About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become
obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases
included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a broken
record" and "Hung out to dry." A bevy of readers have asked me to shine
light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our best bib and
tucker and straighten up and fly right.

Hubba-Hubba! We'd cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and
petting and smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching

woo in hot rods and jalopies in some passion pit or lovers lane.

Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!

We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy
couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for
all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time
anything was swell?

Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats,
knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

Like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim,
we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has been

just a short nap, and before we can say, I'll be a monkey's uncle! or - This is a
fine kettle of fish! We discover that the words we grew up with, the words
that seemed omnipresent as oxygen have vanished with scarcely a notice
from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We
blink, and they're gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape of our

perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy

cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinders monkey.

Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone?

Long time ago:
Pshaw.
The milkman did it.
Think about the starving Armenians.
Bigger than a bread box.
Banned in Boston.
The very idea!
It's your nickel.
Don't forget to pull the chain.
Knee high to a grasshopper.
Turn-of-the-century.
Iron curtain.
Domino theory.
Fail safe.
Civil defense.
Fiddlesticks!
You look like the wreck of the Hesperus.
Cooties.
Going like sixty.
I'll see you in the funny papers.
Don't take any wooden nickels.
Heavens to Murgatroyd!
And awa-a-ay we go!
Oh, my stars and garters!
The Katz Pajamas.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions

than Carter had liver pills.

This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth,
these words that lodge in our heart's deep core. But just as one never

steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice.

Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever

making a different river.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a
child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the
other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering

there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once

strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more,

except in our collective memory. It's one of the greatest advantages of

aging. We can have archaic and eat it, too?

That’s all for now - See ya later, alligator!

by Richard Lederer