The Annotated Conundrums

Q: Why is a professional thief comfortable?

A: Because he takes things easy. (P. 138)

* This obvious joke about the laid-back cool of the professional scofflaw (which led to the phrase “cool as a cucumber-thief”) reveals a little-known fact about turn-of-the-century America: the accepted professional status of career thieves.  While prisons bulged with criminals of other sorts (arsonists, murderers, the Irish), thieves were allowed to roam free as one of the career choices understood to be a “profession”.  To achieve the height of respect in America one went to Harvard to be a doctor or lawyer, to Yale to become a priest, to Miskatonic to be necromancer, or to Crawgrizzle to be a taxidermist, or, alternatively, apprenticed oneself to a pickpocket or bank robber in order to learn this esteemed trade.  This last path is dramatized in such successful rags-to-stolen-riches novels as Horatio Alger’s Robbing Dick, The Enriching Story of Pilfering Pete, and The World Is Made Of Suckers, or a Highly Moral Tale For Boys.

Fig. 236 – One of many Hollywood films celebrating the solid dependability of these pillars of the community

As the only respectable profession open to the children of the underprivileged, thievery was held up as an example of American upward mobility and egalitarianism.  That observant Frenchman, De Tocqueville, often described the glorious sights of train hold-ups and diamond capers as an example to the decaying monarchies of Old Europe.  As we know, however, theft was outlawed in the 1950s.  In an era of anti-communist fervor, no redistribution of wealth — no matter how skillfully accomplished  — was allowed to flourish.  As a result, the traditional folk techniques of the once glorious American criminal have been allowed to languish and disappear.

Q: Teacher asked the boy, Why was it very wrong for Joseph’s brothers to sell him for thirty pieces of silver?  Boy said–

A: They sold him too cheap. (p. 62)

* Throughout history, three types of  jokes have had greater staying power than any others: those confusing the word”mummy” for “mommy”; those about the stinginess of Scotsmen; and gags like this, which hinged on childrens’ comical misunderstanding of basic economics.  In fact, adjusted for inflation, 30 pieces of silver was an extravagant price for a young Israelite boy — the equivalent of almost $60,000 in Ancient Egyptian money.

Fig. 209 – Joseph (in Egyptian garb) congratulating his family for getting such a good price for him.

A similar gag appears in the contemporary Jokes For Folks (Weymouth 1898), in which “The Boy” naively suggests that increasing import tariffs would help spur international trade, rather than hamper it.  What a doofus.

** An interesting side-note: the young man referred to as “The Boy” in these jokes also pops up in Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, who calls him “The Kid.”  The unnamed young man was a hanger-on of the infamous Galton gang in the mid-century American Southwest, and prone to comical misunderstandings.

Q:  Why are lumps of sugar like race horses?

A:  The more you lick them the faster they go. (P. 137)

* Even by the standards of the bawdier, coarser world of 1902 –  in which man-horse coupling was, if not encouraged, at least tolerated — this joke is unbelievably filthy.  One wonders how it ever got into a book explicitly recommended for families and the clergy.  And yet, such was the authority which Frederick J. Drake’s work had attained in early 20th century America that legions of horse trainers took these words to heart, believing he had revealed the secret weapon behind racing success — licking.

Fig. 97 – The Duchess Angelina of Warsaw prepares her horse Tadeusz for the 1904 Kentucky Derby

Begun as a discreet practice behind stable doors, by 1905 trainers were openly licking their horses immediately before  racing.  A horse-licking arms race had begun, with the development of ever more efficient saliva delivery methods, and soon any horse worth betting on was accompanied by a trained pit crew capable of tongue-moistening a full-grown stallion in under 60 seconds.  This caused any number of problems, from racetracks made muddy with drool to seriously creeped out horses requiring years of expensive trauma therapy.

Nonetheless, it was a popular strategy until 1927, when veterinary scientists discovered that orally molesting a horse actually made it “less” likely to run well.  Even today, however, if one looks closely at Preakness and Belmont champions, one can still find suspicious tell-tale damp spots.  The old traditions die hard.

Q: Why is a dull and plausible man like an unrifled gun?

A: Because he’s a smooth bore. (p. 29)

* Before the advent of widespread rifling, shooting a gun was a crap shoot.  After a short distance, there was simply no telling where the ball would end up.  But rifled bores served to spin the projectile in flight, gyroscopically stabilizing it, like the spiral on a football toss.  That is why, until the mid-19th Century, fighting regiments would use “dull, plausible men” like quarterback Brett Favre to “rifle” their leather bullets at enemies from distances up to 60 yards.

Fig. 64 – Favre taking aim at a British soldier during the Battle of New Orleans (1815)

By the time of the Civil War, rifled bores had become commonplace, and quarterbacks were forced to either join the infantry, or play baseball.  The art was (somewhat quixotically) passed down nonetheless, among devoted craftsman, until the invention of the forward pass in football, when it once again became a sought-after skill.

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Fig. 219 – Alastair, aged 108

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Fig. 216 – A mailman during the brief period, from 1870-73, during which the Northeast was entirely underwater

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Fig. 215 – Women were once afforded more protections, but fewer rights, than they are today

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Fig. 213 – Everyone knows that storks deliver babies, but few ever thought to question where they got them from

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Fig. 218 – In later iterations, the animals were replaced with wood blocks, and the name changed to “Jenga”

Q: Why did Adam bite the apple Eve gave him?

A: Because he had no knife. (p. 17)

* Or did he?  No, he certainly didn’t — even the Reductionists didn’t believe that.  But this intriguing counterfactual was the premise of the bestselling 1899 mystery, The Garden of Eden Murders, by R. Austin Freeman.  Freeman, best known for his “Dr. Thorndyke” stories, set the borderline heretical detective story in Earthly Paradise, where a series of stabbings has left Eve, a goat, and several chimpanzees dead, and the snake seriously injured.  After a bloody knife is found in Adam’s tent, God himself must clear his creation’s name.

Fig. 73 – Cain and Abel was the first canonical murder mystery

Since the book is long out of print, there is no harm in telling you that the murderer was actually the snake, who then faked his own stabbing to divert suspicion.  As retaliation, God took away the snake’s arms and legs, and then stepped on him.