Word: zoot
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...time, Rocky tries to dress the part. His idea of what the well-dressed man should wear is a dirty polo shirt; he buys a new zoot suit every month, lets a pal break it in, seldom sees it again. His dislike of barbers keeps a mop of black hair flopping over his eyes...
Mother Hen to Jazz. There were good men on the bandstand: Saxman Bud Freeman; cocky, stocky Trumpeter Wild Bill Davison, who blows the horn out of the side of his mouth; zoot-suitish Clarinetist Joe (Little Sir Echo) Marsala, Drummers Dave Tough and George Wettling-all members of ragtime's Valhalla (Chicago branch) who have kept on playing jazz the old way, even after their pal Benny Goodman called it swing and made it a million dollar baby. There were no music stands or orchestrations to be seen at Eddie Condon's. "That's for organized slop...
Next day it rained. But more than 100 of the faithful journeyed to the islands, found chipper Harry Truman in a brown leather bushjacket (he calls it his "zoot" suit). The party centered around him at the piano. He played some Chopin, and accompanied gusty renditions of the inevitable How Dry I Am and Sweet Adeline. At dark the fun broke up. The President was buttonholed by newsmen at the White House back door. He had one newsmaking thing to say: he alone would make the decision about the atomic bomb secret (see INTERNATIONAL). Had the President done himself some...
Clothing. "Zoot" suits - the green-and-brown camouflaged apparitions worn early in the war - have been discarded by the Army (marines still wear them). Nowadays soldiers wear a two-piece jungle uniform made of green herringbone twill. Because medics insist, it is thick enough to keep out mosquitoes and leeches; because chemical-warfare officers insist, it is gasproofed. Result: a hot, heavy uniform which makes men sweat like stokers, fails to dry out overnight, often fails to give its alleged protection because men simply cannot abide being smothered while fighting for their lives...
...Mexican for zoot-suiter. † Watermelon, doughnuts, shampoo (in Spanish, sandla, rosquitas, lavar la cabeza) become guaramelon, donas, champu, in pocho. Outside the Folies Bergbre hawkers sell a pocho glossary...