FENDER SKIRTS
What Is A Fender Skirt? For those of a
certain age....
FENDER SKIRTS
A term I haven't heard in a long time. And
thinking about fender skirts started me thinking about other
words that quietly disappeared from our language with hardly a
notice like curb feelers:
And steering knobs, AKA suicide
knob.
Since I'd been thinking of cars, my mind
naturally went in that direction first.
Any kids reading this will probably have to find some elderly
person over 50 to explain some of these terms to you.
Remember Continental kits?
They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were
supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental.
When did we quit calling them emergency
brakes? 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 footfeed.
Didn't you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so
you could ride the running board up to the house?
Here's a phrase I heard all the time in my
youth but never anymore-store-bought. Of course, just about
everything is store-bought these days. But once it was bragging
material to have a store-bought dress or a store-bought bag of
candy.
Coast to coast is a phrase that once held
all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take
the term worldwide 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.
When's the last time you heard the quaint
phrase in a family way? It's hard to imagine that the word pregnant
was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for
use in polite company. So we had all that talk about stork visits
and being in a family way or simply expecting.
Most of these words go back to the '50s, but
here's a pure -'60s expression I came across the other day--rat
fink. Oooh, what a nasty put-down !
Here's a word I miss --percolator. That was
just a fun word to say. And what was it replaced with? Coffee
maker. How dull. Mr. Coffee, I blame you for this.
I miss those made-up marketing words that
were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like
DynaFlow and Electrolux. Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with
SpectraVision!
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 but are definitely on
the endangered list. The one that grieves me most is supper. Now
everybody says dinner Save great words. Invite someone to
supper.
Discuss fender skirts.
Someone forwarded this to me. I thought
some of us of a certain age would remember most of
these.
Just for fun, pass it along to others of a
certain age!
No offense
Copyright for photos remains with original copyholders
Author is unknown
