Padiddle: a guess

[Clark Whelton]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn"

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. ...
===========

An interesting clue.  If  the "padiddle" game did begin as a superstition,
it probably precedes automobiles.  This is just a guess, but horse-drawn
carriages and buggies often carried candle lamps on both sides.  And there
were numerous superstitions concerning candles.  See...

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6707/homelore.html

Candles should also be blown out before they burned out, for if they were
allowed to gutter out in the candlestick it was said that a sailor would die
at sea.

To snuff a candle out accidentally was an omen of a wedding.

from  http://www.corsinet.com/trivia/scary.html

If a candle lighted as part of a ceremony
blows out, it is a sign that evil spirits are
nearby.

>From http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/americanwitch/superstition.html

A candle left to burn itself out will bring misfortune.

If a candle suddenly goes out by itself, it is an omen of a death in the
family.

It seems possible that a passing coach or carriage with an extinguished
flame might have required an antidote (the kiss).  On the other hand the
tradition that an accidentally snuffed candle means an impending wedding
might have prompted a kiss for a entirely different reason.

Clark Whelton


> >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.
>