Where’d THAT Come From???

“You may ask yourself - how did I get here?” - Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime.

No, this is not going to be some existential rap about the choices we make and how we end up being ourselves, despite our efforts to be something more/better/different.

I mean its summer time - time to read a magazine on the beach, smell the flowers and eat fresh corn and tomatoes. So in that spirit I’m going to write about one of my favorite things to do - discover how things got here. Things like customs, expressions, social conventions. Why Westerners drive on the right while the British drive on the left. Why the groom is supposed to carry his wife over the threshold. Why is it called a threshold?

Thresholds, Grain, and Tribal Wife Stealing

The reason goes back to hand farming and food producing days. To “separate the wheat from the chaff” (another old expression) people would put the stalks of grain on the floor of the barn and thresh it - usually by beating it with a flail. As you can imagine, this created quite a storm of seeds and stalks. So to keep the threshed grain in the room, a low barrier was placed on the floor of the barn to hold the thresh in. That thresh-hold became the signature for entering into a new domain.

But what about those happy newlyweds? This one goes way, way, way back, with a stop-off in 1955. In that year celestial beings purportedly communicated with us, the result being a huge book about “the Genesis, History, and Destiny of Humanity and our relationship with God the Father” (from the Urantia website www.urantia.org). From this writer's point of view, it is an amazing book. It indeed does cover the genesis and history of the human race from the first stirrings of tribal life, through the modern age. It is the tribal life that originated the custom of carrying over the threshold.

As tribes first came together they were very insular - they formed a protective group which discouraged interactions with a mysterious strange world. Interactions with other tribes was forbidden, in that those tribes might see what you had and come take it. But for the prospective newlyweds this was a problem. From a biological point of view the inbreeding would eventually weaken the tribe and take them to extinction. From within the tribe it was a problem because the chiefs were usually older men, who used their position of power to claim the beautiful young maidens, much to the dismay of the young men. (And quite often to the dismay of the maidens also.)

The solution to both problems is apparent - wife stealing. The young bucks from tribe A would sneak into tribe B, grab the maiden (who often didn’t mind) and carry them home. Thus he would be carrying the wife as he crossed into his domicile, i.e. over the threshold. According to the celestial beings, this custom lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, and is so ingrained (back to grain again) in our psyche that the custom has surfaced in modern times. (As an interesting aside, the book talks about the place of War in our evolution, and how it was useful, but how within the last hundred years the use has come to an end, being replaced by business! The Urantia book is filled with really interesting histories...)

A Loose Cannon

There are tons of maritime expressions we use every day. My favorite is “He’s a loose cannon.” Now I always thought a loose cannon was just someone who fired his shots too often, too carelessly, too “loosely”. Oh no – it’s much worse than that.

Naval warfare was fought cannon to cannon off of wooden deck ships. Due to the bouncing around on waves, those cannons had to be secured. If not, a cannon that broke loose would run over the sailors. The cannons being very heavy, they’d crush the poor sailors, thus the loose cannon. The cannons were so heavy that extra planks had to be put on the deck underneath them. But when one of these behemoths would break loose, it would roll onto the unsupported deck, crash down through the deck into the hull, whereupon it would crash through the hull on its way to the bottom of the sea. Thus suddenly there would be a huge hole in the bottom of the boat, and within minutes the boat, with all aboard would be at the bottom also.

Martinis, Stumps and other Miscellaneous Info…

But there are still mysteries to be solved. No one really knows where the Martini was invented.

I’ve read numerous accounts of the origins of the expression: OK, but the authorities are stumped. Stumped comes from the old days of clearing the forest for farmland. They’d cut down the huge oak trees, then hitch up a team of oxen to pull the stump out. And every so often they’d run into an old grandfather oak that would utterly refuse to budge. They could not hook up enough oxen to pull it out, couldn’t figure any other way to remove it, and so they were stumped.

“You may ask yourself - my God, what have I done...” (- more Talking Heads). I’ve just spent 2 hours writing this article that is not useful, transformative, or inspirational in anyway. I wonder why I think I always have to be doing something like that!? Maybe its time to pick up the Urantia again.

Have a great summer!