Martha recently found a 1938 letter that her grandfather sent to the local police chief in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It concerns a suspected thief who her grandfather thought might be persuaded to confess because, he wrote,, the young man surely had a distaste for eating off the mantle. It’s an old phrase referring to corporal punishment: Someone who gets a stern spanking would have to eat standing up, such as at a fireplace mantle, because it hurt too much to sit down. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Eating Off the Mantle”
My maternal grandparents lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
And I recently found a copy of a letter that my grandfather sent to his local police chief back in 1938.
It seems that some young hoodlums had broken into my grandparents’ house and stolen a few things.
And my grandfather wrote that he was pretty sure he knew who the culprits were,
And that one in particular might tattle on the others because he probably had a distaste for eating off the mantle.
Do you know what that means?
No, a distaste for eating.
Oh, I think I get it.
Do you?
Yeah, I think because he gets a hiding on his rear end, he can’t sit down.
So he has to eat his meal standing up.
That is exactly right.
The birch stick, the old birch stick.
Yes.
Yes, I read that in my grandfather’s letter and I thought, eating off the mantle, what is this?
Somebody taking a big bite out of the wooden shelf over a fireplace?
No, no, this is the old style of taking care of business when it comes to punishing your kids.
I think it’s best that it be gone to the old ways, but it was a different time.
You are absolutely right.
And speaking of that different time, of course, I did some digging in newspaper databases.
And you can see a cartoon of a guy eating off a mantle after he had an embarrassing fall while skiing.
And I also found another article about two Canadians who rode their motorcycles from Montreal to Los Angeles.
And this Canadian newspaper quoted one of them as saying,
It was a great trip and we’re glad to be here, even if we have to eat off the mantelpiece for a while.
Yeah, when your derriere is giving off those cartoon symbols for pain.
Yes.
Those Grawlixes, right?
Grawlixes, yeah.
The stars and the swirls and so forth.
Yeah, those poor guys were saddle sore but happy.
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