Doesn’t That Take the Cake!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, hello. Pleased to be on the show.

This is Edward Van Hall up in Fargo, North Dakota.

Frosty Fargo.

Frosty Fargo.

Frosty Fargo.

Like a beer mug in the freezer.

Absolutely.

Well, I’ll tell you what happened.

The other day, I was provided a really nice chocolate cake.

It was, I think, birthday.

And that afternoon at the office, I was thinking about a big slice of cake when I got back home with a cup of coffee, came home, and the cake was gone.

And I was wondering, sure enough, my spouse, my wife, Kim, had taken it to the lake, and there I was after a full afternoon of anticipation, no cake.

And so I called her and I said, well, if that doesn’t take the cake.

And then all of a sudden I realized, where did that come from?

She literally took the cake.

To the lake.

That’s right.

It’s something my mom used to say years ago.

And I thought, man, I’ve never said that before.

Where did that come from?

And so I kind of was intrigued.

And I thought, well, I wanted to find out more.

And that would be in the same way that someone might say, well, doesn’t that beat all?

Well, isn’t that a shame?

Something like that?

It’s just kind of a…

That’s right.

You can’t believe that something negative happened.

That’s right.

You’re not truly angry about it.

No.

More just exasperated.

Exasperated.

That’s a good word for it.

Yeah, this has got a good history, and it’s entwined in American history.

And it goes back, well, a couple hundred years.

And it goes back to, unfortunately, the enslavement of black Americans.

There was a practice called a cakewalk where people would compete for a cake by doing a dignified or silly or exaggerated walk before judges.

There were lots of kinds of cakewalk, but the black Americans, many of them would do these exaggerated steps.

They would wear lots of fine clothes, and they would pretend to be someone powerful,

Such as slaveholders, the very people that controlled their lives and their fortunes.

So this is before emancipation. So this was a way of mocking the slaveholders when they were

Enslaved. And so they would usually go in a circle, and whoever was deemed to be maybe the

Most outrageous or the most fancifully regal or whatever the agreed upon terms of this contest

Where they would be given the cake and they would literally take the cake. Well, that’s really

Interesting. I just can’t imagine that it’s carried for all these years and it’s an expression I

Haven’t really heard since my mom used it from time to time, usually after something that I had

Or hadn’t done.

And so I thought I wanted to find out more.

That’s great.

Well, you know, there’s a little more to the story

If you want to hang in there and hear it.

This particular cakewalk branched out after emancipation,

And black Americans took it into other corners of American culture.

It became stylized both as different types of music

And as regularized dances.

And you can actually find it being performed in videos

On YouTube. The Library of Congress has old videos of it, and you can find white people

Doing it because, as always, black culture is a wellspring of just all kinds of entertainment.

We look to black culture as a source of great ideas of how to entertain. I’m just saying

That it’s another idea that white Americans got from black Americans. These cakewalk dances,

As they became called, showed up in movies. I think you can see them in Meet Me in St.

Louis. So just they became so exaggerated and so distant from this original cakewalk that some

People did them and didn’t even realize where these weird movements and these kind of high

Stepping exaggerated stances came from. But they came from the plantations. Interesting. It’s also

These particular kind of cakewalks were also the source of when we say something like,

Yeah, he won the prize.

It was a cakewalk for him.

When we say something was a cakewalk,

It’s exactly the same origin

Because we’re saying it was as easy as doing a cakewalk.

And this idea may be that a cakewalk is an easy contest

Because all you have to do is act like a fool.

But in any case, our sympathies about that cake,

That sounds like a really frustrating experience.

Yeah, I would love that chocolate cake.

I know that feeling.

I did eventually get to it.

Oh, you got to it.

That’s right. It was excellent.

Edward, thank you for calling and sharing.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Bye-bye.

All right. Be well. Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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