Wiregrass Seniors Magazine June 2017 JUNE ISSUE | Page 13

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Obsolete Words And Phrases From Our Youth
by Richard Lederer
About a month ago, I illuminated some old
expressions that have become obsolete because
of the inexorable march of technology. These
phrases included “Don’t touch that dial,” “Carbon
copy,” “You sound like a broken record” and “Hung
out to dry.” I have been asked to shine light on
some more faded words and expressions, and I
am happy to oblige:
Back in the olden days we had a lot of
moxie. We’d put on our best bib and tucker and
straighten up and fly right.
Hubba-hubba! We’d cut a rug in some juke
joint and then go necking and petting and
smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and
pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some pas-
sion pit or lovers lane.
Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping
Jehoshaphat!
Holy Moley! Holy Moley
We were in like Flynn and living the life
of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse
us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill.
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Back in the olden days, life used to be swell,
but when’s the last time anything was swell?
Swell has gone the way of beehives,
pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedo-
ras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers.
Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he
isn’t anymore.
Like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle
and Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we have become
unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has
been just a short nap, and before we can say, I’ll
be a monkey’s uncle! or This is a fine kettle of
fish! We discover that the words we grew up with,
the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have
vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues
and our pens and our keyboards.
Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth,
the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re
gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape
of our perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches,
hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes, little wax
bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grind-
ers monkey that is bigger than a bread box. and
barely knee high to grasshopper.