Those of you who enjoy the humor found in this magazine may laugh occasionally and in that laughter experience a brief vacation from everyday worries.
However in this editorial I would like to write about the kind of vacation where we actually go somewhere.
I have never flown in an airplane and do not like long trips by automobile. So my vacations are local. The Philadelphia Zoo is lots of fun to visit especially if you merge with the excited children and try to see the animals through their eyes. What a joy! Also wandering around New Hope, P.A. and Lambertville, N.J. is re-creative. But that can also present problems. For example, last autumn, Dorothy found eight volumes of The Standard American Encyclopedia published in 1937, in an antique store in Lambertville. It was the same type of encyclopedia that she grew up with as a child. The eight volumes were in very fine condition so she purchased them. The problem for me was that I had parked my car in New Hope. So, bravely, I carried the books back toward the car. The day was quite hot and I did not look forward to the long trek. Dorothy offered to carry some of the books, but I did the manly but somewhat foolish thing and politely refused her offer.
As we walked across the bridge over the Delaware River, I considered distracting Dorothy and, as quietly as possible, dropping a volume or two into the river. However, with sore hands and strained tendons, I delivered all eight volumes into the trunk of my car, and immediately asked to be taken out for lunch at one of New Hope’s fine restaurants. Dorothy agreed.
Here is some information from that encyclopedia, which I have struggled to bring to you:
ROSETTA STONE, the name given to a stone found near Rosetta [Egypt] by a French engineer in 1798. It is a tablet of black basalt with an inscription…. The inscription is in hieroglyphic, in Demotic, and in Greek…. It was deciphered by Dr. [Thomas] Young [and Jean-Francois Champollion] and formed the key to the reading of the hieroglyphic characters. It was captured by the English on the defeat of the French forces in Egypt, and is now in the British Museum.
I like the concept that April comes from the [Latin] aperire, “to open” referring to the budding of trees and flowers. I will not be wandering in Egypt, but in the near future I will be exploring and vacationing in my backyard.
Visiting a psych ward, a man asked how doctors decide to institutionalize a patient. “Well,” the director said, “we fill a bathtub with water, then offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient, and ask him to empty the tub.”
“I get it,” the visitor said. “A normal person would use the bucket.”
“No,” the director said. “A normal person would pull the plug.”
Here was and maybe still is a good way to learn the alphabet. From the 1879 revised edition we find the following:
A as in Ax, B – Boy , C – Cat, D – Dog, E – Elk, F – Fox, G – Girl, H – Hen, I – Ink, J – Jug, K – Kid, L – Lark, M – Man, N – Nut, O – Ox, P – Pig, Q – Quail, R – Rat, S – Sun, T – Top, U – Urn, V – Vine, W – Wren, X – X, Y – Yak, Z – Zebra.
Beside each letter and name of an object related to the letter there is an ink drawing, for example, by the letter “L” there is an image of a bird, the lark.
Using words to present truth however does not always occur as can be seen in these students’ bloopers. They are from U.S. students from eighth grade through college.
“The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenburg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.”
“The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and travelled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. They Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.”
When Helen Keller was eighteen months old she came down with Scarlet Fever which left her blind and deaf. Her future looked bleak and hopeless, because she could not see, hear or speak. As Helen grew she became increasingly angry and unruly and it was feared that she would have to be sent away to an insane asylum. But Helen’s parents heard about the Perkins Institute for the blind in Boston. As a last resort, they wrote to the school for help.
As a result, Ann Sullivan came from Perkins Institute out to Helen’s house to try to work with her. Ann started by teaching a finger alphabet to Helen. Ann was loving but firm with her and gradually taught her self-control and the meaning of things. Because Helen was deaf and blind, she had to learn both sign language and Braille. Soon she was reading books, but she wanted more. She wanted to learn how to speak. It was difficult to do so, but she never gave up. She practiced endlessly and finally learned how to talk.
Helen didn’t stop there. She learned how to do many things, such as riding a bicycle, swimming, horseback riding and rowing a boat. She even went to college. Radcliffe College refused to let her attend, but Helen talked them into it. She worked hard and graduated with honors. Helen went on to write books and give lectures. She wanted to help other blind and deaf people and spread her words of encouragement all over the world. Because of her undying spirit and relentless drive, Helen Keller lived a full rich life and died at the age of eighty-seven.
Anna Mary Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her seventies. Even then she only made little paintings to give away as gifts. It wasn’t until after her husband died that she began to paint seriously. By then she had grandchildren and was known as Grandma Moses. Her son and daughter-in-law decided to put several of her paintings in a drugstore window to be displayed and sold. Grandma Moses also sent some of her paintings to a nearby fair. She didn’t win any prizes there, nor did she sell any paintings at the drugstore. It looked as if no one was interested in her work.
Then an art collector named Louis J. Caldor from New York City bought all the paintings in the drugstore window and ordered ten more. He wanted to help Grandma Moses get known. It looked as if she was finally going to be famous. However, try as he might, Mr. Caldor couldn’t get any art galleries to take an interest in her paintings. But finally he found an art dealer who appreciated Grandma Moses’ paintings. They were displayed in a department store in New York and she finally became famous.
S&H green stamps; Party lines on the telephone; Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers; Wash tub ringers; Studebakers; Blackjack chewing gum; Real ice boxes; Pant leg clips for riding bicycles without chain guards; Using hand signals for cars without turn signals; Royal Crown Cola; Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles; Newsreels before a movie; P.F. Flyers; Metal ice tray with a lever; Blue flashbulbs; Packard automobiles; Roller skate keys; Mimeograph paper?
Do you remember when there was no fast food? It was all cooked the slow way. Do you remember when you had to eat all the food on your plate? Do you remember when there was only one telephone in the house? Do you remember when you walked to school, regardless of how far away it was and regardless of weather conditions?
This is to have succeeded.
By William and Mary Morris
MARRIED NAME Most women take their husband’s surnames at the time of marriage, although there have been exceptions. It all goes back to Roman times, when there were fewer names to go around and as a result, much confusion between [for example] the Octavias and Lauras. So when Octavia married Cicero [for example] she became Octavia Ciceronis (Octavia of Cicero). Before long the possessive case ending –nis dropped off, and she became simply Octavia Cicero – and that’s the way it is today.
RED TAPE The practice of tying official documents with tape of a reddish hue began in seventeenth-century England. By the nineteenth-century its use to mean inaction or delay caused by official sluggishness had become well established.
NOT WORTH A DAMN originally came from the common phrase “not with a tinker’s dam,” this dam being a pellet of bread used by old-timer tinkers to block small holes in pots and pans while they poured in solder to fix the leak. When the patch was secure, the dam was discarded. So anything “not worth a tinker’s dam” was something utterly worthless.
CARRY COALS TO NEWCASTLE Newcastle upon Tyne is the capital of Northumberland, England…. It has long been famous as a center of coal mining, so to carry coals to Newcastle simply means to “supply something already abundant.”
BOB’S YER UNCLE According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; “Bob’s yer uncle means ‘That’ll be all right, you needn’t bother anymore.’ The origin of the phrase is unknown; it was certainly in use in the 1880’s, but no satisfactory explanation of who Bob was has been brought forward.”
Rev. Homer Synnestvedt gave his new study its name. The expression “brown study” means a deep reverie or absorption in thought, more than just the color of its shingles. This small building has had many uses through the years, a study, a school, a print shop and a dwelling.
In about 1910 Mr. Will Farrington, Treasurer of the Academy, took over the Brown Study. My father, Mr. George Heath, joined him and the Brown Study became a print shop where the first Bryn Athyn Posts were compiled and printed. When my father and Mr. Farrington withdrew from this work, a couple of years later in 1913, Mr. and Mrs. E.C. Bostock, Jr. (Madeline Glenn) moved in. They remodeled the building and it became a dwelling house. They added a kitchen, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, etc. and so started the bare little building on a career as a “honeymoon cottage.” In 1914 the first baby was born there….
The Bryn Athyn Inn, extending as it did from South Ave. to Alnwick Rd. completes very neatly the houses on the “Inner Loop” of old Bryn Athyn, as it seems to hold out its arms to both sides….
It was built in 1898 by Mr. Henry Stroh and was first called the “New School,” the small building that adjoined the old Moir house (Inn Annex) having become too small for the expanding school. There were three floors. It was covered with brown shingles and had many windows. The entrance was on the Alnwick Rd. side and was reached by steps to a covered porch. There was a hall with stairs going up to the second floor on the right and on the left a door to the big assembly room where the dedication was held on April 18th, 1898. The South Ave. side was almost the same design as the entrance. The two porches provided places for friends to meet and chat in the good weather. To a child, the life at the Inn with constant comings and goings of friends seemed very gay and exciting.
At the back was a wagon road that had been sunk to be on a level with the basement door so that deliveries could be made. The children loved this old road because the retaining wall on the garden side was made of stones and it gave the children a thrill to play on the top and run along and count the 123 stones that made the top of the wall. It must have been 4 or 5 feet deep and the possibility of falling off made it very exciting….
Smart Dutchmen build square bathtubs, so they don’t have to wash out the rings.
The repentant man looked at the minister and proudly started talking about his way of life. “Yes sir, Parson, I want you to know that although I still drink, swear, smoke and steal, I never gave up my religion!”
After some pleading a young Snyder county Dutch lad made a “walk-along” date with a girl of some charm. He was short; she was tall. Walking along a road leading from town, he coaxed and coaxed for a kiss, but she declined. She was quite disinterested. He persisted, but she said: “You are such a young fellow, and so little; I’ll not bend down to let you kiss me.” Not far ahead at the outskirts of town at a blacksmith’s shop he spied an anvil mounted on a block, onto which he jumped with agility, saying as he did so: “Now I’m as tall as you, so how about a kiss?”. “Oh well, if you must,” she managed to say. And so he got a sort of a peck-like kiss – not wholly satisfactory. He jumped down, and they continued to stroll on toward the local lover’s lane. Farther on he again pressed her for another kiss, saying, “How about it?” “No,” she replied. “Aw, come on,” he coaxed. “No, I said and I mean it,” she declared.
They walked for about 15 minutes until he finally realized that she really was not going to kiss him again. “OK,” he said, “I understand. I guess that there is no reason to carry this anvil any farther.”
The young man who divorced his 14 year-old bride because she acted like a child?
The court that freed a man from the charge of bigamy who then asked the judge which home he should go to?