Terms Which Have Disappeared

[tonyb]

Powdering your nose, although that is an expression I still use.
… "

That expression may make a comeback, what with those “half baths” (little rooms with a toilet and a sink but no shower or tub) now being called “powder rooms” by real estate agents everywhere.

In the 1970s and ’80s a person might have been forgiven for thinking the “powder” was a reference to a product of South American origin that went up one’s nose rather than anything Max Factor would have concocted for putting on it.

I use the expression myself, by the way. And I suppose that some people don’t get the allusion. Most, maybe.

 

[tonyb]

Shotgun wedding

Mores have changed so that it's unlikely that anyone under 50 would recognize it.

And then there’s “shotgun shack,” a somewhat disparaging variation on “shotgun house,” which, in either case, means a humble domicile with one room directly behind another, so that with the doors open the shot from a shotgun fired from the front of the house would hit nothing but air as it traveled through the structure and out the back door.

 

[Zombie_61]

And then there’s “shotgun shack,” a somewhat disparaging variation on “shotgun house,” which, in either case, means a humble domicile with one room directly behind another, so that with the doors open the shot from a shotgun fired from the front of the house would hit nothing but air as it traveled through the structure and out the back door.

I'd heard the term "shotgun shack" here and there, mostly on TV or in movies, but until now never heard it defined. Now that I know, it makes perfect sense. Thank you!

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
When the lovely missus and I motored out to the Old Country (Seattle and environs) a couple weeks ago we were taken aback by all the tents pitched alongside the highways.

But I was heartened to see a collection of 20 or so structures that were basically sheds, 10’ by 12’, with power in each and shared central sanitation facilities.

In this age of mega-houses, where every kid gets not only his or her own bedroom but an exclusive bathroom as well, while others are living in tents and tending to bodily functions God knows where, it was good to see a clear demonstration of how little it takes to provide people with a dry, warm, reasonably healthy place to live.

We took the trip to host a memorial for my wife’s dad, who succumbed to complications from Alzheimer’s back in September. At the memorial his siblings told of sharing beds with each other when they were kids, and of living in what amounted to an orphanage when their worthless excuse for a father abandoned the family.

Shotgun houses were (and are) humble affairs, often no more than 12 feet wide and packed in with several others so as to optimize the land on which they are built, but they more than adequately do what a house must first do.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had a "tiny house" movement picking up interest here, but bourgie retirees mobilized to keep them out of town. Might "harm their quality of life," that is to say, their property valuations, don't you know.

 

[Harp]

^ A tad bit proletariat pejorative methinks.

 

[tonyb]

I once lived in a converted chicken coop. And I once lived in a garret (I wasn’t familiar with the term prior to living there); sink in the room, shared bathroom down on the second floor.

A friend once lived in my ’47 Dodge school bus, parked alongside my 500-square-foot house. For a few weeks I slept in a tent in the backyard there, while the house was undergoing major renovations. (That little house had been a brothel prior to my occupancy, and anything but a “high class” one. It was truly squalid, and rat infested.)

I have a picture book titled “Tiny, Tiny Houses,” by one Lester Walker, who also gave us “American Shelter,” a tome recommended to me by our own Haversack. Henry David Thoreau’s cabin is featured, as is George Bernard Shaw’s wiring hut, as well as about 40 other diminutive structures, all well-suited to their purposes.

I’ve offered before how I favor accessory dwelling units, aka mother-in-law apartments, aka granny flats, especially in suburban subdivisions filled with houses made for half a dozen people or more but where half that number or fewer reside now. So please, go ahead and convert that basement into living space, or that garage, or build that “studio” in the backyard. Please, create more lower-cost housing.

I’m convinced that resistance to ADU’s, and freestanding “tiny houses,” is mostly class-based. It’s not just rich people who would prefer not living in close proximity to poor people. Hell, most poor people would rather not live around poor people. Certain social pathologies are more prevalent among the lower classes. That’s the unavoidable truth of it. But having spent most of my now lengthy existence in that world, I’m convinced that most of those behaviors are rooted in desperation — not all, but most. And a person feels much less desperate when he knows he has a warm, dry place to sleep, and one that can be sustained indefinitely.

 

[ChiTownScion]

We're not quite in the Tiny House Dwellers category, but we did retire from a four bedroom, 2.1 bath, fully furnished basement suburban home on half an acre (Lake County Illinois) to a 3 bedroom 3.1 bath townhome in the PNW. Our bedroom, the room that serves as a combination library for me & a workshop for my wife, and a guest bedroom. All bedrooms are en suite, but we have no basement and only a postage stamp front yard.

The kids grew up and we scaled back. There's less room than we've had since the year of our marriage (1985) but I have never been happier in a home. You get to a stage in life where you simply don't own a large home-- because it owns you. Landscapers take care of all grass cutting and such and considering the service that we get the HOA fees are reasonable. If we need to take off for a few days to the mountains or the ocean, we don't feel encumbered.

I also like the fact that there are very few other retirees here. No crabby old people whining for a bygone time that never really existed. We're almost in the shadow of Intel's world HQ, so there a lot of bright tech types from around the world. The local airport hosts an aviation academy that has young pilots (a large contingent from China, it seems). And there are their kids as well. Almost ideal, except that there are times when I could absolutely kill for a Chicago style Italian beef & sausage combo. And the pizza here is terrible. At least once a year I fly 'back home" to sate those addictions.

 

[tonyb]

…
You get to a stage in life where you simply don't own a large home-- because it owns you. …

I’ve long argued that there’s more than a hint of mortality denial in our approach to property ownership. Dead is dead, no matter the thickness of the portfolio.

Having said that, though, I admit to being a little envious of people whose family roots go back several generations in the place they still reside. The closest I have to that sort of “rootedness” are old family photos and documents.

I occasionally find myself wishing I could converse with my grandfather, who played a large role in my upbringing, who was all of 43 when I was born and who lived into my 33rd year. I have little doubt I would have benefited from his perspectives over all the time that has passed since his death. But in a way I do converse with him. I knew him well enough to form what I suppose is a fairly faithful approximation of what he would say. He was no saint, nor sage. He had little formal education. But he had a solid set of values and didn’t expect more than he was willing to give. That’s about all I ask of anyone.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother lives on the same block where her grandparents settled when they came to this country in the 1890s. She's seven houses up from the house she grew up in, and lives next door to a woman who has been her mortal enemy since 1945.

I got off that block as soon as I could, and I'm glad I did. Between redevelopment and gentrification, it's almost completely unrecognizable from the neighborhood I knew. It had been little changed between my mother's childhood and my own -- but those days, and that neighborhood are both physically and emotionally gone forever. It's not much fun to point to a grotesque McMansion and say "see, that's the vacant lot where we used to play..."

 

[belfastboy]

^^^^^
When the lovely missus and I motored out to the Old Country (Seattle and environs) a couple weeks ago we were taken aback by all the tents pitched alongside the highways.

But I was heartened to see a collection of 20 or so structures that were basically sheds, 10’ by 12’, with power in each and shared central sanitation facilities.

In this age of mega-houses, where every kid gets not only his or her own bedroom but an exclusive bathroom as well, while others are living in tents and tending to bodily functions God knows where, it was good to see a clear demonstration of how little it takes to provide people with a dry, warm, reasonably healthy place to live.

We took the trip to host a memorial for my wife’s dad, who succumbed to complications from Alzheimer’s back in September. At the memorial his siblings told of sharing beds with each other when they were kids, and of living in what amounted to an orphanage when their worthless excuse for a father abandoned the family.

Shotgun houses were (and are) humble affairs, often no more than 12 feet wide and packed in with several others so as to optimize the land on which they are built, but they more than adequately do what a house must first do.

My prairie born wife was born into a family of 6, living in a very small house, a hand pump in the kitchen for water, out house out back, a wood fired stove for heat and cooking and honest to god the galvanized tub for Saturday night baths. As the youngest she got first dibs on the water......then upwards in age from there and the poor suffering father got the bath last.....dirty and barely warm I would imagine. I was fortunate that my parents, who lived that prairie life style, escaped to the west coast and decent jobs so I was born into an aspirational post war family and got a house in the suburbs with its attendant comforts. I had my own bedroom but the entire family shared one small bathroom but at least I didn't have to traipse outside in minus 30 to pee.
We have a huge homeless problem here in Vancouver. Multiple politicians have promised to eradicate the problem over the last decade at least. However the result is it continues to grow. The only factor keeping it from totally running away is the epidemic levels of drug caused deaths that is outstripping the deaths from Covid. Our homeless I imagine is no different than any other jurisdiction is dominated by the drug addicted and mentally ill....often both afflictions combined. I believe the issue is intractable.....at least based on the real world experience of the last 10-20 years of promises by progressive governments at all levels.

 

[tonyb]

That 500-square-foot house alluded to a few posts above was demolished several years ago and a McMansion now occupies the lot, just as I predicted would happen back when I lived there.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Chicken Shack, like the old band, must be an outdated term?

I think, it's just a hen house?

 

[Edward]

POLITE REMINDER from behind the bar: Please remember the 'no politics' rule, folks; let's keep to topic. Thank-you!

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

"Flip side" alternatively "B side". Would anyone under, say 50, immediately recognize these?

 

[HudsonHawk]

"Flip side" alternatively "B side". Would anyone under, say 50, immediately recognize these?

With the resurgance of vinyl among the hipsters, it's possible. Though I'm not entirely sure they actually listen to their records, just keep them around for decoration.

 

[Fading Fast]

Also, didn't "B-side" refer to the "less important" song on a single or "45," where the small disc only had two songs - one on each side? Since the vinyl resurgence, I think, is mainly about albums, the "B-side" is probably not a term coming up even amongst the new vinyl fans.

 

[LizzieMaine]

B-side goes back to the 78rpm era, where it was often listed with a catalog number ending in "B."

A B side in the Era wasn't necessarily the lesser of the two. That came later.

 

[Harp]

Almost ideal, except that there are times when I could absolutely kill for a Chicago style Italian beef & sausage combo. And the pizza here is terrible. At least once a year I fly 'back home" to sate those addictions.

You're spot on sandwich and pie. I once railed against the available pizza in Italy as compared
to Chicago's, and combo beef with sausage addictive. White Castles pre-covid did offer air mail
sliders if that is still hungered. Gyros is also big with me, everthing on and stacked Wrigley Field hood
Cubs style.

 

[Edward]

"Flip side" alternatively "B side". Would anyone under, say 50, immediately recognize these?

I'm 47 and it's natural to me, though I would guess that anyone much under 38-40 in the UK who would have had their teens buying either CD singles (cassette singles never really caught in here - and they did tend to either have an A/B side, or both tracks on both sides so you never had to rewind to hear them again, just flip the tape over....).

With the resurgance of vinyl among the hipsters, it's possible. Though I'm not entirely sure they actually listen to their records, just keep them around for decoration.

I've encountered a lot of them who play them - it's more old fart collectors like myself in my experience that will hoard records and worry about condition - inevitably buying two of special recordings, one to play, one to keep good.... (I also intend to digitally back all of mine up in due course. The dirty secret is that digital sound *can*, all other things being equal, be as good as vinyl, but it has to be mixed to optimise being on digital, and it has to be of a high enough bit-rate to match vinyl quality...).

Also, didn't "B-side" refer to the "less important" song on a single or "45," where the small disc only had two songs - one on each side? Since the vinyl resurgence, I think, is mainly about albums, the "B-side" is probably not a term coming up even amongst the new vinyl fans.

Could be... B side as a "here's the lesser, filler track" thing doesn't work the same there, though I suppose there's still the awareness of there being two sides to the disc at least.

B-side goes back to the 78rpm era, where it was often listed with a catalog number ending in "B."

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A B side in the Era wasn't necessarily the lesser of the two. That came later.

Yeah. In later years, into the 90s when I was first seriously buying singles and before CD singles became the dominant norm, I remember them increasingly being sold as a "Double A-side" to emphasise the "two tracks of equal quality" thing and the notion that they were both equally good (I suspect this was gaming to get both equal radio play so there were two bites at selling each disk; sometimes, genre-depending, the other track(s) might simply be remixes for different audiences). I also have a fair few vinyl 7" singles labelled as A side and AA side... The Boys From Marketing strike again!