The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

I remember being eleven or twelve years old, staying overnight with grandma and grandpa in town. Staying overnight with grandma–who always had candy–was a big deal.

But it was a smaller deal because I and my brother and sister took piano lessons from her. She had taught piano her whole life. Staying with her thus was a mixed blessing–have to play the darned piano–get to eat all the candy I wanted.

Maybe I was ten or eleven. Whatever. Grandma and grandpa’s daughter, my Aunt Lois, was home to visit. She would have been nineteen or twenty, blond, attractive. She was fascinating to a country boy going to country school. To me, she was a movie star.

She asked me if I wanted to go to the movie theater, which Riceville, Iowa still had.

You bet. So off we went. As we were walking along, she said: “A gentleman always walks on the street side, you know.”  Wow! I was being considered a gentleman!

I have never forgotten that walk. It has stuck with me all these years. Less so, the gentleman tag.

But there’s a problem here. Way back when, in Olde England and elsewhere, the gentlemen walked on the building side of the path. That was a period when folks threw their sewage out the window. Whomever was on the path walking closest to the buildings ran the risk of being splattered. So the gentleman tried to protect the lady and her finery from a possible stinky splashing.

This was an era which coined the saying: “They had neither a pot to pee in, nor a window to throw it out of.” Eventually, one must assume, they got windows. And the man walked on the risky side.

Urine back then was a primary ingredient in the tanning of hides, because it contained ammonia. This may or may not be the origin of the saying: “Pee poor,” of someone who had very little, not even a pot.

Later in history, as horses and cows and who knows what kind of animals roamed the streets, being splashed with manure from the street by speeding carriages and galloping hooves became the greater risk. New York City, among others, was overrun back in olden days by hogs, which along with horse traffic left the dirt-then streets a sodden stinky mess.

So a gentleman now walks on the street side.

Or calls an Uber.