11 ENDANGERED TERMS

1. FENDER SKIRTS
Old Trunks wonders if a fender skirt had any purpose except for looks. She wonders where the mud would have gone if the skirts were not there. Did you ever take one of them off? Did you know they came off? There was a metal lever.....................

2, CONTINENTAL KIT
SUV units have the tire showing on the outside, they are called kits? The kits of the 1950's and 60's were for looks AND to have more trunk room. My mother designed a car in 1960. It was a Thunderbird with a kit. She had it manufactured in brown with white leather seats. She would not listen when we said that brown was not a 'cool' color for a T Bird. It was always questioned if she wanted the car to match the house.

3. RUNNING BOARDS
Endangered only in the concept of riding on them from the mail box to the house. Some men won't have a running board or a step up on their truck because it looks "gay". What if you have a short wife? Does your truck have running boards?

4. SUPPER
Some say this term is endangered. One has to live in the north to even know the term. Let me explain it to those of you who have dinner.

In the north, especially in farming communities and certainly in our household as a child, it was

BREAKFAST
DINNER (the big meal of the day)
SUPPER (the lighter of the two meals)

In Kansas, there was no supper. That doesn't mean people didn't eat, it was terms were different. One thing that happened was the families had two incomes. The wife wasn't home to cook the noon meal nor was the husband home to eat it. Children didn't go home to eat at noon; they ate in school. It was called the hot lunch program.

BREAKFAST
LUNCH
DINNER (Big meal of the day).

Even more endangered is at this house hold, we have our big meal in the evening and we call it supper. I have been retrained to think northernly. It is also possible that with people working, there is no dinner, either. Meaning of course, that families don't sit down together and have a big meal. What sort of term would we use to define a meal now?

Perhaps I am totally confused and when I said on Facebook, cooking chicken and dumplings for supper, (a big meal), I should have said....cooking for dinner.

5. BRASSIERE
It is not that brassieres are endangered, rather the word brassiere is endangered....well maybe bras are endangered. I used to hate when mother said you need to go see Olga and be fitted for brassieres. The word made me cringe. It was to my grandmother, an unmentionable word. Actually, she called all underwear unmentionables, even the girdle she wore and washed every night and hung to dry in everyone's way.

6. IN A FAMILY WAY
Actually, that is better than bun in the oven. When grandma said someone was in a family way, it meant they were expecting. As a small child, I wondered what they were expecting. When my mother said pregnant, it came out with such force the baby could have been born!

7. PICTURE SHOW
This term was endangered in my part of the country by the time I started to go to the movies. I said, "Goin' ta catch a flick'. It would make mother groan.

8. PERCOLATOR
A percolator was a type of coffee maker that had some sort of heating element in the bottom. It had a basket and a cylinder like stem in which the water in the bottom went up through the stem and over the grounds. It could be a unit which was used on a stove or it could be an electric percolator. The electric ones took 19 minutes. Perhaps the stove kind was a little faster but if you had the heat too high, it boiled over. Mr. Coffee introduced a faster method and now we call them 'coffee makers'. At this two story house, I get out of bed, stomp on the floor twice and Tom, who rises first, starts the coffee machine.

9. WALL TO WALL
Meant, in the 1950's, carpeting which was put in wall to wall and tacked down with strips of wood with nail-like brads. Now? Wall to Wall is back to hard wood floors which in the 50's were covered up with wall to wall carpet. Go figure.

10. RUBBERS
Stop! Let me explain. I don't mean condoms. I mean an item men wore which covered only a portion of their shoes. It kept their shoes dry and provided traction on ice. Dress shoes had slick bottoms. Daddy would sit down, put the toe of his shoe in the rubber and pull them to the heel and snap them on. Rubbers are still available today but if you tried to put them over the non slip soles of the modern dress shoe, you would need a bread sack over your shoe to get them on!

11. RAT FINK
This must have been popular in about 1958 because it is written several times in my year book. No one else wrote it but I did. Most likely it was a term my brother used regarding others who tattled. He probably called me that for times when.......I would rat fink on him for whizzing out the bedroom window at the farm.

Do you remember?

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