Say When

     Some philosophical soul once wrote, “The average American doesn’t want much.  Just more than enough.”

     This thought came to me as I was sorting through the postcards in inventory under the subject heading of “Drinking”.  I was expecting to see vast numbers of cards dealing with the struggle of the over-served drinker to find a way home, the fumblings of the tipsy gent to get into the house unobserved by his vigilant wife, and the logic used by a well-oiled partygoer to deal with pay phones, clocks, and cigars.  These were all present, along with the gent making himself comfortable in a gutter for the night and the tendency of alcohol to make people think they can sing.

     But the overwhelming source of humor, at least among the cross-section of postcard history represented by my inventory, deals with another facet of drinking entirely.  These cards are concerned with getting enough to drink in the first place.

     What constitutes “enough” is, of course, up to every individual.  For some, it may be a daily bottle of the right stuff.

     Or a daily glass.  But the majority suggest that though variety is the spice of life, quantity is what matters at the core of the question.

     In other countries (this one comes from England) this might have been considered a valid concern.

     But in the United States, where Prohibition came in to trouble cartoonists in the second generation of postcards, it quickly became a matter of abandoning mere bottles for barrels.  And to get these barrels, necessitated by dry laws at home, they had to travel north of the border.

     Or south.

     Others had to find their solace in dreams.

     Though there were warnings that overindulgence, even in dreams, could have effects on one’s work.

     Even after 1933, with the repeal of Prohibition, the drive for a god supply (a reserve, if you will) continued.

     With the barrel and the bottle providing an answer to the constant thirst for that elusive more than enough.

     And for decades to come, the postcard world would reflect that basic desire to be filled with…contentment.  (The question of littering would be saved for another day.)

Miscellaneous Mirth

     I have warned you before, and though that exigency is not imminent, I will remind you that we are running out of the old jokes with which I filled my joke quizbook back in the last century.  Once we have completed all of that, I will have to think of another way to brighten your Mondays.  (If you were fretting about it, I DID receive your little tribute, which you sent in gratitude.  The bomb squad hauled it away, but it’s the thought that counts, right?)

     Anyway, this is another collection of jokes made up of odds and ends of categories which don’t have enough elderly gags to fill a blog by themselves.  The answers for this assortment are tucked in at the end of the blog, where I know you won’t look because you are so familiar with these antique japes.

     J1.”Yes, we furnished this entire room with bargains we got with soap coupons.”

     “Are you going to do the other rooms the same way?”

     “Nop.  (          )”

J2.”I’d like a bar of that new, improved bath soap.”

“Yes, sir.  We have several varieties.  Do you want it scented?”

“No.  (         )”

     J3.”I need a nice, long book. I’m going on a trip and I expect to be sitting in airports for a while.”

     “Well, we have a good variety.  Here’s an old favorite, The Kentucky Cardinal.”

     “Oh, I don’t like religious novels.”

     “You don’t understand: the cardinal is a real bird.”

     “(          )”

J4.Bob walked into a country store while on vacation, and glanced at a kitten drinking milk out of a saucer.  He realized with some shock that the saucer was actually a cup plate of the late eighteenth century, with a value in four figures.  Not wanting to alert the ctore owner to his, he called, “Hello, sir!. What a cute kitten!  Would you consider selling me that kitten for a dollar?”

     The man glanced at the animal.  “I don’t know.  My daughter’s really attached to the critter.”

     “I’ll make it five,” Bob said, holding out the money.

     The proprietor reached out reluctantly.  “Well, all right, I guess.”

     Bob scooped up the kitten and reached for the saucer.  “Since the kitten’s used to drinking out of this, I’ll just take it along to make my place seem more like home.”

     “No thanks,” said the store owner.  “(          )”

J5.”Hey, you’re putting that saddle on backwards!”

“Huh! (          )”

     J6.Emmett and Garrett bought a pair of excellent horses, but had trouble remembering which was which.  They decided Garret should dock his horse’s tail, and then they’d know it wasn’t Emmett’s.  It worked, but one day Emmett’s horse got its tail caught in a gate, and the tails were the same length again.

     So Emmett decided he would cut a notch in his horse’s left ear, just big enough so they could tell the difference.  But it wasn’t a week before Garrett’s horse was grazing and ran into an irritable possum, and that possum bit the animal’s klett ear so it perfectly matched the other horse’s ear.

     They told their neigjbor about their problems, and the old farmer said, “Well, why don’t you measure ‘em?”

     This turned out to be just the thing.  They measured both horses and, sure enough, (          )

J7.”This is my new space shuttle.  I’m going to offer people rides into the sun.”

“The sun?  You’ll all burn up!”

“Oh, I’ve got that figured out.  (          )”

     J8.Buck was hauling his new grandfather clock out of the shop and bumped into a lady who was coming in.  She glared at him and snapped “(          )”

     I should probably ask YOU which of my books to serialize next on Mondays, since I know you have all the ANSWERS.

     A1.They’re full of soap.

     A2.I’ll take it with me.

     A3.I don’t care about his private life

     A4.From that one saucer, I’ve sold thirty-six kittens.

    A5.You don’t even know which direction I’;m going

     A6.The white horse was four inches taller than the black horse.

     A7.We’ll go at night!

     A8.Why don’t you just wear a wristwatch?

Dad Chores II

     Very well, you talked me into it.

     So many people admired those pictures of Dad working with the twins in the wee hours of the morning, and expressed curiosity about the postcards showing Dad pushing the baby carriage, that I will give in to your plaintive pleas and show you a selection of those.  (Why the teeming hordes don’t rush to online marketplaces to buy these lovable cards from me is one of the mysteries of the universe, right up there with why the key you just used finds its way to the bottom of your pocket by the time you need it again.)

     As always, the more babies involved to bedevil poor Pa, the funnier the scene is, even if the joke seems a bit obscure.  When this card came out, there were still plenty of sternwheelers (boats propelled by a big wheel at the back of the boat) vying for business with the more modern twin propellor boats.  (See, he’s propelling the twins by wheeling them from…oh, you got that.  Just checking.)

     This card copmes from Merrie olde England, where Blackpool is known for an amusement park where everyone can make merry.  Because the English DO these things, Blackpool’s big Ferris wheel was known as the Joy Wheel.  Note the joyful expression on Papa’s face.

     Children are a pricey proposition, costing a good deal more than buying and maintaining your own horses and carriage would have been.  There is a faint undercurrent here to suggest Daddy is thinking what he MIGHT have spent his money on if….

     This joke was still good when motorized conveyance became more common.

     The investment of time in proper parenting is also immense, but this card takes a (semi) positive angle on this.

     Let us all rise now and do honor to one of the most popular, most consistent, and most aged of all jokes visited upon expectant parents.  The number of postcards, greeting cards, toasts, and wrapping paper (not to mention texts and tweets and facebook posts) involving this simple wish is vast beyond the estimation of the mightiest computer.

     It has its own family tree, and numerous offspring, as in this card with a gloomier take.  (It is probably vile to suggest that the poor overworked father didn’t get that way by pushing carriages.  If you count the offspring trailing behind….)  A similar joke is extremely popular on postcards celebrating the payment of income tax.  (It’s the Little Things That Count.  Makes pushing the carriage seem a little more worthwhile.)

     But enough of this,.  Father’s Day is coming, and someone’s waiting to celebrate with you, Daddy.

Dad Chores

     Father’s Day was not much of an occasion among postcard publishers.  It started to be celebrated in the United States around 1910, which was right in the first Golden Age for postcards, but as a holiday it took a long while to catch on.  Predictably, like Mother’s Day, it didn’t really get a foothold until certain businessmen realized “Hey, we can SELL things on a holiday like that”, and once that started, well, there was even more resistance than before.  But the business interests eventually overcame the objections (the founder of Mother’s Day NEVER forgave them, though they were so grateful that some got together and paid her expenses in old age.)  Perhaps also predictably, it was the florists who really pushed Mother’s Day, and necktie manufacturers who were behind the acceptance of father’s Day.

     But if the postcards don’t reflect the holiday, publishers were not blind to the existence of mothers and fathers.  Like children, parents serve a number of roles, and it is with one of the major roles of fathers we are going to occupy ourselves today.  The spanking of children, which we will discuss some time I want to get arrested, was handled, in a majority of cards, by mothers, with teachers and fathers coming in a distant second.  Pushing babies in buggies or strollers seems to have been assigned primarily to fathers, though mothers take it up more and more as the twentieth century goes on.  Puns involving baby carriages form a significant subgenre.

     But for sheer comedic value, the postcard publishers adored the hapless father trying to calm a crying baby.  This is an extension of the “male hopeless at domestic chores” theme in comedy, which goes back to the Middle Ages.  It is clear, in these cases, that Dad felt his role in raising children should be limited to encouraging his wife and delivering useful and educational homilies to the tykes once they were old enough to talk.  He has no idea what to do with them when they’re just old enough to squawk.

     It is clear in some cases that Papa had no idea he was signing up for this duty.

     The theme they liked best, though, was Dad taking care of his infant progeny in the middle of the night, preferably in a scene which shows his mother fast asleep.

     Even if Mom was a female impersonator (found especially in British treatments of the theme), hapless Dad gets the job in the middle of the night so Mom can do it all day tomorrow while he escapes to the office.

     In a remarkable number of cases, the cartoonist has made things even more entertaining by saddling Daddy with twins.  I doubt that multiple births were any more common then than they are today: it weas just funnier to see Daddy with his arms full, assailed from both sides.  (There are also numerous cards in which a new father, greeting his infant offspring, is dismayed to find his wife has presented him with triplets.  But that’s a whole nother blog.)

     We are invited to sympathize, if we like, or simply guffaw at Pop, whose has given up the joys of staying up late as a bachelor to stay up late with his twins.

     This chap, for example, is making a reference to his days in the army as he exhibits the thrilling exploits demanded of Pappy: balancing two bawling infants while warming their formula over a small heater in the bedroom.  It is clear that if you asked him about it right now, he’d say the Army was easier.

     In the end, however, it is all regarded as just one of the minor hardships in the great work of creating offspring who will carry on your lineage, your legacy, and, well, your looks.  (Study these twins: they have clearly inherited their father’s face, even to his middle-aged receding hairline and paternal scowl.)

     Here’s to all those Fathers out there!  May you get really nice neckties from the twins.

Office Supply

     Here it is Monday, and I’m thinking of Tuesdays.  For reasons I could no doubt Google but would prefer to make up myself, Tuesdays are the traditional days for elections.  Many states are holding their primaries this month, a secondary sort of election.  All of which makes a convenient lead-up to today’s Old Joke Quiz, which comes from the chapter on Political Jokes.  See if you can recollect the punchlines of these aged bits of political humor.  If you can’t come up with an answer, so investigative team will be required, as the answers are appended below.

     J1.The postmaster opened a letter addressed merely “God” and found a message from a small boy, who wrote “God, Dad lost his job, and Mom needs an operation, and we need a hundred dollars real fast or we’ll get thrown out of this house.”  He forwarded the letter to his supervisor in Washington, D.C., who was moved to pass it along up the ladder until it reached the Postmaster general, who was so touched by the missive that he shoved a ten dollar bill into an envelope and sent it to the return address on the envelope.

     Not long after, the postmaster in the small town found another envelope addressed to God.  He opened it and read, “Dear God, thanks for the money  Next time, though, (          ).”

     J2.”Don’t go in there.  Congressman O’Brien’s been talking for an hour now.”

     “What about?”

     “(          )”

J3.”Sir, we’re raising money to pay for the funeral and a suitable tomb marker for Senator Cassidy.  Would you donate ten dollars to bury a Senatir?”

“Here’s a hundred bucks.  (          )”

     J4.”Under the new government we will create,” cried the soapbox orator, “All citizens will be able every day to eat strawberries and cream!”

     A heckler shouted, “I don’t like strawberries!”

     The speaker called back, “Under our government, Comrade, (          )”

J5.During the campaign, Ed :Rooster” Townsend was pushing his record as a successful businessman, claiming that anyone who had made as much money as he had was bound to know how to run a state.  During the debate, his opponent, Ebenezer Terwilliger, allowed as how Townsend was indeed rich.  “But there’s only one honest way to make that much money!”

     Rooster Townsend leaned up to the microphone and said, “What is it?”

     “Right,” said Terwilliger, “(           )”

J6.Rooster Johnson toured the state on his campaign, and in one city, he ran across a stand where a boy was selling puppies.  “What kind of puppies are those?” he asked.

     “Republican puppies,” said the boy.

     Rooster was pleased enough to hand the boy a dime.  Coming back to the city a few days later, he passed the stand again with one of his campaign workers, and said, “Listen to this.”  He stepped up to the stand and said “What kind of puppies do you have for sale?”

     “Democratic puppies,” the boy said.

     Rooster frowned upon him.  “Son, just a few days ago, you told me these were Republican puppies.  Why are the Democratic puppies now?”

     “Well, sir, (          )”

J7.Ebenezer Terwilliger, meanwhile, was also moving around the state, interviewing votes, and asked one prosperous man whether he’d like to support the Terwilliger cause.  “No, sir,” was the answer, “I like your looks, but I’ve always voted Republican.  My father voted Republican, and my grandfather voted Republican.”

     “Huh,” Terwilliger replied, “If your grandfather was an idiot, and your father was an idiot, does that mean you’d have to be an idiot?”

     “No, sir,” said the man, “I’d be (          ).”

J8.When the election was held, the winner called his father to say, “Well, Dad, I won!”

     His father was overjoyed.  “Honestly?”

     “Dad, (          ).”

Here, according to my own personal investigation, are the ANSWERS

     A1.Don’t send the money through Washington.  Those bozos took ninety percent!

     A2.He hasn’t said.

     A3.Bury ten.

     A4.You will eat strawberries and like them!

     A5.I was sure you wouldn’t know.

     A6.Now they’ve got their eyes open.

     A7.a Democrat.

     A8.Why bring that up?

Can You She the Point?

     I have come to you before with postcards which have puzzled me, and so far no one has cared enough to present me with any possible explanations.  This time around, I thought I would offer a few ladies with mysterious ways, and hope their winsome smiles might tempt you to help me with my joke archaeology where the charm of my writing might not.

     I’d like to demonstrate my own ingenuity by starting with some which I was able to figure out all by myself.  I knew something was wrong with the young lady at the top of this column, for example.  The card is too short: somebody, besides blotting out a word, has trimmed away a few centimeters of the bottom.

     But someone on the Interwebs had a copy of the director’s version.  The lady originally smiled so broadly to show how healthy a person could be who used a particular patent medicine for kidney disorders.  The store which produced the postcard and the medicine went out of the kidney curing business, apparently, but had all these lovely pinups left over, and decided not to throw them away, selling them as slightly edited postcards.

     This was merely a matter of looking at the picture and not just the caption.  I thought it was merely a quaint bit of British lingo until I noticed the maid is leaning forward the way she is not because she is bowing to her boss, but to emphasize the sooty handprint on her, er, skirt.

     This one didn’t take me nearly so long.  The gag, of course, is a play on high quality diamonds being “of the first water”, but her position is a mite confusing: you really can’t pump water very well from there.  Ah, but her pose is designed merely to emphasize “Oh, I am merely a frail (cute) helpless (cute) female (who is cute).”

     But I haven’t come up with the punchline here yet.  I’d guess the point was that the person addressed has a secret romantic spot known only to himself and that one special woman, and that he has played this game four times.  But the ladies don’t seem surprised or dismayed to see each other.  And is that same old place over the fence, or do they do their romancing on the ladder?  Yes, it COULD be that the postcard publisher just wanted to give you four chorus girls for the price of one, but it must have meant SOMETHING at the time

     People who got together for coffee was once called a coffee klatsch or klatche or clotsh.  One of the four ladies at this gathering has fainted, and is being revived by her startled friends.  Why?  It could be part of a story told in a series of postcards, but in that case, the title should be longer and less generic.  “The Coffee Klatche III: the Shock” would be used in that sort of case.  Or are we suggesting that ladies who met for coffee ALWAYS did stuff like this.

     I’m almost positive this has to be something out of a story series, because the situation is too mundane.  This could have been used as a joke between friends, sort of a “Hey, remember me?  If not, I’ve Got Good references”.  But it would make more sense if, say, she is a wife applying for a job at her husband’s office, or a woman with a Plan: to rob the safe, catch the boss flirting, or carry off the unsuspecting young man studying that letter.  Maybe somebody out there has the other cards in the series and can tell me how it came out.

     And yes, I know what this card is saying.  It says “Look at US”.  But this isn’t just scantily-clad women: they’re not scantily=clad enough for that, and something is going on.  Probably we have again come in in the middle of a story, but what IS the excuse for their attire?  Are these two friends getting dressed for a costume party?  Is the woman on the right rather unconvincingly dressed as a messenger boy to fool the woman on the left?  If this is the first photographed example of cosplay, what characters are they portraying?  And, most importantly, if there are further cards to this story, do the ladies put on or take off more of their costumes?

     Kindly pass along any answers, actual or absurd.  Inquiring minds want to know.

Rocking the Album

     Once upon a bygone century, any Victorian home above a certain level of prosperity possessed a parlor.  The parlor served as a place to entertain guests, and was sometimes completely locked away from the rest of the family on non-guest days.  The parlor was not just a spot for entertainment and refreshment, see: it was a showcase.  Photographs of parlors at the height of the Victorian era shows them chock full of STUFF: embroidered pillows from your last vacation out of town, the piano, framed samplers, lace antimacassars, expensive and uncomfortable horsehair sofas: it was a way of reinforcing to the guests how well you were doing.

     As an adjunct to this, you had a certain number of what we might now call advertising brochures, but which the family called “albums”.  You had your autograph album, showing what famous people had stopped by, your phonograph album (no joke: Thomas Edison thought his invention would take the place of the autograph album as you replaced written mementos with home-recorded ones), and, of course, the family photo album.  To a great extent, y’see, the phrase “family business” was redundant: a family WAS a business.  The album was a chance to show off expensive wedding pictures (successful mergers), your extensive network of in-laws and cousins (branch offices), and your darling children (new products, available to good home with references and the right price.)  This is why people who brought disgrace to the family were removed from the family album.  (“Never heard of him; he must be related to that family down in Ryan that’s got a similar last name.”)

     Like many other Victorian customs, these albums were a joy for humorists of that era and the decades which followed it.  Here are two cards from a series that showed the family photos entirely too much as they actually were, with the narration by the proud parent turning the pages of the album.

     A wildly popular theme in postcards was the sort of family montage, putting the whole family’s worth pf photos into one shot without the necessity of turning pages to see each picture.  Here you could show your whole Damm Family.

     Or, if you came from the downstate branch, your whole Dam Family.

     Part of the fun in this series, exercised to differing degrees by cartoonists of differing ingenuity, was making up the names of your kinfolk, always suitable to the last name thereof.

     This could extend to mocking other people’s families, of course, as in this widely-copied gag (the number of sisters in the picture depends on how many pseudo-Asian names the cartoonist could think up to fit the pictures.)

     As time went by, other sorts of family pictures needed to be taken into account.  This later tale mocks the family vacation photo, with names suitable to a theme once again.

     One would like to know what one of these artists would make of today’s family albums, which may include thousands of pictures, but which are contained on a phone or in a file on the Cloud.  Perhaps it would not have made a difference, since, in whatever form your album takes, you must in some manner turn from the picture before your eye to the next one.

     Yeah, some things have change, but we’re still making asses of ourselves over family photos.

Children’s Corner

     We gave you a Monday off for Memorial Day, which we hope you enjoyed traditionally, at the graveyard and the grill.  But now we must get back to excerpts from this Old Joke Quiz Book, in which you supply the punchlines to these vintage japes.  We are starting to run out of the original volume, and I now wish I had added a few more chapters.  There’s not a thing on ancient off-color gags, nor was there a segment where you supplied the last line of antiquated jaunty poems.  Well, next incarnation.

     This week we are investigating another load of jokes which are forever young about children.  Tommy, our classroom demon, is almost certainly here again, since wise guy humor goes back millennia.  Some day, after the lottery comes through, perhaps I will do an in-depth study of the sarcastic know-iy-all in literature,. Just so some sarcastic know-it-all can tell me I got it wrong.

     J1.”This spanking hurts me more than it does you.”

     “Maybe so, Mom, but (          )”

J2.”Why can’t you behave?”

“I’ll be good for a quarter.”

“A quarter!  Just to be good?  When I was your age (          )”

     J3.The little boy was rushing from shelf to shelf in the library, looking for books he hadn’t read yet, crying out in disappointment as he recognized things he’d had checked out before.  “Young man,” said the librarian, “You’ll have to be more quiet!  All these people over here can’t read.”

     “Really?  (          )”

J4.A woman walked up to the admission booth at the zoo and bought eight tickets.  “My goodness!” said the cashier, looking at the children behind the woman, “Are those all yours, or is this a picnic?”

     “They’re all mine,” the woman replied, “And believe me, (          ).”

J5.”Mom! Mom!” cried the little girl, “There’s a lion next door!”

“Now, Wendy, you know the neighbors were getting a new watchdog, and that’s all it is.  I’ve told you (          )”

     J6.”Now, see?” said Wendy’s mother, “That was a dog, and not a lion at all.  Now, I want you to sit quietly in the corner for an hour and explain to God why you told such a terrible lie.”

     Meredith sat in the corner for a while, but in five minutes, she was out of the little chair.  “It’s okay, Mom,” she said, “I explained to God and He said, (          ).”

     J7.”I think you should know that there will be an addition to the family.  Your mother will soon be giving you a little brother or sister.”

     “Well, Pop, if it’s all the same to you and Ma, (          ).”

J8.”How dare you reach all the way across the table for the bowl of cole slaw.  Haven’t you got a tongue?”

     “Sure, Pa, but (          )”

J9.”If you eat one more piece of rhubarb meringue pie, you’ll explode.”

“Thanks for the warning, Ma.  Now pass the pie (          )”

     J10.”Well, Scouts, what good deeds did you do today?”

     “Me and Johnny and Billy and Fred and Freckles helped a little old lady across the street.”

     “That was very nice indeed.  But why did it take five of you?”

     “(          )”

J11.I bought my son a watch that was waterproof, shockproof, and rustproof.  He (          )

J12.The salesman asked the boy sitting on the front steps, “Is your mother at home?”

     “Yup,” said the boy.

     The salesman rang the doorbell, and knocked, and rang the doorbell again, to no avail.  “I thought you said your mother was at home,” he said to the boy.

     “She is,” the kid replied, “(          )”

Like Tommy, you probably have all the ANSWERS, but here they are.

     A1.not in the same place

     A2.I was good for nothing

     A3.I could read when I was three!

     A4.it’s no picnic

     A5/a million times not to exaggerate

     A6.It’s okay; when I saw that dog for the first time, I thought it was a lion, too

     A7.I’d rather have a pony

     A8.my arm’s longer

     A9.and get out of the way

     A10.She didn’t want to go

     A11.He lost it

     A12.this isn’t our house

Who Brings Baby Storks?

     This sort of thing used to depress me no end.  Selling unused baby books was sometimes entertaining, as one glanced at the sorts of things the publisher thought you would want to record forever, plus the odd illustrations they added to the pages.  Those that were filled in, however, were depressing.  Was no one left to care that on May 12, 1919, little Bopsy Brown was born and weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces?

     I now understand, if not accept, that this is simply the Circle of Life.  Yes, little Bopsy is gone to the Great Golden Ultimately, all his close relatives have followed, and, yes, we now have no one left on earth who gives a one cent stamp about it.  That is the way of things.  All anyone cares about is whether the picture of the baby is cute or the stork is entertaining.

     A LOT of birth announcement postcards include storks, birds which come in a variety of shapes and heights.

     As we can see from this baby congratulation card.  If you see a stork on a postcard, there is a baby somewhere within earshot.

     Even if we go back to discussing the role of stork as stalker.

     Or is that storker?

     The number of storks on postcards did make me wonder about the whole cliché.  It would probably take an art historian and a few hundred hours of searching to find out who decided how storks should carry babies.

     These methods vary on postcards, depending on what the artist thought was useful.  (Did you notice that one above where the baby is actually in the doctor’s little black bag?  Doctors kept storks around on a regular basis in those days, I guess.)

       But I did wonder if, with the whole of the Interwebs at hand, I could answer the question: why storks?  Why did we not invent a Baby Fairy to bring babies, or a saint, or, though Easter may have claimed him first, a logical animal like a rabbit?

     Well, bacon-wrapped bubble gum, the fact is that the Interwebs likes to confuse us, and to provide a forum for all those ingenious scholars who make up their data.  Storks bring babies because people noticed they were very kind (for birds) to their own offspring (the story that, in times of famine, they will rip open their chests and feed the babies on their own life’s blood is just storkfeathers, apparently.)  They were also believed to be monogamous, which kind of depends on the species of stork and how you define monogamy.  (And what does monogamy really have to do with having babies?)

     But wait.  Other people claim the stork got the job because stork nests are often found in large cities, where there are lots of babies.  OR because storks like to nest in chimneys, which, as Santa Claus may have told them, is an excellent way to deliver things.  OR because storks generally migrate north in March, when almost everybody is having their babies (all those June weddings(, people figured they were coming north with little gift packages.

     OE it’s because the stork has a vast white wingspan, making people think of angels.  OR it’s because among the ancient Egyptians, a stork represented the soul, and every new baby needed one of those.  OR in ancient Greek mythology, the goddess Hera, furious at finding her husband had had another baby by a human woman, turned the woman into a stork and kept the baby herself, leading the stork to try to steal the baby back, thus establishing that storks carry babies and…some spoilsport anthropologist came around and explained that the bird in this story was a crane, not a stork (even Aesop could tell the difference, and he was blind.)  Some people feel that Egyptian soul bird was a crane, too. 

     I mentioned all of this to one of my long-suffering friends, who suggested that it’s because the stork has such a large bill, which means it is practically engineered for lifting and carrying things.

     When I said “But that would really require a crane,” they changed the subject.  Some people can be as helpful as the Interwebs.

State Your Preference

     I suppose it’s another sign that I am not a serious student of world affairs, but I kind of like it that the state in which I live has a state pie.  I have not consulted the public record to see if there was a major debate concerning carbs or calories or fat content; I like the idea that as long as our representatives are dealing with matters which are within the grasp, the less time they have to mess up on scarier issues.

     It was just a side note in a long article about Illinois declaring an official state rock (which surprised me, because the state where I grew up declared ITS state rock decades ago…even though two of my grandparents, highly regarded amateur geologists, pointed out that the chosen rock was not a rock at all, but a crystal formation, and thus one more example of how scientifically uninformed people who go into politics can be, which shows they can’t be trusted with matters of environmental…where were we?)  I found that not only does Illinois have the pumpkin pie as it official state pie, but also named popcorn as its official state snack food.  (The choices were not utterly unbiased: Illinois is a major grower of popcorns and popcorn.)  I did not think the choice of pumpkin was terribly original, but I find that although numerous states have, indeed, chosen state pies, no one else picked pumpkin.

     The Interwebs, as usual, is as much hindrance as help in this subject.  Several websites state clearly that every state has a state pie, while others note that twelve states do not have ANY state foods at all.  (One of these, however, is listed as having a state fruit, which shows that it’s all a matter of your point of view.)  To make matters more complex, some states which do NOT have a state pie DO have a state dessert, which is occasionally pie.  (And one state has honored Whoopie Pie, which, as far as I’m concerned, is a cookie, or, at best, a specialized cake.)  Some states, if you’re interested, call their pie a State TREAT, and Oklahoma has an official State Meal, which ends with Pecan Pie after going through a list of other courses which sound like a really good afternoon at the county fair.

     Pecan Pie, to my surprise, is the only pie on more than one state’s list (which in some states include a State Muffin, but we can’t talk about this all day long.)  Pecan also gets the nod in Texas (whose state snack is salsa and tortilla chips, by the way.)  The pecan is that state NUT in a couple of places, but they leave you to decide what to do with it.

     Again, none of this is accidental.  Maine, where you’ll find plenty of blueberries, made the blueberry pie its state pie.  Massachusetts has so designated the Boston Cream Pie (and the State Doughnut is, wait for it, the Boston Cream Doughnut.)  Wisconsin salutes one of its less famous state crops with Cranberry Pie, and Michigan wants you to remember Cherry Pie.  I cannot find that Nebraska has named a state pie, which is disappointing, because as they have made Kool-Aid their state beverage, I had great hopes for Hostess Fruit Pies there.

     Sometimes patriotism or local pride are the motivating forcers behind the designations.  Maybe nothing is “as American as Apple Pie”, only Vermont has given that the state nod, AND specifies that it MUST be eaten with a glass of cold milk and a good piece of cheddar (OR, at the behest of the younger generation I guess, vanilla ice cream.)  But some state pies are found only in their home state, or in the homes of expatriates.  Indiana has honored the Hoosier, or Sugar Cream, Pie (main ingredients: heavy cream and sugar) while Louisiana went savory, with a deep-fried pie stuffed with ground beef and ground pork.  Arkansas honored the Possum Pie, but this is a sweet pie containing no possum at all, at all   It has chocolate pudding on top of cream cheese beneath whipped cream and, well, pecans, which brings us back where we started.

     If all of this is a bit too much for you, you could always head to Utah, where the State Senate has made  been working to declare the state snack food as Jell-o.