"What's tough?" "Life." "What's life?" "A magazine." (1945)

[Michael McKernan]

Barry Popik wrote:

>Hoosier Folklore Bulletin, Bloomington, Indiana, edited by Ernest
>Baughman, vol. IV, no. 2, June 1945, pg. 37:
>
>_AN ENDLESS TALE_
>
>"That's tough!"
>"What's tough?"
>"Life."
>"What's life?"
>"A magazine."
>"Where d'you get it?"
>"Drugstore."
>"What's it cost?"
>"A dime."
>"shucks, I only got a nickel."
>"That's tough.
>"What's tough?" (etc.)

This sequence is part of my father's repertoire (done with my mother,
though she never initiated a routine), and I have always assumed it came
from his childhood (b.1924), probably from a 1930s radio show.  I'll try to
remember to ask him if he knows a source (radio or otherwise).  Just now,
the only similar (2-person) routine of his which comes to mind is a pretty
trivial one, which he  would launch into (expecting my mother to follow)
whenever someone happened to utter the number 73 (or 74) out loud.  My
father would quickly follow up with the next number (say, 74), after which
my mother would say the next number (75), then my father would call '76!'
and my mother would respond, 'That's the Spirit!' (starting from an
original 74, of course, my father would end up with the punch line).  I
also assumed that this was a radio routine, since my father launched into
it so automatically if the situation was appropriate (i.e., he wouldn't do
it in church if hymn #73 was announced, but he might if he was at an
airport and the departure of 'flight 73' was announced).  Good thing I
wasn't living with my folks in 1973/74....

Some early radio routines were probably first performed live on the
vaudeville stage. My father's father was a vaudeville stage hand, so it's
possible some of my dad's 'material' came from there.

One of his favorite all-purpose, one-person mini-recitations (which we kids
came to dislike due to overexposure, if nothing else):

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today;
Oh, how I wish he'd go away!

Rightly or wrongly, I associate all of these (and various others) with the
radio/vaudeville material of the 1930s and early 1940s, which certainly
must have included material from (much) earlier sources.

oops, just remembered another two-person routine:

#1  You know Jane Howland?
#2  What's her name?
#1  Who?
#2  Jane Howland.
#1  Never heard of her.
(cue music, usually excerpt from Stars & Stripes Forever)

Michael McKernan