Thursday, July 9, 1925
Net got up from his nap with fever again so that settles my going for sure. Gilbert talked last night like he wanted me to buy a dress and shoes and go over for Sunday only but it seemed to me like it would be too much expense and trouble for one day.
(Grandma was referring to a trip to Crawfordsville to see Gilbert's father and sisters. I had previously figured out that it was 50 miles or so to Crawfordsville, avoiding the interstates which would have not have existed, obviously, in 1925. But Grandma was being practical, and not even for a new dress and new shoes, did she want to bother with a one day trip to see her in-laws. With no car, they would have been taking a bus or two to get there, which I think would have taken several hours each way. It would have been a long, hot trip for a pregnant woman.
I was thinking about these diaries being written in 1925 and how they describe a life much different than what we learned in our history classes about this particular decade. Most of what we learned in school about the 1920's was that they were the "roaring 20's" when women started to "loosen up" and went dancing in jazz clubs and smoked cigarettes and raised the hem of their skirts up to nearly their knees. Prohibition was in effect, so all the alcohol was illegal, but people went to "speakeasies" to drink it anyway. Grandma certainly wasn't living that kind of life! (And my other Grandma, living on a farm in Southern Indiana, also wasn't out drinking and dancing in speakeasies!)
I found this website that lists slang from the 1920's. I doubt that Grandma, being mostly at home raising her children, would have have heard or said many of these phrases. By the way, I did not find the phrase "fought like sixty" that she used in yesterday's diary entry, but it is still interesting to read about some of the slang they used in that decade.)
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Carol, I was googling around myself, and found a few writers in 1900-1920 time frame that used a similar phrase, "go like sixty". I'll bet that's the one we'd heard before - maybe your grandma was riffing on it?
ReplyDeleteOne of those who used it was Eugene Wood, who wrote for the Saturday Evening Post.
Could be that if Grandma read the Saturday Evening Post, she picked up on this phrase from that. Thanks for the research!
ReplyDeleteI found this online journal from 1903 in which the writer referred to a pike that "fought like sixty," (and found it interesting that the letter writer was writing to another Ruth): http://willandruth.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/the-afternoon-was-magnificent/
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