| Oregon Magazine |
| E-RFD: For Those of "a Certain Age"
: Sent in by KB7SYY I came across this phrase yesterday: "FENDER SKIRTS," a term I haven't heard in a long time. Thinking about "fender skirts" started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like "curb feelers." And "steering knobs." (AKA) suicide knob. (ED; Aha! That's the one we always wondered about !!) Since I'd been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first. Any kids will probably have to find some elderly person over 50 (ED: "of a certain age") to explain some of these terms to you. "Continental kits," for example. They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental. For another one, when did we quit calling it the "emergency brake?" At some point "parking brake" became the proper term. But I miss the hint of drama that went with "emergency brake." I'm sad, too, that almost all the old folks are gone who would call the accelerator the "foot feed." They were the kids who could wait at the street for daddy to come home, so they could ride the "running board" up to the house. (ED: Some nanny government agency would put a stop to that if there were running boards, today.) A legion of lost terms "Coast to coast" is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term "world wide" for granted This floors me. On a smaller scale, "wall-to-wall" was once a magical term in our homes. In the '50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure. Most of these words go back to the '50s, but here's a pure-'60s
word I came across the other day - "rat fink." Ooh, what a nasty
put-down! Here's
I miss those made-up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like "DynaFlow" (ED: a Buick transmission) and "Electrolux." (ED: Once synonymous with "vacuum cleaner.") Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, "Now with SpectraVision!" (Medical food for thought - Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore. Maybe that's what castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with castor oil anymore.) Some words aren't gone, of course, but just find themselves on
the endangered species list. The one that grieves me most "supper."
Now, everybody says "dinner." I think we should all join the effort
to Save a Great
ED: God only knows who was the original author of this
complaint. See Bybee
(who is another HAM who sends us stuff) for a variation on the theme.
This particular version came to us from a Vietnam vet named John, an amateur
radio buddy of ours, who lives south of Forest Grove.
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