Auroraadvocate.com - The Way It Was: A few words little used now

by John Straka

Correspondent

Sometimes when I'm looking for an idea or a subject for a column, it comes from just a single word.

Shortly after Christmas I was eating some homemade Italian herb bread and after that a piece of bread with candied fruit in it.

Both of them reminded me of the Bohemian houska that my mother used to make. My wife and I made it, too, after we were married.

I seldom hear the word houska anymore. It once was as much a part of everyday vocabulary as the word bread. People of all backgrounds would go to Peters' Bakery to buy a houska or several small housky.

There are other words I don't hear very often that once were in common use. Our house on Theodore in Maple Heights had a pantry. Probably still does.

A little room with a window over a sink, cupboards for dishes, storage for pots and pans, and a built-in flour bin that held the contents of a 24-pound bag of flour.

Some houses had a pantry that was long and narrow like a hallway with a counter-top work space and lots of storage shelves on one wall.

In the basement under our pantry was a fruit bin where a winter's supply of potatoes, apples, lard and home-canned produce was stored.

Some called their fruit bin a root cellar because they used it to store carrots in a box of sand and other things like homemade sauerkraut, wine and anything that would benefit from the cooler temperature.

IN "THE Wizard of Oz" movie, the family takes shelter from a tornado in a storm cellar. A cellar under a house was often entered by way of an outside stairway covered with a slanting door.

I remember a line from a song that goes, "Slide down my cellar door."

Not very long ago, every community had designated fallout shelters or bomb shelters. Some people built or bought their own private bomb shelters. Can you still buy a bomb shelter for your own back yard? What about zoning?

Anyone ever tell you to blow it out your flutter valve? In war time, soldiers were issued gas masks. Inhaled air passes through filters that remove poisonous gases.

Exhaled air goes out of the mask through a flutter valve. When one is tired of listening to what is being said, they can tell the speaker to blow it out their flutter valve, and if he or she knows anything about gas masks, they will understand.

Clothing goes out of style quickly and words associated with what we wear lose their place in popular vocabulary.

Hair pins, bobby pins, hat pins, hair nets, rats, buns, snoods, falls and switches are probably not used by today's young ladies.

Men don't wear detachable cuffs and collars, so they do not need collar buttons or cuff links. Before men wore elastic top socks, they held their socks in place with garters.

Before shirts were sold with a choice of sleeve lengths, men wore sleeve garters to hold up extra long sleeves.

Women wore stockings and needed some way to hold them up. Garters! Some came attached to corsets or girdles. Some women wore a garter belt.

ROUND ELASTIC garters were used with rolled-down hose, but flat garters were more stylish. A girl who wore fancy flat garters just barely above the knee could attract a lot of attention just by letting her skirt flap around a bit.

I wonder how many modern young women know the meaning of keeping some folding money in the First National Bank.

Instead of carrying a purse, women tucked a few bills into the top of a stocking and that was known as the First National Bank.

Recently, I heard the word "muff" and I remember when it was the style for a woman to carry a muff to keep her hands warm in cold weather.

A matching coat, hat and muff would make any woman look like a fashion model. Some muffs had a hidden pocket, too.

Men's styles don't change all that much, so words like spats are almost ancient history. I remember wearing barges, a kind of square-toed shoe.

Political slogans don't stay in use very long, but I do recall "A chicken in every pot," the "New Deal" and Technocracy. You do not hear anything much about the CCC camps, the WPA or the NRA.

What everyday words are likely to fall into disuse? Pencil? Wood? Typewriter? Newspaper? A penny? Cotton? Light bulb? Pay phone? Mailbox?

Will they follow the flashbulb and the telephone dial? Imagine a conversation with Nero and Cleopatra about atom bombs, airplanes, computers, plastics, organ transplants, rubber bands and zippers!