...fourthirtyseven...

My dad worked under Donald Rumsfeld for a time, back when Don made a venture into the private sector. He was CEO of G.D. Searle, maker of everything from ultrasound devices to aspartame, while my dad was head of public affairs for the company back in the '80s. So they're close.
Anyway, William Safire, editorialist for the New York Times, does a column on language for the Times Magazine entitled, oddly enough, On Language. This past week's column focused on "Rummy's" habit of exclaming< "My goodness gracious!" when expressing his surprise at something. Safire goes on to describe the multitude of ways not to take the lord's name in vain and ohterwise avoid profanity.
According to the editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, Safire reports, good grief and goodness gracious are tied for tops, but "Exclamations beginning with great are holding their own. You can still hear great Caesar's ghost! rendered half as often as great God! and great Scott! while great day in the mornin' has gained a rural connotation, and a jocular quality has overtaken great balls of fire!
Great God!? I've never heard that in my life. Now, a lot of people I know say good God! (often followed by y'all if that person happens to be a rock star or Elvis impersonator), but never have I heard God referred to as great in this context. Could this be a regionalism that just hasn't made its way through Chicagoland or Central Ohio, my principal places of residence and historical haunts?
Safire also mentions that the origins of the phrase heavens to Betsy! is a bit of a mystery to language etymologists, but he doesn't mention Betsy's brother, Murgatroid, to whom Snagglepuss often willed the heavens.