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Gags With Footnotes

In the last column, we dealt primarily with postcard jokes that might be a bit obscure because of changes in our language. Today I thought we might poke out a few jokes which are funnier if you know a little bit about history. All topical jokes run the risk of obsolescence. How will weContinue reading “Gags With Footnotes”

Vocabsolescence

So I asked an acquaintance “Does anyone still refer to making out as ;petting’?” He stared at me. “I’m not sure how many still call it ‘making out’.” It’s just a matter of the passage of time. Some slang expressions are here and gone, while others disappear for a while and thenContinue reading “Vocabsolescence”

You Need to Know

We care going to discuss technical matters today, using a hidden language defined by Mort Walker. Walker’s work in cartooning from early on led to his creation of an awkward teenager named Beetle Bailey. One day Beetle, fleeing some typical comic strip catastrophe, ducked into an Army recruiting office to hide, and a legendContinue reading “You Need to Know”

Babies Do These Things

Another cute and cuddly creature assigned certain jobs on comic postcards was the baby. For the purposes of our discussion, these are children too small to walk or get up and use the potty, for, as noted above, they were frequently assigned some of the same jobs as the cat and especially the dog.Continue reading “Babies Do These Things”

Cats Do These Things

Once upon a time, when I was in college, I listened in admiration to an earnest conversation between a couple of young women on the differences between kitties, cats, and kittycats. I don’t remember all of the points discussed, but I should like to make the point that postcards of kittens are a wholeContinue reading “Cats Do These Things”

Dogs Do These Things

Animals played a big part in the world of postcards. In an earlier era, when the only real air conditioning available at night was an open window, a light sleeper could be acutely aware of the dogs and cats which roamed the streets at night, and the chickens your neighbior kept in the backContinue reading “Dogs Do These Things”

Back to You

This week we have considered the postcards which were published so that you could nag your friends to write to you as well as those cards which were printed to apologize for not having written. Because sending postcards came as naturally to those generations as texting and tweeting does to us, there was aContinue reading “Back to You”

Catching Up

The Arms of Krupp, a massive volume, lumbered onto the bestseller lists in 1968. I was a wee bit younger then, and not afraid of large numbers of pages, and what I took away from William Manchester’s riveting tale of a family that manufactured arms and armor for centuries was my admiration for aContinue reading “Catching Up”

Responsibility

We’ve discussed this before: the postcard was a twentieth century text message. For a few pennies, you could send a brief note across town in a couple of hours. The postcard companies knew what you were doing, and provided cards which came with pre-written sentiments which would start the message for you so youContinue reading “Responsibility”

Stolen Sweets

I’m sure people do these things today, but they sure did them a lot more often in that other world I visit, the world of the Postcard Craze of 1908 or so. Young men slipped out after curfew to exchange a few words under the girlfriend’s window, women put pies to cool on theContinue reading “Stolen Sweets”