Ready for Freddy

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah calling from Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Hey Sarah, welcome.

So I wanted to talk to you about some dark or morbid or meant to be humorous sayings that my parents had.

And I’m wondering whether it was because of their generation.

They were both born in 1906 and lived through a lot of things.

So I didn’t come along until 1950.

So my mother would say, you know, when you’re getting ready, especially if there’s a group of people and you’re getting ready to leave the house or whatever, and you’re saying, are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?

My mother would always say, I’m ready. I’m ready for Freddie.

And it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I asked her, well, who is Freddie?

And her answer was Freddie the Undertaker.

I was, I don’t know.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know how to answer that.

And here’s my father. Didn’t say things like that, but he taught me this little song that he sang all the time. That’s really strange. So I’m not going to sing it. But when I was little, I thought it was really funny and I wanted to learn it. So I can remember a couple of the verses.

It’s called fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy.

Fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy was a wise old guy.

Nose like a hawk and an eagle’s eye.

Fooling people was his game.

Cause fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy was the old guy’s name.

Now there was a little boy coming home from school.

Saw a silver dollar at the foot of a mule.

Crept up slowly quiet as a mouse.

Next day a funeral at the little boy’s house.

Oh fuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wuzzy wise old guy.

Definitely morbid.

I know.

I know.

And when I was little, I thought these things were funny.

But you know, because your parents tell them like they’re amusing.

But did you build on a cemetery?

We lived across the street from a cemetery once.

But I learned these songs before we lived in that house.

I see.

Oh my goodness.

Oh these are all good.

I think phones are going to light up.

The email box is going to be full.

Because people are going to have a ton of these.

I remember something about fuzzy wuzzy was a bear.

Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair.

But I think that was a different one. Right. He wasn’t fuzzy, was he? But Ready for Freddy is the one I think.

That’s probably going to require more explanation because it’s not as common as it used to be.

And it’s important that your mother said it was the undertaker because that is the absolute truth. That is who Freddy is. Because we know who Freddy is, Sarah.

Okay. Tell me, please.

All right. So just get this out of the way. There are a lot of incidental rhymings of ready and freddy in lots of contexts for as long as freddy’s been a name as long as ready’s been a word there was even a ready freddy doll sold in the 1920s but okay ready for freddy started as a catchphrase in a comic strip the the little abner comic strip this is folksy down home strip drawn by al cap yeah it was read by tens of millions of people that ran in 900 newspapers from the 1930s until the 1970s.

Well, Al Cap had a running gag at one point in the 1940s, and he kept teasing a line that said, are you ready for Freddy? Are variations on that? And he would just keep inserting it in his strips.

And he didn’t explain for the longest time who Freddy was or why we needed or anybody needed to be ready.

And he’d have his various characters in Dogpatch, that’s the little town in the strip in Little Abner, respond to that.

And so finally, after weeks of this, finally there was a payoff.

Freddy shows up in the strip.

And the townsfolk of Dogpatch are running around.

And there he is standing in front of his shop with his name in huge letters.

It says Freddy’s.

And one of the Dogpatch locals says to him, there they is, Freddy. Notice the eager looks and their bright little eyes.

Oh, they sure is ready.

And to which Fred replies, no, they are not, son, not quite, because they are still breathing.

Because Freddy, you see, was an undertaker.

Freddy was the first undertaker in Dogpatch.

And then he was a character.

Yeah, Freddy was an undertaker.

He was a character in the strip long after that.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, my father used to read me the funny papers all the time.

I can remember reading little Abner with him, and I don’t think I saw that one.

At least I don’t remember it anyway.

But, oh, my gosh, I’m so glad that my mother.

Yeah, so that was 1947 when that happened.

Okay, okay.

So you got an answer.

How about that?

I did.

I know, and I really wasn’t expecting one.

Well, we hope you’ll call again sometime.

Oh, I have a whole notebook of things.

Okay.

But I’ve been keeping you.

We’re ready.

We’re ready for you today.

Yeah, we’re ready for Sarah.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

All righty.

Okay, you too.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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