Caught Phrases

I've been rattling catch phrases around in my head for the past couple of days. Perhaps it has to do with Oprah's guest on her show this coming monday (S. Palin, AKA Caribou Barbie), or the fact that American Movie Classics will be presenting a revised version of "The Prisoner" on Sunday night. The Prisoner marked the departure of characters with the enigmatic phrase "Be seeing you!", which I have adopted after a fashion as my identification moniker whenever I'm Geocaching. Too, I have used the catch phrase made popular by the former Governor of Alaska - but way before that person was even in High School.
Way back in '71 (using the Grizzled Old Prospector voice), I landed a part time job running cameras for the local cable TV channel. For some reason I got into the habit of replying "You Betcha!" every time the supervisor asked me to do something. Didn't take long for the phrase to wear itself thin with the man and being a High School kid at the time it became a bit of a game. So when the phrase came up during last year's Presidential campaign, I was highly amused.
I was just as amused by John McCain's use of the term "My Friend".
Fast forward from High School to the winter of 1978/79. I'm working at a radio station in Parkersburg, West Virginia and the consultant/program manager constantly talked down to most of the rest of us by using the term "My Friend". We were real quick to realize that when that particular dip used that phrase, we were about to get short-changed in one way or another. Almost guaranteed. Over the years I had come to the conclusion that any time anyone used that phrase, they were assuredly not my friend, nor were they likely to be.
What was worse was that "consultant's" stooge's patronizing use of the phrase "Big Boy". I loathed the phrase and I wasn't alone. One of my fellow inmates rigged up a comic book from one of the "Big Boy" restraunts to read "The Adventures of W***'s Big Boy" and posted it for everyone to see. I don't believe he ever caught on.
Then there was the phrase picked up by one of the guys I knew while I was attending Ohio University. He and several other of his colleagues had found part-time radio employment at a radio station in the Ohio River town of Pomeroy. They noted that the locals in Pomeroy would add the phrase "There, beddy" at the end of just about every sentenced they spoke.
"How's the weather, there, beddy!"
"Going across the street, there, beddy?"
"I just murdered my children, there, beddy!" And so on.
Anyhoo, this person had a bit of a creative streak in him and used some free time and the facilities of the Ohio University radio stations to create a "Jingle Package" called, appropriately enough, "There Beddy!", crediting his creation to "Pay Less Productions of Fort Worth". The package was a great send-up of jingles, of some Southern Ohioans, of Country music and of the radio station which employed some of the people involved in making the package. I still have a copy of the package on a cassette tape somewhere, and every once in a great while, I will hear the lyrics:
"Who is the friend of the pig-******* man? W***, There Beddy!"
And then, there was the ultimate melange of catch phrases which occured together when a friend and I who had been both at Ohio University at the time the jingle package was created and at that radio station in Parkersburg (borrowing a couple of other catch phrases on the way) to create the sentence:
"As I say, there big boy, this overhead's about to eat me a new a******, there, beddy!"
Funny? You betcha!

Be Seeing You!