Darren Garrison wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:32:47 -0700, BattMeals
wrote:


a3.jpg shows part of a well-trimmed devil strip of the neighbor
to the right.

So, are you from Ohio? I used Google to look up the
never-heard-before term "devil strip", and found this:

http://www.word-detective.com/030600.html

Dear Word Detective: Recently, a friend said that she parked her
car on the "devil strip" and explained that this was the strip of
grass between the sidewalk and the road. Can you tell me what the
origin of this term is? (She's from Ohio) -- Wendy Klepfer, via the
internet.

Oh, well, there's your answer. People in (and from) Ohio are just
plain weird. (I'm allowed to say that because I happen to live in
Ohio at the moment.) Ohio boggles the mind. Our local county
sheriff just got himself indicted by a grand jury on 323 felony
charges, but steadfastly refuses to stop running for re-election.
And there's a good chance that he'll win. I think there's something
in the water around here.

What people call that strip between the street and the sidewalk
turns out to depend on where they live. When I was growing up in
Connecticut, we called it the "shoulder," but other terms heard
around the U.S. include "tree bank" (common in Massachusetts), "
berm," "right of way," "green strip" and the logical, if
unglamorous, "dog walking area."

According to The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE),
which pays close attention to such local lingo, "devil strip" is
heard almost exclusively in Northeastern Ohio, up around Akron.
DARE suggests that the term may arise from the strip's legal status
as a sort of "no man's land" between public and private property.

"Devil" occurs in many such folk terms, applied to plants, animals,
places and things, usually those considered dangerous or
unattractive, and the sense of "devil" when found in place names is
often "barren, unproductive and unused." DARE notes a similar term
"devil's lane," first appearing around 1872, meaning the unusable
strip of land between two parallel fences, often the result of
neighbors being unable to agree on a common fence. And another
term, "devil's footstep," dates back to around 1860 and means "a
spot of barren ground." So it's not surprising that a strip of land
next to the street, unusable by anyone, would be christened the
"devil strip." In fact, for Ohio, it's downright logical.

Around here we call it the parking strip even though it is against the
law to park on it.