Eat Your Eskimo Pie with the Six Brown Brothers While Playing Tops and Anagrams: A 1930s Trend Retrospective

The New Yorker was in a tizzy about humanism throughout 1930, as the philosophy had suddenly come back into vogue and gained national attention. Thanks to Charles Francis Potter and the establishment of The First Humanist Society of New York, discussing humanism became a frequent pastime among the New York intelligentsia. You can't pick up an issue of the magazine during this period without reading stories and sly jabs about the debates, the propaganda, and the reactionary religious response to the movement.

In the May 31, 1930 issue, Donald Moffat wrote "The Crime at Mrs. Ward's," in which a young man -- fed up with all the latest fads -- actually SHOOTS the guests at a swanky party when they are unable to tell him what humanism is. This supposedly indicates that lots of people gave lip-service to humanism at the time, and they loved to talk about it, but none of them had the faintest idea what it was all about (which seems strange to me, frankly).

Anyway, the interesting thing about the story isn't the heavy-handed plot, it's the long list of PREVIOUS crazes that are presented. Want to know what the highbrow fads were in New York between 1905 and 1930? Here you go.

...my friend acquired a leather-burning set, and happily joined the nation in burning Indian heads on leather--he was too young for the first ping-pong wave. He shouted 'Uneeda Biscuit' to street-car conductors and cabbies, 'Get a horse' to stalled motorists, and said 'ZuZu' to the groceryman. He was among the first of the 1906 diabolo addicts, and as the years rolled by he similarly took to his bosom put-and-take tops, Eskimo Pie, mah-jongg, Coué, scofflawry, categories (or Guggenheim), Queen Marie, crossword puzzles, sex, anagrams, badminton, Yo-Yo tops, and backgammon, as each in turn came into fashion. He seideled to Hoboken and taxied to Harlem when those were the things to do, and wrote little pieces on the social, artistic, and economic significance of....Charlie Chaplin, the Six Brown Brothers, short skirts, Joe Jackson, Lillian Gish, Will Rogers, the return of the corset, Rudy Valée, 'The Well of Loneliness,' Amos 'n' Andy, D. H. Lawrence, Krazy Kat, long skirts, Paul Whiteman, and kindred modern phenomena. He returned from France last summer wearing a beret and espadrilles, and he'd thrown away the top part of his bathing suit.

Whew! Some of them are self-explanatory. Here are my thoughts on the others that require a bit more explanation:

• Uneeda Biscuit: I assume this was just a joke on the name of the biscuit -- "Hey, you need a biscuit" -- along the lines of other knee-slappers at the time like "Do you have Prince Albert in a can? Then you'd better let him out!"
• Zuzu: A ginger snap brand. Their advertisements said "For a bang-up time take five cents to the grocery and ask for Zuzu ginger snaps. You'll hit the mark every time!" I guess this was similar to the hordes of people who walk into Tim Horton's and say "Rrrrrroll up the rim to win!" It's the adoption of a catchphrase.
• Seidel: I have no idea what this means. A seidel was a glass of beer, but how this relates to traveling to Hoboken I don't know.
• I also don't get the "beret and espadrilles" and "threw away the top half of his bathing suit" references.

I love a good piece of culture-spew, and I also love a good mystery! Any insights?

A Cigar for the Battered Husband

The P. Lorillard Company advertised these "little cigars" with an amusing ad campaign. While the name "Between the Acts" suggested a person who wanted a quick smoke during a theater intermission, the advertisements focused on more entertaining moments when the protagonist had very little time to spare.

I can't remember any of the previous ones right now, but I get a kick out of this one from May 17, 1930. There are so many cute symbols involved. I'm not sure why he has a feather in his tophat, but he's obviously the drunk husband coming home and trying to sneak into the apartment without his wife seeing him. He's holding his shoes in his hand so he can move silently, and because he's smoking a "Between the Acts" cigar we know he only has a few seconds before his wife clobbers him with her rolling pin.

I particularly like the way she's rolling up her sleeve in the background, and the fact that you can't see her face. This is such a fun, ominous, and perfectly-designed image!

PS: When will people stop recognizing the rolling pin as a weapon wielded by disgruntled housewives? I'm not even sure how *I* recognize it, except that it was probably a staple of cartoons throughout the '40s and '50s. Like so many symbols of the times, the cartoons serve as an unintended method of feeding the public consciousness. Someday children will only recognize trees because they saw them in Merrie Melodies.

PPS: Who was the mysterious artist "F.G.C."? I'm unable to find out. I've certainly seen his/her work elsewhere in the magazine, and you can find a few references to his advertising copy online, but other than that...

Requesting Songs of an Orchestra?

Something just occurred to me: how did people transmit their musical requests to orchestras?

Think of it: You're at a swank supper club in the 1920s, and you decide you want to hear "The Kashmiri Love Song." Whether you're dancing on the floor or eating at your table, how would you convey your request to the orchestra's conductor?

Even though you often hear about people in such situations MAKING requests, you rarely hear HOW. Did they politely mention the request to their waiter or a passing busboy? Did they shout it out while applauding? Did they approach the musicians during a break? Did they leave notes on the stage? Was there an established job of standing at the edge of the stage and taking requests?

My guess is that the waiter or busboy was the go-between, but I have no proof and I'm very curious.

Unearthing Forgotten Bits of Culture: William Lyon Phelps

Reading old issues of The New Yorker clarifies a lot of things about life in the '20s and '30s, but it also raises new mysteries. It was written -- obviously -- for people who knew the current events of the day, so things can be a bit muddy for the 21st century reader, especially when the writers neglect to provide Googleable clues.

Several months ago I solved The Mystery of Mitzi Hajos. This afternoon I solved The Mystery of Nothing Like It.

Written by Christopher Ward* in the March 8, 1930 issue, "Nothing Like It By W-M L-N PH-L-S" is obviously a spoof of a particular book reviewer. This reviewer is obsessed with his airtight Christian morality, and even more obsessed with his social connections; each review degenerates into a long-winded story about how he is on friendly terms with the author. He also makes some really terrible puns.

Most enjoyable is his "Faery Queene Club," which he offers membership to anybody who has read the poem, including a nine-year-old named Abram Goody who wants "a badge or something" ("No, Master Goody, the only reward is a consciousness of superiority to your parents and friends, and your name in this magazine"). He also gets a letter from a chorus girl:

I have read quite a lot of the book you give me. Its certainly wrote swell. Its away over poor little me. Anyhow I want to join your Fairy Queen Club. I suppose its like the others sos I can go there when the shows over and get a drink and see a little life. Ime getting along fine they have gave me a better part. Ime in the front row now. Let me know about the Club where its address is and everything.

Besides proving that people haven't changed much in the last eighty years, the spoof posed a mystery...who was W-M L-N PH-L-S? Obviously a '30s reader would know, but what about me?

I tried inserting letters into the blanks...obviously "Phelps," but what about "W-M" and "L-N?" "Wim Lon Phelps?" Nothing was working, so I tried reverting the spoof column name ("Nothing Like It") to what I assumed was the original ("Something Like It" or "As You Like It"). Nope, no luck.

Then I tried "The Faery Queene Club," and whoopee...it really existed, and was run by William Lyon Phelps, who wrote a regular column called "As I Like It" for Scribner's Magazine! More importantly, every mention of Phelps online waxes eloquent about his intelligence and fame, but they never ONCE mention his supposed pomposity.

So by writing this post I am not just crowing about my internet sleuthing...I'm also pointing out that William Lyon Phelps was once considered annoying enough to inspire a spoof column, and a very funny one indeed.

* Bonus Mystery: I assume that "Christopher Ward" was Christopher Lewis Ward, who was known for writing burlesques around that time.

Cock-Crow of the Bantam Car

I understand that '30s periodicals were not particularly sensitive -- offenses against God and Country excluded -- but I'm a bit surprised by the pictures in this March 1st, 1930 advertisement from The New Yorker. They represent the "American Austin" car as the victorious rooster in a bloody cockfight.

The rest of the advertisement is simply a list of statistics and celebrity endorsements. The cockfight metaphor is only addressed in the pictures. It's SO BLASE.

This is particularly strange because cockfighting was illegal in New York state in the 1930s, and I only know this because Morris Markey wrote a great piece about it ("Feathered Warriors") in an issue of The New Yorker just one month before. And while the magazine itself made lots of explicit (and complicit) mentions of the illegal liquor trade, the ADVERTISEMENTS never did so (though they did sell cocktail shakers and such).

In short, showing this cockfight imagery would have been akin to saying something like: "The American Austin: The best bootleg gin around!" They couldn't do it for booze...why could they do it for a bloodsport?

The Unsolved Mysteries of Williamson and Voynich

As annoying as Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!" program can be, one of their comments has really stuck with me. During a program about cryptozoology, Penn said that there are enough real and established unsolved mysteries in the world that we shouldn't become obsessed with ones that are merely tenuous.

The obvious examples involve both the huge and the tiny things that science is actively probing: cosmology, subatomic particles, and genetic material. But I'm equally (if not more) fascinated by the little, somewhat mundane oddities that pop up now and then.

Just in case you are too, here's an example: Williamson's tunnels. In the early 1800s, a rich and somewhat eccentric Liverpudlian named Joseph Williamson started constructing huge, elaborate tunnels under his property.


Instead of being objects of curiosity after his death, they were mostly viewed with annoyance; they'd get in the way of new building projects, and housing developers would simply fill them up with rubble -- usually without telling anybody -- so that their new apartment buildings wouldn't fall into them.

Now a small group of volunteers is slowly and methodically uncovering the tunnels, and they're discovering that they're much deeper -- and they travel much farther -- than credible sources would have indicated. It's incredibly difficult for an underfunded handful of people to clear out uncounted tonnes of compressed rubble, but they're slowly making their way through the tunnel network, finding new things all the time.

The mystery isn't just the EXTENT of the tunnels, it's also "Why were they built in the first place?" Nobody really knows yet, but maybe if they travel far enough they'll eventually get some clue. Until then: unsolved and really cool.

A second mystery is one I just learned about tonight, thanks to a brief article in the January 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker. In 1912, book-dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich publicized the existence of a book that has become known as the Voynich Manuscript.


People have been trying to decipher the manuscript for almost 100 years, but they still can't crack its bizarre cypher. If the book isn't simply an elaborate hoax -- which it doesn't seem to be -- then it was written in the 15th or 16th century. It appears to be a biological, astrological, and alchemical treatise and is full of bizarre illustrations, including chimerical plants and naked women bathing in funnels and tubes.

Want to read it? Think you can solve the mystery? Check it out here. And I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing FAR more fascinating than bigfoot or The Ghost of Henry VIII.

60 Dances in 60 Minutes - The General Idea

This morning I was invited to attend rehearsals for the upcoming "60 Dances in 60 Minutes" show, which will be performed November 4th at The Registry Theatre. They didn't invite me because I'm a spectacular hoofer with hotcha feet, but because...

...well, just because. Let me explain.

I love to dance in a bar. I enjoy the "Thriller" dance just as much as the next person. I get a kick out of Ann Miller's tapping, and if I ever dust off my barely-worn tap shoes I just might decide to annoy my neighbours again.

But I don't understand "contemporary" dance. Watching a contemporary dance troupe, for me, is like watching sign language: I appreciate the craft and I understand that it has a history and a meaning and a complexity (and perhaps even a syntax), but I simply can't tell one movement from another. "Sun" might as well be "bathtub" for all I know, just as the movements of contemporary dance could be "Reaching for the tragic revelation hidden behind my lover's smile" or "Ouch, my arm!" at any given time.

I am certainly not the only person who doesn't "get" contemporary dance; lots of people find it baffling. And what's the best way to explain it to the uncomprehending majority?

Simple: send in a Mister EveryMuffy to have a look, somebody who is INTERESTED, and somebody who can EXPRESS confusion and revelation and perhaps even boredom in a widely-read (if I do say so) blog. It's even better if that EveryMuffy will do it just for the fun of it.

I know all too well that some ambitious plans don't work out. Maybe I'll find myself totally uninspired by the proceedings and unable to say anything that is interesting. Maybe, while poking around the Registry Theatre, I'll accidentally drop a sandbag on somebody -- please not artistic director Michael Trent -- and get kicked out for causing a ruckus.

But maybe not. If the stars align during the next week then you -- the curious dance outsider -- might read something of interest in this blog. And I might decide that even if I can't express complex emotions with my uncoordinated body, I might at LEAST learn how to finally do The Twist.

Spider Attack!

My mother told me horror stories about cleaning the kitchen window yesterday, and I saw her pile of blackened paper towels, but it wasn't until today that I learned the TRUE horror of a filthy window.

Since we're in for some cold and blustery days this week, I decided it was time to remove the air conditioner from my new bedroom. I figured that the hardest thing would be...well, just removing the air conditioner, which I knew would be heavy and which -- as is the nature of air conditioners everywhere -- had been installed in an individualistic and unorthodox manner.

After unscrewing the wooden platform and ripping off the electrical tape, I started pulling the air conditioner out...and spiders ran EVERYWHERE. Little tiny spiders the size of pin-pricks, monstrous pea-sized ones, and all sizes in-between...black, gray, transparent, ZOOM! All of them running for cover as I stood, helpless, with the air conditioner in my hands.

So I got Windex and paper towels and started scrubbing every groove and platform in the window. Everywhere I looked: spiders. DOZENS of them. I'd spray Windex in a corner, and three or four more spiders would run out. Crush-crush-crush!

And not just that...the MOULD. At least a decade of thick, black gunge in the corners, mixed with countless splats of flyshit and the corpses of long-forgotten flies. Under the eaves-troughs: dangling webs, more spiders. On the outsides of the windows: thick strands both new and old.

I thought I'd seen it all, and then I tackled the upper corner, which I thought was crammed with insulation to fill in the gap around the air conditioner. But Jesus, no, I don't even know WHAT it was: a solid black crud, an inch thick and several inches deep, which crumbled under my touch to reveal insect husks, spider legs, opaque membranes the size of peanut shells. This was ALIEN. IT SIMPLY COULD NOT BE.

And then the big-daddy spider came rushing out of some hidden cranny, fat-bellied, an inch long, waving at me. I sprayed him with Windex, he went down, he came back, I sprayed again, drowning him, but still he shuddered and spun until...well, I picked up a piece of the air conditioner and knocked him out into the air.

I think he's still alive. Tonight...close your windows.

So why are there so many spiders? Maybe because the previous owners just never cleaned the windows...but I never cleaned MY windows either, and nothing even CLOSE to that ever happened.

Strangely, all the spiders seem to be on the windows on the western side of the building, so either they never cleaned those ones or there's some natural phenomenon involved. Maybe mould grows on that side, which attracts insects, which attracts spiders...

Either way I thank goodness that I haven't found any spiders INSIDE the apartment. Yet.

Crank That Saxophone, Just Like Rudy Valée!

Not only was there a Player Cornet, there was also an Automatic Saxophone!


Note that the sax comes with an attractive crank, unlike the cornet.

New Yorkers Agree, It's Startling! New Type Cornet!

Here we thought that 1920s inventors just invented useless stuff like radio, and talking pictures, and automatic toasters. But no! They also invented...the Player Cornet!


Try to tell me that this wouldn't have been annoying at parties. As described in the October 5, 1929 issue of The New Yorker:

Rather clever of those Europeans...now they bring us a new type of cornet that plays from music rolls, but is not an automatic playing instrument...

The music roll selects the correct tones or notes but you control everything else necessary for the playing of a melody with the feeling you want to express.

The blowing into the instrument to produce the volume, movement of the music roll to regulate the tempo are controlled by you. If you can hum or whistle a tune, ten minutes of practice will enable you to play the melody.

It was available at Mayfair Playthings Store for only $12 (with two music rolls included), but for some reason I can't find any online references to this instrument. How the heck did it work? Can I buy one now?

A Street Person's To-Do List

For a few weeks this summer my workplace has had to deal with a street person's leftovers. This person would sleep overnight in one of our entry ways, then leave behind a bizarre collection of odds-and-ends the next day, including syringes.

Some of his leftovers have been bizarre -- children's toys, a broken stereo, a sleeping bag -- but once I discovered a backpack, and in it a "To-Do" diary with some very interesting notations.



His writing is difficult to decipher. Here's page one:

I NEED DO THE DO
STOP
DO NO HARME
BI BI
LEET GOOD

DO
CALL SHARON
MOM

Page two is labeled "TO DO" and says:

1 DENTOS AP
RENT TO INTENT LETTER
1 2 3

FIND OUT WHAT NEEDS TO BE DON AT
1 TAX
2 WELFARE
GET RENT
PHONE BANK

400 WATS + iPOD
99 HDML DVD
49 5.100
B: DVD
79 200WAT

Page three is one-sided:

START TO SLOW DOWN AND STOP
M L

AT 5:00 I WAS DOWN TOWN AT MARKET IN KIT
$120 PAND FOR RED PUMPKIN
7 DID IN IN THE ROW
8 WALKT HOME

10 TO 2:00
1 AM

Page four is most interesting:

CALL MOM
GOOD DAY TO DAY
TRY 3 OR
$10: OOW AT LARAL STREET

TO DO
GET NUMBER FOR METH
CLINICK WOOD STACK
BUS FAIR
$20 DOLLERS

NIKKEY IS WITH ROS AND ALL I SENS IS NEGATIV MY LAIF IS OFF THE HOOK

And finally, page five:

I CANT US
I CANT SEE YOU MONBER
HEPUT

I suppose this is a glimpse at the functionality of a drug-addicted, partially literate person. He hasn't come around lately.

PS: As much as my workmates hated having to dispose of his garbage, what they objected to most were the syringes. This annoyed me too, but then I realized that they were all prominently displayed...almost laid out deliberately in front of his former possessions.

Suddenly it occurred to me: what is a street person going to do with used syringes? They aren't going to carry "sharpie" boxes around which would advertise to the world that they're injecting drugs. When they want to dispose of a needle, I think their only options are to throw it in a garbage or hide it in something until they're far away.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather the syringes be immediately visible...I don't want to pick up somebody's old backpack or pull out a garbage bag and get a needle in the hand. I wonder if, by leaving their needles where everybody can see them, these street people are being CONSIDERATE?

Fie on Fussy Preparation!

I previously explored the obtuse mystery of a 1929 "Caviarette" advertisement. If you'll remember, the REAL mystery of the advertisement was that it was poorly written and barely sensible.

This appears to be a trend, because in the September 14, 1929 issue of The New Yorker I've run across another Caviarette advertisement, and it's equally bad.


Calling it "The Third C Mystery" is already a bad idea, because the mundane meaning of the "three Cs" are not revealed until the final panel (Cocktails, Caviar, Caviarettes), giving you little reason to worry about whatever it is they're looking for. If the society lady can't even be bothered to explain her problem except by using an acronym -- and if she goes about her investigation with such a haughty, ignorant facial expression -- then we're inclined to hope that she never finds what she's looking for and that her party fails.

But thank goodness the Smart Grocer understands her richie-rich autistic lingo and puts in an order for the all-important "third C." The only bright spot of this entire ordeal is the grinning, bundled up airplane pilot in panel five, who must have gotten paid a lot of money just to fly a package of crackers to her society do'.

In the final writeup we find out that her guests are in fact "Major Bliss, Madame Ecstasy and Miss Delight," which implies to me that she's actually the madame for a high-class escort service. And we know those folks care about their caviar.

These advertisements are beginning to annoy me.

Solving the Caviarette Mystery

I read this New Yorker advertisement once. Then I read it again. I read it a third time and I STILL didn't know what the hell it was supposed to mean (click for a larger image).


I'm happy to report that the fourth time was the charm. So let me explain.

The people in the comic are all members of the same family. They try various pastimes and they all fail miserably; Brother sucks at polo (a "chukka" is a polo-style period), Sis is equally bad at tennis, Mom is losing vast amounts of money playing bridge, and Pop couldn't win at the stock market to save his life (a smooch to anybody who can find out which commodity "Cons. Gravies"* is supposed to be).

The butler knows that "something must be done" to make the family happy...so he serves them caviar on incredible J. R. Ritz Caviarette crackers. He also gives them illegal cocktails, you'll notice. The combination of booze, caviar, and crackers leads to a happy ending in the sixth panel.

Why was this all so confusing? Other than the fact that the actual plot is disconnected and silly, I had trouble figuring out what Pop was doing in panel four (that's ticker-tape, not spaghetti), and it took me awhile to recognize the affiliation of the butler character...it was the bow tie that tipped me off.

But none of this explains the absolutely atrocious first paragraph, which would throw even the savviest culture bloodhound offtrack:

Athletic and high mental family loses all indoor and outdoor sports except Caviarettes at which pastime all run up tremendous record-breaking average.

This is such a terrible sentence that it must have been done on purpose. Was it meant to evoke a telegram, or a radio report, or a quick newspaper brief? Caviarette crackers deserved better, I'm sure.

* I guess I'll have to smooch myself because the answer just occurred to me while I was trying to get to sleep. It's "Consolidated Gravies" and is not meant to be an actual commodity; it's a play on "gravy train." Whew, now I CAN sleep.

Then The Little Truck Goes Under The Big Truck, And Then The Big Truck...

I just got the weirdest telephone survey.

Most of it was normal and seemed to center around my usage of Interac ("Also called Debit") and my recognition of the Interac brand. She wanted a detailed description of any Interac-related logos that I could remember, and she typed in every single word of my long description.

The logo I tried to describe was this one, though I'd completely forgotten that the word "Interac" was on it, and that the entire hand was illustrated instead of just the thumb. And I seemed to remember that the logo was brown.

Funny how these logos penetrate our heads halfway.

Then she asked me if I'd seen any advertisements for Interac during the past month, so I told her that I don't have cable so I don't see any television advertisements at all. Like the marketing-research drone she was, she next described a television commercial to me in great detail. It went something like this, written in terms simple enough for a child to understand, devoid of all energy, and spoken with a rapid-fire and somewhat cute Quebecois accent:

Have you ever seen or have you been told about a commercial about a man in an office who gets up from his desk and walks to the door, and then the camera moves down to show a small truck under his desk, which moves to follow him out of his office. Down in the street we see a big truck, and the little truck goes under the big truck, scraping its paint. The little truck almost collides with a second big truck. A street cleaning truck drives down the street, and the little truck becomes caught in its brushes and is thrown back out into the street. The man enters a store, and the little truck follows him into the store. Have you ever seen or have you been told about this commercial?

Errrr...no, like I said, but it sounds like a sort of crappy commercial.

I personally like being in these surveys because I consider myself the outlier, the result that needs to be discarded because I'm not exposed to the advertising that their focus groups are. It doesn't matter what I think about their commercial, because even if they make a better commercial I'll probably never see it. My "loyalty" to Interac is entirely due it being the most convenient way to pay for things.

To Whom Will You Entrust Your Trees?

When you're hiring a tree surgeon, according to the March 23'29 New Yorker, you don't want to hire some lazy guy from the gutter...you want a man who can do this:


They're members of the Davey Institute of Tree Surgery "Tumbling Team," of course! Because the Davey Institute knows that tree surgeons must have "physical energy," and I guess they might want to go into Vaudeville if the tree thing doesn't work out.

It amazes me that there ever WERE tree surgeons, and I'm almost as amazed to discover that they still exist. I assumed from watching cartoons that the tree surgeons rushed around and pressed stethoscopes against the trunks of sick trees, but apparently their job is more sedate than all that, despite the existence of the Davey Institute Tumbling Team. I think they basically go around and write reports.

The massive two-page advertisement in this New Yorker, however, makes me think that tree surgeons back then would work for either rich landowners or for people who ran orchards. The advertisement doesn't describe what the tree surgeons actually DID -- referring to their actions as simply "the work" -- but it must have been a huge business, considering this was the Davey Institute class of 1929:


That's a lot of tree surgeons.

More From The Pittsburgh Press

The 1920's New Yorker was glutted with full-page advertisements from The Pittsburgh Press. These advertisements were meant to prove...errr...something, and took the strangest logical detours in order to prove...errr...whatever it was they were proving.

I give you this baby. He looks like he's saying "Hey, screw you, lady!"

Why all this Pittsburgh-boosting? Why the babies? "Why is the man pounding the table?" We may never know.

The Little House in the Wilderness

I love the little house in the wilderness, the one tiny house which has withstood all efforts of the Big Insurance Company to buy it. The B.I.C. owns everything else on that block, with the hopes of someday building another tower or a parking lot there...but that plucky little house has stood its ground and -- if Ian has anything to do with it -- it will be there for a long time.

Ian owns the house. Today he caught me snooping around and we started talking. I'd assumed that the house was deserted -- most of its windows are painted over and its wall of two-storey bushes form an impenetrable shell around it -- but no, Ian still lives there. He's an imposing middle-aged guy in green mechanic's coveralls, his face is huge, he is enthusiastically anti-establishment. I found him yanking out the four-foot high thistles, part of the foliage that he correctly calls his "naturalization." It would seem, however, that the B.I.C. doesn't like those thistles.

The 1861 farmhouse has been in Ian's family for a long time, and he says that if anything happens to him it will be inherited by his equally imposing cousin. Ian is friendly and gregarious, a brilliant talker. He calls the B.I.C. tower "Big Brother" and the rising loft tower on the other side is "Big Sister." He shares my amusement that a newly-constructed apartment complex can be called a "loft." As a child in that house he remembers seeing the factory which used to be there belch huge clots of fabric out of its smokestacks.

Ian says, referring to the B.I.C., "They hate my entire G.I. tract."

We talked until the big storm came down and hammered us, when Ian gathered up his electric clippers and disappeared back into his tiny patch of wilderness. It thrills me that he lives in there, happily isolated, a pain in the ass.

Exquisite Creations of Master Designers Woven from the Finest, Virgin Angora Mohair!

Alright. Even if we eventually figure out what "broad-jumper's pants" were, will we ever understand the concept of a "motor robe?"


Described as "the finishing touch of luxury," this advertisement for "Robes by Chase" (made by the L. C. Chase & Company of Boston) tells you everything you'd want to know about the available colours, weaving techniques, and superior fabrics of a motor robe...but it doesn't tell you what they're USED for.

I initially thought they were just a type of upholstery, but check out the picture: the robe is hung on a rod that's attached to the front seat, conveniently available for the driver to reach back and fondle now and then.

Was it used as a blanket during the winter? Was it a cushion in case of a car accident? The advertisement says that the motor robe "feels welcome, indeed, to silk stockings," maybe implying that stocking-wearers could put it on the seat under them, to protect their hosiery from rough seat fabric (though that doesn't explain why the women in the picture above are STARING at the thing instead of SITTING on it).

The motor robe...another of life's great mysteries.

(The New Yorker, February 16, 1929, page 48)

PS: It appears that the motor robe was patented in 1925. The only other online reference I can find refers to it as a "lap robe," which means it probably WAS something meant to keep passengers' legs warm.

Broad-Jumper's Pants

It took me forever to figure out what was going on in this picture. Eventually I realized that the two old ladies were laughing at the man because he was walking funny, and the reason he was walking funny was because his pants were wrinkled. He was crouching down to hide the wrinkles, you see.

So why were his pants wrinkled? "Because he wouldn't take a trunk," according to the Hartmann Trunks advertisement.

After all these years--think of it--still a suitcase addict! O me, o my! And not even a best friend to tell him! Perhaps you, too, have weathered the withering eyes of the Hotel Porch Brigade...the doughty dowagers who never miss a trick--who spot the suitcase customers by their baggy, wrinkled wardrobe.

So that's one convoluted mystery solved, but maybe YOU can explain why the subheading for this advertisement is "Broad-jumper's pants." It might be because the posture of a man who is hiding his pant-wrinkles is similar to the posture of a crouching broad-jumper, but that's a real stretch.

In any case, I assume it's a term that didn't catch on (much like "bidding two spades.")

The Spot-Hole

Today I'm in the bathroom at work and I'm staring at the wall -- for reasons you can guess -- and I notice a little point of light.

So I look closer at it and it appears to be a small hole in the bathroom wall, about a millimeter in diameter, but when I move my head a bit the light disappears.

To make sure it isn't just a shiny fleck of paint I cup my hands around the spot...and it continues to glow. It's a bright speck buried in the darkness of my hands. It really does look like a hole.

Workmate Charles wanders over to find out why I'm lurking around the toiletries and I show him the spot, and he cups his hands around it and says "Yeah, I think it's a hole," though he also notices the way it seems to reflect a bit, as though a flake of paint were covering it slightly. Another workmate -- Matthew -- sees us acting all suspicious and so he looks too and he confirms...yes, could be a small hole, very strange.

A hole in the bathroom wall.

I leave and get a pencil from my cubicle and come back to confirm the theory; I want to poke the spot and see if the pencil goes in. I walk up to the wall...

...and I can't find the spot. I search around and around. I cup my hands and look all over. The situation is complicated by the style of the paint, which is deliberately bumpy. I call Charles back and we look together and neither of us can see anything. Meanwhile the automatic toiletries are flushing like crazy because we keep standing in front of them.

By now we have collected a small bathroom mob. Workmate Don turns off the light while I stand in front of the wall, but I can't see anything. We ascertain out where the hole should exit -- an unused, dimly-lit storage area behind the elevator -- and we search that wall as well...nothing. Just in case there WAS a fleck of paint slightly covering the hole, I get a wet paper towel and start wiping at the wall, hoping to dislodge it. Nothing.

We sit around and stare at each other. Either the little hole got covered up somehow, or it was a remarkably reflective piece of material that fell off, or we just forgot where exactly we'd been looking.

It is an unsolved mystery. Like a UFO. In the bathroom.