“Great Leapin’ Honk! Where in the name of all that’s pretty did YOU come from?”
“You rubbed the lamp, Master.”
“Teach me to dust in here; I’ll never do THAT again. You’re some manner of genie, are you?”
“Sealed into the lamp by Solomon himself a thousand and a thousand years beyond that, I am….”
“That’ll do, thanks. And you’ve got wishes for me, I reckon?”
“Indeed, Master. Three wishes have I for you, in gratitude for freeing me from my ancient prison. Subject to certain rules and conditions.”
“There’s always fine print. So no wishing for more wishes, and like that, hey?”
“I CAN grant you more wishes, Master. But you can ask for only one extra wish per wish, so you gain nothing by THAT. In addition, I cannot grant any wish which is basically impossible. I cannot bring you the moon and hang it above your dining room table.”
“Gee whiskers and wildcats, how will I go on without that?”
“I cannot kill more than a hundred people per wish for you, Master, nor politicians in excess of three at a wish. I cannot do more than double your life expectancy, whatever that may be. I cannot promise you happiness ever after, or the eternal fidelity of some young maiden or….”
“Say, while you’re working your way through the warning labels, can I wish myself a test drive?”
“If you mean to make a wish now, Master, that is certainly allowed. Provided it is something I can….”
“I wish you’d get back in the dadburn lamp and stay there.”
“But Master, I….”
“Thank’ee. As if my life wasn’t complicated enough already.”
Not so long ago in this space, we considered the jokes swapped between residents of the rural parts of the world and those who lived in the city. This town vs. country debate is ancient and widespread, and COULD be considered part of the basic human belief that the people who live the way I live are the best and the rest are wrong, dirty, and evil. But a kinder, gentler notion sees it as simple part of the “fish out of water” comic tradition.
Another facet of this, often seen on bygone postcards, is the comedy of the newbie. These gags make fun at someone who is new to the job or situation, and sometimes even too young to quite understand what’s going on. Some of the same basic situations apply to both types of humor, of course/
But this is broader than just the town mouse not understanding the country mouse and vice versa. The reader gets the same sense of superiority as in the town/country jokes, seeing where the novice is going wrong. The laugh is mixed with a little sympathy, though. because we’ve all had to start somewhere and had the more experienced workers sending us for that left-handed monkey wrench or bottle of toenail polish.
It can, um, apply to something as simple as suiting up for work. (This joke is repeated on scads of postcards. And some of us can feel superior twice, as occasionally it is obvious the artist doesn’t know what chaps look like, unlike this chap, who gets it right.)
World War II saw dozens of gags which depended on the thousands of recruits who showed up to serve in the war effort without knowing a whole lot about how this military service worked. (To some degree, these descend from bestseller ‘Dere Mable’, a World War I classic, which had ancestors during the Civil War and continued through No Time for Sergeants, Gomer Pyle USMC, Private Benjamin, and so forth.)
It’s a perennial source of humor in societies where it is admitted that even soldiers can make mistakes.
The Baby Boom, which coexisted with World War II, drew on another ancient comic trope: the man who is new to what were considered female domestic chores.
Children, both before and after that particular boom, were another rich source of “I’m new around here” humor. They had an obvious excuse for their lack of experience and knowledge about the adult world and its chores. This kept no one from laughing about it.
Back in the adult world, even one’s experiences outside work were grist for the mill. Leisure time activities often took people into new places and new situations where they could not conceal their newbieness.
The world may forgive you for not being from around here, but forgiveness never includes not laughing at you for making a misstep in a new place.
As we have seen hereintofore in this blog, the mistakes of novices are sometimes attributed to being the wrong sex for the specific activity (as in the sailor seen above trying to change a diaper.) Is it that this fishing partner is female, or just because she’s new to this fishing business that she has made a rookie mistake?
Because, and you will find this in literature as well as on postcards, our sympathy for both sides of the question can lead us to cheer for the rookie who surprises everyone by winning the game, breaking the sales record, or, like the boy from the country who marked the side of the boat in the old folktale, having a few tricks up one sleeve.
Monday Morning Breakfast was the best time of the week for Queen Azalea and King Basso. Their children slept late, no guests came to bother them, and no alarming surprises awaited. Muffins and the morning mail: it made for really a peaceful meal.
So Queen Azalea was unpleasantly surprised when her husband leapt from his chair, waving a letter and shouting something she couldn’t make out, his mouth being full of muffin and marmalade.
“What is it, dear?” she inquired. “Do sit down before you choke.”
“King Rodney of Deljoley had a plague of dragons at his castle!” the king shouted, coming back to his chair.
The queen reached for another muffin. “That is bad news. Does he need your army to come and help?”
“I don’t think so, Madame. I do not think so.” He shook the letter and then brought it back to his nose, so he could study it some more. (He had mislaid his glasses again.) “Some prince or another…here it is…Prince Gloxx of Gloxinia slew all the dragons, but not before one of them trapped Princess Aster in her tower. Rodney writes, ‘Unlike any of your daughters, Aster had a very close shave.’ Bah!”
The King threw the letter down. “Well, to be sure,” the queen said, “It’s only a little joke.” She picked up the letter and touched one corner of it to a candle on the table. Then she set it on a silver tray and let it burn up.
“Little joke!” cried King Basso. “Little joke! I’d like to take the army over there and give HIM a close shave!” Jumping up again he drew his sword and waved it above his head. In doing so, he stepped on one end of the scabbard and had to put his free hand flat in the butter dish to keep from falling.
“King Rodney had never good taste in jokes,” Queen Azalea told him. “It should be fairly easy, I think, simply to ignore this letter.” She was calming him down. Sometimes she felt she had spent her whole marriage calming him down.
“I should march them over there and just cut his head and his toes right off,” grumbled King Basso, licking butter from his fingers. “Not that I’m the sort of father to be offended by foolish jokes about my daughters. Why should I be ashamed of daughters who are unique? Other kings and queens have children as alike as the faces on cards. OUR daughters are different.”
“They are ladies to be proud of,” Queen Azalea agreed. “They won that volleyball trophy against….”
“MY daughters stand out from those nobidodies,” said the King, around the buttery thub in his mouth. “Not that they’re freaks, you understand. You couldn’t tell them apart from the most beautiful princesses in the world. They look quite like any beautiful princess, at their best. Nobody could say that OUR daughters are so different that….”
“Do you want that last muffin?” asked the queen.
King Basso put a hand out for it, but stopped. “Do I have very many appointments this morning?”
Queen Azalea ran a long finger down the morning agenda the royal chamberlain had brought in. “Six men are waiting in the throneroom to be interviewed.”
“Ah!” The king rubbed his hands together. “Any royal barbers?”
She shook her head. “Only princes. Two of them are named Jack, though, so there may be hope.”
“Pooh,” said the king. “Pooh pooh pooh. You take the muffin, Madame: I’ll go and get this over with. Sox, eh? That’s Monday through Saturday then. Have the chamberlain put out that ‘No More Princes Needed This Week’ sign. Are you sure you gave him my proclamation about royal barbers?”
The queen took up the muffin and reached for the marmalade. “Yes, I did.”
The King stood up. “It isn’t the price of the razor blades I mind. It’s the unexpectedenesses of the thing. Why must they be so hairy?”
“I quite agree,” Queen Azalea told him. “It must be some kind of curse.”
“Nonsense!” he snapped, striding from the breakfast room. “They’re not THAT hairy: not MY daughters!”
Azalea and Basso had been blessed with five daughters who showed every promise of turning into exactly the princesses any well-appointed royal family ought to have. Each had eyes like twin bright stars, lips like matched rubies, and long beautiful hair so red and bright that when they stood in a row, they looked like a necklace of bonfires.
The problem was that there was so MUCH hair. Every morning, when they awoke, their eyebrows hung nearly to their cheeks. Their arms were so hairy they seemed to be wearing long red gloves. And no other woman of good family had a mustache or beard. Queen Azalea was really quite vexed by this: it had never happened in HER family. But she did not mention this to her husband, who would have roared and grumbled.
The princesses would shave every morning (and it took nearly the whole morning, too) until they looked proper. The hair would grow back, as beards and mustaches do, just a little bit by bedtime. But when the princesses rose the next morning, each had a full mustache and a beard nearly to her waist.
King Basso hired barber after barber, hoping there was some secret known to professional shavers which would help his daughters. But the hair kept growing back. Anyway, none of the barbers was quite suitable. Old barbers were too rough: they weren’t used to shaving princesses. And young barbers fell in love with the princesses, and had to be chased away. After all, when properly shaved, the princesses were quite lovely, and could do better than to marry a mere barber. (The princesses had been named by their father: Dainty, Delicate, Demure, Delightful, and Darling. Queen Azalea thought these were quite sickly names, enough to make anybody grow a beard in self-defense. But King Basso was a second cousin to Prince Charming, so terrible names were a family tradition.)
The princesses showed no sign of growing out of this as they got older. King Basso finally offered a huge reward to any prince who could watch at night and find out anything about what was happening. He offered the same amount of gold to any barber who could come up with an answer, but by this time, every barber in the country had tried and failed.
Princes flocked to King Basso’s castle, each hoping to score the gold and perhaps a chance to marry one of the princesses. King Basso arranged for one prince to do the watching each night from Monday to Saturday.
“All right, all right,” he said this Monday, as he did every Monday, to the princes who clustered around him, recounting giants slain or wolves caught in sheep’s clothing. “You’ll each get your turn.”
As there were exactly six princes this morning, the matter was not complex. “I have six marbles in this bag,” the King announced. “Each a different color. The prince who draws the blue marble watches tonight. The green marble means Tuesday night, and the other colors are for other days. You see how it works, don’t you? Step up, laddoes. “You’re Prince Jack of Lostles, aren’t you? Take a marble, Prince Jack.”
The blue marble was drawn by the other Prince Jack, Prince Jack of Solinin. “The rest of you can all go home,” he said. “I’ll break this curse, Your Majesty.”
“That’s the kind of spirit I like to see in a prince,” said the King. “Now, let’s step over to the Royal Dining Room, and the chamberlain will assign you your seats for lunch.”
King Basso had to eat with the princes because, after all, they were princes. “And they always grab for the pie first,” he grumbled to Queen Azalea that night. “And I have to let them have it because I’m such a gracious host.”
“They’re active young men,” his wife told him, “And need to keep their strength up. You’re growing a trifle pudgy anyway.”
“Pudgy? Getting pudgy? Nonsense: not on the amount of pie I get. I’m as thin as ever I was when I was a prince. In any case, who wants to be that thin? That’s why young men look so…so terribly young. I have the figure of a wise, elder statesman. I don’t look like any prince.”
“Of course, you do not,” the queen told him. “Don’t trip on the cat when you put out the candles.”
The next morning, five princes at breakfast with King Basso, Queen Azalea., and five princesses with long, swinging beards. “Well, now,” said the king, eyeing Prince Dalma, who had taken the last muffin on the plate. “Whose turn is it tonight?”
On Wednesday morning, four princes joined them for breakfast. On Thursday three. On Sunday morning, Dainty, Delicate, Demure, Delightful, and Darling had mustaches to their elbows, and the princes had all disappeared.
King Basso did not approve of princes working on Sunday night, and the princesses were allowed to sleep late Monday morning. So Azalea and Basso had their quiet Monday breakfast, and the king got his fair share of muffins.
“There are eight princes waiting for you today,” the queen said, when they finished. “You’ll need to tell two of them to wait in the village.”
“I have a good mind to send them all home,” grumbled King Basso. “They’re grabbing all the pie and doing us no good.”
The queen folded her hands. “We could invite heroes and warriors instead, of course. But I understand they eat even more than princes. Some day we’re bound to find the right prince, dear.”
The King’s lower lip stuck out. “But it’s rhubarb meringue pie this week. Anyway, what do we need them for? I was a hero once, AND a prince. I could do it. I slew that dragon for you, remember?”
“How could I forget, dear?” the queen replied. “You put that big painting of it in the throneroom. You were quite heroic. Of course, you DID have that helmet of invisibility.”
“The dragon could have killed me all the same,” King Basso declared, shaking the marmalade knife at her. “If he’d breathed fire at me, you know, or…or stepped on me. It took a real prince with brains, and courage, and strength to beat a dragon. I wonder if I still have that helmet of invisibility.”
“It’s probably at the back of the Treasury, with all that other lumber,” Azalea told him. “I don’t see how it would help. Nine of the princes who stayed here had helmets of invisibility, too, and they never came back after spending the night. Unless they were invisible.”
“They didn’t have MY helmet of invisibility,” said the king, putting the marmalade knife down with the marmalade spoon. “I need to find that: it was the best of all helmets of invisibility. Anybody could win if he was wearing that.”
“Will you lend it to just one prince, then?” the queen inquired, picking up a few large muffin crumbs. “That hardly seems fair.”
“I shall wear it,” King Basso informed her. “Why should MY daughters have to put up with all these gluttonarious princes? And I won’t have people like King Rodney saying the kinds of things he’d say about princesses who have a different man in their bedroom every night of the week.”
“What will he say if the king disappears because he was so stubborn?” his wife inquired. But Basso had gone up to the Treasury.
The princes were delighted at the King’s decision. Usually, on retiring for the evening, they had to go right to bed and stay there, lest a prince see them walking around in their nightgowns. Now they could stay up later, playing cards with their father. They let him win a few games when he got huffy.
Finally, though, they all said their prayers and climbed into their beds. “Good night, Daddy!” called Princess Delightful. “Don’t let the hair Fairies bite!”
“I won’t,” King Basso promised. He put on his helmet of invisibility, drew his royal sword, and sat down in the big armchair usually reserved for a guardian prince.
The night proved to be dark and long. King Basso had to poke himself in the foot with the sword now and again to keep from falling asleep. “Hurry up, hair Fairies, or whatever you are,” he muttered. “Heroes can’t wait forever.”
He had no sooner mentioned this than he heard a jingling sound, as of a dozen little silver bells. In the middle of the wall to the king’s left, he saw a door which had certainly never been there before.
At the same time, the sound of rustling cloth reached his ears. The draperies around each princess’s bed were drawn back. Elegant little feet slid out into elegant little slippers.
“Where are you going?” demanded King Basso, rising to his less elegant feet.
The princesses did not reply; their eyes were closed. The mysterious door swung open. Each princess walked slowly to and through it.
“What’s going on?” King Basso demanded shaking the arm of Princess Demure.
When she didn’t answer, he paused, tapping his helmet of invisibility to make sure it was still on his head. Then he hurried after the last of his daughters. The door slammed shut just as he stepped inside.
“Hey, are you the ladies who put the ad up in the coffee shop?”
“This isn’t that ad about strict schoolmistresses who give big bad boys remedial lessons in math and manners again, is it?”
“No, the one about the buyers for cursed and haunted objects.”
“Oh yes, sir. We’re eager to swap clean, unenchanted money for your hazardous antiques. Do you have something for us?”
“These wind chimes are cursed.”
“Interesting sir, How so?”
“They’ve been handed down in my family since the sixties. My great-aunt Rose was found dead under them, on the breezeway. Her sister, my great-aunt Amy was killed in the kitchen, I guess, but her head was left under the wind chimes on the patio.”
“Promising so far, but that could be a coincidence.”
“Just wait. Amy’s daughter Kelly hung them in her own kitchen, and HER body was found stuffed in the dishwasher. Her brother took them to his place, and he wound up folded into his foldout couch bed.”
“This sounds better and better, sir, but tell me. Did they catch any of the murderers?”
“Well, Great-Uncle Jay was found dead in a hut in a forest fifteen years after Rose died. He left a note saying he killed his wife. Great-Aunt Amy’s next-door neighbor was arrested and confessed. Kelly’s husband was found with the gun that killed HIS wife, but he tried to shoot it out with police so we don’t know for sure.”
“I see, sir. We….”
“Pete’s girlfriend admitted she smothered him in the couch, and my Aunt Grace always said she was the one who stuffed Paul into the garbage disposal, but the police wouldn’t believe her and she was….”
“Let me get this straight, sir. Everyone who used these wind chimes was murdered by someone they knew.”
“Yes, and all within forty-right hours of hanging up the chimes. You see why I’ll be glad to get rid of them.”
“Indeed, sir. But we cannot buy your wind chimes, sir. They are not cursed.”
“How can you say that? Obviously they’ve driven forty-three different people to insanity and the murder of members of my family.”
“I understand, sir. But living around people with sensitive ears is simply your family’s bad luck. The rest is standard practice for wind chimes.”
We have mentioned, in an exploration of joke archaeology hereintofore, that jokes made by one group of people against another were regarded as being in poor taste as early as three generations ago, while others continued without a lot of controversy. The town/country joke went on for centuries (Aesop covered t) but it has largely been fading away.
Yes, yes, the old Jeffersonian suggestion that one of these groups of people is better than the other DOES go on. But radio, movies, and television started chipping away at the jokes a hundred years ago or thereabouts. Folks from the country already KNOW the city has big buildings in it. They don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk to stare and cry “Land o’ Goshen!” (No, it’s NOT because people don’t care where Goshen is nowadays.)
The horseless carriage is no longer a wonder restricted to city folk, either. The twentieth century plowed under all manner of differences between the rural and the urban, even as postcard cartoonists were putting jokes about them up for sale.
This one, for example, shows us a back country tourist finding the new electric lightbulbs aren’t worth a dang for lighting one’s cigar. This postcard is only two or three years younger than one you have seen in this space, in which a group of gentlemen try to light their cigars after dinner and learn the same thing.
And here is the same essential plot in another setting.
This couple, who come from a stereo card rather than a postcard, are not the only ones confused by the instructions found in hotels. Later cartoonists would show city travelers who were similarly new to modern hotels getting confused about the “ring bell for water” sign.
The observable difference between what country folk wore and what city folk wore would take another generation or so to change (and Mandy would, by mid-century, simply turn into an older person shocked at what YOUNG folk were wearing at the beach. But that’s a whole nother blog.) Sears Roebuck expected credit for this, and I’m not sure they were wrong (though those of us whose mothers also received the Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney, and Alden’s catalogs know Sears was not alone.)
The longest lasting source of town and country humor of course, involved plumbing. It took a lot longer for running water to make it into rural areas than it did for electricity. And somehow potty humor never grows old. (Or up.)
This presented postcard cartoonists with a double blessing. Because the postcard buying audience found country folk unused to city bathrooms just as amusing….
As it did city folk who had no clue about country facilities.
Looking back at comedy generally, we find that the country folk got nearly as many shots in at the Big Town Jaspers as the city folk did at the Reubens from the sticks. But on postcards, this shows up nowhere better than in the use of The Necessity. (Or The Euphemism, as Dr. Seuss brilliantly named it.)
Even here, though, technology has sent most of these jokes into the realm of nostalgia. The outhouse, like the postcard, has grown scarcer in the modern world, and the country cousins are as likely as city tourists to seek other options.
As mentioned, the debate goes on about whether living out in the country makes you a better person than surviving in the big city. Only the jokes have faded, leaving the barest hint of their old flavor on the passing breeze. Pity, really: a chance to find we could all laugh at the same potty jokes isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it was something.
Farther down, the path was bordered by tall pink walls that had blue eagles carved into them. Jack did not like these. Little blue dots on the pink seemed to shift as he watched, and the glittering jeweled eyes of the eagles appeared to be following his progress as he and the fox moved farther along.
The walls rose higher as the adventurers traveled lower. Soon Jack spotted another gate, this one with bars of silver set in a frame of ruby. Because he knew where to look for it now, he saw the sentry box, too, and spotted ye giant rat just as Cavia shouted, “There he is, Rudolph! Go get him!” Then his fox guide disappeared, with a flip of that big red tail.
“Arrrrh!” snarled the rat, starting forward. “Who goes there?”
Jack had had time to think up a new lie. “Cheeseman!” he declared.
The rat paused. “A man made of cheese?”
“No no,” said Jack, quickly. “A man who delivers cheese to faithful guards. I was supposed to bring you a great deal of cheese, you being so smart and strong and loyal and all.”
“Nobody deserves it more.” The rat looked left and right. “Where is it, then?”
Jack spread his hands. “I had nearly reached Your Eminence’s date when this horrible fox with his sneaky magic came and enchanted it so that now it looks like part of the wall. And I can’t tell which part of the wall is really cheese, what with this cold in my nose and all.”
“That fox again, eh?” snarled he rat. “He’s a troublemaker. Stand back while I give it the old taste test.”
Rushing past Jack, the rat plunged straight at a section of the wall and but down so hard that the wall shook. So did the rat.
“Oh!” the rat moaned. “I think that rattled my brain.”
“I don’t think you’ve got one to rattle,” called the fox, zipping forward to join Jack on the other side of the gate. The rat spun and rushed at them, but smacked into the bars.
“Ho ho,” chortled Cavia. “A cheese fiend au grating.”
“Are there more of these?” Jack moved farther down as the rat tried to reach in and grab them. “Pretty soon someone’s going to give us the gate.”
“One more,” said the fox. “We don’t need to keep up this cat and mouse game forever.” Cavia set off downhill again.
Realizing no more details were to come, Jack moved downhill. He could see more of the city now. Those tall, thin towers branched out into what seemed to be diamonds but, on further study, appeared to be rooms domed over with glass. Jack saw people inside these, but since he never saw them move, he decided they were either statues or people who got around very, very slowly.
His eyes were on this amazing municipality until the fox called out, “Mind the mud patch!”
Only narrow dry paths remained of the path, running along each side of a dark, vast puddle. “Not very tidy,” said Jack, sliding along the wall to the left.
“Yes, but it’s enchanted mud,” said Cavia, trotting briskly along the right side, “It’ll suck in anyone careless enough to touch it.” Jack curled his toes under and walked a little faster.
Beyond the magic mud was a big iron door. No sentry box waited here, and, more importantly, no bars to squeeze between. Jack looked for a handle or a latch, but the only thing he saw was a curly silver horn hanging at eye level.
“Blow into that so we can get in,” the fox commanded.
Jack blinked. “What if somebody hears us?”
“That’s the idea, Rudolph,” Cavia replied.
Jack wiped the mouthpiece of the horn, to be on the safe side, and then blow into it. He didn’t blow very hard, as he was still a trifle unsure about this whole business. But by the time the sound had worked its way through all the curls and coils of the horn, it was loud enough to rattle the door.
The door was rattled from the other side by a loud voice. “Fo fum fi fee: I think you play that thing off key.”
The gate swung open. This didn’t help, because the space was now filled by a golden giant, his armor gleaming and blue beams of light flying from his eyes. At his elbows, instead of forearms, he had two mighty swords.
“Stand and be chopped, intruders!”
He could see there were two intruders because Jack had been quick enough to grab the fox’s tail before Cavia could escape into hiding. “Chop away,” Jack chuckled. “You’ll never chop me, I’m afraid.”
The giant took one step forward. “In your place, manling, that is the last thing I’d be afraid of. Why will I not chop you?”
Jack winked, and yanked Cavia’s tail. “This fox thinks I don’t know, but I can be beaten only when he is not right next to me. It’s part of a blessing from my fairy godmother.”
Now the giant chuckled. “I thank you for that secret! Let this teach you not to tell strangers too much about yourself!”
The twin swords chopped down, not at either intruder, but right between them. Jack let go of the fox’s tail and jumped to one side as Cavia ran to the other.
“Now he’s not next to you,” the giant chortled. “And now I can…hey, I’m stuck!”
Sure enough, the giant had chopped so furiously that the tips of the sword had splopped into the enchanted mud. “Oh, don’t bother to get up,” said Jack, jumping past him through the open door. “We’ll let ourselves in.”
“You said I’d win if the fox wasn’t right next to you,” hollered the giant, his toes digging grooves in the roadway as the enchanted mud sucked him in.
“I lied,” said Jack, and that time he told the truth.
He turned to speak to the fox, but the words died on his lips as, for the first time, he saw the city from the inside. It was grand, glorious, still. Brave banners hung limp from the tips of delicate towers, light twinkled at the corners of gemlike windows.
“Nice, isn’t it?” said Cavia.
Jack shrugged. “Well, if you like things cobbled together out of exotic gems and precious metals, it’s not bad. Perhaps a little gaudy for my tastes.”
“Ah, Rudolph, you are a person of refinement. You must tell me what you think of the palace.”
Jack looked down the road, expecting high stone walls and another barred gate. What he saw was a vast pink dome, its grand front door covered in whorls of sizzling colors. It took Jack’s breath away, but not so much that he failed to notice this door was ominously ajar.
“What horrors are waiting for us in there?” he demanded.
“You’ve got to kiss a princess,” the fox told him. “Think you’re up to that, Rudolph?”
“Mmmmm.” Jack studied the marble stairs on the other side of the door, and stepped inside. “Let’s see.”
He saw quite a lot. From the orange and silver tiles on the floor to the shimmering yellow ceiling, the interior of the palace was an exercise in optical opulence. Each succeeding room was more elegant than its predecessor, with its own assortment of colors and gleams. At last they reached an impossibly lovely chamber hung with pink and gold silks. At the center of these was a platform bearing a golden gondola with pink draperies.
Among these drapes of pink was a still, silent person, obviously a princess. This was obvious in the angle of her jaw and the delicate flare of her nostrils as she breathed in and out. Jack himself found it a little difficult to breathe.
“Who is this?” he whispered.
“That, Rudolph,” said Cavia, “Is Princess Fanny. Centuries ago, she and her entire city were put to sleep by an evil vizier. We foxes were the only ones clever enough to escape and tell the tale, which has been handed down in my family for generations, about the great golden age that was, and will begin again once she is awakened by a kiss from her hero.”
“Golden age,” murmured Jack, moving slowly up the stairs.
“The details have gotten muddle over the years,” the fox said, trotting next to him. “There’s a lot about a ban on fox hunting and chicken for everybody. Get on with it.”
The average shepherd gets few opportunities to kiss a princess, and Jack was unsure how to begin. Nonetheless, it seemed at least as easy as dodging a giant rat. The princess’s eyes fluttered open. They were as bright and clear as Jack had known they would be, and her voice, when she spoke, was music from afar.
“Is it true?” she whispered. She sat up. “Is it time for us to wake? Are you the hero who has saved us? What is your name?”
Jack was too dazzled by her beauty to reply for a second. In that second, Cavia sat up and shouted, “Rudolph Fairbairn McButtermilk IV!”
A tiny wrinkle appeared between Princess Fanny’s eyes. “Oh, pooh!” she said, her gentle lips forming a pout, “The fairies said the curse would be lifted and the new golden age begin when a hero named Jack kissed me!” The beautiful head dropped back onto the pillow. She closed her eyes.
“Wait!” cried Jack. “I….”
The scene before his eyes blurred and went black. He realized after a moment that everything was black because his own eyes were closed. When he opened them, he was lying in the meadow, with all those sheep.
“Asleep,” he muttered. “Dreaming.” But when he turned his head, there was Cavia, studying him over a little mound of earth.
“Sorry about that, Rudolph,” said the fox. “I never heard that last little bit of the story, or I wouldn’t have put you to so much trouble.” With a flip of the tail, the fox disappeared.
“Hey!” yelled Jack, crawling to the hole so he wouldn’t waste tie standing up “Hey!” Both fox and hole were gone. Jack grabbed a rock and flung it at a sheep that wasn’t doing a thing wrong.
Jack vowed that he would never lie about anything again, profound or absurd. This didn’t matter much, as he never found his way back into the cave or the sleeping city. But he became known as the most honest shepherd who ever lived, and that must be worth something.
As you will of course recall from our last thrilling episode, we were considering what vintage postcards had to show us about women in the workforce, especially in jobs traditionally associated with men. The main conclusion we drew from the examples was that the postcard artists were less interested in reviewing current societal norms than looking for an excuse to produce a card which people would buy.
We can see that in postcards covering more traditional female jobs as well. This card, for example, has less to say about the roles of men and women or jobs for female workers than it was an excuse for a good old Bamforth gag. (As this is a Bamforth card, the lady on the right is almost certainly being played by a man. But a discussion of cross-dressing in postcards is a whole nother blog.)
And this artist was not making a comment on the indignities endured by servants. The card was going for the double market for cards with shapely women on them AND cards with cats.
Women who indulged in cleaning floors in larger operations were generally large and ungainly…and watching through the keyhole. The ideal customers for this card weren’t looking at the cleaning women but wishing they could see what the women were seeing.
Cooking, of course, was as homely a job as cleaning the floor, whether at home or for a larger concern. (Surely she wouldn’t be wearing a chef’s hat at home, where she could be less formal in her attire.)
While the pretty waitress was as standard in postcards as in popular song. (The waitress snarking back at travelling salesmen at lunch can be seen in “My Mother Was a Lady”, a hit from 1896.)
And the attractive shopgirl was also a staple in pop fiction and postcard jollity.
All of these stock characters were familiar to the potential buyers, and made the joke easy to understand and appreciate. That meant a sale. Exactly how many businessmen were sent postcards featuring an elderly executive hiring a charming secretary cannot be estimated. What the businessman thought of this, especially if the card was sent to the office by his wife, is also lost to history.
Therefore, in search of postcard purchses, artists did not neglect the nurse….
The schoolteacher….
Or the showgirl. What we can pick out of these little tableaux depends more on our own angle when we seek historical data. We must remember is that the artist was not striving to preserve an insightful or even accurate picture of conditions at the time. In looking for a gag that would help them pay the rent, they did hold up a mirror to the thoughts in their heads, which reflected times they lived in. But, like a mirror, what they show should not be taken as a perfect picture (the best mirrors still get everything backward.)
So we must try not to read too much into their depictions of women pursuing their professions. The things you see depend at least partly on the thoughts in YOUR head.
The First Golden Age of Postcards, when the fad was at its peak and millions of these little analog text messages were selling every year, roughly from 1907 to 1914, saw a growing public notice of the movement of women into the work force. Women had always kind of BEEN part of the work force, but these Modern Women were starting to challenge men for traditionally male occupations instead of keeping to their place behind a needle.
This train of thought was suggested to me by the arrival in my inventory of three postcards featuring this obviously female and slightly threatening barber. The set, possibly part of a larger series, emphasizes the pleasure of a male customer at being attended by her staff of female attendants.
In fact, though we see here that women could be employed as bookkeepers as well, neither the postcards of the 1910s or their descendants in later decades were out to prove women could do a job as well as a man. The postcard companies were more interested in selling postcards than in making a point.
The best that could be said of them was that they accepted that women DID do jobs associated with men. The jokes told by the artists involved weren’t about whether they should or could, but about finding a saleable gag to go with the job.
World War II gave momentum to the movement of women into the work force, and the WAC postcards The woman soldier was a hard sell in some markets, but the postcard artists did their best to show how much they had in common with their male counterparts. (Sleep, for example: the most precious commodity for any soldier. One WAC told me you didn’t waste these opportunities. In fact, she said, you didn’t even notice them: a second after your head hit the pillow, the bugle blew.)
The war’s effect on farm labor was also well documented.
Though in fact, the farmer’s daughter and the pretty milkmaid were staples of literature, postcards, and jokes long before the war.
It continued during the War as well.
And, odd though it seems, even the female blacksmith predates that war.
Like the male blacksmith, female blacksmiths did have to move away from horses and toward horseless carriages as time went by. Postcard artists may have been more interested in showing off an attractive pair of legs than meditating on the social phenomenon they represented.
That legs sold more postcards than sociological meditation on the role of women in the workforce was simply an occupational hazard.
You probably recall that there was once a town that lost all its wool and mutton because the boy who was hired to tend the sheep got bored. He took to hollering “Wolf!” when there was no wolf, just to see all the townsfolk turning out to help him. Naturally, the one time there WAS a wolf, no one believed hi when he hollered, and that story ends rather red.
No far away, in another town, another shepherd, Jack, heard all about this, and saw the moral at once. “What a shame!” he thought. “Anybody should realize that if you tell lies about important stuff, you’re going to get hurt. The secret is to tell lies about stuff nobody cares about. You can have just as much fun, and keep out of trouble.”
Jack got to be pretty good at this. Shepherds, you understand, have very little to do all day but look at sheep, to make sure none of them get into trouble or turns out to be a wolf who took the job under an assumed name. So he had plenty of time to practice unimportant lying.
He’d lie to anybody who walked by. “You might want to walk careful around that rock there, Mister,” he’d say. “It just hopped across the road to get to that place, and I’m sure it winked at me.”
The traveler would stare at Jack and then walk over to kick the rock, or just walk around it, way wide. Either way, no one got hurt, particularly. And if the traveler was going in the direction of town, and mentioned the strange story the shepherd had told him, the townsfolk would tell him, “Well, Jack’s an honest lad at heart. Anyhow, he never hollers ‘Wolf!’ when there’s no need.”
But because the sheep spent their time in a lush green pasture that had no attractions beyond grass, not many travelers did pass by. That didn’t bother Jack. He’d just sit and lie to the sheep. This made no difference because the sheep never listened.
“You know,” he’d say, “I understand the queen needs new robes. So I’m going to have to start feeding you goldenrod. That way you’ll grow golden fleece.”
The sheep, busy nibbling every blade of grass right down to the ground, were too preoccupied to pay much attention to this, though one or two would say “Bah!”
So Jack would go on, “Yep, that’s how we do it. Goldenrod. The golden fleece. Had a terrible fuss a few years back, when I was feeding sheep goldenrod and they got into some bluebells. The wool came out green, of course, from the mixing of the yellow and the green. The queen was ever so angry. But then I showed her that, just the way there was real gold mixed in with the golden fleece, there were emeralds mixed with the green fleece. So she decided not to cut off my head but instead cut me a piece of her own personal rhubarb meringue pie, baked by the royal bakers, and served to me on a golden platter. She said I could take the platter home if I liked, but Mom and Dad had told me to fetch all the firewood I could carry, so I just didn’t have any room for that.”
He would just go on and on. It got so that he could tell a hundred lies to the sheep every day, and two hundred on Saturday so he wouldn’t sin by working on a Sunday.
One morning, he had just settled himself onto a soft spot of grass under a tree, and propped his crook against the trunk, when a small red head popped out of the grass. Jack didn’t notice, because he’d already started in on his first lie.
“Did I ever tell you about the purple sheep?” he inquired. None of the sheep replied, being busy, and he explained, “I was sitting here, just as you see me now, when I noticed this purple sheep mixing in amongst the others. Now, I don’t swear to know every sheep in a flock by first name, but I was reasonably certain there hadn’t been any purple ones when I left town. So I reached out with this crook right here and caught the fellow by one hind leg. “Oh, sir!’ he squealed, which surprised me because no sheep had ever called me “Sir’ before. ‘Oh, sir! Let me go and I will grant you three wishes!’ Well, I thought about it and….”
“I beg your pardon.”
Jack looked all around the sheep to find out where this voice had come from, but finally thought to look down. The head of a small fox was regarding him from the grass. Jack was alert at once. In general, a fox wasn’t big enough to carry off a whole sheep, but foxes were known to be crafty.
“My name is Cavia,” said the fox, tipping its head to one side. “What’s yours?”
It didn’t make any difference, and Jack saw no reason to be on first name terms with a fox. So Jack replied, “My name is Rudolph Fairbairn McButtermilk the Fourth.”
“Ooh,” said the fox, rocking back on its haunches, “An honor to meet you, I’m sure.”
“I know,” said Jack.
“Anyone with a name like that is far too grand to be a shepherd,” the fox told him.
Jack had often thought this even leaving the name out of it. But he yawned and said, “Well, a fellow must do something to pass the time.”
The fox eased a little closer. “Well, Rudy…do you mind if I call you Rudy?”
Jack raised his nose. “I prefer Rudolph.”
“Okay, Rudolph,” said the fox. “Would you mind being a prince instead of a shepherd? You look like strong young man who could rescue a princess from a curse and marry her and live happily ever after on a prince’s salary.”
“Well, now.” Jacked leaned back and looked up at the clouds. “I don’t know that I care so much about the money, but I suppose a fellow ought to do what he can to rescue a princess.” This may or may not have been a lie, as Jack knew very little about money and nothing about princesses.
“Do you mean it?” asked the fox, apparently anxious. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
Jack felt this question was a little too personal, so he replied with a question of his own. “Why? Do you know where there’s a princess who wants to be freed from a curse?”
“I do. If you’d be good enough to follow me, Rudolph, I’ll show you.” And with a flip of its brushy tail, the animal vanished.
Jack rolled to his right and studied the grass where the fox had been. A big hole was waiting; the fox had just gone down inside. This bothered Jack. Being a conscientious shepherd, he had check the area for holes in the ground a sheep might fall into before stopping there. Sheep. Being interested in little but grass, would fall into any hole that was there, given the opportunity And there had been no such hole as this when Jack was checking.
Before Jack could make up his mind how he thought about this, the fox’s head reappeared. “You coming, Rudolph? The princess is under a curse, so she’s not going anywhere, but I have other things to do if you’re not interested.”
Jack got up, looked around at the sheep, and then stepped down into the hole. The path he found there was not particularly pleasant. Water was dripping, and Jack was sure he could hear something creeping along the path. Then he remembered that HE was creeping along the path.
“How much farther?” he asked the fox, half walking and half sliding along a part of the path that had a lot of sharp rocks.
“Oh, any time now,” the fox called back. “See the light up ahead?”
Jack did see a bright spot ahead of and below him. He blinked, and the light rose before him like smoke blown on the wind. He blinked again: the damp dark tunnel was gone. Now he stood on a narrow dirt path littered with boulders, and lined with tall red and blue columns. Far below him, on both sides of the path, he saw a vast city, shadowed but shiny. Tall, thin buildings reached up to the ceiling of an enormous cavern, with glowing spires and shimmering lights he did not understand. It was all so sparkly, and yet so silent.
“Heads up!” called the fox, as Jack stood staring. Jack looked down, of course, and saw the fox’s tail disappearing under a boulder to the right of the path.
“Ahem,” said something else.
Jack had hitherto neglected to look straight down the narrow path. Not much more than twenty yards ahead of him sat a great gate with golden bars, blocking any forward progress, although Jack estimated they were far enough apart for him to squeeze through. (Shepherding is not an occupation in which one puts on fat.) But there was a sentry ox next to this, and blocking access to the gate was a huge hand, standing on fingers each taller and broader than Jack. Where the wrist should have been was a broad bald unfriendly head.
“Why do you approach the city of Merripat?” demanded this head. The mouth showed rows of broad, flat teeth.
Jack threw himself on the ground and, groveling in an amiable way, cried, “Oh, Master! This vicious fox told me there was unguarded treasure in this place! If I would just follow him, I would find unguarded storehouses where I could walk in and take all the chewing gum and maple sugar I desired! But when Your Magnificence appeared, the traitor ran away!” Jack threw a hand toward the boulders to the left of the path.
The hand scratched its nose with its little finger…or leg. “Him again, eh? I’ve had trouble with him before. “Wait right here. I will deal with both of you together.”
The fingers hurried the sentry past Jack and up the path. Scooting forward, Jack plunged at the gate. He had estimated correctly; he squeezed between bars without any trouble. The fox, coming from behind its boulder, simply squeezed under. They ran down the path until they were out of sight of the sentry box.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Rudolph. You really tricked him.”
“That’s not very funny,” Jack told the fox. “You could have told me about him beforehand.”
“What did you expect?” Cavia demanded. “Cursed princess always have guards on hand. Or vice versa. But I knew he wouldn’t get anyone as daring as Rudolph Fairbairn McButtermilk the Fourth under his thumb. Come on.”
Jack had stopped in the middle of the path. “Are there any more gates like that one ahead?”
“Why?” asked the fox. “Are you thinking of turning around and going home?”
“Ready for that three o-clock appoint…oh, it’s you.”
“I’ve got it this time. I truly have.”
“Mr. Forsyth, we at the Society for the Proliferation of Conspiracy Knowledge have a lot to do since the invention of online communication. We have bent over backward to try and disseminate your pyramid theory, but it just hasn’t generated any follow-up.”
“But I tell you, my latest translations from the Ancient Scroll of Thlekethron has filled in the gaps!”
“Sir, there are other people spreading word that the pyramids gather cosmic energy.”
“That’s true. But the Scroll….”
“And your claim, based on a scroll you found in the leftovers from your neighbor’s garage sale….”
“He did a lot of hiking in Europe when he was in college.”
“…has done very little more but add one more voice to the idea that the cosmic energy was being gathered to preserve stasis chambers for a race of ancient astronauts twelve feet tall and possessed of technology beyond our understanding. It’s nothing new, Mr. Forsyth.”
“But it’s all right there in the scroll, I tell, you: the whole plan, even the time and date they plan to return and bring the benefits of their science to our society!”
“Yes. Which, let me just check your file, was to happen at noon, Chicago time, on January 1, 1939.”
“Yes, but I….”
“And your claim that governments everywhere somehow hid these giants all through the Second World War….”
“That was just a hypothesis based on the information I had at the time. I admit I was wrong. But I’ve been working with an AI translator….”
“On a language no one else has ever seen.”
“It has similarities to the script in Voynich, but that’s not the point. I have new translations.”
“Okay, Forsyth. NOW what date will the giants return?”
“I don’t have any changes on the date.”
“You shock me, Forsyth, but that is at least moderately interesting. What have you repaired in your extremely leaky theory?”
“It’s in the lead-up to the plan to arrange the stasis chambers under the pyramids around the world. The leader of the giants, Wisdomspeak was working extensively with, Quickeyes, his ‘klatzaplud’, which I was translating as ‘Vizier’ or ‘Advisor’. I missed the connection with the title of Wisdomspeak’s consort, the ‘damaplud’. And now everything is clear.”
“To you, perhaps, Forsyth.”
“The Klatzaplud was an advisor, but his real title translates as ‘brother-in-law’. And the sentence about him ‘being aware of a wise old scientist’ actually translates that he ‘knew a guy’!”
“So….”
“So this proto-pharoah Wisdomspeak trusted his brother-in-law to set up all the technology. And the stasis chambers never worked.”
“Great Scott!”
“That’s right. Nothing happened on January 1, 1939 because Quickeyes got his tech from some charlatan who scammed the….”
“Hang on a second. I need to get Francis and his Truth Team on this right away. It’ll knock those latest flat-earthers right off their disc!”
Blogsy Babbles 