Meredith Willson peppered the songs and dialogue of The Music Man with people, places, and things familiar to people in years gone by, but unknown to most of us today.
What’d he say?
In the song, “Trouble,” Harold Hill warns the citizens of River City to look out for the signs of degradation in their children with these cautions:
Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang is considered the great grandfather of the National Lampoon and other humor magazines. Originally created by World War I veteran, Wilford H. “Captain Billy” Fawcett, as a small bulletin of barracks humor for disabled servicemen in a veterans’ hospital, the colorful little book became popular for its irreverent humor.
Cubebs are the berries on a climbing vine in the pepper family. People also used the term as shorthand for cigarettes made from those dried, unripe berries often sold for medicinal use.
Although it sounds counter-intuitive to our ear, Tailor-Mades was the term for machine-rolled cigarettes. Prior to the 1880s, “ready-made” cigarettes were rolled by hand, with a top worker turning out four cigarettes per minute. James Albert Bonsack won a tobacco industry prize for inventing a machine that turned out 200 per minute.
Sen-Sen was a distinctive “breath perfume” with a strong flavor somewhere between soap and licorice. It was the Tic Tac of its day and was manufactured and sold by the same company for more than a hundred years. The company discontinued Sen-Sen in 2013.
Dan Patch was the fastest and best-known harness racehorse of the 20th Century. He ran so fast that other owners refused to race their horses against him. His 1905 world record 1:55¼ mile was unbeaten until 1938. Dan Patch died in 1916. His heartbroken owner died just 30 hours later.