That Perfect Sign

Sometime early this summer a new roadside a-frame sign board popped up on my work commute.  It's gotten me thinking every morning.  There's a little shopping strip near my house I drive through (yes, through, not by) each morning.  It almost feels like the street I'm on devolves for a short stint from being an actual street into a mere turnaround for the shopping center traffic, but it's, in fact, actually the street (even if cross traffic doesn't always realize it).  There's also a little median with some plants in it and a brick walkway alongside the street.  And the a-frame sign board sat on that brick walkway each morning until very recently when people finally didn't need the sign anymore because the shop had been there long enough for people to know and remember it.  Including me, I guess, though I've never been in there.  In any event the sign caught my attention because it was bold and looked like this:

Brass tacks.  Every morning on my way to work.  For months.  I always picture old antique chairs - specifically some specific ivory striped ones that used to be in my parents' living room when I was a child with brass tacks lining the edges where the fabric met the wood.  I remember running my fingers over the line those brass tacks made, enjoying the feel of the inconsistent but smooth surface as my fingers rode along their bumpy track.  Small rounded hills with teeny fabric ravines in between.  It's a comforting memory.  Childhood things tend to be like that.

But this sign speaking to me with its bold font at the start of each new day, well, it got my attention, and it got me wondering the origin of the phrase.  And tonight, as I passed it on my way home, I was especially tuned into the concept. 

Turns out, we think we know what things mean when we hear them, but looking them up always gives a little more depth.  And frequently yields something surprising.  (If I'm good for nothing else, it's researching and diving deep....) 

Webster's has a definition for "brass tacks":  "details of immediate practical importance —usually used in the phrase get down to brass tacks." And The Free Dictionary lookup yielded this: "Deal with the essentials; come to the point. For example, Stop delaying and get down to brass tacks, or We really need to get down to bedrock, or He has a way of getting down to the nitty gritty, or Let's get down to cases. The origin of the first phrase, dating from the late 1800s, is disputed. Some believe it alludes to the brass tacks used under fine upholstery, others that it is Cockney rhyming slang for 'hard facts,' and still others that it alludes to tacks hammered into a sales counter to indicate precise measuring points. The noun bedrock has signified the hard rock underlying alluvial mineral deposits since about 1850 and has been used figuratively to denote 'bottom' since the 1860s. The noun nitty-gritty dates from the mid-1900s and alludes to the detailed ('nitty') and possibly unpleasant ('gritty') issue in question. The noun cases apparently alludes to the game of faro, in which the "case card" is the last of a rank of cards remaining in play; this usage dates from about 1900."  

So it's getting to the bottom of things... the essentials.  Oh, essentials.  Ah.  Of course, that.  I've written about those at length before in an earlier post having to do with flowers.  So I can't help but go here:  "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."  The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  The invisible, the essential: brass tacks.  Apparently everything leads me back to here.  This quote was even mentioned in a novel I read to my children this week.  I think I'm sensing a pattern.  Or patterns.  But I guess I wouldn't be me if I didn't.