When I mentioned to the CEO that we had to stop having dinner with those people because it just created more work for me, she smiled as CEOs do when more work is assigned to other people (not in management). It’s not that I don’t enjoy their company. They simply play a game called “Let’s Ask Jim.”
I don’t believe they really think I know everything — I let my kids believe that when they were younger — they just delight in sending me on information chases. Then they read the column to determine if I’ve had any success. Oh well, it probably sells newspapers.
I won’t identify them, but a clue is that they’re designated as Group AA in the Foothills Bridge League. Although none of them smoke (that wouldn’t do in our home anyway), the conversation swung to smoking.
One of the guests is a cardiologist — nice to have around if I get terrible bridge hands — so he was able to weigh in on the issue of smoking. Someone in the group, whom I won’t identify, said “Remember when cigarettes were called coffin nails?” Oops, that did it. Now they turned to me and said, “When did that start, Jim?”
Both my parents smoked, but I never even tried it. However, I do remember that expression, but never knew its origin.
This is when the work assignment kicked in; I had to go and write a note to research it (my bonuses depend on good followup).
The term, “Put a nail in my coffin,” to describe performing some self-destructive act first appeared in print in 1789 in Peter Pindar’s Ode no. 15 as “Care to our coffin adds a nail.”
This was repeated through the years and coffin nails as slang for cigarettes appeared in the 1880s, 20 years before they were called “weeds,” and 40 years before they were called “butts.” In the early 20th century, the Anti-Cigarette League announced that every cigarette smoked was a nail in one’s coffin. However, the first use of the phrase may have come from Australia when it was recorded in 1910, but O. Henry wrote “Have you a coffin nail?” in his “The Higher Abdication,” 1907.
The word “cigarette” was first recorded in England in 1842, but these “little cigars” had been smoked at least two centuries before then. The Indians who convinced Sir Walter Raleigh that it was a good idea to take tobacco back to England had the first laugh, as humorously illustrated by Bob Newhart in a very funny monologue from the 1960s.
This took a lot of research and I’m not just “blowing smoke,” so I hope this piece gets recorded for my next evaluation.
- Microbreweries abound. By the year 3000 B.C., there were at least six different types of beer brewed in Egypt. Pharoahweiser? Phat Tyre? Cleopatra’s Asp Ale?
- General Burnside would have been so proud. At least 500 pairs of false sideburns were used during the filming of “Gone With The Wind.”
- You just barely get through a long weekend. The average American requires 2.6 days to feel relaxed on a vacation.
- The fact doesn’t surprise me at all. It takes male cardinals three times as long as females to learn a new song.
- Tom Lehrer had a delightfully nasty sense of humor, “On my income tax form 1040 it says ‘Check this box if you are blind.’ I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.”
Jim Willard, a Loveland resident since 1967, retired from Hewlett-Packard after 33 years to focus on less trivial things. He calls Twoey, his bichon frisé-Maltese dog, vice president of research for his column.
