The origin of the joke ‘a freckle past a hair’ when one is asked the time of day

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Growing up in Canada, I heard this dialogue a hundred times:\

Dude: "What time is it?"
Guy pantomimes watch-checking, but his wrist is bare
Guy: "It's a freckle past a hair."

Wiktionary even has a scant entry, except with the nouns flipped:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_hair_past_a_freckle

I've even noticed this joke fading; perhaps it is because of smartphones.

Is there a 'ground zero' for this phrase?

Best Answer

There are different variants of the phrase but it boils down to the same joke.

The phrase two hairs past a freckle, also one hair, or a hair, past a freckle, is used as a jocular reply by a person who does not have a watch, when asked what the time is; while replying, they will look at the back of their wrist as if they were wearing a watch.(wordhistories)

The same source shows that it is pretty recent:

The earliest occurrence of two hairs past a freckle that I have found is from the letter that a soldier named Dusty (whose chest had “swelled out about six inches” because he had just been promoted to flight sergeant) wrote to his mother on 30th August 1943—letter published in The Canyon News (Canyon, Texas, USA) of 2nd September 1943:

Well, Mom, I guess that is about time for me to stop writing. I just asked Bill Lasher the time and of all the answers to get was “I have just exactly two hairs past a freckle.” Till the next time, Mom, I’ll just say, Love to all, Dusty.

Apparently, the phrase was used in another sense, that of being 'microscopically' accurate when shooting:

Jonathan Storm used the phrase two hairs past a freckle in a different sense in his review of the pilot episode for the U.S. television crime series Justified, with the U.S. actor Timothy Olyphant (born 1968) as Raylan Givens—review published in The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) of 16th March 2010:

Givens works out of the Lexington, Ky., branch of the U.S. Marshals Service. His boss is a plainspoken guy, and his associates include a no-nonsense African American woman and a sniper who can hit a spot two hairs past a freckle from 300 yards.

There's a lot more to read about it in this article, you can find out plenty of interesting facts about other variants of the phrase if you wish.

You can definitely play with the phrase as this hilarious post says:

Everyone knows though that ‘three hairs past a freckle’ is 10.15 and that two moles past a pimple is 10.30. For the record, three hairs past a pimple is 1.45 and a freckle past a pimple is 5.30. 11 plooks is, obviously, noon and, 6 boils, is midnight. 2 freckles past a rash is 2.30 and an ingrown toenail before a 5 o’clock shadow is six o’clock.

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