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Laissez les bons temps rouler

I love the strong, determined, but somehow cheerful look of this old rolling machine. To achieve the needed rolling weight for flattening dirt roads, you fill its wheels with water. I bet it is lots of fun to drive. I ran across it today when browsing through photos I took in the countryside in Alsace FR.

 

When the perfect caption popped into my mind, I felt I had to upload to Flickr and share the laugh. “Laissez les bons temps rouler” is a shop-worn phrase from the perennial party town of New Orleans, Louisiana. It appears on busses, T-shirts, etc.

 

Funny enough, the phrase is also a calque: a word-for-word substitution of a phrase in one language into another language. Never mind the grammar and syntax. In this case, the calque is from American English into Louisiana Cajun French.

 

Location: Rural Alsace, France.

 

In my album: Dan’s Funny Stuff.

 

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Uploaded on October 27, 2025
Taken on September 14, 2015