I finally found some citations for
some pumpkins other than my quoted source, Dr. Bill!...but putting "some pumpkins slang" into the search. Here's one from
Bartleby, an excerpt from H. L. Mencken's
The American langauge (don't know why this didn't come up on the
Bartleby site search:
>Thornton, in 1912, substituted the following:
Forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England, which survive in the United States, such as
allow, bureau, fall, gotten, guess, likely, professor, shoat. Words and phrases of distinctly American origin, such as
belittle, lengthy, lightning-rod, to darken one’s doors, to bark up the wrong tree, to come out at the little end of the horn, blind tiger, cold snap, gay Quaker, gone coon, long sauce, pay dirt, small potatoes, some pumpkins. Nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc., that are distinctively American, such as
ground-hog, hang-bird, hominy, live-oak, locust, opossum, persimmon, pone, succotash, wampum, wigwam. Names of persons and classes of persons, and of places, such as
Buckeye, Cracker, Greaser, Hoosier, Old Bullion, Old Hickory, the Little Giant, Dixie, Gotham, the Bay State, the Monumental City. Words which have assumed a new meaning, such as
card, clever, fork, help, penny, plunder, raise, rock, sack, ticket, windfall.<
Here's the whole page from
Bartleby.
http://www.bartleby.com/185/pages/page41.htmlThis from Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women:
MEG : Amy, what have you been doing?
AMY : Don't laugh, Jo. I only changed the little bottle of cologne for a big one. I gave all of my money to get it.
BETH : Amy!
MEG : Darling! That was unselfish of you.
JO : You're
some pumpkins, Amy.
AMY : I felt ashamed thinking only of myself.
And this from a Mexican War journal by one George F. Ruxton (in Spanish..consuelo or anyone?):
Uno suele encontrarse con criaturas muy hermosas y cuando una mujer mexicana combina tales perfecciones, son «como calabazas»,
«some pumpkins», como dicen los habitantes de Missouri cuando se refieren a algo superlativo, cuando hablan de mujeres.
http://sunsite.unam.mx/revistas/1847/Ruxton-i.htmlThere were still more pages of hits I didn't have time to scour, Dr. Bill, if you want to try finding some more.