Things we used to say

Refreshing the Vocab

When our grandson moved in with us, I told my husband that it was my intention to have him talking like a sixty year-old before he moved out. I wanted him to bust out sayings like, “whatever floats your boat” and “a good gig if you can get it” and “different strokes for different folks”–all prime examples of late-Boomer axioms that slip out of my mouth now and then. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, “No one Rides For Free: Gas, Grass, or Ass.” Unfortunately this dates to the 1970s and I remember hearing it and thinking it was funny when I was a young teen. These were counter-culture, hippy-inflected sayings. They were cool at one time. They no longer are.

If you’re wondering, my grandson has not picked up any of my old-lady sayings. I have a vocabulary that tends toward ridiculously erudite, so he’s more likely to bust out with a highly specific adjective than a long-haired hippy maxim. But this has made me think about cultural reference points, and how they become dated without our even noticing. Here are a few things that I grew up hearing and saying that were teetering on the brink of obsolescence in my own youth. I think almost no one says these anymore.

Sherman Tank

When you wanted to convey something’s strength, its ability to withstand mortar fire, you said it was built like a Sherman tank. These were WWII tanks that were so incredibly well-made, they were used into the 1970s. Sherman was, of course, a general in the civil war.

You could also insult someone by saying they were built like a Sherman Tank, especially if that person was a woman. This was replaced with Brick House. The funny thing is, Sherman Tank was pejorative, and Brick House was a compliment. But it also teeters on complete obsolescence despite that wonderful song.

Anything related to the Titanic

I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and the maxims that used it as an example were many as I grew up. When something failed, it sank like the Titanic. People wasting time on a hopeless endeavor were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. There were iceberg-related Titanic sayings, too. This link is actual footage of the actual ship from the Library of Congress: https://www.britannica.com/video/titanic-shipwreck-disaster/-281894

And this Titanic stuff would probably have gone the way of most of these old sayings, except for a little movie that came out in 1997 and reminded the world of this massive ocean liner. But that movie is old enough that “Jack…Jack…” will soon be a joke that old people make, and young ones don’t understand.

Pony Express

Faster than the Pony Express! Yeehaw! The Pony Express was a wild ride, and a short one. This messenger service took ten days to get a letter from Missouri to California. Riders rode a succession of horses in breakneck relays, and it became synonymous with traveling at great speed. I was born 100 years after the Pony Express began, and it only ran for eighteen months. But it lived as a legend and was still a common saying until I was around forty. So when you’d say something got there faster the Pony Express, it was like overnight Amazon shipping that arrives before dark on the day you order it. This link will take you to a PBS video about modern day re-enactors that’s so interesting!

https://www.pbs.org/video/pony-express-y65bzb

Fort Knox, The Denver Mint

Fort Knox implied safety, guardedness. “She keeps her jewelry locked up like Fort Knox.” The actual Fort Knox is part of the gold bullion reserve, where we supposedly have enough gold bullion to back our currency. But of course the USA no longer operates on a gold reserve, which does not alarm me. All currency is an agreement, including the value of gold, which is just a metal. It’s only valuable because we all agreed at some point that it was valuable. But if you tell someone under twenty that a place is as safe as Fort Knox, they have no idea what you mean.

The Denver Mint is another currency-related example. There are two mints in America, one in Philadelphia and one in Denver. The mint is where they make money, so people would protest, “What am I, the Denver Mint?” or the like, like you were capable of printing more when you ran out. I wonder if our lessened use of paper and coin has something to do with our not using Fort Knox and Denver Mint anymore. We also no longer talk about being made of money, or money growing on trees.

Above the Fold, Page One, Front Page News, Extra-Extra!

All of these refer to papers. Real papers, the large size that folded in half. So if something was above the fold, it was the lead story, the hot news, the first listing on your Apple News app. But we all look at our phones now, and a large population gets their news such as it is from F*x, or read the crap links posted on Tw*X and mistake the sources as reliable. The idea of a newspaper is so quaint now, like the evening edition, or newsies in their knickerbockers and porkpie caps, running around exhorting people to get the latest for two bits (do young people even know that’s a quarter?).

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know

This is not a person, place or thing. This also doesn’t seem that old to me, but fifty-to-forty years ago it was a tagline for The National Enquirer. Until the 1990s, this was a way to say, “My interest is piqued.”

Now we just want “the tea.” Remember when we made fun of the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News? It was hilarious that anyone read those. They are a step up from what so many Americans are reading now.

Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett

These were heroes of the American West, and their names were synonymous with Westward Expansion. They had guns and cultural hegemony on their side. Also TV shows, which were dated and in reruns when I was a kid, but there was so little to watch that I occasionally watched them and therefore the theme songs live on in my lizard brain, never to be forgotten.

No one ever made a black and white TV series about Jim Bridger, who was a true mountain man. This is probably because he married a Native woman and took up the ways of the Natives, instead of engaging them in gunfights. Also, he didn’t have a coonskin cap to his name.

Billy the Kid, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde

These were the bad guys. Each was a symbol of criminal prowess in his/their time.

Billy the Kid was an old west outlaw. He was simply a name to me. When we were running around Claremont, SD with capguns playing cops and robbers, this was the bad guy name. I don’t think anyone young knows who he is now, even though have been more than fifty movies made about him, including a movie from the 1970s with a rare screen appearance by Bob Dylan. He was a killer and a thief, and he kept getting away, right up until he didn’t.

Dillinger and Capone were gangsters, known for riding on running boards and gunning down coppers. They had many movies made about them. Though they were always brought to justice, their fedoras and pinstripe suits, their instrument cases full of tommy guns, their sneering slang made them anti-heroes for decades. Kids still said “You dirty Rat” from one of these movies when I was a kid (except Edward G. Robinson never actually said that). The reference was already dated, but these things hang on, like the taint of criminality and the grudging admiration it secretly inspires. They were the Martin Shkrelis and the Crypto-Kings of their day.

Bonnie and Clyde were Depression-era outlaws on a crime spree. They were ruthless, heartless, low-class, shameless, but they captured the public imagination during the Depression and people rooted for them. They were played by two gorgeous actors (Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty) in a landmark movie in the 1970s, which resuscitated their legend for another good chunk of years. I wonder if anyone knows who they are today, or cares. Let me tell you, if you haven’t seen it, the movie is a masterpiece.

There are a few criminals in danger of expiration – John David Hinkley, the Unabomber. I always wonder when DB Cooper will lose his last hold on the American imagination.

Mata Hari/Tokyo Rose

These were spy women. I didn’t know exactly who they were as a child, but these names lingered in the public consciousness, carrying the waft of sexual temptation that would lead to treason. From the way in which people used their names, I understood that they were crafty and evil. Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and spy in WWI. Tokyo Rose was the name given to a group of Japanese women who went on the airwaves to gently encouraging Allied soldiers to give up in WWII. I can understand how Tokyo Rose lingered in my youth, because WWII had only been over for fifteen years when I was born. But how did Mata Hari hang on? It had to be all the movies. I mean, a sexy stripper spy?

No wonder she inspired a popular video game!

Keep On Truckin’

My point is, things hang on, right until they don’t. The cool hippy slogans of my time are ancient history today, but they still slip in here now and then. Someday they will lose all meaning, replaced with Skibidi and Rizz, which will too sink into the sea of obscurity.

Like the Titanic.