TheGraphicOnline

Well, it’s time for a break again after the heavy stuff. But before starting on the Trivia Trail, I can’t resist commenting on the corn. (Some might say that corn is all that ever appears in this blog.) No, this is real corn. Have you noticed the fields around town? My guess is that this year’s crop is the fastest-growing ever. Do you remember how we used to swear by “Knee High By The Fourth of July”? Iowa has always bragged about being “Out Here Where The Tall Corn Grows.” Bet we’ve got’em this year. Even before the Fourth it’s “Eye High By The Fourth of July!”

* * *

So now we’ll return to Trivia of the Week, or maybe “Remember When…” — furnished by that jolly raconteur, Don Kowalski. Don insists he’s not the kind of person “of a certain age” who will remember some of these, but he’s getting close. Whatever. Here’s some terms as he submitted them:

“I’m sad,” he laments that almost all the old folk are gone who would call the accelerator the ‘foot feed’. Many today do not even know what a clutch is or that the dimmer switch used to be on the floor.

“Now that we’re thinking of automobiles, when did we quit called them ‘emergency brakes’? At some point ‘parking brakes’ became the proper term. But I miss the hint of drama that went with ‘emergency brakes.’ And how about this? Did you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the ‘running board’ up to the house?

“Here’s one you may have heard all the time in your youth but never anymore – ’store-bought’. Of course, almost everything is store-bought these days. Remember when real cooks contrasted that phrase with their own creation, ‘made from scratch’?

“Another phrase you rarely hear now is coast-to-coast’ — words that held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term ‘world-wide’ for granted. On a smaller scale, ‘wall-to-wall’ was once a magical term in our homes. (I can relate to that one. In the ‘50s when we moved into our new-to-us home, we covered our hardwood floors with wall-to-wall carpeting. A few months ago, when we put the house on the market, we were told to remove all the carpeting (which we did) because we were told by the agent that modern buyers don’t like carpeting but ‘just love’ hardwood floors.)

“When was the last time you heard the quaint phrase ‘in a family way’? It’s hard to imagine that the word ‘pregnant’ was once considered a little too graphic for use in polite company. Today, referring to pregnancy as ‘in a family way’ might even be dangerous, or embarrassing, because so often there is no family involved, only a go-alone mother-to-be.

“Some words aren’t gone, but are definitely on the endangered list, like ’supper’. Now, everybody who considers themselves sophisticated says ‘dinner.’ They seem to think ‘supper’ is so, well, Midwest. Maybe that’s why most of us yokels around here still say ‘supper.’

“Back to automotive for one more term – ’steering knobs’ – also known as ’suicide knobs’ or ‘neckers knobs’. We may have to explain that last one for the younger generation. It means you could still drive the car with your left hand as you pulled your date over with your right arm. But that’s so Mother and Dad, isn’t it?

–Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Jul.03.2010 :: Uncategorized ::

Trackback URI | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed