countdown was: "As If"

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 21, 2005, at 6:52 PM, sagehen wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: countdown  was: "As If"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
>> Weren't those antediluvian music countdowns called the "hit parade" ?
>>
>> JL
>  ~<~<~<~<
> Glug, splutter.....as one of the survivors of the deluge, I can attest
> that
> The Hit Parade ("brought to you by Lucky Strikes, so round, so smooth,
> so
> fully-packed:  LS/MFT," commemorated elsewhere in these pages) was of
> the
> "top ten" tunes of the preceding week  (arrived at by who knows what
> calculus?) which were presented in descending order, but without, as
> far as
> I remember, using the expression "countdown."
> AM
>
> ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>
>

Thanks for the reminder, sagehen. I'd been racking my brain trying to
remember the name of that show. Lucky Strike means fine tobacco!
[Tobacco-auctioneer's chant, ending with the words, "Sold, Ah-merican
(Tobacco Company)!"] There was a joke that Lucky Strike was being
investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee because it
had heard that Lucky Strike was selling Americans.

"Lucky Strike green has gone to war!" In the Army, when we went out
into the field, we ate C-rations left over from The War. These rations
always contained a vacuum-sealed pack of a random brand of cigarettes.
One day, I got a pack of Luckies and, sure enough, the pack was green
instead of white.

-Wilson Gray