The Cotton Trade
An old man walks into the office where I work:
Clerk: Good morning!
Old man: Good morning.
Clerk: How are ya today?
Old man: Fair to middlin'.
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That's one of my favorite old phrases. Making a mental note to use it more often. I'd never really known its origins, though, until now -
From World Wide Words:
Fair and middling were terms in the cotton business for specific grades — the sequence ran from the best quality (fine), through good, fair, middling and ordinary to the least good (inferior), with a number of intermediates, one being middling fair. The phrase fair to middling sometimes appeared as a reference to this grade, or to a range of intermediate qualities — it was common to quote indicative prices, for example, for “fair to middling grade”. The reference was so well known in the cotton trade that it seems to have eventually escaped into the wider language.