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Terms Which Have Disappeared

CataWhatas

New in Town
Messages
21
Location
Small Town, US
Or the advice that mothers gave daughters, "Stay away from men like him -- you'll catch a Dose."

Gramma said don't have personal relations with crazy men, you'll only be driven crazy. When I came home for winter break from my sophomore year of college, Gramma got to see my 9 ear piercings and all I heard was about how I had relations with one of them high falutin' crazy boys.
 

Two Types

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,456
Location
London, UK
You could smoke in hospital rooms (unless oxygen was being administered) up until the 70s. My family doctor would smoke while seeing patients at his office and while making rounds at the hospital.

My sister lives in Greece:When she gave birth by caesarian a few years back, just before the procedure started, the doctor walked into the room smoking a cigarette, only putting it out when he was ready to start cutting!
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,763
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
To get the full import of this you would need to know that ham and eggs was a dish popular in cheap diners and boarding houses. It was not associated with breakfast, it could be served any time. But was not considered very classy.

A fondness for ham and eggs stamped one as common.

In boxing slang, a "Ham and Egger" was a mediocre, unexciting fighter who existed only to fill out the bottom of a card. My father, during his brief pro boxing career, was a "ham and egger."

The term was also used in vaudeville for the sort of cheap locally-based act that a theatre would use to fill out a bill.
 
Messages
10,939
Location
My mother's basement
In boxing slang, a "Ham and Egger" was a mediocre, unexciting fighter who existed only to fill out the bottom of a card. My father, during his brief pro boxing career, was a "ham and egger."

The term was also used in vaudeville for the sort of cheap locally-based act that a theatre would use to fill out a bill.

It's akin to the "Joe" title for the easily replaceable lesser lights in the company of a star. A baseball club's starting rotation might be "Randy Johnson and three guys named Joe." The band playing the local casino's ballroom might be "Al Green and four guys named Joe."
 
Messages
10,939
Location
My mother's basement
You people haven't been paying attention. Old Airstream trailers are big business these days! http://vintageairstreamrestorations.com/

Oh, I'm quite aware of what old travel trailers might fetch these days. (See my entry -- post #559 -- on the previous page.) A friend just sold her '59 Airstream, a shortish one in decent but not great condition, for an even $10,000.

But these are TRAVEL trailers, not house trailers.
 
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Messages
10,939
Location
My mother's basement
I did a quick search, and we have at least 10 Trailer Parks. Thats where people live year round. Here is one of them. http://www.elmorrohomes.com/Index.html

We got a slew of "mobile home communities" (so as to distinguish them from "trailer parks," if such a distinction can honestly be made) around here as well. There's one a couple of blocks to the east and south of where I sit at present, a "traditional" one with mostly aluminum-skinned old single-wides and a concrete-block structure in the center that serves as a laundromat. It's called "Tall Firs Mobile Court," but the tall firs got cut down a couple of years ago.

And then there's another one three or four blocks to the west, a newer and much larger settlement of mostly wood-sided double-wides. It's one of those age 55-and-over "communities."

They call 'em "mobile" or "manufactured" homes these days because the ones of more recent vintage hardly resemble trailers anymore. And because of the negative connotations attached to "trailer." You know, it's a trailer, and not really a house. So there's that stigma. And then there's that phrase "trailer trash." Perhaps that phrase will gradually fall out of popular usage as well, as the trailers themselves gradually go the way of all things. We can hope, I suppose.
 
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Messages
13,672
Location
down south
Say, some Joe was perusin' the menu in this diner,an he notices the double wide salad. He calls over the waitress. "What's a double wide salad?" "Oh" she sez, "it's for our customers that can't afford the house salad."


Sent from my SGH-T959V using Tapatalk 2
 
Messages
12,018
Location
East of Los Angeles
We got a slew of "mobile home communities" (so as to distinguish them from "trailer parks," if such a distinction can honestly be made) around here as well...
We have some of each in the neighborhoods surrounding ours. You can usually tell at a glance whether it's a "mobile home community" or a "trailer park" by how well the property is maintained.
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,808
Location
Cobourg
In boxing slang, a "Ham and Egger" was a mediocre, unexciting fighter who existed only to fill out the bottom of a card. My father, during his brief pro boxing career, was a "ham and egger."

The term was also used in vaudeville for the sort of cheap locally-based act that a theatre would use to fill out a bill.

Probably the origin of "ham actor" as well.
 
Messages
10,939
Location
My mother's basement
On the cigarette theme, how about "tailor-mades"?

It's been so long since rolling one's own was a common practice that I suspect most people under 40 wouldn't catch the reference.

I occasionally rolled my own, back when I still partook of the Devil's weed, and I come from a long line of working-class smokers for whom rolling a smoke was almost second nature. (My grandfather liked to boast that he could roll a Bull Durham -- the most difficult brand to roll a decent cigarette with, seeing how it's so dry and how it's so finely cut -- one-handed atop a boxcar going 30 miles an hour. And I believed him, because I knew he could roll a smoke sitting in his easy chair with the paper and tobacco in his mouth throughout the process. We're a people of peculiar but wondrous talents. Indeed we are.)
 
Messages
10,939
Location
My mother's basement
How long before "store-bought" falls away?

I suspect it's been falling for a good long while already. Most everybody's clothes are "store-bought" these days, so "store-bought clothing" is becoming almost as redundant as, say, "gas station-bought gasoline."

Many of us here, those of us born during the early to middle of the post-WWII baby boom, were probably the last to hear "store-bought" in the everyday speech of everyday people. My own mother made our clothing -- some of it, anyway -- until she got too busy and clothing prices dropped to the point (relatively) that it was hardly worth the time to make them herself.

I suppose that most people who make their own clothes these days do so much more for recreation than budgetary considerations. And I suppose it's that way with home canners these days as well. Although in both cases, but probably more so in the latter, a strong argument can be made that the homemade product is superior to the store-bought one.
 
Messages
17,219
Location
New York City
How long before "store-bought" falls away?

I suspect it's been falling for a good long while already. Most everybody's clothes are "store-bought" these days, so "store-bought clothing" is becoming almost as redundant as, say, "gas station-bought gasoline."

Many of us here, those of us born during the early to middle of the post-WWII baby boom, were probably the last to hear "store-bought" in the everyday speech of everyday people. My own mother made our clothing -- some of it, anyway -- until she got too busy and clothing prices dropped to the point (relatively) that it was hardly worth the time to make them herself.

I suppose that most people who make their own clothes these days do so much more for recreation than budgetary considerations. And I suppose it's that way with home canners these days as well. Although in both cases, but probably more so in the latter, a strong argument can be made that the homemade product is superior to the store-bought one.

Interesting. I do hear the term "store-bought" used in front of food items such as "store-bought bread" - not everyday, but not rarely. So it might live on with a new noun to modify.
 

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