[BuddyG]

I remember this......born in 1936


Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word murgatroyd?

Lost Words from our childhood:

Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really!
The other day a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about
driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said
what the heck is a Jalopy?
OMG (new phrase!) he never heard of the word jalopy!!

She knew she was old but not that old...


Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle...
By Richard Lederer

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have
become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.

These phrases included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy,"
"You sound like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry."
How about "Run through the wringer."

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our
best bib and tucker to straighten up and fly right. Heavens to Betsy!
Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!

We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular
guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a
pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time
anything was swell?

Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats,
knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before
we can say, well I'll be a monkey's uncle! or
This is a fine kettle of fish!

We discover that the words we grew up with,- the words that
seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a
notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind.
We blink, and they're gone. Where have all those phrases gone?

Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It's your nickel.
Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper.
Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers.
Don't take any wooden nickels
Heavens to Murgatroyd! A "Crystal Radio Set"

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions
than Carter has liver pills.

This can be disturbing stuff !

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times.
For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age.

We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of
remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were
words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now
are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It's one of the
greatest advantages of aging.

See ya later, alligator! I'll be smiling "like a Mule eating briars."

(added: Reel to reel tape, 8-track, cassette tape, 45 single, LP record, VU meter, stylus diameter of 3 mils for 78 RPM Shellac or hard disks and 1 mil or less for LP & 45s and "flip over" cartridge for playing all kinds of records. Thermofax. Dictating machine with slip on acetate tubes for recording and secretary could play it back on her machine to type letter or notes on her manual typewriter. Huge time saver.
Ditto spirit duplicator. "Don't loose your skate key."

 

[opos]

Heavens to Mergatroid and suffering succotash were famous sayings by Daffy Duck....
Got a feeling you saw all that stuff on a Burma Shave sign along old highway 30 through Nebraska....We saw it as we drove the 50 Nash Statesman with the seats that made into a bed and 3 speed with the overdrive...We also saw the Challenger articulated double driver Union Pacific locomotives running along the UP mainline...if you raced the locomotive and waved at the engineer he'd toot the whistle at you..

We'd stop along the road and buy a lug of roasting ears during the early summer..nothing better than field corn roasting ears, some pork tenderloin and some home made ice cream. If it was hot and we had a long way to drive we'd stop at the A&W Root Beer stand and fill up our gallon jug with ice cold root beer and share along the ride.

Anyone recall going to the Buster Brown shoe store where Buster Brown and his dog Tige sold kids shoes? You would go in and get measured..try on the shoes and then the sales man, Mom and the kid would all go over to a big machine with 3 eye pieces that looked down inside..they turned on the machine and it was an x ray machine that looked through the shoes and showed how the shoes fit so Mom and the sales man could determine if they were big enought to get through the school year...forget the fact that the unshielded x ray machine was giving eveyone a serious dose of radiation...we always took great pleasure in playing with the shoe xray...maybe that's why I have 3 ears.

I bet most of the younguns don't recall the white dinner jackets with the black tux pants for the prom at school...the girls all dressed up in satin prom dresses and every guy bought a big floppy purple orchid corsage to pin on the girls dress...many a young man accidently got his first experience of a "cheap feel" in pinning on that corsage....The prom was in the gym and all decorated in crape paper....the last dance was always "Good Night Irene"...then outside where the folks were all lined up waiting to pick up the folks to take them to the drive in for a malt and wet fries.

Nobody that is younger can ever imagine the smell of fresh baked bread or get the first slice out of the fresh loaf...lots of butter melted on the warm bread was better than cake.. Of course in WW2 there was no butter..we got some white lard looking stuff with a little package of yellow powder to mix in to make "oleo margarine" with...lots of stuff in WW2 that was different...we saved bacon grease for the war effort and took it to the "collection" station once a week..the old joke was "the women all take their fat cans to the collection station to help the soldiers.

Anyone know about North Platte Nebraska in the war time? The whole town turned out every time a troop train came through North Platte and they fed every soldier on the trains...there were thousands a week..google it...quite a story.

Cars today are super quick....the target when I had my first car was 0-60 in 10 seconds...if you could do that you were king of the strip..Full race Merc flatheads with triple "progressive" carbs, Offy heads and a 3/4 or full race cam...I never could get one to last very long..they blew up from overheating on a regular basis...we threw away a world of flathead motors over the years.

Anyone ever wash clothes with a gasoline powered wringer washer made by Maytag? Until the REA (if you don't know what that is...it's on google) electrified the rural areas...maytag made a single cylinder engine and a twin..the tubs had to be filled with hot water..soap added and the clothes agitated for a long time...then "wring them out" (careful of the long hair...if it goes into the wringer it pulls all your hair out..if something else get's caught it's a trip to the hospital)..then rinse and wring them back into a fresh tub of water and finally wring and hang them up to dry...if it's cold the sheets froze solid like a sheet of plywood.

Ever see the Duncan YoYo man? They used to travel to all the schools and put on a show for how to do tricks with the Duncan Yoyo's....I still have a chipped front tooth from a YoYo coming back at me while I was doing "loop the loop" and smacking my in the chops...

I have a good friend that is my age..he has a beautiful big (50') sport fisher...he agonized over a name for it when he launched it...he finally settled on a 40's and 50's saying...it's called the "Bees Knees". Only old duffers even know what it's about...

Remember the crew cuts with the pink wax in a jar to keep the flat top standing up? it was like putting pork lard in your hair but it sure stuck up...when you'd go to a dance and get all cozied up with your main squeeze she'd often end up with pink wax all over her satin prom gown...dead give away.

Arthur Godfry fired Julius La Rosa live on TV while the program was in progress...just canned him on the spot and off he went. (edit) Soupy Sales had a kids program...he dressed up all goofy and did silly stuff for the kiddies...he walked through a door to leave the set and unknown to him or anyone else the crew had a very naked woman standing there...nobody saw her but him and he never did gain composure when he came back on the set.

Watched Snooky Lamson (how about a name for a man ....Snooky ?) live on "Your show of Shows" try and sing the National Anthem...he tried 3 times to get the words right and finally left the stage in a real hurry in tears...

I saw all the great boxers...Joe Lewis...Sugar Ray Leonard...Kid Gavilan with his Bolo punch (he killed another boxer named Benney 'Kid" Peret, on live tv)..never missed Wrestling live on tv when we got a t.v. Dad thought it was real...we knew better...got to see Gorgeous George win it all over and over and over.

Now "straighten up and fly right" or I'll pull your ears!

Enough.

 

[va patriot]

Totin' a Roscoe and lookin' like "a bears butt at huckleberry time"

 

[trooplewis]

Hey, reading this was better than a jab in the eye with a sharp stick.
Or as my friends in Kansas would say, better 'n a jab in the a&* with a cold carrot.

I always wondered whether the carrot being cold made it worse...

 

[Heartbreaker]

I still use carbon paper nearly every day at my job for writing work orders. I also know the pain when the office staff puts it in the printer upside down....

 

[joe357]

I'm 19 years younger than you (born 1955) and I knew everyone of them.

 

[sr9c sr22]

Tried to buy a superball few months back for my dog but the wally kid had no idea what one was.

 

[Bozz48]

I watched an old Merv Griffin show yesterday on Cozi TV. Guests were Phil Specter, Ertha Kitt, Wally Cox, and Richard Pryor, LOL. Merv asked Phil if there were any hot new songs coming out, he said " Yep, The Righteous Brothers have a new one called "Unchained Melody". "Looks like it's gonna do well."

It was the bee's knees.

Mom always said: Clean your plate, there are people starving in China.

 

[Bozz48]

Anyone remember Soupy Sales?

 

[opos]

Anyone remember Soupy Sales?

I'd said it was Pinkie Lee that had the naked woman back stage when he opened a door on the set...it was, in fact, Soupy Sales...thanks for the memory jogger...