Cussin' Contests, 1890s

[Jonathan Lighter]

  From John G. Neihardt's All but a Beginning : Youth Remembered 1881-1901 (N.Y.: Harcourt, 1972), pp. 93-93 :

  "Bill...was especially gifted in the coining of ingenious cuss words, and this at a time when distinguished practitioners of that lost art still actively indulged in "cussing contests."  These affairs were held with no sacrilegious intent, but merely as innocent entertainment....The idea was to outdo one's adversary in the sustained utterance of original epithets and imprecations fit only for the ears of a mule.

  "...I once carried the hod for a plasterer who had achieved championship rating in his practice of the now lost art. I myself heard him declaim luridly and without hesitation or repetition for a solid half hour. His peroration, preserved for posterity among my archives, is strictly 'classified.' "

  Posterity is here. Neihardt's papers are preserved in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

  I'll see what I can do.

  JL


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