Fossils

[mme_hardy]

Oh, the chambermaid came to the door
Says, "Get up, you lazy sinner
We need those sheets for a tablecloth
And it's almost time for dinner!"

-- "No Booze Today!"

That was an song I learned in the 1960s, from a children's album. It was already forgotten in children's culture; I never heard it anywhere else. You can judge how obsolete the song was because it mentioned sending a child to the saloon with a growler to get beer, a custom I doubt revived after Prohibition.

Remembering the song did make me wonder where the boarding-house went. It was a city institution in America throughout the last part of the 19th century and at least until World War II. A boarding house gave you a bedroom, access to common rooms, and two meals a day. Young women going to the city were sent to "respectable" boarding-houses that would keep a watchful eye on their clientele. Jokes said that young men married just to get out of the boarding houses.

Then they went poof. What happened? When and how did single Americans decide that they'd put up with their own cooking in exchange for privacy?

Edit: My father, born 1929, habitually referred to grabbing a serving dish across somebody else -- as opposed to asking for it to be passed -- as "a boarding-house reach", both when he did it and when a child did it.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

And did they gave way to the SRO type of hotels? It's an interesting question.