We have mentioned, in an exploration of joke archaeology hereintofore, that jokes made by one group of people against another were regarded as being in poor taste as early as three generations ago, while others continued without a lot of controversy. The town/country joke went on for centuries (Aesop covered t) but it has largely been fading away.
Yes, yes, the old Jeffersonian suggestion that one of these groups of people is better than the other DOES go on. But radio, movies, and television started chipping away at the jokes a hundred years ago or thereabouts. Folks from the country already KNOW the city has big buildings in it. They don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk to stare and cry “Land o’ Goshen!” (No, it’s NOT because people don’t care where Goshen is nowadays.)
The horseless carriage is no longer a wonder restricted to city folk, either. The twentieth century plowed under all manner of differences between the rural and the urban, even as postcard cartoonists were putting jokes about them up for sale.
This one, for example, shows us a back country tourist finding the new electric lightbulbs aren’t worth a dang for lighting one’s cigar. This postcard is only two or three years younger than one you have seen in this space, in which a group of gentlemen try to light their cigars after dinner and learn the same thing.
And here is the same essential plot in another setting.
This couple, who come from a stereo card rather than a postcard, are not the only ones confused by the instructions found in hotels. Later cartoonists would show city travelers who were similarly new to modern hotels getting confused about the “ring bell for water” sign.
The observable difference between what country folk wore and what city folk wore would take another generation or so to change (and Mandy would, by mid-century, simply turn into an older person shocked at what YOUNG folk were wearing at the beach. But that’s a whole nother blog.) Sears Roebuck expected credit for this, and I’m not sure they were wrong (though those of us whose mothers also received the Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney, and Alden’s catalogs know Sears was not alone.)
The longest lasting source of town and country humor of course, involved plumbing. It took a lot longer for running water to make it into rural areas than it did for electricity. And somehow potty humor never grows old. (Or up.)
This presented postcard cartoonists with a double blessing. Because the postcard buying audience found country folk unused to city bathrooms just as amusing….
As it did city folk who had no clue about country facilities.
Looking back at comedy generally, we find that the country folk got nearly as many shots in at the Big Town Jaspers as the city folk did at the Reubens from the sticks. But on postcards, this shows up nowhere better than in the use of The Necessity. (Or The Euphemism, as Dr. Seuss brilliantly named it.)
Even here, though, technology has sent most of these jokes into the realm of nostalgia. The outhouse, like the postcard, has grown scarcer in the modern world, and the country cousins are as likely as city tourists to seek other options.
As mentioned, the debate goes on about whether living out in the country makes you a better person than surviving in the big city. Only the jokes have faded, leaving the barest hint of their old flavor on the passing breeze. Pity, really: a chance to find we could all laugh at the same potty jokes isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it was something.
Blogsy Babbles 