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YOU KNOW OR IS IT YOU NO?
I have always been interested in the patterns of speech used by my fellow Americans. The election season of the past two years have been a bonanza of sorts. During daylight hours, it has become the custom of cable programs to ask a speaker to kill a full hour whether he has anything to say…
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GI SPEAK
This humble and modest little essay has to do with language. Specifically it has to do with the language spoken by enlisted men, always called GIs, in the American Army in the era of World War II. This is the language spoken among enlisted men, and it has very little to do with the lofty…
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A LITTLE BIT OF THISA AND A LITTLE BIT OF THATA
About the only advantage in being raised during the Herbert Hoover Depression of 1929 was that the radio carried intelligent music. The lyrics had a story line and there were harmony and melody to the music. There were dozens of bands that toured the country at a time when almost every major hotel offered a…
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“THAT CERTAIN PLACE”
“THAT CERTAIN PLACE” Jake Haberfeld, Jerusalem~ 1983 Most Americans, particularly of the male gender, like to think of themselves as stand-up guys without a need to revert to nuances and/or euphemisms. There is nothing wrong with nuances and euphemisms, but there is also a virtue in calling things by their proper names. For reasons…
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RIGHT AWAY – LOOKING FORWARD
Like most Americans, I have followed events in Washington, which are a form of theater. Granted that it is a deadly theater, it is theater nonetheless. When members of this Democratic administration try to explain what is being done, they overwork the words “looking forward.” A few weeks earlier, they overworked the word “transparency.” Robert…
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OBSCENITIES NATURALLY
As I was growing up, there was one article of faith that had to be observed by my mother and by myself. It had to do with the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The Post Dispatch was an afternoon paper, of which there are very few left. When one of the older children appeared after work…
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THE DOCTRINE OF UP
This essay, which I hope you will read, has its genesis in a remark made to me by a nursing aide who attends to my needs at night. This lady, who was born in Ghana, said to me, “Would you like for me to cover you up?” She could have said, “Would you like for…
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HE/SHE/THEY SAID THAT?! Volume IV
Volume IV There are four exclamations that will wrap up the story on He, She, They Said That?! They come from widely varied sources. The first one is about a preacher in New Providence, New Jersey and the owner of a filling station/garage across the street. My recollection is that in 1956, there…
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HE/SHE/THEY SAID THAT?! Volume III
Volume III When I set out to write this essay, I thought my recollections could be contained in an essay of maybe six or eight pages. But as it has turned out, my recollections have now reached a total of three volumes. I believe that I have spent as much time as I wish to…
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HE/SHE/THEY SAID THAT?! VOLUME II
VOLUME II This is the second volume of “They Said That?” This essay will lean heavily on my experience in the labor relations field and on my work as an attendant in the filling station business. In the labor relations field, there are some rich quotations. There was a division accounting manager for AT&T…