Not quite sure if this is a regional saying or not, but around here when things are going slow we equate it go going as slow as molasses going uphill in winter.
Not quite sure why, because the reference to this saying is an amazing flood of molasses in Boston in January of 1919 The molasses tank above the city exploded presumably because the day was so extremely warm after being so cold, and the molasses ran through the streets faster then people could run and it ended up killing 21 people.
An eight-foot-high wave of molasses swept away the freight cars and caved in the building's doors and windows. The few workers in the building's cellar had no chance as the liquid poured down and overwhelmed them.The huge quantity of molasses then flowed into the street outside. It literally knocked over the local firehouse and then pushed over the support beams for the elevated train line. The hot and sticky substance then drowned and burned five workers at the Public Works Department. In all, 21 people and dozens of horses were killed in the flood. It took weeks to clean the molasses from the streets of Boston.
What a strange, yet scary story! Death by molasses!? Just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a regional saying. I'm originally from Massachusetts and my mom would always say this to us whenever we were dawdling.
ReplyDeleteAnother Massachusetts saying is "Light dawns on Marblehead". I don't hear this much here in Albuquerque!
OMC! I wonder if any kitties were killed in this horrible disaster!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely it is a regional saying - my human, a southern California native, had never heard it before but the first thing she thought when she saw it was, "This sounds like something a New Englander would say!" because, well, it only makes sense!
I remember my parents using a similar phrase: "Slower than molasses in January" I can't think of when I first heard it. I live in Western Canada.
ReplyDeleteI had heard about it, then it was also included in the novel about Boston from that era "The Given Day" by Dennis Lehane. I love to find historical events in fiction. In Western PA we also said "as slow as molasses in January", which would be pretty darned slow except during the spring thaw, as happened in Boston.
ReplyDelete