Apple Core, Baltimore!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Travis Cooper calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Travis, how you doing?

Hi, Travis.

I’m doing okay, how are you guys?

Super duper.

What’s cooking?

Well, I was listening to your show a couple of weeks ago, and it dawned on me that throughout my life, my dad, when I was younger and even to this day, and I’m 29 years old, he’ll be eating an apple, and he gets done eating his apple, he’s got this apple core in his hand, and he says, apple core Baltimore, who’s your friend?

And if you don’t answer fast enough, he whips the apple core at you.

And I’ve asked plenty of people if they’ve ever had that experience or anything like that.

And they say, no, man, your dad’s really weird.

And actually, I just found out.

I was telling people that I call in on the radio show.

And actually, something like that was on the Woody Guthrie show back in the day.

But no one ever threw the apple core at anybody.

They would just say, apple core Baltimore, who’s your friend?

The Woody Guthrie show?

He had a TV show?

I’m sorry.

What is it?

Not the Woody Guthrie Show.

Woody Woodpecker.

Andy Griffin.

Howdy Doody.

Andy Griffin Show.

Yeah, that’s the one.

I don’t know why I said Woody Guthrie.

But, yeah, so I could never really get any solid answer where that came from.

I even asked my dad.

He doesn’t even know where he got it.

Nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

Well, your dad isn’t the only one for sure.

No.

I mean, he may be weird, but.

A little mean.

Yeah, I think it was popularized by a couple of Disney cartoons.

What?

Yeah.

There was one in 1952, the Donald Duck one.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You see that?

And we talked about this before.

Chip and Dale had one too, right?

Right.

And I’ve heard of other people doing that.

Like if there’s several people in the room, you might say you get down to the core of the apple and you say apple core.

And somebody says Baltimore.

And then you say to the Baltimore person, you say, who’s your friend?

And then they name somebody else in the room and you throw the apple core at that person.

Wow.

It’s very much a kid’s game, though, not an adult’s game, right?

Well, yeah.

Yeah, a good excuse to throw things at people.

There is another version of it that goes, applecore, bite no more, in the snout, point him out, which is the same idea.

Then you throw it.

Somebody gets hit in the end with an applecore.

Yeah.

We know that at least it goes back to the 1930s when it was recorded in the folklore that was collected by the Works Progress Administration.

They had all these field workers out there.

But the thing with folklore in general is that it tends never to have a true origin story, many false origins.

So we don’t know.

But we just know that it at least goes back to the 1930s.

And there’s a new resurgence in the 1950s, like Martha was saying when it pops up in cartoons, Andy Griffith’s show, so on and so forth.

You’ll frequently find it in novels as a little bit of childhood color.

But I don’t know that children actually much do it anymore.

I always wonder if the Baltimore is a variation on the bite no more.

Yeah, they sound a lot alike, don’t they?

I wonder if maybe the bite of them were turned into Baltimore.

That’s what I’m wondering, yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for a little bit of clarity on that.

And I’ll get back to my dad on that.

I’m sure he’ll be, you know, interested to hear about that too.

So I like you guys’ show.

I appreciate what you do.

And thank you for your time.

Oh, it’s our pleasure, Travis.

Thank you for calling.

Yeah, I would be eating an apple when you tell your dad about this.

It sounds like a great way to do it.

I think I’ll do that.

All right, bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

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