Terms Which Have Disappeared

[tonyb]

Here's another one from a Dragnet episode I listened to yesterday, "sleeping porch". I imagine that ubiquitous air conditioning has done away with these in the US.

As is the case with most of the terms and phrases we've been discussing, the gradual disappearance of "sleeping porch" from the popular lexicon coincides with its gradual disappearance from the physical world. They were a common feature in much of the country, in houses built before WWII. I suspect that many sleeping porches in now old houses have been converted into indoor spaces over the ensuing decades, and that many of those that still exist in their original form are referred to by other names by the current occupants of those old houses.

 

[tonyb]

In my childhood home, the refrigerator was often called the "ice box." And the refrigerator is still referred to as such by those now elderly people who raised me. The electric refrigerator pre-dates these people, and I presume that refrigerators (or, "the Frigidaire," as any brand of those newfangled contraptions were often called) were in most homes even in their earliest years. But in their world, "ice box" it is, and ever shall be. I find myself occasionally calling the fridge by that name.

 

[dhermann1]

When I was a kid in the 50s there were still a few actual ice boxes in use in my town, and we still had an ice house. I remember going there in the summer of 1954 with a camp counselor and some other kids, and eating a watermelon he had left there. The roof of the ice house collapsed under the weight of the snow in the winter of 1955, thus ending the useful lives of those few remaining ice boxes.

 

[fashion frank]

Ice Box And fridgeadare

When I was a kid in the 50s there were still a few actual ice boxes in use in my town, and we still had an ice house.

Yea I remember an elderly couple right across the street from us and they had a real to goodness icebox with the drip pan underneath it and everything .

I remember it because in the summer time we used to play in their huge back yard and the old man would open it up and with a pick he would break off chuncks and give it to us kids to cool off with .

All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[Haversack]

Back when I was doing rental inspections for the City of Eugene, I encountered a nicely fitted-out sleeping porch. It was in a large, early 20th C. house that had been divided into about 7 units. One of these units was a studio that had once been the house's sleeping porch. It effectively still was. Its windows, (On three sides of the room), were in sashes that dropped into the wall cavity underneath. There was also a second set of screened sashes in the wall cavity that could be raised and locked into place. It had obviously been designed to allow the room to be used year round and it made for a light-filled studio. No insulation though...

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^^

Sounds like a nice crib, as the kids say these days. As a big fan of light-filled spaces, I'd like the chance to furnish and decorate such a room as that.

College kids lived there, I suppose? What with it being Eugene and all? And an old house divvied up into little apartments?

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

OK, keeping the thread alive, here's a term which will be a complete mystery to the general public in 2043, "spinster". And tangential to that, a term that the original DA character, Adam Schiff, in Law and Order used in describing a judge, "He's what people used to call 'a confirmed batchelor'."

 

[tonyb]

I clearly recall "confirmed bachelor" being what was considered a "polite" way of acknowledging the subject's homosexuality. Not exactly a euphemism, leastwise not among my people, but more of an oblique way of stating the case. But then, among my people, such matters, be they homo or hetero or whatevero, were rarely spoken of directly. No, no, no. In that world, the word "sex" itself may as well have been spelled with four letters. It was an all but taboo topic of conversation.

None of which is to say that my people didn't engage in much such activity, licit and otherwise. They just didn't talk about it, and were content to leave the impression that their own sex lives were equally quiet.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I clearly recall "confirmed bachelor" being what was considered a "polite" way of acknowledging the subject's homosexuality. Not exactly a euphemism, leastwise not among my people, but more of an oblique way of stating the case. But then, among my people, such matters, be they homo or hetero or whatevero, were rarely spoken of directly. No, no, no. In that world, the word "sex" itself may as well have been spelled with four letters. It was an all but taboo topic of conversation.

None of which is to say that my people didn't engage in much such activity, licit and otherwise. They just didn't talk about it, and were content to leave the impression that their own sex lives were equally quiet.

Indeed. There was an elderly gay man on my street when I was growing up -- he lived with his sister, was a very pleasant, polite fellow, and nobody gave him any trouble or speculated about his private affairs. He was, as they said, "a confirmed bachelor," and that's all anyone cared to know.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

It's kind of funny on the "confirmed bachelor deal", my seventh grade teacher looked like the guy in the ads for Barclay Cigarettes. Slim, well dressed etc. He didn't marry until his mother died. He got married for the first time after he retired. Not at all gay, but he had promised his brothers that he would take care of their mother and he didn't marry until she died.

My high school algebra teacher was another confirmed bachelor. I think he would have LIKED to be married, but never did. He just wasn't a good looking dude. Now he's moved to Arizona and is shacked up with some old broad at about 82-83.

Later

 

[HudsonHawk]

Hi

It's kind of funny on the "confirmed bachelor deal", my seventh grade teacher looked like the guy in the ads for Barclay Cigarettes. Slim, well dressed etc. He didn't marry until his mother died. He got married for the first time after he retired. Not at all gay, but he had promised his brothers that he would take care of their mother and he didn't marry until she died.

My high school algebra teacher was another confirmed bachelor. I think he would have LIKED to be married, but never did. He just wasn't a good looking dude. Now he's moved to Arizona and is shacked up with some old broad at about 82-83.

Later

Exactly. Not all unmarried men and women are closet homosexuals. Some just aren't the marrying kind, some, like your algebra teacher, perhaps just have trouble attracting the opposite sex.

 

[dhermann1]

In keeping with this being International Talk Like a Pirate Day (see my post in the Observation Bar), may I mention that it's been a while since I've heard the phrase, "Shiver me timbers"?

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Not since I last watched a Popeye the Sailor cartoon. Steel hulls have obviated shivering timbers.

 

[HeyMoe]

My parents just built a sleeping porch onto their house this past summer. While the weather is turning to cold up here in Vermont, the summers can get into the 90s with pretty high humidity and a sleeping porch works better for them than an air conditioner (neither of them like AC)

 

[tonyb]

Exactly. Not all unmarried men and women are closet homosexuals. Some just aren't the marrying kind, some, like your algebra teacher, perhaps just have trouble attracting the opposite sex.

Well, there is a spectrum. Some go this way, exclusively, and some that way. And some could go either or both. Or neither.

As Mike observed, in many cases (most, perhaps) it is a false assumption that because a person has never married he or she must be gay.

And then there are all those people who can't acknowledge their own orientation, even to themselves. The recent American Masters profile of Billie Jean King had her saying that she herself was so homophobic in her earlier years that she couldn't acknowledge her own lesbianism until she was outed. Like many in similar straits, she went so far as to enter into a heterosexual marriage, mostly because that's what she thought people were supposed to do. And that's certainly understandable, considering the times, and her position. Coming out publicly, as she did, took real courage back then. What she said, essentially, is "here I am, take your best shot."

 

[HudsonHawk]

Well, there is a spectrum. Some go this way, exclusively, and some that way. And some could go either or both. Or neither.

As Mike observed, in many cases (most, perhaps) it is a false assumption that because a person has never married he or she must be gay.

That's my point exactly. If the term "confirmed bachelor" as a euphemism for "closet homosexual" goes away, the world's a better place for it.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

That's an assumption that really needs to be put to rest. It's still the train of thought around here, especially if you dress well. A well dressed guy with no wife just has to be gay, you know. Give me a break.

Exactly. Not all unmarried men and women are closet homosexuals.

I think I'm a little from column A and a little from column B lol lol lol

Some just aren't the marrying kind, some, like your algebra teacher, perhaps just have trouble attracting the opposite sex.

 

[tonyb]

People will think what they will. Ain't much anyone else can do about that, so we can only hope, for that reason, that a person would pay it little mind.

 

[GHT]

Kids today probably wouldn't know what you meant by the phrase "hang up the phone".


With automatic windows being the standard norm in cars for decades now, do people still say "roll down the window?" What else would you say - put the window down? Buzz down the window? Open the window? Or do they still say roll down the window without knowing you used to have to literally roll down the window?

At my God-daughter's wedding a couple of years ago, we were treated to a ride in a vintage Rolls Royce. It had hand wind windows: A Roller without electric windows, classic!

 

[McPeppers]

Kids today probably wouldn't know what you meant by the phrase "hang up the phone".

With automatic windows being the standard norm in cars for decades now, do people still say "roll down the window?" What else would you say - put the window down? Buzz down the window? Open the window? Or do they still say roll down the window without knowing you used to have to literally roll down the window?

Id go with "lower the window" and "raise the window" That way i am covered until we have forcefields

And hang up is still in common parlance. With cellular phones it is tougher to understand but we still put landlines down even the wireless ones


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