Another "nine yards" joke (was Re: Firstmention.com)

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

Today Jonathan Lighter wrote (in part):

>   It seems more than a coincidence to me that this is the
> second joke we know of to involve fabric and the crucial
> phrase "the whole nine yards," albeit in a literal sense.
> Perhaps the bawdy Sandy MacTavish joke derives from the one
> about the giant shirt.
>
>   Somebody needs to search out joke collections published
> before 1964.  Just don't expect to find a _figurative_ "whole
> nine yards."

Back on August 8, Doug Wilson wrote, with regard to the origin of "the whole
nine yards":

> Quite possibly the real story is one nobody has mentioned at all.
>
> [Who would have guessed that "say 'uncle'" came from a joke about a
> parrot? But I think it very probably did (I posted the evidence here
> some time ago and Quinion presented it recently).]


Since Jonathan and Doug have recently touched on the idea of joke-as-genesis
for the phrase "the whole nine yards" (needless to say, we also have Barry's
contribution of the MacTavish joke [1]), I'll go ahead and present the
following, which I really haven't known what to do with.  (This is meant for
everyone but Sam [Clements], who's already heard it and who's been very
patient with me.)

For what it's worth, here's a "nine yards" joke, also involving fabric, told
by Alan Shepard (then Captain, USN, and former astronaut) in January 1967.
(I've included an extra paragraph on each end just to provide context.)

----------------------

There are all kinds of training programs and contributions to the attributes
of an astronaut.  He is supposed, as a spaceman, to be able to climb bravely
on the top of a rocket put together by the lowest bidder.  Or to be able to
smuggle a corned beef sandwich aboard the spacecraft.  Or when you have the
call of nature in a hurry and your zipper on your suit sticks, you are
supposed to be a scientist.

There was a young lady who went into a department store one day and she said
she wanted to purchase some material for a negligee.  The clerk showed her
some rather transparent material.  She wanted about nine yards.  The clerk
said, "Well, I enjoy the commission, but really for your size, maybe two and
a half or three yards would do the job."

"I realize that," said the lady, but my husband is a scientist."

"A scientist?"

The lady said, "Yes, he would rather look for it than find it."

There are two characteristics that I feel are important to me and to the
colleagues with whom I associate in the space program, and they are in the
extreme sense of physical fitness and a fine sense of self-discipline.
There is no question in my mind, and I am sure there is no question in the
minds of those of you who are gathered here today, that these two
characteristics are in fact developed during undergraduate days in the
athletic field.  [pp. 109-110]

[From the transcript of the Honors Lunch, held January 10, 1967, Houston;
pp. 103-117 in _The Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the National
Collegiate Athletic Association_; snippets available via Google Books.]

----------------------

Shepard was at the NCAA convention along with six of his
astronaut-colleagues (Lousma, Gibson, Schmitt, Kerwin, Aldrin, White; five
others could not attend) to accept awards as "American space pioneer[s] who
distinguished [themselves] athletically as well as academically during
[their] undergraduate years" at NCAA-member institutions.  He spoke on
behalf of the group.


Trouble is, that's the earliest telling of this joke I've been able to find,
so it's doubtful that this anecdote, with "about nine yards," has any real
connection to "the whole nine yards," which we know was entrenched in
NASA-speak by 1964.  A folklorist-friend with an interest in jokelore of the
period (anything from Cerf and Linkletter to Berle) is unfamiliar with this
joke.  It doesn't seem to appear in Legman's books, either.  Nobody on a
folklore discussion list I subscribe to has offered any information about
forms of this joke that may have appeared in the '50s and '60s, though
someone there did nicely describe it as belonging to "the motif-genre of the
'nerdy unsexualized scientist/engineer.'"

It's also quite possible that the joke existed in some other form and that
Shepard's 1967 use of "about nine yards" was influenced, consciously or
subconsciously, by presence of "the [whole] nine yards" in
military/aeronautic jargon and, by then, in popular slang itself.  (By the
way, other tellings I've collected, told in 1982 to the present, do not
feature "[about] nine yards," but instead some other numbers of yards.)

And then there's the problem of coming up with a plausible explanation for
how this anecdote could've inspired the creation of "the [whole] nine
yards."

But there you go.

I will, however, mention that the next earliest telling I've been able to
find (1972; see below) was also linked, in a fashion, to the space program.

-- Bonnie

----------------------

SCIENTISTS ASK TO CONTINUE LUNAR STUDIES

Nicholas C. Chriss
*The Los Angeles Times*
1 December 1972

HOUSTON -- Only half joking, a lunar scientist at the Manned Spacecraft
Center here said recently:  "We have a lot of answers to the moon's
mysteries now.  But we don't have the questions."

It was only 3-1/2 years ago that man first set foot on the moon and began
the exploration of that barren rock.  Now with the flight of Apollo 17 next
week, it is about to end.

During those brief years the lunar scientists have been putting together a
gigantic puzzle that they hope one day will tell the story of the moon, and
thereby the origins of the earth.

The geologists have come a long way in project Apollo.  At first they were
barely accepted by the engineers, often ridiculed.

*Nightgown Material* [subtitle]

One popular joke told of the girl about to be married to a scientist.  She
went to the store to buy material for a nightgown.  When the clerk expressed
surprise at her request for 9 yards of cloth, she exclaimed:  "My husband is
a scientist.  He would rather look for something than find it."

This week a group of world renowned lunar scientists made an appeal for the
continuation of their work, seeking several more "modest" lunar missions in
the post-Apollo period.

[...]

--------------------------

[1]
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_scotsmans_kilt/

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