Okay, M. Bergeret, you’ve got me. Explain the joke.
Not long ago, I added to my inventory a collection described as an assortment of postcards roughly 120 years old, based primarily on French silent movies: mainly comedies. Among these, among scenes from a Dutch documentary of the 1950s and a German drinking song postcard or two, were numerous works from A. Bergeret et Cie.
Albert Bergeret set up as a postcard publisher in 1898, and by the turn of the century was printing seventy to a hundred million postcards a year. (Have I mentioned what a HUGE fad postcards became?) These were almost all photographed subjects: cute kids, weird fantasies, and one series I’d like to see more of, in which pinup models interacted with punctuation marks. Some of the cards I have do seem to be scenes from morion pictures or stage productions of the early twentieth century. (The Bergeret imprint lasted only until 1905, when he merged with another company and took a different name for the combined company.)
We have discussed hereintofore the early postcard trend toward series of postcards, and have even mentioned specialized series in which a long poem or popular song would be divided by verses into several postcards. So I was not sure, when I saw these three cards from a “Sur la Mur” series, whether I was dealing with a movie, a poem, or a song. I’m still not.
Part of the problem is the relationship between me and the Interwebs. YOU try looking up “Sur la Mur” online. When the Interwebs wasn’t trying to sell me postcards “On the Sea” (Sur la MER) they were showing me postcards about love (Sur l”AMOUR.) OR they were showing me people who decorate their apartments with postcards on the wall, which is closer to my literal search but got me no nearer to the postcards in hand. Here’s #1 in the series, by the way.
Here we have a nice little poem, which I will NOT try to translate into verse, about Pitou, a popular stage and movie character, a hapless and put-upon soldier. Here we are told that on the wall, by the light of the moon, he sneaks out of camp to see his brunette. But the guard spots him and hollers and tomorrow, we are told, will be all cabbage. Somebody else will have to cover the complex subject of cabbage in French idiom, but this is a sympathetic and entertaining little vignette. Let us consider postcard #2.
On the wall, with ferocious face, rises a horrifying vision: the fearsome burglar. His blade flashes in the moonlight as he breaks and enters to pillage. Bad luck to anyone who interrupts him! I admit that Pitou was not so cute as HIS poem suggests, but we have definitely changed key. What kind of creature will face us in postcard #3?
On the wall, a marauder swipes apples from the neighborhood orchards. He laughs at police, and in his heart is a malice that tells him to do this again and again. Do you see the natural progression of crimes here? Me neither. If we’d started with the boy thief, turned him into a luckless soldier, and THEN had him turn to burglary, that would have produced a typical Victorian song about the inevitable decline and fall of naughty children. That isn’t what M. Bergeret had in mind. These pictures are not pf the same person. Heckfire: it’s not even the same wall.
And, moving on to the 64,000 franc question: is this it? Or were there further cards, at least a fourth one to pull the story together? Maybe the Bergeret employees simply found they had unrelated photographs of different characters and walls, and decided to write a few poems to make them marketable. Tell me whatever you can about the subject. I’ve run into a…ah, sit down. You must have seen that coming.
Olivia took hold of her collar with both hands. “It’s going to rain,” she stated.
“It’s not going to rain.” Griffin shook his hair back. “Besides, thunder and lightning will make it even better.”
Olivia’s lips pulled in. Griffin realized that he’d have had a better chance if he’d said the second sentence first. “And look.” He nodded to the narrow space between bushes and brick. “We’ll have lots of cover.”
Olivia looked to the people running along the track. “I can see over.”
“We’re not going to be standing up,” Griffin pointed out.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, right.” She pulled on her collar some more, not really doing much more than twisting it.
Griffin studied the patch of dirt. “Yeah, this’ll be okay.” Turning to her, he found her mouth open, and very pink. Her eyes seemed very large.
Olivia saw Griffin’s eyes narrow. Was that exciting, or scary? Seen by everyone else as a reedy guy, tentative, with a mustache similarly thin and timid, Griffin seemed suddenly very masterful. Did he come here a lot? With…others?
She licked her lips and then, deciding that might be seen as an invitation, sucked them in. The advice she needed right now wasn’t in anything they’d given her to read in school, OR in the magazines. Who sat down first? It seemed creepy to just go…get down there while he was still standing up. She bit down on her lips to stifle a giggle.
Griffin heard it anyhow: that was encouraging. Nothing was going to happen, though, if they just stood there looking at each other. “Here.”
Stooping, he swept away a litter of leaves, torn newspaper, and Booty Burger bags. “We need some space.” Some paper was stuck under dried mud and took a little effort; this gave him a chance for a reminder glance up Olivia’s shorts. There as quite a lot of her; he really ought to get bonus points.
Curled against the base of the brick wall was a rolled and dirty issue of Subterranean Samurai Swingers from Cincinnati. He ran a thumb across the top, looking for the issue number. He had missed a couple of issues last winter, during the Ragnarok-Armageddon Showdown, when the Red Gotcha was killed by the Mad Auctioneer. But he couldn’t remember which issues those were.
“I knew when I first saw you,” she said, putting a hand on the wall.
“Huh? Oh, er, yeah. Me too.” He looked up again, with what he hoped was a romantic smile.
Olivia was tall, with soft, natural curls and soft, natural curves. Anyone would have thought she was six years older, except for her uncertain complexion and the uncertainty in her eyes. She was a very good hug.
She was silent. Griffin straightened and cleared his throat. “Well, this is the proof that can’t be denied. Here’s where we pledge that our love burns forever.”
“Burning love,” Olivia murmured. She shivered. Sitting down quickly, she yanked off her sandals.
Annoyance that she should start with the inessentials mingled in Griffin with a twinge of guilt when he saw those pink toes. “Burning love.” His eyes went up to the clouds. “Hope the weather doesn’t try to put out the fire.”
Olivia looked at the bushes, which were rustling fiercely again. “Oh. It will be…sweeter in the rain. We’ll remember this for the rest of our lives.”
“Yes.” Griffin’s mind was on more immediate matters. He’d have to put his hands in the dirt, wouldn’t he? So then how did…well, time for that when they got to it. SOMEBODY had to go first and report on method to the Four Rs.
He, with Tracy, Jason, Leif, Luke, Chuckie, and Jim, had founded the mighty club known, for security reasons, as the Four Rs. Only the members knew they were the Rough Rowdy RamRodders: a group dedicated to rising into adulthood through pursuit of adultery. (That was one of Leif’s best lines in the By-Laws.) Rank in the organization was regulated by the point system on Chuckie’s phone. Members received one point for a hand that landed here, two points for getting a hand in there, and so on through ten-point, hundred-point, and even thousand-point operations in the field of love.
Embarrassingly, the Four Rs had no officers. Only Jim had risen to the dizzying height of Privates First Class, with a verifiable twelve points. And even he hadn’t managed all that on a single date. Club Secretary Chuckie kept complaining he had almost nothing to enter into the complex coded recordbook he had developed.
Well, there’d be something to record now, once Griffin finished up operations here. There might have to be new codes to cover exploration of new territory.
Olivia had unbuttoned a single button. What was she supposed to do with her hands? Later, once…well, eventually, no doubt, you got to a stage where every move came naturally, but there were bound to be awkward moments between the time you got your clothes undone and the moment you remembered why.
“Perfect love,” she said, her eyes on the second button, “Casts out fear. Oh!”
Her hair, which had been well clear of any part of their camouflage, had suddenly gotten itself attached to a branch. A quick tug did not free hr; had she looked closer, she might have wondered how the wind had managed to tie several strands of hair in such tiny knots.
Griffin leaned down. “Here. Let me help.”
“No!” Both hands went up to hold off the man who was her Eternal Love. “No, no. Don’t…worry. I can do it.”
She torre at the branches and dashed leaves from her hair. A glance at Griffin showed she had not offended him; for a moment, when she shouted, she was afraid he’d walk out of the bushes. No need to shout. Griff wasn’t the type to take a chance at a quick grab: she wouldn’t be here with him otherwise.
Griffin did take a step back, his eyes on that second button, which had worked its way loos when she turned to tussle with her hair. He flexed his fingers.
Olivia pulled the last of the twigs from her hair. She spared not another glance for the trustworthy Griff. He was the only man Olivia had been out with this often who had not yet gon for tit or tush. The most he’d ever gone for was her arm: her wrist, in fact, not even her upper arm, which other guys considered an expressway into her blouse. And he didn’t push sex into every conversation.
Tom next door, for example, liked to study stuffed animals and point out omissions in anatomy. Jim was always spotting “wrinkles” in her clothes that he was willing to smooth out. That kept his hands outside, anyhow, unlike Terry, with his “Look! A wasp on your sleeve! I’ll get him!”
Griff was different. Griff kept his hands where they belonged, and Olivia had never detected a trap in anything he said. (Unlike Leif, with his “interesting book I just read”, ready at any flicker of interest toi follow this with “Want to try it out?”
Griff’s confession of love had surprised her; his invitation over here was amazing. But it had all been just right, his sincerity showing in every word.
Enough: the branches seemed to be staying put. She brushed the other leaves from the front of her blouse, undoing the other buttons in a single move.
She did not look at him. “I hope it’s not just these,” she said, her right hand cupping her left breast so she could lift the whole assembly in the (to her eyes) rather flimsy bra.
“Mmmmmm?” Griffin had been watching with such interest that he had forgotten for a omoment that he was part of this scene at all. “No no!” he tapped the side of his head. “It’s what’s up here that counts.” He added, to himself, “It’s what’s down there that adds up.”
“Hearts and minds that beat in time,” sighed Olivia.
Griffin licked his lips, and put his hands down to wipe his palms on his pants. On second thought, he shifted them to his own shirt. This was getting urgent: best not to take chances. No rushing: he would owe his position in the Four Rs to her; the least he could do was move at her speed. No points for rushing: the Four Rs insisted Rape was NOT worthy of being an R.
This, Olivi told herself, was going to be perfect. Even so, she had to take another breath before shrugging her blouse down. One arm, then two arms, and she moved to set it down.
“Ugh! Ants!”
Griffin had seen absolutely no ants when they chose this spot. He shoved a fist down among them, sending them away at a scurry and mashing into the dirt the little red piece of candy neither had seen roll into place.
“Heh. It’s not in your blouse you’re supposed to have ants.”
In any other guy, Olivia would have thought this was crude. She squirmed, more at the thought than from a lingering aversion to ants. But Olivia understood. It was just a little joke to put her at ease. Griff was thoughtful that way.
“To love ant cherish, huh?”
Griffin shivered. “Windy,” he said, to excuse this sign of weakness.
It was not a windy day. And yet the bushes rustled again, loudly, and a scrap of torn newspaper fluttered by, with another gum wrapper. The gum was Juicy Fruit, the headline, briefly glimpsed, was ‘NWED MOTHER, 17, KILLS SELF, BA”. Olivia’s hand jerked away as if this was a giant ant, and the scrap fluttered up against the wall, the flip side bearing an ad for secondhand tires.
Olivis glanced at Griff, and thought about asking. Instead, she reached behind herself for the hooks, shaking her head.
“These things,” she said, a little hoarse. “Everyone’s always looking at them.” Unharnessing her chest, she set the bra down on the blouse. “Big and fat and ugly.” She dealt the left breast a slap that left a pink handprint for just a second.
Oooohhh, golly: she was waiting for him to answer. “They’re not ugly.” So far, so good. “They’re not really….” He groped for a word and cursed as it came out. “Subtle.”
Olivia’s smile was all reward. Other guys, to get on her good side, would have gushed about her girls, or insulted them to get on her good side. This was just Griff, with an honest opinion. Her hands slid to her waistband.
Griffin swallowed again. She was so…clean. The nipples were pretty much the same color s her lips, which surprised him. Was that the lipstick? Did she wear lipstick?
“They slow me down.” She slapped the same spot again. “Nobody likes you when you’re big.”
Griffin’s lips seemed very dry to him. “I don’t know about that.”
She folded her arms across her chest, and rocked a little forward and back. “It was exciting at first, you know: being first and bigger than anybody.” One hand swung down to the large economy-size undershirt she had just discarded. “But you get to be fourteen and you’ve heard all the jokes about watermelons and…and cows, and ‘your cup runneth over’. And the senior guys asking if I wanted to go for a ride. And if I complained to anyone, it was always ‘Oh, yeah, you’ve got it so rough.’”
Griffin nodded with sympathy though he was now listening with one quarter of one ear. His eyes were taking up most of his brainpower, but what little was left reminded him he was part of this, too, and he’d better start slipping off some clothes. The Four Rs did not award many points for a long look.
“They stand around in the halls.” Olivia mashed a straying ant looking for the hidden red candy. “And it’s, ‘Hey, Livia, if you’re going to the gym, I’ll carry those basketballs!’ Or they’re leaning over your shoulder, drooling. Why did it take so long to find….” She slapped that same breast a third time: it must have hurt, but she turned a beaming smile on Griffin to let him know he was special.
Griffin’s mind went to the gym: shirts vs. skins. He always prayed he’d be picked for Shirts, or it would be “Put your arm next to mine! Do you get any sun? How white can a guy be without being dead?” His hands trembled with his shirt buttons now. Still, if she had something to say, she should say it now.
As the shirt came open, he looked down to find her gazing up at him, and it struck him that he was standing and she was sitting. His chest blushed with his arms and face, and he twisted a little to the side.
Olivia had never seen him without a shirt. Pity he had to turn just then but she could see his neck blushing and a little of his chest. She was stunned by how…by how PRETTY he was. She wondered if he blushed all over, and blushed herself.
Griffin tossed the shirt down as casually as he could. “Lucky it’s cloudy.” He cleared his throat. “We’d need a GALLON of sunscreen.”
Her face had gone doubtful: had she taken that as a comment on her frontage? Those thumbs had gone for that waistband about a dozen times now. He’d get ten points for helping her off with them, of course, but a move too fast might end this game. He was not losing all the points for sex in public with a virgin and settling for Privates First Class.
So he didn’t wear a T-shirt. And he had hair on his chest: plenty of it. Olivia decided she liked this. She pictured herself picking crumbs from that chest hair after breakfast in bed.
But he’d mentioned the weather, and her next glance went to the sky. She was glad it was still vercast, so she didn’t have to worry about sunburn. But he had that fragile look: would he catch cold if it rained while they were…busy?
“Why do the bushes keep rattling?” she demanded. “It isn’t windy, or cold. Is it squirrels? Not rats!”
“Squirrel, probably.” He went over and bent over the bushes to look. Olivia decided he would be pretty with his pants off, too. Did he wear underpants?
But she had to ask. “You aren’t cold, are you?”
He faced her again. “Are you cold?”
She shook her head. “But are you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? You don’t want to catch cold.”
“I’m fine.” Griffin glared at the bushes, which were rattling fiercely now. Was the wind that much stronger on the other side? “But you’re sure you’re not cold.”
“I’ll be all right.” She hugged herself. “Anyway, I can always lend you a coughdrop.”
Was that a chuckle or a shiver? She was old enough to take care of herself, he supposed. He dropped his shirt to the dirt. Coughdrop: better if she could make up a story about where he’d caught a cold. If he caught one, which he wouldn’t.
He frowned. She’d lend him a coughdrop, would she? He realized suddenly that two hundred points wouldn’t be the end of the thing. He’d have to talk to her tomorrow. She might be expecting more than talk, too. That meant more points, of course, but also more arrangements. Assuming he didn’t go for two hundred points with someone else, of course. Anyway, what about winter? He could take her to The Burrow. He’d heard about it. She didn’t look like the people who paid to go to The Burrow. Neither did he, he supposed. So far.
He shuddered. “You ARE cold,” she said. “You can…keep your shirt on and still….”
“I am NOT cold!” he yanked at his belt, which stuck, as it did whenever he was in a hurry.
Olivia stuck her thumbs under her waistband again. She’d offended his masculine ego: no guy would ever admit he was cold. With a shrug, she raised herself so she could ease the shorts down. She paused. People caught colds all the time, of course: no big thing. But was it fair of her to insist on going through with this if he got sick?
Griffin got the belt unfastened, and paused. She didn’t LOOK cold: in fact, she looked very nice and warm. He didn’t feel cold himself. He was getting really hot under the…under the collar.
Another scrap of newspaper flipflopped along the base of the bushes. Olivia thought it looked like a Vaporub ad. Her mind flashed back to that other scrap. What happened to the father of the baby in the story? Had he died of pneumonia?
The bushes rustled and rattled. A siren started screaming, several blocks away. Griffin’s sense of self-preservation made him drop to his knees for cover.
Olivia wanted to jump back and lean forward at the same time. He was SO pink and nice. Was that his natural color, or was it the chill in the air?
“Do you want….”
“If you want….”
The sirens seemed to be approaching, and the rustle of the leaves was joined by another sound. That tapping took a second to identify. “Rain.” Griffin intended to say more, but had to stop and swallow.
Olivia slid her shorts back up. “There….” She had to swallow, too. “There’ll be other times.”
“It’ll….” Griffin started to rebuckle his belt. “It’ll be drier the other side of the building.”
“Have to….” Olivia reached down for her upper underwear. “Get dressed to get there.” She put her arms into harness. “Are you…I hope….”
Griffin swallowed again; something tasted very bad. “Yeah.”
“Good movie tonight.” Olivia struggled with the closure. “Sure Death of a Mouse. It was…third at the box office first weekend.”
“Yeah.” Griffin picked up his shirt. “Want to see it?”
Olivia’s hands kept missing the hooks. “If…if you want to.”
“Um.” Griffin computed the money in his pocket: it would be barely sufficient. “Wait.” He moved around behind her and fastened the hooks for her. She was, indeed, very warm. Biting his tongue, he pulled away and put his own shirt on.
A few actual raindrops were falling now, but Olivia didn’t feel them. He had soft hands. “Um. Six-thirty?”
“Okay.” He buttoned his shirt slowly, his fingers fumbling as he watched her rebutton her own top. Her lips were pressed tightly together, reminding him of the pink of her nipples and that handprint. “If we go at a quarter after, we’ll get better seats.”
Olivia opened her eyes, which had also been tightly closed, and then looked away from that belt buckle. “Okay.”
“if you want to.” He said, moving forward.
“Oh, I want to,” she sighed.
Griffin reached out and took her nearer hand. “We’d better get going. It’s wet.”
She squeezed his hand. “Yeah.”
Rising from the shelter of the bushes, they studied the park for the driest way through the increasing raindrops. Griffin squeezed her hand back; he could ait and get his points a few at a time instead of all at once.
“Remember you?” she demanded. “I’ll never forget.”
“What?” asked Griffin. The rattle of the bushes covered her reply.
Bud hunched his shoulders. That had sounded very much like an expensive drawing table being tipped over and kicked. But Aster was at an age where her bedroom door was a. a shield against an irrelevant outside world, b. the guardian of her privacy, her identity, and her human rights, and c. a force field completely impenetrable by a father’s question. Resolved to make his own ears soundproof, he went back to considering the claims of chips or microwave popcorn as an accompaniment to the Sunday Afternoon Really Bad Movie. He had about fifteen minutes to make up….
His head came up. THAT sounded like the world’s largest bloodhound baying with lungs set on high. Shrugging, he shook the half bag of soggy tortilla chips. He’d had his tastes in music sniffed at before this. Perhaps the next sound—as if that very hard to assemble even with instructions spread out drawing table being had been flung against a wall–was just the newest percussion effect of another currently (and perhaps perpetually) undiscovered band.
The bag of chips lowered toward the counter. Bud turned toward the noises. Squaring his shoulders, he forced his attention back to the snack question. Aster’s tastes and talents ran to the visual arts, and an artist needed privacy. He had known that without her mentioning it from time to time (each day.) This weekend she was exploring the hopefully remunerative art of fantasy illustration, and had locked herself away to consider an online course entitled “How to Draw Dragons”. She had been drawing dragons since she was four, and twelve years’ experience had honed her talents to a point where Bud wouldn’t have thought an expensive video course in….
His hands broke a dozen chips as they clenched on the bag. THAT had sounded like a sonic boom. And it was succeeded by even scarier sounds: a door slam and stamping feet. Apparently, the online instructor had failed to turn her instantly into a famous illustrator.
He shook himself. Best to go into Supportive Dad Mode (very similar to Blind, Deaf Dad Mode). It was that or miss the opening credits.
Good intentions flew out the window as his daughter appeared in the kitchen. “What in…. Have you been drawing with charcoal?”
Her hands and face, and much of her T-shirt, were streaked and smudged with black and dark gray. “No!’ she snapped. “It was the course on how to draw dragons.”
“How can drawing….”
“I should have read the description better. It was about ATTRACTING dragons—drawing them TO you–not sketching them! It took every White Pearl eraser I had to get rid of the whole flight!”
She slapped at her shoulders, which were actually smoldering, and turned her eyes to glare at the bag of chips. “Do we have any chocolate?”
They tell me freckles are now high fashion. People who once tried to bleach their skin or laser away their sunkisses are now drawing extra freckles on their cheeks, or pressing broccoli hard against the skin, and even having freckles tattooed into place.
The change started in the 1960s, apparently. Model/actress Twiggy is noted as someone who declined to cover her freckles, and I suppose the Sixties, with their emphasis on healthy outdoor lifestyles and natural looks, contributed to this. There’s a social component as well. Historically, the fashionable have been those who do no useful work. (This is why VERY fashionable shoes are impossible to walk in.) For centuries, the workforce was generally outdoors, getting tanned and freckled. Then the urban migrations of the twentieth century brought in a workforce penned into offices, and the fashionable were those who had the leisure time to go out and get some sun.
Then, too, even as soap manufacturers and cosmetic companies were pushing CURES for freckles, pop culture had a prejudice toward the freckled. Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables (who hated her freckles) were active heroines, girls who DID things, while a Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn without freckles would be regarded with suspicion. For over a hundred years, the comic strip Freckles and His Friends starred a spotted adventurer.
In fact, the popular image of an active, healthy, mischievous child was a freckle-faced troublemaker, usually with red hair. (Freckles are not restrained by race or ethnic origin. Those of us of pale skin and red hair are just more susceptible to the freckle-causing effects of sunlight AND more obvious when the spots appear.)
So why don’t the kids on postcards—as mischievous and active as any children designed for comic purposes—seem to have ‘em?
It could be a matter of having to answer to company art directors, who liked nice, empty spaces. It could be that artists didn’t quite trust the printing presses their companies paid for, as a slip in the press could turn an attractive display of freckles into a blot, or a swarm of mosquitoes just to the right of the cheeks intended. (This is why, for example, comic book companies banned writers from using the word “flick”, since dialogue was printed in all caps and a simple speck in the wrong place would cause massive letters from outraged civic officials.)
So on faces where we might look for freckles, they seem to have compromised by giving their leading lads and ladies bright red cheeks. Ruddy cheeks were supposed to be a sign of glowing health anyhow, and didn’t require the addition of spots. They had nothing AGAINST freckles; they just wanted something cheap and easy.
And in closeup, this made sure you didn’t suspect the tough kid needed a shave.
OR that some endearing moppet wasn’t coming at you with measles. That’s the problem with all art, of course: the artist relies on the viewer to figure it out. MUCH safer to go with a rosy blush.
Lilian’s eyes shifted left again, away from him. She wished that just once she could walk somewhere without some guy deciding so small a woman would be easy to pick up. And this was an especially unsavory specimen. She shot him another quick look: he hadn’t shaved, he owned a potbelly which was putting an awful strain on that poor abused belt, and he further possessed a bald spot made all the more obvious by growing the hair long just below it.
Her nose wrinkled: the first mistake was consulting a doctor about her stress. “More fresh air”: look how that was working! It had torn her way from work waiting to be done and taken her here to suffer even more stress. She checked her watch to see how close she was to being finished with fresh air for today.
Schuyler licked his lips. She was moving as if to check the time again, but he wasn’t fooled. Lord, she’d looked at that watch four times in the last five minutes; no appointment in a park was that important, anyhow at this time of day. If she wanted to look at him, let her just DO it; he would find it less uncomfortable than all this kidding around.
Je knew he should have shaved. The stubble made him look like a nonconformist, and that was back in style. A stomach like this should make him ineligible for any woman’s interest, but some women were looking for variety, while others were desperate. This one was desperate. She wasn’t even as tall as the fence, it looked like, and she had those small, mean, concentrated features. Her face wasn’t particularly clean and, to judge by her clothes, the theme as continued elsewhere. He hoped she would not speak; he didn’t want to know what her voice sounded like.
He set his back against the bench and sighed. Lilian crossed her legs and looked away.
Behind them, Bluebell giggled. “She’s pretending not to see him. Isn’t that cute?”
“Promising, promising.” Meadow Saffron kicked at a dandelion. “But we have to do better than that. Maybe see if we can get them on the same bench.”
Bluebell nodded. “How do you want to do it? If it started to rain we might get them under an umbrella together.”
“Maybe.” Meadow Saffron pointed. “Get yonder while I ponder.”
Lilian risked another glance. If he made one move in her direction, the doctor could just mail fresh air to her apartment. Oh grand: he didn’t lack a single vice to make himself unattractive. He was reaching in his pocket for cigarettes.
Schuyler took the pen and folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He wondered whether the expert who recommended fresh air as a cure for writer’s block had ever seen this particular patch of struggling greenery. Why did all those professionals tell writers to get outside and describe a tree? He had never yet written a story in which any tree had had anything significant to do, and his characters couldn’t just walk around all day describing trees.
He tapped the butt of the pen against his lower lip. Might make a book, at that. “Describing Trees”, the tale of a distant island to which all free-lance fictioneers finally driven mad by writer’s block and low payments walked around describing trees to each other all the livelong day. There would be an annual Tree-Describing Competition, a tree-worshipping cult, and…and a mad villain who rode through the island swinging a chainsaw.
He looked up from the paper to consider the motives of the chainsaw killer or killers—escapees from a nearby island of insane editors?—And found the woman’s beady little eyes turned his direction again. Well, this business of describing trees might have something in it after all, but he could just as easily describe trees from home. Describing trees would be far easier without her constant supervision. Besides, it looked like rain.
Lilian supposed he was writing a note. That could be one way to get rid of him without having to speak to him. Should she crumple it up and throw it over one shoulder, or stride off with dignity and drop it in a trash can? Hard to stride off with dignity when you were four foot two. What if she decided, from her walk, that she was inviting him to follow, before she got a chance to show her real opinion at the garbage can. Crumple and toss: much more efficient.
What was taking so long? Was he writing her a poem or something? She tried another glance, met his eyes, and turned away again. Obviously, he was putting a lot of thought into this: pity he was wasting his time. What if this poem turned out to be completely obscene? She stuck her tongue up inside her upper lip. No, he was probably drawing a nude picture of her in some bizarre position: some men did consider that a rare compliment.
Tongue and lips came in. What if it was a good likeness? With that stubble, the guy might be an artist, selling his sketches for hundreds in a gallery. Could she crumple up a picture that was worth so much? If she didn’t, might someone who knew her recognize it one day, and assume she’d posed for it? Why couldn’t artists go infest some other park instead of complicating her life this way?
Schuyler was, in fact, sketching a map of the Isle of Described Trees. The Vale of Pencils would be here, while the bubbling spring of hot coffee could tumble down from the Mountain of Manuscripts. Among the waves of the ocean, he was writing “HERE BE AGENTS” when the wind, of which there had been none a second before, tore the paper from his hands.
Four eyes watched the folded page bounce along the ground, apparently making for Lilian’s ankles. Well, thought Lilian, not subtle, but ten points for accuracy.
Schuyler stuck his tongue behind his upper lip. This was trouble. Would it be better to go after his notes, or ask her to hand them back? Better go get them. If she touched the paper, she might read it, ask questions, and trap him into conversation.
Lilian drew back, setting one foot on the notes. “Excuse mem” said Schuyler, keeping his eyes on her as he reached for them. “Dropped this.”
“Oh, sorry.” She slid so far away that one thigh protruded over the edge of the seat.
“That’ all right.” The treasure back in his hands, Schuyler returned to his own bench.
Vivian glared after him. Had he been gawking down her blouse or up her skirt? More details for his masterpiece, she supposed.
Schuyler saw her face as he sat down. Angry because he hadn’t said more, she was now going to insist on sitting next to him to talk, he knew it. How was he supposed to write a best-seller if she insisted on playing games?
“Did you have to pick such thick-headed ones?” Bluebell demanded. “We’d better get the others or we’ll be here all day.”
, “Obviously, we’ve got two who are just right for each other.” Meadow Saffron tapped one foot. “All we have to do is make them figure that out. Hey, here we go!”
Great: Lilian felt a muscle in her forehead twitch, just the sort of thing she’d come out here to cure. Her right eyebrow quivered. She’d promised Dr. Coath she’d try to stay out an hour each day; he’d never believe her excuse for going back inside.
Oh, now she was winking at him! This was too much. He started to rise, but then the idea of a tribe of cheap little dark-eyed female cannibals on the island struck him. He could see their gruesome eyes peeking out at the writers from the undergrowth, distracting the poor souls from their leaf-by-leaf epics. Ah, no doubt they were employed by the editors, and when not working as cannibals were inept proofreaders.
A red piece of candy bounced along the ground. Neither Lilian nor Schuyler, concerned with other obsessions, noticed it, but smaller eyes saw it. First one ant, and then a dozen, followed the bouncing sweetness.
Lilian checked her watch. Forty-five minutes yet to go? She was going to be so healthy she’d need private duty nurses and restraints on the bed. Would he follow her if she just got up and found another bench? If only the rain would start, the doctor would have to….
“Ooh!” She jumped as an ant crawled across her thigh. Ants were swarming along the bench. Lilian could not stand tiny wildlife.
Schuyler shrank to the farthest end of his own bench. The woman was pointed at him, shaking her tiny skirt well above the safety point. She was more desperate than he’d thought.
Lilian shook away ants and glared t the man, who was obviously making room for her on his bench. This was too much. He was probably the one who had planted ant bait under her place. Time to go home: this fresh air was getting more and more complex.
“Hey, get back here!” Meadow Saffron shouted. “Come back!”
Lilian stepped off the curb just before the phronik reached her. “Oh, I hate when that happens,” growled Bluebell, rubbing her nose where she’d banged it on the unseen barrier which kept the phronik restricted to Griese Park. “Look! The other one’s getting away!”
“Hey!” Meadow Saffron bellowed after Schuyler, “You’re supposed to be in love, you lummox!”
Bluebell followed, but pulled up short as Schuyler, too, stepped off the curb and out of the park. “Owwwww!” cried Meadow Saffron, rubbing her own nose as she turned around.
“Now what?” demanded Bluebell.
“Ah, they’ll e back,” said Meadow Saffron, “They’ll realize how much they liked it here and…..”
Looking up to where she had expected to see Bluebell, she saw Bluebell, Sweet Pea, Primrose, and an annoyingly serene angel. “Well,” said Primrose, her arms folded behind her back, “If it isn’t Mac and Tush!”
Sweet Pea fluttered overhead and let two little candy wrapper dunce caps drop onto the heads of her sisters. “Oooh, that’s cute!”
“Aw, what do you toenail biters want?” demanded Meadow Saffron, pushing the cap above her eyes.
Primrose shook a finger at her. “You been showing off again. See what happens?”
“They were supposed to fall in love,” muttered Meadow Saffron, pulling the dunce cap back down. “Between deep love and mature love, they should have fallen too hard to ever ever get up again!”
Unfirom shook his head. “Not without the initial rush of shallow love. Consider a broken leg: shallow love is the splint while deep love is the knitting of the bones.”
Bluebell tipped her dunce cap back and clapped her hands. “Isn’t he sweet when he gets all mystic?”
“Did it mean anything?” Primrose agreed, nodding. “Or was it just angeltalk?”
The angel’s eyes were half-closed. “The work requires the four of you. With an angel to identify your proper targets.”
“Some people like improper targets,” Primrose noted, poking Meadow Saffron from behind.
“Why couldn’t they be a target” Meadow Saffron demanded, kicking one leg up behind her and missing Primrose by a good margin. “They could be going to Do It.”
“It was a remote possibility, depending on circumstances outside the park.” The angel blinked. “You have actually improved the chances and, in their new courses, they will meet again in this park one day.”
“And so they WILL….”
Unfirom shook his head. “It depends on too many other matters; I cannot see it clearly.”
Meadow Saffron balanced her dunce cap on her nose. “And what if we’d succeeded?”
“I cannot see that at all.”
“Well, anyway…..” Bluebell put the tip of her dunce cap to one eye and peered through it. “What should we do now for fun?”
“How about some work?” replied the angel. “Now that we’re all together again, we’re here, we’re here, there is another couple.”
“Where? Where?” demanded Sweet Pea.
“This way,” he said, starting toward the fieldhouse. Not far.” He pointed at two people holding hands.
“They look nice,” said Meadow Saffron. “When are they going to Do It?”
“In about fifteen minutes, if you don’t get a move on.”
All four phronik clustered above the young man’s tousled hair. “Right here?” demanded Sweet Pea. “Ooh, it’s been almost a week!”
“They’re sweet together,” said Primrose. “Are you sure they’re not in love?”
“He’s keeping score,” the angel said.
“One of those, is he?” sniffed Primrose.
Sweet Pea followed as the two slid into the narrow gap between a row of bushes and the wall of the fieldhouse. “Has he got any rubber thingies with him?”
“No,” said Unfirom. “That’s part of the problem.”
Bluebell stared at the angel. “Oh, I get it. You mean we have to stop them?”
“If you would, please.”
Meadow Saffron wrinkled her nose. “Huh. Some job we got.”
I have saved you time on research through the Interwebs several times now, and I shall do so again. I need only make use of a magic phrase regularly beats all the search engines the computer savants can throw at you.
“Nobody really knows.”
This time around, I was inspired by making my bed. I will not take time to explain my domestic arrangements, but I make my bed only when forced to by circumstances, as the process involves taking everything apart and then putting the springs where they belong, squaring the mattress on top, and then locating a mattress pad and sheets which will stretch to all the corners and stay in place for more than 24 hours. I have a standard mattress and standard sheets, and yet somehow, the corners will never…let’s get back to the question at hand
I was struggling once again to get the elastic over the corner of the mattress and wondered “Who invented the fitted sheet?” I knew this was a recent innovation, since I was instructed in making beds both by my mother, who eventually worked in a hospital and learned to make a mitered corner for sheets, AND my father, who learned in the Air Force to make mitered corners for sheets. Each, having learned this skill in a fairly demanding environment, was rather proud of this skill, which is one of many I never mastered. I DID accomplish a mitered corner once, but that was probably the last time I even saw a non-fitted sheet.
There are histories of fitted sheets around the Interwebs. The most detailed actually names the lady who in 1957 came up with the concept, but insisted on elastic garters you attached to the sheets before bedmaking. This did not catch on, but later another lady came up with built-in elastic corners, and the world was changed.
Unfortunately, the world of the wide web abounds in nostalgia websites reprinting old advertisements, and there are plenty of catalog listings and newspaper ads for fitted sheets in the early Fifties and even the late Forties. One brochure from 1954 says that fitted sheets have been on the market for five years, which confirms my belief that a LOT of the culture I grew up with was invented in the Post-War World. I have been able to learn nothing about what innovater sewed the top sheet to the fitted bottom sheet, but this does not seem to have caught on.
The first fitted sheets seem to have been for cribs, whose occupants could be counted on to kick and roll and dislodge sheets, which, even leaving out the possibility of diaper leakage, meant a lot of repeat bedmaking. In any case, the Overworked Housewife so often touted in ads for household products (always a winner, since every homemaker feels the pressure of work to be done) was the focus of these campaigns, and the time save by not having to miter the corners day after day were held up as a major selling point.
As more than one humorist has pointed out since, all the time saved in this is then lost by the amount of time it takes to FOLD fitted sheets.
Now, this is a topic on which everyone agrees: there’s a trick to it. After that, they diverge, some experts going in for amazing linen origami. But it boils down to this: you bring the corners of the sheet together in an orderly fashion so that all four are folded together into one little pocket. You now have a MOSTLY flat sheet which you can fold in whatever way appeals to you. SOME experts feel you should then wrap the sheet and its attendant top and pillowcases in another matching piece of fabric which can be used to sort your sheets by color so you can match seasonal or other decorating demands when making the bed. (Guess who uses that method.) Other people suggest you just wad the sheet up into a ball and shove it in a corner of the closet. (No points for guessing who uses THAT one.) Or you could always buy a sleeping bag.
It struck me that I have been selfish, having turned my collection of fine old jokes over to YouTube. After all, it was in this space that I published major excerpts from my quiz book on ancient humor, with the setup in one section and the punchlines in the answer section, to see how many aged gags you knew. And as I was looking at a blank page where today’s blog should be, and noticing how many golf postcards I have for sale…well, here goes a new quiz, in response to no demand whatsoever.
Q1. I went to a golf pro to find out why my game was suffering. He watched me take a few swings and said, “I see your problem. You’re standing too close to the ball
Q2. Kelly decided golf would give her a chance to get out and meet men. She asked her friend Louise to teach her the game. Louise showed her how to grip a club and told her, “Now you need to address the ball.”: Kelly looked down and said
Q3. St. Peter liked to play a few holes of golf when he got time off from sitting at the gate of Heaven, so one day he called on St. Luke and Elijah to hit the course. Luke teed up, swung, and sent a ball flying up into the air and right down into the cup for a hole in one. Then Elijah moved up to the tee, swung, and also hit the cup in one stroke. St. Peter pulled out his own driver and said
Q4. It’s important to make sure your clubs reflect your unique style of play; I, for example, spend so much tie in the rough I got rid of my 3 iron and my 6 iron and replaced them with
Q5. Meredith knew Allen was prone to improvise his scorekeeping, but he was the only partner available on some weekends. On the sixth, hole, as they both reached the green, Allan said, “I lie three.” Meredith replied
Q6. They putted out on the eighteenth green and Allen said, “Well, me for the bar.” Meredith said, “Ah, let’s finish the course first.” Allen said, “Finish? This is the eighteenth green. What else is there?” Meredith said
Q7. I was in the idle of my swing on the first hole when one of the usual busybodies broke in to tell me, “You know you’re not allowed to start from the lady’s tee, sir.” I said
Q8. The four men had met in the clubhouse and decided to make up a foursome. The seventh hole ran parallel to the highway on the other side of the fence, and as Irving was about to swing, he spotted a funeral procession passing by. He put his club back in the bag, took off his hat, and stood with his head bowed until the cars had all driven past. One of the other players said, “That showed real respect.” Irving shrugged and replied
Q9. “How was your game?” Lou’s wife asked, when he returned from the course.
“Terrible,” he said. “We were on the fourth hole when Marvin keeled over, stark dead from a heart attack.”
“How horrible!” cried his wife.
“I’ll say,” said Lou
Of course you don’t need to read the ANSWERS; these are just par for the course.
A1. After you hit it.
A2. “Hello, ball.”
A3. “Okay, enough with the miracles, now let’s play golf.”
A4. A rifle and a fishing pole.
A5. “Well, the first two words of that are correct.”
A6. “The way you’ve been undercounting, I thought this was the eleventh.”
A7. “Start? This is my third stroke.”
A8. “Well, we were married for forty=-two years.”
A9. “It was six holes of hit the ball, drag Marvin, hit the ball, drag Marvin….”
Unfirom was not quite able to shudder. As he strode across the park, the thought of the phronik trying to handle their job one at a time, though, brought him fairly close. An attempt to influence lovers by less than the full crew would bring on a rush of lopsided emotion. He reassured himself with the consideration that any phron’s FIRST target would be any breath mints or bubblegum s[potted in a pocket or purse.
He glanced at the sky. His colleague Yomottow was probably still doing very well as a guardian angel.
Spotting another couple I the park, he dismissed this unworthy thought and strode on. The two men, completely overdressed for their surroundings, stood in the grass center of the track, oblivious to the people around them running after health. The tall developer was one of the pair, still lacking any hair out of place or a wrinkle in his clothing. The shorter older man wore his wrinkles as a sign of his higher position in Rock Mountain: it was Marty, of course. Unfirom and the phronik had worked on Marty officially some thirty years ago, achieving success with Marty and his sweetheart. But one of the sad truths of this work was that making a couple fall in love did not guarantee that they would not fall out again.
Still, that first marriage had averted some of the complications that might have ensued otherwise, and Marty had risen to become a power in the community. He was a solid businessman, an officer of the Pont a Methon Museum, and a man never to be seen dining at Booty Burger.
Unfirom moved up unseen behind them as Marty said “Oh, I don’t suppose there really are any underground huts here. Griese wouldn’t have bought land he couldn’t build on.”
“He might not have known.”
Marty shook his head. “He’d know. All business, Griese, from everything I’ve heard, and no nonsense. He’d want this place developed in a way that will really put Rock Mountain on the map.”
The older man raised a stubby pointing finger. “Speaking of which, when you take out that fieldhouse for the new park lodge, we’ve been talking about a nice luxury lounge at one end.”
A tiny crease ruffled the ridge of the developer’s nose. “I thought everyone had agreed on a very inconspicuous park lodge. Perhaps partly underground.”
Marty nodded violently. “And that’s what we want, exactly what we want. But with a big room tacked on, with stained glass windows. They’re talking about weddings in the park, amd there’d need to be a place to go if it rains.” He swung a hand around behind him to wave in the direction of the not yet constructed Pont a Methon Museum. “Can’t have a whole dripping wedding party crowded into the galleries.”
The developer paused, considering an inconspicuous lodge with a large wedding chapel attached. “The gazebo we….”
“That’s the ticket.” Marty’s playful punch left a dent into the flawless surface of the jacket. “Exactly right: something along the lines of that gazebo. Great stuff. I know your team can give us just what we’re looking for.” He turned away to smile across the real estate. “And you’re right about one thing. If somebody else has heard about old sod huts, there’ll be delays. I’ll get Gabriel to check the old plats. But I bet they were all just filled in.”
The developer’s head quivered slightly to the left and then the right. “But that’s what we….”
“Got to run.” Marty nodded some more. “There’s a trustees’ meeting tonight, and I better be ready. Some of ‘em coming in from out of town. Keep up the good work.”
More small creases appeared in the developer’s face as he watched Marty go. Then he turned to regard the old brick fieldhouse. Unfirom saw six different lounges, two of them obviously chapels, pass through the man’s mind. The angel thought this over. Would having a chapel in the park complicate his work with the phronik, or make it easier?
Then he sped forward, shifting his constitution as he did so. Marty was no more than ten feet from the gate out of the park when the angel, now a graying man with a plaid sportcoat and a necktie with orange eagles all over it, called, “Well, it’s Marty, isn’t it? How’s Leah?”
Marty was far too good a businessman to suggest that he had failed to recognize a man who not only knew his name but that of his wife. “Fine, just fine! And how about you? And how about….”
“Fine, fine, we’re all just fine.” Unfirom reached out to shake Marty’s hand with enthusiasm. “Nice day!”
“Yes, indeed!” Marty returned the enthusiasm of the handshake. “And the…kids?” Grandkids more likely, he thought, but it was better not to push too far without knowing the territory.
“What can you say about kids?” the older man chortled. He looked back at the track. “So this is the park, huh?”
“You’re in tow for the meeting?” Marty had already figured this out, but it gave him something to say. “Yeah, this is it. Not much to look at now, of course. Er, Shirley Waterman’s in town for the meeting, too. She’s too smart to see this as much of an asset unless we do some work. Did you read that….”
The other man shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure whatever you come up with will be an executive decision.” He grinned. “I actually came in to see Rebecca Swartz. I’ve been hearing about her for it seems like years now, and someone said she might be at the meeting.”
“Swartz? Rebecca Swartz?” Marty was still not on firm ground. He knew all the trustees’ names, if not their faces, and there was no Rebecca Swartz among them.
“Oh, you know,” said the tall grey man. “What-do-you-call-it…Community Relations or what-have-you for Booty Burger.” He shrugged. “I guess they’re sending her to put in a bid for the cafeteria concession.”
“Well, now….” Marty looked the man up and down again. Had someone really come from THAT far out of town?
The other man had raised his head to study the thickening clouds. “That’s your business, of course. But she might be able to pass along some community relations tips when we break for drinks.”
“She’s that good?” Marty rubbed his chin. Booty Burger was calling in the big guns? Did that mean their CEO was scared, or that there was an ace in the hole no one here knew about?
“There were those canvas bags for some book fair in Chicago,” the other man said, still scanning the sky. “For some library. People loved ‘em, and the name Booty Burger was all over town by the end of the week. Wish she could’ve done something about the colors.”
“Mm,” said Marty. And no one had heard….
“And some recreation program at that park in Milwaukee, to push all that protein they sell.” The man shook his head in admiration. “Half the kids in town carry a Booty Burger water bottle or wear that headband. Same rotten colors.”
“Mm-hmm.” Marty looked across the park, calculating. Not good, if Booty Burger was known for buddying up with parks and cultural institutions.
Unfirom could see the doubt nibbling the edges of Marty’s confidence. What he had said was true, too, even down to a possible visit from Ms. Swartz. All he had omitted to mention was that Booty Burger saw no point in spending any goodworks dollars in so minimedia a community as Rock Mountain.
“Don’t know that we’d want Booty Burger selling in the museum basement so much,” he said. “But the money can’t hurt.” He spread out his hands, palm out. “But that’s all up to you. Good to know Booty Burger is taking that much of an interest in us.”
Marty had forgotten his own hands, one of which was now stroking his throat. “And, er, Ms….Swartz?”
“Rebecca Swartz.”
Marty’s eyes rolled up for a second as he recorded the name and pronunciation. “Ms. Swartz. She’s in town now?”
“Haven’t seen her yet. Do me a favor and call me at the hotel when she wants to set up a meeting. Not to interfere; I just want a chance to talk to her.” Unfirom’s eyes shifted to the left. “Gotta go. Keep up the good work.”
He started away but Marty had a hand on her jacket. “A…bout how old a woman is Ms. Swartz?”
“Young, for as much as she’s done.” Unfirom raised his free arm. “That wouldn’t be her now, would it?”
He had supposed correctly, but in turning to look, Marty let go of his sleeve. “Is it?” Marty said, leaning forward to peer across the grass. “I….”
Marty spun around. The tall grey man wasn’t there. Turning back, he looked over at the unknown woman, to see if his new friend was already moving in to talk to the phenomenal Ms. Swartz.
Unfirom had instead recognized another couple moving toward the sort of mishap he was here to prevent, and needed to speak with smaller phenomena. Once again among the immortal colors of the park, he scanned the ground for phronik.
His ears caught the melody, but it was no more than a duet. There would be delays while he sought the rest of the combo. Ph, why couldn’t he be working with something easy to corral, like dandelion fluff or baby spiders?
“Cousin Katie was a star on radio
Playing Tiny Tina Tippett on a big hit show;
A saucy little miss who was adored by all –
Along came television: Kate was six feet tall!
Percolator, Coffemaker,
Subaru and Studebaker:
All ya got is all yer gonna get,
Waddya bet?”
Sweet Pea and Primrose had found a pile of grass clippings from the last time Park Maintenance had passed this way, and were very busy disentangling and replanting each blade. This was naturally taking time, as most had been cut in a way which made it difficult to decide which was the root end and which the top. Which did not make it difficult to argue about, of course. Each blade fell flat almost immediately upon being planted, but neither phron was interested in that detail.
“Have you seen your sisters?” Unfirom asked, stepping up as the pair were slapping each other with bits of their new garden.
Sweet Pea glanced up. “You mean today?”
“I mean now.”
The phron looked left and right, eyes wide and interested. Unfirom tapped an index finger against his thigh.
“Oh well,” he said. “I suppose I’ll find them where the bunnies are.”
Sweet pea dropped her plants. “Are they hogging all the bunnies again? Those guys are…worse than pumas!”
“As long as they’re not eating all the chow.” Primrose sighted along oe blade of grss to make sure it was perfectly straight before flinging it over one shoulder.
Sweet Pea was already up in the air. “Oh, there they are! They’re playing nice…not bothering bunnies at all.”
Following her gaze, Unfirom spotted the other two, flying from a man to a woman and back again. He understood at once what they were up to. He shook his head. Baby spiders, definitely.
As those of you around the globe who rush to read this blog will recall, I do NOT write a food blog. In spite of which, we HAVE discussed ketchup before. But I was wandering around the Interwebs and thought of a thing or two that need to be said.
Now as a native of the Midwest, I must specify that we are discussing REAL ketchup, not walnut ketchup or zucchini ketchup or any of the other variations thereof. And I will be talking about KETCHUP without meaning any disrespect to those of you who insist on catsup or even catchup. By all means, you go on doing you. Each word has its history. But for the sake of my own self-respect, I am talking about not the spelling or history of ketchup but how it is used in my corner of the world.
Ketchup is considered a natural topping for fast food hamburgers, and I pity the misguided soul who holds a cookout and serves up hamburgers with no ketchup in view. Among some people, ground beef and ketchup are such a natural pairing that they go the extra mile and make ketchup one of the main ingredients in their meatloaf. My mother used tomato sauce in hers, and HER mother used only home=-canned tomato sauce. They also used tapioca, but that’s a subject ofr a whole nother blog.
I do not use ketchup in cooking myself, but when I heard from the Frugal Gourmet that a basic sweet and sour sauce could be made by simply combining water, sugar, and ketchup, I gave it a try and found it worthy. (I have not checked his assertion that a number of Asian restaurants use the same recipe. For one thing, sweet and sour sauce seems to have fallen out of fashion, and I very seldom see it offered.)
As a resident of Chicago, I am supposed to sneer at those of you who put ketchup on your hot dogs. I decline to do this. You can NOT put ketchup on your hot dog and call it a Chicago dog, but I refuse to go around asking what you call your hot dog. I suspect the results of such a poll would shock me, and I am very delicate. Dress your hot dog as you please, by the shade of Oscar Mayer! This said, however, I DO worry about those of my acquaintance who put ketchup on their bologna sandwich, even though that’s technically a very similar dish. But as long as I can have my meal without ketchup on it, I am not here to judge. The same goes for those of you who can’t eat eggs without “red gravy”.
What really took me to the Interwebs, and which it has taken me long enough to get around to, is the connection between potatoes and ketchup. At my house, we did not ketchup our French fries. But I knew that other people did and, as I moved out into the wider world, I found most people regard this as so automatic that once again, I was the outsider. I took it in stride. Some people salt their watermelon and some don’t, I figured.
But that was then. Nowadays, whenever I dine out and any manner of fried potato is served, be it French fries, cottage fries, American fries, or any one of a dozen types of hash browns, ketchup is automatically provided. This would not be the case if America was not demanding ketchup with fried potatoes. Going to the Interwebs to find out why, I was offered a labyrinth of rabbit holes. One writer insisted I was a fool for not dipping my potato chips in ketchup, and there are roughly a thousand recipes for crispy potatoes that have been stewed in ketchup. (How the potatoes get crispy when stewed is beyond me, but I declined to spend the rest of the week comparing recipes, so that’s just me.)
The sole voice raised to discuss the question suggested it derives from the tradition of smothering fish and chips in malt vinegar (vinegar being a notable component of ketchup). But that was as far as she went before moving on to discuss putting ketchup on your macaroni and cheese. At least I found no followers of the kids I used to eat lunch with in the school cafeteria, who would gleefully grab the squeeze bottle of ketchup, plunge the tip into their mashed potatoes, and pump a pint of red gravy into the mound of white. I DID find a lot of malarkey claiming that the current rage for dipping sauces with our fast food choices started with McDonald’s and their McNuggets, when obviously fries and ketchup were there first.
I came out of my research shaken, but convinced that my fellow Americans simply expect ketchup with their potatoes. But the order of fries never comes with the ketchup pre-applied, so I can eat mine as they come (yes, I did try dipping a couple in the ranch dressing, but that was just out of curiosity). Those of you who cannot go through a drive-thru without asking the counterfolk for a few extra packets of ketchup (by which, as I have observed, you generally mean ten or twelve) are free to sauce your potatoes any way you please. I have mustered as much interest as I can in the unanswerable question. Mayo all keep well.
We have, in this space, discussed what the postcard artists of days gone by thought of dogs or cats or chickens generally, but many parts of the animal world have sub-categories which had their own themes and jokes. Among the many jokes about, say, Scottish terriers or bloodhounds, we have a significant number of postcards dedicated to the dachshund. This is a dog breed so popular among all manner of cartoonists that people who don’t go out much may wonder if any real animal actually looks like that.
Yeah, they do.
The breed was brought about centuries past to hunt badgers, and was intended to be muscular but low to the ground, with big floppy ears that would keep insects or plant debris from getting into the ears, and a curled tail that would make them easier to spot in the grass. Dachshund (PLEASE don’t pronounce it dash-hound) was, as the name suggests, native to Germany, a country so fond of its doxies (or Dackel, in German) that entire series of books have been published just to reprint vintage drawings of the long little doggy.
We have mentioned the German custom of sending postcards with pigs to wish people good luck at the onset of the New Year. A goodly number of these find dachshunds joining in the celebration, apparently simply because dachshunds love a good party. (This one is in French, but there was an export market, y’know.)
Outside Germany, the dachshund was sometimes used to indicate and sometimes to mock Germans, along with references to sausage and or sauerkraut. (And, as sauerkraut had to be relabelled Liberty Cabbage during World War I, so the dachshund became, temporarily, the Liberty Hound in the United States. This was about the same time that German shepherds became Alsatians. But we will consider freedom fries and other such monikers in a whole nother blog.)
The cartoonist, however, was generally less concerned with family history than with that animal which as “half a dog high by a dog and a half long.” Function was going to follow form here.
Whenever a cartoonist wanted to refer to length, a doxie was a very handy animal to be able to draw. Everybody knew the drawing was realistic: dachshunds were long.
Sometimes very, very long. Which raises the question of whether this becomes a tall tale or just a long story.
Postcard dachshunds were generally very limber, too.
If that last picture suggested a particular phrase to you, be assured that cartoonists noticed it as well.
And a truly fine old joke can be repeated throughout the generations.
We have not so far discussed how the shape of the dachshund also led to it being known as the “Wiener Dog”, or “Sausage Dog”. Since both sausages and dachshunds were associated with Germans, there are plenty of postcards set in German cafes where the inevitable occurs.
This, um, brings up another theme which relies on a base slander often leveled against German sausage makers or sausage makers generally. But we have gone on long enough for one blog, so we will save the often grisly story of postcard sausages for some other time.
Blogsy Babbles 