OT=- Trip down Memory Lane for all You Old Codgers

[Daryl]

By: Richard Lederer (A remarkable local Linguist).

About a month ago in this space, I illuminated old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.

These phrases included: don’t touch that dial, carbon copy, you sound like a broken record and hung out to dry. A bevy of readers have asked me to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We’d put on our best bib and tucker and straighten up and fly right. Hubba-hubba! We’d cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and petting and smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some passion pit or lovers’ lane. Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.

Like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” or “This is a fine kettle of fish!” we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape of our perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinder’s monkey.

Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone? Long time ago: Pshaw. The milkman did it. Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread box. Banned in Boston. The very idea! It’s your nickel. Don’t forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain.
Domino theory. Fail safe. Civil defense. Fiddlesticks! Kiddidlehopper! You look like the wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties. Going like sixty. I’ll see you in the funny papers. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! And awa-a-ay we go!

Oh,my stars and garters! It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter had liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart’s deep core. But just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging.
We can have archaic and eat it, too!

Badda Bing, Badda Boom!

[Bill K]

Thank you Daryl.. Yes those were good times and very good sayings, remember everyone of them. The sparking and you name it. Times long gone, and never too be again. Bill K

[sicero]

Daryl
I still use some of them. But I am only 76. Kenny

[Alex]

What a fine kettle of fish this is!

Alex

[sicero]

My mom's favorite. You'd get used to hanging if you hung long enough,

dad burn it, aw shucks, rats petutie. Thanks Daryl. Kenny

[ramos]

Amazing how he put all that together!

[junk man]

them old sayings were " slick as a minnows whistle"

[johno]

I said to my my son awhile back when I made a mistake

" well that's another fine mess you've got us into Staneley"

He said, "you really are getting old dad, my names Mick"

"its a line from Laural & Hardy son" says I

"Cool, who are they?"

"Never mind son"

Johno

[Lenard]

I have heard most of those sayings. As a kid I always hung around with the old men and all of them, including my dad were full of those sayings. Such fun, listening to the stories and sayings as a kid.

[toolman47327]

Daryl, I really like your post, it rings very true!

My youngest daughter, Lindsey, drove my 68 Chevelle to a ball game at school a couple of years ago. I get a phone
call after dark, she states “Dad, the check engine light is on in the Chevelle” “Oh really, tell me more” I say.
“well, I started the car and it is running fine, but when I turned on the headlights the light came on”
“Lindsey, is it a round red light in the speedometer?” “yes” she says. “Lindsey, that is the High Beam indicator, turn the lights to low beam and it will go off”
“Dad, I am pulling really hard on the turn signal lever and it is not turning off the high beams” … “Honey, the switch is on the floor, step on it with your left foot”…
TRUE STORY!


Tom