flips and gasmeters

[sagehen]

>        We have to be careful not to impose our own inflated ideas of money
>on Slim and Slam.  My parents, who were whites in rural Kentucky, have told
>me many times how in the 1930s a man would work 12 hours of hard labor for
>a dollar ("and be glad to get it, too," they would always add).  I doubt if
>Slim and Slam's target audience was any more affluent.
>
>John Baker

<><><><>

Yes.  This, of course, was my point in posting "Brother,..."

 Even as late as 1950 when I first entered the work force,  there were many
jobs paying only 60 cents an hour in the SF Bay area. A dollar an hour was
considered pretty decent.
 In 1940 you could eat lunch on a dime.  I remember a place in a resort
town in Michigan that sold a "DeLuxe" hamburger (very fancy with tomato &
lettuce, &c., and french fries) for 25 cents that we thought was a terrific
extravagance.

"Brother, can you spare a dime?" wasn't merely a panhandling song, but a
serious appeal for recognition of how badly the system had let its workers
down.

Doug Wilson earlier wrote: ...>but what could "gaily star" be? <  How was
Slim Gaillard's surname pronounced?  It suggests a connection.

A. Murie