"Jerry to the old jazz" (June 1913)

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Thu Dec 25 15:10:22 UTC 2003


   This is a great article, so I'll type the whole thing.  Again, you can
read it for $4.95 on www.newspaperarchive.com.  Click on the new search, and then
"advanced search."


   4 June 1913, FORT WAYNE SENTINEL, pg.  8?, col. 5:

_GOES BACK HOME_
_WITH NEW SLANG_

_"Hod Dickety-Dog" is a_
   _New One That Comes_
   _from Indiana._

_IS MAKING A BIG HIT_

(Boxed--ed.)
_"BEST SELLERS" IN CITY SLANG_
   Indianapolis--"Hod dickety dog!"
   Boston--"I should worry."
   San Francisco--"Are you jerry to the old jazz?"
   Denver--"It's mush to me."
   St. Louis--"Gazipe!"
   New Orleans--"Make a little dodo!"
(End of box--ed.)

   Milroy, Ind., June 4--George Stoner came back from his week's visit to
Indianapolis with some new bits of slang, which already have swept Rush and
Shelby counties and are the most popular things known here since "The Banks of the
Wabash" first saw the light.
   "I suppose those city fellows kidded the life out of you, hey, George?"
asked Henry Talliff, who met Stoner at the interurban station.
   "Hod dickety dog," said Stoner.
   "What's that?" asked Tolliff.  "Didn't they get any change out of you?"
   "Didn't you hear me say 'hod dickety dog?" asked the traveler.  "What's
the matter with you rubes, anyway.  Everybody who is anybody knows that that
means I'm jerry; I'm hep; I connect.
(Column six--ed.)
When you try to kid a fellow and he says 'hod dickety dog!' that means that
the bunk bounces off of him.  Are you next?"
   "I get you," said Tolliff thoughtfully.
   "Lemme tell you something here: "Hod dickety dog will be all the rage in
New York before winter.  All good slang, like everything else, comes from
Indiana, and travels east, and this is going fast.  'Round the Stanton House there
in Indianapolis there was a bunch of traveling men and they gave me a line on
the correct slang in various parts of the country; it's different in different
cities.  F'rinstance, 'I should worry' has the call in almost every city.
It's especially popular in Boston, and in New York they don't know anything
else.  It isn't very old.  It's a Jewish expression and was born about the same
time as Talmud.  A fellow who sells bunion (?--ed.) plasters for a Denver house
was telling me that out his way, if a person doesn't care about the subject
under discussion he says, "It's mush to me."
   "Now, out in San Francisco the most popular word is 'the old jazz.'  It
means anything you may happen to want it to.  There was a St. Louis man there
who thought that he was real cute.  He was trying to kid me, and just to show
him I was wise I said 'Hod dickety-dog.'  'I see you're there with the gazipe,'
he says.  'Get it?"
   "Hod dickety-dog," said Tolliff nodding.
   "Down in New Orleans they say 'I think I'll take a little dodo,' meaning
they're going to hunt the hay or go to sleep.  I got a lot more that I'll tell
you some other time."
   "Getting into any gambling houses, George?" asked his friend.
   Stoner winked.
   "Lose much?"
   "Me?  Hod dickety-dog."


(I'd found "hot diggety" in 1906...There is no page number, and the pages
appear out of sequence.  For example, page one didn't turn out to be the first
page...The year is totally illegible.  However, there is a story on another page
about the death of "Chuck Connors," a friend of Steve Brodie's on the Bowery.
 Connors died 10 May 1913   --ed.)



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