Drugstore Cowboy (1922)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

I've just added "drugstore cowboy." It looks like TAD did _not_ coin this  
one.
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I'm thinking of developing a "Big Apple"-type page for California and Texas  
and Florida. Suggestions welcome.
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_http://www.barrypopik.com/article/1393/drugstore-cowboy_ 
(http://www.barrypopik.com/article/1393/drugstore-cowboy) 
 
Drugstore Cowboy
A “drugstore cowboy” was someone who hung around the drugstores, then 
popular  with the soda fountain crowd. The term had long thought to have been coined 
by  New York cartoonist Thomas A. Dorgan (“TAD”), but this is not the  case.
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(Oxford English  Dictionary)
drug-store 
Also attrib., esp. as drug-store cowboy, a braggart, loafer, or  
good-for-nothing; a person who is not a cowboy but is dressed like one. 
1925  College Humor Feb. 57/1 (heading) With the Drug Store  Cowboys.
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(Historical Dictionary of American  Slang)
drugstore cowboy n. 
1. an idle young man who lounges at or near a drugstoe doa fountain, esp. for 
 the purpose of socializing with young women; (broadly) a soft or callow  
fellow.
1923 T.A. Dorgan, in Zwilling TAD LEXICON 33 [July 26]:  Hangin’ around that 
gang of drugstore cowboys.
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31  October 1922, Mexia (Texas) Evening News, pg. 3, col. 3: 
Drug  Store Cowboy
Latest Name For
Young Jelly Beans 
OKLAHOMA, Okla. Oct. 31—The “Drug Store Cowboy” is the latest classification 
 given local “faddish” young men. 
Besides “Jelly-bean” and “Cake-eater,” “Drug Store Cowboy” will go down in 
 the book the ever changing younger generation. 
The dress of the “Drug Store Cowboy” is distinctive as is that of the  “
Jelly-bean” and “Cake-eater.” 
The biggest and fussiest cow-puncher John B. available, classy boots, and in  
some instances the real thing—high heeled rough leather boots, a classy wool  
shirt of the right shade of blue or gray, and a neck scarf with lots of 
cowboy  lingo compose the apparel distinctive of the “Drug Store  Cowboy.”
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1 September 1923, Evening State Journal  (Lincoln, NE), pg. 6:
If there was any justice in this world outside of Sears  & Roebuck’s brand of 
auto tires the drug store cowboys (all of them) would  be out taking up space 
in the institution just this side of Yankee  Hill.
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17 November 1923, Atlanta Constitution, “Bits of  New York Life” by O. O. 
McIntyre, pg. 6:
Cheap sports with red-rimmed eyes,  drug store cowboys, girls with immobile 
masks of red and white, old  white-moustached dogs, cookies and gambling house 
runners. It is a swirling eddy  of Broadway’s scum—the promenade for those 
who live by their  wits.

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