Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (36 page)

Today, people exchange business cards all the time with little thought, but there was a time in Western society (particularly British society) when giving a card with business information to a social acquaintance would have been terribly rude. During the 19th century, every gentleman and lady had engraved calling cards—some were made of thick paperboard, others from copper. The cards served as an introduction, and there were many rules to govern their use and contents:

There was also an elaborate system of card protocol when leaving a community. Some people used special “P.P.C.” cards, or simply wrote these initials at the bottom of their usual cards. “P.P.C.” meant “Pour Prendre Conge,” or “To Take Leave.” In other words—so long! Accompanying the initials was an even more elaborate system of corners turned up or down that showed whether you were leaving on a short trip, a long trip, or moving away permanently.

These days, napkin rings are more likely to hold paper napkins than cloth ones, if a host even uses them at all. But in the 19th century, cloth was the rule, and napkin rings were as common to a table as forks . . . they were as practical, too. Before washing machines, all clothes, bedding, and other cloth items had to be washed by hand. That was a lot of washing, either for a servant or for the lady of the house. So people were always looking for ways to cut down on the laundry.

Enter napkin rings. Made of wood or silver, napkin rings, monogrammed with each person’s initials, kept track of whose napkin was whose. The same person used the same napkin for several meals and would only wash it when it got really dirty. Of course, over the years, napkin rings became widely used and were put into service at formal occasions, when no one would be reusing a napkin afterward.

Have you ever gone to a wedding and enthusiastically said “Congratulations!” to the bride, only to have a relative correct you? That’s because, as Emily Post reminded us in 1922, “it is a breach of good manners to congratulate a bride on having secured a husband.”

There are probably people who still abide by this bit of forgotten etiquette, but the reason behind it is so outmoded that it bears mentioning. You’re supposed to say “Congratulations!” to the groom and “Best wishes!” to the bride. That’s because a long,
long time ago, in a world of etiquette far, far away, two things were true:

First, throughout history, women were not always willing participants at their own weddings. Marriages were often arranged to bring together warring clans or to join financial forces. The bride was the prize (“Congrats, old man!”), and the poor young woman could only be encouraged with good wishes as she left for a life she might detest.

Second, by the 18th century, if not before, securing a marriage proposal and wedding had become the goal most women’s lives. But to congratulate her would be unseemly because one wouldn’t want to imply that a genteel lady had been involved in any intrigues, snares, and machinations to snag her man. So “Best Wishes” it was.

Maybe the rule requiring men to doff their headgear inside a building has faded in the face of so many guys wearing billed caps, but real cowboys still know and practice the increasingly forgotten art of hat etiquette. Historically, tipping a hat was practiced mostly by cowboys. Removing one’s hat dates back to the days of chivalry when knights would raise their helmet shields as a sign of respect.

But no matter, gentlemen. According to the John B. Stetson Hat Company, founded in 1868, there are very specific rules that dictate when to tip your hat and when to remove it:

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is the bedrock ingredient of numerous condiments and sauces worldwide (rouille, remoulade, tartar sauce, and Thousand Island dressing, for example). Mix a jar of ketchup with mayo and you’ve got Russian dressing. Mix mustard with mayo, and you’ve got Hellman’s Dijonnaise. The list just goes on and on.

There is no definitive source for the origin of the word “mayonnaise,” but there are several theories:

If mayonnaise comes from Mahon, it’s more than 250 years old now—and as popular as ever. The first recorded English use of “mayonnaise” appears in an 1841 cookbook. The British renamed
it “salad cream” in 1914 and kept this term after an attempt to return to mayonnaise in 1999 resulted in a public outcry.

The first commercially manufactured mayo was born in a New York City delicatessen—Richard Hellman’s Columbus Avenue storefront—in 1905. Hellman sold his wife’s homemade salads, which used mayonnaise as a dressing, and soon people were asking to buy it on its own. The condiment became so popular that in 1912 Hellman built a factory to produce it in large quantities.

Originally, there were two versions of the creamy spread, and to tell them apart, Hellman tied a blue ribbon around one jar, which was consistently more popular. He called that one Hellman’s Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise.

Meanwhile, across the country, Best Foods introduced Californian consumers to a slightly tangier version of mayonnaise. No one outside the conglomerate knows for sure, but gourmands suspect that the Best Foods formula contains more lemon juice. (Today, Best Foods owns Hellman’s, but maintains both brands and their distinct recipes.)

Hellman’s and Best Foods split the coasts, but there’s one more brand in the American mayo lineup, beloved by Southerners past and present: Duke’s. Still made to Mrs. Eugenia Duke’s original formula in Greenville, South Carolina, Duke’s Mayonnaise (“The Secret of Great Southern Cooks”) contains more egg yolks than the other commercial brands and no added sugar.

True mayonnaise eggheads, however, swear by homemade, even though it’s made less often now due to the fear of contracting salmonella from raw eggs. Making mayo isn’t difficult—just slow and steady.

The essential ingredients are an egg yolk and oil. Additions may include mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, and different oils and seasonings. Mayonnaise making is all in the whisk (or blender or food processor), because the oil has to be added drop by drop to emulsify with the yolk and then is beaten until a thick cream forms.

In downtown Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, Barry Levenson’s World-Famous Mustard Museum opened in 1986 when Levenson started collecting bottles of the spicy yellow stuff. Mustard Museum lore says that, distraught from the Red Sox’ World Series loss to the Mets, Levenson drove to his local supermarket and wandered the aisles, eventually picking up 11 bottles.

Those 11 bottles have swollen to 4,800 bottles—and jars, tubes, and packets—from all over the world. The Museum also hosts its annual National Mustard Day on the first Saturday in August and publishes a newsletter. Levenson judges the WorldWide Mustard Competition, whose finals are held at the Napa Valley Mustard Festival.

Creator Charles Schulz wrote
Peanuts
from 1950 until 2000, making it, as one scholar put it, the “longest story ever told by one human being.” Actually, the story began even earlier, in Schulz’s comic strip
Li’l Folks
, which ran in Minnesota’s
St. Paul Pioneer Press
in 1947. That strip included some of the same characters who later showed up in
Peanuts
: a dog that was a lot like Snoopy and a kid named Charlie Brown.
Li’l Folks
was retired in 1950, and Schulz moved on to the strip that made him famous.

When United Features Syndicate picked up
Peanuts
in 1950, it ran in seven newspapers around the United States. (Eventually, more than 2,000 picked it up.) The strip got more elaborate over the years—Schulz added color and more detail—but it was always notable for its simple look and approach to life. The drawings are characterized by spare lines and little background, and the comic’s themes and dialogue match that simplicity. In the first
Peanuts
strip on October 2, 1950, two children sat on the sidewalk. One said, “‘Well, here comes ol’ Charlie Brown!’ . . . ‘Good ol’ Charlie Brown’ . . . ‘Yes, sir! Good ol’ Charlie Brown.’” And then, as Charlie Brown passed them, “How I hate him!”

The characters were always honest, too, in the ways that most children are: they said what they thought and didn’t couch their
opinions in euphemisms. And they were funny. As one critic said, the
Peanuts
gang “brought . . . humor to taboo themes such as faith, intolerance, depression, loneliness, cruelty and despair. [The] characters were contemplative. They spoke with simplicity and force. They made smart observations about literature, art, classical music, theology, medicine, psychiatry, sports and the law.”

Peanuts
had other unique and endearing aspects, too. In particular, the strip featured a whole cast of characters—rather than just one or two. And the group included types of people most readers could relate to: the nerd, the grouch, the philosopher, the slacker, the jock, the insecure thumbsucker, and the dreamer.

Unlike many comic strip artists who collaborated with a number of writers, storyboard artists, and colorists, Schulz produced all aspects of
Peanuts
himself. He worked on the strip everyday, and each of the characters was his own creation. Schulz once told an interviewer that the entire
Peanuts
gang was based on people he knew—his fussy daughter, Meredith, was the inspiration for Lucy, and Charlie Brown’s “little red-haired girl” mirrored an unrequited love named Donna Johnson who rejected Schulz’s marriage proposal in 1950. Some characters even portrayed aspects of Schulz’s personality—he said more than once that Linus represented his spiritual side.