End of ADS-L Digest - 25 Dec 1997 to 26 Dec 1997
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Subject: ADS-L Digest - 26 Dec 1997 to 27 Dec 1997

There are 8 messages totalling 503 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

 1. Podunk (2)
 2. Christmas Potpourri (Fresh Air Fund, Tenement, Blind Tiger, etc.)
 3. Wait Till Next Year
 4. Rubber game (Was Re: Christmas Potpourri....)
 5. Betting pot (Was Re: Christmas Potpourri....)
 6. movie non-anachronism
 7. "Mudville" update

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Date:  Sat, 27 Dec 1997 03:48:27 EST
From:  Bapopik <Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM>
Subject: Podunk

   AMERICA IN SO MANY WORDS uses the OED citation and has "Podunk" as the
word-of-the-year for 1846. Unfortunately, neither the RHHDAS nor DARE is up
to "P." (Or maybe fortunately, since this antedate could get in.)  The name
"Podunk" itself goes back to at least 1666; the DA's first 19th-century
citation is in 1841.
   I can't recall if I thoroughly checked the Boston TOKEN annual almanacs
a few years ago. This is from the Southern Citizen (Asheboro, North
Carolina), 6 December 1839, pg. 4, col. 2:

MISCELLANEOUS
(From The Token, Boston--1840)
THE POLITICIAN OF PODUNK.
   Solomon Waxend was a shoemaker of Podunk, a small village of New Uork
some forty years ago. He was an Englishman by birth, and had come over the
water to mend the institutions, as well as the _soles_, of the country. He
was a perfectly honest man, and of natural good sense; but having taken pretty
large doses of new light from the works of Tom Paine and the French
Revolutionists, he became, like an inflated balloon, light-headed, and soared
aloft into the unknown regions of air.--Like many of his countrymen brought up
under monarchical institutions, he was slow in understanding the mysteries of
our political system; and wanting the ballast of _Yankee_ common sense, he
nevertheless thought himself specially qualified to instruct the people of
Podunk in every thing relating to civil liberty. (...)

   Puck of 26 June 1889, pg. 293, col. 2 has a cartoon called "NEW IN
PODUNK." Uncle Abner receives his city niece's present of slippers and says,
"Wife, I'll bet four dollars them slippers was made for some dood thet don't
cross his legs!"