Blogsy Babbles

     Oh, very well.  If you have to hear how the story finishes up, we can put the joke column off until Wednesday.  How the millions of joke column fans will…what was that?  Don’t be rude.

     I hope everyone who read the first two installments has tuned in for the conclusion and was not thrown off by what may have seemed an unnecessarily crude detail in our second installment.  Those who had been reading may have remembered vaguely that this was a story about the immigrant experience, and how my grandfather felt there was a lesson to be learned in the story of HIS grandmother about how to treat The Other, the stranger who wasn’t like you.

     Yes, we ARE going to get to the story,  We left sixteen year-old Magdalena “Lena” Ruppel lying in the straw at the livery stable, afflicted by the pangs of cholera, a deadly disease that was seasonal throughout the civilized world at this time.  No one wanted tyo have anything to do with the German-speaking waif who was obviously sick: half a dozen white people hurried past and a black man turned and ran.

     Well, if you think of Galena as Oz, and Lena as Dorothy, she had just encountered her three main allies.  The freedman who turned and ran was going to serve as her Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion.  Like the Woodman, he had a heart, and it went out to anyone dying on a sunny day in Galena.  Like the Lion, he had courage, and did not fear the disease that was going around.  But like the Scarecrow, he also had a brain.  This was Galena, Illinois, it was 1843, and he knew what would happen to a black man seen carrying a white woman through the streets of town.  He would be no use to Lena once he’d been pummeled to pulp.

     So when he ran, it was home to his wife, where he called “Ma, there’s a little Dutchy girl with the cholera lying in the straw at the livery stable, and she;s going to die if we don’t help!”  His wife did not pause to take off her apron, but hurried down to carry Lena to safety.

     Lena received the care she needed to recover, and also got some advice from the couple who had carried her away from death.  “You’ll always catch the cholera when it comes back, now you’;ve had it once,” she was told.  :What you want to do is cross the river and go to Dubuque, Iowa.  They never have the cholera there.”

     Dubuque was a lead-mining town well-known in a lead-shipping city like Galena.  And it had grown up in one of the hilliest sections of Iowa.  (It ain’t all flat fields of corn and hallucinatory baseball diamonds.)  Because of all the hills, sewage ran down into the Mississippi River before it had time to contaminate the drinking water supply (except for those who drew directly from the Mississippi) and it thus had an accidental but true reputation of being healthy.

     So when she was well enough to travel, Lena hit the road again.  She had learned a modest bit of English by this time, and was able to find work in the home of an old woman who lived alone.  Lena, you need not guess, did the laundry, washed the dishes, washed the floors…Lena’s life was a soap opera in more ways than one.

     Iowa had not even become a state at that point, and life was still on the frontiersy rugged side: they had absolutely NO WiFi.  So the lady of the house amused herself by taking an interest in the lives of those around her.  There was a sturdy young man from Alsace doing the yardwork and carpentry and other heavy chores around the house, and the lady never lost a chance to drop a hint to Lena about what a fine husband Heinrich would make for some lucky girl.

     Lena and Heinrich (later Henry) were married, and had four children, whom she tried to teach, among other things, that people who didn’t look like you or talk like you were not necessarily evil.  Henry died young (trying to build a better house than his brother’s, he lifted a stone that was just THAT much too heavy.)  Lena fretted about her youngest child, a ne’er-do-well who hopped freights around the country, learning about more people who didn’t look or talk like him, until she finally bought stock in a furniture company so she could make the supervisors give the boy a job.  He was named Jacob, after Lena’s brother, but legally switched his first name with his middle name, August, so people would call him Gus, which sounded less foreign.  (Lena did not live to see World War I, when speaking German in public eas banned in Iowa, but there were already those who looked on foreigners with suspicion.)

     My grandfather preferred to end this tale by pointing it out that it happened in 1843, and noting that in 1943, just one hundred years after Lena decided she was going to die in a pile of straw, he was leader of a Boy Scout troop.  The local Scout supervisor came to him and asked if he could add one more boy to the troop.

     The troop was already about as big as he could efficiently manage, but he said, “I suppose so.”

     The Scoutmaster said, “I should warn you.  This boy has been turned down by three other troops.”

     My grandfather thought it over.  “Does he smoke?’

     “No.”

     “:Does he drink?”

     “No.”
     “:Is he crazy?”

     “No,  He’s a Negro.”

     <y grandfather kept asking questions.  “Is he over twelve?”

     “Yes.”

     “Does he want to be a Scout?”

     “Yeah, that’s the problem.  He….”

     “Will he take the Boy Scout oath?”

     “I suppose.”

     My grandfather nodded.  “My manual says if ha boy is over 12, wants to be a Scout, and will take the oath, he can be a Scout,.  It doesn’t say anything about being a Negro.”

     “You’ll take him?”

     My grandfather never mentioned  this Scout’s name, but mentioned he was a good Scout: not the best and far from the worst, and lost to the world of Scouting when  high school started.  (The Boy Scouts lost a lot of them at high school age in Dubuque because baseball practice night was the same night as Scouting night, and each boy had to make a choice.)  But in his own way, he felt he had lived up to Lena’s story about a man who rescued a stranger who spoke a different language and was a different color.

          Eons ago, a lot of jokes in this country dealt with The Other, people who were outside the norm, who had different clothing, different ways, and different language.  This became known as “ethnic humor”, and is now largely considered passe, if not downright evil.  I don’t have much interest in debating the question: some people regarded jokes about their ethnic group as recognition that their group existed at all, while others took the jokes as straight insult.  These postcards from Cavally’s portrait series seem rather genial to me, but I have been told I am incorrect.  I think it is no coincidence that the downfall of the ethnic joke came around the same time as the generation that had been born over here, and didn’t LIKE to be mistaken for those people who were funny, and awkward, and different (their parents and grandparents.)  One of my grandfathers, as a boy, disliked intensely being reminded of his ethnic background, and didn’t like visiting his heavily accented and over emotional grandmother.

     My grandfather grew into a staunchly conservative Republican, and had definite views about The Other, and how people who were different ought to be treated.  He regretted very much that he hadn’t been nicer to his grandmother, and, when fortified with strong coffee, would tell her story.  Sometimes he could take two hours about it, and I wish I had had the nerve to tale a tape recorder with me.  But I will tell the story of this ethnic adventuress in rather less time,. (I hope.)

     Once upon a time in Hesse (I have forgotten whether it was Hesse-Darmstadt or Hess-Casse;, but my grandfather knew) there was a family of farming Hessians comprising Mom and Dad and four children.  Jacob was the oldest of the children, the only boy, AND the tallest of them, coming it at around five foot one.  Not a tall family, the Ruppels.

     Mom and Dad died in an epidemic.  The children mourned, but there was a farm to run, and the cows need to be milked no matter who died.  Jacob and his three sisters worked the farm together until one day the Notice was posted.

     If you have heard of Hessians at all, you know that these were Herman soldiers hired by the British to fight in the American Revolution.  This was how the Hessian governments stayed solvent: they drafted their young men, trained them, and rented them out to other countries.    The Notice stated that all men of a certain age should report for duty: the government needed the money.

     Jacon didn’t especially want to go.  Hesse was filled with the damaged veterans of previous levies, and, anyhow, he didn’t see how he could leave his sisters alone to run the farm.  For one thing, he was the only one tall enough to harness the horse (not wealthy, either, this family).  Those of you from the city might think one of the girls could just stand on a footstool. But a horse is no dummy.  He knows all he has to do is take one step away from you and you have to get down, move the stool, and start over, whereupon he can move one step forward.  He can do this as long as you can: it may be tedious but it’s more fun than hauling a plow.

     Then, too, if news got out that the farm was being run by three small teenaged girls (The shortest and youngest was Magdelena, who at 16 was just four feet tall) this might give ideas to some of those veterans who, unable to find work, gathered into gangs to pillage and loot.  Killing three girls  would have been easy work for someone who had been off fighting in other countries’ wars.  And, after all, killing wasn’t exactly necessary: they could do other things which would make the women happy to marry them and let them loaf on the farm while the young ladies, between producing offspring, could do the work.

     So Jacob and his sisters resolved to get out of Dodge.  They sold the farm quickly got noy much money.  The neighbors were sympathetic about Jacob’s plight, but knew a desperate seller won’t haggle.  The four used that money to get transportation. They turned up at the seaside one jump ahead of the authorities (who had some experience finding draftees who didn’t want to go),  and completely out of funds.

     Next time: How the Kids got to America, though all Lena saw on the ocean trip was suds.

     Postcard cartoonists in days of yore held strong opinions, or anyway expressed strong opinions, about clothes.  They were cartoonists, after all, and whether clothes make the man or vice versa, they found clothes a very easy way to establish character.  The way a character was clothed told you what the cartoonist wanted you to think about him.  We are, as I think I have hinted in those last few sentences, going to look at how men dressed in postcards, as women’s dress had to carry a variety of messages, from what the cartoonist thought of some new fashion to whether we were expected to take the postcard home and pin it up somewhere the ladies of the house wouldn’t look

     We are excluding, with some regret, golf clothes, which are also an entirely different matter, both on postcards and in life generally.  Froggy,. At the top of this column, will have to wait for some other blog.

     We have discussed, hereintofore, some fashions in men’s clothes, particularly the stiff collar a man could attach to his shirt.  The height of one’s collar had said something about one’s status as a man in polite society, and it was argued from the beginning of the nineteenth century until World War I.  A very high collar signified high fashion and wealth to some people, and stupidity and uselessness to others.  To some cartoonists, the four went together anyhow, as seen in this scene, which, in case you didn’t know you were supposed to laugh at these blokes, monocles and a kind of male bustle have been added to the scene.

     At least their clothing is the right color. Going back in men’s fashion, we find that it is prince Albert who, by his sober example, changed men’s fashion in the direction of dark hues.  A Regency buck in, oh, 1808, would have thought nothing of light blue trousers or a forest green jacket (probably not together.)  But Prince Albert’s dark suits led to five or six funereal generations in men’s clothing.  Men could, and did, wear colors, but the cartoonists recorded what the rest of society thought of them.

     Such men were suspected of donning flashy dress to make a stir, which the proper gentleman did not.  (This fellow is succeeding in making a stir, but, the cartoonist feels, not a really good one.)

     The artist of the Mollycoddle series could have indulged in worse name-calling than that, but preferred to express opinions through wardrobe.  The central figure here is wearing a gaudy striped sweater with spotless white pants (known universally as “white ducks”), the marks of a weekend athlete, if that.  (Striped sweaters were fabored by muscular members of college football teams—in pre-uniform, pre=helmet days—and he’s not exactly showing off a football physique.)  And any sport you could indulge in while wearing heels that high was not considered much of a sport.

     This mollycoddle goes in for fashion faux pas of another sort.  His watch fob (if he has a watch) is prominent, and adorned with a popular good luck charm.  His tie is broad, his mustache is thin, and his pants are baggy.  Once again, the mollycoddle has dressed to impress, but is not impressing us favorably.  (Quick quiz: list three words the cartoonist may have wanted you to think of instead of “mollycoddle” while looking at these pictures.  Very good.  Now go wash your brain out with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.)

     Dressing so people notice you is to be avoided.  People may not be thinking of you what you think they should.

     As an antidote to all these encouragements to dress soberly, we shall close with the always reasonable Walter Wellman, who warns us that fashions change, and wishes us to be mindful of that.  After all, it is now the twenty-first century, and if you wish to wear a plaid jacket with a striped sweater and polka dot trousers, you just go ahead and be you.  (As a precaution, though, you might want to add a bag of golf clubs.)

     Now, this is the third time in a row I am going to begin this column by opointing out that it is summer and, as Lewis Carroll decreed, what I tell you three times is true.  It seems appropriate, then, in this time of vacations and warm leisure, to present a collection of old jokes dealing with the things people do when they’re off work.  As always, the answers are hidden at the end, when you feel like going to the trouble of working that far down the page.

     J1.”How was the game, honey?” the woman asked her husband as he set his golf clubs in the closet.”

     “The worst,” he said.  “It was hot, the golf cart wouldn’t work, and after playing four holes in that heat, Ted grabbed his chest and dropped dead.”

     “Wow!  How horrible.”

     “I’;l say.  After that (          )”

J2.The golfer was about to try a putt when, on the highway just beyond the ninth green, a funeral procession passed.  He set the putter against his bag, took off his hat, and waited until the heatrse and the fifty or sixty cars behind it passed in slow procession.  Then he addressed the ball and sank the putt.

     “It was thoughtful of you to show respect like that,” said his partner.

     “It was only right,” he replied.  “After all (          )”

J3.”If you’re so bored,” Steve’s wife said, “Why don’t you play golf?”

     “Ah, everyone’s busy today,” he told her.

     “Why not call up Jim.  He’s retired, too, so he should be available.”

     “Huh!  Would you play with someone who kicks your ball into the rough when you’re not looking, coughs whenever you putt, and refuses to count the swings where he misses the ball when he’s counting up his strokes?”

     “I guess not.”

     “Well, (          ).”

J4.Every Thursday, the foursome met for cards at Casey’s bar and Pizza.  And, every Thursday they could depend on old Buck wandering over to watch, criticizing their play on every hand, expressing contempt for their lack of skill, and just generally making a nuisance of himself.

     “We need to teach him a lesson,” said Bill, one Thursday.  “Let’s start playing, but make up the game as we go along.  Then he can’t criticize.”

     The rest agreed, and when they saw Buck start in their direction, started a game in which each player was dealt eight cards.  “Lemme see,” said Bill, “I’ll take one card and discard two.  I think I have an ultrapong.  I’ll bet ten.”

     “Ha!,” said Jim, tossing down one card.  “I’ll see you ten.  Looks like I have a pippeck.”

     “I can do better,” said Joe, pulling his cards to his chest.  “I have a snozzle.  I make it twenty.”

     Tim tossed four twenties into the pot.  “Well, I’ll raise you.  I’ve got a spludge!”

     Buck couldn’t take any more.  “What are you doing?”

     “Can’t figure it out, eh?” said Jim.

     “No!” snapped Buck, “(          )”

J5.Carl, carrying his rod and his tackle box, stopped at the store on his way home.  He told the man behind the meat counter.  “Wrap up two trout.  And can you throw them over the counter to me?”

     “Sure thing,” said the butcher.  “But why?”

     “Headed home,” said Carl, “And (          )”

J6.The hunters trudged through the forest, becoming more and more convinced that their guide was leading them in circles.  “Admit it,” said Tom, “You’re lost!  And I thought you said you were the best guide in the state of Maine!”

     “I am,” said their guide, “But (          )”

Set that frosty mug of root beer to one side, adjust your bag of chips, and check to see whether I have gotten the same ANSWERS you did.

     A1.It was fourteen holes of Hit the ball, drag Ted, hit the ball, drag Ted….

     A2.We were married for thirty-five years.

     A3/Neither will Steve

     A4.What kind of idiot raises a snozzle with a spludge?

     A5.I want to tell my wife I caught them

     A6.I think we’re in Canada now.

     Well, we are thoroughly into summer now (I saw my first Back-to-School Sale ads) so perhaps you feel this is the wrong time to discuss romance in the long grass.  But hey (this is the last time I’ll make that joke on this outing.  Promise.)  But grass grows more months of the year than in autumn, and romance is seasonless.  What I mean to say is that hay can be gathered from late spring through the earlt frosts, and there is no cut and dried season for gathering rosebuds.  (And we will put an end to the cut and dried jokes now, too.)

     Ecen in the big cities, few people were far from the concept of open fields, and the knowledge that long grass and other crops could provide camouflage for experiments in animal husbandry.  I do think the publishers of this postcard could have shoved down the grass just THERE, as it creates a sightline that gives the impression the young lady’s figure…well, I wasn’t there.  Maybe the growth was abundant that year.)

     This all played into a city-grown concept of farm romance, which was a major factor in popular literature in the nineteenth century.  See, it probably derives from the idea, pushed by Thomas Jefferson and others, that city life was generally unhealthy, and life in the country air was more robust, more real.  This is now seen mainly in cowboy romances, but there used to be a vast movement by city folk to spend some time on a farm during the main growing season, during which the city folk would pay for the privilege of working like, well, like farmers from dawn ‘til dusk, just so they might have a chance at scenes like this.  (In reality, the city folk would be too exhausted by the constant work—so were a lot of the farm folk—to engage in hanky=panky, but we are dealing in romance here.  The caption of this card, by the way, is a reference to an urban pop song, though tall grass plays its part in the story.)

     Of course, if one stayed up late at night, after the chickens had gone to roost, maybe you’d all get your second wind.  Then the camouflage of a handy haystack might prove useful.

     I do not have much data on the mechanics of the proposition, but I do think what you did if underneath a haystack was try to get out again.  Maybe this form of hay is easier to draw so it can be understood than a hayloft, which I should think would be more convenient for this sort of hay fever.  Note that the chickens seem to be shocked.  (We will be making no jokes about shocks of grain, as I feel that is best left to the farm joke professionals.)

     Now, to get to the main target of this blog, we must consider the hayride, that adventure on which, if old stories are to be believed, romance could blossom and young couples got to know each other rather better than they could during the workday.  The hayride, I am told by the unromantic, started as a time when those working on the harvest could get a nap.  The hay had to be transported once cut, and kids and tired, er, hired hands would ride on top of the hay to the spot where it needed to be unloaded.  The hayride was wildly popular in farm romance, and pretty soon the farmers who charged city folk a fee to come and work on the farm realized that other city folk, out to the country on a day trip, would pay a fee to ride on the cargo.  One load of hay could bring in several loads of money, as carloads of tourists could be transported from farm to barn or railroad depot several times before the hay actually had to be unloaded.  (The approach of rain had to be measured against the approach of tourists, and the canny farmer had to time these trips just right for maximum profit.)

     The romantic possibilities of the hayride and the tourists who enjoyed it started somewhere in the late nineteenth century, and the city folk seemed to be having so much fun that hayrides became traditional even if there were no tourists available.  Even country folk were caught up in the romance of the thing, and the hayride, sold to tourists as an old rural tradition, eventuallt SDID become a rural tradition, associated with the autumn harvest and the celebrations that went along with completing the hard labor of the season.  All work and no play, after all….

     This postcard appears to have been published in 1910 by a major agricultural company (THE major agricultural company, as a matter of fact) and to my naughty modern eyes makes no secret about what we’re up in the hay for: good wholesome fresh air and a sense of fun.  The fact that we’ve paired off and are reclining…well, there’s nothing like the scent of new-mown hay.