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Funny you should say that...Here is a typical article that has appeared in FYSST: --------------------- BAD NEIGHBORHOODFrom Dan Russell: I was watching the History Channel last night and heard an interesting word origin: The wrong side of the tracks referred to the side of the tracks that, due to the wind, usually received most of the locomotive's black, sooty smoke. And so you've come to us for the final word on this phrase? Smart man, Dan! Well, etymologists like Christine Ammer don't think the phrase has anything to do with soot. There would have been plenty of soot from everyone's fireplaces, because most people did not have any kind of heating other than fireplaces, and for a long time that is also where cooking was done. Ms. Ammer suggests that the phrase is simply the same as "the wrong side of town" or "the wrong side of the street". Why, there's even a phrase born on the wrong side of the blanket. When railroads were built and became the primary mode of long-distance transportation, the tracks became an important fixture through town, literally dividing the town's more prosperous half from its poor half, or perhaps only figuratively doing so. However, another etymologist, Adrian Room, recently revised Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and he does believe that soot, smoke, and prevailing winds did result in poor or industrial areas being located on the downwind side of the tracks, which then gave rise to the phrase. Whatever the precise notion behind the wrong side of the tracks, it arose in the U.S., probably in the 19th century, though the OED's first record of it is from 1929. ----------------------------- Source: Take Our Word For It http://www.takeourword.com Weekly Preview Newsletter: etymology-subscribe@listbot.com (c) Copyright Take Our Word For It 1995-2001. All rights reserved.
Budgeting Your Time And Talent © 2001, Rozey Gean, Marketing-Seek.com If you could put a price tag on your time, would you be selling yourself short or cashing in on what you are actually worth? Should we take the time to run the calculations, I would venture to guess that the majority of us would discover that we are definitely coming up on the short end when it comes to our time and talent. As entrepreneurs, it is import. . .
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