Lakewood Lore

Old sayings bring back sweet memories of childhood

Gone, gone, gone -- so much is gone that can be only resurrected in the mind -- and then oft-times only after some weighty thinking.

For those of us coming down the flip side of the mountain, memories of childhood usually are the clearest.

Schoolyards were hubs of activity and often microcosms of the outside world we would face later in life. Fisticuffs for settling scores were commonplace. They usually started with someone poking fun at someone.

"Put up your dukes!" an antagonist would shout when spoiling for fight. That meant assume the stance with arms extended and fists tightened.

Sometimes it followed an order to "Knock this chip off my shoulder" -- the chip being my small twig lying about. A knife was a sign of cowardice, and we didn't have to worry about guns.

If we got licked, we might say, "Aw, he hit me in the breadbasket."

This was a good excuse for "being yellow" because the stomach was adjudged a particularly sensitive part of the anatomy when we were growing up.

We told that "Everyone will eat a peck of dirt during his lifetime," so we didn't care much about what we put in our mouths. Anyway, warm tar from a city paving truck was supposed to whiten one's teeth, and dry, crumbled leaves wrapped in a piece of old newspaper made a suitable cigar that cost nothing.

As we matured, we learned the closest way of making, or missing, something was "by the skin of our teeth." We agreed that if something was "as clean as a paper of pins," it couldn't get any cleaner.

We also accepted the belief that a thing was the deadest if it were "as dead as a door nail." We gathered that undertakers, like everybody else, died, too, but not as often.

We drank homemade root beer and ate licorice straps, green mint leaves and those penny caramels called bullseyes. We saved string, tinfoil and cigar bands. We listened to the Victrola play "Lonesome and Sorry" and "It's a Treat to Beat Your Feet on the Mississippi Mud."

We watched our parents and their friends bunch around the upright in the parlor of an evening to sing "Down by the Old Mill Stream" and "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."

Occasionally we'd see a silent, stooped man lurking around the neighborhood. We were told he was a harmless veteran who had been gassed in World War I and could never work again.

During the Great Depression, we learned that "One has to wait a long, long time before a roast duck flies into one's mouth." People themselves, however were never "depressed." Instead, they were said to be "downhearted," or to have "the blues."

We were told that "nothing is impossible." If that was the case, then how do you dribble a football, we wondered. We heard say that "Those who laugh a lot live longer," and some of us figured that should be good news for hyenas.

We learned never to wear a new tie to the dentist's office. We always avoided quicksand and whirlpools, and at the zoo gave the rhinoceros a wide berth.

When friends drove fast, they would brag they were "goin' like sixties." Only professional race drivers went that fast, however. If someone exceeded the modest limits of the day, an arresting cop would usually snap, "Who do ya think ya are -- Barney Oldfield?" (Oldfield was an early race driver who broke a lot of records but died peacefully in bed in 1946).

"You win; pick up the marbles," meant just that. "Only the good die young," left us confused. "Don't count you chickens before they're hatched" made more sense.

Most people thought, "If you wear a clean, white shirt every day, you're just as good as the next man." Your best girl friend could easily have been an Anna, Mary, Rose, Eleanor, Mildred, Helen, Grace or Elizabeth. Kelly was an Irishman's last name.

When we compared notes with Lakewood old-timer Bob Hitz, who has lived in the same home on Warren Road since 1919, he remembered that his mother always said, "If you yelled Bob and Betty, you'd empty the schoolhouse."

Well, now that we're running out of space, we'll close with what my mom used to say, namely: "Everything has an end, and the sausage has two ends."

This article appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post August 9, 1990. Reprinted with permission.

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