blind pig / blind tiger / striped pig

Entrance to the Krazy Kat speakeasy, Washington, DC, 1921

11 October 2023 (Update 14 October: striped pig added)

You don’t hear about blind tigers, blind pigs, or striped pigs much anymore. Occasionally, one may happen upon a bar or tavern with the name Blind Tiger or see the terms in historical fiction, but that’s about it. They are old slang terms for establishments that sell illicit liquor. The names arose in the days when sideshow or roadside attractions offered a glimpse of exotic or weird creatures. The two names come from the signs advertising the establishments, offering a peep at said animal but actually delivering a drink instead in an attempt to evade laws restricting the sale of alcohol.

The terms were not only differentiated by the title animal, but by region as well. Blind tiger was more common in the American South and West Midlands. Blind pig was primary found in the Inland North and West Coast. But the granddaddy of them all, the striped pig, got its start in Massachusetts.

Striped pig started when the Massachusetts legislature passed a law on 1 July 1838 prohibiting the sale of liquor in quantities less than fifteen gallons (the act was repealed in 1840) on days when the militia mustered. The original striped pig sprang up on the muster field in Dedham, Massachusetts on 11 September 1838:

YANKEE SHREWDNESS.—Coming it over the fifteen gallon law.—We understand that previous to the Division Muster at Dedham, yesterday, a shrewd one hit upon the following novel expedient to evade the license law. He made application to the Selectmen for a license to exhibit a striped pig during the parade day, which was granted.—He accordingly procured a pig, and with a brush painted some stripes on his back, and yesterday morning he had a tent erected on the field, with due notice on the exterior, that a striped pig was to be seen within: price of admission, six and a quarter cents. The rate being so low, numerous visitors were induced to call upon his swinish majesty, and, every one on coming out appeared highly gratified with the kind and courteous reception he met with from the keeper of the remarkable pig, for each comer was treated to a glass of brand and water or gin, or whatever liquor he might prefer, without any extra charge. Some were so well pleased that they were induced to take a second look at the animal, and were as kindly and liberally treated as at their first visit. At the last accounts the exhibitor was driving a brisk business, and was likely to make a profitable day’s job in exhibiting his “striped pig.”

The striped pig was a nationwide sensation, widely reported in newspapers throughout the United States. The America’s Historical Newspaper database records nearly nine hundred articles referencing striped pigs appearing between 1838 and 1840, when the law was repealed. And uses continued well beyond that date.

According to the Massachusetts’s Gloucester Telegraph on 22 September 1838, bars in New York were serving drinks called the striped pig:

A new beverage, called the “Striped Pig,” is said to be all the go at the Astor and other fashionable hotels in New-York.

And Rhode Island’s Providence Daily Journal of 28 September 1838 reports a stage show of that name being performed in Boston:

A new burletta, called the “Striped Pig,” has been performed at the National, in Boston, to full houses. The Gazette says it was written by one the first men in Boston, and is said to be a SQUEALER.

Dedham’s Norfolk Advertiser of 6 October 1838 tells of a political “party” being formed dedicated to the repeal of the law. Evidently this was not a formally organized party, so much as a caucus of candidates opposed to the law:

The Striped Pig Party in Hampden Co. have nominated for the Senate George Ashmun and Matthew Ives Jr.

And by the end of October, copycat striped pigs were in place. From the Norfolk Advertiser of 20 October 1838:

Not less than four “striped Pigs” were brought before Mr Justice Wells last week, and fined for violating the laws of the Commonwealth. One of these “poor shoats” has been shut up in the county “pig pen.”

But elsewhere in the nation, other animals took the place of the swine, and instead of being striped, they were blind. From Tennessee we have mention of a blind tiger in a debate in the state House of Representatives on 13 October 1841. On the agenda was a bill to repeal the state’s strict liquor laws, with proponents arguing that the ban was ineffective and only served to promote illicit trade in booze and all the societal ills that accompanied it:

The gentleman from Henry, who introduced that bill, had told the House about a Blind Tiger in Henry, that people went to see and got something to take on his premises. He knew of one of these destructive Blind Tigers in Cannon county, which was terrible enough. This question should not be made a theological one. Bad[?] as he was himself, he was a member of a church and was repealing the present law. So were the preachers in his county.

Another early example of blind tiger, also from Tennessee, comes in the Memphis Daily Eagle of 29 December 1849:

On the subject of Sunday tippling, or of selling spirits to negroes, it appears necessary that a witness shall testify that himself or other person actually paid down at the time for what he drank, although in a house notoriously open for tippling purposes. We believe that all “Blind Tiger” artifice, and other cunning evasions should be circumvented by the higher skill of a virtuous and patriotic Legislature.

By 1855 blind tigers were appearing in Texas. From the Texas State Gazette of 26 May 1855:

The liquor sellers at Marshall are seeking to evade the law by the game of the Blind Tiger. The council are expected to make it the dead tiger shortly.

And we see this fuller description of a blind tiger in Porter’s Spirit of the Times of 23 May 1857. This account is supposedly from a traveler passing through the state of Mississippi:

After a while I goes up in town, leavin’ Ben in charge of the boat; and after crusin’ around a little, I sees a kinder pigeon-hole cut in the side of a house, and over the hole, in big writin’, “Blind tiger, ten cents a sight.” I walks straight up, and peepin’ in, sees a feller standing’ inside, stirrin’ somethin’ with a stick. I immejiately recognised a familiar kinder menajery smell about the place. “Hello, there, you mister showman,” says I to the feller inside, “here’s your ten cents, walk out your wild cat.” Stranger, instead of showin’ me a wild varmint without eyes, I’ll be dod-busted if he didn’t shove out a glass of whiskey. You see, that “blind tiger” was an arrangement to evade the law, which won’t let ’em sell licker there, except by the gallon. It is useless to say that my visits wur numerous to that animal what couldn’t see.

Blind pig appears a decade or so later. There is this account in David MacRae’s 1870 The Americans at Home that describes a blind pig without using the term (he uses blind and pig, but not blind pig) in a section of the book that details prohibition laws in New England:

It was a new thing for me to walk for hours along the streets of a large and populous city like Boston and not see a single spirit-shop. That is one point gained. The traffic, no doubt, goes on. But it has to creep away into back streets, or conceal itself behind window-blinds that offer nothing but cigars, or soda-water, or confectionary, to the uninitiated passerby. When the people become more vigilant, it has to supply its customers through clubs or city agencies, or under medical prescription. In desperate cases it has to betake itself to the exhibition of Greenland pigs and other curious animals, charging 25 cents for a sight of the pig and throwing in a gin cocktail gratuitously. Natural history, in such cases, becomes a study of absorbing interest. People have no sooner been to see the Greenland pig once, than they are seized with an irresistible desire to go back and see him again.

And we see the phrase blind pig complete in a 27 February 1878 article in the Minneapolis Tribune:

At Rochester, an establishment known as “Blind Pig,” where the law was evaded and liquor sold, has been broken up and a young man named Charles Hall arrested, tried, and found guilty. He was fined $100 and costs, and in default sent to jail for ninety days.

There is this from the Tacoma Weekly News of 23 July 1886 in the then territory of Washington:

About half past 8 o’clock this morning there was considerable excitement among the habitues of Pacific avenue. It was caused by the appearance of a body of laboring men strolling along the sidewalks having come from the wharf. After they reached the Halstead house, they divided into squads and then circulated through the city taking in all the sights that included tips to the “blind pig.”

And this delightful story in the same paper two weeks later, on 6 August 1886:

A day or two ago at Puyallup, a sow’s six piggies ran under a coach of the train bound for Tacoma, while stopping at the depot. After the train started the pigs trotted along under the car, for nearly a block, while pig mater stood behind looking for her offspring with surprised alarm. The youngsters desiring to learn the significance of “blind pig,” and having heard of such an asylum for the distressed, rushed into a saloon and stayed there until driven out by the bar keeper. It was a thrilling pig’s tale all around.

Finally, there is this excerpt from a sermon printed in the Boston Herald of 24 January 1887:

Now, in Kansas, after prohibition had been carried, they found all the old topers were as drunk as before. Finally, one fellow with a nose went peeking around, and he found there was a place where a man was running what he called a blind pig.

These exotic animals and the beverages served to those who viewed them are things of the past, although there are present-day equivalents, only they don’t advertise animals and liquor is not the intoxicant they serve. Such establishments are a product of prohibition.

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Sources:

Thanks to Peter Reitan for alerting me to the existence of the phrase striped pig.

“Additional Laborers for the Front.” Tacoma Weekly News (Washington), 23 July 1886, 3/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Brevities.” Tacoma Weekly News (Washington), 6 August 1886, 3/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. blind tiger, n. also attrib., blind pig, n., striped pig, n.

Gloucester Telegraph (Massachusetts), 22 September 1838, 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v blind pig, n., blind-pigger, n., blind tiger, n.

A History of the “Striped Pig.” Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1838, 9–10. Gale Primary Sources: American Fiction.

“’Lige Simmons of Sinkum.” Porter’s Spirit of the Times (New York), 23 May 1857, 182/1–2. American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 4.

MacRae, David. The Americans at Home: Pen-and-Ink Sketches of American Men, Manners, and Institutions, vol. 2 of 2. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1870, 315. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Norfolk Advertiser (Dedham, Massachusetts), 6 October 1838, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———, 20 October 1838, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Our Table.” Texas State Gazette (Austin), 26 May 1855, 309/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. blind pig, n., blind tiger, n.

“Presentments.” Memphis Daily Eagle, 29 December 1849, 6/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Providence Daily Journal (Rhode Island), 28 September 1838, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Small, Sam. “Liberty for All. How the Fetters of Sin Can be Broken.” Boston Herald (Massachusetts), 24 January 1887, 3/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“State News.” Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 27 February 1878, 2/6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Tennessee Legislature. House of Representatives” (13 October 1841). Daily Republican Banner (Nashville), 15 October 1841, 3/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Yankee Shrewdness.” Columbian Centinel (Boston), 12 September 1838, 2/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Cleon Throckmorton, 1921. Library of Congress, LC-F8- 15145 (P&P). Public domain image.

belfry / bats in the belfry

9 October 2023

To have bats in one’s belfry is slang for being mentally unbalanced, eccentric, or odd. A belfry, in the most common sense in use today, is a bell chamber at the top of a tower, which in the slang phrase is a metaphor for the head. The slang expression is American in origin and relatively recent, but belfry is a word that dates back centuries.

Belfry comes into English from the Anglo-Norman berfrai, a word that is first recorded in the late twelfth century. The French term comes from either the medieval Latin berefredus or a proto-Germanic word *bergfrid, meaning castle or keep. The Norman dialect of Old French, from which Anglo-Norman descends, differs from standard Old French in that it was heavily influenced by Germanic words; Norman comes from Norseman. The Norman dialect may have gotten the word from either source. But in either case, the Latin word is itself a borrowing from the Germanic, so that is the ultimate source regardless.

The shift from /ɹ/ to /l/ occurred by the fifteenth century, we see the shift in Anglo-Norman by the late fourteenth century, and in English by the fifteenth. This particular consonant shift is unsurprising. The English liquid consonants, that is /ɹ/ and /l/, are easily interchangeable. And in this particular case, the association with bell probably influenced the shift to /l/ as well.

The original sense of berfrai was that of a shelter from missiles used during a siege. Later it came to refer to such a shelter at the top of a wooden tower on wheels used as a siege engine. We see this sense in the late fourteenth-century poem Cleanness:

“Þenne watz þe sege sette þe ceté aboute,
Skete skarmoch skelt, much skaþe lached;
At vch Brugge a berfrey on basteles wyse
Þat seuen syþe vch a day asayled þe ȝates.

(Then the siege was set about the city,
Skirmishes sharply fought, much injury suffered;
At each drawbridge a belfry in a moveable tower,
That seven times each day assailed the gates.)

The bell tower sense appears by the mid fifteenth century. We see it in a poem about Thomas Becket from that period:

Thomas rides fro Rome, þe man þat right kennes;
he faris forth by a faire towne, Pise it is hotyne.
There fyndes he masons, upon a toure makand
A belfry of alabastre, þere belles shul hengyne.

(Thomas rides from Rome, the man that teaches rightly,
He travels by a fair town, Pisa it is called,
There he finds masons building upon a tower
A belfry of alabaster, where bells shall hang.)

The tower here is what would become known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was under construction during Thomas’s lifetime in the twelfth century.

The phrase bats in the belfry, however, would have to wait a few hundred years. It starts appearing in print in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Here is the earliest use I know of, from the Searchlight newspaper of Redding California of 7 September 1897. The editor of that paper is sniping at a rival publication:

THE SHASTA COURIER waxes sarcastic about that “awful eastern cyclone.” Bro. Carter seems to think that Redding reporters have “bats in the belfry” and “rats in the garret.” It’s all a mistake. The reporter in question has not passed the wind on the stomach epoch of his existence. Paregoric is wanted, Bro. Carter, not sarcasm.

And there is this, a few months later, Memphis, Tennessee’s Commercial Appeal of 27 February 1898. The piece supposedly records the conversation between two dogs:

“We’re all mad, you know, they say,” I ventured—

“We have a neat little way of saying it in French,” he said, flipping his tail impertinently around.

“What is it in English?”

“Bats in the belfry!”

“Ha-ha!”

Of course, the phrase is not from French. The joke is playing on the fact that the readers will recognize it as a current slang phrase. This quotation is evidence that the phrase was in widespread use by this point.

As to why bats, that is twofold. First, belfries are common roosting places for bats. Second, it alliterates. And the idea of creatures flitting about inside one’s head is an apt, if rather insulting, metaphor for insanity.

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Sources:

“All Sorts and Conditions.” Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), 27 February 1898, 4/7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. berfrai, n.

“Cleanness.” In The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, fourth edition. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002, lines 1185–88. London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x, fols. 73r–v.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. belfry, n.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. berfrei, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. belfry, n.

Searchlight (Redding, California), 7 September 1897, 4/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Seint Thomas of Caunterbery.” In A. Brandl, “Thomas Beckets Weissagung über Eduard III un Henrich V,” Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 102, 1899, 354. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 56, fol. 45a. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Unknown artist, 1937. Collins Crime Club. Wikimedia Commons. Fair use of a low-resolution scan of the image to illustrate the topic under discussion.

hassium

The linear particle accelerator at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany where hassium was discovered

6 October 2023

Hassium, element 108, was first synthesized in 1984 at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (Institute for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany. The discoverers proposed the name after Hassia, the modern Latin name for the state of Hesse in which Darmstadt is located. The name was proposed at a September 1992 meeting of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). From Chemical and Engineering News of 14 September 1992:

Names for the three heaviest known elements—atomic numbers 107, 108, and 109—were formally proposed last week during a ceremony held at the nuclear research facility in Darmstadt, Germany, where they were discovered between 1981 and 1984.

In the competitive and disputatious world of heavy-element discovery, these three elements are among the least controversial. But their naming has raised some eyebrows nonetheless.

Element 107 was named nielsbohrium (Ns), after Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who pioneered modern atomic theory. Element 108 was dubbed hassium (Hs), after Hassia, the Latin name for the German state of Hesse, where Darmstadt is located. And meitnerium (Mt) was the moniker given to element 109, after Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, one of the originators of the idea of nuclear fission.

The chemical symbol for hassium is Hs.

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Sources:

Dagani, Ron. “Naming Heavy Elements: 107 to 109 Attract Least Controversy.” Chemical and Engineering News, 70.37, 14 September 1992, 4–5 at 4. DOI: 10.1021/cen-v070n037.p004.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. hassium, n.

Photo credit: Alexander Blecher, 2015. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

balling the jack

Judy Garland and Gene Kelly performing a tame (and very white) version of Balling the Jack in the 1942 film For Me and My Gal

4 October 2023

The verb phrase to ball the jack has an uncertain origin. It is commonly said to have its origin is in railroad jargon, but any such claim has to be prefaced by perhaps or possibly. The evidence of the phrase’s early use, albeit far from dipositive, suggests that an origin in American Black slang referring to sexually suggestive dance movements is also possible.

The phrase has two primary meanings, which both date to the early twentieth century. The two senses are recorded within a few years of each other, and both undoubtedly had currency in oral discourse before being written down, so it’s impossible to tell which came first. The first sense is to move quickly, later extended to mean to work hard. The second, first seen in Black slang, is to dance or move one’s body in a sexually suggestive fashion.

The best guess as to the phrase’s origin is that it comes from railroad jargon that dates to at least 1905: highball (signal a locomotive to proceed) + jack (locomotive). But the first recorded uses of ball the jack in a railroad context come a few years after that phrase is already established, but not so long after that it could simply have gone unrecorded in print. And it’s possible that the two senses have two distinct origins, although ones that undoubtedly influenced one another.

The earliest uses of ball the jack that I have found come in a pair of articles in Florida’s Tampa Tribune in September 1911. Both articles put the phrase in the mouth of the same man and the context is of speed in loading cargo, specifically rock ore, onto ships. The first is from 24 September:

Meanwhile, Mr. Giles is repairing little odds and ends about the elevator, rearranging certain details and so on. When the fall season starts up Mr. Giles says he will “be ready to ball the jack” with phosphate tramps.

The second comes three days later on the 27th:

Heavy rains are seriously interfering with the loading of ships. Almost every boat in port is being thrown behind by the weather. The Spanish Steamship Madrileno, for instance, was slated to clear today, but the rain yesterday afternoon delayed it a day. Tomorrow, however, Seaboard Foreman Giles says “she will ball the jack.”

The dance sense first appears a little less than a year later in a song title. Early uses of this sense are primarily found in Black newspapers. The first is in the Indianapolis Freeman of 15 June 1912 in a description of an entertainment act:

The Original String Beans,

Known to us generally as May and May, was, as usual, a riot. Mr. May is becoming more of a legitimate comedian than he was in the days of yore. Mrs. May looks the same as when we last saw her—young and pretty. Their act is a singing and talking one, but good all the way through. They have several new songs, all of which are hits—“Ball the Jack Rage,” “All Night Long” and others.

There were several songs of the era that used ball the jack in their titles. Another is found in Georgia’s Savannah Tribune, another Black paper, of 23 August 1913:

Sept. 22nd, Monday, “Ball the Jack Short” by Pa Pa Hawkie and Little Ed at Masonic Temple. Admission 25 and 35 cents.

Perhaps the most famous tune of that title is the 1913 Ballin’ the Jack by Black musicians and vaudeville entertainers Jim Burris (lyrics) and Chris Smith (music). The chorus of that song goes:

First you put your two knees close up tight,
Then you sway ’em to the left,
Then you sway ’em to the right,
Step around the floor kind of nice and light,
Then you twis’ around and twis’ around with all your might,
Stretch your lovin’ arms straight out in space
Then you do the Eagle Rock style and grace
Swing your foot way ’round then bring it back,
Now that’s what I call “Ballin’ the Jack,”
“Ballin’ the Jack.”

And we see the phrase used in a description of a movie featuring an all-Black cast that appeared in the New York Age on 16 October 1913. The article is urging a boycott of the film’s production company for producing the film which is loaded with racist stereotypes. Exactly what ball the jack means here isn’t clear, but given the term’s usage elsewhere, it probably means some type of suggestive dance or movement:

The “all colored” picture, to which exceptions are taken bears the title of “Slim, the Cowpuncher.” Overlooking without comment such an inappropriate name for a picture supposed to deal with Negro life, [I] shall tell about the film, especially the second half of the reel, in which a number of colored persons are seen wandering aimlessly about. The subjects shown are of the lazy, indolent type of Negro, who proceed to “ball the jack,” drink gin, shoot dice and steal watermelons. Colored theatregoers who have had the misfortune to see this picture refer to it in disgust. The regard it as an insult to the race.

(The word which I interpret to be “I” is obscured in the digital scan of the paper. This may be a scan error, but it looks like the editors have scratched out a typo in the original, a single letter that is not “I.”)

And the first clear use of the phrase in prose to mean a sexually suggestive dance is in the Chicago Defender of 8 November 1913:

One evening this week the writer was taken to the fourth floor of a flat building on State street. This flat was kept by a woman known as “Mrs.,” but not married. Ordered a round of drinks. Several women in the flat “visiting.” Four bottles Edelweiss served with two whiskys. Paid 75 cents. Half hour later we made our departure. Was informed “not to forget the place” and “when you come again bring some more friends.” [Left] and went on second floor. This lady had a piano. Hilarity at its height; two women full doing a dance they called “balling the Jack” and other disrespectful capers. Bought a round for the crowd and left.

A pair of articles in the Indianapolis Freeman of 20 December 1913 decry entertainers who ball the jack and the producers and theater managers who permit it:

The actor who swears too much is a nuisance. Some theaters don’t allow it all. But when it comes to smutty slang managers should not allow it: actors should be watched and chided and the limit the law regarded. Stories that suggest ill repute are especially offensive. It is quite the same with suggestive dances. The shivering bodice, twitching of the shoulders, centralized emotion and balling the jack are all sufficient reason for the revoking of any manager’s license.

And the second of the pair:

The majority of managers of today allow the actors too much liberty: for instance, I have seen the so-called comedian undertake to tell what he considers a funny joke or story. He does not get a laugh. He does not attempt to tell another, but immediately commences to “Ball the Jack,” which I consider the most vulgar movements I have ever seen attempted  in public, but seemingly the managers of some of the houses stand for it and the public use their own discretion, but some managers don’t think they have a good show unless the audience makes a lot of noise and “Ball the Jack” is a noisy producer in some of the State street houses, but should Ball the Jack be accepted the same in the better houses as Salome, Texas Tommy and Tango, then I will be willing to offer an apology to all the Ball the Jackers.

And a few years later we see balling the jack making its way onto white dance floors. Puzzled by the meaning of the phrase, a reader wrote into Cincinnati’s Post, a white newspaper, of 7 August 1916 asking that question:

Dance Figure

Puzzled: What does the expression, “balling the Jack,” mean?—it refers to a figure in dancing, in which the feet are kept solid on the floor, close together, and the knees moved in a rotary movement.

As for the speed meaning, that picks up steam with World War I. At the end of the decade, we see a number of newspaper articles recording the use of ball the jack by doughboys. We see it used in the context of troops supposedly eager to go over there in the Miami Herald of 18 November 1917:

Every one here is getting impatient to “ball the jack,” for France, now that some of our “Sammies,” have lost their lives in the fight for democracy; and the 31st division or the “Dixie Flyer,” as we have nicknamed it, will undoubtedly make themselves felt when they reach the first line of trenches. They are a fine looking body of men, and the people of “Dixie” may well be proud of this division of fighting men.

There is this account of life in the trenches found in the Atlanta Journal of 29 September 1918:

Well, anyway, about 4 a.m. Sunday morning I was suddenly awakened by the noise of many guns and discovered, much to my consternation, that it was a barrage, either going over, from our guns, or coming over from Fritz’s cannon. I didn’t wait to find out, but, grabbing my shoes, balled the jack to the dugout, where nearly all the rest of the company had already arrived.

And this one from Kansas’s Emporia Gazette about post-war troops working in a sawmill in France and preparing to come home:

Yesterday the night and day crew tried to make a record run for the A.E.F. They made something of a 160,000-foot run (twenty hours), in a 20,000 capacity mill for ten hours. To see the boys “ball the jack,” believe me, the sawdust and lumber flew. They have an order for big timber, for bridges.

We see ball the jack used in reference to automobiles in this account of court testimony about a car accident in the 24 November 1920 edition of North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Journal:

Mr. Peddycord, another witness for the State, was called upon by the solicitor to estimate the speed Jeffreys was making, but the best he could guess was that "he was balling the jack." Whether or not this was a speed of ten miles per hour or sixty miles per hour could not be determined.

We’ve seen the speed sense of ball the jack used in the context of loading cargo ships, soldiers in wartime, lumber mills, and automobiles. The first known use of the phrase in the context of railroads appears in the midst of these in 1916. This is only five years after the phrase is first recorded, so the date doesn’t rule out an origin in railroad jargon, but it makes it less likely. This use comes in a 26 January 1916 notice from the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, a union:

I think that should well be explained before Congress that we have more on our hands at train time than at any other time of the day, even without the mail, but with the mail a man cannot do himself justice in trying to do all his other work and then have to lug a batch of mail half hour or longer, right when has to get to ball the jack on his other duties, but still everything has to be done, and right then.

There is this poem, presumably composed by schoolchildren that associates ball the jack with a railroad, but which could just refer to the lamb’s attempts to squirm free, resembling a suggestive dance. From Alexandria, Louisiana’s Weekly Town Talk of 2 September 1916:

The visitors were very much amused at a small “poem” that they found on one of the blackboards, and the writer will digress long enough to reproduce it:

“Mary had a little lamb,
She tied it on the track,
And every time the whistle blew
The lamb would ball the jack.”

There is this refers to a train moving at high speed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of 21 June 1920:

Knoxville Rotarians greeted the special at the depot. From there on the special “balled the jack” in an effort to make up time. Sunday morning found the special bowling the green field, along at the foothills of the famed Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

And this article from the Atlanta Journal of 3 January 1923 about a locomotive engineer retiring after fifty-four years of service that clearly establishes the term as part of railroad jargon but does not indicate how far back it goes:

He chartered a car and an engine, and the boss put me on it with orders to ball the jack, and we had a clear track and no stops to make, and we balled the jack.

What does all this tell us? The early citations of the ball the jack’s use don’t give a hint as to the underlying metaphor. An extension of the railroad term highball is certainly possible, but the existing evidence is insufficient to confirm it. We can’t even say for certain that the two senses, speed and sexually suggestive movement, have the same origin, but if one were to bet on it, one would probably say they do. Still, it’s a fascinating phrase, if only because the two senses highlight the racial division in American society as it existed in the opening decades of the twentieth century.

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Sources:

“Amusement Column.” Savannah Tribune (Georgia), 23 August 1913, 5/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Boosters Made Pleasant Trip.” Weekly Town Talk (Alexandria, Louisiana), 2 September 1916, 2/6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Burris, Jim and Chris Smith. “Ballin’ the Jack.” New York: Jos. W. Stern, 1913. New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Byrne, W.G. “Texas Rotary Delegation Goes into Convention Unpledged.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas), 21 June 1920, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Gossip of the Stage.” Freeman (Indianapolis), 15 June 1912, 5/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. ball the jack, v.

“John M’Waters Daddy of All Engineers, Greeted by Officials and Cameramen as He Completes 54 Years at Throttle.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 3 January 1923, 8/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“In Camp and Field.” Emporia Gazette (Kansas), 4 January 1919, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Lights and Shadows in Police Court.” Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina), 24 November 1920, 10/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Little Bo Peep. “The Buffet Flats.” Chicago Defender, 8 November 1913, 4/7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Mrs. Evans’ Answers.” Post (Cincinnati, Ohio), 7 August 1916, 7/4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. ball, v.2.; September 2014, s.v. highball, v.

“Prospects Bright for Big October Movement.” Tampa Tribune (Florida), 24 September 1911, 7/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Russell, Sylvester. “Annual Stage Review.” Freeman (Indianapolis), 20 December 1913, 12/1–2.

St. John, Rex E. “Notes of Company M.” Miami Herald (Florida), 18 November 1917, 21/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Smith, W.H. “Actors and Managers of Today.” Freeman (Indianapolis), 20 December 1913, 14/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Taylor, Carl. “Letters from Our Boys Over There.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 29 September 1918, 9/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“To All Members Who Are Required to Carry United States Mail” (26 January 1916). The Railroad Telegrapher, September 1918, 34.9, 1162. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Walton, Lester A. “A Time for Action.” New York Age, 16 October 1913, 6/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Waterfront Gossip.” Tampa Morning Tribune (Florida), 27 September 1911, 11/7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, For Me and My Gal, 1942. Fair use of a single, low-resolution still from the film to illustrate the topic under discussion.

the coldest winter ... San Francisco

San Francisco, seen from Twin Peaks, with the fog of the marine layer rolling in

2 October 2023

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

—Mark Twain

Open up just about any guidebook or web site about San Francisco and you’ll find this quote. The trouble is, Twain never said it, or at least it doesn’t appear in any of his published works or extant letters and papers. The quote is sometimes attributed to other writers and other cities, but the clear favorite is Twain and San Francisco. (Twain is a “quote magnet,” with hundreds of quotations by others falsely attributed to him.)

But Twain did write about San Francisco’s climate, and his conclusions were completely at odds with this alleged quote. From his 1872 Roughing It:

The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets in Summer and Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. You wear black broadcloth—if you have it—in August and January, just the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in one month than the other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world.

While San Francisco does get a bit chillier in than the surrounding counties, particularly when the marine layer of fog covers the city—visitors to the city are advised to pack a sweater no matter the month—it never gets really cold in summer or in winter. Twain was right; the climate of the Bay Area is delightful year-round.

Twain did, however, say something similar about Paris. In an 1880 letter he wrote:

For this long time I have been intending to congratulate you fervently upon your translation to——to——anywhere——for anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the Damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, “Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?” “Yes,” said he, “Last summer.” I judge he spent his summer in Paris.

But here, it is Twain who is paraphrasing someone else, in this case actor James Quin (1693–1766). Quin’s quip, which doesn’t refer to a specific location, was evidently in circulation in Twain’s day. We even see it in a 1789 letter by English politician Horace Walpole, son of Robert Walpole, who had served as prime minister:

But St. Swithin [i.e., 15 July] played the devil so, that we could not stir out of doors, and had fires to chase the watery spirits. Quin, being once asked if he had ever seen so bad a winter, replied, “Yes, just such an [sic] one last summer!”—and here is its youngest brother!

The current phrasing, naming a specific city, came into being at the turn of the twentieth century, only it was in relation to Duluth, Minnesota, not San Francisco or Paris. From Duluth’s News-Tribune of 17 June 1900:

One of these days somebody will tell that mouldy chestnut about the finest winter he ever saw being the summer he spent in Duluth, and one of these husky commercial travelers, who have been here and know all about our climate, will smite him with an uppercut and break his slanderous jaw. The truth will come out in time.

But even here, the use of mouldy chestnut indicates that by this date the attribution to Duluth was an unoriginal and tired one. And it was widespread. Here is one from Lexington, Kentucky’s Morning Herald of 17 June 1901 that tells of R. Q. Grant who worked for the state weather bureau:

Another assignment was to Duluth, Minn., where he learned to appreciate rapid changes in temperature. He says the coldest winter he ever experienced was the summer he spent in Duluth.

And San Francisco, Paris, and Duluth are not alone. The quip has been attributed to a number of cities over the years. The phrase is what linguists have dubbed a snowclone, that is a formulaic, cliché in which a familiar idiom is modified to fit new circumstances. A classic example is X is the new Y, where the two variables can be substituted, as in blue is the new black.

For a fuller history of this and other dubious quotations, see the Quote Investigator.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“Interesting Experiences. Morning Herald (Lexington, Kentucky), 17 June 1901, 6/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

O’Toole, Garson. “The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Was a Summer in San Francisco.” Quote Investigator (blog), 30 November 2011.

Sunday News-Tribune (Duluth, Minnesota), 17 June 1900, 12/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Twain, Mark (pseud. Samuel Clemens). Letter to Lucius Fairchild, 28 April 1880. Mark Twain Project.

———. Roughing It. Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing, 1872, 410. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Walpole, Horace. Letter to Miss Berry, 31 July 1789. The Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. 6 of 6. London: Samuel Bentley, 1840, 333–34. Google Books.

Photo credit: Brocken Inaglory, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.