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First Supper

In 1949, Frank McNamara went to a New York restaurant, Major’s Cabin Grill, to entertain a group of dinner guests

He had changed suits before he went and when the bill was presented, he realized his wallet was in his other suit. Fortunately, he knew the owner and his IOU was accepted.

That night he had an idea: why not charge it? He and a partner, his attorney, started the first credit card, the Diners Club.

In February, 1950, McNamara and his partner returned to Major’s Cabin Grill and paid for dinner with his Diners Club card. This seminal event is known in the credit card business as “The First Supper.”

Initially, the Diners Club card had 200 subscribers, mostly friends and acquaint-ances, and was accepted in 14 New York restaurants. By the end of the year, 20,000 people carried the card.

Today, it is accepted by 13 million estab-lishments in 200 countries.

Sorry, I don’t take Diners Club cards. But you can buy me supper.

Passing the Buck

The word “buck” for dollar comes from buckskin, deer hide, that the colonials used to trade with the Indians.

Conrad Weiser, a German immigrant to England and then to America spent a year as a youth with the Mohawk Indians and learned their language. He became an interpreter and negotiator for the Penn-sylvania colony and later one of the founders of Reading and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

He recounts addressing Indians in his journal in 1748:

“Whiskey shall be sold to You for 5 Bucks in your Town, & if a Trader offers to sell Whiskey to You and will not let you have it at that Price, you may take it from him & drink it for nothing.”

and

“Here is one of the Traders who you know to be a very sober & honest Man; he has been robbed of the value of 300 Bucks, & you all know by whom; let, therefore, Satisfaction be made to the Trader.”

It’s Greek to Me

A lot of stuff is, especially whatever’s going on in Greece.

The expression “It’s Greek to me” traces back to Shakespeare’s 1599 play Julius Caesar, in which one of Caesar’s assassins remarks to another that he was left out of the loop when Cicero, a Roman Senator who was also assassinated, spoke Greek describing Caesar having a seizure.

So what’s Greek in other languages? The Swedes stick with Greek, for the Finns it’s Hebrew, in Yiddish, Aramaic, Cambodian to the Vietnamese, French or Arabic to the Turks, fish-egg language in Iceland, and Chinese in just about every other language, including Greek.

So what’s inscrutable to the inscrutable Chinese? In Mandarin it’s God’s writing and in Cantonese chicken intestines.

Caesar should have paid attention to the chicken intestines. He was told to “beware the Ides of March” by Spurinna, a haruspex — one who foretold the future by reading animal guts.

The Cat Who Came to Dinner

In 1898, Woolf Joel, nephew of South African diamond magnate Barney Barnato gave a dinner for 14 at the Savoy Hotel in London. One guest canceled, leaving an unlucky 13 at the table

A guest predicted that the first one to leave would die. Woolf scoffed at this superstition and left first. A few weeks later, on March 14, 1898, he was shot dead in his office in Kimberley by a blackmailer.

Thereafter, the Savoy volunteered a staff member to sit in on parties of 13, but it was awkward having a stranger and in 1927 noted British architect Basil Ionides sculpted Kaspar, a 3 foot high wooden black cat to be the 14th guest.

Kaspar is given his own place setting, a napkin is wrapped around his neck, and is served each course.

Winston Churchill liked Kaspar so much he insisted that he join him no matter the number of guests

Kaspar was catnapped during the war in an RAF prank. He was returned, slight damage repaired, after intercession by an Air Commodore whose dinner guests, officers of an air squadron, unknown to him, had done the catnapping.

Zen and the Art of Canine Maintenance

Concentration! Urination! Defecation! It’s the concentration part that’s hard. Do it already, dog! Grrrr.

While in Zen mode, my dog wrote a Haiku.

Winter, white coats grass

Doggie footprints in the snow

Poopsicles behind

Hot Waitress Indicator

Check out your waitress next time you go out to dinner. If she’s a looker, better order something less expensive: the hotter the waitress the weaker the economy. (But don’t cheap out on the tip — she can’t afford to go out to dinner like you.)

Hot waitresses are a leading economic indicator, predicting the future economy. In good times attractive people can easily find higher-paying jobs but in a bad economy they’ll be forced to settle for less.

An article in New York Magazine August 2, 2009 quoted a waitress at a New York City club: “They slowly let the boys go, then the less attractive girls, and then these hot girls appeared out of nowhere. All in the hope of bringing in more business. The managers even admitted it.”

Guys, after checking out the waitress, you’d better open your drawers’ drawer (or your briefcase) and check ‘em out after you go home.

Overworn Underwear on p. 165 tells about Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s favorite economic index: the MUI, Men’s Underwear Index. Men hold off replacing their tatty underwear in a recession without anyone except underwear stores knowing since it’s worn under.

He said that when the MUI dips “that is almost always a prescient, forward impression that here comes trouble.”

Fairy Toll

Even the Tooth Fairy has been hit by the Great Recession. Results from a Visa survey show a decline in money left under the pillow since 2010. In 2011, it’s an average of $2.60 per tooth, down from $3 last year.

It varied by region with the East the worst, down 38%. The South was down 21%, the Midwest 3%. The West actually went up a dime to $2.80.

Even the number of kids stiffed by the Tooth Fairy went up from 6% to 10%.