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Someone mentioned Sadie Hawkins Day recently and was met with blank stares. Whatever happened to Li'l Abner? Al Capp died (1979) so the comic strip died with him? That's not the same with Peanuts and Charles Schulz. Charley Brown is a strong cultural icon along with Snoopy and others. Li'l Abner and his comic strip pals were icons for a while back in the 1950-1970 era and there were funky theme parks or tourist traps named Dog Patch. Al Capp was a semi-regular on late night TV and had his own show on occasion. Sadie Hawkins Day was an annual event on college campuses and even high schools. Fearless Fosdick, Sparkle Plenty, and Daisy Mae were household names. The Schmoos were a huge national marketing craze. The term Lower Slobbovia for a backward or poor place or country is a relic of that comic strip but almost never heard today. The same with "double-whammy". Al Capp was probably not close to politically correct, as I remember, but he had entertaining opinions. He had only one leg and occasionally joked about his prosthetic leg and its various antics.
What other cultural "things" have seemingly disappeared or withdrawn into a niche so deep they can't be easily found? I would say roller derby except that I have been to a roller derby competition in the last few years. It was not really the same as I remembered back in the day. For one thing, it was flat-track and not a banked wooden track. The ladies were about the same though seemed younger.
I suppose it’s mostly about the general demise of newspapers as a source of information and entertainment. Comics and crossword puzzles were a staple of American households for generations. Everything changes in the long run.
Al Capp was a difficult guy to do business with.
When he died he didn't have an apprentice working with him and about 1/3 or more of Lil' Abner was topical and/or political, like Doonesbury is today.
Topical stuff is always changing, and the old stuff is mostly forgotten about.
The combination of Capp's difficulty, no apprentice, and topicality caused his comic strip to die pretty quickly after he died.
Charles Shultz' characters weren't ever topical or political, and they never aged. As little kids, they are timeless, as what was funny in 1950 was just as funny when Shultz died in 1990. The only way for a reader to guess the age of the strip was to know how Shultz' drawing style changed over the years.
Even then, his style didn't change all that much. His very first strips have characters anyone would immediately recognize.
That makes Peanuts perfect for syndication for as long as folks want to read it.
Don't know about the rest of the country but free samples have pretty much vanished where I live. I can remember when gas stations gave away free drinking glasses with every fill-up. About once every couple of months I would get a free sample of dish soap, laundry detergent or a Granola Bar in the mailbox, not any more. Newspapers would occasionally have a free goody rolled up with the paper, I don't even see any newspapers around my neighborhood these days.
Grocery stores used to always have some kind of free samples to give away. The last time I saw free samples in a grocery store was about two years ago. There was a little table in front of the delicatessen that had some kind of seafood cut into little pieces on a plate. It must have been old because nobody was sampling any. One old lady stopped, took a look and a sniff, then walked away.
What is crazy is that every few decades in every region of every state/province of every country in the world since time immemorial had cultural touchstones that arise, live for a while, and then... do not survive the test of time. Some do, but most fade away.
Some local traditions became part of the broader ethno/national geist, and some of those become >>>tradition<<<, but 99.99% do not.
So goes human culture. When I was a kid, I pretty much thought the world revolved around Smurfs and Pac-Man, and thought they would be an enduring cultural edifice. I was wrong.
But it is important to realize that these lost cultural ideas survive by influencing those that follow, some of which do become enduring cultural mainstays.
What other cultural "things" have seemingly disappeared or withdrawn into a niche so deep they can't be easily found? I would say roller derby except that I have been to a roller derby competition in the last few years. It was not really the same as I remembered back in the day. For one thing, it was flat-track and not a banked wooden track. The ladies were about the same though seemed younger.
Roller derby is still around, but it's no longer on TV on weekend afternoons, the way it was when I was younger. Roller derby reminds me of pro wrestling, except in one regard: while the WWE gets most of the TV coverage, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller pro wrestling promotions all over North America. The WWE gets people interested in attending local wrestling events, even if those events are not part of the WWE, and so wrestling gets publicity. Roller derby has the smaller promotions all over, but doesn't have the "big league" that gets the TV coverage (and fan interest) like WWE pro wrestling does. So roller derby has kind of dropped off the radar for the average person, and you have to look for it to find it.
We have a roller derby team locally, that skates in some regional league. I've never been, but my neighbour likes it. He tells me that they do flat-track also. There's a great 2009 movie about it, still with banked tracks, starring Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, and Drew Barrymore, all about a small roller derby promotion in Texas:
Not sure if its only a VA tradition, but fewer localities have fireworks in December for Christmas. Its not a colonial tradition, rather it dates from 1934 when it was first done in Williamsburg and spread. Some localities picked up the "tradition" of having a Christmas camel. Mt. Vernon has one...this dates back to when George Washington had a camel. Of course, the Tobacco Day Parade along with the Queen of Tobaccoland is long gone; it was done away with as the dangers of smoking could no longer be ignored.
Then there are the different variations on a traditional New Year's meal to bring good luck. Our tradition was stewed tomato (for compassion), cabbage or collards (represents money) and black eyed peas (considered animal feed by Union soldiers, it was what southerners were reduced to eating; also its said as a lowly food Jews ate beans in Egypt during slavery). As a Jewish family, we skipped the pork and ham. Poultry on News Years is bad luck.
Bourbon, coke and peanuts is making a comeback now with fancy names like the Tallulah. But these folks who are making it a fancy drink, didn't invent it, its been a staple down here for 100 years, just like coke and peanuts - drop a bag of peanuts in a coke and you have a meal and don't have to wash your hands.
Someone mentioned Sadie Hawkins Day recently and was met with blank stares.
I don't remember a Sadie Hawkins Day. I remember attending a Sadie Hawkins Dance in North York, Ontario, near Toronto in April 1973. I was there as part of a band exchange of symphonic and marching bands between North York and my town in the N.Y.C. Metropolitan Area. It was not a happy night. A fellow band member, Alan, now of blessed memory (died of MS) tried to make me feel good about it.
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