grocers' poles [Was: "can of corn"]

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/22/2014 08:09 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>Re: "Burt L. Standish"
>
>I found a recent paperback copy of a Standish-Merriwell in a used bookstore
>in the '70s.
>
>Wow! It had more antedatings than any book I'd ever seen! Of course it was
>still set in the 1890s and had the original pub date on display.
>
>My naivete soon became clear. A 1960s reviser had updated  the '90s lingo
>to make it more interesting and readable for today's youth.
>
>Turns out the whole series of "reprints" was like that.
>
>A few years ago, my wife found a recent reprint of a book she'd liked in
>grade-school, one of the "Elsie Dinsmore" series by Martha Finley.
>
>Same title and everything. Same setting in the nostalgic past.
>
>You can imagine her horror when she found it to be completely modernized
>and heavily Christianized too.
>
>The various newspaper DBs I can access all cite "can of corn" from the same
>1937 journalistic list of baseball slang. I haven't noticed anything
>earlier.
>
>Those grocers' poles with the rubber-tipped clasp at the end were indeed
>"neat" (as we used to say).

The reprint calls them "cool", and names them "Nifty Nabbers".

Joel 

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