Grapevine Gallouses

During a conversation with Mom and Dad while we were camping last weekend, the subject of overconfident young first-time employees came up. (Let's face it, they sometimes think they're MUCH more indisposable than they really are!)

Daddy said that when my grandfather, Curt, was working for Clinchfield Coal many years ago (when Daddy was a young boy) that a miner had expressed his displeasure with the Company to a supervisor. (This of course was before the union got involved in mining.) The supervisor had told the miner that if he didn't like his job, there was someone waiting outside the gate in his grapevine gallouses waiting to take his place.

I'd never heard the expression "grapevine gallouses" before, and was completely intrigued. I Googled the phrase and got no hits whatsover. I think it's very descriptive, though. First, for those of you who never heard of "gallouses", think "suspenders". At the time this supervisor would have used the phrase, gallouses would have been common attire. Imagine being so poverty-stricken that you had to use grapevine to keep your britches up. Very descriptive, indeed.