I know you had your hopes, but there are a LOT of postcards sitting around in the files. If people would get busy and BUY them, we could be chatting again about Turkey Liver Pizza. But though we nearly covered our “behinds” in the last column, there are other running gags in the world of postcard posteriors (And there were actually a couple of cards using the word “behind” which did not appear last time around. But we must put this behind…what? Oh, very well.)
I did think “mooning” people had been left behind in the twentieth century until the big mass mooning held at a building not far from where I am writing these words. Certainly, the use of “moon” as a synonym for the human situpon was not neglected by previous generations. The couple above has their minds on higher things.
But this chap from the 1940s is clearly thinking of the old saying that “Man wants but little here below.”
The joke was popular enough to be repeated by another cartoonist in the 1950s.
And by another in the 1960s.
The whole point of this sort of joke, as it was in the gags about behinds, was that the word used could have a perfectly innocent use in the sentence, though the picture elucidates matters. A previous generation, sending cards in or around 1915, enjoyed this bit of wordplay. (Those are his sister’s underdrawers, if that is not obvious. If you compare their size to his size, you see he is living very dangerously, as his sister could probably throw him over the house if she catches him.)
In case you thought a previous generation was too pure, too honest to swipe other people’s gags, you must have skipped a few lectures on the history of comedy.
It seems to have been the rule to make the child involved as obnoxious as popular. This version, you’ll note, is for people who don’t have “sitting rooms”, a term that was by no means universal.
Though it was understandable enough to go on being used in the 1950s.
I would be remiss, of course, if I did not make mention of this joke, popular wherever sex and drinking were on people’s minds.
So, um, just about everywhere. Especially at the beach.
As always, a cartoonist could use one traditional joke to slip in another old favorite.
Or even two. This may seem to be too much, but we’ve always been willing to rise to the occasion.
Well, Thanksgiving is past and we must now face the reality that Christmas is upon us. I have, myself, always stated that I DO love Christmas: I’m just not very good at it. So many things which used to be so simple have become difficult with the passage of time. For example, at my age, it is harder and harder to get on Santa’s naughty List. So with a view to correcting that situation, I thought we would return to the subject of postcards dealing with butt jokes.
There are, according to some slang dictionaries, more words for referring to the seating arrangement of the human anatomy than any other part of the body. Among your postcard cartoonists, none was more versatile than “behind”. They could use this in a perfectly innocent sentence and then draw the illustration to leave you in no doubt about which meaning they wanted you to see. The card at the top of this column shows how this was done. The man is merely saying that his girl is behind him in the picture, and nothing else.
We dedicated an entire column to this running gag.
Any use of the word could prompt a picture. I don’t know that the cartoonist really did his best with this one. He could at least have had the behind on the left.
Of course, the most common use of the joke was to excuse oneself for not having written. People would, in theory, be chortling so much at getting the double meaning that you could toss in another old joke as well.
And in case those postcards from the 1940s and 1950s make you think we eventually grew out of that joke, these two from a later era show we never left the joke behind.
A vacation scene would add to your explanation about why you hadn’t written. It is, we are told, so easy to get behind at the beach.
Vacations, of course, were for leaving things behind, as noted here.
The joke could also express regret at the vacation’s end.
And the resumption of the cares of daily life, with bills to pay. (His pants are torn, see, or rent, so he…oh, you got that one.)
Or the rigors of watching your weight.
Or just the daily grind, as seen with this sorry tail.
This is a plant which looks as if it has frost or ice on it, hence its name and meaning. Most books agree on this meaning, but Mme. De Latour had it with a slight difference. Both editions of her book which I have seen give the meaning as “Your Fires Freeze Me”, the sort of thing you might say to a suitor whose passion you find annoying. Now, M. Louis Aime-Martin, whose Belgian edition claims that he is Mme. De Latour, has changed one letter, from “feux” to “yeux”, which makes it “Your Eyes Freeze Me”, basically the same meaning as the above. Maybe Mme. De Latour’s printers goofed it up, or maybe she meant it as printed and the other floriographers just couldn’t figure it out.
IMBRICATA “Uprightness”
IMMORTELLE “Never-ceasing Remembrance”
This, as you probably guessed, is a kind of Everlasting.
Impatiens: see BALSAM
IMPERIAL MONTAGUE “Power”
Ipomoea: see JASMINE, INDIAN
IRIS “A Message”*
Iris and Hermes were the messengers of the Greek gods. Unlike Hermes, who had lots of things to do besides, Iris seems to have done absolutely nothing but dash up and down the rainbow, carrying messages hither and yon.
A popular minority meaning for any iris is “Flame” or “Fire”, because the shape of the plant reminded viewers of flames.
IRIS, BLUE “A Message”
IRIS, GERMAN “Flame”*
*IRIS, JAPANESE “Beyond Criticism”
Iris, Yellow: see FLEUR-DE-LIS
IVY “Fidelity”
*IVY, JAPANESE “Binding”
This is an ampelopsis, made famous by Dorothy L. Sayers, who, in her short story “The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker”, has Lord Peter Wimsey describe an oily character as “Bit of an ampelopsis, what…suburban plant that climbs by suction. YOU know—first year, tender little shoots—second year, fine show—next year, all over the shop.”
*IVY LEAVES “I Offer You My Friendship”
*IVY, POISON “Annoyance, Envy”
Go ahead: give your beloved a bouquet of this and see who gets annoyed. No one will envy you.
*IVY, WITH APOCYNUM, “Your Friend is Deceitful”
*IVY, WITH JONQUILS “Return to Fidelity”
IVY, WITH TENDRILS “Assiduous to Please”
Late into the research for this book, my life was enriched by the discovery of an item called Embleme des Fleurs, ou Parterre de Flore, published in Paris in 1833 and written by one “Ch.-Jos. CH….T. Ch.-Jos. turns out to have been Charles-Joseph Chambet, author of a number of ephemeral books, the most popular of which seems to have been his guide book to Lyons.
The 1833 edition was the fourth; in it he points out that the first edition was published in 1816, “two or three years” before the work of his “aimable imitatrice”, Charlotte de Latour. So far, I have been unable to substantiate this claim; the earliest edition I was able to trace is the second, which came out in 1824, cited by Henry Phillips in his own work of 1825. Chambet says he doesn’t wish to detract from the obvious talent of his imitator (they always say that) but just wants it known that he was there first.
His book has definitions in common with Mme. De Latour, but even more in common with Louis-Aime Martin. Like Louis-Aime Martin’s book, Chambet’s does not seem to have had anywhere near the influence of Mme. de Latour’s, though it was apparently dipped into by Dorothea Dix, Emmeline Raymond, and Josephine Addison.
J
Jack-in-the-Pulpit: see ARUM
JACOB’S LADDER “Come Down”
As Jacob’s dream showed him angels moving up and down the ladder, does this mean the giver considers you an angel?
*JAPANESE GOLDEN PLUME “Distinction”
JASMINE “Amiability”
Some books say Jasmine and some say Jessamine. One authority informed me that Jessamine is properly used for the American plant, while Jasmine is the Asian version. But another expert claims jessamine is merely a poetic way of saying Jasmine. There are even a few floriographers who spell it Jasmin. Surely there’s an amiable way out of this argument.
Jasmine, Cape: see GARDENIA
JASMINE, CAROLINA “Separation”*
Some of the earlier floriographers make this Virginian Jasmine. North American geography was not a high priority in those days.
JASMINE, INDIAN “I Attach Myself to You”
JASMINE, NIGHT-BLOOMING “Only for Thee” or “Love’s Vigil”
Either way, you are claiming you would do this only for the one you love, the way only someone who really loves a flower would stay up all night to watch if it bloomed. A good flower to give someone who has asked you to take out the trash.
JASMINE, RED “Our Love Will Lead Us Astray”
Jasmine, Scarlet: see JASMINE, INDIAN
JASMINE, SPANISH “Sensuality”
The most important quality of jasmine, to gardeners of the day, was its scent, which is powerful and alluring if you can take it, and sickeningly thick if you can’t. Most of these meanings, obviously, were chosen by people with a strong tolerance for the stuff.
Jasmine, Virginian: see JASMINE, CAROLINA
JASMINE, WHITE “Amiability”
However, Laura Peroni says that in Spain this plant means “Sensuality”. Note JASMINE, SPANISH, above.
JASMINE, YELLOW “Grace and Elegance”
Ernst and Joanna Lehner claim the original Turkish flower language (Selam) had a special code for Jasmine. Red meant “Our Love Will Be Intoxicating”, White meant “Our Love Will be Sweet”, and Yellow meant “Our Love Will Be Passionate”. You can see how some of that might have evolved into what the floriographers gave us.
Jessamine: see JASMINE
JOB’S TEARS “Sympathetic”
JONQUIL “I Desire a Return of Affection”
Several floriographers make this simply “Desire”, following Mme. De Latour. Clair Powell says the Turks made it mean “Lust”. Well, “I Desire a Return of Affection” is NEARLY the same thing, isn’t it?
*JOSEPH’S COAT “Affectation”
*JOY “Enduring Friendship”
Someone has suggested that this is just another name for Wood Sorrel, which is sometimes called Gye. I’m thinking that over.
JUDAS TREE “Disbelief”
JUJUBE TREE “Concord”
This is sometimes known as the Buckthorn, or Purging Buckthorn. Both a high-powered laxative and a very popular candy have been made of it. Go figure.
*JUJUBE SEED “I Love the Brunette”
JULIENNE, WHITE “Despair Not”
There is a story about an exiled queen who looked at this plant whenever she needed encouragement. It reminded her that God was everywhere, so she should not give up. Some people feel this is the same plant as Queen’s Rocket, but I say if she’d had a rocket….
JUNIPER “Protection”
This plant was thought to protect you from devils, and was also used as a cure for plague and poison. The belief in its ability to protect probably comes from the Bible, since Elijah sat under one for shelter. That is, he does in the King James Bible. In the Revised Standard
Version, he sits under a Broom Tree. The floriographers were working without benefit of the Revised Standard Version.
Less Biblically-inclined floriographers have other explanations. Robert Tyas says that simple-minded natives burn it to keep evil spirits away. He doesn’t say simple-minded natives of where, and, anyhow, maybe they were just smoking out mosquitoes. And Clair Powell says rabbits, thrushes, and insects always hurry to the juniper for shelter. The juniper berries had nothing to do with it, I guess.
JUSTICIA “The Perfection of Female Loveliness”
K
*KALMIA “Treachery”
This is a kind of laurel, but definitely not the kind from which wreaths are made. Our Ancestors’ estimate of it can be judged by the fact that they called it Lambskill, or Calfkill. (Depending on whether they were in sheep or cattle country.)
KENNEDIA “Mental Beauty”
*KENTIA “Sincerity”
KING-CUP “I Wish I Was Rich”
This name has been applied to any cup-shaped yellow flower: a buttercup or cowslip or marsh marigold. It’s a pretty obvious symbol: somebody was looking out across a field of these yellow cups and sighed, “Golly, I wish those were real gold cups.” And some older person was
listening then recited the tale of King Midas, and the younger person would sagely nod, having learned the larger lesson: never wish for anything where Aunt Booney can hear you.
Now, this is not, not, not, not a food blog, as I have mentioned before. However, we are rolling at the greatest food holiday of our year (about the only one which is about the entree and not the dessert, or the snack) and I thought I would record my turkey cooking experiences. This is less to enlighten YOU, creamed cod sauce, than it is a request by my loving relatives that I set this down in black and white so I can stop telling THEM about it. (This is also the season for wishing for things you ain’t gonna get, but we will move on.)
In my heyday, which was one or two decades ago, Daylight Savings Time, I would eke out my miserable salary by buying a fresh turkey at my local grocery store every other week. (Nowadays, they supply fresh turkeys for three days before and two days after Thanksgiving and Christmas.) This was an investment of about twenty-five bucks, and from that investment, I would derive fifteen to twenty meals.
Sunday after buying this turkey I would rise in the morning and set a disposable aluminum pan on the bottom of a broiling pan, in case of leakage. After wrestling the turkey out of its mesh net and plastic bag, I removed the bag of giblets. I would open that, remove the liver, and wrap that separately for the freezer (to await the next time I yearned after Turkey Liver Pizza.) Then I would wrap the rest of the giblets in foil and toss that into the pan where it could support the drumsticks. The turkey itself would then be stuffed with, well, two quarters of an onion (one in the central cavity and one under the skin at the other end) or some peeled cloves of garlic in the same two places. This would then be placed in the pan, breast down because my mother cooked chickens that way. I put foil over the bird, crimped this along the edge of the pan to keep the steam inside, and shoved the whole assembly into the oven.
I always bought the improved turkeys with a label telling how long to cook per pound. I would add half an hour or thereabouts to this time. Once that time was up–no nonsense in this meal about basting, removing the foil to brown the skin, or preparing a roux for gravy—I would take up the broiler pan and carefully set this heavy, hot contraption on the front of the stove.
Two plates and a bowl or two had been set up on the counter as my receiving station. Dodging steam, I set the top foil aside, saving the bits of crisp skin which had stuck to it despite my trying to form a tent over the bird. With a couple of forks, I could easily remove the two legs (the result of that extra half hour: things come loose without the use of a cleaver) and set them, one at a time, on large pieces of foil on a receiving plate. The foil was folded and each leg tucked away in the defidgidator: that was two dinners to come.
The wings went on the other plate: once they cooled a bit, I would start eating those (have to keep your strength up during this process.) If I felt brave, I would then move the bowls into position, and carefully pour off the liquid in the pan (let the turkey slide to the corner you’re pouring from BEFORE pouring; it prevents splashy surprises). Depending on how the seal of the foil worked, there might be two to four bowls of this liquid, which could then be set into the fridge to cool and separate. Once upon a time, the result was about eighty percent turkey gelatin and twenty percent fat. Turkey growers have changed their ways, and over the last ten years, it has been more ninety-five percent gelatin and five percent fat. The fat can be pulled off this for use as cooking fat while the gelatin will make anywhere from two to six bowls of turkey noodle soup. (Another recipe we won’t stop for today.)
Now pan and turkey are light and safe enough for more heavy duty work. Remember the receiving plate that did not have wings on it? Get out more foil and remove as much of the white meat as you can. One breast and other smidgets of meat can be wrapped in foil and put in the freezer while the other is similarly wrapped and set next to the legs. THIS is going to provide turkey sandwiches for lunch for the next two to three weeks (depending on the size of the bird and how greedy you are when making lunch.)
Now I would eat the wings (unless I had done so already) and the tail, which at some point had also been placed on the receiving plate. This would be followed by what was in the foil container of giblets as well as any meat which adhered to the remaining bones, or fell off into the pan while you were working, oh, and that crispy bit stuck to the foil, and….
And then I would take a nap, filled with the turkey’s sleep chemicals and secure in the knowledge that I would not have to decide what was for lunch or dinner (dinner or supper for those of you from my hometown) for a couple of weeks. AND there was cooking fat to make popcorn in the frying pan.
In this way, I celebrated Bachelor Thanksgiving about twenty times a year. I don’t suppose any of this will be useful to you tomorrow, but at the very least I wish you as hearty a nap as came with my old recipe.
This is a kind of tamarack, and is sometimes spelled tacmehac. No, honest!
HAND FLOWER TREE “Warning”
HARBELL “Grief”
*HARLEQUIN “Laugh at Trouble” HAWK WEED “Quicksightedness”
It was believed, once upon a time, that hawks rubbed their eyes with this to give them, well, eyes like a hawk. I have spent even less time studying hawks than I have studying flowers, but I am willing to bet they don’t.
HAWK WEED, PURPLE-EYED SUCCORY “Protection”
HAWTHORN “Hope”*
This is one of the most widespread flower meanings, apparently going back to the Ancient Greeks, who carried it on their wedding day, as an emblem of a happy and fertile marriage. Geoffrey Grigson claims this is because the scent reminds people of sex, and that is
why the flower became the emblem of May Day, a sex festival. I guess hope can be tied up in there somewhere, too. For the more spiritual, it is also said to represent the hope in the resurrection, since the hawthorn was the source of Christ’s Crown of Thorns. However, this has been claimed for a lot of different thorny plants, and one bloke actually worked it out how each plant contributed one thorn for the Crown. If you think that’s interesting, you should see everything that’s been written about what kind of wood was used for the Cross.
HAZEL “Reconciliation”
There is a story, which I frankly don’t quite understand, about Hermes taking a wand of hazel wood throughout the world, tapping people with it to teach them that war was wrong and how we all ought to live to help each other. This wand was the caduceus, now used as the symbol of the medical profession. Hermes was the God of Thieves.
*HAZEL, ONE SPRIG “Be Friends”
*HAZEL NUTS “Death is Preferable”
Some books do list filbert, another name for hazel nut, but when they do use Filbert, they seem to refer to the tree, not the nut.
*HEAL-ALL “Return in friendship”
Heart’s Ease: see PANSY
Heath: see HEATHER
HEATHER “Solitude”
*HEATHER, PURPLE “Beauty in Solitude, and Admiration”
HEATHER, WHITE “Good fortune”
Frederick William, Crown Prince of Prussia, is said to have proposed to Queen Victoria’s oldest daughter by handing her some white heather, as a sign he wished her well. Victoria herself thought it was terribly romantic.
Frederick and Alix were married, and their little boy grew up to be Wilhelm II, the bogey Kaiser of World War I. Which should teach us all a little something about romance.
HELENIUM “Tears”*
This flower supposedly sprang from the tears of Helen of Troy. I have nothing in my notes which specifies the occasion, but she had ample opportunity during the Trojan War. Maybe it was after the war, when her husband took her home.
HELIOTROPE “Devotion”*
The Gods of Greece and Rome conducted themselves with all the wisdom and dignity of characters in your average soap opera. The lovers in this case were a nymph named Clytie and the sun god Helius. (Not to be confused with Apollo, God of the Sun. Helius was sort of Apollo’s district manager, the fellow who actually drove the chariot of the sun through the sky, leaving Apollo to do the administrative work.)
Helius ticked off Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, by tattling to her husband that she’d been off rolling in the clouds with Ares, God of War, both of them forgetting that Helius would be flying right overhead and see them. To get even, Aphrodite made Helius fall in love with
Leucothoë. (Which is NOT a reference to the plant known as Leucothoë, which is a kind of Fetter Bush, not to be confused with the Fetterbush. Are you getting all this down?)
Helius forsook Clytië, his faithful lover who had done nothing wrong, so he could pursue Leucothoë. Her father was a fine old fairy tale character, one of those wicked old kings who locks his daughter away in a tower, far from the contaminating influence of men. This never works. Helius got into her tower anyhow, dressed as her mother, for lust will find a way.
Meanwhile, Clytië, distraught at being dumped, ran off to Leucothoë’s father and gave away the plot. The king, not honored at all by the visit of a sun god, had his daughter burned alive, a nasty move in any event, but a serious insult to Helius, since fire is a sun god’s natural element, Helius used his pull with the gods to get Leucothoë turned into the frankincense plant. I have no data on what he did to her father, but I wouldn’t want someone who drove the sun around the earth to get mad at me. And he never spoke to, or even looked at, Clytië ever again.
But what about the Heliotrope, and Devotion? We’re coming to that. See, in spite of everything, Clytië was still passionately in love with the sulking sun god. She would sit all day gazing into the sky, watching the sun go by without so much as a friendly wave. She wasted away to nothing, and became the Heliotrope, which to this day shows its devotion to the sun by turning its blossom toward it as it moves by in the sky.
Several plants actually do this. Maybe the Heliotrope thought of it first. Anyway, this story comes to us from Classical Literature, which was once the basis of a college education. As Will Cuppy noted, “Our ancestors felt that four years of this sort of information would inevitably produce a president, or at least a Cabinet member. It didn’t seem to work out that way.”
As for the Aphrodite-Ares affair, that ended in a perfectly scandalous revenge by Aphrodite’s husband, but since it involved no flowers, I won’t spend time on it here. It is depicted in a number of paintings not generally shown to children.
HELLEBORE “Calumny”
The meaning could be explained by the poisonous version of the plant, though that is properly called False Hellebore. Or it could be because the plant’s name can be translated to mean “Hell’s mouth”.
HEMLOCK “You Will Be My Death”
This is poisonous, of course, and was used in the execution of Socrates. (As they said in my school days, “Socrates drank something awful.”)
HEMP “Fate”
This plant was long used in divination, to provide visions of the future. Also known as Cannabis Sativa, and numerous other names popular in the 1970s, it has other legal uses in addition to that.
HENBANE “Imperfection”*
Claire Powell notes that this is a narcotic and that addiction to narcotics is obviously an imperfection. Surely somebody can do better than that.
HEPATICA “Confidence”
Henbane blooms very early in spring, perhaps confident that the weather cannot hurt it. Plants that do that in my neighborhood are known as “snowed under”.
Herb Archangel: see ANGELICA
*HERBS, WILD “A Cure”
For those who are suspicious, this was not added to the dictionary by one of our modern herbalists, but by George H. O’Neill, in his book of 1917.
HIBISCUS “Delicate Beauty”
HICKORY “Glory”
Hoarhound: see HOREHOUND
HOLLY “Foresight”*
Several floriographers tell us this is because holly is such a fine shelter for birds, with thorns on the lower branches so predators can’t climb up, but smooth branches farther up, and berries for food. So why is this “Foresight” instead of, say, “Generosity” or “Providence”?
HOLLY, BOX :Activity and Cleanliness”
HOLLY HERB “Enchantment”
This appears in several books, but none of the authors come right out and say what it is. I suspect it was originally a misprint for “Holy Herb”, another name for vervain. But it was misprinted as Holly Herb in that book by the Lover of Flowers, and everyone who stole that dictionary…this teaches us the value of personal research.
HOLLYHOCK “Ambition”
HOLLYHOCK, DOUBLE “Ardent Attachment”
HOLLYHOCK, RED “Content Me”
HOLLYHOCK, WHITE “Female Ambition”
We have all been worrying about why White Hollyhocks would mean this. John Ingram says it’s because the flowers grow so high. Dorothea Dix says the Hollyhock aspires to imitate
the rose, though she does not say which hollyhocks she interviewed to learn this. Sheila Pickles and I independently arrived at another idea. A very popular meaning for hollyhocks is “Fecundity”. Could it be—this was about two centuries ago, remember—that someone just figured a woman’s highest ambition was to be fertile?
*HOLLY SEED “I Love the Rosy One”
*HOLLY WREATH “A Merry Christmas”
I suspect this was thrown in just to remind people to run down to the florist’s shop and put in an order for the holiday season. Flower language was used heavily as an advertising gimmick: it was a natural for florists and herbalists. In the twentieth century, it was used to sell printing services (Lafayette Cargill, Language of the Flowers, 1932), a perfume company (Sheila Pickles, 1990, plus a matching address book, a matching appointment book, etc., each scented with a fragrance from Ms. Pickles’s company), and a line of paperback romances. (Silhouette Books reprinted a slew of Nora Roberts novels in their Language of Flowers series, each book keyed to a different flower language meaning.) This has been an unpaid announcement, darn it.
HONESTY “Honesty”
Looks simple, eh? In fact, it gets complex because this flower is known by four different names, and some floriographers listed a different meaning for each. According to John Ingram, the plant is known as Lunaria, or Moonwort, because its seed vessels are shaped like the moon, Satin Flower because its seed vessels are glossy, and most widely as Honesty because the seed vessel has transparent partitions that anyone can see through.
I hope this is clear. I had to go through it several times myself.
HONEY FLOWER “Love Sweet and Secret”
HONEYSUCKLE “Bond of Love”*
Anything that climbs or twines frequently gets a meaning implying that you and yours are bound by affection. Mme. De Latour sees this as particularly representative of people who are in the grips of unfortunate passion: she goes on about Desdemona, Cleopatra, and La Valliere, who loved men that were bad for them.
HONEYSUCKLE, CORAL “The Color of My Fate”
HONEYSUCKLE, FRENCH “Rustic Beauty”
Henry Phillips notes this flower is lovely in the wild, but looks pretty cheap in the garden, the way a country girl looks wonderful in her own setting but not when you get her to the city. Must be a story there somewhere.
HONEYSUCKLE, MONTHLY “I Will Not Answer Hastily”
*HONEYSUCKLE, TRUMPET “Inconstancy”
HONEYSUCKLE, WILD “Inconstancy”
Maybe these last don’t twine as well as the others.
HONEY WORT “Flattery”
This name does not appear in flower language books after 1829. New name? Extinction? I know flattery hasn’t gone out of style.
HOP “Injustice”*
One type is a parasite, they tell me. But most plants with alcoholic connections have been given sinister meanings.
*HOP, JAPAN “Protection”
HOREHOUND “Fire”
Two books have “Frozen Kindness”, perhaps because they spell this Hoarhound, as in hoarfrost.
HORNBEAM TREE “Ornament”*
Hornbeam was used for decorative woodwork in fancy houses.
*HORSERADISH “This Does Not Warm Me”
HOERWNAIA “You Are Cold”
See also HYDRANGEA
*HOUND’S TONGUE “Envy”
Clarence Hylander, a wildflower specialist, seems to fall away from strictly objective scientific observation when he states that this is “an obnoxious weed with an odor reminiscent of mice”. Sometimes I just sit and look out my window, worrying about plants with an odor reminiscent of mice. Is the problem with the plants themselves, or with scientists who go around sniffing mice and weeds? And I wonder if we couldn’t all get together and do something about these problems, and then I think maybe we should just leave things as they are.
HOUSELEEK “Vivacity”
HOUSTONIA “Content”
Bluets and Quaker Ladies are types of Houstonia.
HOYA “Sculpture”
Also known as a Wax Plant, the hoya’s tendrils can be wound around forms to create fantastic shapes and can be dried in that position. (Ever try to pry dry hoya tendrils out of a lace curtain? You have missed nothing.)
HOYABELLA “Contentment”
HUMBLE PLANT “Despondency”
HYACINTH “Sport, Game, Play”*
Another of Apollo’s love affairs, this one came to tragedy through no great fault of Apollo, for a change. Apollo and Hyacinthus were playing with a discus, a cast iron Frisbee disc, and Apollo’s throw accidentally hit Hyacinthus and killed him. Apollo turned the dead man into a flower.
There are rumors that one or another of the wind gods altered the path of the discus out of envy. Hyacinthus was really something in his day. three of the gods fell in love with him, and the Greeks credit him with being the first mortal man loved by another mortal man: a singer named Thamyris, if you wanted to know.
*HYACINTH BEAN ‘Consciousness”
This is sometimes known simply as Lablab. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it.
HYACINTH, BLUE “Constancy”
HYACINTH, PURPLE “Sorrow”
Richard Folkard, Jr. says that just about any flower that hangs its head will be given a meaning implying sorrow. But see GLASSWORT.
Hyacinth, Red: see HYACINTH, PURPLE
HYACINTH, WHITE “Unobtrusive Loveliness”
There was a popular line of poetry about selling your bread and buying hyacinths to feed your soul. You wouldn’t catch anybody doing that nowadays: this is a “Bread First, Hyacinths Later” world.
HYDRANGEA “Heartlessness”
Minority meanings go for “Frigidity” or “Boaster”; all three derive from the habit of the Hydrangea for producing huge, lovely flowers that don’t smell like much and produce no fruit. Hortensia is a type of Hydrangea.
Not that it’s relevant, but in It’s a Wonderful Life, Donna Reed is hiding in the hydrangeas. You know the scene I mean.
HYSSOP “Cleanliness”
This was used as a cleanser in ancient days, and is mentioned in the Bible. Experts, though, have doubts about whether the Biblical writers meant Hyssop when they wrote Hyssop. I know the feeling.
It has been some time since we last considered the popular song on the postcard. (Don’t start counting back through the blogs; just take my word for it.) The pop song and the postcard are of similar age: there were certainly songs which stuck in the ear and were heard at every concert and recital. But mass production of music aimed at selling large quantities is held to have started in the 1890s, when businesses started bragging about how many pieces of sheet music a song sold.
(The business of selling sheet music is a shadow of a shadow of itself. There were sheet music departments in department stores, with singers employed to perform any of the sheet music customers wanted to hear before buying. And, as seen above, there were street vendors pushing the newest numbers.)
Postcard publishers were not going to miss a good bet. A fun picture might sell a card but a fun picture and a reference to or quotation from a song everyone was singing would sell even more. They didn’t know they were in the business of musical preservation. Some songs, popular for a few months, are now more famous for having been on postcards than having been sung.
It took a bunch of hunting to find this little number, once so popular it was worthy of being reproduced in full on a series of seven postcards. We see the gloomy ending of the song here, but it was a sprightly little number about a country girl who really hates having to climb the stile to get over a particularly high wall. The young man seen here helps her to the top, but won’t help her down the other side until she tells him she loves him. She promises to tell him something once she’s down. He helps, she laughs him to scorn, and goes her merry way, leaving him to mope alone. (How did she get home, by the way?)
This postcard gives us a glimpse of postcard marketing. The title and picture here have very little to do with the lyrics printed below. “The Way Through the Wood” was a very popular poem at the time, a whispering little ghost story by Rudyard Kipling about bygone lovers from a previous century. The lyrics are from a song called “Changed Her Mind”, which was about a quarter century old and cost much less to use (the young lady turns away a young man in a forest and cries about it until he comes back hours later and she can tell him she changed her mind.)
Theochrom was a German postcard publisher who moved to the united States, and made a bundle on a varied line of postcards based on songs. (Sometimes, as noted in a previous column, if he could not get the rights to a song, he could find a way to change enough words to elude copyright and use it anyway.) I thought this card gave me enough of the lyrics to trace the song, but it has eluded me so far. (These ARE the right lyrics, though, as he thanks the publishers of the original on the back.) There have been, oh, five million songs about Broadway over the last century or so, and this one has slipped through the cracks of the Interwebs.
THIS song I found. Like a lot of the songs I have searched, it can be found on YouTuibe. It is, however, a folk song, and I could find only clips of elderly men singing it in German taverns. (The song is about as long as the printed lyrics here: drinking songs should not be too complicated to be sung by someone who’s had a few.) I cannot, however, find anyone to translate these lyrics. I suspect they simply make a logical connection between drinking a lot and other bodily functions, but no one will come out and say so.
I didn’t even know this was a song: it stands on its own. But when I looked up this little message from 1910, I found four other postcards, each with a different humorous illustration, each from the first decade of that century. I found that it was actually a song hit in 1900 for May Irwin, a performer who presented problems for critics then and would cause them now. (She starred in “The Kiss”, one of the first widely known scandalous motion pictures.) I could write about May Irwin and the problems she poses for today’s listeners, but this column is long enough, and, hey, I have….
When I was a lad, the world went through another wave of Nostalgia. We as a society run from periods of “The past was evil; forget it!” to “The past was kind of funny” to “Some of the past was really cool” to “The past is kind of funny” to start again with “The past is evil.” The part of pop culture we look back on shifts, generally focusing anywhere between twenty and fifty years in the past. I have written elsewhere about how sad it is for me to recall some of the things which were high-priced collectibles once but which are now a dime a dozen because the generation which was nostalgic about them has largely died. This puts me in the odd position of being nostalgic for bygone nostalgias.
In any case, back in my boy days, I walked and talked among people who actually remembered the early days of the American comic strip, who would reminisce about Lulu and Leander, Foxy Grandpa, or And Her Name was Maude. I could actually read these comic strips in magazines published just for the nostalgia market. So when I came to infest the world of antique postcards, I recognized several old friends, and picked up a few new ones.
One of the popular themes for comic strips was the One Gag Strip. In this method, the characters would perform variations of the same joke every time out. The fun was in seeing how the characters got into, and out of, the same sort of situation. Foxy grandpa ALWAYS turned the tables on his nephew’s plots,. The mule Maud would ALWAYS defeat the farmer’s attempts to make her do something.
At the top of this column, we see Mr. E.Z. Mark, who every week would fall for a scam and lose his temper violently as a result. WE may see the trap early on, but he would always fall for it. This was the work of F.M. Howarth a cartoonist who despite an early death in 1908 created two classic comic strips, as he also invented the perennially thwarted lovers Lulu and Leander (a pioneer of Big Head Cartooning.)
Mr. Jack was a (married) tiger about town, rather past middle age but still trying to make time with the beautiful women he passed. In his day (hinted at here) he made many conquests, but the gag here was how every week he would be punched, tripped into a puddle, or otherwise humiliated by the women he was making up to. He was the work of Jimmy Swinnerton, who created a dozen or so comic strips in his day, often for children’s newspaper supplements, and he is sometimes credited as being the inventor of the comic strip. His most popular and longest running strip involved a clueless little boy named Jimmy, and Swinnerton was able to live to see this revived in numerous nostalgia waves, as he lived until nearly 100.
Then, as now, the point was to make up a character who would be instantly recognizable and followed by readers (several newspapers which pioneered daily comic strip s as opposed to the Sunday comics, spread these strips throughout the paper instead of having a comics page, because the publishers knew people would venture anywhere, even into the ad sections, to follow their heroes.) Alphonse Mutt, originally A. Mutt, began as a one gag panel cartoon and then became a .strip. Every week he would play the races, lose, and go grumbling home. The cartoonist picked actual horses that were running in races the day the paper appeared, and once chose a longshot which won, meaning suddenly everyone had to buy the paper, hoping lightning would strike twice. A. Mutt eventually teamed with an escapee from an asylum, a short little man who thought he was boxing champion Jim Jeffries, and the long-running strip “Mutt and Jeff” was launched. Bud Fisher held onto the copyright to the characters, made his own animated silent cartoons starring the duo (in which he also appeared, often splattered with ink by his own drawings), and eventually owned his own stable of racehorses, one of whom did win the Preakness Stakes, while another of his horses, Mr. Mutt, finished second in the Belmont.
We have already discussed the work of illustrator, cartoonist, comic strip star Frederick Burr Opper, who created a huge phenomenon in Happy Hooligan, who started as just one of a number of unlucky tramp characters, but took the world by storm to such an extent
That there were several spin-offs from the strip, including a strip starring comic Frenchmen Alphones and Gaston. Opper also drew And Her Name Was Maude and was known for his editorial cartoons (one of which, in 1894, actually uses the phrase “fake news”.) He might be the first cartoonist to have a memorial service broadcast over the radio.
Not every comic strip artist who achieved popularity achieved lasting fame, however. Paul Branson was a nature artist at heart, and his more realistic work was produced for paintings or as illustrations for children’s books. As a cartoonist, though, he chose the Lilliputian mode (societies involving tiny creatures coexisting with us continue to this day, by way of the Tinies, the Littles, and others.) HIS society was entirely made up of bugs, and started as panel cartoons, becoming comic strips as time went by. These were clipped by fanatic readers who found his insects much more companionable than the ones they ran into in the three dimensional world.
There were other cartoonists who did the same sort of thing, of course (we have not even brushed against the many Katzenjammer kids and Buster Brown postcards), and there were similar phenomena in Europe. But I have given you a taste of it at least, in hopes that one day you will reminisce about this column (which will mean that you have topped me by being nostalgic about someone who was being nostalgic about nostalgia.)
Sheer ecstasy is what they mean. The gardenia appears more often in flower language books as Cape Jasmine. See also JASMINE, CAPE.
*GARLAND “Love’s Bondage”
“Love for a garden has powerful influence in attracting men to their homes, and on this account, every encouragement given to increase a taste for ornamental gardening is additional security for domestic comfort and happiness.” The Monthly Repository and Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Dec., 1832, p. 246
GARLIC “Courage and Strength”
Gay feather: see LIATRIS
Genista: see BROOM
GENTIAN “Virgin Pride”
That is, pride in being one. I understand this sort of thing is coming back into style.
GENTIAN, FRINGED “Intrinsic Worth”
The Gentian is named for King Gentius of Illyria, who believed in the medical uses of gentians. See also CENTAURY.
GENTIAN, YELLOW “In Gratitude”
GENTIANA FRITILLAIRA “A Blessing”
GERANIUM “Gentility”
They explain this by saying that the geranium has a variety to please anybody who comes along and that an ability to be gracious to all comers is a sign of gentility. Geraniums are also accommodating about growing just about anywhere you stick them.
This flower is also known as Crane’s Bill, with varieties or second cousins known as Stork’s Bill and Heron’s Bill, or Pelargonium. The Stork’s Bill, or Pelargonium, was included in Herr Klingenbeck’s book, with the meaning “Delicate Doubt”. The little poem suggests the traditional role of storks, but he gets no more specific than that.
GERANIUM, APPLE “Present Preference”
This is no doubt related to the meaning for Apple Blossom.
GERANIUM, CRANE’S BILL “Envy”
No, I don’t know why, if Stork’s Bill is another name for Geranium, there should be a Crane’s Bill Stork’s Bill. I can’t tell you what these people were thinking; I only report what they wrote.
GERANIUM, DARK “Melancholy”
GERANIUM, FISH “Disappointed Expectations”
If you have the time and the opportunity, look up a little book called The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1836. Be prepared to go through security to do so, because Edgar Allan Poe wrote one of his more famous stories for it. But you can read that in lots of books. Turn instead to William l. Stone’s “The Language of the Flowers” for a rambling article filled with observations on this and that. Stone takes floriography back to the Garden of Eden. I cannot strike from my mind the picture he paints of Eve, on her first day of existence, going around and watering the geraniums. After actually discussing flower language for a page or two, he veers off into the tale of Margaret Moncrieffe, a daring and, of course, beautiful British spy held prisoner during the American revolution. She passed her time in captivity painting a dainty little flower picture, chatting about flower language to the American general, Israel Putnam. (It was not a very harsh imprisonment: Margaret was of a certain level of society and, besides, the Americas hoped to lure her father over to their side.)
The general was so charmed by her that he was thanking her for the visit when her release was arranged when a dashing young colonel stepped into the conversation and pointed out that the stems and the leaves in the flower painting somehow formed an accurate outline of the fort they were standing in, with certain landmarks pointed out by large blossoms. Margaret promptly fell in love with the colonel, who was apparently the first man she’d ever met who was as smart as she was. Alas, when her father found out, he married her off to a landowner in England. She wound up as a mistress of the Duke of York. It’s a rather unsatisfactory ending to such a dashing romance, and takes the text farther and farther away from flower language. But
you need to kick back and take a break from floriography once in a while. Don’t be so intense: you know what that does to your digestion.
*GERANIUM, HERB ROBERT “Do Not Think That I Am Such a Person”
GERANIUM, HORSHESHOE-LEAF “Stupidity”
The geranium is so good about growing just about anywhere you shove a branch of it into the ground that some people take it as a symbol of amiable stupidity. Try to be nice and see where it gets you. Red geraniums especially are given this meaning thanks to Mme. De Stael, raconteur and letter-writer, who compared a scarlet geranium to a good-looking soldier in a bright red uniform, whom she’d met earlier in the day. They were both easy on the eye, she said, but utterly worthless otherwise.
GERANIUM, IVY “Bridal Favor”
This meaning started with Sarah Josepha Hale but a goodly number of floriographers follow E.W. Wirt, who made it “May I Have Your Hand for the Next Dance?” Be sure you and your sweetheart have read the same book when you hand over this flower, or you may not know what you’re asking for.
Laura Peroni goes along with the majority meaning, but edits it to mean “Inclination for a Permanent Relationship.” These people are everywhere.
GERANIUM, LEMON “Unexpected Meeting”
I ask people if they’ve tried a little Lemon Geranium on their Fish Geranium, and all I get are these funny looks.
GERANIUM, MOURNING “Despondency”
*GERANIUM, NUSK “Constancy”
GERANIUM, NUTMEG “An Expected Meeting”
GERANIUM, OAK “True Friendship”
This is also known as the Oakleaved Geranium. One floriographer, in fact, has a separate listing for Leaf of Oakleaved Geranium, “I Give You the Truest Friendship”. You can play One-Upmanship even with flower language, I guess.
GERANIUM, PENCILLED “Ingenuity”
Not many floriographers used the story for their flower language, but it is apparently not permissible to write about Geraniums without telling the tale of where all geraniums came from. No, they were NOT brought by storks to be Stork’s Bill Geraniums. It seems that Mohammed went in swimming one day and hung his clothes over a mallow. The mallow was so overcome by the honor that it started to blush, and has been a geranium ever since. That’s okay, as far as it goes, but I can’t help thinking there ought to be more to the story.
Geranium, Pink: See GERANIUM, ROSE
Geranium, Red: see GERANIUM, SCARLET, and GERANIUM, HORSESHOE-LEAF
Geranium, Red, Dark: See GERANIUM, SORROWFUL
GERANIUM, ROSE “Preference”
This was a very popular flower among the Victorians, who loved the rose-scented leaves. The pressing of fragrant leaves and flowers in books goes back farther than I expected. Geoffrey Grigson tells of buying an Elizabethan book and finding not only a pansy that was pressed there, but also a marginal note showing that the flower had been there for 350 years. I like the thought, although it suggests that no on read the book for three or four centuries. As a writer, I’m bound to find that chilling. Can’t you just put them in an unabridged dictionary?
GERANIUM, SCARLET “Comforting”
But see GERANIUM, HORSEHOE-LEAF
GERANIUM, SILVER-LEAVED “Recall”
GERANIUM, SORROWFUL “Melancholy Spirit”*
*GERANIUM, VARIEGATED “Ingenuity”
This may be just another name for the Penciled Geranium.
GERANIUM, WILD “Steadfast Piety”
One of the floriographers who picked this meaning has been in print since 1968. The book is sometimes attributed to Margaret Pickston, and sometimes to “Father”.
The Language of the Flowers is a pretty little gift book and, according to Margaret Pickston’s introduction, a facsimile of a hand-drawn book by “Father” (she doesn’t know whose father) which he made for presentation to his wife on their anniversary in 1911. This is what, in fact, it looks like: there are age spots (foxing) on some pages, and there are places where Father drew dotted lines to show where a flower meaning he’d left out belonged alphabetically.
I cannot, however, track down where Father got his flower language. A lot of his meanings are traditional ones, but a number of them appear in no other flower language book until after 1968, when the facsimile was published. This does not mean Margaret Pickston was faking: Father may have made up some meanings or he may have been taking his floriography from some book I haven’t seen yet. The book has, however, been influential since 1968. Anyone in need of a nice, inexpensive flower language dictionary picks up either this one or the latest reprint of Kate Greenaway. Murder Ink, an anthology of essays about mystery stories, took its flower language from this, but gave it a sinister turn.
Gilly-Flower: see STOCK
GINGKO “Arcane Knowledge”
The Gingko is also known as the Maidenhair Tree. The leaf is light brown and fan-shaped, and I suppose it gave much the same impression to susceptible gardeners as the maidenhair fern. Knowing these risqué associations is one of the joys of learning a fern language.
GLADIOLUS “Ready-Armed”
The gladius was a sword carried by gladiators, and some people are reminded of it by the shape of this flower. (In some areas, it is known as Sword-Lily.) The flower may or may not be at the root of the name Gladys, though of course, some Gladyses go unarmed.
*GLASSWORT “Pretension”
The name comes from having its ashes used in making fine glass. Claire Powell says the meaning comes from the way it droops over water, reminding you of a woman looking at her own reflection.
GLORY FLOWER “Glorious Beauty”
GLOXINIA “A Proud Spirit”
GLYCINE “Your Friendship is pleasing and Agreeable to Me”
The soybean, from which we get tofu, among other things, is a glycine. It appears only in the later editions of Mme. De Latour’s book.
*GOLDEN FEATHER “Riches”
GOLDENROD “Precaution”
I know lots of people who take precautions before risking a whiff of goldenrod. Before it got its reputation as a bane to hay fever sufferers (a reputation now considered unjustified) it was used as a treasure-seeking plant (it will supposedly point to buried treasure) or as a flavoring in herbal medicines, to make them more palatable. This caused its minority meaning, “Encouragement”.
GOLDY-LOCKS , FLAX-LEAVED “Tardiness”
You wouldn’t think she’d be tardy if she had three bears chasing her. Unless this is a reference to “the late Goldilocks”.
GOOSEBERRY “Anticipation”
This has to do with the way it blooms so early in spring, and not at all the meaning you were anticipating.
GOOSEFOOT “Goodness”
See also BONUS HENRICUS, which is a variety of Goosefoot.
*GOOSEFOOT, GRASS0-LEAVED “I Declare War Against You”
Claire Powell says that in Italy, it is a straight insult to hand anyone the stems of this plant.
GORSE “Anger”
All prickly plants mean something unpleasant. (Okay, not roses: flowers outrank thorns.)
*GORSE, TWO SPRIGS “Reciprocated Love”
And not when Mr. Morato is writing about them.
GOURD “Bulk, Extent”
*GRAIN, ONE STALK “Look for Goods and Wealth”
*GRAIN, DOUBLE “Hope and Contentment”
*CRAIN, TRIPLE “Assured Wealth”
*GRAIN, DEVOID OF GRAIN “Vain Hope”
GRAMMANTHUS CHLORAFLORA “Your Temper is Too Hasty”
GRAPE, WILD “Charity”
This is one of the meanings which go back to 1829 and Dorothea Dix. Dorothea Dix, if you have forgotten the three minutes they spent on her in your grade school history classes, was a schoolteacher who wrote a few books for children; most critics now call them forgettable (one of these was her flower language book.) She got to feeling poorly, and her doctor told her she’d better give up her day job and rest. So she spent the rest of her life working like a dog on a crusade on behalf of the mentally ill. She made rude calls on businessmen who wouldn’t donate, and hounded politicians with descriptions of some of the snake pits where the mentally ill of all grades, from the merely eccentric or recalcitrant to the completely shut-off, were imprisoned. One of her chief goals was the establishment of a National Insane Asylum, run by the government on the latest and most humane treatment methods. She nearly made it, too. President Buchanan never got around to signing the appropriation, and Abraham Lincoln had other things to think about almost immediately. So that never got done, but Dorothea Dix did a great deal of good along the way, bringing to society’s attention a lot of people it was trying to forget. And we owe it all to some physician who felt women were the weaker sex and shouldn’t try to hold paying jobs.
GRASS “Utility”*
You can use grass for all kinds of things, especially if you include Bamboo. A popular minority meaning is “Submission”, because grass stays down when stepped upon.
*GRASS, ONE BLADE “I Beg An Answer, please”
*GRASS, ONE BLADE, TIED IN A KNOT “I No Longer Wither Away For Your Love”
*GRASS, IN BLOOM “That Pleases Me”
*GRASS, DOG “War and Death”
The Lehners, who are the only authorities who mention this, say Dog Grass was dedicated to Mars, Roman God of Offensive War. (Minerva was the Goddess of Defensive War. They had specialists even in those days.)
This is not a food blog. Nor is it a parenting blog, though I am eminently suited to writing one of those, having no children. HOWEVER, I thought I would pass along a few gimmicks for the impending holidays.
These are not specifically holiday recipes. There was no particular rhyme or reason that was obvious to my mind about when my mother would come up with these things. I enjoyed these dishes, which were primarily snacktime foods, and did not question why I was eating them. But as I become aged and suspicious, I have been wondering if some of my mother’s food choices were ploys to keep us busy
For the first recipe, for example, you require only two ingredients: a shallow plastic bowl/cup/container of chocolate chips and a similar container of miniature marshmallows (rainbow, if obtainable.) The child in question takes care of the rest of the recipe. One chocolate chip must be carefully inserted, pointy end first, into one of the flat surfaces of one marshmallow. With certain baby brains (mine, for example) this is wonderfully time-consuming. The chocolate chips which are still in perfect condition, with a little curve to the pointy finial, are not as good for this. And there are those (you know who you are) who do not know any better than to try to insert a chocolate chip into the SIDE of a marshmallow.
Um, no, you do not need a baking pan or anything to put this on. After the chocolate chip has been inserted into the marshmallow, you eat the combination. Saves on storage, and clears your work area for the next marshmallow. I remember using a lot of concentration to get each chocolate chip carefully centered, so this constructive chore would keep me busy for, oh, easily half an hour at a time.
I assume there are some children who will bypass these difficult steps and simply eat the chocolate chips and then the marshmallows, or vice versa. SOME, I suppose, will alternate without actually inserting one into the other. Perhaps I was the only toddler detail-obsessed enough to fall for this one.
But I guarantee you’ll generate interest with the second recipe. You need full-sized marshmallows this time, a small number of clean Popsicle sticks (or other wooden sticks of similar design), and a small lighted candle in a stable candlestick. Depending on how carefully you have auditioned the children to help you with this recipe, you way wish to invest in a flame-resistant tablecloth.
The child sticks the marshmallow firmly on the wooden stick and turns it over the flame until the marshmallow is a delicate golden brown on all sides. If you have that sort of child, of course. I was infamous for preferring to set the outer coating of my marshmallow on fire and let it burn a while. (This is why you need substantial sticks.) The charred outer coating could be sucked off, leaving a partially molten marshmallow underneath to be cooked again. This is, obviously, a wee bit more hazardous than the last recipe but more exciting, and will probably occupy the child/children involved until all the marshmallows are gone, the sticks have been burned through (genuine Popsicle sticks would stand up to a lot of this, being of a good size AND probably still slightly saturated with orange or grape flavoring), or the flaming marshmallows have set off the smoke alarm for the fifth time.
For our third and final recipe, the only one I still occasionally indulge in, you need a saucer, a spoon, a small knife, a pound of Colby cheese, and a jar of honey. Cut your Colby (sharp cheddar is acceptable: the cheese needs to be hard and a bit salty) into finger-food strips and then hide the knife from the tots involved. Dollop a generous tablespoon of honey into the center of the saucer. Now each slice of cheese can be dipped in the honey and eaten. There MAY be clean-up involved–one child can spread a tablespoon of honey most anywhere—but think of the relative peace and quiet while the smallfry consumes what are essentially two healthy foods at one and the same time.
These are all the family secrets for today. I have a notion in my noggin about those Christmas cookies we made every year. My mother found baking cookies a little fussy (switch pans from rack to rack, watch to make sure they don’t burn, keep small fingers away from them until they cool) but I recall we took a loooong time over each cookie, deciding where to place the cinnamon beads and silver balls and colored sugars and long thin sprinkles. We could NOT have been doing that for the food value (for one thing, a cookie coated with all that is virtually inedible.)
But if you are desperate at some point in the holidays to find occupation for tiny relatives, you can give these a try. The nice thing about food is that it is a temptation to older children to volunteer for supervisory duties and you may be able to draw away from adorable and exhausting children into a soothing cup of tea or hot cocoa, or single malt whiskey. (At least until the fight breaks out over who is stealing whose marshmallows.) Happy Holidays!
Once upon a time, there was a whole world of migrant vagrants. The lore of this world can be found in many nations, and members of the group served as heroes, villains, or comic relief in many a story. Some were men down on their luck, while others were princes in disguise. But by and large, it was a life’s occupation. The class started to drop out of pop culture after World War II. Diesel trains were harder to hop, requiring a state ID to hold any kind of job made the migrant’s lot harder, and the Sixties in particular dragged in all manner of new issues as dropping out of society took on a political charge.
The inhabitants of this world went by many names. Someone on Wikipedia has gone to the trouble of defining the differences between hoboes, bums, and tramps. A hobo, says this authority, travels and works, a tramp travels but avoids work wherever possible, while a bum neither travels nor works. Some would disagree, but you can go into the subject more deeply on other websites: hobo culture particularly has attracted attention from scholars and collectors for eons.
The characters seen in most comic books, cartoons, and movies, therefore, would seem to be tramps. They spend a lot of time arranging for transportation.
Some of them in more comfort than others.
But by and large, they are always seen traveling by rail. (That bundle carried on a stick over the shoulder is known as a bindle, by the way. It was usually made up of spare clothes and bedding. Sometimes the stick is called a bindle stick, while others prefer to use this term for the entire stick and bindle set. I have been unable to find out if a bindle is still a bindle if there is no stick. A bindlestiff is a hobo or tramp who carries such a device. Try working your new vocabulary into conversation this week.)
Of course, the automobile offered new manners of traveling from town to town. These frequently turned out to be very similar to train travel.
Higher even on the priority list than transportation, though, was arranging one’s daily menu. Could these lads have made it in a world of aluminum and even plastic cans?
Fresher food was preferable, but it was seasonal. The symbiotic relationship of tramps and cooks who left pies on the windowsill to cool was another one of those ecological features we have destroyed in modern times.
In the right climates, though, a quick worker could harvest lunch at most any time of year.
Though the ambience of outdoor cafés could vary widely.
Once one had the problems of travel and sustenance figured out, though, a tramp was as free as air, without having to give up his leisure time to work or family. So there was that.
Blogsy Babbles 