Seattle has been a great place to start a business and. TWIST IT, CHOKE IT, AND MAKE IT CACKLE: Chocolate malted milk with egg Soda Jerk Soda will be relocating to Western New York at the end of the Summer Farmers Market Season. Inspired as a nickname for the soda clerk who operated soda fountains as late as the 1950s, the Soda Jerk title was inspired by the jerking action a server used to swing the soda fountain handle back and forth when adding soda water to a fountain beverage. PUT OUT THE LIGHTS AND CRY: Liver and onions NOAH’S BOY WITH MURPHY CARRYING A WREATH: Ham and potatoes with cabbage HOBOKEN SPECIAL: Pineapple soda with chocolate cream COCKTAIL: Castor oil prepared in sodaĮIGHTY-SEVEN AND A HALF: Girl at table with legs conspicuously crossed or otherwise attractive Here are a few gems from his glossary, which includes many terms you might recognize from modern restaurant slang and many that illustrate soda drinks that have long gone out of fashion:Ĭ.O. In celebration of the special language of the soda fountain, Bentley collected hundreds of words during numerous personal trips (and probably plenty of ice cream sodas) between 19. From “nervous pudding” (Jell-O) to “skid grease” (butter), soda jerks displayed what Bentley called “a refreshing aptness” in envisioning and re-envisioning the mundane world around them.
“A clever waiter urged on by an appreciative audience,” he writes, “would be induced to bring forth all the fresh expressions his wits might concoct.”Īll those linguistic fireworks led to a vibrant soda fountain slang with distinctive regional differences. Part of this, writes Bentley, stems from the ingenuity and display of soda jerks themselves. What Bentley calls a “peculiarly American phenomenon,” these restaurants were temples of food, socialization - and slang.īentley saw soda fountains as a place to scout out the novel and bizarre, from drinks named after current events to cheeky terms for otherwise ordinary items. Soda fountains may be all but dead in the United States today, but during the Great Depression they were on what seemed like every corner. Bentley’s exploration of “soda jerker” slang reveals. That was the case in the 1930s, too, as Harold W. This is supposedly because they had to jerk the handle on the fountain spout to dispense the seltzer water for soda fountain beverages. American English moves at the speed of, well, sound, and there’s no better display of the language’s fast pace and colorful texture than a restaurant.