Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan, there's Casper the Ghost
Speaker 1: or your producer. Hi Casper. Yeah, Jerry's on vacation. Guest
Speaker 1: producer Tristan came in and tapped the record button with
Speaker 1: his nose as his per tradition, and then he left.
Speaker 1: Here we are. That's the new tradition. People just come
Speaker 1: in and be like, yeah, here you go. See remember
Speaker 1: the old days when guest producers would claim her to
Speaker 1: get in here and witness the magic. I remember, I
Speaker 1: can remember. Now they draw lots and just go all right.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll go hit record and leave. I'd like
Speaker 1: to think it's because they're all overworked. That's why it's
Speaker 1: not like, you know, we're past a No, it could
Speaker 1: be both, though. I guess how you doing. I'm doing
Speaker 1: good man. I'm excited about this one. It's nice to
Speaker 1: have something that doesn't, you know, have that much weight
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, I needed a little lighter break. Uh
Speaker 1: and big thanks by the way to Denver, Colorado. Just
Speaker 1: came back from Denver for two sold out shows. Two
Speaker 1: great shows. Yeah, and it was. It was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I had fun as well. It was a
Speaker 1: good show. I think that second one, for my money,
Speaker 1: is the one we should release, as are the version
Speaker 1: of that show. Which live shows have we released? I
Speaker 1: know Chicago was Pinto's pr PRR toes was Atlantic because
Speaker 1: that was the benefit show? And what about dB Cooper
Speaker 1: dB Cooper with Seattle I believe, and then Grave Robbing
Speaker 1: was somewhere in the UK, I would imagine. I think
Speaker 1: I think it was London, all right. So we have
Speaker 1: not released a Denver show. No, we definitely haven't. We
Speaker 1: have not, so this could be the one. If you
Speaker 1: ask me, it was just on and popping well money,
Speaker 1: You know me, I don't like to overthink these things,
Speaker 1: so I'm generally just prone to say it's good enough
Speaker 1: for you, it's good enough for me. That's very nice
Speaker 1: of you. Let's me get away with a lot. That's right. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, well chuck, um hmm. I'm prepared now, are you? Yes? Well,
Speaker 1: then let us speak in talking about jobs that just
Speaker 1: aren't around anymore, the old stuff you should know. Top ten,
Speaker 1: which means we'll do what eight maybe if we feel
Speaker 1: like it certainly not ten. I'll tell you that I agree.
Speaker 1: So there's actually this article I thought started out pretty
Speaker 1: cleverly talking about some jobs that are probably going to
Speaker 1: be extinct in the near future, at least as far
Speaker 1: as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is concerned. I
Speaker 1: didn't even look at that part. So so there's a
Speaker 1: few coming up word processors and typists. Not not a
Speaker 1: lot of time left on that profession. Door to door
Speaker 1: sales workers, which I took issue with because I can
Speaker 1: see people wanting that personal touch of being bothered and
Speaker 1: harassed by a salesperson. You know happened, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: now it mostly happens like didn't you want to sign
Speaker 1: this this um petition or something like that, especially the
Speaker 1: door to door thing, not like here's a vacuum cleaner
Speaker 1: or set of Encyclopedia Britannicas. I do you know how
Speaker 1: just blown away you would be if somebody came up
Speaker 1: to your door and tried to sell you a vacuum cleaner.
Speaker 1: You'd be like, what's your angle? Are you case in
Speaker 1: my house or Encyclopedia's I mean, that's even moral fashion.
Speaker 1: At least you still use vacuum cleaners. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: that's true. The last one on this list was mail carriers,
Speaker 1: which will I don't know, man, I could see, I
Speaker 1: could see there's always going to be a need for
Speaker 1: physical correspondence, or there will be for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that one. But the upshot of
Speaker 1: all this is is this, Chuck, there's this guy who
Speaker 1: you boat you and I know, uh named John Maynard Keynes,
Speaker 1: and he is an economist. He was an economist liberal economist,
Speaker 1: and he will wrote back in an essay called Economic
Speaker 1: Stabilities of our Grandchildren, and it's actually like a quick
Speaker 1: easy read. But then he basically said a hundred years
Speaker 1: hence so by we will have done away with work,
Speaker 1: will have automated basically every process you can think of,
Speaker 1: and humans will be totally out of work. And he
Speaker 1: said that will be a really good thing, because we
Speaker 1: will still be generating wealth, but we just won't have
Speaker 1: to work. So people will start writing bad poetry and
Speaker 1: painting terrible paintings, and eventually we'll get better and better,
Speaker 1: and there'll be like a big blooming of the arts
Speaker 1: and of like interpersonal relationships and things like that, and
Speaker 1: we'll just be able to hang out and chill, and
Speaker 1: we've come close to that. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of holes in Keynes's argument, whereas like if
Speaker 1: you if you're gonna do this, you kind of have
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to distribute the wealth evenly,
Speaker 1: or else you just end up with the people who
Speaker 1: own the machines are the ones who get wealthy, and
Speaker 1: everybody else is just out of work. But setting all
Speaker 1: of that aside, there is a silverlyinging to the idea
Speaker 1: that jobs can be extinct. And these this list of
Speaker 1: jobs to me kind of shows like, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: we move on without this kind of stuff. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: rough for the people who had that job, but you
Speaker 1: can get new training and learn another job, which for
Speaker 1: my money is part and parcel with getting rid of
Speaker 1: one job. You need to train somebody for another job
Speaker 1: as long as we humans can work. Yeah, And it's uh,
Speaker 1: I think with most jobs it's not like I mean,
Speaker 1: in some cases the thing just no longer exists, but
Speaker 1: if it's replaced by a better or newer technology or both,
Speaker 1: then then that becomes the job. So I've never bought
Speaker 1: into this whole, like, you know, we need to protect
Speaker 1: these jobs that are surely antiquated just to keep these
Speaker 1: people in work. It's like, no, man, you've got to
Speaker 1: roll at the times you do. But I think that
Speaker 1: one of the rules of like government or even industry
Speaker 1: is to to provide training to keep up with those times.
Speaker 1: Sure if if so, someone so chooses for sure. Sure. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if it's all robots doing everything all the time, then
Speaker 1: we should be able to choose not to and you
Speaker 1: should have a nice universal basic income. But someone has
Speaker 1: to build and fix those robots, and well you build
Speaker 1: other robots to do that, all the materials and at
Speaker 1: some point, I just I don't think I agree with
Speaker 1: him fully that nobody will be working at some point
Speaker 1: you disagree with Can's all right, let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Because first, the first job on this list, I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody was really sad to see go, although that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily true. There were fans well, and I know
Speaker 1: one person in particular it was probably pretty sad. Oh well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to him, okay. Chariot racing, Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: extinct job. You cannot anywhere in the world find a
Speaker 1: professional chariot racer as far as we know. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this was one that was a very very big sport
Speaker 1: back in the day and was literally like NASCAR was today,
Speaker 1: very much so. Yeah, I mean they had, uh, if
Speaker 1: you if you look at let's say they called this
Speaker 1: the tracks circuses, if you look at Circus Maximus in
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, this thing, I mean, these things started out
Speaker 1: where people could just like sit on the hillside and
Speaker 1: watch races, but it evolved into Circus Maximus, which held
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand spectators. I saw two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty really. Yeah, well, let's just say it's somewhere
Speaker 1: between that then, right between those two numbers. Either way,
Speaker 1: it's super impressive, agreed. Yeah, And of course, if you
Speaker 1: don't know what a chariot races, it's very simple. It's
Speaker 1: just a race where a horse pulls a man in
Speaker 1: a in a little two wheeled vehicle called a chariot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Everyone's seen a chariot, and the depictions I've always seen
Speaker 1: from cartoons to movies actually apparently were very um accurate.
Speaker 1: It's like closed off in the front and then kind
Speaker 1: of tapered down the sides and open in the back.
Speaker 1: There was one axle with two wheels and it was
Speaker 1: connected to a team of horses. Usually about four horses,
Speaker 1: maybe two maybe six um and it went really really
Speaker 1: fast and it was really really flimsy. So if you
Speaker 1: collided with another chariot, there was a pretty good chance
Speaker 1: your chariot was going to disintegrate and you were going
Speaker 1: to be in trouble. Yeah, I mean just sort of
Speaker 1: like modern race cars. The chariots they designed for military battle,
Speaker 1: we're not like this. They were very sturdy, often had
Speaker 1: a lot of metal and reinforcements. But if you were
Speaker 1: out there racing, you know, you wanted to win, so
Speaker 1: your chariot was super light, probably just made of wood.
Speaker 1: You were probably standing on that axle. It's not like
Speaker 1: they you know, you were sitting on some big throne
Speaker 1: in the center of your chariot. And uh, it was
Speaker 1: sort of like horse racing. They would you would draw
Speaker 1: lots for position, they would drop the white cloth, uh,
Speaker 1: and then up to twelve racers at a time, you know,
Speaker 1: the gates would open and you were off. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there were the height of the Roman Empire. There were
Speaker 1: four and then later on six teams. It was a
Speaker 1: red team, a white team, a blue team, and a
Speaker 1: green team originally, then they added purple and gold and
Speaker 1: like you said, this is like NASCAR. Are people devoted
Speaker 1: to these teams like they're devoted to racers today, or
Speaker 1: like to football or soccer today? Um? Just fanatics. There
Speaker 1: was a story that Pliny wrote of a guy who
Speaker 1: is a fan of the Red team and when one
Speaker 1: of the Red team racers died, the fan threw himself
Speaker 1: onto his funeral pyre killed himself out of grief. Wow,
Speaker 1: which you know that happens weekly in NASCAR, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: except they throw themselves on their their turkey friar. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I think that. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: pretty accurate, man. I bet there's a lot of turkey
Speaker 1: friars or maybe their barbecue pit, how about that? Sure?
Speaker 1: So the dude I mentioned that was probably pretty sad
Speaker 1: to see it go, although he did finish his career,
Speaker 1: it's not like the sport went away. His name was
Speaker 1: Gaius Diocles. I haven't heard of this cat. He was
Speaker 1: someone who was likely one of the most rich people
Speaker 1: in ancient Rome that was not a member of you know,
Speaker 1: royalty or whatever. He raced from the eighteen to the
Speaker 1: age of forty two, close to races, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to find out some sort of some kind of
Speaker 1: ballpark conversion of their money compared to our money today,
Speaker 1: and most everyone with a brain on the internet and
Speaker 1: internet said no, don't even bother, although some people were like,
Speaker 1: it's really just like a one to one ratio, So
Speaker 1: I don't buy that. But supposedly he amassed a wealth
Speaker 1: of thirty six million whatever you however, you pronounced that
Speaker 1: sesster cs. I haven't seen that word before. Ever, that
Speaker 1: was their money. I don't know s E S T
Speaker 1: E r c E s. Yeah, I've never seen that.
Speaker 1: So I mean, let's say it is a dollar then
Speaker 1: about thirty six million bucks, which made him one of
Speaker 1: the richest people. Yeah, it is. It is impossible that
Speaker 1: the ratio or the conversion is a dollar to like
Speaker 1: one to one, I would think, so right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: totally impossible. Yeah, that was just some dummy on answer
Speaker 1: this dot com or something. Yeah, I'm tired of thinking
Speaker 1: about this. Just say it's wonder why. I think it
Speaker 1: was from the webs website take a stab at it
Speaker 1: dot com. But that guy raised from eight to two
Speaker 1: huh eighteen years old, and apparently he not only was
Speaker 1: super rich, but he kept a lot of records of
Speaker 1: his races. So he's one of the only people we
Speaker 1: can look back on and say, you know, he raced this.
Speaker 1: I mean he only one about a third of his
Speaker 1: races to it looked like so. But even still just
Speaker 1: surviving that many races as boggling, like this is really dangerous.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you're if your chariot basically exploded,
Speaker 1: you had lashed the reins to your horses around your
Speaker 1: waist to stabilize yourself better, and you were still connected
Speaker 1: to your horses by your waist and now they were dry.
Speaker 1: I give you possibly to death. So most most most
Speaker 1: racers carried a knife on them to cut themselves loose
Speaker 1: in case they weren't always quick enough with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you had to get your knife out while
Speaker 1: you're being drug at however many miles an hour or
Speaker 1: whatever they used to distinguish speed. Plus there's always like
Speaker 1: a bad guy villain like in the ban Her race,
Speaker 1: who was trying to like chop up your chariot and
Speaker 1: whip you. Yeah. I didn't see rules as far as
Speaker 1: that went, is like were they clean races or was
Speaker 1: it you could you know, stick a a staff through
Speaker 1: somebody's wheel and flip them over. I did not see.
Speaker 1: I thought there was a range of activities. Yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be my guess. You want to take a break. We
Speaker 1: already I mean that chariot race took up a lot
Speaker 1: more time than I thought. This is gonna be like
Speaker 1: a three hour episode. Uh, yeah, let's take a break
Speaker 1: and we'll do what four more? Yes, didn't take another break?
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Alright, we're back Chuck with another old job
Speaker 1: that's not around anymore. This one's armorer, Yes, which is
Speaker 1: hard to say. It really strains the back necks, the
Speaker 1: back neck muscles. Yeah, I mean, there is a modern
Speaker 1: job called an armorer, but we're talking about the dudes
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages who would build your body armor,
Speaker 1: which was I mean extraordinarily skilled craft like you couldn't
Speaker 1: go to school to learn how to be an armorer.
Speaker 1: You basically had to be born the son of an
Speaker 1: armorer because the skill was passed along from father to son,
Speaker 1: and secrets of how to make these these suits of
Speaker 1: armor were kept very closely secret by um by the
Speaker 1: people who knew what they were doing, because they had
Speaker 1: a lot of competition, and so as a result, historians
Speaker 1: and I guess armor specialists of today still have questions
Speaker 1: about how some of these guys made some of these
Speaker 1: amazing suits of armor because they didn't leave any evidence
Speaker 1: of exactly how they did it. Yeah. I mean the
Speaker 1: process would start as just like a we are the
Speaker 1: people that make suits, uh Taylor Taylor, like a tailor
Speaker 1: might today. So you would lumber up, you would uh,
Speaker 1: you would strip down to your linen's and they would
Speaker 1: take your measurements and then make a replica of your body,
Speaker 1: uh if they so had the time out of wood
Speaker 1: or something. Because it would take a long time, Like
Speaker 1: you couldn't if you wanted a quality suit of armor,
Speaker 1: you couldn't go in there and say turn it around
Speaker 1: in a week, like sometimes it would take months and
Speaker 1: even more than a year. Yeah, I saw years in
Speaker 1: some cases. Yeah, because if you want the good stuff,
Speaker 1: you gotta go. And these people made a lot of money.
Speaker 1: They they were like a subset of the smithies, like
Speaker 1: you said, like it was not something that everyone was
Speaker 1: good at. So they would spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: with wealthy people. They made a lot of money themselves,
Speaker 1: and so they had kind of a much higher standing
Speaker 1: as opposed to like a regular smithy might yeah, and
Speaker 1: and the suits of armor that we see today, um,
Speaker 1: the ones you think of usually like a British night
Speaker 1: or something like that wearing it, those were made of
Speaker 1: like high quality steel. But steal back then this is
Speaker 1: like fairly fairly early after we really figured out how
Speaker 1: to make steal reliably. And um, it was a real
Speaker 1: bear to work with because you would have to you'd
Speaker 1: hammer it and then you'd have to heat it up
Speaker 1: again and hammer it some more, and it would cool
Speaker 1: as you were hammering it and you have to heat
Speaker 1: it up again. So it was really tough to work with,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty strong. Um. The thing is, because
Speaker 1: steel was rare, it was also very expensive to work with.
Speaker 1: And so the suits of armor we see today, like
Speaker 1: in museums and things, usually come from the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: And even though they were making suits of armor similar
Speaker 1: to that and as far back as like the fourteenth
Speaker 1: and fifteenth centuries, you don't see those because they reused
Speaker 1: that old steel from the old suits of armor into
Speaker 1: the new ones. And then they finally ended in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century when they stopped making suits of armor. But
Speaker 1: that's why you only see almost exclusively sixteenth century suits
Speaker 1: of armor that makes sense. Also saw that, um they
Speaker 1: tried to set up shop near the materials, so instead
Speaker 1: of having the transport stuff long distances and and it
Speaker 1: sounds like it was in pretty high demand if like
Speaker 1: you know, let's say someone died in battle and then
Speaker 1: they would say they wouldn't just leave that stuff out there.
Speaker 1: Somebody would go and gather up all this stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think just living near the product or the
Speaker 1: base materials was a big advantage if you were an armorer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and armors kept up their trade. I mean eventually the
Speaker 1: the so muskets came along well. At first it made
Speaker 1: armor even better. It like pushed the development of armor
Speaker 1: plating along even further. But then it outpaced musket development,
Speaker 1: outpaced armor development, and then there was no reason to
Speaker 1: have um armor any longer because you could just shoot
Speaker 1: right through it. But but up to that point, the
Speaker 1: armor plating got better, but then people stopped wearing as
Speaker 1: much of it, until you basically had a chess plate
Speaker 1: in a backplate and you would see people battling still.
Speaker 1: I think even uh Napoleon's troops wore chest and backplate
Speaker 1: armor and in the American Civil War and that's it,
Speaker 1: they were naked right, like, it's so cool, but the well,
Speaker 1: no one more thing. In the American Civil War, there
Speaker 1: were people who sold chess plates. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that was about as as late as it went, late
Speaker 1: nineteenth early twentieth century, you could still find an army
Speaker 1: here they're wearing a breastplate. Maybe. Yeah. I imagine that
Speaker 1: even later on with the advent of muskets, uh, something
Speaker 1: that could stop an arrow or or a sword, like,
Speaker 1: you would probably still feel pretty good about wearing that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't too heavy. One thing I saw that I
Speaker 1: thought was pretty ridiculous was that one of the reasons
Speaker 1: soldiers didn't didn't wear a more widespread in the Civil
Speaker 1: War in America was one it was tough to to
Speaker 1: lug around. They got heavy, so when you're on the march,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to carry that. But then secondly,
Speaker 1: like they would be chided as cowards by their by
Speaker 1: their fellow soldiers, which is like, are you a coward
Speaker 1: just for taking an extra step of protection and extra
Speaker 1: measure of protection when you're out there on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if I'm missing something. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe back then it was just getting that time where
Speaker 1: they were like old Sally backplate over there, right, he
Speaker 1: didn't want to take an arrow to the back. Or
Speaker 1: if you were richie rich, because you could afford a
Speaker 1: breastplate and everybody else couldn't. So they just kind of
Speaker 1: peer pressured you into dying along with them. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: peer pressure you into dying pressure. It's pretty bad. You
Speaker 1: don't want to succumb to that peer pressure. So in
Speaker 1: this case, the armorer, and we didn't say in the
Speaker 1: last one, the chariot racers went away with the fall
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire. This job armor went away basically
Speaker 1: when when muskets became capable of piercing steel. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: after that, like I said, it may help with the
Speaker 1: odd arrow or knife thrust, but maybe a throwing star,
Speaker 1: the famous throwing stars of the Civil War. Uh, shall
Speaker 1: we move on? Yeah, man, moving along, We're gonna stick around.
Speaker 1: In the Middle Ages, it just kind of head on
Speaker 1: over to the court jester. Yeah. I think this is
Speaker 1: one where there's a lot of misconceptions because while in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages there were court jesters who would dance
Speaker 1: around with the colored cloths and the and the little
Speaker 1: hat with the bells on it and stuff like that
Speaker 1: that did occur, but from what I gathered, the general
Speaker 1: court jester didn't really wear that that often. No. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the other misconceptions too, is that
Speaker 1: they were kind of lunkheads or dummies or just simpletons
Speaker 1: who knows, however you want to put it, when actually
Speaker 1: they were extraordinarily stu usually among the highest educated people
Speaker 1: in in any given country, certainly in a court. Um.
Speaker 1: And that they were less fools and more satirists. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so let's let's break this down. There were a few
Speaker 1: different types. The type you're talking about is the the
Speaker 1: legit court jester who would generally perform at the behest
Speaker 1: of the court. Uh. And those are the ones that
Speaker 1: were sometimes some of the only people who could speak
Speaker 1: ill of the king or queen as a satirist. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, but you still would run a risk, you know,
Speaker 1: if you took it too far. Imagine there was more
Speaker 1: than one court jester who found their their head on
Speaker 1: a stake at some point, for sure. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: the last one known to have lived, um Dicky Pierce,
Speaker 1: who was the fool to the Earl of Earl of Suffolk,
Speaker 1: fell to his death from a pulpit and they think
Speaker 1: they The official line is that he slipped, but um,
Speaker 1: somebody thinks that he may have actually been pushed by
Speaker 1: somebody who didn't like his little shove his stick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh, it says in this one article, I found
Speaker 1: that three types of fool emerged, and that one was
Speaker 1: the official court jester. Uh. A lot of times they
Speaker 1: would just wear normal clothes rather than that little outfit
Speaker 1: that we all know is the court ester. But then
Speaker 1: there were definitely noble families and wealthy people who would
Speaker 1: adopt men and women who had mental illness or some
Speaker 1: sort of physical deformity, and they were a little more
Speaker 1: They called them innocent fools, and they weren't paid. They
Speaker 1: were just kept around, almost like amusing pets, like wild
Speaker 1: Peter from the Feral episode the Fear of Feareral Children episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they would get like food and clothes and lodging
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, which I think was saying quite
Speaker 1: a bit, yeah, because that was that value, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they said the third class was were people
Speaker 1: of the members of the fool societies that were big
Speaker 1: in France. And I think these were more of like
Speaker 1: what we would consider now like a rin fair performing yea,
Speaker 1: and they would definitely wear those outfits and really played up.
Speaker 1: So um the the type of fool that that belonged
Speaker 1: to a court that um they actually had like a
Speaker 1: really important position in the kingdom because like you said,
Speaker 1: they were satirists, um, and they could satirize at their
Speaker 1: own peril. But they were also capable I think of
Speaker 1: surviving by bringing it right up to the line, by
Speaker 1: knowing just how how far you could press the king
Speaker 1: or the queen um or the court. But in doing
Speaker 1: this you could you could you you provided a service
Speaker 1: to your fellow countrymen, and that you could keep the
Speaker 1: king from getting bored and maybe going off to war
Speaker 1: um uh inadvisable, or coming up with some terrible new laws.
Speaker 1: Or if there were some terrible new laws, the gesture
Speaker 1: was in a position to make fun of them satirically
Speaker 1: and maybe make the king rethink these policies, to help
Speaker 1: out your fellow your fellow people. So it was a
Speaker 1: very important position because you were basically the only person
Speaker 1: in the entire court who had the ability to speak freely.
Speaker 1: And again it was at your own peril to an extent,
Speaker 1: but for the most part it was accepted that you
Speaker 1: could poke fun at the king and the court and
Speaker 1: policy and the state of affairs. Imagine it was a
Speaker 1: bit of a nerve wracking job. You would also do
Speaker 1: other things. Sometimes you would have other jobs like keeper
Speaker 1: of the hounds. Sometimes they would buy the livestock for
Speaker 1: the family. Uh. And then during times of war they
Speaker 1: would actually function, um almost as like a us O might.
Speaker 1: Like they would be brought to the front lines to entertain,
Speaker 1: uh well to to to do two things. They would
Speaker 1: entertain their own troops to kind of try and ease
Speaker 1: them before battle, or they would mock the other side
Speaker 1: uh and try and like try and actually thwart their
Speaker 1: plan because they would get so mad at the jester
Speaker 1: they would not be thinking clearly and like make some
Speaker 1: kind of mistake because the haunting. Yeah, because the jester
Speaker 1: farted in their general direction. Well, it's funny you mentioned that,
Speaker 1: because I did see a lot of times they would
Speaker 1: be rewarded with land at the end of their tenure.
Speaker 1: And King Henry the Second gave his jest your thirty
Speaker 1: acres upon retirement as long as he came back every
Speaker 1: Christmas to leap, whistle and fart. That's it. He's like
Speaker 1: you get one leap, one whistle, and one far and
Speaker 1: if your fart sounds like a whistle, then he just
Speaker 1: knocked out two birds of once. Nice. So this with
Speaker 1: this job, I'm not entirely sure why it went away.
Speaker 1: I think we need gestures more than ever. Um. But
Speaker 1: the last one, like I said, was Dickie Pierce, who
Speaker 1: was full to the Earl of Suffolk, and he died
Speaker 1: in seventy of misadventure. Really well, yeah, he felt that
Speaker 1: maybe shoved. Yeah, possible homicide. I guess the closest thing
Speaker 1: we have now are either political cartoonists or the White
Speaker 1: House correspondence dinner or the Onion or the onion. Who. Man,
Speaker 1: they've just been killing it since day one. Still, after
Speaker 1: all this time and an evolution, the onion is still
Speaker 1: just doing great stuff. Agreed. Um, Moving on. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna advanced forward a little bit. Lulu new to
Speaker 1: the Victorian England to the late nineteenth century. And I
Speaker 1: had never heard of this job before. You no, but
Speaker 1: we have talked a lot in the past about the
Speaker 1: sheer build up of horse manure before cars weren't invented.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the stat in New York City but
Speaker 1: it's astounding. I found one in London that there were
Speaker 1: a thousand tons of horsepoop generated a day in London streets,
Speaker 1: a thousand tons, and like this stuff would just be
Speaker 1: right there in the middle of the street. There was
Speaker 1: also trash, there was also human waste. There was just
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, terrible stuff everywhere. And part of
Speaker 1: the problem was that the Victorian era was really big
Speaker 1: on pomp and overdoing fashion. Um. There were long trains, addresses,
Speaker 1: lots of skirts over skirts and all this stuff. So
Speaker 1: the idea of walking through horsepoop was not not very
Speaker 1: pleasing to the upper echelons of English society at the time. No,
Speaker 1: they would mean one of their many employees would have
Speaker 1: to clean that up later, exactly right. But apparently they
Speaker 1: were very big with um appearances, so they didn't want
Speaker 1: to even go a second without with getting like any
Speaker 1: horsepooper or any trash or anything on them. So thus
Speaker 1: evolved a job from this, uh this era called crossing sweepers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this I saw a lot of different reactions to
Speaker 1: this from various historical websites that I went into. Some
Speaker 1: people saw this as a pretty valuable job, um, and
Speaker 1: then most people I saw found it a bit of
Speaker 1: an annoyance in that it was if you had any
Speaker 1: skill or were physically able, you would not be a
Speaker 1: crossing sweeper. It was what they called a last chance job.
Speaker 1: I saw, I saw both, I saw a combination of those.
Speaker 1: Read an article by a woman named Jerry Walton, who
Speaker 1: I think did pretty good um his historical research on it,
Speaker 1: and she seemed to come up with the idea that
Speaker 1: you're right on both counts. There were some people who
Speaker 1: had who dedicated themselves to this. They were regular crossing sweepers,
Speaker 1: and they had like posts like there, They had a
Speaker 1: corner that was their corner, and over time they became
Speaker 1: kind of a fixture of the neighborhood, maybe the eyes
Speaker 1: and ears in the neighborhood. I read of one um
Speaker 1: crossing sweeper who actually helped apprehend a murderer by by
Speaker 1: going to the cops and telling him what telling them
Speaker 1: what he saw. UM. But I also saw that there
Speaker 1: were that this was basically the the last stop before Baker,
Speaker 1: but but much more respectable than just being an outright beggar.
Speaker 1: At least you were providing a service. You could also
Speaker 1: very easily become a nuisance though too if you held
Speaker 1: your hand out afterward, or pestred people who are just
Speaker 1: trying to cross the street. Yeah, I mean they like
Speaker 1: in it in this article maybe a little insensitively to
Speaker 1: people who will clean your windshield at a stoplight today. Uh.
Speaker 1: But again even with that have seen a range of
Speaker 1: window cleaning services that range from like nice work, here's
Speaker 1: a good tip, to like, let me spit on your
Speaker 1: wind shield and rub it with my sleeve. And I
Speaker 1: think it was kind of probably similar back then. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there were little kids who would do it, or super
Speaker 1: old people, or you might be disabled and that is
Speaker 1: your last chance to make money. Uh. And people like
Speaker 1: you said I had had one of two attitudes. Either
Speaker 1: you're doing it right and this is a good service,
Speaker 1: or this is sort of a glorified begging. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I saw that for the most part it was kids.
Speaker 1: The proclaimed king of the crossing sweeps was eleven years
Speaker 1: old and eleven year old boy, and that they would
Speaker 1: also add some acrobatics in on the side to really
Speaker 1: to really drive home just how great what they were
Speaker 1: doing was. Well, it's like what like little flips and
Speaker 1: like probably probably what we would call parkour here there
Speaker 1: today something like that. But you know this little nimble
Speaker 1: like kids who were able to just hop around, do
Speaker 1: some some quick acrobatics and then probably hold their cap
Speaker 1: out and say thanks, have a good day, what time? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So um. One thing though, that was good about this
Speaker 1: is that it was something that anybody could start as
Speaker 1: a business and take seriously with just the investment of
Speaker 1: a broom. That's all you needed. Low barrier to entry
Speaker 1: is what they call that, exactly right. And then eventually
Speaker 1: it's like sanitation improved and fashions change. The crossing sweeper
Speaker 1: was less and less necessary, and they evolved into the
Speaker 1: grocery store bagger. You were playing them that one. It
Speaker 1: just rolled off on my tongue. Yeah, alright, good And
Speaker 1: as I was saying, I was like, man, this is
Speaker 1: gonna offend the baggers, and I don't mean it like that.
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, especially public baggers who bagged delicious
Speaker 1: cake all the time. Thank you for what you do.
Speaker 1: Should we break now or do the last for or
Speaker 1: do one and then three? Let's do one and then three.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm feeling good about things all right. Well
Speaker 1: we'll move on to the lamplighters. No way, I changed
Speaker 1: my mind. Okay, well we're gonna take a break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll get too lamp lighters right after this. Okay, okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: thanks for rolling with me on that one. So you
Speaker 1: said lamplighters were doing next. I mean, I guess we're
Speaker 1: doing all this chronologically, right, Well, that sort of is
Speaker 1: in a way, yeah, because we started with cheritots and
Speaker 1: now we're up we're still in the late nineteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is, man, this is something. I had a
Speaker 1: gas lamp growing up at my house, and I really,
Speaker 1: really I would like to get a gas lamp put
Speaker 1: in on the front porch of my house. You know
Speaker 1: that can happen. Yeah, I mean you just gotta run
Speaker 1: gas to it, right, Yeah, that's it, and then come
Speaker 1: and pay a lamp lighter to come lighted every every
Speaker 1: evening and cut it off every every morning. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just love to look like there's a few in our neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and every time I see one, I pine for it.
Speaker 1: I think you should treat yourself to a gas lamp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It really says a lot, you know, it does. It
Speaker 1: says I have conquered fossil fuels in my very own house.
Speaker 1: I wonder how wasteful that is compared to electricity. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I really don't know. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: should find out and just do it. I think you
Speaker 1: should do it and report back on Okay, I can
Speaker 1: always buy carbon offsets, right, totally, alright, So lamp lighters,
Speaker 1: like we said, in the days in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: of gas lamps lighting up all of of let's say London. Again,
Speaker 1: someone had to light these and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of them. So it's not like I mean this was
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people doing this job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually you would have something like under a hundred, but
Speaker 1: over fifty lamps I saw, um, at least for Lowell, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: But um, I think Lowe was a midsize city at
Speaker 1: the time, said seventy thousand people in the like I
Speaker 1: think eighteen eighty census, So that's decent size for the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, you know. Um, but it's certainly nothing like
Speaker 1: what London had at the time. They had tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of lamps, right, right, But I imagine that that
Speaker 1: they probably didn't overtax their lamp lighters more than say
Speaker 1: low did, so say, say somewhere around seventy to eighty
Speaker 1: lamps um is what one lamp lighter would be responsible for.
Speaker 1: They'd have a beat. Yeah, I mean that's a I
Speaker 1: don't know how far apart their position, but that's a
Speaker 1: that's a full day's work. I would imagine her full evening. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could. It lasted for a while, and I didn't
Speaker 1: get the impression of what you do in between, but
Speaker 1: you would wait around until dusk came, and then you
Speaker 1: would start your your route and start lighting the lamps.
Speaker 1: And then after any respectable person was asleep, you would
Speaker 1: go out and extinguish them, or before daybreaker, around daybreak
Speaker 1: you go extinguish them, and then you would eat your breakfast,
Speaker 1: and then you set about repairing the lamps, refilling them
Speaker 1: as need be, and like getting it rid of any
Speaker 1: soot and smudge, and maybe if the lamp got knocked over,
Speaker 1: you'd have to set it back up again. So it
Speaker 1: sounded like it was, you know, there's a decent amount
Speaker 1: of work to it, but supposed it was a very
Speaker 1: safe job from whatever. And yeah, I mean they do
Speaker 1: mention ladders in here, but I also saw that many
Speaker 1: of them were uh lit from below with a long
Speaker 1: lighter or and extinguisher that was all kind of in
Speaker 1: on one pole. Very ingenious. Yes, I don't know that
Speaker 1: they were climbing ladders all over town. No, you could
Speaker 1: just raise it up. It would be easier to walk
Speaker 1: with just that long staff than to walk with the
Speaker 1: lad her. So yeah, because you could also stab somebody
Speaker 1: in the eye with it, right any master comes at you,
Speaker 1: bam Bamuh. Mainly men held these job, but there were
Speaker 1: some women apparently in London that did so. And like
Speaker 1: you said, it was pretty safe. It's not like these
Speaker 1: things weren't running on gasoline, you know, like whale blubber.
Speaker 1: I don't think is the most combustible thing in the world. No, um.
Speaker 1: And then I think there were there was also natural guests.
Speaker 1: They eventually laid gas lines to these things too, so
Speaker 1: all you had to do is walk around with a
Speaker 1: like a whale probably whale blubber torch on the end
Speaker 1: of your staff and just touch touch the lamp wick
Speaker 1: and there you go. And then I think they made
Speaker 1: something like two dollars a day for this, at least
Speaker 1: in Lowell, mass It's not bad King's ransom. I did
Speaker 1: see that there are still some people that do this today.
Speaker 1: There are certain parts of England where they still light
Speaker 1: the lamps, and I'm sure it's a bit of a novelty.
Speaker 1: But um, I don't know that it's necessarily like like
Speaker 1: Colonial Williamsburg or anything. I think it's not like it
Speaker 1: has to be an old relic themed town, just one
Speaker 1: that's involved in being charming. Yea, yeah, lamplighter and if
Speaker 1: you see a lamplighter, give him a little how do
Speaker 1: you do? Yeah? Off your cap? Yeah, So it's not extinct.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't belong on this list at all, though.
Speaker 1: A couple of pints their ways, their ways Tuppins. Remember
Speaker 1: that song from Mary Poppins so depressing. No, but I
Speaker 1: have high hopes for that reboot. Oh, I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: anything about that. Please do tell well there's a new
Speaker 1: movie coming out they're redoing, uh, Mary Poppins, and and
Speaker 1: Emily Blunt is Mary Poppins, which I think it's fine casting.
Speaker 1: And I think what's his name? Lynn? Manuel Miranda himself
Speaker 1: is in the ABU say the Dick Cabitt part. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't Dick van van Dyke, the chimney sweep Dick Abbott.
Speaker 1: That would have been a much different role. Yeah, tell me, Mary,
Speaker 1: tell me about your life. Shall we move on to
Speaker 1: ice cutting? Yeah? This one I love. It's fascinating. You
Speaker 1: know my grandmother Bryant said, ice box. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would imagine that that was like part of her jam, right,
Speaker 1: like an actual like something you would point to and say,
Speaker 1: that's a refrigerator. But no, no, no, friend, there's no
Speaker 1: refrigeration going on whatsoever. It's just an insulated wooden box
Speaker 1: that you jam a block of ice into the top
Speaker 1: of and let it cool the rest of it down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean if she she loved to be a hundred
Speaker 1: and she passed away probably I don't know, like eight
Speaker 1: or ten years ago, so she was definitely rocking the
Speaker 1: ice box when she was a kid for sure, and
Speaker 1: into her probably like um married life, I would guess,
Speaker 1: the early married life. Yeah, I mean, she told me
Speaker 1: a story one time about when she was like twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen, she and her two friends stole the uh,
Speaker 1: the horse and carriage that delivered the mail and rode
Speaker 1: it around town for a joy ride. That sounds awesome,
Speaker 1: so that she was definitely a link to the past.
Speaker 1: It was great hearing those stories. The male horse hats
Speaker 1: off to you. Granny Bryant. Yeah, hats off Granny Bryant.
Speaker 1: So she had an ice box. I just described an
Speaker 1: ice box. But the question is this, chuck, Let's say,
Speaker 1: where was Granny Bryant born and raised? I didn't know
Speaker 1: where she was born, but she generally lived in most
Speaker 1: of her life in Tennessee. Okay, in Tennessee. So it's
Speaker 1: the middle of the summer and it's super hot, but
Speaker 1: you have an ice box. What are you gonna do
Speaker 1: for ice? Well, Fortunately, the good folks up in Illinois
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin and Minnesota spent the winter harvesting ice. And
Speaker 1: that was a job you could have, was an ice harvester,
Speaker 1: because before there was the advent of making mechanical ice
Speaker 1: and mechanical refrigeration, we got ice by literally harvesting it
Speaker 1: from frozen ponds and lakes and rivers during the winter,
Speaker 1: packing it away just so, and then come summertime it
Speaker 1: would be distributed throughout the country and delivered two homes
Speaker 1: by again horse and carriage like the mail. Apparently amazing.
Speaker 1: So here's how it would work. You would uh, sometimes
Speaker 1: they could use a pond, but generally very slow moving
Speaker 1: water was best because it formed really good clear ice.
Speaker 1: I saw something about ponds weren't great because the ice
Speaker 1: could become kind of stagnant and not not super great. Gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe a very slow moving uh river would be great.
Speaker 1: And the first thing that you want to do is
Speaker 1: is probably use a horse drawn plow because you don't
Speaker 1: want that thing packed up with snow on top of it. No,
Speaker 1: because the snow actually keeps the ice from freezing as
Speaker 1: as well, because you want cold wind on it, not
Speaker 1: cold snow. Right, right, So you got the horse keeping
Speaker 1: the the snow clear. That's one, one step one and
Speaker 1: that's what they would call these ice farms. And like
Speaker 1: you would have an ice farm, like if somebody came
Speaker 1: and tried to poach your ice, you had a legal
Speaker 1: dispute going on, like this is a big deal. And
Speaker 1: during the summer it was just like a river or
Speaker 1: a an aer raided pond or something like that. But
Speaker 1: come come wintertime it became like big business. You'd have
Speaker 1: whole crewise and operations going on. Right, So you've got
Speaker 1: this the horses clearing the snow, and every once in
Speaker 1: a while a horse would fall through the ice. It
Speaker 1: is sad and you would think, well, so long horse,
Speaker 1: But Apparently somebody figured out that you could strap a
Speaker 1: rope around a horse's neck and it would be struggling
Speaker 1: under the water, and if you pulled the neck tight,
Speaker 1: I guess you kind of cut off its air enough
Speaker 1: to get it to quit struggling. It does and then
Speaker 1: other horses would pull that horse out of the water
Speaker 1: and giving it a fighting chance to survive. So that
Speaker 1: was a big hazard, not just for horses, but for
Speaker 1: the people working there too, and they would wear special
Speaker 1: horse shoes that would prevent them from slipping and breaking
Speaker 1: through as much as possible. But yeah, I would imagine
Speaker 1: a horse drawn plow on ice is just an accident
Speaker 1: waiting to happen. I remember growing up in Toledo, we
Speaker 1: were allowed to ice skate on some of the ponds
Speaker 1: on the golf course, like across the street from US
Speaker 1: and UM, but not until Dad went out with his
Speaker 1: work boots on stomped around the pond to make sure
Speaker 1: that it didn't crack. And it was like, that was
Speaker 1: really great that he was doing that for uce, but
Speaker 1: it was also not the best technique you could think of,
Speaker 1: although it's the only technique I can think of, really,
Speaker 1: But hats off to Dad. Too, for stomping on the
Speaker 1: pond ice for us to make sure we didn't fall through.
Speaker 1: Your dad would do that, Oh yeah, every every winter,
Speaker 1: some sometimes a couple of times in winter, depending on
Speaker 1: whether the ice had started all or not. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen too many movies that just scares me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. Uh, well I didn't. You don't really think
Speaker 1: much about your mortality as a youngster, you know, no
Speaker 1: kind of invincible. Uh So, all right, so they're clearing
Speaker 1: the snow, but it gets super frozen when there's no snow,
Speaker 1: like really frozen, and then you would come in and
Speaker 1: score the ice because just cutting it is is too
Speaker 1: tough by that point, so you score it by cutting
Speaker 1: into it I guess a few inches and getting it
Speaker 1: going depending on your operation, dependent on the kind of
Speaker 1: size of an ice block you want. But they said
Speaker 1: in our article maybe two ft by six ft was
Speaker 1: pretty standard. And then you would cut it all the
Speaker 1: way through with another horse drawn device, a horse drawn saw,
Speaker 1: I think, almost all the way through, and then humans
Speaker 1: would saw it the rest of the way, and then
Speaker 1: you've got like a floating two ft by six ft
Speaker 1: by However thick the ice was chunk of ice, right,
Speaker 1: and that's heavy. That's a very heavy thing. So you
Speaker 1: would kind of push it with sticks through a channel
Speaker 1: that you had to carve out to the shoreline, and um,
Speaker 1: then you had to figure out a way to raise
Speaker 1: it out of the water onto like a cart or
Speaker 1: something like that, and then take it to the ice house,
Speaker 1: which was a probably a cement like cinder block building
Speaker 1: that um you would pack with sawdust so that this
Speaker 1: ice wouldn't melt onto one another or melt at all
Speaker 1: during the summer, and then just wait for summer to
Speaker 1: come and then bam, start charge of people money, yep I.
Speaker 1: And this was a job through like the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: until you know, refrigeration became a thing, and then people
Speaker 1: like my grandmother, they couldn't You couldn't stop saying ice
Speaker 1: box or tinfoil, Yeah, tin foil. I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd still say tinfoils. Seat and olio she
Speaker 1: said olio instead of butter. That's that's growdy. How could
Speaker 1: you eat that if you call it olio? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know she never I don't know why she
Speaker 1: said that because she didn't use butter. She used the
Speaker 1: big bell jar bacon grease that she collected sitting on
Speaker 1: the stove, like even on bread. No, no, no no, just
Speaker 1: for cooking. I got you. But she was old school man.
Speaker 1: It's kind of neat when you have a link to
Speaker 1: the past like that. One more thing about ice cutting. Um,
Speaker 1: one of the best three stooges ever was called an
Speaker 1: Ache and every Steak, and they were ice delivery men.
Speaker 1: I think I remember that. Yeah. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble with it, as as you can expect. There
Speaker 1: were probably some tongs placed in the wrong area at
Speaker 1: one point where Mo yeah and Curly Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: they both got it. Probably Curly did it first accidentally
Speaker 1: to Mo, and then Mo retaliated on purpose, I remember correctly.
Speaker 1: All Right, two more to go. Yeah, we really are
Speaker 1: doing eight this time? Huh. I think so so, Chuck.
Speaker 1: When you go to a bowling alley, right um, and
Speaker 1: you roll the ball, I'm gonna go ahead and give
Speaker 1: you the benefit of the out. You would hit a strike,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Steve ruck In the how you say, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Um, When you knock all his pins
Speaker 1: down an awesome machine comes down, well, there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any pins left. But if there was one standing, a
Speaker 1: machine would come down, grab it, raise it, and then
Speaker 1: a sweeper would come and push all of the knockdown
Speaker 1: pins that you hit, which are called deadwood by the way,
Speaker 1: back into a little pit, and then a new set
Speaker 1: would come down and reset and your ball would shoot out.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing is a marvel of mechanical engineering.
Speaker 1: It's all mechanical. But there was a time where if
Speaker 1: you went bowling, there were little boys back there who
Speaker 1: did all the jobs that I just said that machine did.
Speaker 1: They were known as pin setters. That's right, and we
Speaker 1: have Mr Gottfried Freddie Schmidt to thank for the automatic
Speaker 1: pin spotter, where he debuted this thing at the American
Speaker 1: Bowling con Grits Tournament. But like you said, previous to that,
Speaker 1: they had little pin boys who would for about what
Speaker 1: ten cents per game, per bowl or per games. So
Speaker 1: if you had like six bowlers bowling in a in
Speaker 1: a game, you would you'd make sixty cents a game. Technically.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Hi, Yeah, you could make some dough if
Speaker 1: you really hustled. Wow. That's not bad for a ten
Speaker 1: year old at the time, not at all. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing too, I mean, I guess it's the great
Speaker 1: way to the best way to pay them for a
Speaker 1: bowling alley. But because you don't want to pay them
Speaker 1: while there's no one bowling. No, no, it's like per
Speaker 1: bowl or per per game. So yeah, if you're just
Speaker 1: standing around, you're not making any money. Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: would they would set the pins up. They would uh,
Speaker 1: they would wipe the pins away by means of carrying them.
Speaker 1: And they actually had pinbars that they would step on
Speaker 1: to raise these little metal spikes and that's how they
Speaker 1: would align the pins. They just didn't eyeball it right.
Speaker 1: And I read an account by a former or pin
Speaker 1: pin setter. Um, and so you're hanging out there where
Speaker 1: people are throwing the bowling ball where it hits the back,
Speaker 1: like you're hanging out back there. So there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things going on. Um. Apparently teenagers would love to
Speaker 1: take aim, sometimes drunken adults, so you had to watch
Speaker 1: out for people bowling at you. Pins sometimes would get
Speaker 1: knocked to the back and hit you in the shin
Speaker 1: or the head or something like that. But this account
Speaker 1: that I read was, Um, this guy, this kid was
Speaker 1: saying like there was no better way to like secretly
Speaker 1: enter the world of adults than to be a pin setter,
Speaker 1: because adults would go bowl and get drunk and you
Speaker 1: were in the back basically invisible, but you're hearing everything.
Speaker 1: You're seeing everything. You could hear something from way down there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from way back there. From what this guy said, at
Speaker 1: the very least you can watch their their physical behavior
Speaker 1: or whatever. But um, yeah, he said he learned quite
Speaker 1: a bit about human nature by being a pin setter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess the the equivalent of trying to throw your
Speaker 1: ball at the pin setter is when you go to
Speaker 1: a golf driving range. Slightly dude comes out in the
Speaker 1: in the sixty Volkswagen Beetle with a ball trough on
Speaker 1: the front of it, and everybody on that driving range
Speaker 1: tries to hit that car. In Unison, it's just I
Speaker 1: think one of the things you do. I haven't been
Speaker 1: to a driving range and forever, but when that car
Speaker 1: comes out, there's one objective, see if you can hit it,
Speaker 1: and then that guy driving or the girl driving to
Speaker 1: screams at the top of their lug stop stop. I'm
Speaker 1: a human being. Well, and for the for people who
Speaker 1: don't understand these these old cars are heavily caged, so
Speaker 1: it's not like you're gonna hit anybody or breakthrough a
Speaker 1: window or anything like that. Sure you're not. But they
Speaker 1: also electrify the cage so that the person can't get out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun. I've always wanted to drive one of those.
Speaker 1: I've never seen a beetle. I've always seen like some
Speaker 1: sort of like a lawn tractor or something like that
Speaker 1: with a pokemobile top on it. Oh see back, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've been by golfing a long time, but
Speaker 1: all the courses I went to you had just old gelopes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like the people running the courses you went
Speaker 1: to were smoking grass, growing grass and smoking grass. Right,
Speaker 1: Uh so what else about these people? Basically overnight they vanished.
Speaker 1: The first moment those automatic pin setters came about. That
Speaker 1: was that was that? But the that kid whose account
Speaker 1: I read or the man whose account I read as
Speaker 1: a kid, No, that still doesn't work, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, I'm not gonna say it a third way. Um.
Speaker 1: He said that it took him about two months to
Speaker 1: realize that you set set the pins and then you
Speaker 1: roll the ball back to give yourself time to get
Speaker 1: out of the way. If you roll the ball back
Speaker 1: and set the pins. By that time the person's got
Speaker 1: their ball ready and they take aim for you. Jerks. Jerks, indeed,
Speaker 1: bowler's notorious jerks. Hmm some of them, sure, Like John Leguizamo, No,
Speaker 1: John Toturo, Oh, Jeseus. Yeah, like Tsus you did huh well,
Speaker 1: except for the fact that he was a petterist. He
Speaker 1: was a bit of a jerk too. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: a better and I forgot about that part. Uh. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so pin setters, Uh, the last one. This is my
Speaker 1: favorite of all time. Yeah. Party line operator. Not to
Speaker 1: be confused with the party line operators from the party
Speaker 1: lines of the eighties and nineties. These are the much
Speaker 1: more innocent party lines of the early twentieth century. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: here's how telephoning used to work back in the old days.
Speaker 1: If you lived out in the sticks, uh, and imagine
Speaker 1: even in certain city blocks, but if you lived out
Speaker 1: in the rural areas, you would have a shared telephone
Speaker 1: line between sometimes ten or twenty houses. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: would have your own special ring that you would be
Speaker 1: able to recognize. And when someone calls all twenty houses,
Speaker 1: the phone rings and you have to know your ring
Speaker 1: to answer, or you're gonna pick up and be listening
Speaker 1: to your neighbor's conversation, which which happened a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently that was called rubbering. You have no idea why,
Speaker 1: but it's what you were doing, your eaves dropping on
Speaker 1: your neighbor. And it's called a party line. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so the party line. Um, they they had party lines
Speaker 1: because this is at a time when running telephone line
Speaker 1: and operating and maintaining it was very, very expensive because
Speaker 1: it was early in the telephones infancy. Right, So you
Speaker 1: rural Nebraskan should just thank your lucky stars that you
Speaker 1: even have a telephone. Don't don't try to get all
Speaker 1: fancy and ask for just your own line. That would
Speaker 1: come later. But um, when you had this party line,
Speaker 1: you you could ring your own neighbor on the same
Speaker 1: party line if you knew their ring. Like when you
Speaker 1: look at the old telephones where you have the receiver
Speaker 1: that you hold up to your ear and you speak
Speaker 1: into the mouthpiece, you see people crank it. Sometimes what
Speaker 1: they're doing is they're actually turning a magnet inside a
Speaker 1: spool of copper coil um. So that and there's they're
Speaker 1: turning it in a way that it's mimicking the ring
Speaker 1: of the family on their party line they're trying to reach.
Speaker 1: So if the family's ring is a long, short long,
Speaker 1: they're like ring, ring, ring, that's how they're they're spinning.
Speaker 1: The magnet creates a current which translates into the ring
Speaker 1: on all of the other phones in the party line.
Speaker 1: So you could call people yourself, but if you wanted
Speaker 1: to call outside of your party line, you had to
Speaker 1: dial the operator, yes, which was a long ring. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you would call central what they called Central, which
Speaker 1: is where the switch board was, and they were you know,
Speaker 1: someone was there twenty four hours a day, lived there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like in their little apartment that they would they
Speaker 1: would have set up for them. And uh, if you
Speaker 1: if you needed an emergency, it was generally agreed upon
Speaker 1: that the longest ring possible was an emergency. So if
Speaker 1: you're on a party line of like let's say fifteen
Speaker 1: houses and there's a tornado coming through, you're the first
Speaker 1: one to see it. You would do a long, long, long,
Speaker 1: long ring, and everybody on that party line would either
Speaker 1: just know that's a warning or they would know to
Speaker 1: pick up all, everyone could pick up the phone at
Speaker 1: once and Elmer could say we got a tornado come in,
Speaker 1: and then it was like the origins of pretty much. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a good way to communicate quickly with your neighbors.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a lifesaver. Yeah, another reason you
Speaker 1: should just be happy to have any kind of phone line,
Speaker 1: you hay seed. So this rubbering thing was was like
Speaker 1: you said, it was quite a as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: since there have been neighbors, there have been neighbors trying
Speaker 1: to get another neighbor's business, So, uh, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Like sometimes they even said in
Speaker 1: here you could kind of fashion a speaker phone if
Speaker 1: you just wanted to listen in but not stay in
Speaker 1: there by just letting the earpiece drop into like a
Speaker 1: bucket or something ooops, and it would just you know,
Speaker 1: to amplify the sound and you could go about cleaning
Speaker 1: your house and listening in on your neighbor's conversation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And something Granny Bryant knew but took to her grave
Speaker 1: and never share with anybody is that if you hung it,
Speaker 1: dangled it into a croc a bacon fat, it would
Speaker 1: really amplify it. That's I'm sure she had a party line.
Speaker 1: There's no way she lived in Tennessee. Starting in the
Speaker 1: nineteen d and part yeah for sure. And this actually,
Speaker 1: I mean party lines went on for a while, as
Speaker 1: you know, in the city, um where you know, people
Speaker 1: demanded respect from phone companies. You you got your own
Speaker 1: line sooner than later. But out in the rural areas
Speaker 1: they continued on quite a while. And there's actually a
Speaker 1: movie called Pillow Talk starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson.
Speaker 1: Pretty great, cute little romcom from the late fifties, but
Speaker 1: it was from nineteen fifty nine and the whole basis
Speaker 1: of the plot revolved around a party line. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like a mix up and it tensional mix of he
Speaker 1: toyed with her a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. I like it. Well that's it man. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: party line operators they went the way of the dinosaur
Speaker 1: when everybody started getting their own line and you didn't
Speaker 1: need the party line operator. Nope, So long, get out
Speaker 1: of get out of this office that you live in.
Speaker 1: And now we've evolved to the point where everyone has
Speaker 1: their own WiFi that's locked down by password and nobody
Speaker 1: couldn't use it. Yeah, think about it. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the times when you would call a number and you
Speaker 1: you you could get any one of a number of
Speaker 1: family members at the same number. And now it's like
Speaker 1: you call somebody and you're calling that person. Everyone has
Speaker 1: a phone number. It's like the next evolution from a
Speaker 1: party from party lines to individual household lines. And now
Speaker 1: individual people have lines. Because you would call and say,
Speaker 1: can I speak to Josh, and then Mom would say,
Speaker 1: Josh phone, and then after a couple of minutes, you'd
Speaker 1: hear Mom hang up, stop rubbering, and then Mom would
Speaker 1: fake it because she needed to know about all your
Speaker 1: AH cigarette activities. Yeah, that's right. She'd be like, I
Speaker 1: didn't know he switched to men thal. That's it, all right,
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? All right? Extinct jobs? Will yours
Speaker 1: be next? We'll find out in ten years. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about extinct jobs, there's a there's
Speaker 1: an article we didn't cover two of them on the
Speaker 1: site at how stuff works dot com. And since I
Speaker 1: said that, it's time for a listener, mayo, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this uh Christiania m follow up. We heard from
Speaker 1: quite a few people that have been to this little
Speaker 1: idyllic or is it a dyllic village in uh near
Speaker 1: Copenhagen in Denmark? Yeah, Denmark, which is where Copenhagen is, right. Hey,
Speaker 1: I's been an Abod listener for about five years. I
Speaker 1: do not live in Christiania. Is that it's pronounced Christie?
Speaker 1: I think Christianna. All right, you may have misspelled it,
Speaker 1: but I did visit about five years ago. My cousin
Speaker 1: lives in Copenhagen. I live in Ireland, and he took
Speaker 1: me on a trip there after dark, in the middle
Speaker 1: of winter. It is a beautiful place, filled with arts,
Speaker 1: crafts in striking architecture. When we first entered, my cousin
Speaker 1: was quick to point out the sign that said have fun,
Speaker 1: don't run no photos. Asked him why, and he said,
Speaker 1: due to the nature of the site, like the sale
Speaker 1: of cannabis and other soft drugs that are otherwise illegal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I'm adding this part myself, they're illegal
Speaker 1: there as well. Um. Because apparently other people said the
Speaker 1: cops will rate it sometimes uh. And in fact she
Speaker 1: says occasionally it is rated by police and running is
Speaker 1: seen as a threat of danger and as his photography
Speaker 1: for the same reasons. So apparently you don't run there, brother, No,
Speaker 1: you just chill. Yeah, just take its low man. At
Speaker 1: just nineteen, I was pretty intimidated. But why what I
Speaker 1: saw is lawlessness? Until my cousin mentioned we go for
Speaker 1: dinner there. He took me up a stairway covered in
Speaker 1: graffiti and artwork, only two open heavy doors into what
Speaker 1: remained my favorite restaurant of all time. Yeah, this sounds
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Low wooden beam ceilings, white table cloths, and
Speaker 1: a simple, gorgeous, entirely in Danish menu that my cousin
Speaker 1: kindly translated. What followed was the most beautiful and memorable
Speaker 1: meal I've ever had, and it changed my idea that
Speaker 1: this place was lawless and scary. Since then, I've urged
Speaker 1: any friends to visit Denmark to stop by. Next time
Speaker 1: I visit my cousin, I'll be sure to go during
Speaker 1: the day and taking the beautiful murals in the sun
Speaker 1: between you guys and the mcelroys. Hope to never run
Speaker 1: out of informative and entertaining podcasts. You never will. Lots
Speaker 1: of love your Irish Pal. Thanks a lot, Irish Pal.
Speaker 1: That was a great story man. The idea of going
Speaker 1: to the best restaurant you've ever been to in an
Speaker 1: anarchist project in Denmark is pretty awesome. Yeah, and other
Speaker 1: people's you I should point out just that went during
Speaker 1: the day talked about how just insane some of these
Speaker 1: houses were because at one point, I think there was
Speaker 1: a a contest or something and all of these houses
Speaker 1: or a lot of these houses were built during that
Speaker 1: time frame, and you know, they just range from these
Speaker 1: crazy art looking homes to just very modest things. But
Speaker 1: it just sounds like some people did send a few
Speaker 1: pictures like decorating your cubicle around a holiday or something,
Speaker 1: which no either do you know. So if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can
Speaker 1: follow us on social you can go to stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com and all of our links are there.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love it, And you can also send us
Speaker 1: an email, right, Chuck, that's right. Send it to stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.