23 Skidoo!

Erin’s grandma wonders where all the jalopies have gone.

Well, outside of the fact that she lives in one of the finer, wealthier areas of Chicago and a jalopy would be as out of place there as a couple of dogs humping at a polo match, I don’t know that anyone calls them “jalopies” anymore…

Ergo, there are no jalopies.

Junkers? Hoopdies? Beaters with Heaters? We have plenty of those, just no jalopies.

And so the word march goes on. We’ve run out of jalopies.

What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?

Grandma had a sister-in-law whose nickname growing up was “Puss” because she was such a pretty little girl. “A pretty face, just like a little cat,” Grandma said.

Now? Them’s fightin’ words.

My grandmother used to serve us “nectar”, aka “fruit juice”. She was also known to have “warshed” the car (rather than “washing” it) and say thing like “oh, for land’s sake” and “might as well, can’t dance”.

She also served “dinner” at lunchtime and “supper” at, well, what we now call “dinner”.

It gets very confusing. I have diagram I could show you later.

Hark! So many words we no longer say. So many meanings that have changed since their initial use. So much is specific to a generation and then goes away with them, once that generation is gone.

And that’s a shame, because if there’s one thing I could use nowadays would be a nice cool glass of nectar.