Postcards from Tin Pan Alley

     We considered in Friday’s column a few series of song postcards, and publishers who brought out lines of postcards devoted strictly to popular songs.  Today, we are going to look at a few where the publisher  just took a hit song and made a joke of it, knowing the audience would get the reference.  Popular music being what it is, some (most) of these jokes slip past us today, though some of them are funny even if you don’t know where the joke came from.

     I take it the lady is saying this to a bird, whether it is real, plush, or a hanky bunched up to LOOK like a dove.  The line is from “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden”, a massive hit in 1899 and 1900.  Chorus girls had been a staple of American musicals since 1869 and “:The Black Crook”, but in “Floradora”, a sextet of dapper men flirted with a sextet of ladies in “Tell Me, pretty maiden, Are there Any more at Home Like You?”, which concluded with this philosophical observation.

     It’s hard to realize that what WE think of as classical music  could ever have been the latest craze, but so it was with The Merry Widow Waltz.  There were  parodies, movie versions, and, of course, postcards within the first three years of the debut.  (Don’t know a lot about the history of the corset: sorry.) This came out shortly after Franz Lehar’s “The Merry Widow” debuted, and actually includes the opening notes of the melody, just to hammer it home.

     This refers to Irving Berlin’s oh, second or third smash hit.  Not only was this song played everywhere, but the line “Everybody’s Doin’ It” could be used in dozens of postcard situations, from people scratching mosquito bites to downing a beer at the bar to, well, about anything.  Look closely and you’ll see this card from the 1910s combines that craze with another: the British housewife dog is pasting trading stamps in a folder.

     I have been unable to track down the song, but the sheet music for this number features William Howard Taft, the heaviest human being to serve as Chief Executive.  Men at the beach, chubby puppies, and small round children appeared on postcards bewailing the truth of the title.

     The punchline is obvious here; in the original song, though, the story was more dire.  A popular musician gives up his job on the stage to sleep with an audience member, only to have her throw him out in the morning, after the show has left town without him.  Many songs of that era had morals, but this one had very few.

     This little number has its analogues throughout musical history.  The picture is for once a literal representation of the theme of the song, which is about people who are having various problems with their stomachs.  Because referring to that part of the body was considered ill-bred, they call it their Mary, Mary, Darling Mary, and I guess it was funnier to people who might have blushed to say “belly”.   (Word Denied songs are adored by audiences who feel they’ve been clever in figuring out exactly what word was left out.)

     This tender postcard came out RIGHT after Irving berlin wrote one of his less immortal song hits, “Snooky Ookums”, about a man who lives next door to a pair of newlyweds, and wails that all night long the man calls his bride “Snooky Ookums”.  THIS sort of song is popular because if you sing it long enough somebody nearby is bound to scream, “Will you STOP!”

Takin’ What They’re Givin’

     I hear unemployment rates are down and businesses are dropping their Cobvid restrictions about having to work from home, so more people than ever are now joyfully springing from their beds on Monday morning to head off to work on a Monday morning.  Hooray for not having to loaf around at home in pajamas with another cup of self-made coffee before joining that Zoom conference!

      That’s just one of the jokes you get in this selection of old jokes about work and getting to do it, from my unpublished joke quizbook  As usual, the answers, which you don’t need because these jokes are so overused, are at the end of the column,.  For those of you who just said they don’t need the jokes either, YOU can go straight to the conference room for a brainstorming session of the empowering diversity paradigm.

     A1.”Dad, I have this term paper to write for Business Administratioon.  The teacher wants examples of ‘ethical questions’ and I can’t think of any besides the ones in the textbook,”

     “Oh, I can give you an example.  Let’s say a cuistomer comes into the store, buys something, and being old-fashioned, pays with a twenty dollar bill.  I give him his change and he leaves.  When I go to put the twenty in the drawer, I see it’s really two twenties stuck together.  The ethical question is (          )”

     A2.The commuter dashed onto the platform just as the train pulled away.  “Just missed it, eh?” said a passenger who had just gotten off the train.

     “Heck no,” said the commuter.  “(         )”

A3.”You have come in late every day since you started here!”

“Yes, but (          )”

\     A4.”I;m going to lose this job if I can’t get to work on time,” said Brenda.  “I’ve tried everything: I go to bed early, I take sleeping pills…..”

     “Well, that’s your mistake,” said Sarah.  “Do what I do.  Stay up late, and before bedtime have a long drink of high octane coffee.  Then go to the living room and run around it the right number of times: sixty if you need to get up at six, fifty-five if you need to get up at 5:30, and so on.”

     “This works?” said Brenda.

     “Try it.”

     So Brenda did as required.  She binge watched Gilligan’s island until midnight, drank a mug of high-octane coffee, and then ran around her living room sixty-five times.  Then she staggered to the bedroom and crawled into bed.

     Sure enough, she was awake precisely at 6:30.  Humming to herself, she ate a good breakfast, caught her train into the city, and showed up at the office at precisely 8:59.

     “Here I am!” she called to the boss.  “Right on time!”

     “So I see,” said her boss.  “(          )”

A5.”Schwarz, Schwarz, Schwarz, and Schwarz!  How may I help you?”

“I’d like to talk to Mr. Schwarz, please.”

“Oh, I am sorry.  Mr. Schwarz is in a stockholders’ meeting and can’t be disturbed.”

“Then could I speak to Mr. Schwarz?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Schwarz is out to lunch right now.”

“Then I’ll settle for Mr. Schwarz.”

“Let me…no, Mr. Schwarz is on vacation and won’t be back until May 15th.”

“Well, let me speak to Mr. Schwarz, then.”

“(          )”

     A6.”How do you do?” said Miss fairfront at the office Christmas party.  “I’m your husband’s secretary.”

     “Oh.”  Mrs. Gotlots looked her up and  down.  “(          )”

A7.Mrs. Gotlots’s gardener fell ill, and she supposed she had to do the proper thing by one’s servants, and took flowers to him at the hospital.  “In which room is Mr. Lewis?” she asked the recptionist.

     “811,” the woman replied, “Just down the hall to your right.  Are you his wife?”

     “Certainly not!” said Mrs. Gotlots.  “(          )”

I hope you already knew these ANSWERS.  It’ll be on your annual evaluation.

     A1.Do I tell my partner?

     A2.I was chasing it out of the station.

     A3.I leave early every day to make up for it

     A4,Where were you yesterday?

     A5.Speaking

     A6.Were you?

     A7.I am his mistress!

Sing Me a Song of Postal Significance

     Ir has been a while since we took up the question of popular song.  This is a subject which is a lot more fun in retrospect.  If I say a little ditty from 2010 was popular, I must be challenged by people who tell me it was NOT a “pop song”, that it was NOT popular with the general populace but only a certain age group, or that the singer/songwriter responsible for the song has said something vile on Twitter and must no longer be mentioned in polite company.  Dealing with songs from an age where the people who hummed it when it was new are all dead now takes a great weight off the blogger’s mind (if any.)

     Postcards making use of popular songs come in two basic varieties: there are those where the artist was looking for something to illustrate and thought of a song with lines that suggested a good gag, and there were those which were part of a series specializing in popular songs.  I thought we might hit up the latter platter today, and save the first kind for next week.

     You have seen these cats at the top of the column before.  They were part of a general species of postcards printed in striking red and black, but these cats specialized in gags relating to songs.  This one references a little number from 1904, in which a rustic tourist remarks the chorus to the tour guide in a palace.

     They also took an interest in this perennial paean to optimism, and preserved a number of other songs simply by being nifty black cats.

     You have also seen this company’s creations in this column.  Theoochrom cards can generally be recognized by this gold border (though a few companies copied it after it caught on.)  the “chrom” part of the name comes from “chrome”, which appears in numerous postcard company names or lines, as a reference to shininess or color or both.  The “Theo” comes from Theodor Eismann, the founder of the company.  The company, headquartered in Germany, concentrated on cards to sell in English-speaking countries, and preferred to use pop songs known in the United States, frequently paying for the rights to them, and occasionally changing lyrics a bit when they couldn’t get the rights to the real ones.  This is a fine tear-jerker about a woman who was SO beautiful she couldn’t get a boyfriend.  (More to it than that, but we must move on.  Who has time for an entire Victorian tearjerker?)

     Bamforth became famous for its humorous, and frequently bawdy, postcards, but it also had lines which specialized in pictures based on hymns or popular songs.  This is a song best known now because Bamforth did three postcards of it: the first verse, shown here, the chorus, and the second verse.  It is another tearjerker, and perhaps you will be glad to know, without having to buy all three postcards, that after the stepmother cries out that the boy broke his mother’s heart so she died, disgraced his father, and is probably only trying to insure an inheritance, his father decides to take him back home anyhow.

     This couple are featured in the “Simple Life” series from Julius Bien.  I assume they live the simple life because they’re broke, as shown in his patched clothes, and her glorious patchwork gown, cheap hat, and distinctive hairdo.  Here they reference a song of 1904 by a W.H. Thompson.

     It was exactly the sort of lyric to be useful to the general public as well as to postcard publishers, so it can be found in many places.

     Our Simple Life couple also saluted this little song from 1908, the chorus of which lives on in a wholly different song.  The original said nothing at all about chili, and was not set to the tune of Santa Lucia.  It was another work in the genre of songs about demented women, this one being a dancing fiend.  (Other song hits in this genre were “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, but that’s a whole nother blog.)

     They put a very nice spin on this bachelor anthem of the nineteen-aughts: the title of the show at the opera house makes the reaction quite logical.

     Unlike some of the rather caddish postcard takes on the same lyric.

     Again, to the relief of readers, I can point out the existence of an answer song, which our Patchwork Child and friend also covered.  I prefer blogs (and songs) with happy endings.

Rabbit Hole Bread

     All I wanted was the answer to one simple question.  I thought it was going to be “This is another product of food corporations hiring Home Economics majors to make up recipes and dates to 1954”.  Ah, that might have been possible in the LAST century.  But now we have those Interwebs.

     By the way, I have not double-checked the story offered by an expert I knew, who said there was definite proof linking the money given to schools with Home Economics as a subject by food companies, and the use of those companies of the graduates of said programs.  “Here’s what we make,” the company would tell its grateful new employee, “Make up recipes so that every housewife in America needs it.”  She derived all salads which start with Jell-O and all casseroles involving the opening of a can of soup to this phenomenon.  I just accept that with the faith of all of those who attended any kind of potluck dinner during the twentieth century.

     So, as I was breaking off bits of monkey bread, and someone said “Why ‘monkey bread’?  Who came up with that?”, I simply assumed it was all a plot by Pillsbury to get people to buy more tubes of biscuits (which I, as an unashamed child of the past century, consider one of America’s perfect foods.  I have always regarded biscuits which do not come out of tubes with suspicion.)

     According to the Interwebs, however, it is not so.  They all agree Pillsbury does not come into the Monkey Bread question until the 1970s, by which time Monkey Bread had appeared in any number of cookbooks.  One must go back farther than that.

     What is wonderful about the Interwebs is that I was able to find seven totally different origin stories.  This is actually refreshing: not everybody had stolen their data from the same source, but had done some original digging.  Of course, we had to consider the history of bread, and the fanciful ways in which people used bread dough.  Monkey bread, it is clzimed on one or two of these sites, was not even possible until the nineteenth century, when people started making bread in pans.  (Can’t make Monkey Bread without a pan, see, and up to this point, most people made bread with a heavy dough that could simply be plunked down on any flat surface near a heat source to cook.  Some bread, I was told, was actually cooked on the side wall of the fireplace.  How did you tell when it was done?  It fell off into the fire?)

     Anyway, at SOME point, somebody in the Middle East came up with the idea of dipping small lumps of bread dough in fat and then piling them together, so they would cook but not merge, and each bit could be pulled off separately.  The recipe moved north, and butter became the standard fat for this.  This led to a Golden Dumpling bread, brought to the western hemisphere by Hungarian immigrants, who in time developed it into a street food.

     So who added the cinnamon?  Early monkey bread was plain buttery bread for dipping into jelly or gravy or anything else handy.  One Interwebs food maven gives the credit to frozen bread dough makers in the Fifties while another pins the addition to comedian (and serious chef) Zasu Pitts, who may also have originated the idea of making it in a Bundt or Angel Food pan, leaving the middle open.  Nancy Reagan gets the credit for really spreading the culture, after she discovered it in the 1970s, and started serving it every Christmas, at the ranch, the Governor’s mansion, or the White House.

     Then how about the name?  It’s popular, but not the unanimous choice: you can get the same thing with Hungarian coffee cake (remind me some day to talk about the history of coffee cake and tea biscuits), Sticky Bread, Plucking Bread, Pull-Apart Loaf, Bubble Bread, Pinch Me Cake, and on and on.  (given its addictive nature, you COULD just call it And On And On.)  Theories vary.  Nancy said to make it you had to monkey around with the pieces of dough.  Zasu said the recipe was perfect for quieting small children (those little monkeys.)  A popular theory is that it comes from a monkey’s habit of studying something by pulling it apart.  (Reference the scene of King Kong pulling Fay Wray’s dress off, occasionally censored for sensitive TV viewers.) Monkeys huddling together for warmth, monkey hands, and, yeah, somebody out there does have a recipe called Monkey Brains.  (Calvin and Hobbes readers know better.)

     Now, about the history of coffee cake, which always implied the presence of sugar, and suggests that the Hungarian Coffee Cake recipe might have started the whole brown sugar and cinnamon mix…hey, just remembered this is NOT a food blog.  Anyway, there’s leftover Monkey bread, so I have things to do.

Eat, Drink, and Be Harried

     Ah, Monday: the dawn of a new week, a time for new beginnings, new challenges, new opportunities!  And old jokes.

     We pick up the quiz with another section on Food Jokes, though I think this might also be Diner Jokes or Wait Staff Jokes.  Just don’t tell these to your waiter or waitress.  You may be quite some time waiting for them to laugh.

     J1.Ryan really liked that joke in the last food joke blog, about the man who asked for greasy eggs, burnt toast, and weak coffee because he was homesick.  So he decided to pull that one the next time he had breakfast out of town.

     The day came, and he told the waitress “Bring me really greasy eggs, toast burnt to a crisp, and coffee so weak it looks like water.”

     The waitress leaned toward him and said, “(          )”

J2.There are as many jokes about flies in the soup as there are bowls of soup and nearly as many as there are flies.  (Is there a fund for flies who never get bowls of soup?)  But you HAVE to know the one about the customer who shouted, “Waiter!  What’s this fly doing in my soup?”

     The waiter took a look and said “(          ).”

J3.Another customer snapped, “Waiter, I cannot eat this soup!”

     “There’s nothing wrong with the soup, sir.  It’s our specialty.”

     “Nonetheless, I cannot eat this soup!”

     “Let me fetch the manager, sir.”

     The manager bowed a little to the customer, and said, “I understand you have a complaint about our soup, sir.  Our chef has been a master at preparing this soup for the last twenty years, and I am sure there can be nothing wrong.”

     “That’s all very well, but I cannot eat this soup.  YOU eat it!”

     The manager sighed.  “Very well, sir.  Where is the spoon.”

     “(          )”

J4.”Waiter, I can’t find any corned beef in this sandwich!”

     “Try another bite, sir.”

     “There.  I still can’t find any.”

     “Well, I’ll be.  (          )”

J5.”Waiter, I have stabbed this steak, torn at it with my fork, and twisted it with my bare hands, and I can’t get any of it to come loose enough to eat.  Take it back!”

     “I’m sorry, sir.  I can’t do that.”

     “Why not?”

     “(          )”

J6.”Waiter, these pork tenderloins are so terrible I refuse to eat them!  Get the manager!”

     “That’s no good, sir.  (          )”

J7.”Waiter, my cottage cheese has a splinter in it!”

     “Well, Ma’am, (         ).”

J8.”I ordered apple pie.  What is this?”

     “What does it taste like, sir?”

     “Glue!”

     “(          )”

J9.”Waiter, this coffee tastes like mud!”

     “I’m not surprised, sir. (          )”

J10.”And how did you find the steak, sir?”

     “(          )”

J11.”Waiter, these oysters are very small!”

     “I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

     “And they’re not very fresh.”

     “(          )”

J12.Graham wandered into a grubby diner on Clark Street and ordered a cup of coffee from the surly man behind the counter.  He glanced out the window.  “Looks like rain.”

     “Well,” snarled the counter man, “(         )”

Assuming you’ve had your coffee this morning, you don’t need these ANSWERS, but perhaps you had coffee at one of the diners above.

     A1.You’ve eaten here before, haven’t you, honey?

     A2.Looks like the backstroke

     A3.Aha!

     A4.You bit right past it!

     A5.You’ve bent it.

     A6.He won’t eat ‘em either.

     A7.At these prices, did you expect the whole cottage?

     A8.Then it’s apple.  The peach pie tastes like paste.

     A9.It was ground this morning.

     A10.I just moved a fried potato and there it was.

     A11.Just as well they’re small, then.

     A12.It tastes like coffee, don’t it?

No Crime to Rhyme

     I thought we might conclude our consideration of postcard poetry with the ever-popular miscellaneous section.  There are always a few postcards which don’t fit in other categories (at least not in my inventory) but which are too good to allow to slide by.

     The item at the top of this column is, of course, another consideration of the use of an accent to communicate information which might otherwise seem trite or too sensitive.  The dialect plus reference to pumpkins and the marvelous rhyming of billets-doux (a useful French phrase for love letters used through most of western civilization) makes it possible for you to laugh off the love poetry as a joke if the recipient doesn’t care for it.

     As long as we’re admiring ingenious messages, how about this one? The last time I saw any data on the subject, birthday cards were the number one greeting cards sent in the United States, and even in the day of Facebook wishes and emails, I would guess that’s so.  The writers of these cards have a long row to hoe.   Is this the sentiment of the sender or of the poet, who thought, “Golly, gotta write one more birthday sentiment this week.,  What can I say that I haven’t already said?” 

     There are plenty of disposable poems written about what we ought to do when we are feeling low.  This poet came up with a nice way of turning it into a compliment to the recipient of the card.  (And got credit for the verse…if you can call three initials credit.)

     Here’s an example of the usual kind, just for reference.

     This puppy at least knows he’s being silly about it.

     And here’s a writer who takes the opposite attitude entirely.  (Some philosophers of the period would scold him for being so depressed when he does, after all, still have ink.)

     Speaking of those who may seem to be grounded a little more in reality, we return here to a poet who is using dialect of another once-popular type: the semi-literate child.  The poet invites us to agree with Dad.

     I like the hint of understanding thrown in by this poet, who suggests that if the weather is nice, some people may find things to do besides go to Rally Day.  (This forced me to do a little research.  I was brung up in the Midwest, I was, in a town with roughly a dozen churches, and I don’t recall any of them having a Rally Day.  This is the first Sunday of a new Sunday School year, generally observed in September: the aim was to get as many kids to start the school year right.  As an added note, I don’t recall being taught about the flag shown here with the American flag, which is the Christian Flag, an institution just about a hundred years old and news to me.  Maybe I just never asked, or maybe our denomination had its own flag.  Can’t go back in time and check it now.  Anyway, our new Sunday School year started in January, when we opened the new box of collection envelopes.)

     Of course, there was always a market for postcards with verses which were simply cute.  Here, for your delectation, are some puppies, who seem   Does it matter that the poem isn’t terribly coherent?  Never!

     Simple is better, naturally.  Here’s a postcard with a bit of black felt attached to it, and a reassuring message for the recipient.  THAT’S poetry a-bruin.

A Letter Is Better

     There are those of you who are not going to understand a word of this column,  But stick with me: I’ll explain.

     Once upon a time, younglings, we did not have the electronic communications devices of today.  There were no computers, so email, texting, tweeting, social media sites, and all that was…no, wait.  I heard that, you in the back with the curly hair.  (At least you’ve been eating your breadcrusts.)  “They still had phones.”  Yes, we DID have telephone communication.  But I warned you that this was in pioneer days.  Our phones DID NOT HAVE SCREEM\NS.  All we could do was talk into them.  And during the golden age of postcards, a telephone was still, in many parts of this country, considered a luxury.  It was expensive, and it was available only in those parts of the country which had been wired.  Yes, if you’ve looked at that landline phone your grandmother still keeps attached to the wall for emergencies, you have seen a few of these wires.  We did not even have WiFi in them days.  And because phone systems were rather rough and ready even in most places which had been wired, we had something called a party line, which meant phone calls were not especially private.

     “Private”?  I can try to explain that in a whole nother blog.

     So for news from people you couldn’t talk to face-to-face, the best option was to write a letter.  Postcards were nice, but rather like tweets or calls on a party line: not private.  So in the days before there were other possibilities, a MAJOR genre of postcard was the “Write Me a Letter” variety.  And whilst travelling through my postcards on the way to those with verse, I found a lot of these rhymes dealt with that heartfelt plea.

     Another blog I’ll write someday, when I’m feeling braver, is the whole ethnic mockery  postcard.  There’s a nice series of cards by Frederick Cavally in which he had the face of  a member of an ethnic group demanding, with an accent, why you hadn’t written.  He would do a man from that group on one card and a woman on another, so he could use the accent twice.  These are not in verse, so they’ll wait for that brave blog I’ll write one day.

     Ethnic mockery was toned down as the twentieth century went on, but it was still going strong when, in the 1930s, possibly in response to popular novels, a whole new ethnic group sprang into view and Hillbilly Humor took the nation by storm.  Numerous artists took it up, including artist Luther Landis Irby, who is responsible for the card at the top of this column as well as dozens of others.  Many of these, like the following, took up the age-old question of wondering why you were taking so long to write.

     The nagging was generally heavily loaded with affection: why would I want a letter so badly if I didn’t care?  So some of the verses are almost indistinguishable from Valentines.

     Other artists took their cue from nursery rhymes for their combination of longing and demand.  (This is illustrator Mabel Wright Enright putting Little Jack Horner to work.  Did he EVER stand up?)

     Of course, SOME artists leaned a little bit more on the demanding part of the equation.  This is Frederick Cavally, mentioned hereintofore, sarcastically assuming you’re pretending to be at work.

     Though he was more comfortable drawing faces.  (I’m not sure which is more annoying here: the face or the verse, but I think he did both of them.)

     And as long as we’re saluting artists by name, here is Mr. Irby again, with the only verse which addresses, via Hillbilly Humor, one of the few downsides of getting a letter.

Moldy Miscellany

     And here we are again, on another Monday, preparing to face the week.  What is the one thing you need to be fully prepared?  A good breakfast?  Aspirin?  A few red jellybeans?

     No, what we need is another old joke quiz?  (If you knew the answer already, you are ready for both the quiz AND Monday.)  These jokes come from the Miscellaneous chapter, so it’s a mix.  Maybe a few funny ones got mixed in with the rest.

     J1.”The professionals have traced my grandmother back to Charlemagne.”

     “Yeah? (          ).”

J2.Once upon a time, we are told, a man walked past a newsstand and saw a large picture of Dame Edith Sitwell on the cover of a magazine, with her name in big letters underneath.  “That’s a shame,” he said, “They shouldn’t (          ).”

     J3.Ace walked into the store and asked a clerk, “Do you have any talcum powder?”

     “Certainly, sir,” the clerk replied.  “Walk this way.”

     Ace watched for a moment and said, “(          )”

J4.”Where were you until three this morning?”

“Was that when I came in?”

“Why didn’t you at least call to say you’d be late?”

“Didn’t I call?”

“And why do you always have to answer a question with another question?”

“(          )”

     J5.”Your hair’s getting thin.”

     “Well, (         )”

J6.”Um, why do you have a banana in your ear?”

“Excuse me?”

“I asked why you have a banana in your ear?”

“What?”

“Would you please tell me why you have a banana in your ear?”

“Sorry.  (         )”

     J7.”You just don’t have anything up north like what we’ve got back home in Texas.  Everything’s bigger and better there.  You know, I can get on a train at dawn, ride all day, and still be in Texas at sunset.”

     “Oh, (          ).”

J8.Elroy’s wife was difficult to please.  One year, for his birthday, she gave him two new neckties, a green one and a yellow one.  Next morning, when he came to breakfast wearing an old black tie, she snapped, “Why didn’t you wear one of your new ties?”

     “Well, Honeycomb,” he replied, hoping for a quiet breakfast, “That was such a wonderful party last night that I left all my presents in the living room, and didn’t think to go down and fetch one of those wonderful ties while I was dressing.”

     “If you loved me at all,” she said, “You would have come down without a tie, and gone to the living room after breakfast.”

     “Well, Dearlove,” he said, “You KNOW how I spill things.  Why not spill on an old tie, and change into a new one after breakfast?”

     She was still scowling, so without another word he left the table, strode into the living room, pulled out the yellow necktie, and changed it for his old one.  “Satisfied?” he asked, returning to the table.

     She burst into tears.  “(          )”

J9.Years ago, I went out for a career as a boxer.  I did four rounds once with Muhammed Ali, and I really had him worried.  (          )

     I think today’s jokes were really of impressive vintage.  (Contrary to popular usage, this means age, not quality.)  But if you really need to check the ANSWERS, here they are.

     A1.They traced an uncle of mine to Poughkeepsie once.

     A2.ought to call a classy broad like that a dame

     A3.If I could walk that way, I wouldn’t need the talcum powder

     A4.Do I?

     A5.Who wants fat hair?

     A6.You’ll have to speak up.  I have a banana in my ear.

     A7.We have trains like that in Chicago, too.

     A8.So you hate the green one!

     A9.He thought he’d killed me.

Just Thinking of You

     I am not here to mock those who have never gotten into the habit of writing verse.  I am here merely to enlighten those who are unaware of the mental processes of versifiers.  See, to the person who does not write poetry, the art is something rarefied and elite, an outlet for people who are inspired by the sun, moon, and stars and think elevated thoughts beyond “Getting late: am I missing the latest episode of Ridiculousness?”

     The fact is that for those of us who speak Poetry, anything can bring on a couplet or quatrain.  You have only to look at the wall of an old school restroom to realize that.  Speaking of which, postcard poets are frequently inspired by the outhouse.  The card at the top of this column reflects succinctly on the camaraderie of sharing a roadside rest stop (a reflection which, thank goodness, is almost unobtainable today.)

     Other outhouse poetry isn’t nearly so romantic  But it takes all types of poets to make an anthology.

     And I am sorry to say that in this fast-paced modern age we are losing an ability to think of insults as an inspiration for verse.  We are more likely to get off a quick tweet, or simply repost somebody else’s prose wisecrack than pause and think “Hey, this would be even more devastating if it rhymed.”  But once upon a time, one could insult a whole social movement with a few short lines with rhymes at the end.

     Mind you, they could retaliate by rhyming a few observations on your own situation.

     Once upon a time, THIS was how we reposted other people’s remarks.  Did you know some young lady who was on the prowl for matrimony?  You could pick up a postcard poem and let her know you’d noticed.

     Other poets could be relied upon for a card to send to the young man whose matrimonial goals were fairly obvious.

     And if any of these couples had kids, you could pick up a poem to mail it and insult the offspring.

     You could insult specific groups with a well-chosen poetical postcard.  (Let us pause for a moment to consider a cultural artifact here.  No, not the old-style spelling of sauerkraut.  When, exactly did firehouses become associated with great amounts of food.  This was before the days when firehouse chili or fire department cook-offs became popular.  Just another note to these who are in search of their degrees: a thesis topic that could please and help them toward their Ph.D.s.  There: a free poem with no postcard attached.  Now where were we?)

     Postcards remarking on a fisherman’s inability to catch fish or a hunter’s failure to bring home anything but an appetite are legion.  But it takes a poet to really show it.  (No charge for that couplet, either.)

     But the bestsellers were probably the simple, basic digs.  Here is a fine old leather postcard which states things as simply as possible, so you could send your regards to anyone at all, at all.

Dutch Rhymes

     Okay, we have tiptoed around the subject long enough.  We looked over the Dutch kids postcards in a couple of columns recently, and we discussed postcard verse.  But we have, except very briefly, evaded the subject of Dutch kids and poetry on postcards.  We will repair this omission today.

     As you may recall from previous episodes, the craze for postcards featuring Dutch kids (or, to be precise, kids dressed in Dutch costume and speaking whatever the postcard artist considered a Dutch accent, usually Pennsylvania Dutch, which was derived from German) prevailed mainly in the 1910s, with numerous postcard companies and artists and some business ads getting in on the trend.  So far, no one has explained this to me, but this was an era when the united States was celebrating its diverse ethnic makeup by making fun of it.  Much (not all) of this funning was good-natured, since immigrants bought postcards, too, and there was no sense offending a possible customer.  This was especially acceptable, apparently, if the immigrant characters were children, as cuteness can sometimes defeat the general xenophobias of the human species.  Sometimes, as seen in the postcard at the top of the column, the immigrant’s plight could be used by anybody who had moved to a new place and felt lonely

     It also, as mentioned hereintofore, made for a way to state an obvious truth if you adapted it to an accent and put it in the mouth of a child.  The sentiment here has an edge, which we enjoy even more because we have figured out the accent on our way to the punchline.  (Giving your readers a chance to pat themselves on the back is good business.)

     Of course, poetry was frequently employed in the cause of love, and the Dutch kids were very interested in the subject.  This young lady is fairly modern ion her knowledge of germ theory, and romantic warfare.

     This poet has taken the easy rhyme, using no real dialect in it, but if is short and simple.

     But one subject which always moved the Dutch kids to verse was correspondence.  The whole subgenre of “Sorry I Haven’t Written lately” and “How Come You Haven’t Written Lately” brought on numerous odes.  (Note the use not only of Dutch dialect, but the pale blue and white tones associated with Dutch tiles.  Not missing a trick here.)

     The modern world, with its technological communication systems, offered a substitute, of course.  (Of, what if our ancestors had been able to text each other?  Why would the acronyms of textlingo have looked like if they had been mixed with Dutch Kid Language?)

     And, of course, the unhappy child with an accent made nagging about such things acceptable.  Could you get angry when confronted with a complain like this?

     Or a heartfelt outpouring like this one?

     This young lady goes even further, diagnosing the problem and offering a remedy.  I am sure she went far in the brave new world of the twentieth century, even if in her case it was an accentury.