Made In America - Bill Bryson [130]
Anderson and Ingram hit on three novelties that sealed their success and have been the hallmarks of fast-food service ever since. They offered a limited menu, which promoted quick service and allowed them to concentrate on what they were good at; they kept their premises spotless, which encouraged confidence in their hygienic integrity; and they employed a distinctive, eye-catching design for the building, which made it instantly recognizable from blocks away. Soon there were White Castles all over the country and a following throng of eager imitators – White Tower, White Diamond, Royal Castle and White Crest – some of which survive to this day. The age of fast food was with us, though no one would know it as such for another thirty years. The expression fast food first appeared in 1954. Takeout food was even slower to arrive; its first recorded appearance is not until 1962.21
Before we part temporarily from the delights of hand-held comestibles, two other linguistic novelties of the early 1900s need mentioning. The first is hot dog. Memorably defined by H. L. Mencken as ‘a cartridge filled with the sweepings of abattoirs’, the hot dog had been part of the American scene since the early 1800s, but had gone under the name of frankfurter or wienerwurst (literally ‘Vienna sausage’, and corrupted to wienie as early as 1867). The modern name didn’t arise until a popular cartoonist named T. A. ‘Tad’ Dorgan drew a picture of a dachshund in an elongated bun in the early 1900s and the term caught on in a big way. It was also helped by the fact that the catch-phrase Hot dog! as a cry of delight or approbation was also sweeping the nation.
Dorgan was responsible for a slew of catch-phrases, among them cat’s pyjamas, yes man, skiddoo, you said it, drugstore cowboy and yes, we have no bananas, which he had picked up from an Italian fruit-seller and used in one of his cartoons. It became a national catch-phrase (one wonders how anyone found a context in which to employ it) and was soon set to music loosely plagiarized from ‘I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls’ and became a national sensation.22 (It is striking how many words have come into American English through comic strips. Heebie-jeebies, hot mama, hotsy-totsy, bodacious and horsefeathers were all either coined or popularized by W. B. ‘Billy’ DeBeck in his comic strips involving the characters Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. Hooligan was popularised by the comic strip ‘Happy Hooligan’. Keeping up with the Joneses was an expression inspired by a comic strip by I. Bacheller begun in 1911. ‘Popeye’ popularized goon and jeep.)
At about the time that the hot dog was taking its place in the language, another much-loved snack came to prominence: the ice-cream cone. Its invention is commonly traced to the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. According to one story (and there are many to choose from), a waffle vendor and ice-cream seller were stationed side by side on the grand concourse and discovered that if they combined their products they could not only produce an appealing and portable treat but one that also eliminated the trouble, expense and hygienic uncertainty of having to supply dishes and spoons. Unfortunately for this story, the ice-cream cone already existed in 1904. A patent had been taken out a decade earlier by an Italian-American named Italo Marchiony. The ice-cream cone may have become popular at the fair – though that in itself is by no means certain – but it wasn’t invented there. In any case, the term is not recorded in general usage before