Interesting If True - Episode 45: We're A Bunch Of Jerks!
Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that’s much, much better than most things now associated with the number 45…
I’m your host this week, Shea, and with me are:
I’m Aaron, and this week I learned that one day all of us will buy a food with an expiration date longer than our own…
The Jerk Off!
Inspired as a nickname for the soda clerk who operated soda fountains as late as the 1950s, the “Soda Jerk” title was inspired by the jerking action a server used to swing the soda fountain handle back and forth when adding soda water to a fountain beverage. They prepared milkshakes and other treats using drink mixers that feature spindles and agitators to fold air in for smooth and fluffy results served in tall glasses. Soda Jerks were charged not only with preparing delicious treats for customers, but with entertaining them as well. Their responsibilities were many—breaking and draining eggs with one hand, carving chicken, remembering orders, pulling the correct spigots and spindles on the drugstore soda fountain. But most of all, the NY Times reported, “the prime requisite of their station is the ability to bandy words.”
Soda jerks became known across the country for this kind of esoteric slang. They were often virtuosic wordsmiths, with a gift for puns and riffs. And, at a time when the United States was nuts for all things ice-cream, they were at once “consummate showmen, innovators, and freelance linguists of the drugstore stage,” writes Michael Karl Witzel in The American Drive-In. “America’s soda jerk became the pop culture star of the Gilded Age.”
The colorful jargon of the Soda Jerk was verbal shorthand for calling out orders as part of putting on a show for customers. The order consisted of the method of preparation, the number and size of the order, the basic soda fountain item, and any special instructions, such as “Shake One in the Hay and Spit on It” (a strawberry shake with raspberries on top). Soda fountains had handbooks of recipes they had to memorize, but hundreds of variations were created on the fly by the creative Soda Jerks.
By the 1950’s capitalism all but killed the old time soda fountains, the increase in technology and the wish to expedite helped push the jerks out the door. By then diners were the new big hang out, the good ol greasy spoon of yore to the place of soda fountains but they kept some of the language and peppered in some of their own.
Similar to visiting a foreign country where English is not spoken, diner lingo is virtually unknown outside the United States. The light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek and even sometimes risqué phrases could be heard in wide use in busy diners during the 1920’s continuing on well into the 1970’s. Diner lingo was never intended for use in speeding up the order-to-table process. Rather, it was a spontaneously developed mnemonic means of making orders easier to hear and remember above the conversational din of the busy diner. It also provided patrons and employees with a free form of entertainment.
Today we are going to test your soda jerking skills in our first ever JERK OFF!! Today’s quiz will be the interesting slang used by jerks and slop slingers back in the 50’s and we will compete to see who will be the Jerk of the year.
Remove an item from an order or from the menu; throw an item away (plenty of theories on the origins of this one, including: a reference to Article 86 of the New York State Liquor Code, which defines the circumstances under which a patron should be refused alcohol; a reference to coffins, usually eight feet long and buried six feet under; from Chumley’s Bar and Restaurant in New York City, where trash was thrown out the back door at 86 Bedford Street; from Delmonico’s Restaurant in NYC, where item #86 on their menu, the house steak, was often unavailable due to its popularity.
On occasion, the code had a simple, practical purpose. That might be in protecting the privacy of the customer: The name of an order spiked with the laxative magnesium citrate would include Mary Garden “because it makes you sing.” Mary Garden was a famous opera singer of the time. If a customer left without paying, whether by accident or otherwise, it was often easier to shout “95!” than to explain what had happened. “99!” denoted the presence of the big boss or an inspector (soda fountains were notoriously unhygienic and tended not to use soap when washing dishes).
I don’t know what your plans for dinner are tonight but I’m going with A yellow blanket on a dead cow, frog fries then stretch one and paint it red and Twist It, Choke It, and Make It Cackle.
For those too slow to keep up, that’s a cheese burger with fries and a cherry coke followed by Chocolate malted milk.
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Wow Shea, I had no idea shit on a shingle was actually a yee-oldie thatchers technique! That’s so interesting… if it’s true.
Pretty sure it’s not.
These things are though. In keeping with Shea’s quiz about eating out, I’ve prepared a quiz for you about eating out…
Question 1:
Cunnalingus is…
Yep, the lain for vulva was cunnus and “to lick” was lingere. Put’em together and what’da got? Well.. B, probably, which is the other answer I would have accepted. Remember kids, reciprocity is the foundation of civilization.
Question 2:
Which of the following are not acceptable oral sex barriors capable of prevent the spread of STDs and STIs?
Yes, while googling Dental Dams I did find a seller of Christian themed, mint flavored, dental dams for the safety-first clitorally-concerned cloisteress. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that nun’s outfit definitely wasn’t designed at the Vatican… Enter “glory” at checkout?
The answer is A for the penis-havers and C — or a less creepy variant thereof — for the vagina-havers. While a latex or nitrile glove is a bio-impermeable layer, that’s only true if you don’t accidentally poke holes in it while cutting it, or rub holes in it… rubbing.
As for cling wrap, some could work but there’s not enough good, positive, research to suggest it’s a good idea. Moreover, many microwavable cling wraps have micro pores to allow steam to pass through them, which you can totally tongue-punch an STD or STI though…
Question 3:
In Watchmen, one of Zach Snyder’s good movies (I mean, this airs after the release of the Snider Cut, but come on… what could he possibly add, remove, or drug us with to make that movie suck less?) OG Silk Spectre gives her daughter a “Tijuana Bible,” a tiny adult comic book. Not your most commonly known about or distributed comic, but like Marvel they left their mark on the English speaking world at least. What phrase did the Tijuana Bible make famous:
Thanks to Urban Dictionary for the joke in this round! Yeah, I’ve never heard that either…
The answer is B, Blow Job. There are a few casual records of “blow” getting used as a term for filatio, and many more in the diaries of the wild-wests working women describing it as a laborious “job.” However, the term first appears in its entirety in a ‘Tijuana Bible’, a crudely drawn and in this case, eight-page, pornographic comic. They often featured a well known or notorious person at the time, in this case the alleged Communist spy Alger Hiss and the McCarthyite informer Whitaker Chambers.
c.1948 ‘Chambers & Hiss in Betrayed’ [comic strip] in B. Adelman Tijuana Bibles (1997): Alger […] you give such good blow jobs!
Question 4:
The ancient gods were busy bees for sure. While Zues was shagging everything in sight and Yahweh giving happily married women surprise-babies, the rest of the gods, well in Egypt anyway, doing everything but:
That’s right, it’s a star chart kind of moment.
Apparently, the Egyptian gods Geb, god of the earth, and his grand kinds were all fans of a little holy autofellatio. I’ve included a papyrus from the British Museum in the show notes… not the show because like last week, I’m not clear on how iTunes handles giant, red, wangs. The red, by the way, was added in photoshop to make their not at all subtitle cocks easier to see.
According to ledgent, the god Osiris was hacked up all murder style and his sister-wife Isis had to put him back together. Unfortunately, his wang was the one peace she “couldn’t find” so she fashioned him a new one out of the clay of the Nile and then used it to blow life back into him like a cheap inflatable pool toy for risque tupperware parties.
As for the mud babies, this is apparently Isis and Osiris’ origin stories. Thir father, Ra took his human form Atum, and rubbed out two pools of his own filth, which somehow sprang to life then married each other. So… yeah.
Question 5:
Like many professions doctors can glean knowledge from their customers which they may not have intended to share. In our case, it’s always and forever the button you clicked but swear you didn’t. Trust us, you did. And for Dentists it’s:
And of course, it’s A!
The other three are made up, though I gotta think that if you get a gum infections and they culture the bacteria only to find a ton of butt stuff that’s a dead give away.
As for the blow job evidence, it’s called Fellatio-associated erythema of the soft palate. Which is a very doctor way of saying that you’ve recently been sucking dick aggressively enough to visibly bruise your soft palate. The bruise is called a petechiae. Apparently the don’t last long so it’s not a good test of if someone has ever sucked a dick but it seems like around the week, maybe two, time frame is well within reason. That or you have fundamentally failed to understand how popsicles work.
Check the show notes for a screen grab from Dr. Huzefa Kapadia’s TikTok video describing the condition. It’s been viewed some 33 million times and the comments from other dentists are just a delight. For example:
I used to get these high school girls that would come in Monday morning to get their teeth cleaned, and I’d ask them how their weekend was. And they’d go, “Oh, it was fine, I didn’t really do too much.” And you’re looking in their mouth and you’re thinking, Mhmm, you did a lot more than ‘not too much.’ Yeah, those were the best.
Again, for those T.I. enthusiasts out there, the effects are short lived and can be caused by carrots, snickers, dicks, popsicles, or misunderstanding the length of your soup spoon. This is an interest and true fact, but not a means by which you can really tell much about much.
Question 6:
According to most of the stats I glossed over for this quiz, some 80% of women will acquiesce to the men in their lives and temporarily damaged their soft palate for us. On the other had, a mere 40% of men are willing to return the favor despite socially prevalent sayings like “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Hopefully, our numbers begin to rise and, demographically, as men age apparently they do. So, which of the following are good avoid for making sure your lady is happy:
Bonus Question:
When looking into sexual health information, there’s a lot of misinformation. Like a lot a lot. Moreso even when you look for women’s sexual health information. So, to clear up at least one amazingly frustrating item, Pregnancy Crisis Centers are:
No one gets to answer this one. This is my point. The answer is D, 100% of the time. Pregnancy Crisis Centres are just another outlet for religiously motivated sociocultural shame and that’s bullshit.
And with that I’ll congratulate ____ and remind everyone to visit https://gettested.cdc.gov to find a nearby, confidential, and often free, testing clinic for STI/Ds. And if you want to help support free, rapid HIV/AIDS testing, available contraceptives, and support for those living with HIV/AIDS in Wyoming, visit WyoAIDS.org to like, share, and donate!
… And for you regular listeners wondering what ___ won and why it means they should get tested, visit Patreon.com/iit or make a donation to WyoAIDS and send us the email recipe and we’ll reply with the patron cut of the last five shows!
OutroI’m Shea, and this week I learned that charcuterie boards are just expensive lunchables. Before we go I’d like to thank all our listeners, supporters, and my co-hosts.
Find out more about the show, social links, and contact information at InterestingIfTrue.com.
Music for this episode was created by Wayne Jones and was used with permission.
The opinions, views, and nonsense expressed in this show are those of the hosts only and do not represent any other people, organizations, or lifeforms.
All rights reserved, Interesting If True 2020.
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