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Show I By ELMO SCOTT WATSON ,"! HE modern Kip Van Win-I Win-I I kle caiue back to his I I home town and rubbed I I his eyes In amazement. I I Of course, he had ex-xm ex-xm mi I pected to find many changes In the place. fov'Syl The buildings along Main street were now handsome structures of brick and concrete, con-crete, replacing the old frame stores with their "false fronts" which had given the Impression that they were two stories high, even If they weren't. But It wasn't so much the altered architectural ar-chitectural appearance that troubled this Rip Van Winkle. It was the unfamiliar un-familiar legends on the fronts of the places of business which had him Puzzled. The first thing which he wanted, of course, after his long sleep was a shave and hair cut, and guided to the place where he could obtain those attentions by the familiar Krlped baroer pole (It wasn't a pole oy more but a rapidly revolving cylinder cyl-inder encased in glass) he approached 'he place where Bill Jenkins' barber op had once been; But what was this marvel of white tiling and porcelain porce-lain In which he was welcomed by a wave individual dressed in white? It was a "Tonsorial Parlor and Beatity Shoppe." A Job by any other name would stl" be a Job but it wouldn't sound o Important If we didn't call it a position po-sition or a profession" to paraphrase iIr- Will Shakespeare. And In these modern days a Rip Van Winkle would "id more than one example besides jne conversion of "barber shop" into "tonsorial parlor," thus demonstrates demonstrat-es the fact that mankind is engaged " "dressing up" the familiar occupations occupa-tions with exotic names which half conceal and half reveal their true na-tBre. na-tBre. After all, there is a perfectly 8d reason for our doing so. Deep all of us Is the fundamental desire o dramatize our lives: and to hide "e drab realities under some glltter-ln8 glltter-ln8 cloak of fancy. As to which class of men started business of "dressing up" occupational occu-pational nomenclature, it Is difficult soy. Time was when we were -cieu into this world by the old "mlly doctor, but now It is done by obstetriclan. An undertaker used 0 usher us out, but now its done by mortician. In between those two st Important events we are served various ways by the greatest va- rlety of persons, all of whose titles indicate that they are specialists In this age of specialization. Formerly when we wanted to buy a home or a farm we went to a real estate agent. Xow we carry the tale of our land hunger or our desire to conform to the tautological "Own Tour Own Home" slogan by consulting a realtor. We are kept In health by a great variety of medical men. The old family doctor managed to i:eep granddad grand-dad and his family going with the standard remedies which cured a whole host of human Ills, but If we want to make sure that we are hitting hit-ting on all six, we must consult an army of these "new-fangled" specialists. special-ists. If our eyesight begins to fail we don't go to the Jeweler in our town and have him fit us with a pair of spectacles. Instead we make an appointment ap-pointment with an optometrist and pay him a fee in proportion to the length of his title. If we get the stomach stom-ach ache we go to a diagnostician, who looks us over and then sends us to the proper specalist for our particular particu-lar disorder. If we get a toothache, the logical thing of course, is to go to the dentist's office. Only he isn't that any more. Dentist, meaning "tooth carpenter" wasn't dignified enough, but "gnathologist" a word of Greek origin, meaning "a person versed in the science of masticatory apparatus" Is. If the wife discovers that wrinkles are appearing in her face, she doesn't tile herself to a "beauty parlor," but she goes to a "Salon de Beaute" or consults a dermatologist. When she wants a new dress she doesn't have Millie Connell, the town dressmaker, come to the house to sew the chances are that she has to call up "Mille, Modiste," and make an appointment ap-pointment for a fitting, because the mornings are taken up with one of the cosmeticians or cosmetologists or some other form of "beautician." What has become of the hoy or girl who used to clerk In the dry goods or grocery stores? For one thing, the "groceterias," which followed the cafeteria as Inevitably as night fol- lows the day, where the "serve-self" idea has reduced the necessity for so much "hired help," has put some of them out of an occupation, me otn-ers otn-ers aren't clerks any more. They're salesmen and salesladies. When they were promoted to salesmen, the traveling trav-eling salesmen-you know those "drummers"-and the stories they used to tell !-ceased to be drummers and became "commercial travelers." The butchers and bakers so far have not aspired to adopt a "high-toned" name. Nor have the tailors. But the painters and paper-hangers are now "decorators." And the tinker Is now a "tinsmith" or a "specialist In high-class high-class repairs." Not only have those who possess established es-tablished places of business changed their titles, but some of those whose business takes them from door to door have also undergone a new baptism. Do you remember the hucksters who used to go about offering the housewife house-wife bargains In green vegetables? If she waited for them now her family would never get enough of vltamlnei A and B. No ! She must telephone to the "Quality market" and have the cabbages and string beans and spinach delivered. What, too, has become of "the old clothes man" who was once as much a sign of spring as the first robin?. Well, the chances are that he has opened a place of business which he calls "An Appraisal Shop" or one which bears a legend "Clothing Merchant Mer-chant ; Estimates Cheerfully Made." Changing times, changing customs, changing names and changing contents con-tents of our stores who remembers when a drug store was a pharmacy where you bought such drugs as you needed? Originally, of course, the druggist was a chemist Go Into a drug store today and ask for some headache tablets and after the druggist drug-gist has finished serving a New England Eng-land boiled dinner at the soda fountain, foun-tain, sold one woman a box of stationery, station-ery, fitted a wrist watch to another, sold a little boy a baseball bat and a first baseman's glove, supplied the rushed citizen with a postage stamp, taken a magazine subscription for another, an-other, sold a third a copy 'of the latest lat-est book of fiction, he can supply you with the headache pills. But If the drug store has departed from Its original role, what shall we say of the plague of "shoppes" that Infest the land? The woman who established es-tablished the first "Giftle Shoppe" evidently ev-idently didn't realize what she was starting. For now long-suffering humanity hu-manity finds that in order to purchase even the necessities of life they must seek It in one of the Innumerable shoppes that have sprung up since then, and It Is said that in one city "There is none other than Ye Butcher Shoppe" where one can purchase ye olde porke choppes and ye olde steakes. and even ye olde catte meatte." |