Chicks on a Raft and a Cup of Mud So, you want something to eat so you ask for it, plain and simple and specific, right? Don''t want any miscommunication when it comes to dinner. But really - how boring is that when you can make your order in diner slang? Like so many of history''s most interesting things, the origins of diner slang are lost. There are hints that it began before the Civil War; there are also hints that Black waiters and waitresses were the ones who started it. For sure, its popularity soared between the Jazz Age and the end of World War II and it endured at least a little bit into the ''70s, if nothing but for nostalgia''s sake. You might''ve heard it in small restaurants even a few years ago. For the most part, though, it''s the rare diner that encourages its staff to speak in code today. Here''s how diner slang worked: let''s say you wanted two eggs over easy, buttered toast, and coffee for breakfast at your favorite eatery. Your waitress (and it was usually women in that role) would yell your order back to the cook: flop two, dough well done with cow to cover, draw one.

When you think about it, it makes sense: flop the eggs over easy . Bread dough well done (toast) with butter. draw a coffee. See? Gelatin dessert was "nervous pudding," because it shimmied, get it? Scrambled eggs were "hen berries, wrecked." "Dog soup" was water. Or always something similar, because diner slang was never meant to fit inside any rules. In fact, it broke rules. Mainly, it broke the rule that says language has to make sense, and while that happened, it contributed to our everyday language.

Anyone want a BLT with mayo , a stack of pancakes, or a cup of Joe , for example? Several theories attempt to explain why diner slang was ever used in the first place: it may have been a way to avoid confusion: in a busy, loud diner, "white bread" could easily be confused with "rye bread," but there''s no mistaking the word "whiskey" as a stand-in for "rye." And of course "Noah''s boy" is Ham. It might have been something to inject a little bit of fun in a job that could otherwise be hard, and hard on the feet. It has a musical quality, in a way, so maybe it has musical roots. Or diner slang might have been a way to hide inside and possibly risque jokes from all but the most clued-in customers. Fun Fact! Though it might sound like it is, Hoppin'' John is not diner slang. It is a dish, though: made of black-eyed peas, rice, sausage, and ham, Hoppin'' John is a traditional North and South Carolina favorite that dates back to at least the 1840s. How Does Your Garden Grow? When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it almost immediately signified the entry of the U.

S. into World War II. Those who could enlist to fight did so in great numbers. For those Americans who couldn''t enlist in the armed forces did what they could to help the war effort from home. That included growing a Victory Garden. But first, dig this. Fighting a war takes vast amounts of resources and by 1942, it became obvious that the U.S.

government was going to have to ration certain products to keep the war machine running. Items that were rationed included gasoline, nylon, sugar, coffee, rubber tires, and certain kinds of leather products. Those things were often difficult to find and could be purchased only if you had the money and the necessary "stamps" or coupons to do so; if you didn''t have the stamps (which were given free to every American of every age) or couldn''t get them by proving to the government that you had a definite, dire need (farmers, for instance, were given front-of-the-line consideration, in some cases), then you followed the timeless advice of "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without." On the flip side of rationing, there were patriotic scrap drives. Old tires, scrap metal and tin, fats from cooking, and paper were collected and turned over to government collection sites, where those items would be melted down and used to make airplanes, tanks, and other weapons. Iron fences and monuments, kitchenware, old metal toys, and old car parts made their way to the scrap heap, where they went toward the War effort. Did you know? In June of 1942, Records of Our Fighting Men, Inc. was formed with the intention of collecting old record albums so that the shellac on them could be reclaimed and recycled to make new record albums.

Shellac was a restricted product during the war; old records were deemed basically worthless. The first record drive resulted in 4 million pounds of scrap, which purchased 300,000 records to help boost the morale of U.S. soldiers. Also scrapped: the metal master discs on which an unknown number of early recordings were temporarily stored. By the spring of 1942, rationing had extended to a small list of foods: first, sugar. Coffee, that fall. Then canned fish and canned meat, and cheese.

Restaurants began to promote Meatless Monday or Tuesday or whatever day(s) of the week they deemed necessary. To help direct food sources to the war effort, home economists, county homemakers groups, and local officials encouraged homemakers to can their own food, in order to stretch their budgets and food coupons, and classes sprung up to teach newbies the art of preserving food. In order to do that, though, the first natural, patriotic step was to plant a victory garden. Even if a person didn''t have a farm or a large plot of land at their disposal, they could still grow a victory garden. As soon as the idea took root (no pun intended), lawns were sacrificed for lettuce. Patios yielded potatoes, boulevards could grow beets, and you could get eggplant from an empty lot. Even a back balcony could yield yams. Businesses, government entities, and schools all came together to offer seeds and instructions on how to get the most from whatever land one had available; Scouting programs, garden clubs, and others taught Americans how to save seeds for the following year.

All this self-sufficiency helped underscore the idea that contributing to the War effort was way more important than the individual. By the middle of World War II, more than 20 million acres of American soil had been converted to a garden of some sort. About half of all American families grew a victory garden at one point or another during the War, resulting in about 8 million tons of food for homefront dining room tables by the end of the War. Fun Fact! Bibb lettuce, a common salad ingredient is named after John Bibb (1789-1840), the lawyer and sometime horticulturist who developed the plant in his Frankfurt, Kentucky, garden in the mid-1800s. America''s Worst How could we possibly look at American history without taking a peek inside the depraved minds of the killers who made the news and shook the nation? We can''t, that''s a fact, so read on for a by-no-means-definitive list of the worst of the worst among us, and a few laws you might be breaking right now. A record we can all hope is never broken: Samuel Little (1940-2020) claims to have killed almost 100 people, most of them women, between the years 1970 and 2005, when he was finally captured. He died, possibly of health-related complications, in a Los Angeles hospital. Ted Bundy (1946-1989), who mostly killed women and girls across several states, was accused of killing 35 people but some authorities believe that his murder rate may number closer to 100 victims.

Bundy was put to death in the state of Florida. Gary Ridgeway (1949- ), the "Green River Killer" who went on a decade-plus-long murder spree, was responsible for a confirmed 48 victims. Officials say that he may have committed twice that number. Interesting Fact! In most states, it''s a crime to hang something from the rearview mirror of your vehicle. So is downloading music without paying for it. So is playing a few hands of poker with your buds, especially if it''s not just a "friendly" game. Clementine Barnabet (1894-?) is known to have killed at least one person, but she claimed to have killed 35 victims over the course of about two years. From 1911 to 1912, at least twelve Black families were killed in their homes along the Southern Pacific railroad in Louisiana and Texas.

Clementine''s father was arrested for one of the murders but he was released for insufficient evidence, then later re-arrested for the crime. While he was imprisoned, more, similar murders occurred; Clementine ultimately confessed but doubts were cast almost immediately. Whether she was guilty or not, Clementine, who was also Black, spent some time in Louisiana State Penitentiary but was released in 1923 after undergoing some sort of medical procedure that was supposed to have cured her supposed propensity for murder. With that in mind, she was released and was never heard from again. Did you know? Statistics show that a mere 11 percent of American serial killers in the past century have been women. Just 15 percent were Black. Chicago''s John Wayne Gacy (1942-1994) killed 33 young men and boys over the course of just a few years, and he hid the bodies in the crawl space of his suburban home. Officials believe that it''s possible Gacy left many more victims across many states.

After a last meal of fried chicken, French fries, and strawberries, Gacy was put to death at the Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois. Though he was a Mexican man, Juan Corona (1934-2019) left most of his victims in peach tree orchards in California after he killed them in 1971. All in a.