“Any you guys want to pray a bit, we got some time.”
It was not a whisper, but the gruff voice was no louder than one. I looked around to see if one of the neighbors had a window open, and I was getting some Sunday afternoon movie. Kneeling in the garden, I had not expected to find anything more warlike than cutworms.
“Sarge, I prayed so much when we met that troll at the tunnel, God’s just gonna to say, ‘You again?’”
The voices seemed to be coming from close by, and a little below my head. I peered among the sprouts and then around behind me to see if somebody dropped a phone and I’d set off an app.
“There it is, anyhow. All we got to do’s walk past the gate.”
“Is that all?”
“Sarge, why’d the captain send us?”
“Best men for the job, Collins.”
“Yeah?”
“He can spare us.”
There were five of them, in the shade of the cabbage. Military men maybe three inches tall, their shirts open to show sweat and orange dogtags. Orange feathers crested their helmets and they had swords in their hands. They stood in a semicircle facing a clump of arugula, which I’m sure I had not gathered up in a black wrought-iron fence, with a high spiked gate (well, nine inches high.) I couldn’t see what was inside this arugula castle, but whatever it was was worrying them.
“Don’t seem to know we’re here.”
“Won’t last.”
“Remember: as little fighting as possible. Secure the prisoner, then beat it back to the tunnel.”
“Tell you what, Sarge. In case I forget, I’ll start back now.”
“Make me laugh, Haines.”
I could see them as clearly as the veins in the cabbage leaves. Their faces were green, though that could have been camouflage. Their eyes and noses tipped up in a not purely human way, but I knew those faces all the same. I’d seen faces just like them in my company overseas. The one on the far right reminded me of me: absolutely fearless and scared to death. Faces like that fought for Pharaoh and Grant and Eisenhower, and would be seen in any fights beyond the world we know.
I reached for my phone to take a few pictures, but apparently I’d left it in the house when I changed into gardening clothes. If I shouted for Pat, would the little soldiers hear me? I checked the window to see if anyone happened to be looking out.
“You know the job. Get in without….”
“Aieee! He knows we’re here! He’s breaking loose!”
“Firpov, Haines! Cover the windows on your left!”
There had been no windows in the arugula thicket before, but there was one now, next to the gate. From it came a length of pure darkness, a thick curling tentacle. What the rest of the creature looked like I couldn’t tell for the arugula.
I turned to my tools: just about anything on the cart was bound to help. But what would they think of that? There was no sign they’d seen me. How would they react to a bolt from above? Either side might think I was attacking them: did anybody have weapons that could have an effect on me?
“Bust the gate! The amulet, Firpov: you had it!”
“Hope I didn’t use all its power on the troll.”
“We’ll find out.”
Tentacles stretched from two windows now. Two of the soldiers had raised their hands, sending little orange pulses through the air. The tentacle nearest them retracted. No one was doing anything to the tentacle by the thicket gate. It seemed to be growing, reaching for the invaders.
The clippers should remove a tentacle or two, but if the soldiers charged, I might get one of them at the same time. There were all those spray cans and bottles, including a really old, slightly rusty can of bug spray; the kind they warn you on the evening news not to use. Would that doom them as well? I grabbed it up and checked the directions for any mention of leprechauns, gnomes, or pixies.
“Ha! That’s got it!”
“Go go go! Collins, Petrov, hold ‘em ‘til we hit the tunnel!”
Three of them were running as fast as they could when cushioning a wriggling black object covered with tentacles. The tentacles curled around their arms, as if holding on for dear life. Two others were swinging their swords against the advance of what seemed to be three princesses, in tall cone hats and flowing aprons. Red and orange pulses shot from hands on either side, and the swords clashed against raised ladles. One princess/chef swung up a small pot and the two soldiers fell back.
Their sergeant and two comrades vanished under a cabbage. Petrov and Collins continued to fight their way backward, pressed hard by the princesses. One soldier fell, but the other grabbed him by the collar and dragged him backward as two princesses dipped ladles in the pot and tried to splash him with whatever soup or potion was inside. I watched as both forces ground toward that particular cabbage and, pushing back and forth as the advantage shifted, slowly joined the others and their refugee in the tunnel.
I waited, but I couldn’t hear any more battle cries or sounds of swords against ladles. After a while, I risked leaning an ear down to the cabbage where I’d seen them last, but the only sound was from a bicycle going slowly by on the sidewalk. This made me realize what a show I was providing in my current position, and I straightened up, stretched my back, and gathered all my tools.
I took these back to the garage. Watching a ballgame was less likely to upset the balance of power.
In my boy days, we were always getting articles about how Jules Verne had predicted the future. This was a major theme in the world in those days: Jules Verne had predicted space travel, high-powered submarines, television, and who knows what all else. There was a reason that the government named its first nuclear submarine after the ship in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Jules Verne, as a prophet, had Nostradamus beat all hollow.
Those days have slipped off to wherever the good times go. People began to speak of mistranslations of the French original for English-speaking audiences, and the natural reaction to years of articles about how great were Verne’s powers of prophecy was a growing flood of articles to explain what Jules Verne got WRONG. Our own mission to the moon, for example, did not involve a spaceship fired from a very large cannon. And in all of this, the sheer adventure of many of Jules Verne’s tales was lost under other societal considerations.
The newest prophet of futuristic achievement and technology, according to articles and videos I have run into, is Star Trek, especially The Original Series (TOS, as it is known to acronym lovers). The writers in the Sixties were just making stuff up to look like the future, but they were not stupid, and they benefited from Gene Roddenberry’s requirement that the shows was not going to stop the plot to explain how all these devices worked. This was considered a nice bit of polish in the day, but it did not really impact today’s culture until someone sat up during the umpteenth rerun of The Trouble With Tribbles and exclaimed, “Hey! Thise communicators are really flip phones!”
So Star Trek has gotten the Jules Verne treatment, having correctly, with some adjustments for changing styles, predicted the desktop computer, the big screen television, and 3-D printing.
I am not here to start the anti-Verne effect on Star Trek (that’s already begun). But I think I’ve spotted something no one else has. And it struck me while I was considering the postcard shown above.
“Peaceful Thanksgiving”: curious wish. We usually wish people a Happy or a Merry or a Nice. But how many cards wish you a peaceful holiday?
A lot, as it turns out. I found dozens of cards from around 1909 wishing people a Peaceful thanksgiving. I wondered if there were some particular crisis that led to this, but the answer was right there on the postcards. Because the ones with longer captions wished you a “peaceful amd prosperous” Thanksgiving. Several had poems which spelled it out explicitly: Thanksgiving was a day for celebrating plenty, but prosperity was not possible without peace. Peace and prosperity, to our ancestors, were something to wish for, and be thankful for, on Thanksgiving.
And my mind went to “Day of the Dove”, a Star Trek episode in which weird things happen which keep the crew busy with a small invasion of Klingons. Both sides are upset by this turn of events, and spend their time fighting and killing, though they find their fallen foes brought back to life for another round, as if something is profiting from all the violence. They eventually deduce that an outside force IS, in fact, causing the events to feed its needs through hatred and violence. So the bitter enemies get together to laugh the alien out of existence.
So hey, yeah: Star Trek got it right. Predicted social media, didn’t it? An entity which, realizing more hits mean more profit, has perfected a system which brings you articles or videos to upset you. I started noticing it myself during all the alarums and excursions of 2020, when I learned from a lot of my friends on Facebook that it was okay to hate people if they weren’t the same (fill in blank) as you. Everyone who responded with an angry answer got an angry reply, and the number of hits grew, and the alien entity grew stronger and stronger.
It’s an Election Year again this year. Shortly after Election Day, we will hold Thanksgiving. Not that laughing at this alien entity instead of howling with anger will solve the WHOLE problem, but….
Just saying. Have a Peaceful Thanksgiving. And prosper.
“That was fun,” said Bluebell, tossing flower petals to the left and to the right, and then over her head.
Primrose, who was standing on her head to scratch an ankle with one hand, pointed an accusatory finger with the other. “You said they were boring.”
Blubell nodded. “That’s what it was fun to push them I the mud.”
“And we had puppies to play with.” Sweet Pea was wiping fragments of grass from a faucet on the side of the field house, using other fragments of grass.
Meadow Saffron sighed. “I hated breaking the leash that way.”
“Oh, yes.” Sweet Pea looked up. “I was afraid the puppies would get hurt, too.”
Meadow Saffron sat on the handle of the faucet. “Plus it tasted terrible.”
Sweet Pea flew to Unfirom, who was watching the couple depart. “Would the puppies have gotten hurt?”
“Perhaps.” The angel’s eyes remained on the couple. “None of us could have gone beyond the park to save them.”
“I grabbed the leash,” she pointed out. “But it just dragged me along.”
“Could have sworn you were fat enough to anchor it,” said Bluebell.
“So what’s going to happen?” asked Primrose, flying to the angel’s nearer ear as Sweet Pea shot off in pursuit of Bluebell, thumb and forefinger extended for a devastating pinch.
The angel’s head did not move. “I believe it will clear up.”
“No!” She kicked at his earlobe and missed. “To them!”
Now he looked down. “I meant them. They will Do It on exactly the same day as before, but eleven minutes later.”
Meadow Saffron tipped her head to one side and put a forefinger on her chin. “Does that make a difference?”
“It will.” The angel raised his eyes to Sweet Pea and Bluebell as they shot overhead, the phron in the lead shrieking “Yowp yowp yowp yowp yowp!”
“Come on, kid!” Primrose was above the angel’s head, shouting to her speeding sisters. “I could’ve pinched her pink and purple by this time!”
“As fat as you are?” demanded Meadow Saffron, flying up to pick out a patch to pinch. In moments, four phronik were shrieking back and forth through the sky.
Unfirom watched for a moment, but this was something he had seen before. And he knew that no matter how much they chased each other, they could not be worn down to a point at which they’d all be quiet. Hope was reserved for mortals.
Someone was hanging a sheet along the backstop of the softball diamond. Sytriding over, the angel found that hope had not yet forsaken the neighborhood activist, who was struggling to hang on to the middle of the big banner and adjust both corners at once.
Unfirom took a few steps back to study this new text, now obscured by a fold of fabric, and then by a gust of wind. He nodded.
FRIENDS OF GRIESE PARK NEED TO UNITE AGAINST MERCENARY BUREAUCRATS WHO WOULD RESTTRICT THE PARK TO ELITE PATRONS OF AN ART MUSEUM!!!!!
The protestor stepped back herself, frowning either at the expressed sentiment or the draping of the banner. A corner slid toward the dirt and she lunged for it, which kept her from observing a flying oblong coming that direction.
Unfirom scanned the air for phronik. They were not to be found. He was supposed to be unsurprisable, but somehow it always startled him to find disaster striking without their assistance.
The developer, still reluctant to return to the office, passed the softball diamond which had had decided would be the easiest thing to tear down first. A woman all wrapped in canvas wobbled against the backstop while a greasy kid who should have been in school at this hour asked her if she’d seen his skateboard. He lingered, supposing this was just an excuse to mug the mummy. He disliked skateboards, which would be banned from the park, lest damage occur to the flowerbeds.
The boy was content to find his undamaged skateboard upright against the fence, and moved on. So did the developer, frowning at the horse-drawn carriages carrying a party of sightseers. Yjeu’d have to be prohibited in this neighborhood, too: they really played hob with the traffic.
Unfirom watched the protestor drop to the ground and start to roll herself free, smudging the banner in the mud at home base. She was one of those people positively destined to be bruised by everything she attempted. There was nothing he could do about that.
Something he could do was not far away: his eyes widened. The phronik, now that he needed them, were of course neither to be heard nor seen. Since they could not possibly stay quiet for long, he stayed where he was, head tipped to the side to listen.
The song grew louder as he marched toward the fieldhouse.
“Lola found a chemical I oxtail stew
That made a scratchy record sound like it was new;
It worked on shellac, doughnut discs, and thirty-threes
But didn’t do a thing for nasty old CDs.
Percolator, coffeemaker,
Subaru and Studebaker:
All ya got is all yer gonna get;
Waddya bet?”
Primrose was at it again in the kitchen, but this time she sat cross-legged on top of the stove. She wore a bay leaf behind one ear, and waved a wooden spoon to direct her forces.
“Do you have that cup of light brown sugar yet?” she demanded, directing the spoon at Meadow Saffron.
“Well….” Meadow Saffron stood back from the heaping cup of sugar. “It’s nice and light in the middle, but it’s white on top and way too dark on the bottom.” She flew back to the open bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, and tipped this forward. “It needs more work.”
Primrose twirled the spoon above her head. “Put that at the top, but if it’s still too dark at the bottom, add flour. That’s light.” She swiveled on her buttocks to swing the spoon toward Sweet Pea. “What about the six tablespoons of butter?”
Two of the siz tablespoons fanned out on the countertop had butter in them and three were empty. Sweet Pea was stomping butter into the remaining tablespoon, raising each knee nearly to her chin as she worked. “Oh, my feet go squishy squishy!” she squealed, paying no attention to Primrose at all.
The chef shrugged, and wriggled around toward the refrigerator. “We still need that egg!”
“I’ll get one over there yet!” Bluebell shot out of the fridge, an egg nearly as big as she was held above her head. She did, indeed, get halfway to the counter before this slipped and joined the five other piles of egg and shell on the floor.
She kicked herself in the right ear. “Why, oh why, can’t chickens make eggs with handles?”
“Just out of curiosity,” said Unfirom, stepping into the room. “Why are you just sitting there instead of helping to carry the eggs?”
Primrose stared at him, exasperation all across her expression. “The recipe says to preheat the oven,” she declared, swinging her spoon toward the battered blue cookbook, “So I’m sitting on it to warm it up!”
The angel accepted this without comment. “Do you suppose you could come out here and cook up something else?”
“Oh, I suppose.” Primrose tossed the spoon toward the book. “That would give me time to figure out where to find a vanilla to squeeze.”
Unfirom accepted this as well. None of the phronik objected to leaving the laboratory, though Bluebell flew backward, her eyes on the refrigerator as if longing for another try.
“There.” The angel indicated a park bench.
There was no sound—except for that of Sweet Pea sucking butter from her toes—for a moment as the phronik looked from the gray-haired woman on the bench to the black-haired man lurching along the sidewalk.
Then Meadow Saffron flew upside-down to a spot in front of the angel’s eyes. “You’re joking.”
“Them?” Primrose demanded. “When are THEY going to Do It?”
“She,” said Unfirom, “Is not going to Do It at all. He is going to Do It TO her. Then, because she won’t stop screaming, he will strike her repeatedly with a can of pork and beans from that bag. He will be caught two hours after he kills her, still carrying the pork and beans. He will manage things so they do not take him alive.”
“Oog,” said Primrose, her nose wrinkling so much it nearly disappeared. “Is he worth bothering about?”
The translator took its usual two-heartbeat delay in showing the reply. “Yes, Your Magnificence. With your digital signature, we can proceed immediately.”
Yellowe nodded, and typed in a question he’d had answered before but wanted to read again. “And my people won’t know it’s happening?”
Another pause. “We can’t guarantee complete secrecy, but we do our extractions very quickly.”
“Good. I don’t need anyone second-guessing me at this point.”
“Thank you, Your Magnificence. We hope the payment will benefit your people as much as this resource will benefit us. If you should ever require any….”
He pressed the tab to cut off the communication. The offworlders were very ceremonious and could go on for pages of text. The last thing he needed was for a journalist to hack into the system and get word of this arrangement out before everything was finished.
Yellowe moved to the window and nodded to himself. The translator had defined the resource the offworlders wanted to purchase was something they drank. Since his people didn’t drink, and he could very much use the economic boost they had given him in return, he felt this was a win-win for all concerned. The broad avenues and tall buildings were busy but peaceful under a clear green sky. With any luck, everything would stay that way.
He moved back to his desk and opened the channel to his executive secretary.
“No comments to the press until tomorrow, Gilbert.”
The reply showed on the screen at once. “Acknowledged, Your Magnificence.”
Yellowe looked out over the city again. The Council might complain he had acted unilaterally again, but when they saw the size of the payment the offworlders had made for an unused resource, all complaints would cease. Everyone would recognize Sticey Yellowe as the greatest chancellor….
He peered along the avenue that stretched beyond his window. Was the sky getting brighter? It hadn’t been overcast this morning. Any clouds….
Things were getting a lot brighter outside, brighter even than the usual noon in the capital. He reached to the computer, but stopped. The roof of the Union League Building had just peeled away. Was the building itself leaning? Workers rushed out of it, moving in swirls of panic. The Elder Library, a much wider building, started to incline toward the Union League.
He pressed the tab that summoned his Chiefs of Staff. His eyes went to the window again and he recoiled. The brightness was growing, invading even his own office. He closed his eyes to slits. The offworlders! There was more to this deal than they’d told him! They had acted as if…but they would learn not to fool with Sticey Yellowe!
He blinked at the message on his screen, suddenly unable to read it. The brightness grew, and with it, a hot, sickening feeling that started at his head and moved across his body. He dropped to the floor, feeling as if his weight had tripled.
The door burst open, and six of his security force tumbled into the room. They rolled forward on the floor, trying to reach him, their mouths open to call to him, but though he could see this, he could not hear a word.
He reached to his desk, trying to climb back to the computer screen, but breathing was difficult, bordering on impossible. The light stabbed his eyes. His research had missed something during the offworld deal. What was this “water” anyhow?
***
“And the Chancellor had no idea they all lived underwater?”
“Nobody did. Apparently, with no dry land and so few things growing to above the surface, hardly any of them even knew there was such a thing.”
“Is it all aboard?”
“Going through the strainer and purifier now.”
“Let’s go. Best sort of deal to make. No complaints.”
If you hate baby talk, you have a lot of company. One of Irving Berlin’s lesser hit songs dealt with how it set his teeth on edge, and I have been running through the bookshelves in my brain to come up with authors who made the attempt successfully. I had no problem with a couple of novels by Mazo de la Roche (NOT her famous Jalna books) and a long but forgotten book by Lewis Carroll which I enjoyed. But I read those all a long time ago, and will not go out on a limb for them.
None of which, of course, kept postcard artists from attempting this unloved dialect. Here, as elsewhere, certain rules do apply. Babies themselves almost never speak in baby talk. Baby talk is more commonly something that otherwise apparently normal human beings use for speaking TO babies. As every cartoonist knows, it is more entertaining when actual babies speak in full sentences and discuss complex moral and philosophical problems.
It is also, as seen here, often used for speaking to small, fuzzy animals. This is true of the world outside of postcards as well.
But baby talk, as Irving Berlin observed in his song “Snooky Ookums”, is at its most nauseating when used between two adults whose romance is going through a sickeningly sweet stage. It reflects a principle we have discussed hereintofore: some concepts just seem easier to approach when spoken of with an accent.
The postcard artists used this to great effect in the 1910s or thereabouts with the mammoth phenomenon of Dutch accents on postcards. And having a CHILD voice those sentiments removed the danger by one more degree. This is one of the reasons for the millions of postcards featuring Dutch kids in the 1910s.
But we have walked under those windmills many times. Today we are sticking to children speaking of romance, and in baby talk, so if some grownup (mostly) lover was frowing kisses by mail at the wrong person, one could always pretend it was all a joke.
This does not seem to have been nearly as popular as the Dutch kid postcards, perhaps because there were plenty of people in the United States at that time who still spoke with foreign accents to make fun of (and who enjoyed having their accents recognized.) But even then, people just got shudders hearing grown-ups address each other with THIS accent in public. A number of potential customers may have turned away from these cute kids due to a memory of using this lingo. Belated embarrassment may explain why we make that face when we hear it or see it later.
It might be useful if we went through our memories and postcards and books now to compile a glossary of baby talk, explaining the various usages (they are not uniform, so this is probably good dissertation material). This will be helpful to future readers, in an age when humanity has outgrown the practice.
Thus that brave new world will be able not only to read the ancient texts in which grade schoolers address each other as “booful” so adults don’t have to, but also understand the names of such classic toys as the Booful Beans doll (from early in the beanbag doll craze of the most recent century.) Much cultural data may be lost to them if we don’t move now to….
What’s that? You don’t think we will ever, as a species, outgrow the urge to say “Oose wittow tweeheart is oo?” You have a point there. One should never deny the contrariness of the human race. Even if it does lead you to go find comfort in the bottle. (Test the temperature on your wrist first.)
Two people walked hand in hand, picking a careful path along the wet grass. He was tall, with rather too much nose in the center of a long, bland face. She was not so very much shorter, with tiny eyes, great big glasses, and an excess of chin. The eyes of each were guarded, the mind of each busy with individual thoughts. He was the first to break into the silence.
“I have spoken to the caterer about the brie. He’s promised to see to it.”
“I’m glad.” She was, too. Michael had been obsessing about that brie for six days now. He was going to be one of those husbands ready to point out every flaw in the universe. She’d guessed that when he snapped at her for the handprints on his fender.
“Clarence had that mail-order brie at his wedding,” Michael went on, as if that explained everything. To him it probably did. Family meant a lot to Michael, and Clarence was one of his uncles; she wasn’t clear which one, but it WAS the one who was always doing the wrong thing though he might be fun to be around. She shuddered: what if Michael insisted on naming their first boy Clarence?
To shake off the thought, she offered, “We could always use the mail-order brie to fill in the buffet toward the end of the reception.”
He shook his head. “In all the bother, the caterers would surely forget which was which, and serve that first.”
She shrugged; she had never expected to go walking with her fiancé in the park and spend the whole time talking cheese. “Especially if they’re working in this little field house,” she noted.
Michael looked the small brick building over, and then past it to consider the park. He was glad this was no more than one of the finalists for the reception site. This was terribly hard-used: too open, too public. If they had to utilize a park, he’d have preferred the handsome passive park in the museum proposals. He looked across the street, to the horizon: you couldn’t trust developers, though. If the museum did succeed with its passive park, it would also no doubt put up one of those huge soulless gray-white buildings that looked like minimum security correctional facilities. As well actually be married in a prison as have reception photographs with one in the background.
“They said they could run flowers along all the fences,” Bailey said, pointing at the softball diamond. “And we could do the pictures there, or maybe put the buffet tables along that way.” There was a gurgle behind her voice as she went on, “And we could have the three bars at first, second, and third base.”
Michael gazed in the direction of the imaginary bars and buffet tables, all wobbling hazardously on the uneven platform provided by the softball field. Then he glanced at his optimistic fiancée. Bit of pudge there today. Bailey’s mother was, by his estimate, a 54 double D. He hoped Bailey wouldn’t turn out to be one of those wives who ballooned up after the ceremony. She seemed helium-headed enough, at times.
“And we could put the mail-order brie way out in left field,” he went on, with not quite a giggle.
Michael smiled in mild appreciation. At times she looked rather too much like barbie.
“Drat!” She bent from the waist to reach to her left shoe. A pair of sandwich wrappers from that fast food place had blown across it, and had apparently decided to stick.
“Allow me.” He stooped to pull the greasy paper from the square toe of the shoe. She should have known to wear canvas shoes, not leather ones, for a cross=-country stroll. She would learn: one did not expect perfection in a fiancée. Adjustments had to be made, and expectations lowered.
Bailey sucked in her lips, embarrassed both to have Michael down there and by the Booty Burger wrappers, which were not helping the case for Griese Park as a spot for a romantic party. Michael was not the sort to be married anywhere that French fry boxes might dance around his feet.
She shrugged. Anyhow, she could say she’d had a man at her feet. She opened her mouth to say so, but changed her mind. He didn’t find the brie in the outfield funny.
The terrain underfoot was damp, so it was easy enough to slip. That was all there was to it. Michael knew he had just imagined a shove between his shoulderblades, and a jerk on his shoes. He came forward. With a shriek, Bailey sat down hard.
He rocked back, horrified, pulling his face out of her lap. “I am terribly sorry. Let me help you!” His sister Nan would be screaming at this point; probably Bailey had to catch her breath first.
Bailey pulled back, catching her breath as best she could. “Did I splash you? There’s mud on your knees.” Michael was the sort of person who would take this personally.
Michael hoped Bailey wouldn’t be the sort of wife who obsessed about trifles when important matters went unnoticed. “Are you all right? Are those bruises or is it just dirt?”
“Oh, I….” Bailey looked around at herself. “I think…. Oh, hello!”
She was being sniffed by a small gray and white dog and a slightly larger black and white dog. “Come back here at once!” bellowed the young man at the end of the bifurcated leash.
“Oh, they’re all right.” Bailey was glad of anything to distract from the dirt on her fiance’s trouser leg. “What are YOUR names?” She smiled at the dogs, who smiled back, tongues out.
Michael stepped back, raising an eyebrow as the dog walker said “Well, this is Beaufort, and this is Bonbon.”
Both dogs were flailing feathery tails as Bailey reached out to scratch the head of the smaller dog. Michael, with the tiniest of shrugs, reached down a hand to the other.
“They’re so cute!” cried Bailey, addressing dogwalker, Michael, and the dogs at the same time.
“That’s their job,” said the dogwalker.
Beaumont looked like a teddy bear which had gone primitive and returned to walking on all fours, while Bonbon had obviously been a tiger in a previous life and was irked at being found in a smaller body. She took hold of Michael’s thumb, still wagging her tail.
“Yes,” he told her. “You’re fierce. You’re ferocious. I knew it at once. Give me that thumb back. It’s mine.” Shaking his thumb loose, he held it just above her eye level, so she could bounce up and grab it again.
Bailey was scratching Beaufort under the chin. Long black hairs, sticking out on each side of his head like eyelashes, made him look thoroughly exotic. The fuzzy round head twisted to offer another spot to be skritched, and Bailey obliged.
Bonbon was enjoying the thumb game, but spotted something on the ground that looked like food, and moved closer. The double leash made it necessary for Beaufort to accompany her. “Bonbon!” barked the dogwalker. “Drop it!”
Bailey watched them go, waving in reply to the dogwalker’s nod, and then looked up at Michael. She had liked the little dog but had even more enjoyed the sight of her fiancé playing with the other one. It was the first thing she could remember him doing that didn’t seem rehearsed. Her head tipped to the side. How did she know he hadn’t rehearsed it, though. Michael was one of those people who never did anything for the first time: prepared for everything, surprised by nothing, irritatingly unflappable. So why couldn’t he buy his own Brie?
“You’re going to be soaked through,” he pointed out, reaching out with the hand Bonbon had been savaging.
He was correct, of course: what else? Putting a hand on a drier patch of park, Bailey pushed herself up without his help. Most of her weight was on that hand and one foot when the foot slid straight forward, so straight it might have been pulled. She landed square in the mud again with a solid splop.
Michael was moved to point out, “Those shoes aren’t suited to walking in wet weather.”
Bailey found this unreasonable. Dashing some of the new mud from her hips, she snapped, “But these are your favorite shoes!”
He frowned at her feet. “Are they?”
“You said you liked them best.”
“I don’t remember that.” Michael frowned a little more, but gave it up. “The color is very nice.”
Very nice? She slapped both palms on the ground behind her, making two more loud splops. “And here I’ve been making sure they were clean every time I come in so I could be sure to wear them again when we went out!”
Michael supposed he could have paid more attention. Most women were like that: they worked long and hard to make their appearance seem spontaneous and effortless, and then expected you to appreciate al the effort that had gone into it. “Well, you really needn’t go to all that trouble. We’re already engaged.”
Her mouth screwed into a little pout. “And you don’t like them!”
“I didn’t say that,” he pointed out, quite in a reasonable tone. “I just never gave them much thought.”
“Oh, well. In that case….” Reaching out with muddy paws, she pulled the shoes from her feet and wiggled her toes.
“My dear!” Michael had never noticed Bailey’s toes particularly. They seemed perfectly acceptable toes, if you cared for toes. He didn’t think much of this tendency to undress in public, despite one fleeting recollection of distant days when he could go barefoot in public.
She set the feet flat in the mud, preparatory to pushing up, and wiggled the toes. “That feels good.”
Pleasant, Michael thought, to see her for once when she wasn’t looking left, right and backward, worried about what people were thinking. He reached out again, offering the hand nearer to the less muddy of her own.
“Thank you,” she said, and stepping out of the depression her struggles had made in the landscape, walked over to her discarded shoes. She looked left and right, and, spotting a garbage can, walked over and dropped them in.
“My dear!” Michael said again.
“Hey!”
Michael and Bailey turned. Their friend the dogwalker was waving the red handle of the leash, which was all he now held, as Beaufort and Bonbon, still connected to each other but not to him, leapt across the park, their lack of synchronization offset by their glee in their newfound (relative) freedom. Michael whistled, and they glanced at him, but after another “Hey!” from the dogwalker, moved on by, ready for a race.
“They’re headed for the street!” Bailey slid in the mud, but dug in a heel and launched herself after the pair.
Michael was running with her, stooping now and again in futile grabs at the trailing leash. His fingers closed around it twice, but, with no handle, found it sliding from his grasp each time.
He was NOT going to be outrun by anything with such tiny legs. With another burst of speed, he got far enough ahead of the leash to grab it toward the middle, and flip the loose end toward his other hand. Digging his feet in just as they all reached the sidewalk, he learned that Bonbon, particularly, was made up of a good deal of muscle. He tripped forward but kept his grip and avoided landing on his face on the concrete. He pulled back, his shoes digging again into dirt.
“That’s got you!” he announced, as the dogs swung around to face him. They started forward. He nodded to them, reaching with his free hand, but his eyes sought Bailey. He seemed to have lost track of her. He had heard her shouting “Don’t hit the puppies!”, and realized where she must be.
She had flagged a blue Buick that had come around the blind corner. It had, fortunately stopped, as she was right in the middle of that lane of traffic. Michael’s mouth dropped open.
“Thank you! Thank you!” said the dogwalker, joining him. “Bonbon’s been chewing the leash again.”
“Hmmmm? Oh.” Michael was still staring at his barefoot fiancée who, realizing the danger had passed, was bowing to the Buick and gesturing to it to move along.
“Leash broke.” The dogwalker was trying to attract Michael’s attention and relieve him of the leather band while dogs bounced cheerfully around his ankles.
“Oh. Oh? Of course. No trouble.” Mchael released his grip.
“Come on, you two. You’ve had enough exercise for one day.” The dogwalker twisted the end of the leash around his fist. “And I’ve had enough for the whole week. Thanks again.” Michael murmured acknowledgement.
Bailey, meanwhile, had mounted the curb and come back, favoring one foot. Either she’d sprained something or had scraped it running barefoot on the asphalt. “What happened? The leash broke, huh?”
Michael took a deep breath. “What were you thinking? You might have been injured! Even killed!”
“Thank you! Thank you for letting me know!” Bailey put her right hand in hr left. “And you would have been so embarrassed!”
She was trying to shift the engagement ring, but Michael’s eyes weren’t on hr hands. Those feet, those silly feet. He was appreciating for the first time that he was apparently marrying a woman equipped with toes. Something basically ridiculous about toes. It went along with a woman ridiculous enough to risk her life for a couple of mophead puppies. Pleasant, really, if one could go along with that as well.
He looked up at angry eyes. “Nnnnnno,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been embarrassed until the reception, when I realized I’d have t eat all that brie myself.”
Bailey had worked the ring past her knuckle, and was about to say something devastating, as soon as she thought of it, when she took in what Mchael had said. She froze for a moment, wondering if he was laughing at her.
One way to find out. “And you wouldn’t want to be part of some cheesy reception.”
He laughed, and put out a hand. To take it, she had to do something with the ring, so she jammed it back on her finger, at least for now. “That was brave,” he said. “Too brave, perhaps, but I wouldn’t have thought of it. Had I missed the leash, the dogs might have needed you where you were. For that matter, if the leash broke once, it might have broken again when I pulled at it.”
Bailey, realizing that it had been a close call for Bonbon and…whatever the other dog’s name was, felt a moment’s impulse to cry. But it was important to remind him, “It didn’t break. You’re the one who saved the puppies.” She still felt like crying, so to stop herself, she reached up and kissed him.
Michael wasn’t sure he liked her kissing him in public than he liked her taking her shoes off in public. But when he stood back to tell her so, it seemed a good deal more reasonable to kiss her in return.
“Remember you?” she demanded, when he’d finished. “Of course I’ll remember you.”
“You’d better,” he told her. “And I’ll always remember your perfume.”
That was a pity, for Bailey couldn’t remember it herself. She’d remember what it was later, she supposed. They set off back across the site of a possible reception, hand in hand, pausing only by the garbage can so Michael could retrieve her shoes. He thought of everything.
We have so far made no mention of the 2024 Summer Olympics, and this must be remedied. I am myself an Olympics junkie, sucked in by the games of 19…whatever. I watch in my own special way, of course. There are events I watch through my fingers (“Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t make me watch you fall”) and a few I watch through my eyelids (“Could I get a medal if I stay awake for five more minutes?”) But we will discuss MY Olympics some other time (the acquaintance who mentioned he had a gold medal, the cousin who had a bronze, the time my bosses had scored a public relations coup and someone said “The only thing that could stop us now is if a bomb goes off at the Olympics”. All semi-interesting stories which can wait for another day.
What I wanted to mention was that the array of postcards about married life shows a relation to the Olympics I had not suspected. This British card, for example, shows that the 100-yard dash was well known to cartoonists early in the twentieth century.
Wrestling, of course, was known in antiquity. Styles may have changed, as seen in this Spanish card of about the same vintage as the British one, but the sport is unmistakable.
In the world of boxing, this card from 1908 or thereabouts shows that the postcard artists were ahead of their time, envisioning mixed boxing (the female boxer is apparently given an equipment advantage.)
It is also no surprise that a sport as old as golf gets its place in the marital Olympics.
And I believe this is some version of fencing, though if some reader out there can identify it as a lesser-known martial art, I will accept that explanation. (Yes. I see that the card claims this is poker, but sporting terms change with the years. At first, because of the shape of their weapons, I was thinking this might be miniature golf.)
There are simply too many cards showing various forms of running and tumbling, but the most popular event, represented in dozens if not hundreds of cards, is that classic track and field competition, throwing the dishus.
The postcard artists were interested in all forms of athletic endeavor. This may be one of the first pieces of evidence that curling was being considered for the Winter Olympics even before there WAS a Winter Olympics. The lady’s size and her readiness to make use of a broom show she was an enthusiastic curler.
And in some cases, we have illustrations of sports which are no longer part of the Olympic lineup. This lady is demonstrating her skill at the early Biathlon, a combination of weightlifting with stairclimbing. (We do not have time for side issues, but I hope you have observed that some Olympic uniforms were as impractical as some of today’s: how many events nowadays are performed in heels?)
This card is one of the few pieces of evidence we had for what must have been an invigorating sport in Mixed Peekaboo Relay.
While the record of Tug of War at the Olympics is well-documented, we have only the postcard artists to tell us that good old-fashioned wheelbarrow races were considered as well. Maybe we will see some of these marital games at the 2028 Olympics. Or you will: looking over these illustrations leads me to believe I’d watch most of these with my hands in front of my eyes.
Once upon a time, there was a commercial which emphasized the importance of shoes. The young man in overalls who has never worn shoes because his feet can’t breathe finds that Hush Puppies are different, and cries out that now he can go to school “I can BE somebody!” (I do not have a Hush Puppies postcard; you’ll have to settle for this one from Keds, also responsible for some classic television.)
Rather than rail against fickle fate, which has made it impossible to watch this young man’s revelation on the Interwebs (did NO one save a copy?) we will consider the role of shoes on postcards of the past. Our postcard artists were NOT going to let this important article of fashion elude their notice, especially if their point was making fun of a well-dressed man. This chap cannot catch a break from the cartoonist, head to pointed toe.
This chap’s clothes veer off in an entirely different direction, just as unfortunate as the one preceding. He has dressed for excess, and those shoes are a worthy part of that effort.
One problem, of course, is that we must look past the change in fashions when considering cartoons of an earlier day. Although this gent is rather oddly proportioned, the clothes he wears would not have raised many eyebrows, back in the day. He is simply wearing spats, a decorative element once meant to both add color and possibly save parts of your shoes and socks from the mud (mostly the adding color bit.) So these are NOT caricatures of shoes (except in size, which is a fine old joke for some other blog.)
Likewise, though this IS a caricature of modern fashion, it’s meant to be a comment on the new dresses with side slits. The SHOES are not part of the joke.
Similarly, these well-worn droopy high-button shoes are merely a mild exaggeration, something fun to draw to illustrate what COULD have been construed as a racy innuendo. (You wouldn’t pack so personal a belonging of someone else unless you were really well-acquainted.)
As in this wildly popular shoe joke. I have had three different versions of this little exercise in drawing shoes so other people could draw the conclusion. Once again, though the shoes need to be prominent, making them caricatures would have gotten in the way of the gag.
In this well-drawn bit of fashion commentary, the shoes are not the first, or even the second point of the picture. (Either the wordplay of the caption, or the slam against the Hobble Skirt comes first, THEN the lovingly depicted legs in black stockings, and then the bird with the sly dig, and THEN the shoes, which are still part of the joke, being ill-designed for walking on winter ice.)
As time passes, of course, the interest of the viewer will change. The political joke has faded into the realm of dusty humor (we are comparing Papa to the nation of Turkey, which offered to give foreigners the boot.) We’re more interested now in the design of this handsome bit of footwear.
And THAT sort of thing is more or less eternal, as shown in this postcard from about half a century later, featuring an assortment of boots available in Arizona. (I’m sure the boot from the previous postcard is in here somewhere. Keep looking.)
Little raindrops sprayed from little wings, but did not affect the petals the phronik tossed with abandon. Meadow Saffron was the first to pause.
“Whoo!” she said, fanning herself with one petal. “I thought for a long time we wouldn’t do it. And they would.”
“The way she was treating him like one of her girlfriends!” Bluebell spread herself out in midair on her back, waving a hand in front of her face. “I thought sure he’d see how to move in!”
Unfirom nodded. “Delaying them long enough for the rain to come was good enough.”
Blubell kicked out and did the backstroke up to look him straight in the nose. “Did you make it rain?”
“Of ot was no more than a matter of rain, the five of us would be unnecessary,” the angel noted. “Was there some reason you didn’t lure a dog or a passerby toward te bushes? That might have spoiled the mood more quickly.”
Swwt Pea was peering up the drainspout of the lodge, obviously hoping for a stream of water, but looked around quickly. “That would be cheating!”
“Anyway,” said Primrose, kicking raindrops from a leaf down to a bedraggled wildflower. “They might’ve just gone someplace else, where we couldn’t….”
“Watch,” said Bluebell.
Sweet Pea stuck both hands out to catch raindrops, but these were so fine that it took a while for the tiny palms to fill. “It was easier that time we had to make that couple do it right here. Why dn’t you bring us some more like that?”
“That was a special case.” Unfirom studied the clouds. “Those two would have met later at a party and fallen so thoroughly in lust that they would have used the hostess’s bedroom and then left in a hurry without getting each other’s phone numbers or addresses. They would have hunted for each other unsuccessfully for the rest of their lives.”
“And what about these two?” Meadow Saffron demanded, pointing at Olivia and Griffin in the distance.
The angel swept rain from his nose. “They would have decided they had to get married in about four months. Forbidden by their parents to do so, they would have eloped.”
“But that’s romantic!” cried Bluebell. “And they were so cute together! Couldn’t they have lived happily ever after anyhow?”
“Just outside of town, Olivia would cry out that she saw her father’s car. To escapem Griffin would have tried to beat a train to the crossing. Without success.”
Sweet Pea threw her arms over her head, scattering the rain she’d captured. “Oh no! What a good thing we were here!”
“So now what?” Primrose demanded, slapping away the rain Sweet Pea had splashed all over her.
Unfirom wrinkled his nose toward the sky. “The marriage will take place,” he said, “And for the same reason, but three years from now, by which time Olivia will have a job and be able to support him.”
Primrose rolled over on her back to watch the rain come down. “And they can get married in a church, with their families, and cake, and little sandwiches.”
“And presents.” Sweet Pea nodded vigorously. “Blenders.”
“And napkin rings!” shouted Meadow Saffron, throwing a fist up into the air.
“Little pillows with tassels on the corners,” sighed Bluebell.
“Matching candlesticks,” said Primrose, a faraway look in her eyes. “And crystal and china sets they won’t use and….”
“A Moby Sandwich!” squealed Sweet Pea, spotting the first of the early lunch crowd, careying the cheese-covered fish filet in a soggy bun. The phronik dove after her: Moby Sandwiches always dripped cheese and hot grease. Unfirom nodded, and moved off in the opposite direction.
The rain was no more than a drizzle which soon faded into plain humidity. The usual migration of people for whom a wet park bench took nothing away from time out of the office was beginning. Booty Burgers, Moby Sandwiches, and fries of varying size and sog perfumed the air. There were couples in the crowd, but none with pressing personal requirements, for which Unfirom was grateful. He would do his duty I any case, but the phronik were harder to gather when Triple-Thick Pizza made an alternate call.
His thumbs began to rub against his forefingers. Working with the phrtonik could be frustrating but not as much as periods of inactivity. There was always something to work on, something doing, in his pre-park days.
A quiver of the shoulders was all he allowed himself by way of a shrug. Then he picked up his pace, striding toward the familiar back of a head.
The developer had wrinkled his suit only to the extent needed to seat himself on the plastic bag he had spread across the wet bench. A sketchpad open to a page of precisely spaced doodles sat on his knee: nothing here resembled the Pont a Methon building. This seytchpad did not involve itself with any project except in the earliest stages: he was playing hooky. He really should have been in front of the computer, reading all the updates from various government agencies, or composing more complaints against Booty Burger. But he allowed himself occasional bouts of creativity among the day’s occupations.
Unfirom had seen this sketchpad a dozen times by now; he sidled over to watch unseen. Today, as on most days, the developer was sketching quick nudes of passersby, in their passing poses. Unfirom knew he had definitely complimented the young woman walking the shih tzu, but had very much shortchanged the young man on the inline skates. The couple in the convertible, which had paused a mere ten seconds at the stop sign, was very elaborate, though it was obvious the artist was more interested in a classic Mustang than in the occupants.
The angel remembered the couple well; their attention had been diverted along a better direction when the phronik made it possible for them to realize they had patronized the same tattoo artist. Unfirom resisted the temptation to reach over the developer’s shoulder and add this detail to the developer’s sketch.
With an even tinier quiver of the shoulders, the angel turned away. A woman was marching through the wet grass, a long rolled banner trailing behind her. He could see through the folds that she had spelled it ‘MUSUEM”.
The crowd she had hoped for had not turned up, but her face brightened when she saw the back of the developer’s head. She walked faster, pulling up on the banner she hoped would rally the population to defend the park. Unfirom pulled back, waiting to see if he would be needed if and when she recognized her mortal enemy. He was not sure what she would do to the man with a weapon as wet and floppy as the misspelled banner.
“If you enjoy using the park….” She began, nearing the bench. Her right foot found the very spot where the ground leveled down toward the sidewalk.
“Ack!” She nearly regained her balance, but her left foot landed on the corner of the banner just as she swung around, jerking on the trailing fabric. Flapping forward, she landed hard on the sidewalk, presenting her southern façade to the trembling skies.
Unfirom checked around for the phronik. None of them were in sight. She had managed this landing all by herself.
“Are you all right?” There was no recognition in the developer’s eyes as he stooped forward, extending a hand across his sketchpad.
Her face was as red as the lettering on her banner. “I don’t know. Yes. No.”
“I don’t think you tore it.” Since she was ignoring his hand, he used it to catch up a fold of the banner. “The grass must be wet yet.”
“Ye-es.” She took the offered fold of banner from his hand, not very gratefully. “Thank you. That’s fine. I, er…thank you.”
Banner trailing behind her, she hurried away, limping just a little. Her face and neck were still very red. The developer watched her for a moment, and then returned to the sketchpad.
The new sketch was quick but as definite as any of his drawings. One of her legs was stretched behind her head on impact; Unfirom was mildly interested to observe that he had left her shoes on her feet. The developer nodded at the sketch, and reached inside his jacket for a red pencil, to shade the result.
Unfirom turned to watch the protestor leave the park, pausing a bit as a car whipped around the corner. Unfirom nodded. He had been sure the developer had given her higher heels than she was actually wearing.
Passing her on their way to the park were a tall man with a woman not quite so tall. Unfirom’s interest in the sketchpad evaporated, and he marched through the wet grass, searching for his co-conspirators.
Three quarters of the company were to be seen near the park lodge, Sweet Pea napping in a discarded yellow shoe, both her tongue and that of the sneaker hanging out, while Meadow Saffron and Bluebell wove a shoelace around a twig. They were singing again.
“Roller-skating Tatum had the whole thing planned
For a roller Derby comeback that would sweep the land;
She mastered every skating trick they could design—
And then some doofus went and put the wheels in line;
Percolator Coffeemaker,
Subaru and Studebaker;
All ya got is all yer gonna get;
Waddya bet?”
Unfirom gave the sneaker a nudge with one foot. “Where’s Primrose?”
“Oh, cookies,” muttered Sweet Pea, rolling over and sticking her hands under her head.
“There is work to do.” The angel pressed down on the shoelace. “Where is she?”
“He just doesn’t listen to the answers, does he?” yawned Meadow Saggron, fluffing out her hair in back.
“He will have only himself to blame if we never see her again,” said Bluebell, tossing the twig over one shoulder. “And we shall have to sing trios.”
Unfirom closed his eyes for one second. Then he turned to the park lodge. A glance through the window showed a tiny white cloud erupting from a doorway. He turned and marched around to the glass doors of the lodge.
The unique smell of dim rooms formed by painted cinderblocks struck his nose. He followed a faint background scent of flour, striding past small empty meeting rooms and then through a dark echoing chamber suitable for shuffleboard, ping pong, or skits performed by people in foolish costumes.
“Oh, pafoots!” cried a shrill voice from the room that opened onto this.
Having a studio so unworthy of her efforts was always a frustration to Primrose. In fact, few people larger than a phron could have accomplished much in a kitchen so small.
Ingredients were tidily stacked on the counter to the left of the cracked sink. Primrose was always tidy, except for eggshells, which she always tossed on the floor to keep them out of the way.
Just beyond the mixing bowl, though, several mounds of salt showed where she had run into difficulties. As Unfirom approached, she set her little measuring cup on a clear space, and then flew back to tip up the salt canister. This was not too large to lift, but it was too big for her to control, and the flow of salt rushed across her cup, knocking it over. She thomped down the canister and ran around it to set up the measuring cup again. Then she ran around and tipped the canister up again.
Nine times as much salt as the cup would hold surrounded it. The phronik gathered in the doorway cheered and applauded.
“Kinda early for snowdrifts!” called Bluebell.
“Phoof!” Throwing her arms up back behind her ears, Primrose kicked the measuring cup into the sink, where it bounced back and forth twice before rattling to a stop in the drain.
Sweet Pea flew over to study the cup. “What were you making?”
The chef wiggled her fingers above her head and scowled at the mixing bowl. “This silly recipe calls for two cups of sugar.”
Meadow Saffron flew over to light on the canister. “But this is salt!”
Primrose kicked at one of the little piles. “I know. They were out of sugar. They never have ANYTHING around here!”
“I wonder why.” Spotting the canister lid, Unfirom picked it up and put it back on the canister. “Shall we move outside to our usual chores?”
“As long as it’s not another couple running into trouble just for something to do.” The disappointed chef ran her fingers through the hair, streaking it with white powder.
“When we get to do it our way,” said Sweet Pea, settling in the drain to peer up not the faucet. “It can be all kinds of fun.”
“You can’t debauch everyone in the park,” said the angel.
A drip was forming above Sweet Pea. “Oh, I bet we could,” she said.
“You’d be recalled.”
Sweet Pea sniffed. “Where do baby angels come from?”
Unfirom tossed his hands toward the door. As they emerged from the shadows and looked through the glass doors, Bluebell spotted the couple making their way carefully through damp grass. “Oh dear,” she said.
“They’re holding hands already,” said Sweet Pea. “That’s a good sign.”
“Not really,” the angel replied. “They’re engaged.”
Primrose flew up toward Unfirom’s right ear, salt adhering to damp calves and thighs. “What’s the problem, then?”
“This couple will also be married out of necessity.”
Eight round eyes were moving from the couple to the angel’s somber face, and back again. “You’d never guess,” said Sweet Pea.
“They have to get married because he’s decided he’s getting too old to be single, his parents want grandchildren, and she’s as suitable as any.” The angel nodded to the approaching couple. “She has to get married because she’s tired of living in a studio apartment, she has money, and he’s good-looking enough to be acceptable.”
Four mouths dropped open. “Ick!” said Primrose.
“Do we HAVE to?” Meadow Saffron demanded.
The angel inclined his head. “There will be two children,” he said, “Who will be devastated by the divorce when each finds someone more suitable. The younger of the two will take Little Hans, his plush dinosaur, and run away from home, right into traffic. The dinosaur will survive this.”
“No no no!” Sweet Pea launched herself toward the couple, hit the door, and bounced backward onto the floor.
There is much to be said for technical ineptitude. Once again last night, I came very near to commenting on a video on a social media venue. One of my favorites was replying to a comment by getting into costume and…never mind. You had to be there. I have enough to do just explaining that my comment relied in the first place on an outmoded expression, and was reinforced by a reference to a book not one person in a million has read. I haven’t read it myself. (Though that is no reason not to cite it, as anyone familiar with the Interwebs will understand.)
I was going to mention, in passing, a one hundred year old reference book of which, for my sins, I owned two copies as a child. (I may still own a copy: over several moves, books went into boxes with wild abandon.) In its own way, it IS a legend of American literature, a treasure known as Putnam’s Phrase Book.
This mighty reference was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons (hence the name) in 1921, and was assembled by one Edwin Hamlin Carr, who is apparently known for nothing beyond this one wonderful work. He tells us it was the work of a lifetime, plucking useful phrases from everything he read, hoping these would inspire users to pepper their own writing with such phrases. He includes a number of examples of letters which can be composed using his….what shall we call it?
How about “Cliché Thesaurus”?
Consider, for example, phrases he suggests you use to describe something mysterious. He starts with “Into those invisible regions where we cannot follow”, which is intriguing, not to say mysterious, itself, and then proceeds to “Clothed in a cloak of mystery”, “Shrouded in mystery”, “A great deal of hokus-pokus”, “It was Greek to me” (which he properly ascribes to Shakespear), and “Utterly inexplicable”.
For those people who find themselves confronted by the mysterious, we have these phrases for someone who is “Perplexed”: “Utterly at sea, “I am really at the end of my tether”, “It is very vague”, “We cannot make much of it”, and “Utterly inscrutable”. It is no crime to use the word “utterly” so often, even if one is writing a book about substituting exciting phrases for what you were going to write.
He admits in his very short (and largely metaphor-free) introduction that he has slanted his material. Mr. Carr was a writer of the 1920s, when optimism was considered a civic duty, and he tells us he has emphasized “commendation, optimism, and courtesy”. Obviously, he has no relevance in the era of social media.
So under “Pessimistic”, though he HAS included pessimistic phrases—“Doleful recollections”, “A damper of my hopes”, “Smothered under the wet blanket of”, and “Fallen into the Slough of Despond”—we also get descriptions of pessimistic people: “He always has a plentiful stock of gloomy ideas”, “A peddler of pessimism”, and “He indulges in the gloomiest forebodings”. (He even includes a phrase for that last person to use: “No rosy delusions should be permitted to warp our judgement.”)
WERE there people who felt the need to consult Mr. Carr to come up with such utterly pedestrian phrases for their work? Well, it is a thick (though pocket-sized) book and it sold a LOT of copies, so there may well have been professions (politics jumps to mind—thought of that one myself, but I bet it’s in the book) who felt having a copy of this on the desk might be just the cure for a moment of writer’s block. His reference book CAN, he hints, be used to prompt your own phrase creation. You could read through a section and think, “I can do better than that!” and proceed to prove it.
So besides making myself look at least four or five years older than I actually am, I am glad I did not mock Putnam’s Phrase Book on social media. Perhaps, in saying, “Since we all talk in phrases as well as in words, every home needs a phrase book as well as a dictionary”, Mr. Carr was right after all. We need not, as he might say himself, regard his life’s work as “Arid and unfruitful”, “Cheap and tawdry”, “Of no particular moment”, or “Utterly repudiated”.
Blogsy Babbles 