Month: November 2024
Eee! I had the wrong time. This Saturday’s event with me and Tamara Kaye Sellman at Saltwater Bookshop in Kingston WA will start at 5 PM, not 3:30 PM as I had previously said. Still: a good time, a tasty bakery next door and plenty of writer shenanigans, I’m sure. Hoping to see you all there! Check out the Event Page for more info.
This Saturday, November 23, at 3:30 pm I’m going to be reading, talking and signing books at Saltwater Bookshop in Kingston WA along with Tamara Kaye Sellman—another Kitsap area writer and the author of Cul de Sac Stories, which came out earlier this year from Aqueduct Press. Get details on my event page.
Saltwater Bookshop is a new independent bookstore just up the road a bit from the Kingston ferry terminal (both car and fast foot ferries) and at this time of year, Kingston is already starting to put up their over-the-top light display around the marina, so it’s going to be festive and slightly weird as only a Northwest tiny town can be (I can only say: festive fish made of lights…). And of course it’ll also be fun, because Tamara is delightful and we love indie bookshops! There’s also a tasty bakery next door, so now all we need is some cool folks to come hang out with us and enjoy some author shenanigans, books, treats, and a (hopefully) pretty view on the way to and fro.
See you all there!
Today’s slang has a really long history in various forms. Although this particular formation is from the early part of the 20th Century, I’ve also encountered variations and similar allusions from Shakespeare onward and it’s probably got roots even earlier.
Going/Gone to Read and Write: (v) going to/in jail.
When I used to do Renaissance fairs, my first “job” was with the thieves’ guild (no, we weren’t actual thieves, we posed as them, and did a lot of street theater about pickpockets, con men, and other nefarious types in Elizabethan England). Here I encountered the term “college” among the thieves cant we learned. If one of our troupe said they’d been “been to college” we were supposed to understand and play on the fact that they’d been in jail. We made a lot of college jokes since the majority of us were actual college students or had been at some time. So I figured out the 1920s/30s term “gone to read and write” to mean the same thing and, behold, after looking it up in several references it does!
A phrase now forgotten anywhere outside of North Carolina, although it’s still useful, and seems to have been around for quite a while before the 1930s.
Durham: (noun) “bullshit.” Probably in reference to “Bull Durham” tobacco products based in Durham North Carolina.
None of this is a reference to the movie of the same name (which was definitely full of its measure of Durham,) nor apparently to either of the two baseball players who were also nicknamed “Bull” Durham, or the baseball team named “the Bulls” also based in Durham NC. That’s a lot of bulls. But why “bull” at all? Well…
Bull Durham smoking tobacco was introduced by W.T. Blackwell and Company in 1850, which was the first major tobacco company to establish itself in Durham, but not the last, since the town quickly became the tobacco warehousing capital of the United States. At some point, the company started using a bull on their labels and advertising, supposedly to tie the brand the English Durham mustard brand that used a bull on its labels, and thus give the product a little olde-world cred. Blackwell used the bull as early as 1897 for certain, and possibly earlier. The brand was so popular that the city itself was nicknamed “The Bull City.” And now the whole town is all about bulls… because of mustard.
I heard the term used recently in a song from the 2010s and thought it was interesting that a term from the crime world of the 1920s and 30s was apparently still useful as recently as ten years ago. Since it also shows up a few times in Storm Waters, I figured it was a good term for today.
Crush Out: (v) escape.
Hoping that you will all be successful with any crushing out that may be on your agenda today.
The first finished draft of Storm Waters was actually a novella titled “Hard Ticket.” Due to his family background, it’s a term Marty would have been familiar with. It’s an odd term I had encountered in a few stories from the very early part of the 20th Century, but the only crime author I can remember using it was Cornell Woolrich—and I may be misremembering that.
Hard Ticket: (noun) A person or ghost who is difficult or dangerous to deal with; an unscrupulous person. A rare term in the 1930s, mostly used in spiritist an spirtualist circles starting late 19th century.
After a lot of revisions, Storm Waters moved so far from the original novella, which is now mostly the first third of the book, though some of it was split and put into the last third. But the scenes that scenes that contain my original “hard ticket” remain in the first chapter of the book, though Captain Davies is called a “tough nut” now.
By the way, Storm Waters is officially on-sale today, so if you still don’t have a copy, trot on over to the publisher’s site and get one: Buy Storm Waters at Fairwood Press
And if you want an ebook or a different purchase site, look here: Books2Read
This is an odd term you don’t see anymore and I first encountered it in “Crooked Souls” by Dashiell Hammett. The short story was originally published in Black Mask in October, 1923. The story was later reprinted in the May, 1953 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and again in a 1962 collection A Man Named Thin, edited by Fredrick Dannay (who was also one half of the writing/editing team we know as “Ellery Queen.”) With thanks to Don Herron of Dashiell Hammett Tour fame for posting the Ellery Queen connection on his website.
Now, where the term comes from before Hammett put it on paper, I don’t know, though there’s an obvious connection to the idea of foxes as sly or clever.
Cutting (up) Foxy: (v) acting clever.
The term is usually applied with some derision as in “You keep cuttin’ up foxy, and I’m gonna bop you in the beak.” It also shows up as just “cutting foxy” upon occasion. Sadly, I have no further etymology for the term and it’s always possible that Hammett just made it up—he did that from time to time—but it does appear in a few other places through the 1940s, and then disappears. Alas, poor foxy….
Because it’s almost Veteran’s Day in the US, I figured I’d show you some uniforms. In this case, police uniforms, because the term we usually use for police—cops—comes from an item of their uniform. So here we go.
Button/buttons: (n) cop/cops. Shortened from “copper buttons,” referring to the buttons on early police uniforms, which were made of copper.
“Where’d you hear this line?” “Couple of buttons on the nightshift were leakin’ air.”
This specific photo shows the Seattle Police Department’s Fifth Precinct officers with their one and only car sometime in the 1920s. And if the photo were in color, you’d see that the buttons and badges are copper colored. Copper was cheap at the time—cheaper than the brass that became popular later. Alas, I couldn’t get a photo of the LAPD dress uniform of the period, but it was similar and featured a small, silver-colored hat badge that was a heart-shaped shield with wings on top—which the LAPD still uses—and an oval copper badge with a pointed bottom that featured an eagle on the top and a tiny enameled circular seal of the City of Los Angeles. The current badge with its image of the Los Angeles City Hall’s central tower didn’t come into use until 1940.
Why police in the US continue to be called “cops,” but not “buttons,” defies me, but the term seems to have faded out in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Maybe because copper ceased to be cheap during the Second World War and uniform buttons were replaced with brass or mixed metals, and the buttons no longer stood out as unusual. Most police departments had started trading in silver badges for copper or brass around 1900, but the buttons held on little longer.
One other note: the uniforms of most police departments in the US at the time were made of wool. Los Angeles police uniforms are still made of wool—including the shirt—to this day. Can you imagine walking a beat in Los Angeles in the summer wearing a black wool shirt and hot copper buttons? Holy cow!
Friday got away from me so today you get two slang terms from the 1920s: Choice Morsel and Bughouse (the adjective, not the noun, but you probably figured that out already.) Neither of these are particularly nice terms, but they get the point across without being overly crass.
Choice Morsel: (n) person who can do no wrong (in someone’s eyes, including their own.) Generally used ironically.
Bughouse/buggy/bugs: (adj) crazy, mentally unstable, unpredictable. Eg: “he’s gone bughouse”. Also the root of the nicknames “Bugs” and “Bugsy.” (Yup, that bunny is nuts!)
“His mom thinks he’s a choice morsel, but his ex-wife’ll tell you he’s totally bughouse.”
and casts a negative light on mental illness. On the other hand, I’m fine with “choice morsel” applied to anyone who plainly believes in their own superiority.
A term that has vanished completely, although I doubt the activity has. In period crime fiction of the 1920s through 1940s, “the Broderick” shows up with fair frequency. I guess the closest terms today would be “tune up,” or “work over” even though those are also a bit dated, now. If you can suggest another current term, please leave a comment.
Broderick (the): (n) severe, usually methodical, beating. Derived from real life NYPD detective John Broderick, notoriously violent head of the Gangster Squad, which was established during Prohibition. Usage as in: “Give ‘im the Broderick, boys. And don’t hold back.”
Having now weathered the US election, I’m hoping that no one is feeling that giving anyone the Broderick is a good idea.
