“Buckle up your guts”
Alan K. Simpson, a Wyoming U.S. senator from 1979-1997, co-chaired President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Erskine Bowles (leading to the more familiar name of “Simpson-Bowles”). Speaking about the Commission’s work, Simpson said in May 2012:
“But Simpson-Bowles, all day long they talk about it in here and it’s like a stink bomb in a garden party, it isn’t going away. Every person that has spoken has mention it. I am not in it for fame and fortune, but there it is. I will not use an old phrase our football coach at the University of Wyoming, but buckle up your guts.”
Simpson graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1954, so “buckle up your guts” probably dates from at least this time. A 1982 book about University of Tennessee football mentioned that “you had to buckle up your guts.” A 1994 book about the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas has Senator Alan Simpson telling Thomas, “Buckle up your guts, pal, and get on the field and forget all the other stuff.”
“Buckle up your guts” appears to mean that one should prepare one’s self for difficult times. The saying remains little-used.
Wiktionary: buckle up
Verb
to buckle up
1.(intransitive, idiomatic) To fasten one’s seat belt or safety belt.
Google Books
Orange Lightning:
Inside University of Tennessee football
By Mike Siroky and Bob Bertucci
West Point, NY: Leisure Press
1982
Pg. 30:
As for the difference between life on a team then and now, Claxton says, “If you wanted to make it here, it was no easy matter. You had to buckle up your guts and come on. If you couldn’t take it, well, as I said, they got it on a platter over here now.”
Google Books
Resurrection:
The confirmation of Clarence Thomas
By John C. Danforth
New York, NY: Viking
1994
Pg. 76:
In that call, and in a call the following Thursday night, Simpson (Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming—ed.) adopted the style and verbiage he learned from a football coach while he was in college. He recalls telling Clarence, “Buckle up your guts, pal, and get on the field and forget all the other stuff.” Simpson’s locker-room-style pep talk was borne out of his own experience, not only as a former football player but as a person who in his youth had spent a couple of nights in the Laramie jail and had been on federal probation for shooting mailboxes.
The Memoirs of Aditya
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Life At NITW-A Bitter Sweet Experience: Diary Post dated August 15, 2007
(...)
Because you have to once again buckle-up your guts to stand in yet another tunnel-long line only to know what your room number is, and mind-you, no proxy’s allowed here.
Yahoo! Finance
Re: JOElongs…-buckle up your guts…
29-Nov-11 08:45 pm
Yentabeans is one of the few posters who get it…everyone here who is thinking that this “recession” will end just like the others doesn’t understand the magnitude of the crisis that we are entering. Boomers will see the best and worst of times before they are buried. The worst is coming…
Huffington Post
Alan Simpson: Paul Krugman’s Work ‘Borders On Hysteria’ (VIDEO)
Posted: 05/16/2012 12:27 am
Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming who co-chaired President Barack Obama’s debt commission in 2010, took a swipe at one of his most fervent critics on Tuesday, saying that economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s work often “borders on hysteria.”
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“It’s like a stink bomb in a garden party, it ain’t going away,” Simpson, who is known for his colorful turns of phrase, said. “Buckle up your guts.”
Zero Hedge
One Half Of Simpson-Bowles Goes There: “Krugman Borders On Hysteria”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/16/2012 13:04 -0400
We have all thought it. We have all muttered it under our breaths (and some of us have even written about it on blogs) but the Keynesian Krusader’s borrow-and-spend-our-way-to-growth dogma was bazooka’d by former Senator Alan Simpson yesterday.
(...)
On Simpson-Bowles 2.0:
“All day around here they talk about Simpson-Bowles. They did not talk about Bowles-Simpson because the acronym there is too bad. It is BS. But Simpson-Bowles, all day long they talk about it in here and it’s like a stink bomb in a garden party, it isn’t going away. Every person that has spoken has mention it. I am not in it for fame and fortune, but there it is. I will not use an old phrase our football coach at the University of Wyoming, but buckle up your guts.”