See de CDV?

     The Interwebs informs me that the business card came first, and the calling card second.  At some point in the seventeenth century (in Europe; China was two hundred years ahead, as usual.  But they had printing first, so they had a head start) businessmen would drop these off at the offices or homes of prospective clients as a warning that they would be coming to give a sales talk at some later date.  The upper classes picked up on this custom and converted it to social calls.  (My own theory is that the bourgeois came up with the whole card idea first because they were the first class that really needed to be able to read.  It is only my own mean-spirited imagination that sees the dukes and earls picking it up just to show off they they’d been to school, too.  I suppose Moliere has already included a character who could NOT read, but was high class enough to drop off calling cards, and learned only too late that the printer had made an unfortunate and obscene typo, leading the people he visited to expect…where were we?)

     So technically, the “Visiting Card” or business card came first, and then came the “Calling Card”.  I had rather expected that these cards were unnecessary in the days of the Interwebs, unlike the days when business folk had special file drawers or Rolodex-style wheels for saving them.  It is not so.  Estimates claim that in 2019 alone, over 7 billion cards were printed, mainly business cards, as calling cards have fallen out of favor except with certain quirky teenagers who use them for dating.  HOWEVER, then the Covids came along, and nobody wanted to take something you had touched, and the business went into something of a spiral.  We’ll see what happens next.  Tweetcards?

     But we are taking a long time to get to the subject of this column, which is a special sort of calling card.  During the nineteenth century, a bunch of techno-geeks were fooling around with an invention which would eventually be called the camera.  Like a lot of techno-geeks, they came up with the invention first, and then had to come up with ways to make money on it.  Some chaps became artists and took breathtaking photographs for exhibit, while others set up galleries and sold pictures of anything at all in bulk.  Others set up studios and would take your picture for a fee, cameras being too complex for the average human to handle.

     Other techno-geeks, like techno-geeks everywhere, thought of odd branches of the profession.  Have I told you about the Parisian pornographer who tried to convince the French government that old-style passports, with a lengthy description of the rightful user, could be replaced with new ones, with a photograph?  Yep, this fellow turned aside from raunch to invent the passport photo and, by extension, the ID photo, driver’s license photo, and the rest.  Another photographer looked at the calling card and invented the Carte-de-visite.

     The carte-de-visite, or cdv as collectors call it, was a stiff piece of cardboard of the same kind used for larger family photos, but about the size of a large calling card.  In place of the name, a photograph was applied, so you could drop these off at a friend’s home, and they would recognize who it was who had called.  The usefulness of this could be debated (you might not recognize your neighbors once they dressed up for the photographer) but the popularity was obvious.  Everybody wanted the new notion and ordered plenty.  The photographers, understanding their customers, printed up cdvs with pictures of celebrities and royalty on them, creating an early form of trading card.  Millions of cards with millions of faces were produced, and as most of them were on good, solid card stock, millions exist today.

     But they are still collected, some for the same reasons they were collected in the 1870s: the faces were instantly recognizable and important.  (“I’ll trade you these three prince Alberts for that Sarah Bernhardt.”  “Throw in that Princess Alice or no deal.”)  Others are saved because they are like the Real Photo Post Cards, because the faces are unknown, but were frozen at a moment of acclaim or passing importance.  That’s what I have sitting around here mostly, and we will look at some of those in our next thrilling installment.  (Book now: seating is limited.)

Zap: Snap!

     Today is, of course, National Pie Day, but since, as mentioned hereintofore, this is NOT a food blog, I shall save the dissertation on my mother’s pie recipes for another day.  Anyhow, Monday is Old Joke Quiz Day around here.

     So here is a collection of tart remarks (catch that one, did you?  Ooh, you’re good.)  The answers, should these not occur to you right away on a Monday morning, are tucked away below.

     J1.”I see my buddy gave you a black eye.”

     “Ah, you don’t even know the guy who did this?”

     “Yeah?  (         )”

J2.”So it’s a battle of wits you want, eh?”

“No way.  (        )”

     J3.”If you were my husband, I’d give you poison.”

     “If you were my wife, (          ).”

J4.”How ‘bout them Hawks?” said the barber, as Mickey sat down in the chair.  “Pretty good game, I thought.  Hot today, isn’t it?  Good for the corn, I suppose.  “How’d you like your hair cut today, sir?”

     Mickey smiled.  “(          )”

J5.”Doc, this liniment yougave me makes my arm smart.”

“Well, why don’t you (         )?”

     J6.”I’ve changed my mind.”

     “Good.  (         )”

J7.Harlan was always borrowing things and “forgetting” to bring them back.  When Jim saw Harlan at the door, he steeled himself to refuse the next request.  He opened the door and Harlan said, “Hey, neighbor!  You using your lawn mower today?”

     “Why, yes,” said Jim.  “I was just about to go out and mow the front lawn.  Then I was going to mow the back yard, and after that I was going to go over to my mom’s place and mow her lawn.  I guess I’;m going to be using that lawn mower all day.”

     “Oh,” said Harlan.  “Then (          )”

J8.”Put your ear up to this box.”

“Why?”

“Just put your ear to it and listen.”

“Okay.  I don’t hear a thing.”

“(         )”

     J9.”I’ve invented a pill that makes you smarter.”

     “That could be useful.”

     “I’ll let you try it for fifty bucks.”

     “Fifty bucks?  That’s…..”

     “Guaranteed to make you smarter.”

     “Okay, here’s your money.  Let me take that pill.  Looks like a plain aspirin, but here goes.  Well, how long does it take?”

     “It all depends.  Wait and see.”

     “Wait and see, eh?  I think you’re a complete fake!”

     “(          )”

J10.Lee, Lionel, and Leonard were lost in the woods and had been going in circles for days.  Supplies were getting low and the men were down to their last hope.  “Listen,” said Lee, “There’s no chance all three of us can survive this.  We’re down to one salami and that’s not enough food for another day of this.  Let’s pick one of us to eat it and go on while the other two just give up and wait for death.  We can draw straws.”

     “We ate the straws yesterday,” Leonard reminded him.

     “Why don’t we sleep on it?” said Lionel.  “We’ll have a contest.  Whoever has the best dream tonight wins the salami.”

     This seemed fair, so they settled in for the night, their rumbling stomachs singing them to sleep.  In the morning, Lee said, “I guess I win the salami.  I dreamt that I died and went straight to Heaven.  They rolled out a golden carpet for me, and led me to the heavenly choir, where the director handed me the baton and said he could now retire.  And then I led the heavenly choir in a mighty hymn of joy.”

     “Not a bad dream,” said Lionel.  “But I also dreamt I died and went to Heaven.  They met me in a golden chariot so I wouldn’t have to walk, and I was taken to St. Peter’s office, where the saint told me what they’d been looking for was a really good bookkeeper, and I would get the job.  My first job would be to see why the heavenly choir was spending so much.  Tough dream to follow, I think.  What about you, Leonard?”

     “Well,” said Leonard.  “I dreamed you two guys died and went to heaven.  (          ).”

None of these smart guys are as smart as you are, of course, since you already know all these ANSWERS.

     A1.Anyone who gives you a black eye is a buddy of mine.

     A2.I’d never fight an unarmed man.

     A3.I’d drink it.  (one of Winston Churchill’s, ca. 1930)

     A4.In silence (found in Plutarch, ca. 60 AD)

     A5 rub some on your head

     A6.Maybe this one will work

     A7.Then I can borrow your golf clubs

     A8.I noticed the same thing

     A9.You’re smarter already

     A10.So I got up and ate the salami

What’s the Story, Morning Glory?

     In my pursuit of archaic humor, I rely, as any detective would, on a combination of information and deduction.  I have learned, when a caption aooears on postcards by different artists, to check the world of advertising or the realm of pop song.  This has led me to a greater familiarity of the recordings of Billy Murray and Bert Williams, and I think I am the better for that.  Whether the descriptions of the postcards in question, enhanced by this added data, happen to sell better, I will allow the market to decide.

     As you have seen, ye weary hardworking regular readers of this column, we have also ventured into the world of bygone slang, and the nearly-forgotten catchphrase,  And you have also seen that I have occasionally come out right where I began, none the wiser for my search through the echoing halls of ancestral comedy.

     I am going to bring up a few of these unsolved cases in this episode of our saga, in the hopes that you will be as confused as I was.  If you DO see at once the joke I’ve missed, you can let me know in the comments, but I’d really rather think these are stumpers.  Just affirmation of my role as jokemaster around here.

     The postcard above dares to somewhere around 1914,  I have been through the history of bananas, and even of the song Yes, We Have No Bananas, which would lead to its own fiendish craze some years after this.  But I have found no song or silent movie about a banana fiend.  It could be that this was part of a series by one artist, and included pineapple fiends and kumquat fiends.  Or, he may just have loved the idea of a fiendish soul spreading really old jokes about banana peels on pavements.  But I feel incomplete, somehow.  The question “Why a banana fiend?” will haunt me until someone tells me this was an early supervillain who roamed the streets of Gotham City at the turn of the century.

     My problem with this young lady is that I can’t quite figure out what she’s doing,.  Is she holding a mirror, and studying her black eye?  Was her publisher cad enough to think a punch in the eye from a man was funny enough to warrant a card?  Or IS that a black eye?  It might be a stray shadow, and the lady is actually studying something else she’s holding in her hand.  If she’s holding something in that hand.  If she’s even a lady (given the tendency of early postcards to feasture female impersonators, this is another possibility.  This could be a famous vaudeville performer who sang a song called “Sent By Male”.  Haven’t found him yet, though.)

     Now here, I know what they were up to.  The publisher wanted to combine a number of icons of spring and Easter in one card.  This has been done in a variety of ways, but I’;ve never found one quite so startling as this.  If I am seeing this right, somebody built an Easter diorama of a little country town inside a box shaped like a cross.  They then apparently filled it with strawberry Jello (that pink tinge around the village, but just as high as the edges of the box.)  And then they left it on the lawn.  Were they tired of hiding colored eggs?

     In this case, I am perfectly convinced that this is the work of some important avant-garde artist of the 1910s, and no one has told me which one yet.  The card was printed in Germany, and has no text on the front or back to explain the photo.  That grimace is unpleasant for a card I would send anyone, but I wasn’t around at the time, so maybe I just don’t understand.  And what is she doing, anyhow?  Is she in pain?  Is she weeping?  Is she, as someone I have decided to ignore in the future suggests, laughing really, really hard?  I have had one or two other suggestions, but really, I don’t want people to get the idea this column is devoted to bathroom humor.

     And if we’re going to be indelicate, we can save it for this postcard.  When I searched the Interwebs for “tickled to sleep”, I was sent to a lot of really unusual websites.  But the basic explanation is reasonably G-rated.  It is possible to tickle someone until they are exhausted, and pass out.  There are videos of people doing this to puppies and kittens and small children online, and I hope these people are being carefully watched.  But who’s been tickling whom?  Is the lady on the left still slightly awake?  Is she the tickler, and her friend with both eyes shut the ticklee?  But how is this all possible?  I can’t believe that if that much tickling had been going on that thjeir hair and clothes would not be disheveled.  And speaking of their clothes, um, where was someone being tickled?  They have their shoes on: we can see that, thanks to the design of the photo to let us stare at their calves and ankles (this card dates from about 1908).  Their clothes look kind of tickle-proof to me, so where…how…no, I really don’t want to hear ALL your theories.  Once again, I may just not be understanding something obvious to a person in 1908.

     And, if there’s anything these cards demonstrate, it’s that we just don’t know what will tickle somebody else.

Coming Up in 1949

     I was researching a few side issues on the cow shown here, and came up rather disappointed.  No, I was not really expecting to find multi-flavored cows.  But I was expecting to find out a little more about the Postwar World, once one of the great mass visions.

     What turned up on the Interwebs was that there have just been too many wars for any one “Postwar World” to get much attention.  The Interwebs is about the Religion of What’s Happening Now, and was filled with essays on what Nostradamus had to say about the Ukraine.  (I’ll summarize these for you by noting Nostradamus hardly ever gets pulled out these days for anything less than the end of the world.  There, you can now skip millions of digital words.  You’re welcome.)

     During the 1940s, however, those people who weren’t grumbling “I am so sick of this war.  Is it ever going to end?” (the grandparents of those who would like Covid to go away and stop bothering them) were indulging grand visions of how a world partially demolished during World War II would emerge from the rubble.  These visions were heavily based on technology.  Wars tend to encourage technological innovation, and new glories were coming out faster than Scouts on scrap drives.

     The technology was going to make us all happy, comfortable, used to leisure and luxury.  I am especially impressed by the Modern Kitchen envisioned for the housewife of the 1950s.  Every modern kitchen would be brilliantly shiny, filled with electric stoves, electric refrigerators, electric frying pans, electric can openers, electric toasters, and electric dishwashers.  A lot of this came to be, of course, though I, personally, would like to know what became of the electric malted milk machine.  Medical science had proven that malts were very healthy, and every good housewife would give her husband and children malted milk as part of the daily routine.  I feel a little cheated.

      I also miss, kind of, the flying car.  This was more a matter of science fiction than sober consideration, but air travel was the wave of the future.  One American airline was poised to seize control of the skies after the war, and once it was in charge, why, the sky was the limit.  People would give up their cars and commute by airplane, helicopter, or who knew what variation we might come up with.

     Because we would live in highly electric homes in the suburbs, all built new and fresh, we would be commuting by very safe and hygienic new methods.  We would ALL have cars in the Postwar World, of course, because prosperity would accompany the grand rebuilding.  (It did, by the way, but you can’t go on rebuilding forever.)  General Motors was imagining automated commutes, controlled by special new highways.  You set your car for the route you needed, got on the new Intelligent Interstate Highways, and left the driving to the road.  Since every car was included in this system, the automated roadway would not allow for crashes or traffic jams.

     Politicians were alive to all of this; some were working hard to make sure everybody would take part in this grand rebuilding.  Just after the war, a major presidential candidate campaigned throughout the United States.  Rumored to be a Buddhist, he promised cooperation among industries to make not just the United States but the whole world prosperous and happy (this did not go down well with American CEOs planning to seize the markets abandoned by bombed-out European businesses) and included among his supporters the Civil Rights leaders who came out of World War II and even a discreet Gay rights group from New York.  He was defeated handily, and in the real Postwar World, his supporters were hounded by self-appointed investigators.

     No movement looking to the future is, of course, without it doomspeakers.  Other experts on the Postwar World predicted uncomfortable social upheaval, especially among a group they called “teenagers”, who had been left to raise themselves while their parents were out winning a war.  The collapse of governments and the spread of bizarre new political groups (like that fellow mentioned in the last paragraph) would frighten and terrify.  And above all, they warned, people who were expecting huge benefits from the Postwar World would become dissatisfied, feeling cheated, and start demanding more than the postwar World could hope to deliver.

     Makes me feel a little guilty, really.  I AM still waiting for my malt, though.

Back to the Cornfield

     Ah, here comes Monday once again, the day when people wake with foreboding to face the daily commute on a crowded thoroughfare or smelly train to get to the office.  Don’t you wish you could drop it all and set up shop in rural America, where a person can WALK to the office (through the rain or snow or hundred degree temperatures).  Of course, the farmer has no commute at all, since the office is there the minute the eyes are open (or even before, dang that rooster.)

     Our old Joke Quiz this week takes us back to the country, where, by the way, these jokes are just as old as they are in the city.  The ANSWERS, which you surely don’t need, will be down at the bottom of this compost heap.

J1.The Agricultural Extension man had come to visit Farmer Jenkins’s place.  “I notice you still let your pigs roam free to forage for roots and plants.  Don’t you know that if you confined them to a lot and fed them regularly on the newest feed, they’d be ready for market in half the time.

     The farmer shrugged.  “Well, mister, (          )?”

J2.”How much milk do your cows give?”

     “(          )”

J3.The small town’s council was considering the purchase of a grand chandelier to put in the town’s main meeting hall.  The crusty old conservative member of course voted against it. 

“Useless expense,” he said, “Nobody in this town (          ).”

J4.He was also the roadblock when a proposal was brought forward to buy six gondolas for the water park the town was thinking of setting up.  “Save money,” he said.  “Just buy two, and (      ).”

     J5.”Is that your flock of cows, Mister?”

     “Not flock.  Herd.”

     “Herd what?”

     “Herd of cows.”

     “Well, (          )”

J6.”Mister Farmer,” said the tourist from the city.  “How come that cow over there doesn’t have any horns?”

     “Well, there are plenty of reasons a cow might not have horns,” said the farmer.  “Sometimes an animal is so aggressive, we have to remove the horns to keep peace in the field.  Sometimes, for reasons the experts are still working on, the horns never grow in in the first place.  Sometimes there’s a fight or an accident and one horn gets broken off, and we have to remove the other so the cow doesn’t have to live with its head to one side.  Now, the reason that particular cow doesn’t have horns is (          ).”

     J7.A lady from the city was picking berries and wandered a little too far into a field.  She spotted the bull glaring at her at the same time she saw the farmer leaning on a fence, and called to him.  “Is that bull safe?”

     “Oh, yes,” said the farmer.  “(          ).”

J8.Another tourist at another farm watched over the fence as the rural mail carrier came dashing across the field, an angry bull in hot pursuit.  The mail carrier was breathing hard, and the bull was obviously catching up.  Just when it seemed the man was a goner, he jumped up on a rock and took a headlong leap over the fence, landing in a gully filled with water as the bull snorted and fumed.

     “He nearly got you that time,” said the tourist, helping the man out of the water.

     “Oh yes,” said the mail carrier.  “(          ).”

J9.”How come you never came around to close the deal on that horse you were going to sell me.”

     “Oh, (          ).”

J10.A tourist was working on his car on a lonely road in the country.  It had sputtered to a stop and wouldn’t start again.  He tried a few elementary things and tried the ignition after each one, to no avail.  He was bending over the engine for the fifth time when someone said, “Sounds like your transmission.”

     The tourist grunted and turned around.  To his surprise, there was no one to be seen.  A horse was looking over the fence, but that was it.  “I don’t suppose that was you,” he said.

     “Who else?” said the horse.  “It really sounds to me like it’s your transmission.”

     The tourist yelled and ran as fast as he could up the road until he came across a farmer at a gate.  The panting tourist pointed behind himself.  “There…there’s a horse back there!”

     “Got lots of horses,” said the farmer, a little surprised at the observation.

     “No, but listen.  My car stalled, and this horse comes up to the fence and says it’;s my transmission!”

     “Brown horse?  About yea high, white stripe between his eyes?”

     “That’s the one!  Do you know about him?”

     The farmer shrugged.  “Never mind about him.  (          ).”

Of course, like the farmers above, you know all the ANSWERS, but here they are anyhow.

     A1What’s time to a hog?

     A2/None.  We have to taske it away from them.

     A3.knows how to play the darn thing

     A4.and let them breed

     A5.Of course I’ve heard of cows!

     A6.It happens to be a horse

     A7.A darn sight safer than you are

     A8.He nearly gets me every time

     A9.He got well

     A10.He doesn’t know the first thing about cars

My Room Marked With Y

     Not long ago, I mentioned in this space the way some people will go on vacation and, far from being grateful, spend the whole time complaining.  I will excuse the numerous postcards which complain either a) that the vacation never seems long enough or b) that you need another vacation to recover from the effects of the first vacation.  These are basic truths of life.

     I’m thinking of the people who are able to get away on vacation and cannot seem to find anything nice to say.  If it rains the whole two weeks, why, it’s true, as the feller at the hotel’s front desk notes, that the crops really needed it.  And if you are snowed in at the ski lodge,. Well then, as the hotel desk clerk points out, you shouldn’t have tried to come skiing in the winter.  They don’t have those problems in July.

     In fact, the poor folks who run hotels get a lot of grief from the postcard manufacturers, who knew that people on their vacation love to pass along criticism of their accommodations.  Nowadays, we do that sort of thing through the Interwebs, but once upon a time, you went to a rack in the hotel gift shop to buy a postcard explaining how rotten your hotel was.

     And it’s not so much that a hotel is BAD, necessarily, as that your expectations are too high.  Sometimes a hotel visitor can be completely unreasonable.  Take the refined gent in the postcard at the top here.  If that towel was clean enough for the last two dozen men who used it, why should HE complain?  He expects too much.

     Most hotels of the time were designed to provide the most up-to-date comforts of home to the guests.  Here is a typical room with a lot of space, a simple and unaffected décor, and loads of amenities (the chamberpot is provided; he didn’t have to bring his own from home.)

     If some people read the advertisement and choose to read “near the sea” instead of what’s actually written, does this give them a right to complain?  I think not.

     A bed for the night is a bed for the night, after all.

     And if the local entertainers are too exciting for you to get much sleep, whose fault is that?

     One of the most common complaints, especially at really popular places (and particularly true in the cities during World War II) was that the hotels were fully booked, and there wasn’t much space.  Dozens of postcards complain about this, and yet the people shown could generally find a place, even if it was only semi-private sometimes.

     Or possibly less private than that.  This was a very common arrangement in hotels and inns in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so travelers were being allowed to experience travel (and social networking) the way their grandparents did.

     Every hotel has spaces which can be opened up to guests in times of real emergency.

     Though, as postcard after postcard pointed out, even those spaces needed to be booked in advance, as they might sell out quickly.

     As travel writers have pointed out, travel is meant to be an adventure, not just more of the same.  If all you want is the comforts of home and a handy Burger King or Wendy’s, why, you can always stay home.  (Postcards never say that, though.  If all these people stayed at home, who’d buy the postcards?)

Pick of the Litter

     I suppose someone out there in the world of postcards knows a whole lot more than I was able to learn about Vincent V. Colby, an artist responsible for a LOT of postcards in the 1910s or thereabouts.  Anybody with this body of distinctive work must have had a fan who dug out information about his life, but whoever that person is has not yet posted it and what I could find on the Interwebs was discouragingly small.  I hate it when geniuses are forgotten.  It gives me doubts about my own legacy.

     I suppose there’s a good chance that he is the same Vincent Colby I have found on a number of art sites as a landscape painter who was active in the Southwest around 1912.  It seems certain that he is the same man who did a few jobs for Bray productions and their early animated cartoons.  Imdb gives him credit for directing two cartoons: I Should Worry (did he do any of THOSE postcards?) and, more importantly for our meanderings today, Seven Cutey Pups (or Seven Cutey Puppies.)

     See, Mr. Colby was an artist of dogs, or, more specifically, puppies.  Especially one little white puppy with black ears, who is bold enough to proposition you (as seen above) but also timid enough to admit he doesn’t like dark nights. (below.)

     The timid side of the puppy was the cute one (the one that sold) and he must have produced dozens of pictures of this particular puppy trembling on the brink of some new crisis.  It wasn’t that M<r. Colby COULDN’T draw grown-up dogs.  He just saved that for special occasions, to act as straight man to his puppy’s comedy.

     He did sometimes draw postcards featuring just children, but a child with a puppy in the picture fit his line more particularly.

     And he could draw other animals.  (If he IS the Vincent Colby active in the Southwest, there is a World War I food production poster he did featuring cows and pigs.)  This led to one of the puppy’s dark secrets: his mad crush on a member of another species.

     This romance had its ups and downs, and he recorded all of these.

     From time to time, a puppy of his made reference to current events, as this puppy did in 1909 when rival Polar explorers Cook and Peary were racing to the Pole.  Plenty of people who didn’t care about explorers at all just bought this card because it showed another one of Vincent Colby’s puppies.  These were becoming so popular that genuine Colby puppy postcards had his special monogram on the back.

     See, more than one artist could draw little bulldog/beagle puppies.  This example, as timid as a Colby puppy, shows no Colby signature nor Colby trademark.  If that weren’t enough of a hint, those ears don’t seem to have the Colby pizzazz.

     While this puppy, rather more bulldoggy in his loneliness, is under the copyright of A. Bklue.

     As is this fellow, who seems to have the same problem with his master or mistress having other interests in life.

     Cute puppies abounded on postcard racks throughout the nation, possibly more even than the omnipresent Dutch kids.  This artist, whom I call “Black Box” always has HIS puppy speaking in a well-defined box somewhere in the corner.  (There was another artist of this time who seems to have specialized in dogs wearing muzzles, but we can save that for another day.)

     While a Colby puppy is the gold standard for cute puppies in this era of postcards, other artists succeeded in putting canine cuteness on paper.  After all, puppies are eternal in their struggles, so like our own, to deal with the complexities of an existence they only kind of understand.

Doctor, Doctor

     Today, we find ourselves in the doctor’s waiting room, waiting for a laugh.  Ah, for the pre-pandemic days, when the waiting room might be filled with Reader’s Digest, Highlights for Children, and Boys’ Life, all magazines which included joke columns, helping to preserve the traditional gags of our nation!  Now we must rely on emails and Facebook posts.

     Speaking of which, any of these, with or without the punchlines which have been hidden in the ANSWER section, are guaranteed to be of ancient vintage and perfectly ripe for posting.  No, you don’t have to give me credit.  I’m in this for my health.

J1.Angus strolled into the doctor’s office and asked the receptionist, “What does the doctor charge for a visit?”

     “One hundred dollars for the first visit,”” she told him, “But twenty dollars for each subsequent visit.”

     Angus waited his turn and then moved back to the examination room.  “Hey, Doc!” he said, “(         )”

J2.”Doc, it hurts when I do this!”

      “Well, then, (          ).”

J3.”That cough of yours sounds much better today.”

     “It should, Doc.  (          ).”

J4.”Yes, your leg is a bit swollen but I’m not worried.”

     “Well, Doc, (          ).”

J5.Dr. Krankheit took out his stethoscope and applied it to Sheila’s chest.  “Cough, please.”  She obeyed.  “Now cough again.”  She did it again.  “Now cough once more.”  Sheila did as she was instructed.

     The doctor lowered the stethoscope.  “My goodness!  (          )”

J6.”You’re going to need to keep regular hours.”

     “But, Doc, I do that now!”

     “You told me you leave your office and go straight to the bar and keep drinking ‘til midnight!”

     “So?  (         )”

J7.Dr. Krankheit gave me six months to live.  I told him I couldn’t pay his bill.  So he (         ).

J8.”I’ll be honest, Ma’am.  I don’t like the way your husband looks.”

     “Well, Doc, (          ).”

J9.”And how are you today?”

     “Worse than ever, Doc.”

     “Have you been doing what I told you?  Drinking a glass of hot water an hour before breakfast?”

     “I tried, Doc.”

J10.”Dr. Krankheit’s office,” said the doctor into the phone, “Dr. Krankheit speaking.”

     “Hey, Doc!  Sorry I didn’t make my appointment today!  But I’;ve been running fifteen miles a day, just like you said, and I feel great.  Really great!”

     “Glad to hear it,” said the doctor.  “But why didn’t you come in for your appointment?”

     “Well, Doc, (          ).”

J11.”Doc, whatever’s wrong with me, don’t scare me to death with some long scientific name for it.  Just give me the news straight out.”

     “Well, your basic problem is you’re a lazy fat man.”

     “That’s a relief, Doc.  Now (          ).”

J12.”This is the worst cold I’ve ever had!”

     “What’re you taking for it?”

     “(          ).”

We don’t have to wait for results from the lab.  Here are your ANSWERS.

     A1.Here I am again!  (In the long version of this joke, the doctor glances at Angus and says “You look good to me.  Keep taking the same medicine.”

     A2.Don’t do that

     A3.I’ve been practicing all night

     A4.If it was your leg, I wouldn’t be worried, either

     A5.How long have you had that cough?

     A6.Those are my regular hours

     A7.he gave me another six months

     A8.neither do I, but he’s good with the children

     A9.I can’t keep it up for more than ten minutes

     A10.I’m six hundred miles from home

     A11.Now give me a long scientific name so I can tell the wife

     A12.Make me an offer

Number One Column

     There has been absolutely no call for equal time, but we did commit a modest oversight a few months back with a series of columns on what dogs do, and what babies do.  Although there was a brief examination of the possibility that cats also did such things, we may have given you the wrong idea about our ancestiors.

     Of course, our ancestors knew this was a universal activity.  Someday, when I am desperate for material to fill this space, I may discuss the different industrial uses found through the centuries for the oldest chemical compound discovered by humans.  It was used in laundry, in medicine, as a food additive…for that matter, it is still essential in a number of consumer products.

     But our ancestors were such prudes, as we are told over and over: people who refused to acknowledge the truths of life.  They wouldn’t have discussed such subjects in postcard illustrations, would they?  Not on things that would go through the mail with someone’s name on them.

     As mentioned before, it was okay if you discussed it in conjunction with babies.  Nanies didn’t know better, though this gentleman suggests otherwise.

     Even in a sacred setting, it was okay, if a baby was involved.  But grownups were, well, too grown up to be indiscreet and discuss such business on a postcard, right?

     This, of course, is a joke which goes back as far as fire hydrants and women who could see their shoes to tie them, since those long skirts and high button boots went out of style.  But this is essentially a joke about dogs and fire hydrants.  Men might sometimes be indiscreet, but a lady was far more conscious of the improprieties.

     Privacy was essential for the mature adult.  Even the truck drivers noted at the top of this column, almost certainly men, retreated behind a roadside sign.

     Ladies also knew enough to leave the seat down.  Men were another matter entirely.

     There was a camaraderie among men, and a more raucous sense of humor.  This card, published in Germany, shows an entire group enjoying the opportunity to, as the send of the card has written on the back, make sure the water level in the lake remains satisfactory.  This card was actually sent through the mail, from Huntington, New York, in 1911.  The recipient was male, and, of course, in those days, the postal delivery system was handled largely by men, so there was no chance of offending the fair sex with such a picture.  Women, especially American women, wouldn’t find this sort of thing funny.

     Um, this card was mailed in 1911 from Huntington, too.  And this card, you’ll notice, did not deal with vulgar foreigners.  Well, anyway, we have set the record straight on postcards and dogs and babies.

Drawers’ Choice

     Once upon a time, mackerel jellybeans, one had to be so careful what one said.  Every word had to be measured before uttered, lest it cause offense.  And there were people on the alert for these offenses, so they could point them out to you and cry out to the world that you were unfit for decent society.

     Well, no, I didn’t mean last week on the Interwebs.  I was talking about a hundred or so years ago.

     The dictionary tells me people have worn “pants” since the 1830s, but it wasn’t a word that was supposed to be in wide circulation among the polite.  It may have been its assumed derivation from pantaloons, which was derived from the name of a vulgar clown, or it may have been where they were worn and what they were covering.  “Breeches” was similarly considered rather low class, and one spoke, if one had to speak of the lower garments at all, of trousers, or even, if one were terribly careful, of “bifurcated garments” (garments which forked into two parts.)

     It was not until the 1920s, apparently, that people started to use words like “underpants”, while words like “smartypants” or “fancy-pants” had to wait for the jazzier 1930s.

     And yet, people wore them, and they did attract attention.  Sporty gentlemen, like the elegantly dressed soul above, mighty wear fancy pants indeed.  This was largely discouraged by the refined, except when, say, playing golf.  (A hundred years before that, of course, men thought nothing of walking through the streets in skintight butter-colored…maybe THAT’S why “Regency Dancing” is so popular at pop culture conventions.)

     More likely to be commented on in the 1910s, and even less often to be seen nowadays, were the patched trousers, something which marked the wearer as someone too poor or too cheap to throw away a torn or worn pair of trousers.  Oddly enough, a number of different postcard companies developed lines of repaired pants for sending good wishes to one’s friends.

     Here’s a typical example.  The patches are always on the seat (I used to wear pants until they fell apart, but they never developed holes in the seat.  I don’t know if this placement of patches is a comic stereotype or if I just wore reinforced pants) and the caption is laden with puns.  This goes for a trifecta: rent behind could be slow payments on one’s abode or tears in the seat, while a quarter could be a three-month period or a square of cloth.   Why you’re wishing someone luck by showing the seat of your pants and complaining about yours is a separate problem.

     This is a little heartier.  Black and White is a popular whiskey, so a complaint about winter becomes a little joke between drinking buddies.

     This artist did the same sort of thing, only with a tartan patch.

     Here we are going a little far to make the joke in verse.  This comes from the phrase that no matter how good someone’s luck or talent or intellect may be, it isn’t good enough to be a PATCH on yours.  (Note also that it seems to be a preference among these jokes to refuse to mention the garment in question at all, allowing you to figure out the joke on your own.  Yes, I COULD just have shown these pictures and not explained the text, but that sort of column wouldn’t be a patch on my…okay, okay.)

     So of course you got the joke here, from the use of “check” as an obstacle.  Vocabulary, however, is not the only joy of this study of vintage bifurcated garments.  Have you noticed the different designs of the waistbands, and how most of these patched pants come with a pair of suspenders?  What can we learn about our ancestors from this, Horseradish Éclair?  Did only gents wear belts?  Did men usually hang up their pants with the suspenders still attached (if you had only one pair of each, that makes sense.)  Or can we….

     Very well, we shall conclude with this card which at least shows how our language has changed.  If used on postcards later in the century, this first pun would have had one more meaning.