Bleeping bleepity bleep

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There were two things my parents might say that could make the hair stand up on my arms. One scenario involves Mother in the sewing room at the back of the house, hovering over her sewing machine. Perhaps she made a mistake in her sewing, or more likely, her old Singer machine had eaten up the thread, or the needle had broken. "Curses!" she would say with considerable vitriol. That would make me disappear from the room in a hurry. That is what Mother said when she was outraged. The other time she would do this was sometimes when she was trying to style her hair before going to church. Mother, poor Mother, has always been incredibly impatient with her hair. Typically, she would sleep on pink sponge curlers, then take them out after Sabbath breakfast. There she would be in the bathroom, after all of us had finished getting ready for church, trying to get her hair to behave. Since it wouldn't conform to the picture in her head of how she wanted to look, she'd begin raking through it with her hairbrush. Of course, that would make it bushy and wild. "Oh...curses!" she'd explode, slamming her hairbrush down on the counter top. We'd all head for the car to wait for her to come out, hair askew. It never crossed our minds to laugh--she was white hot.

This was the way we felt the few times when we heard Daddy say with the strongest passion, "Jew-dass pa-reest!" We'd freeze, then try to disappear just to get away from his fury. He wouldn't hurt us, just explode and stomp around. But he only did that when he was at the height of his element. The other thing he'd say that made me hold my breath was, "What the Sam Hill?" or his incredulous, "What in the cat hair?!"

I ask you, who is Judas Priest and where is Sam Hill, and of what significance is cat hair? I don't know the origin of these sayings, but country folk used to say some pretty funny things. If this was as bad as the language got, it really wasn't that bad at all. But it was funny.

There were other things that I heard people say when they were angry. Nana used to exclaim, "By Cramp!" when she was upset. Great-grandfather used to say, "Gee Rudney!" when something of note happened.
"Gads!" "Gah!" or "Guy!" were other comments that always make me chuckle. My friend, who grew up on a farm in Tennessee drawls out, "Hwhat in tar?!" while others say, "what in tarnashun?" And a shirt-tail relative used to say, "Great Day in the mornin!" An elderly man whom I used to care for used to say, "Good night shirt!" if he saw something that defied explanation.
Mother tells of an old boyfriend she had in New York City back in the 40s who used to say, "Holy jump up and sit down!" Mother would go to pieces laughing. "Jumping Jehoshaphat!" conjures up a hilarious mental image, as does "Holy Nellie!" and "Great Scott!" My sister's, "What the blazes?!" cracks me up.
The British say things that to our American ears are quite hilarious, but to them mean really bad things. Sometimes it makes one laugh just to hear anger expressed with an accent. My friend Betty used to say with exasperation, "My giddy auhnt!" with great effect. And my cousin's grandmother used to exclaim, "Mercy me, I do pray!"
My Australian friend used to use the qualifier, "flogging" in front of anything that he wanted to emphasize: "The flogging door was locked!" This used to double me up with laughter, which annoyed him more.
Then there is my dear cousin who exclaims, "Oh, forevermore!" Daddy's description of an irksome element as being "consarned" or his hasty comment, "Confound it!" used to make me want to laugh. But he said these in the heat of the moment, when a laugh would be seen as defiance. So I have chortled to myself for years over his, and other such euphemistic expletives.
I wonder where some of these hilarious comments come from. For now, they are a mix of warm memories and laughter.