It isn’t easy having a first name...
It isn’t easy having a first name that is synonymous with a bathroom fixture.
So you can understand why Chatsworth consultant John Jackson is proud to be chairman of the A.T.D.P.F.C.T.J.
Better known as the Assn. to Deter People from Calling Toilets John.
Each of the group’s board members is a John (middle and last names also qualify).
“We think we’re gaining a little bit,” Jackson said cautiously of his movement. But, he added sadly, “we even find Johns who still say ‘john’ (for toilet).”
Apart from wearing hats with the group’s initials, the members do little besides hand out their A.T.D.P.F.C.T.J. cards around the nation to halt etymological offense. They don’t do any picketing or even letter-writing.
“I’ve thought of sending a (membership) invitation to Johnny Carson,” Jackson said. “But I don’t know.. . .”
Part of the problem may be that the board would refuse to accept Carson unless the 65-year-old TV host sheds his boyhood nickname and stands up to be counted as a John.
Exactly when the toilet first acquired this alternate name, incidentally, isn’t known.
A Harvard College regulation of 1735 stated: “No freshman shall . . . go into the fellows’ cuzjohn .”
Author Hugh Rawson says that, in Colonial days, “ cousin john , to give it its full title, is apparently a close relative of jakes , jacques and jack’s house (or place ),” all of which were euphemisms for toilets in those reserved times.
Some non-Johns out there shouldn’t be so smug, by the way. Rawson notes in “A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Double Talk” that john inspired “similar proper-name euphemisms . . . 19th century Americans sometimes spoke of going to the joe , and even today a woman’s toilet may be referred to as a jane .”
He adds that “at Vassar, in the Roaring Twenties, the john was called fred .”
Alas, for the A.T.D.P.F.C.T.J., fred didn’t catch on nationwide.
Our Dueling Signs of the Week, which appear to constitute a warning of sorts, were discovered by Elmer Black of Temple City.
Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District will be among those agencies at the signing of a statewide water-conservation charter on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento today. “In case of rain,” a press release notes, “backup location is the Capitol Plaza Halls.”
We’re glad the event won’t be rained out.
A UPI dispatch announcing posthumous ceremonies on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame for rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Alan Freed said that “those expected to be on hand for the star’s unveiling” Tuesday were “Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and Fats Domino.”
Sadly enough, Muddy couldn’t make it, having died in 1983.
Then, again, death doesn’t seem to have slowed down Elvis.
miscelLAny:
Mark Denis, a traffic reporter for radio stations KFI-AM and KOST-FM, is also the Voice of the Monorail at Disneyland.