jackleg

1999, David Horsley, Into the Wind, Houston, Texas: Winedale Publishing, “Tops for Trees,” p. 180, If it were up to me, we’d have a city ordinance against incompetent pruning of trees. You need a permit to unclog a sewer or fix a light switch, but any jackleg with a chainsaw can climb up a ladder and undo in five minutes what Mother Nature took decades to accomplish.

1841, Letter to the editor, The Southern Planter, Volume I, No. 1, January 1841, p. 12, The next year I had a projecting kind of jack leg carpenter, from Hanover, living with me in the capacity of overseer […]

1941, Martha Colquitt, Interview published in Slave Narratives, Library of Congress Project, Volume 4: Georgia Narratives, Part 1, Grandma didn’t think chillun ought to see funerals, so de first one I ever seed, wuz when ma died two years atter de War wuz done over. A jackleg colored preacher talked, but he didn’t have sense ’nuff to preach a sho’ ’nuff sermon.

1957, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Wolfbane, Chapter 11, in Galaxy Science Fiction, He was a doer, not a thinker; his skills were the skills of an artisan, a tinkerer, a jackleg mechanic.

2005, William Hoffman, Lies, Montgomery, Alabama: River City Publishing, Chapter 23, p. 226, Driving the secondhand Chevy pickup, he visits not only major car dealerships but also every jackleg garage he happens upon in dusty sun-blasted towns of the Deep South.