The thing about the fine old jokes found on aged postcards is that some of them have become obscure with the passage of time. Sometimes even a dedicated comedy archaeologist has trouble getting to the bottom of things. One of my readers made a comment about piling something or other higher every time I explain things, but I think I got a garbled version of his message. Maybe he sent the email by a party line.
Some cards involve mere temporary bewilderment. The postcard at the top of this column is pretty straightforward. My only complain is that the phrase, as I have always heard it, was “between you, me, and the fence post.” I feel the cartoonist just decided drawing a row of lamp posts took less time than drawing a fence, AND made it easier to show a dog on each side.
This one is a similar matter of phraseology. A very quick hunt on the Interwebs shows me that the phrase I know “Broke But Happy” seems to be a generation or so younger than “Happy But Broke.” I wouldn’t mind researching further, and discussing with you exactly what this says about the difference between the attitudes of people on each side of the Great Depression (if that IS the border between the two) but gosh, there are only so many hours in the day. Anyhow, I polled a couple of readers like the one above, and got a unanimous response that they’d gotten along this far without the knowledge and would struggle on a while longer if I felt I could use my time more wisely finding a way to get AI to write these…but the messages got garbled again at that point.
Now we arrive at the real puzzles. I was a little unsure of why you would send this card to anyone, but in hunting through the Interwebs, I found two completely different postcards, each using this same text, and another which said “Nobody Knows Everything. Don’t Try to Be an Exception.” This tells me that this must have been a catchphrase (or meme, as young’uns on the Interwebs put it) around 1910. So many similar sentiments exist, though, that hunting this one down proved fruitless. SOMEBODY used this in a speech, song, or stage presentation, but unless someone can provide me with another clue, I’m stuck.
We’ve mentioned the Dutch kids often, and the way their accent could make any observation cute or wise. I can’t work my way around the Pennsylvania Dutch of this statement, though. Are we COMPLIMENTING whatever town gets written into the banner, or insulting it?
The kid on the right in this British postcard seems disgusted. Does he hate the beach and wish he was back in the classroom conjugating Latin verbs? Or is he grouching that today’s his last day at the beach and he has to go back?
Is it just me or is this…. See, a dog sniffs things to check, basically, who else has urinated there, and deduce what he can. So if this pooch is sniffing around to find out how I am, is the implication that…just me? Okay, sorry.
It seems a little late for this child’s bedtime, and she seems to be coming DOWN the stairs anyhow. But ten seems rather late for her to be getting up. And that “Papa says” seems to be lending a little doubt to the time indicated. What’s the gag? Nice picture of the phone, though. (Did she maybe get a phone call from Papa, who is in some other time zone where it IS ten o’clock? Yeah, that’s a long reach.)
And this is a cow. This is a cow that looks like something I would have photographed in my first days with a camera: why put such a crummy photo on a postcard? And why oh WHY couldn’t somebody have written something on the card so we would know why and when and where it was necessary to photograph this particular…yeah, that one’s not answerable at this point. Anyhow, it’s a cow.
Anyone with suggestions about the answers to these questions may comment in the space provided. Be wary of how you express yourself, as a mad message garbler seems to be invading a LOT of the glowing reviews I get on this column.
Blogsy Babbles 