Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (34 page)

SANTA MELTDOWN

Shortly before Christmas in 1999, Kelley Fornatoro placed her 19-month-old son next to Santa for a holiday portrait in a Woodland Hills, California, shopping mall. The baby immediately started crying. So Fornatoro suggested that Santa put his arm around the boy to calm him down. That’s when Santa had a fit of his own. “I will not imprison your child!” he yelled at her. “Was it worth it for you to torture your child for a picture? You must be an evil person.” As Fornatoro retrieved her baby, she said she’d be filing a formal complaint. “You can complain about me if you want, but I am Santa Claus. I am the best person in the world!” Then he got
really
mad. While parents rushed to cover their shocked children’s eyes, Santa began undressing. He took off his hat, beard, wig, coat, and belt, and was down to his red, baggy pants and a tank top when security guards escorted him out of the building.

THE
SANTA

In a quest to find Great Britain’s ultimate Santa, organizers at Guinness World Records sponsored the first-ever “Santathon” in December 2001. The event included a field of eight top contenders donned in full beards, red suits, and black boots. Competitive events included sack hauling, pie eating, chimney climbing, stocking filling, and ho-ho-hoing. First prize was awarded to David Broughton-Davis, 43, from Croydon, a professional department store Santa. “I’m not very proud to admit that my best event was eating three large mince pies,” Broughton-Davis lamented after being awarded the Golden Boots trophy. “I just wish that event hadn’t taken place before the chimney climb. It was hard on the stomach.”

The S.S. in a ship’s name stands for “steamship.”

ANIMAL NAME ORIGINS

When we came up with the idea for this page we figured that after 15
Bathroom Readers,
we
must
have done it before. We were wrong.

G
ORILLA

“First used in a Greek translation of 5th century BC Carthaginian explorer Hanno’s account of a voyage to West Africa. He reported encountering a tribe of wild hairy people, whose females were, according to a local interpreter, called gorillas. In 1847 the American missionary and scientist Thomas Savage adopted the word as the species name of the great ape and by the 1850s it had passed into general use.” (From
Dictionary of Word Origins
, by John Ayto)

FERRET

“
Ferret
comes from Latin
furritus
, for ‘little thief,’ which probably alludes to the fact that ferrets, which are related to pole cats, like to steal hens’ eggs. Its name also developed into a verb,
to ferret out
, meaning ‘to dig out or bring something to light.’” (From
Cool Cats, Top Dogs, and Other Beastly Expressions
, by Christine Ammer)

SKUNK

“Because the little striped mammal could squirt his foul yellow spray up to 12 feet, American Indians called him
segankw
, or
segonku
, the Algonquin dialect word meaning simply ‘he who squirts.’ Early pioneers corrupted the hard-to-pronounce Algonquin word to
skunk
, and that way it has remained ever since.” (From
Animal Crackers
, by Robert Hendrickson)

HOUND

“Before the Norman conquest of England, French hunters bred a keen-nosed dog that they called the St. Hubert. One of their rulers, William, took a pack to England and hunted deer—following the dogs on foot. Saxons had never before seen a dog fierce enough to seize its prey, so they named William’s animals
hunts
, meaning ‘seizure.’ Altered over time to
hound
, it was long applied to all hunting dogs. Then the meaning narrowed to stand for breeds that follow their quarry by scent.” (From
Why You Say It
, by Webb Garrison)

Literally translated,
hors d’oeuvre
means “outside of work.”

LEOPARD

“It was once wrongly believed that the leopard was a cross between a ‘leo’ (a lion) and a ‘pard’ (a white panther)—hence the name ‘leopard.’” (From
Why Do We Say It?
, by Nigel Rees)

PYTHON

“According to Greek legend, the god Apollo’s earliest adventure was the single-handed slaying of Python, a flame-breathing dragon who blocked his way to Pytho (now Delphi), the site he had chosen for an oracle. From the name of this monster derives the name of the large snake of Asia, Africa, and Australia, the python.” (From
Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun
, by Willard R. Espy)

CARDINAL

“One would think that such an attractive creature would have given its name to many things, but in fact it is the other way around. The bird’s name comes from the red-robed official of the Roman Catholic Church, who in turn was named for being so important—that is, from the adjective
cardinal
, from the Latin cardo, meaning ‘hinge’ or ‘pivot.’ Anything cardinal was so important that events depended (hinged or pivoted) on it.” (From
It’s Raining Cats and Dogs
, by Christine Ammer)

MOOSE

“Captain John Smith, one of the original leaders at Jamestown, wrote accounts of the colony and life in Virginia, in which he defined the creature as
Moos, a beast bigger than a stagge. Moos
was from Natick (Indian) dialect and probably derived from
moosu
, ‘he trims, he shaves,’ a reference to the way the animal rips the bark and lower branches from trees while feeding.” (From
The Chronology of Words and Phrases
, by Linda and Roger Flavell)

FLAMINGO

“This long-legged pink wading bird is named for the people of Flanders, the
Flemings
, as they were called. Flemings were widely known for their lively personalities, their flushed complexions, and their love of bright clothing. Spaniard explorers in the New World thought it was a great joke naming the bird
flamingo
, which means ‘a Fleming’ in Spanish.” (From
Facts On File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins
, by Robert Hendrickson)

Florence, Italy, was the first city to have all of its streets paved…in 1339 B.C.

BIRTH OF THE BAGEL

Uncle John was in his office munching on a bagel (toasted, with cream cheese) when he realized that the last time he wrote about that fabulous food was all the way back in the very first
Bathroom Reader!
And that wasn’t the (w)hole story!

W
HAT EXACTLY IS A BAGEL?

There are lots of different kinds of bagels made today, but to the purist, real bagels contain only flour, water, yeast, malt, and salt. No sugar, no eggs, no raisins, no onions, no sesame seeds, no cinnamon, no garlic, no jalapeño peppers, no cheddar cheese, and no sun-dried tomatoes.

The dough is rolled into a cylinder and then twisted into a ring with a hole in the middle. The rings are allowed to rise, and then (the key to making real bagels) they’re cooked quickly in boiling water before they’re baked. The boiling process gelatinizes the gluten in the dough, giving the bagel its unique hard and shiny surface and thus sealing the inside to preserve its density and chewiness.

WHERE DID BAGELS COME FROM?

Bagels are believed to have been invented in the 17th century, but there is some debate about their exact origin. They might be Polish—text from Kraków, Poland, written in 1610 refers to
beygls
being good gifts for new mothers—possibly because they make good teething rings, which many people still use them for today.

Another theory says that an Austrian baker wanted to make a gift for King John III Sobieski of Poland after he saved the city of Vienna from Turkish invaders in 1683. King John was famous for his horsemanship, so the baker made a roll in the shape of a stirrup. (Bagels used to be much thinner, with bigger holes.) The Austrian-German word for stirrup:
beugel,
or
bügel
.

However they began, bagels were a hit. They spread all through Eastern Europe over the next two centuries—even into Russia, where they were called
bubliki
. Many different peoples baked bagels in the old days, but over time, Jewish bakers became bagel specialists.

French flies:
Entomophagy
is the practice of eating insects.

BAGELS IN THE NEW WORLD

In the 1880s, thousands of eastern European Jews emigrated to North America, bringing the bagel with them. The chewy bread soon became a staple in stores and street markets on New York’s Lower East Side, as well as in Montreal and Toronto. (Each of these cities claims to have the best bagels today.)

In 1907 the International Bakers Union was founded in New York City. By 1915 bagels had become so popular that bagel-makers formed their own union: Bagel Bakers Local #338. It was a very exclusive group (the only way to get in was to be the son of one of the 300 members). Their recipes were closely guarded secrets, and bagel-baking techniques—hand rolling and twisting—remained unchanged for decades.

THE THOMPSON MACHINE

It wasn’t until the early 1960s that this process changed. Dan Thompson—whose father started baking bagels in Los Angeles in the 1920s—started tinkering with a bagel-making contraption after watching his dad try in vain to invent one. In 1963 he succeeded. The Thompson Bagel Making Machine was the first commercially-practical bagel-making device. Using nonunion, unskilled workers, Thompson’s machine could make over 1,000 bagels an hour.

Who leased the first one? Lender’s Bagels, a small shop that had been in operation in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1927. In 1963 they were going into the frozen bagel business, and Dan Thompson’s invention came along at just the right time. Lender’s Bagels became a familiar item in supermarkets across the country, and Lender’s became the biggest bagel maker in the world.

MODERN-DAY BAGELS

Today there are bagel shops all over the country and bagels come in all different flavors, shapes, and sizes: there are chocolate-chip bagels, spinach bagels, pumpkin bagels, miniature bagels, pizza bagels, and even square bagels. Bagel-making machines can now turn out more than 50,000 bagels an hour.

But nostalgia is affecting business today too, so many shops have gone back to the old style, making all their bagels by hand or with simple machines, boiling them in a bagel kettle, and using the simple authentic recipe. If you ever get to Englewood, New Jersey, stop by Englewood Hot Bagels. That’s where Uncle John got his bagels as a boy, and he hasn’t found a better one since. Enjoy.

Price of an Alberta Ferretti hamster-fur skirt suit in 2000: $6,300.

BAGEL BITS

• Classic combo: Cream cheese was invented in 1872; Philadelphia Cream Cheese hit the market in 1880. But it wasn’t until Joseph and Isaac Breakstone began selling their Breakstone Cream Cheese brand in 1920 that New York bagel eaters discovered it—and cream cheese became
the
bagel spread.

• In 2000 several rioters at a Fourth of July celebration in Morristown, New Jersey, were arrested for throwing “dangerous” projectiles into the crowd and at police. The projectiles: “batteries, golf balls, and stale bagels.”

• According to the
Guinness Book of World Records
, the world’s largest bagel was made by Larry Wilkerson and Jeff Maninfior in 1998, at the Lender’s Bagel Bakery in Mattoon, Illinois. Weight: 714 pounds. Diameter: 6 feet. Flavor: blueberry.

• During the 2002 American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and Anaheim Angels, Anaheim mayor Tom Daly bet New York mayor Michael Bloomberg a crate of oranges and chilies that the Angels would win. Bloomberg’s bet: a crate of Nathan’s hot dogs and 48 H&H bagels. (Daly won.)

• In 2002 John and Cecelia O’Hare sued a McDonald’s restaurant in Panama City Beach, Florida, claiming that an improperly cooked bagel damaged Mr. O’Hare’s teeth…and somehow ruined their marriage as well. They sued for $15,000 in damages. (Case pending.)

*        *        *

BIRTH OF A STRANGE LAW

To attract patrons to his circus, P. T. Barnum would often hitch a plow to an elephant and have it work fields next to the big top. One farmer got so angry about his field being torn up that he pushed a bill through the state legislature. To this day it’s illegal to plow a field with an elephant in North Carolina.

Q: Why did the pony speak softly? A: Because it was a little hoarse.

ON TOUR WITH ELVIS

Next time you’re traveling, here are some Elvis-related sites to see.

M
ISSISSIPPI-ALABAMA FAIRGROUND

Address:
West Main and Mulberry Alley, Tupelo, Mississippi

Claim to Fame:
Site of the King’s very first public performance on October 3, 1945, when he was only 10 years old. His teacher entered him in a talent contest—he sang a song titled “Old Shep” and won $5.

OVERTON SHELL

Address:
1928 Popular Ave., Memphis, Tennessee

Claim to Fame:
The first place Elvis “the Pelvis” swiveled his hips—on July 30, 1954. Also, his first paid performance, which explains why he swiveled—he was scared. “He said he thought he was gonna faint out there on stage,” recalled singer Webb Pierce. “So he started flapping his legs, just to keep from passing out. Then he noticed the crowd reacting to it, so he just kept doing it.”

SUN STUDIO

Address:
706 Union Ave., Memphis, Tennessee