Author Topic: What exactly is a "croppie house"?  (Read 7667 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« on: April 25, 2006, 10:34:58 pm »
I mean, my folks was from Pennsylvania, so what exactly is Randall talking about?

He tells Jack that his boss, Roy Taylor, has a little cabin down on Lake Kemp (on the Wichita River in Baylor County, Texas, southeast of Childress--I looked it up in my atlas). Randall says he's got "a croppie house ... a little boat. Says I can use it whenever I want." Randall says they should "fish some."

We know what he really wants to get Jack down there for, but what exactly is a "croppie house"?

I have heard my father and other relatives who are fisherman talk about fishing for "crappies," which in central Pennsylvania refers to a type of bass. Anybody know whether this is what Randall is talking about, bass fishing? Is a "croppie house" a little cabin Texans stay in when they go bass fishing?
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Offline littleguitar

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2006, 10:42:02 pm »
Well the word crappie is pronounced croppie, so most likely they are talking about the same thing.  A crappie is a type of fish, a very usual type of fish to catch and eat.  What exactly a crappie house is, I'm not sure... I think it's probably where they keep the crappie after catching them, or maybe where they keep fishing equipment... I'm not really a fisher, so I'm not positive. Maybe someone else can help you with that...

I once had a waiter tell me the special of the night was crappie, he pronounced it literally CRAP-PIE, LOL It killed me!
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2006, 10:48:23 pm »
My father really loved crappie, and so I was mercilessly teased in elementary school because I pronounced it just like it was spelled!
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Offline newyearsday

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2006, 10:49:30 pm »
I mean, my folks was from Pennsylvania, so what exactly is Randall talking about?
Well the word crappie is pronounced croppie, so most likely they are talking about the same thing.  A crappie is a type of fish, a very usual type of fish to catch and eat.  What exactly a crappie house is, I'm not sure... I think it's probably where they keep the crappie after catching them, or maybe where they keep fishing equipment... I'm not really a fisher, so I'm not positive. Maybe someone else can help you with that...

I once had a waiter tell me the special of the night was crappie, he pronounced it literally CRAP-PIE, LOL It killed me!

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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2006, 11:09:29 pm »
Quote
Well the word crappie is pronounced croppie,

Not in Central Pennsylvania it isn't, which was sort of part of my point. Up here it's pronounced CRAP-PEE, with the first syllable pronounced, well, like crap.

But thanks for the input!
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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2006, 11:34:42 pm »
It's just a little cabin like structure usually on a lake but sometimes like a trailer where you can hang out and fish and sleep and cook all day or all weekend while you go after the elusive crappie


Offline littleguitar

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2006, 12:00:15 am »
Quote
Well the word crappie is pronounced croppie,

Not in Central Pennsylvania it isn't, which was sort of part of my point. Up here it's pronounced CRAP-PEE, with the first syllable pronounced, well, like crap.

But thanks for the input!

Really? Wow, I had no clue! here I was thinking that croppie was just the normal pronunciation, I had no clue it was a regional/accent thing... huh, you learn something new every day! LOL
‘cause the truth is, I already give him everythin’ I got to give, more than I ever even knew I had; ‘n it all for him, all of it, him who is my brother, my father, my child, my friend, my lover, my heart, my soul; my Ennis.

-- del Mar Painting, Ch. 48 by b73

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2006, 09:40:49 am »
It's just a little cabin like structure usually on a lake but sometimes like a trailer where you can hang out and fish and sleep and cook all day or all weekend while you go after the elusive crappie



Maybe drink a little whiskey, too?  :D

Thanks, Victoria! Kinda figgered that's what it was, but it's nice to have confirmation.

Actually, the eleventh edition of Webster's, which we have here at work, has an entry under crappie, but not croppie. The crappie entry further cross-references to black crappie and white crappie, and both are evidently a variety of sunfish, not bass. Maybe I should ask my dad about this. He tried and failed to make a fisherman out of me. I didn't have the patience to sit on a stream bank all day and wait for something to bite!
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Kd5000

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #8 on: April 26, 2006, 03:59:12 pm »
We fished for the same thing, in East Texas except we called it a sacalait, the best fish to eat. I looked it up at google and it's the same thing as a crappie. I think sacalait sounds better.
From google
Sac´a`lait
n. 1. (Zool.) A kind of fresh-water bass; the crappie.

I never heard of anything called a crappie house. In the resoviers around East Texas, they were merely called fishing camps, just a trailer parker near a lake.   If the most modest structues was referred to as a fishing camp, as that particular word choice covered a wide variety of very very modest fishing camps to some nouveau riche structure with a large pier and boats tied up to it.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2006, 04:08:58 pm »
We fished for the same thing, in East Texas except we called it a sacalait, the best fish to eat. I looked it up at google and it's the same thing as a crappie. I think sacalait sounds better.
From google
Sac´a`lait
n. 1. (Zool.) A kind of fresh-water bass; the crappie.

I never heard of anything called a crappie house. In the resoviers around East Texas, they were merely called fishing camps, just a trailer parker near a lake.   If the most modest structues was referred to as a fishing camp, as that particular word choice covered a wide variety of very very modest fishing camps to some nouveau riche structure with a large pier and boats tied up to it.

Well, then, "I think my dad wuz right!" A crappie is a bass.

Interesting point about the use of the term "fishing camp." Those same relatives of my dad who fish with him for crappies use the term "camp" for the kind of small house that might elsewhere be termed a cabin. As in "hunting camp" rather than "hunting cabin." Put another way, where Ennis speaks of "Don Wroe's cabin," my dad's cousins would probably say, "Don Wroe's camp." But they would mean a cabin.
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Offline twistedude

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2006, 01:48:12 am »
Bob says there used to be crappie fish AN D bass in the lagoon near his house (south side Chicago, Illinois), and they asre definitely two different fish. The bass is nice and solid and cooks up nice; the crappie is softer and less pleasant. Bass are somewhast larger than crappies (which he promounced "crappie" but was not unfamiliar with the "croppie" pronounciation.

Said the city would stock the lagoon with these fish every spring, and what were not caught would die off during the cold of the winter.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2006, 02:44:43 am by julie01 »
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Offline MaineWriter

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2006, 09:42:53 am »
Quote
Interesting point about the use of the term "fishing camp." Those same relatives of my dad who fish with him for crappies use the term "camp" for the kind of small house that might elsewhere be termed a cabin. As in "hunting camp" rather than "hunting cabin." Put another way, where Ennis speaks of "Don Wroe's cabin," my dad's cousins would probably say, "Don Wroe's camp." But they would mean a cabin.

Up here in Maine, we definitely have "camps."  Fishing camp, hunting camp etc. "We're going up to camp" is a common expression.

My parents always had a summer cottage (not camp, not cabin) but that was over in NH. LOL
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Offline henrypie

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Re: What exactly is a "croppie house"?
« Reply #12 on: April 28, 2006, 10:03:39 am »

Delayed but sincere bellows of laughter at the crappie special.
 ;D