More Yocks of Yore

     As we near the end of the chapters in my old joke quizbook, the offerings become more miscellaneous, but I can assure you that the quality of the gags themselves will not diminish for being less organized.  (I heard that, you in the back.  For that, you can stay after class and watch recordings of Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson.)

     As usual, the punchlines are missing, but I feel you will know what they are without checking the ANSWERS.

            J1.The nude model arrived at the artist’s studio to find him sitting at a small table in front of his half-finished painting of her.  “I just don’t seem to have the spark today,” he told her.  “Do you mind having a cup of coffee or two instead of getting right to work.”

     She shrugged and sat down across from him, sipping the coffee he poured while he discussed his latest insurance problems and what he thought about the chances the Cubs had of making the Pennant race.  He was in the middle of a sentence when they heard a knock at the door.

     “Good grief, that’s my wife!” he exclaimed.  “Quick!  (          )”

J2.I was doing my comedy act at the Castle Theatre back in ’99, and they added these jugglers to the show.  Brother, they were terrible!  Dropped stuff, tripped over their own shoes, couldn’t keep a rhyth,.  The audience started to throw things and just booed them off the stage.  Let me tell you how bad they were.  They were so bad that a minute after I started my routine, the audience (          )

     J3.Old Sherman Fiveandime was dying in the little apartment over the store he had opened sixty years before.  His family gathered around him, awaiting his last words.  After hours of silence, he opened one eye and gasped, “Is Mabel here?”

     “Yes, Sherman,” said his wife.

     “And Junior?”

     His son stepped to the bed.  “Yes, Father.”

     “And Annabelle?”

     His daughter exclaimed, “Yes, Father!  Yes!”

      Sherman opened both eyes.  “(          )”

J4.”Unless my boss takes back what he said to me today, I’m never going back to the office again!”

“Why, what did he say?”

“He said (          )”

     J5.At the staff meeting, Mr. Gotlots told one of his best jokes, the one about the white horse and the black horse.  Everyone roared with laughter except one woman at the far end of the table.

     “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, “Didn’;t you get it?”

     “Oh, yes,” she said, “But (          )”

J6.Ed and Carolyn went to the latest blockbuster movie and settled in to enjoy the show.  After a couple of minutes, Ed whispered to his wife, “Can you hear all right?”

     “:Yes, dear,” she said.

     “Can you see the screen okay?”

     “Yes, dear.”

     “Not sitting in a draft, are you?”

     “No, dear,” she said.

     “That’s good,” he told her.  “(          )”

J7.One of Ed’s friends asked him the next day, “So did the picture have a happy ending?”

     “Oh, yes,” he said.  “(         )”

J8.The play was the hit of the season, with waiting lists a mile long to get tickets.  Jack was amazed, when he was shown to his seat, to find the spot next to him empty, though the theater was packed.  “I wonder what happened to this fellow,” he observed to the woman on the other side of the empty spot.

     “Oh, that’s my husband’s seat, but he couldn’t be here,” she said.

     “That’s too bad,” Jack said, “But don’t you have a friend who could have used his ticket?”

     “Oh, no,” she replied.  “(          )”

Naturally, you know all these ANSWERS, but here they are so you can show them to your friends who didn’t.

     A1.Get your clothes off!

     A2.started booing the jugglers again;

     A3.Then who’s minding the store?

     A4.You’re fired.

     A5.I’m leaving at the end of the week anyhow.

     A6.Care to swap seats?

     A7.Everyone was happy when it ended.

     A8.They’re all at the funeral.

Watch for Those Mosquitoes

     Once upon a time, watermelon fondue, it wasn’t as easy to get water-soaked as it is today.  Taking a bath involved heating many buckets of water and filling a large waterproof tub in a large warm room (frequently the kitchen, so the tub was near the stove, meaning both the water and the bather would be warm.  (And since it was a huge waste of time to empty the tub and refill between every bather, you kind of wanted to be first in line,)

     Public swimming pools were few and far between, and there weren’t all that many private ones, either.  Your best recourse, whether your plan was to wash off a layer of dirt from the road you traveled or cool off in the summer, was to find some handy source of natural fresh water.  For those who lived near a beach, this was simple enough.  Some towns had traditional “swimming holes”, which might involve a little maintenance or supervision by the town council (more often not.)  If you lacked these things, you had to rely on occasionally finding an unsupervised bit of creek or lakefront.  If this was handy enough, you might bring a towel and swimming suit, but more often, it was a matter of serendipity.  This meant you took your chances for a quick swim by wrapping your clothes in a bundle on the shore and indulging in a bit of “skinny-dipping”, a quick bath in the fresh water.

     The world of cartoon and comic strip (and silent movie) is filled with the perils of this practice.  And postcards could not lag behind.  Chief among these perils was, of course, the danger that the private spot one found was not quite private enough.  In secluded rural areas, a lot of convenient bathing spots were known to wandering vagrants who were less interested in a bath than in a change of wardrobe.  OR a merry prankster who just wanted to see how you’d get home in your bares.

     Here our hero is beset by a playful dog.  AND a couple of witnesses who are laying bets.

     Alternately, one had to deal with the clueless, who, oblivious to your presence, nonetheless had to perch in some place with a good view, preventing you from leaving the water until they left the scene.

     There does seem to have been something of a double standard, mid-century, in how much you got to see of the embarrassed swimmer.  I think this is partly because it seemed funnier to show a bold, brave man cowering in the water up to his shoulders, and partly because your postcard artist didn’t get a lot of legitimate chances to draw nudes.  There ARE postcards involving female skinny=dippers in the early twentieth century, but in the cards I’ve seen, the women do not appear at all: there’s just an eager man hunting along the riverside after he finds piles of clothes. 

     This card makes use of the punchline of a fine old joke and loses a little in the translation.  (See, in the original, the swimmer realizes someone is coming but doesn’t have time to get to her clothes.  She grabs up an old washtub on the bank for modesty and snaps at the new arrival “Do you know what I think?’ and then…yeah, it’s not much funnier the way I tell it, is it?)

     I could whine about the joke here, too, if I wanted to.  This is a mere accidental skinny-dipper, someone who somehow got to the water past a number of onlookers, and never realized she’d forgotten an important part of dressing for the beach.

This is just a contextual gag; the sender simply wants to know what you’ve been doing, and uses this skinny=duiipper to frame the joke.

     There WAS at least one other joke about skinny-dippers, when the swimmers don’t realize they are being observed.  This one takes a neutral approach, but there are others which deal with the inconvenience caused to the accidental witness.  The poor would-be fisherman has his whole afternoon plan has been thrown off.  Might as well go home, if there’s nothing to do here after all.

     And there’s this wonderful scene which mingles inconvenience and embarrassment and a horrible lapse in logic that of course I am going to froth at the mouth about.  Let’s turn my complaints into a game, shall we, pickled marshmallow?  Which of these two is more clueless: the man who sat down to read, not noticing the clothes spread out on the rock, or the woman who has made it to her clothes without him seeing her, and lacks the brainpower to pick up ger undies and slip away?  Or is she just trying to decide whether to do that otr stay and watch HIM disrobe?  Frankly, they are both dim enough that if I was writing this little script, they would wind up at the end being embarrassed and getting dressed in a hurry in each other’s outfit.  Ah, the treasures the world lost because I wasn’t around to write for postcard companies.

     I think I’ll cool my seething brain with a nice cold shower.  I’ll pull the curtain.

Auto Eroticism

     Compared to today’s automobiles, you find in the picture above a rather comfortable back seat, with nice padding and plenty of, er, leg room.  If you could combine that with a very discreet chauffeur, so you didn’t have to waste any of your attention on actual driving, you created prime romantic real estate.  Or so our ancestors liked to pretend, in song, story, and postcard.

     In truth, those seats were built to be solid and largely unyielding, and anyone with sense would have put the roof up.  (No matter how discreet the driver, the neighbors are going to pay a lot of attention to auto-hugging.)  But you did get a little more fresh air than you would have in the family parlor, and that horsehair sofa was certainly no more soft and comfortable than the car’s :eather seat.  (Our ancestors, who by all accounts favored feather mattresses into which one could sink a good eighteen inches, preferred hard, straight furniture for sitting.  Somebody else should write a dissertation on this: I have postcards to polish.

     Those same ancestors were well-acquainted with the romantic possibilities of a long buggy ride.  The automobile might have offered greater speed and perhaps more distance, but the principle was very much the same.  A ride in the country offered that fresh air, beautiful scenery, and distance between a couple of joy riders and their parents.

     If Ma didn’t drive, she couldn’t keep track of what you were up to.  (If you reads French, you may realize this is actually a married couple explaining to Ma/Ma-in-Law that they’ll have a more charming trip by car if she walks.)

     Postcard artists were not, certainly, unaware of the dangers of a long ride in the country, and were willing to warn their readers of the same.

     Horse-drawn vehicles, after all, had offered a certain stability which might be lacking in an automobile.  The multi-tasking driver, having lost that equine ally, was taking new risks.

     The joys of observing nature were no excuse for not keeping one’s eyes on the road.

     One was risking damage to one’s automobile, one’s body, and, most of all, one’s relationships.

     Mind you, the artists were also willing to warn you about paying TOO much attention to your driving.  This was an era of open cars.

     Even if one paid a proper amount of attention to the driving AND one’s passengers, the toll could be exacting.  Romance on the road had its hazards no matter how it was conducted.

     One of those was marriage, of course, after which a ride in the country had to be rearranged.

Your Granddad’s Dad Jokes

     I hope you did not fear, when this blog took the holiday off last week, that we were out of old jokes.  We have not yet reached that catastrophe.  We have a few tales of other people’s catastrophes to try out on you first.  As always, in case you catastrophically cannot remember the punchline to one of these antiques, those are tucked away below.

     J1.Walter Prince opened his morning paper and found his own name and biography on the Obituary page.  Once he had checked his pulse and found it to be there, he called the Gazette and demanded that the mistake be corrected.

     “We never print retractions, sir,” said the editor.  “But I’ll tell you what.  Tomorrow (          )”

J2.”Boy, call me a cab.”

“Okay.  (          )”

     J3.The phone rang at three o’clock in the morning.  “Hey, is this the Metro Auto Loans Company?” asked a voice.

     “No,” said Rosemary.  “This is a private home.”

     “Oh, wow.  I’m really sorry to have called you at this hour.”

     “That’s okay.  (          )”

J4.”Who was that lady I saw with you last night?”

“That was no lady.  (          )”

     J5.”Well, you are the first person to answer our Help Wanted ad, so we give you points on self-motivation.  Now, where did you get your training for this kind of work?”

     “Yale.”

     “That is excellent.  And what is your name?”

     “(          )”

J6.Andrew called in an investment consultant after he’d won the lottery.  “I want to be intelligent about the money,” he said.

     “Very wise, young man,” said the consultant.  “You are aware, of course, that I charge one hundred thousand dollars to answer any two questions.”

     “A hundred thousand!  Isn’t that a lot of money to charge for just two questions?”

     “Yes.  (          )”

J7.”I know a man with a wooden leg, name of Smith.”

“Oh?  (          )”

     J8.”Do you serve crabs here?

     “(          )”

J9.”Have you lived in Needleburg all your life?””

“(          )”

     J10.Scott was finally able to take a break from his work at the bank and decided to make it worthwhile, with a nice long cruise.  On the second day out of port, however, he was admiring the ocean when a massive wave swept up and washed him overboard.  He yelled for help and was relieved to hear the cries of “Man overboard!”

     A voice from the deck called out, “We’re coming, sir!  Can you float alone?”

     “Yes,” he called back, “But (          )”

J11.”And thus,” said the professor, “We see that all our best measurements point to an end of the universe as we know it in fifteen billion years.”

     A hand shot up in the audience.  “How many years?”

     “Fifteen billion.”

     “Whew!  (          )”

J12.”You have an impressive resume.  Now, why did you leave your previous job?”

“Illness.”

“Illness?”

“Yes.  (          )”

     I know while these people were caughts in their various dilemmas, you had all the ANSWERS, but here they are anyhow.

     A1.We’ll list you in the Births column.

     A2.You’re a cab.

     A3.I had to get up anyway to answer the phone.

     A4.That was my wife.

     A5.Yohn Yohnson

     A6.Now what is your second question?

     A7.What’s the name of his other leg?

     A8.We serve anybody, sir.  Sit down.

     A9.Not so far.

     A10.is this any time to talk business?

     A11.I thought you said fifteen million.

     A12.The boss was sick of me.

Club Initiation

     Have I ever confided in you the deep, dark secret that I have no ambition to write a food blog?  I have occasionally considered starting a series where I could discuss some of my personal recipes (I am the originator and only known provider of Crawford Sausage, for example) but every time I think about it, it calls to mind that letter from Washington, D.C., asking that I spread my cooking advice only among those people known to be hostile to the United States.

     HOWEVER, I do wonder, as most people do, about the foods and beverages I see around me, and it occurred to me one day to worry what club invented the club sandwich and club soda.  Is there a placque somewhere?  Can I get a menu and find out whether there was also a club pie or a club meatloaf?

     For those of you who have important things to do today, I will divulge the main answer right away.  No.  Not the same club.  You can now go paint your toenails puce while the rest of us munch our way through history.

     Clubn soda was one of a series of beverages which followed Joseph Priestley’s discovery of a convenient way to carbonate water in 1803.  Priestley, like most of the nineteenth century fans of fizz, felt it had medicinal properties (he figured it as a preventative for scurvy.)  I believe, as stated hereintofore, that the mere production of burps was enough, but there are all sorts of theories about neutralizing acid in the stomach and stuff like that there.  In 1877, Cantrell and Cochrane was commissioned to produce a new type of carbonated beverage for the Kildare Street Club of Dublin, which called it their Club Soda.  The company still retains the rights to the name, and though the club was very important and exclusive (the Duke of Wellington belonged), its main contributuion to human history is club soda (no word on who first discovered its ability to remove red wine stains, but that sounds clubbish.)

     The club sandwich, however, is claimed by clubs both American and British and the correct recipe is also a matter of debate.  It SEEMS to require toast instead of bread, certainly mayonnaise and often butter, and usually at least two kinds of meat (one of which must be chicken or turkey, while the other is expected to be ham or bacon), as well as tomatoes and lettuce.  (One person who DOES write a food blog called it a chicken sandwich with a BLT hat,)  Whether it MUST be a at least three slices of toast is hotly debated, as is whether the sandwich HAS TO be cut into triangles.

     For some years, the sandwich appeared in literature as a Union Club sandwich, but the Saratoga Club also claims it, while a British source credits the Tenderloin Club.  All of these clubs are mentioned in articles at the end of the nineteenth or start of the twentieth century; the sandwich started appearing on menus and in cookbooks aroundabout 1899.  One article insists that the club sandwich must be served with good coffee to show at its best.  No mention is made of potato chips, which were invented in Saratoga Springs a generation earlier.

     To take care of side issues before they arise, Canadian Club Whiskey was originally marketed by Hiram Walker as Club Whiskey, because he figured men who drank in clubs would like it.  He moved part of his production from Michigan to Canada to keep ahead of the temperance movement in 1855.  His competitors demanded he mark the label “Canadian” so everyone would know THEIR whiskey was American, and this backfired so beautifully (customers figured Canadian whiskey must be more exotic, and bought more of it) that the word moved down the label.

     Clicquot Club ginger ale also had nothing to do with a specific club (Veuve Clicquot champagne probably inspired it).  That brand eventually perished, along with its mascot Klee-O, so you cannot order it, even at the Kildare Street Club.

     Now Crawford sausage is a fickle and delicate dish, as I can demonstrate by this scar across the knuckle of my left thumb…oop, I think one of the Men In Black is coming.  Next time, perhaps.

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days

     So the Fourth of July has passed and we are now in full summer.  (Not for us old-timers this modern custom of beginning summer with memorial Day weekend.  Summer isn’t fully underway until we start seeing watermelon and corn on the cob in the grocery…yeah, I know they’re there all year round now, but you could have let me indulge my recollections at LEAST until the second paragraph.  Whose blog do you think this is?)

     The origin of the concept of the summer vacation is lost in the mists of time, but those of our ancestors who had the money understood well the appeal of living one place in the cold of winter and somewhere else in the heat of summer.  Royalty had their winter palaces, and society had their homes in the country.  And for the lower classes, temporary residence in a quiet, restful spot was available at least by the middle of the nineteenth century.  (One of the earliest surviving obscene sound recordings, from the 1880s, deals with an old joke about a vacation cottage developer.)

     Along with this custom of getting away during the sweaty months came a realization (as in the joke mentioned above) about the gap between expectations and reality.  Postcards detailing exactly HOW much fun it was to get away from your house to the lake or beach abounded in the 1950s, and covered as many joys as possible, a handful of which can be seen here.

     Sunburn was especially a feature of such celebrations after the turn of midcentury.  Women had to wait for the change of fashions  As the makers of parasols to keep the sun off Milady’s delicate complexion started to go bankrupt, makers of sunburn lotions and home remedies intended for a similar purpose experienced a boom.

     Men, and indeed women, had been experiencing sunburn for centuries, of course, but it required the twentieth century to observe that it seemed to be obligatory to go out in search of it at certain times of year.  The change of fashion helped, too, as it gave postcard artists another excuse to portray women in skimpier attire.

     But the whole family of man understood about mosquitoes from an early age.  Early in the twentieth century, cartoonists made it clear that these bloodsuckers were waiting for your vacation time as eagetrly as you were.

     And just like you, went through a whole pre-vacation period of planning for the big occasion, making sure everything was set and ready.

     Travelers who wanted to describe a vacation not only bragged about the size of the fish that were caught, but the size of the mosquito that caught THEM.

     Literature is filled with fine old jokes (I know you didn’t get an old joke quiz this week because of the holiday, so this will have to do) about the mosquitoes the size of a horse who carried away tourists telling each other, “Yeah,. I hate these type O guys too, but just take what you can get before the BIG guys come and take ‘em all.”

     In spite of all of this,. However, people stuck to their vacation spots (or simply couldn’t get past the sentries to get home.)

By Two and Two

     No, thank you for asking, we have not quite covered every aspect of alcohol as examined in the postcards of yesteryear.

     Our relationship with the juice of the barley is complex.  The traditions brought by European immigrants were divided along a north-south boundary between southern cultures from warm climates, who drank to loosen tight nerves and enhance conversation and festivity, and colder, northern regions, where the object was to get as plastered as possible and snooze one’s way through a long, hard winter.  (A little broken furniture or noses before unconsciousness was considered collateral damage.)  The first settlers to cross the sea were also divided between those who wanted to live a life of denial of physical pleasures and party animals who had to be reminded that it would be necessary to do actual labor to survive.  And you wonder why our political spectrum gets so extreme.

     Publishers of humorous postcards did not aim a lot of product at the militantly sober.  (Publishers of religious postcards, too, tended to emphasize joy, or, when considering misery, showed how religion provided comfort.)  The vast majority, like this pop song reference of the nineteen-aughts, tended to show convivial companionship.

     This one, a pop literature reference, might mock the lads for getting drunk, but the reader was free to interpret this as reprobates who weakly gave into a craving for alcohol, or lightweights who just couldn’;t carry their liquor.

     And this group also bears the signs of over-indulgence which were frowned on by the sober: those sporty straw hats, the disarranged clothes, the difficulty of walking upright.

     But as a long story poem by Rudyard Kipling pointed out, the sins ye do by two and two, ye pay for one by one.  Sometimes the last chap pf a band of happy partiers, trying to wander home to home and wife, got a little mixed up and had to be helped to a temporary shelter.

     Even if they found reasonable accommodations on their own.

     For those who did make it home, of course, there was always the morning after that needed to be faced.

     Taking stock after a party might reveal startling physical changes.

     Or a general inventory might bring increased consciousness of the unpleasantries of returning sobriety.  (As another poet wrote of the dangers of the refilled cup, “to avoid hangovers, don’t sober up.”)

     The postcard world was not one for sending rebukes (except for failing to write postcards) but even cartoonists were willing to admit the rueful truths of life.

The Way to Go Home

     So far, we have had only a sip from the postcard world of alcohol imbibing.  There are many cards, for example, like the one above, which deal with the person who enjoys a simple glass of beer (or two) at the end of a long day.  Such cards show no signs of overindulgence, just the simple enjoyment of a touch of alcohol of an evening.  They are good-natured, benevolent, and not all that funny.

     We don’t really get laughs until the hero of the card has had a few.

     And a few more after that.  It is an attribute of the lead character on a postcard that no matter how far they are on the path to inebriation, they can still treat us to a pun.  (All together on the chorus now:  “Corn whiskey, corn whiskey, I like you pretty well.  You killed all my kinfolk and sent them to….where were we?)

     Not that our protagonist would overindulge, of course: not in the prim and proper world of our ancestors and their postcards.  It’s just that, before our hero knows it, time has flown, and he must think about heading home, as in our Friday column.  (As long as there’s something left in the jug, however, the clock will nag for naught.)

     A person with some experience navigating the treacherous road to hearth and home knows where all the streetlights are along the way.  These are not only useful for charting a course, and possibly offering support en route, but also provide a place to pause and show the world how sober he is by pausing to light a cigar.  Our hero here is not the least bit over-lubricated, just momentarily confused as he tries to light the handle of his walking stick instead.

     This one should also not be insulted with the word “drunk”.  He is, in fact, doing very well walking during a major change in terrestrial geography.  (These things frequently happen after that sixth or seventh glass.)

     And we live in the days of benevolent government officials, who put up signs to help in getting our bearings.  They might, of course, make these a little more helpful by adding details the sober passersby never seem to need.

     If one is especially exhausted by the trek to one’s snug little bed, these markers offer something to read while one rests up.

     Our heroes keep their good humor to the last, of course, knowing that they are perfectly sober and capable of finding a way to the warm embrace of family.

     Unless someone else from the party tries to horn in, of course.  (Tell me.  Has this chap made it home to his private BATH or his private BERTH?  I’m sure that if I wait until morning to ask him, he won’t know what I’m talking about.)

The Best Medicine

     And here we are at the last Monday in the first half of the year.  We can look over the months of January through June and consider the joys of six more months of the joys of….okay, be that way.  Maybe I should have waited for the last Tuesday of June.

     In any case, it is time for another Old Joke Quiz and, at that. Another Old Joke Quiz about the world of Medicine.  No, I’m not sure why there were so many jokes in the book about doctors.  It may relate to my basic thesis about western human history, which started its joke campaign against doctors, lawyers, and priests some six or seven centuries ago.  These were men who spoke Latin, belonged to groups distinguished by higher learning and mysterious functions, and could send a layman through Hell, sometimes literally, in the case of the priests.

     But that can all wait for some day other than Monday.  We must get on with the Quiz.  Once again, the missing punchlines, which you can surely provide with a prescription, are tucked away below.

     J1.”Gentlemen,” said the professor to the medical students, “Here we have a patient who limps.  Examination shows that he has one leg longer than the other.  Mr. Bailey, what would you do in such a case?”

     “Hmmm,” said the student.  “I guess (          ).”

J2.”The doctor is here to see you.”

     “Tell him (          ).”

J3.Midway through a Broadway play, a man in the third row jumped up and shouted, “Is there a doctor in the house?  Is there a doctor in the house?”

     Action stopped onstage.  A man in a balcony rose and announced, “I am a physician.”

     The man who had shouted looked up at him.  “(         )”

J4.”I think I need glasses.  Ever since I turned sixty-four when I stand up, I see spots before my eyes!”

     “Hmmmm.  Have you seen your usual doctor?”

     “No.  (          )”

J5.”Have your eyes ever been checked?”

      “No.  (           )”

J6.”What do you charge to pull a tooth?”

     “Three hundred seventy-seven dollars.”

     “What?  For two minutes’ work?”

     “Well, if you prefer, (          )”

J7.”Open wide and say ‘Ahhh.’  Open wider, please.  Still wider…..”

     “Doc, (          )”

J8.Midge ran I into Barbie and said, “So how’s your Uncle Bart?”

     “Not good,” said barbie, “He’s been awfully sick for months.”

     “Tut tut,” said Midge, “Didn’t you see that study which proves ninety percent of all illness is caused by negative thoughts?  He just THINKS he’s sick.  You should tell him that.”

     A week later, Midge saw barbie at Louis Vuitton.  “So how’s your Uncle Bart nowadays?”

     “Not so good,” said barbie.  “Now (          )”

J9.My doctor told me I had to start living the straight and narrow life or die, and gave me a list of things I had to give up.  So the first week I cut out smoking.  The second week I have up drinking.  The third week I cut out dating.  The fourth week I cut out (          ).

     J10.”I just read an article that went into all the health hazards of smoking, that went into all the horrible long-term effects of nicotine addiction, and the poisons you inhale with all that smoke.  So I’m giving it up.”

     “You’re finally going to give up smoking!”

     “No.  (          )”

J11.”The best thing for you, Mr. Gotlots, would be to give up smoking and drinking, stop seeing that twenty year-old secretary of yours after hours, and lose about sixty pounds.”

     “Doc, (           )”

If any of these stumped you, I can give you the email address of a doctor; they always have all the ANSWERS.

     A1.U

D limp, too.

     A2/I’m too sick to see anybody

     A3.How do you like the show, Doc?

     A4.Only spots

     A5.Always blue

     A6.I can do it very slowly

     A7.If you’re getting in, I’m getting out

     A8.He thinks he’s dead

     A9.paper dolls

     A10.Reading.

     A11.I don’t deserve the best.  What’s second best?

You Didn’t Say When

     See, this guy walks out of a bar….

     The joke must be as old as the tavern: as long as there have been establishments outside the home where alcohol was served, stories have told of the epic journey to return home with diminished skills of judgement and navigation.  When we finally decipher the unknown languages of bygone millennia, we will no doubt find new versions of the same story.  And postcard artists could hardly resist the lure of the set-up.  Getting home to one’s wife after an enthusiastic evening of inebriation was fraught with possibilities.

     Realizing when you were home was the first challenge.  The gentleman above has declared :Mission Accomplished” way too soon.  He’s lucky at that: other postcard artists show their heroes tearfully embracing a policeman, glad to have made it home at last.

     Some lads were at least still sober enough to wonder whether they were at the right address, and, lacking GPS, have to check with their life partner about the address.

     The next challenge would be getting in to the house.  Exhausted, and trembling from the long hard walk home (it couldn’t be anything else), you might have trouble getting that key in the lock.  (Sherlock Holmes, somewhat before this postcard was printed, deduced a man’s addiction to alcohol from the number of scratches around the keyhole of a pocket watch, showing how many attempts it sometimes took to get the key into place.)

     Then we have the classic gag of trying to sneak into the house without waking the waiting wife.  Shoes (here worn with spats) must of course be removed, and naturally there are stairs, which will squeak at the most inopportune times.  (For many years, it was considered inelegant and even improper to have your bedroom on the first floor of your home.  Going upstairs to bed was taken for granted.)

     And of course the Waiting Wife could be relied upon to be a Waking Wife as well.  If that genius grant from the Macarthur Foundation ever comes through, perhaps I will study the choice of weapon by wives of different eras and regions.  This lady waits in her humble abode with a broom.

     While this one favors the fire irons.

     The rolling pin was favored by cartoonists of a later generation.  Inquiring minds will, once I have completed my monumental study, finally get an answer to the question of whether these ladies had a spare rolling pin for the kitchen, so the main pin would always be available upstairs in the bedroom.

     Of course, waiting in bed might be more comfortable for the Waking Wife.

     And there were always handy missiles to be thrown from there.  This husband is obviously a veteran.

     In any case, the Waiting Wife was so standard a theme in domestic comedy that some cartoonists advised young ladies engaged to be married to go into proper training for married life.

     It was ripe for parody as well.  Turnabout, after all, is fair play.