In my house, growing up, we had three things that had long handles. A spatula that got used on our Charmglow gas grill. Any pair of pliers made by Channelock. (We reserved the use of the word ‘Channellock” for “Vise grips” for reasons nobody understood, ever). And Underwear.

Last night when Lizp commented on this post, it minded me of those three longhandled things.

I never heard of Longjohns or Long underwear, it was always ‘Longhandled underwear”. I don’t know where the expression came from but both my parents used it, and I did too.

Dad had a recipe for chicken- an old family recipe that only he could do, and which was passed down to me in my turn, a way of marinating the chicken as it cooked to make it tasty and wonderful, and we ate it as often as we could afford the chickens. He had put the chickens on the grill, and the handle had come loose on the longhandled spatula. He sent me downstairs to fix it- i had just gotten home from school and had just hung my suit up in the closet, so I was in my longhandles. I ran down the basement steps and took the longhandled pliers off the pegboard and re-crimped the brass rivets into the handle of the longhandled spatula while in my longhandled underwear. The irony wasn’t lost on me, but I didn’t pass along the knowledge until this very moment.