Remembering Those Goofy, Corny Days

It all started when I looked out the window a few weeks ago and said to myself, "It's going to be chilly today."  At which an image of my mother instantly popped into my head along with her amused little saying, "It'll be chile today and hot tamale."  I mean, even as I write that, it makes me laugh.  Yes, corny, but it so reminds me of my mother, I don't care.

Then I remembered my father liked "If we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs."  A popular saying of that day.  No one says that anymore.

It got me to thinking about how that sweet, silly, sappy, old fashioned humor has gone the way ... things that we just came up with ourselves.  Now if we want to laugh, we tune in to some program.  Of course, programs have been around a long time:  Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny on the radio in my day.  But it seems that now, rather than just being nutty and goofy, humor has become mean-spirited, or else it's ironic or sarcastic. Or Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey tosses off what are called "zingers" as impromptu wit, but, still, this isn't the humor I remember.

Of course, a lot of it is style, and corny jokes aren't Maggie Smith's style.  They were my parents' style, though ... and, as I say, part of the style of that time.

My father briefly tried his hand at being a cartoonist and used 3 x 5 cards to record the family's cute sayings that he wanted to illustrate.  I still have those cards and find, now, how really innocent our humor was.


*Distracted father:  Our money goes so fast these days we don't even get a chance to spend it.

*Woman:  For years I've been catering to my stomach.  Now, I'm going to think about my'sylph!

*Definition of a cat washing itself:  A little spit and paw-lish.

*Child:  We're studying insects at school and now I've got the bug.

*Kids going to bed, say to parents:  Please be quiet, we want to talk.

*Young mother:  Well, after all, I gave up swearing to be a good influence on the children.  If they're going to take it up, so am I.


Well, all that may have gone out of style today, but I'm glad my parents had their goofy moments, especially considering what their generation had to take on!