Gum Chewing... An Age-Old Enjoyment

 

I'm a gum chewer. Sad to say, this is not far from a cud-chewer when I'm in my best form. Yes, I was one of those kids who was made to stand in the corner at school for an hour with a wad of gum stuck on my nose. That would definitely not be allowed in today's classroom; it would lower my self-esteem. Back then it obviously did not. I continued to chew gum … just more surreptitiously. Oh, Miss Thompson, if you only knew.

My Mom could chew a half stick of Dentyne (prevent decay, sweeten your breath, keep teeth white) all day long. I'm never happy with one stick, or even two. Though I'm promised “intense flavor that lasts”, it never does. I need more … and more. Sometimes I consider a pack equal to a single serving. Oh, yeah, I take my gum chewing quite seriously.

Gum chewing is quite popular in the USA, but not so much in other countries. In fact, parodies of Americans many times show gum-chewing bimbos. They always seem to have that vacant look in their eyes … akin to the aforementioned cud-chewers. In actuality though, Kantar Media found that the Middle East nations of Iran and Saudi Arabia had the most gum chewers, some of which is accounted for by the fact that vendors give pieces of gum in lieu of small change. Heck, the gum industry is a $19 billion market worldwide. That's some serious chewing.

Chewing gum dates back at least 5,000 years. They found a piece of bark tar with tooth imprints from the Neolithic period somewhere in Finland and concluded that they were chewing gum way back then. In Mexico, they refer to gum as “chicle” which I always though was based on “Chiclets”, a candy-coated gum pellet I used to love when I was a kid. Plus you could use the gum as fake front teeth and considering the amount of sugar in them, that wasn't a reach. Chicle actually was the base for gum products until it was replaced with a cheaper “rubber-like polymer” product in the 1960's. The Mayans and Aztecs chewed chicle and the ancient Greeks chewed mastiche. So you see, I'm in good company.

In 1848, John B. Curtis developed and sold the first commercial chewing gum called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. It's still available, but only as a specialty type product at a specialty price. In 1871, Thomas Adams patented a machine for the manufacture of gum. It's the same Adams name that's part of Cadbury Adams today and still produces chewing gum.

Speaking of specialty gums, do you remember Blackjack, licorice-flavored gum that you could use to black out your front teeth? Blackjack was the first flavored gum and the first to be offered in sticks. Huh! Now that's entertainment. Then there was Beeman's clove-gum, a flavor/smell I always associate with old ladies for some reason (who probably had false teeth and couldn't chew gum anyway).

Do you remember bubble gum cigars? or wax lips and moustaches that could be chewed like gum? How about baseball cards that came with a flat, baseball card sized hunk of bubble gum?

Today, it's hard to get out of a store without seeing a chewing gum display. The flavors now include root beer, apple pie and orange. Give me spearmint or something refreshing, please, nothing frou-frou.

Schools, by the way, do not allow chewing gum because “students often dispose of it inappropriately, the chewing may be distracting in class, and the gum might carry diseases or bacteria from other students.” Sounds like bunk to me. The under side of desks was and probably still is the “inappropriate” depository for chewing gum at school, but did you ever see those tourist places that tout the blobs of chewing gum stuck to the walls. Talk about disgusting. Get this ... The Singapore government outlawed chewing gum in 1992 because it was becoming a danger when it was wedged in the sliding doors of underground trains. However, in 2002 the government relented and allowed sugarless gum to be sold in pharmacies if a doctor or dentist prescribed it.

Bubblegum, though it's usually not sugar-free, is fun to chew. The 23-inch bubble blown by Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, California in 1996 holds the Guiness Book of World Records for largest bubblegum bubble. I'm definitely not in her league. I did like chewing Dubble Bubble and Bazooka, partly for the gum and partly for the comics inside.

There was always something neat about bubblegum machines, too. I guess begging for a penny (now 25 cents...inflation), having my parents give it to me and then going through the complex process of inserting the coin and getting the gumball was always a satisfying experience for me as a little kid. I was easily amused then.

I know, I know. This is more than you ever wanted to read about chewing gum, but you know how my mind works … in mysterious ways. So relax and chew. The ADA says chewing sugarless gum is good for your teeth.

New England Speak

I've talked about New Englanders and their accents … chowdah and lobstah, for example. Though I've been away for years and pretty much lost the accent, it's easy to slip back and every once in awhile I can hear David chuckle as I tell him I'm heading over to my “sista's” house. Beyond the accent, we also have our own vocabulary in this part of the country. Here are a few of my favorites.  

The package store … does not sell packages nor do they package up stuff for shipping. No, a package store is the local term for a liquor store and we sometimes refer to it as “the packie”.

How about a cabinet? Got you on this one, huh? In Rhode Island, a cabinet is another word for a frappe (silent “e”). What's a frappe, you ask? A frappe is a thick milkshake. Rhode Island also serves coffee milk: milk with coffee syrup, like chocolate milk.

We eat grinders instead of submarine sandwiches.

New Englanders love their clams. There are steamers (steamed clams) and quahogs (pronounced coh-hogs) which are super-large clams, used for clam cakes, chowdah and stuffed clams. Then there are littlenecks and cherrystones, tender little guys usually served raw with a horseradish-based cocktail sauce and lemon. And don't forget fried clams … only whole bellies, no strips! We wash it down with bee-ah or perhaps tonic. Tonic is soda elsewhere or any carbonated beverage and not necessarily Schweppes tonic water with quinine, although it could be.

If you're in a Dunkin Donuts aka Dunkies, the #1 donut shop in all of New England, and you order a regulah coffee, you'll get it with cream and two sugahs.

Wicked is a particularly well-used adjective here. It replaces “very”, but in a more emphatic way. I'm not sure if it's from our heritage of witchcraft in Salem or what, but things are “wicked awesome” or “wicked weird”, but rarely just wicked. Sometimes wicked is used in conjunction with frickin which is a more courteous way to say the “F” word, e.g. frickin' wicked.

Then there's a bubbler. You might know it as a water fountain or a drinking fountain elsewhere. Three deckers and triple deckers are better known as tenement houses or three-story apartment buildings in other areas of the country. The cellar (pronounced cellah) is known as the basement in other parts of the country. In fact, most times we don't even use “the”, we just say “I'll take it down cellah.”

Turnpike is another word for a toll road. The Mass Pike (aka Interstate 90), or simply The Pike, is probably the best known toll road in the area. Lots of toll roads in the East; not so many in the West.

Candlepin bowling allows you three tries to hit the ten narrow little pins at the end of the alley. It's the only kind of bowling I'd ever done until I moved to New York where they had the “big balls”, aka ten pin bowling. Nowadays, there's both here, as well as duckpin bowling.

If you ever plan to come to Boston, you might want to learn the language. Check out The Wicked Good Guide to Boston English.

Going to the Movies - "The Butler"

We saw a movie last night. Well, actually we went to a movie theater and watched a newly released movie on the big screen rather than sitting in Bea's apartment and watching something on HBO that we really weren't interested in or had seen before. I can't remember the last time we did this; it's been that long. First, we haven't had an evening to ourselves in ages. Second, we're too cheap to spend big bucks to go out to a movie. Third, there's never anything playing that we're interested in seeing. So, when we had a rare free evening and found ourselves just sitting around AND the local movie theater only charged $6.25 for a movie ticket and there was something of interest to watch … well, let's just say it didn't take us long to get our acts together and head out the door to the Sharon Cinema 8. Please note that our idea of a movie aboard Nine of Cups is usually sitting on the saloon settee about 24” from the laptop screen to watch a DVD or (dare we admit it?) perhaps a pirated movie of lesser quality. Either the audio or video are faulty or it's a movie we've watched several times before. It's still an enjoyable evening, but nothing like the real thing.

It might have been awhile, but it didn't take us long to get into the groove. “Two “senior” tickets for “The Butler”, please.” “Marcie, go order the mega-tub of popcorn!” Who needs dinner when there's movie popcorn and a liter of diet Coke to be had? We were in a nirvana-type state by the time the trailers began.

We watched “The Butler” with Forest Whitaker in the lead and Oprah Winfrey as his wife. Based on a true story, the hero, Cecil Gaines, is an apolitical black “domestic” who served several US Presidents in the White House as a butler. Cecil's son is a black political activist. The story follows Cecil's career as a butler through American racial turmoil during the civil rights movement from Eisenhower in the 1950's to Reagan.

We liked the movie, but this is by no means meant to be a movie review. Rather, it's a commentary on how something as simple as a night out together to watch a movie, munch popcorn, and hold hands in a dark movie theater can have such a wonderful effect on a couple's attitude. The fact that the movie was a good one was a bonus!