Category Archives: periphrasis

Periphrasis (per-if’-ra-sis): The substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name (a species of circumlocution); or, conversely, the use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it. (Circumlocutions are rhetorically useful as euphemisms, as a method of amplification, or to hint at something without stating it.)

I didn’t know what to do. The big round yellow ball in the sky was about to set me on fire. I swear, digging potatoes should be a job for dogs. Here I was in Idaho, a boy from New Jersey—from the Jersey Shore. I had read the ad for potato diggers in “True Stories” magazine—my primary source of information about the world. I had just finished reading a story about a man who only ate barbed wire. It was shocking. I turned the page and there it was. “Home, home on range, where the deer and the tubers play. Spend your day off at Yellowstone National Park! You will dig potatoes. You will dig Idaho!” There was a photo of a giant potato floating on a spewing geyser. I was sold!

I wondered how we would dig up the giant potatoes. Would it just be us with shovels, or would we be assisted by bulldozers. I was thinking these thoughts as I fell asleep on the train to Boise. As an amateur poet, I wrote “An ode on a Giant Potato” when I woke up in the morning, before I headed to the dining car, were I ordered scrambled eggs and home fries. I asked the waiter if the home fries were from Idaho. He just looked at me and shook his head like he pitied me.

When the train arrived at the station, there was a man with a sign that said “Potato Ranch.” A group of us assembled around the man. He said, “Please place your wallets and all forms on I.D. In the canvas bag. This is a mere formality. Just do it.” I threw my wallet into the bag. My mother given it to me for high school graduation. It was hard to let it go. I asked, “When do we get to go to Yellowstone?” The man told us he was sorry—the Yellowstone thing was a misprint in the job ad. He told us it is 600 miles north of the potato ranch, and impossible to travel to in summer when the roads are jammed with tourists. He said, “Get on the truck, and hurry.” I climbed up on the flatbed truck and off we went. It was about a half-hour trip banging around on the truck’s bed. My butt was really sore when we got to the ranch. The next thing we had to do was sign our contracts. There were two men with guns standing by the table. I signed a document pretty much making me an indentured servant.

I looked around and saw the 25-foot high electrified fence surrounding the Potato Ranch compound, There were a couple of dead crows hanging from the wire. Their wings were charred and their feet were missing—there were charred stubs where their feet used to be. One more thing: We were told that we’d be “watched over” at night, to keep us safe from the “Indians” who spent their evenings getting drunk and luring people from Potato Ranch to pow wow. They have a primitive hair salon where they take their unfortunate prisoners and have aspiring native hair stylists practice cutting their hair, using tools made from Buffalo bones and charging $9.00 for a trim and $12.00 for a full styling, which includes a bear grease “flat down” and a smoked doe skin do-rag. Given Potato Ranch’s electric fortifications, I couldn’t be sucked in by the “watched over” story—clearly, the fence was designed to keep us in, and clearly, if they actually existed, the Indians were friendly.

So, here I am out in the field digging potatoes. There are no giant potatoes; just giant blisters on my hands. “Potato Ranch” is a nightmare. But, I found out through the grapevine that the ranch is owned by the McDonald’s hamburger empire. I wrote a letter to Ronald McDonald describing the unconscionable, and probably illegal, working conditions at Potato Ranch. I was able to sneak the letter to the post office via one of the “Fun Women” brought in for the executive staff’s “entertainment” on Saturday nights.

One week later a helicopter landed on the quad, and Ronald McDonald stepped out! He said something to the Boss, and the boss pointed me out—I had foolishly signed my name to the letter. As he came toward me, I smiled and waved to him. He grimaced. I noticed the Hamburglar had stepped off the helicopter too. He was carrying a crowbar and had a menacing look on his face. I ran for the helicopter, grabbing the Hamburglar’s crowbar as I as I ran past him and jumped into the helicopter. I held the crowbar over the pilot’s head and yelled “Get me the hell out of here or your head’s a cracked egg.” Ronald McDonald shook his fist as we took off.

When we landed in Boise, the police were waiting for me, to arrest me. I told the pilot that the cracked head thing still stood if he didn’t talk to the police. He talked, and the police let me go. I went back to Jersey where I parlayed my Idaho potato experience into a job picking tomatoes on a truck farm. Eventually I received a huge settlement from a class action suit against Potato Ranch and McDonalds. I purchased a cranberry bog in South Jersey and named it “Waders.”

I have nightmares about Ronald McDonald, but I know he’s doing time in a federal penitentiary. The franchise was dissolved to cover legal expenses and the trade name McDonalds was was banned. A Chinese company bought all the assets and reopened under the name MacaDownells. I still eat at the McDonalds remnant for two reasons: I love Big Macs with cheese and I carry a magic marker and write obscenities on the statues of Aiguo Macadownell (who looks identical to Ronald McDonald) standing by the entranceways.

As you can imagine, I will never eat the French fries ever again. In fact, I have to put in a mighty effort when I’m at MacaDownells to keep from hopping the counter and grabbing a handful of frozen fries and throwing them on the floor.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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