I was looking over a new postcard for my inventory and thought, “Wow! How much longer does THAT joke have to live?” I realized that even I understand some of these old postcard gags simply because I had read about the basic idea in books, or seen them in old movies. A joke depends on the audience immediately recognizing the situation and the props, and some of these are moving into museums (like my inventory, which is a collection of things I THOUGHT I was going to sell.) So I thought we would observe some of these endangered jokes as they pass. We will not be discussing fashion, which becomes obsolete so quickly, northings like the check shown above. Checks may be doomed, but their extinction date is still uncertain. We will also not be covering jokes which became extinct because they weren’t all that lively to start with. We can discuss Fine Old Jokes like that in some other space.
This is the postcard that provoked my column. ARE there still buildings where you can pe through the keyhole? How many buildings built in the last twenty years or so bother with locks that require keys? Fortunately, there are still Old Dark House movies, where a gang of meddling kids winds up in a vintage domicile. As long as we still have haunted houses on the hill….
We weren’t going to discuss fashion, but that thing sticking out of her hat did last through a couple of generations of hats and windy weather. The hatpin probably still exists in some sleek, discreet modified form, but back in the day, they were highly decorated and intended to be admired. (That’s ONE reason they stuck out this way. The second reason was that it made the pin easier to reach if your date was getting too close to your vanilla malt.)
How many modern viewers would recognize this as a pen and an inkwell? No: Martha me no Stewarts. I KNOW you may use these for your wedding invitations, but after THAT your pen will be another thing you move around on your desk and the inkwell will dry up in a corner like all inkwells of the past sixty years.
Do you see the highly dangerous item in this picture? No, NOT the spoon he’s trying to hold off. And those of you who said something about the young lady’s…well, you will stay after class and write a six page essay on how sorry you are. That object over on the left is a chafing dish, which three generations of college kids sneaked into their dorm room despite warnings from four generations of college administrators that these fire hazards were NOT allowed. They have been replaced in dorm rooms by toaster ovens and/or microwaves (on special all last month at stores and all still banned by most dorms. THAT hasn’t changed.)
Sheet music still exists, but gets rarer every year in a world where electronic substitutes abound. And store departments which sell only sheet music? These survive only on postcards.
I have done no in-depth analysis, but I believe free-standing bathtubs with legs now exist primarily in those haunted house movies we discussed earlier. Yes, there may be a few high-priced architects who may be trying to bring them back, but this classic model, which virtually required a step ladder to get in and out of, is probably now classed as a danger to life and limb.
And there may well be amusement parks and such which preserve the old street scale, where you inserted a penny to get your weight and fortune. But once, if we believe postcards and vintage movies, they were all over shopping districts. Never mind the scales for a moment, outdoor vending machines used to be all over town: not just around one side of the gas station. Were the peanut and gum and candy machines victims of a rising crime rate? Or of rising prices which would now require you to swipe a plastic card through the machine (IF you have enough funds in the account to cover a whole pack of gum?)
I’m afraid I was assuming that flypaper, once a staple of silent comedy, short cartoons, and postcard gags, was still available for sale to old-timers. But a glance through the shopping pages on the Interwebs shows me only a movie of that title, and a brand of jeans. So I guess if you were hoping to buy some for your next slapstick TikTok, you’re stuck. (I TOLD you, we’re not going to be criticizing extinct jokes. Just let them fly by.)
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