Oh shucky darns; you got me going:

Seems like I read somewhere that to teach the draftees during WWI to march
they ran into the problem that a large number did not know left from right.
So they put straw in the privates left foot, and hay in the right. Then the
Sargent would call out Straw foot, Hay foot, Straw foot...... I do not have
a reference, but that seems about right that they woud definitely know the
difference fo staw and hay, even if they did not know left and right.

Oh, and hay was the largest export from the US during WWI. It was the
petroleum of the day.
Bert


"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

"Phil Carmody" wrote in message
...
dpb writes:
BTDT Couldn't wear the T-shirt due to the straw down my back.
...

"Straw" and "hay" are two different things...

To some people they may be, but to other people they
are not. Do not think that your chosen argot defines
everyone's language.

Phil, who really doesn't care about the presence or
absense of ******** hanging off any cows he sees.

May not make any difference in your life but it's still standard English
and not "argot". If you kid is going to do a craft project requiring
straw and you bring him or her hay then it's not going to work out very
well. If said kid has a pet rabbit and you bring it straw to eat instead
of hay that's not going to work out all that well either. And do take
your camera to the hat shop to record the expression on the hatter's face
when you ask for a "hay hat". And I'd like to see you drink soda through
a hay.

It's not a fine point of distinction--hay is animal fodder, straw is
what's left over after everything with significant nutritional value has
been removed from the grain plant.



--
I tried the Vista speech recognition by running the tutorial. I was
amazed, it was awesome, recognised every word I said. Then I said the
wrong word ... and it typed the right one. It was actually just
detecting a sound and printing the expected word! -- pbhj on /.