Word: pumpkin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...unaccountably left behind this trip. But though she can talk, she has less animation, and character, than the mutt. The same lack of enchantment afflicts the new friends Dorothy makes on the journey. Instead of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion of blessed memory, she encounters a pumpkin with stick limbs, a tin soldier and something called a Gump, which looks suspiciously like your basic moosehead. They are all mechanical marvels, not actors, which means they can do anything except win an audience's heart. Still, it would defy the gifts of an Olivier to find interesting, amusing life...
Would we tolerate it if America's mothers gathered together and announced that because we had been eating a little too much pumpkin pie recently, they--as a group--were going to dump an extra half-cup of sugar into every one of their apple pies...
...that this nonsense is without pattern or order. Of terms of endearment there seem to be five main types: animal, edible, ethereal, infantile and strange. Animal terms include Lamb or Lambkins, Ducks, Mouse, Bear and the popular Pussycat. Among the edibles are Pumpkin, Apple Dumpling and an unhealthy variety of baked goods. Ethereal: Angel. Infantile: Babe, Baby, Baby Doll. Among the strange are combinations of the above, such as Lambie Pie, Honey Bear and Poopsie, a possible reference to fatigue. There are also physically or emotionally descriptive terms such as Hot Lips, Heartthrob, Hunk and Cuddles. All of which have...
...lime could talk, with all its citric wit and experience in bars, what stories it could tell! A talking pumpkin, on the other hand, would not be such an improvement...
...easier to sell a pumpkin to the American public than a lime: Rooney's book, unlike Royko's, is on The New York Times Best Seller List, number four for the week ending October 31. I can only hope that Halloween had something to do with it, but people this month, too, are preferring the trick to the treat. Royko should expect this, though, for it was Mencken who noted. "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people...