Pounding on the cable...

There are a number of curious turns of the phrase that have eluded my efforts to track them down on the internet.

Among these is a line from Ogden Nash, in a paean to baseball titled Line-Up For Yesterday. The poem consists of 26 short stanzas, all but the last of which are devoted to famous players, in alphabetical order. Nash wrote the following for the letter "O":

"O" is for Ott
Of the restless right foot.
When he leaned on the pellet,
The pellet stayed put.

I understand the "restless right foot" part. But when one "leans on the pellet" in baseball, what, exactly, is one doing?

Another mystery is "egg in one's beer," which I recall first reading in some piece of fiction about the Marines ('Whaddaya want—an egg in your beer?'). This slang appears to have no clear etymology, but from the context of its usage, it appears to mean something along the lines of "you want something extra for nothing?"

And finally, there is the quote from which the subject of this post is derived.

A year before I graduated from Stony Brook, Robert A. Heinlein delivered a talk to the Brigade of Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy. It's actually a great lecture, if only because of Heinlein's "Five Rules for Success in Writing" (which, I suspect is applicable in other endeavors), but a number of sources on the 'net cut out all the stuff about writing and focus only on the part after Heinlein asked a plebe "Mister, why are you here?."

In addressing that rhetorical question, Heinlein wonders why anyone would want to become a naval officer. It's not the pay. What about...

Working conditions? You'll spend half your life away from your family. Your working hours? 'Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able; the seventh the same, and pound on the cable.' A forty-hour week is standard for civilians - but not for naval officers. You'll work that forty-hour week, but that's just a starter.

I've never been able to determine the meaning of "pounding on the cable."

But it does create a certain mental picture.

At any rate, I had intended to translate 3,000 source words today. I managed almost 30% more than that, which puts me in reasonably good shape, but I'm not out of the woods yet.

The evening was spent with everyone running around packing. The kids go back to Oilers-land tomorrow.

And unless I miss my guess, tonight is the "fall back" night, time-wise.

This should be fun.

Cheers...