It was Joey Hart, one of Mr. Martin’s two assistants, who had explained what the gibberish meant. “She must be a Dodger fan,” he had said. “Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the radio and he uses those expressions--picked ‘em up down South.” Joey had gone on to explain one or two. “Tearing up the pea patch” meant going on a rampage; “sitting in the catbird seat” means sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him. Mr. Martin dismissed all this with an effort. It had been annoying, it had driven him near to distraction, but he was too solid a man to be moved to murder by anything so childish. It was fortunate, he reflected as he passed on to the important charges against Mrs. Barrows, that he had stood up under it so well. He had maintained always an outward appearance of polite tolerance. “Why, I even believe you like the woman,” Miss Paird, his other assistant, had once said to him. He had simply smiled.
So, there. The catbird is a North American bird that mimics the cat mew or meow if you will. Hence its name. This bird likes to perch himself/herself on the tallest branch of a tree and sing out loud, attracting mates or warning off rivals. The tallest branch of the tree is therefore the “catbird seat”, where the bird gets an overview of what’s going on from all directions.
Hence the metaphor that the catbird seat equals to an advantageous position, where one sits comfortably and enjoys their advantage, whatever it is.
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