Again I find an excuse to hijack tsuwm's wwftd: "woodshedding". My excuse is that only someone my age would know what a woodshed was, or what pain in posterior was predicted by the command from paterfamilias "Come with me to the woodshed." In the days when the great majority of homes was heated by wood, there were two little houses behind the home. for two different kinds of comfort. The firewood had to be kept dry, , but in particular the kindling to light the fire had to be dry. And the kindlling was a convenient size with which to administer corporal punishment. And the woodshed was far enough away from the home that sympathetic mother did not have to suffer the vocalizations of the culprit.
The woodshed was never big enough for a barbershop quartet. That part of the quote makes no sense to me.

Subject:
today's wwftd is... woodshedding
Date:
Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:07:34 -0500 (CDT)
From:
wwftd master <mikef3@cfsmo.honeywell.com>
To:
wwftd minions <tsuwm@aol.com>
the worthless word for the day is: woodshedding

[vbl. n.] a) the dispensing of punishment
b) the practice or rehearsal of music
c) spontaneous or improvised barber-shop singing

No head falsetto here but complete, out of the honest breast,
a baritone voice brought over years of woodshedding up to this range.
-Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

-tsuwm http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/