pididdle -- when the game started

[Laurence Horn]

>On 7 Mar 2002  at 11:46, A. Murie wrote:
>
>      Does anyone know when this game started?  I may have been
>      moving in the
>      wrong circles, but I never heard of it during my
>      highschool years: 1945-8.
>
>A. Murie
>
>I first heard about "piddiddle" from my dad, who came of driving age
>in 1945.  I can't recall all the particulars of the story he told
>me, so I've sent him an e-mail.  But apparently, from what I do
>remember, teenagers in mid-1940's central Pennsylvania knew all
>about "piddiddle."  So the game is at least that old.

Here's an article that suggests a mid-1940s date would be about
right, although "some parts of the country" isn't quite specific
enough for our purposes.

The Washington Post
April 21, 1991, Sunday, Final Edition

  SECTION: WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE; PAGE W8; J STREET

  HEADLINE: Bumper Crop
  BYLINE: RICHARD SKINNER

  BODY:
  Years ago in some parts of the country when you were out just
driving around of an evening and you saw a car approaching with one
of its headlights out, you were supposed to say "Padiddle!" and you
got to kiss your date.

  In those days, right after World War II, you saw "one-eyed" cars
about as often as you saw airplanes flying overhead, which is to say
not very often. Today, in the Washington area you could padiddle all
over the place. There's a rash of one-eyed cars. On a recent Friday
evening drive from Chevy Chase to the Kennedy Center, we encountered
21. On the way home, up Connecticut Avenue to Chevy Chase, we spotted
seven more...
======
and here's one that calls it a superstition:

Los Angeles Times
May 13, 1992, Wednesday, Home Edition

  SECTION: View; Part E; Page 5; Column 2; View Desk

  HEADLINE: SUPERSTITIONS: A KISS FOR LUCK

  BYLINE: By ROY RIVENBURG

  BODY:
  Some enduring childhood superstitions, compiled from interviews with
kids and ex-kids and from "One Potato, Two Potato," by Mary and
Herbert Knapp:

  * If you see a car with a burned-out headlight, say "Padiddle" and
kiss someone for good luck. ...
===========
and another that does get more specific for the whereabouts of p...
whatever.  The (unnamed) columnist seems to take it as given that the
source is Sp. "perdido", but no evidence is provided.

The Denver Rocky Mountain News(Denver, Co.)
January 14, 1998, Wednesday,
   SECTION: LIFESTYLES/SPOTLIGHT; Ed. F; Pg. 2D

   HEADLINE: SPOTLITE

   WACKY QUESTIONS
  As children in the Midwest, some of us liked to play a game called
Padido (puh-diddo) after supper. I'm not sure of the spelling, but
the object was to see
  who could spot the most cars with only one headlight working.
Whoever accumulated the most ''one-eyes'' or padidos before bedtime
was the winner. A
  friend from Pennsylvania also played Padido. Where did this game
originate? - Sleepless in Louisville

We played that game, too, growing up in Tennessee,
  only there it was called ''perdiddle.'' We're told that in Ohio it's
''padiddle,'' in California it's ''padoodle'' and in Washington they
play a variation involving
  non-working tail lights, called ''padungle.'' Others yell
''perdido,'' and when you spot one, you turn to your date and get a
kiss. Others play that if you're the
  first to spot one, you get to punch your fellow traveler on the
shoulder. According to the folks at Perdido magazine, no one knows
where the expression
  came from, or how it should be properly spelled or pronounced, or
even precisely what the rules of this childhood game are. Perdido, by
the way, is Spanish
  for ''lost.'' In the 1940s, Duke Ellington wrote a song called
Perdido. How the word or some variation thereof came to be applied to
one-eyed cars is
  anybody's guess.