A few days ago, I was flagged to a stop for a highway patch crew. One guy was laying down a line of hot tar on the crack in the center of the road, and another guy was spreading it out with a hoe, bent into a shallow V.
It was the first time in my life I ever saw a guy with a hard road to hoe !
Shouldn’t that be “a hard row to hoe”?
Dang. That is rare. Now if he’d had a hard row to hoe, it would have been even better!
And you also inspired me to a bout of Googling and I still think it’s row, since that makes gardening/agricultural sense. I don’t know why one would hoe a road, apart from asphalt maintenance!
From: an apologetic overly literal person :S
Well back in the days when roads were just a big dirt path I could see it being hoed but I’m pretty sure it is row.
Well, yes, that’s the right way, and you more often hear “a hard road.” I was pointing that out, in that I finally witnessed the wrong usage coming true. Gardeners and farmers often have a hard row to hoe.
Hookers might talk of having to “ho” one road or another, and the Jolly Green Giant has lots of rows to ho, ho, ho.
When I was in school I once saw one visually impaired student assisting another in finding her way about campus. They both had the long thin white cane with a red tip. He was utilizing his, whilst she merely clung to his elbow for guidance.
Yes, I saw “the blind leading the blind”.
He was quite good at it.
I’ve seen that too. My grandmother volunteers at a “center of activities” for the blind.
Whenever a new patron shows up it is always an existing patron showing them around the building.
Whereas a chubby prostitute in a boat would be a hard ho to row.