[Bapopik at aol.com: Hawkins]

Sun Feb 20 01:22:35 UTC 2005

>From Barry.

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  Subj:    "Hawkins" in Tamony papers; Big Apple Club (1934)
  Date:    2/19/2005 7:40:36 PM Eastern Standard Time
  From:    Bapopik
  To:    ADS-L at listserv.uga.edu

OT MISC.

TRAVEL: I will be in the Dominican Republic from February 20-27 with my sister. She goes there for treatments for her autistic son. Normally, I'd wish that my plane would crash, but my sister is actually worth more alive than dead.

BIG APPLE-WORLD'S SECOND HOME: I wrote another letter to the New Orleans Times-Picayune about the Big Apple's origin there, and I asked them to honor the black stablehands (during Black History Month). I guess it wasn't good enough to be published (again)...I wrote a letter to the New York Times about the "World's Second Home." I said that "Big Apple" originally meant the pinnacle is sports. That wasn't published, either, although I received an e-mail from Ellis Hennican ("Why Apple?" his story went) that I should send it to Newsday...I inexplicably got thousands of hits on my web site yesterday for "World's Most Famous Arena." The entry is so old that it has "Welcome Republicans!" on it, from July 2004.

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BIG APPLE CLUB

7 July 1934, New York Amsterdam News, pg. 9, col. 1:
"This Hectic Harlem" by Roi Ottley
(...)
The Big Apple has arrived and is worth your time.

This is the earliest I have for the Big Apple Club (135th Street and 7th Avenue/Adam Clayton Powell Junior Boulevard).

I had read the Amsterdam News for this period about fifteen years ago, but I went through the newspaper again briefly today. Roi Ottley called Harlem the "Coal Bin" (not in HDAS?). He also used terms like "Cornflakes Boulevard" (not in HDAS?). I'm looking for "Hawkins" somewhere in 1934.

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HAWKINS IN TAMONY PAPERS

Gerald Cohen helped to pay for this (I thought he would get a discount?) and it arrived today. Here goes:

Here are the photocpies of the term "Hawkins" found in the Peter Tamony Collection (C3939). I did not photocopy any of the "Hawk" clipping because the majority of those referred to either the bird, military equipment, or to the Vietnam War with the term "hawks and doves". The charge for photocopying was credited to Gerald Cohen's account.

Mary Beth Brown
Manuscript Specialist
Western Historical Manuscript Collection
BroMary at umsystem.edu

CARD ONE:
JIVE TALK (Regular column).
MISTER HAWKINS--The wind, wintertime, cold weather, ice, snow.
RHYTHM AND BLUES (Onyx Publishing Co., Derby, Conn.).
December 1954: Vol. 1, No. 15, p. 20/1.

CARD TWO:
Down the Spillway. John O'Ren
Baltimore Sun, Dec. 21, p. 14 and Dec. 27, p. 8, 1934;
Jan. 5, p. 10, Jan. 8, p. 10, Jan. 9, p. 10 and Jan. 12, pg. 10, 1935.

A series of comments and letters regarding the use in Maryland and Virginia of the expression _Hawkins is outside_ or _Hawkins is coming_, meaning the chill weather is coming.

American Speech, Bibliographical Department, October, 1935, X, 3, 224/1.

CARD THREE:
HAWKINS.
HAWKINS...Cold weather.
Jive and Slang of Students in Negro Colleges.
Marcus H. Boulware, Hampton Institute, Virginia, January, 1947.

CARD FOUR:
HAWKINS.
"Hawkins is inside tonight."
Compare--SNOW BLIND.

CARD FIVE:
"HAWKINS IS INSIDE TONIGHT."
This expression is used by night club musicians to indicate that things are not going well, and got its start, so it is said, with a drummer called Hawkins. Hawkins was such a bad performer that his fellow bandsmen took to explaining away all their misfortunes by saying "Hawkins is inside tonight."

What is the truth of this story.  B. T.
May 30, 1947
AMERICAN NOTES AND QUERIES, April, 1947, VII, No. 1, p. 10/1.

LETTER

American Notes & Queries,
7 West 44th Street,
New York City 18, New York.

Gentlemen:

Relative to HAWKINS IS INSIDE TONIGHT (VII, no. 1, p. 10/1):

THe following, from the BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AMERICAN SPEECH, X, No. 3, p. 224/1, October, 1935, may offer come clue to the background of the above phrase:

Down the Spillway. John O'Ren. (Apparently a column.)

Baltimore _Sun_, Dec. 21, p. 14 and Dec. 27, p. 8, 1934; Jan. 5, p. 10, Jan. 8, p. 10, Jan. 9, p. 10, and Jan. 12, P. 10, 1935.

A series of comments and letters regarding the use in Maryland and Virginia of the expression _Hawkins is outside_ or _Hawkins is coming_ meaning the chill weather is coming.

Chilly weather being the antithesis of a "hot time," and extension of this phrase would not be a great mental effort.

The uninviting coldness and chill of an empty room is the source of an analagous expression among owners and employees of restaurants and night clubs. This is "snow-blindness," which such people are said to get from gazing morosely at white-capped tables uninhabitated by hilarous, paying guests.

Very truly yours

ANSWERS, Volume VII, page 26/1. Above printed.

(JSTOR)
Brief Notices
American Speech > Vol. 10, No. 3 (Oct., 1935), pp. 222-231
Pg. 224:
O'Ren, John. Down the Spillway. Baltimore _Sun_, Dec. 21, p. 14 and Dec. 27, p. 8, 1934; Jan. 5, p. 10, Jan. 8, p. 10, Jan. 9, p. 10, and Jan. 12, p. 10, 1935)
A series of comments and letters regarding the use in Maryland and Virginia of the expression _Hawkins is outside_ or _Hawkins is coming_, meaning that chill weather is coming.

(THOUGHTS: The Tamony papers really didn't provide us with anything we don't already have from our own AMERICAN SPEECH. I'll check out the Baltimore Sun articles and type them up here when I return. It'll make a nice COMMENTS ON ETYMOLOGY article...So it appears that "Windy City" comes from Cincinnati and "the Hawk" comes from Virginia! I might hop a Greyhound down there and check it out...I'll check the digitized AFRO-AMERICAN (Baltimore) again. The Baltimore Sun will be digitized by ProQuest some time in the next five years...Finally, this will all make the Chicago Tribune in about 2013, and I will get no credit, and I will be plagiarized by the Chicago Historical Society and the University of Chicago Press--ed.)

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