If I could live in any other decade in United States history (as the age I am now), it would have to be the 1920′s. It was a decade of immense economic prosperity and social evolution. It was the era of the flapper, speakeasies, jazz, and week-long dance marathons. The 1920′s brought about a wave of revolutionary inventions: the automobile, airplane, radio, film, TV, Vitamin E, and Penicillin. There were significant (and cool) happenings as well: the woman’s suffrage movement, the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, the Sacco and Vanzetti Case, and the Scopes Monkey Trial.
If I lived in the 1920′s, you’d to find me dancing the night away to a hot jazz band in a speakeasy with bootleg liquor in one hand a flapper girl in the other. Those were the days… It would be all good and fun until my birthday came at the end of the decade (October 29, 1929 also known as Black Tuesday), the great Stock Market Crash of 1929. Then it wouldn’t be so much fun anymore. But if my grandparents could survive the Great Depression, so could I.
The 1920′s also had the best slang. (Found here and here.) These are some of my favorites:
- Applesauce, Bee’s Knees, Cat’s Meow, Cat’s Pajamas, Heebie-Jeebies, Hotsy-Totsy, Real McCoy, Spifflicated, Wet Blanket, Whoopee, Zozzled
I’m trying to bring some of these back. Anyone with me?
- extraordinarIAN
Posted by Ian Mac