Week Nineteen: Shipwreck Party

A few costume ideas . . .

A big part of me really thinks that Cokesbury’s Shipwreck Party came a few decades too early. Back in 1932, about the only shipwreck reference common in popular culture was that of Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe’s fictional tale, while compelling, hardly has the panache of today’s shipwreck ethos. No Gilligan running around getting chased by cannibals or giant spiders, or eating bowls full of glow-goo. No Captain Jack Sparrow fixating on why the rum is gone or schizophrenically chatting to doppelgangers as eerie rock crabs scuttle about his ship, marooned in the salt flats.

Sinclair Lewis-themed segue: Alan Hale, Jr., who played Capt. Jonas Grumby in Gilligan’s Island, is the son of Alan Hale, Sr., who played Miles Bjornstam in a 1923 adaptation of Lewis’ Main Street novel.

But what Cokesbury lacks in overall shipwreckery panache, it more than makes up for it by the sheer weight of the recommended decorations and sheer pointlessness of party activities, as you’ll soon see.

But first, the obligatory invitation, accompanied by a reminder that this is a costume party:

It is the good ship – Friendship –
That sails in our social sea.
But on Friday night we’ll make believe
That the ship no more shall be.
For we’re having a Shipwreck Party,
And you are just to wear
What you salvaged from a shipwreck,
What that is we do not care.
The ship, of course, met this disaster
In the still hours of the night.
So wear what you would first pick up
Were you forced to sudden flight.

Now, on to the decorations. In the past, Cokesbury has recommended you find your more obscure decorations (remember those hatchet-shaped cards) at your local five-and-dime. This time, they offer no suggestions, but, perhaps, intimate that such a party is better hosted in a locale such as Palm Beach, where such frippery is readily available:

Decorations. A few old anchors, ropes, life-preservers, boats, and yacht chairs would make good decorations and furnishings. Also have some steamer chairs or some beach chairs. The hose and the hostess may be dressed in sailor suits, as the idea might be that a party of shipwrecked persons was picked up by another boat. Even the social committee, the judges of the costumes, and those planning the party may be dressed as sailors or in a yachting suit.

Gee. Here I am in landlocked Idaho. Anchors aren’t all that common around here, even in the best ship's chandlers offices. Life preservers I’ve got. And a canoe. A few paddles. That inflatable raft with the hole in it. Maybe I can make this work. Just as soon as I can find a sailor suit. Don’t some sailors wear bib overalls?

The rest of the evening, apparently, will be spent faithfully recreating the drudgery of either being stranded on some desert isle or in the company of sailors who are too busy staving off homosexuality to do anything more constructive or interesting. Behold the eye-matching activity:

Matching Partners: Eyes. Have the women find a partner by finding a man that has the same color eyes as herself. In case there is an argument about the proper matching, the leader must decide the case.

I’m sure you’re waiting for the rest of the activity. I know I am. But that’s it. I even checked to make sure a page wasn’t missing from the book, or that two pages were stuck together by cocktail sauce or something. But that’s it. Ladies, find someone with matching eyes. Wasn’t that entertaining?

But there’s more:

Making the Best of a Shipwreck. Give the guests papers and pencils and sheets of paper on which has been written at the top the word “shipwreck.” Let the couples work together at this and see which couple can make the most words in a given time. Give a prize for the longest list and have this list read.

Damn, that Professor's Good

Now, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island knew how to make the best of a shipwreck. Give him a little time, some bamboo and a few coconuts and he’ll have you sitting in a Bamboo-Lounger listening to hi-fi recordings of Gilligan being chased by cannibals through the coconut earphones. He did not, however, gather the other castaways about and insist they find out how many words they could make out of “shipwreck.” Even Gilligan would have beaten him if he’d suggested such a thing.

So let’s do something entertaining, yeah? How about this:

Quiots. Get rubber quoits from the five-and-ten-cent store. Have a quiot tournament. Divide into groups of eight and match two players against the other two, letting them play four at a time. The winners in the first game play the winners in the second game. The two players who win in each of the groups of eight can then play off the tournament. Give a prize to the couple that wins the tournament.

Now really, such games are entertaining, especially when played by those who really think tey know what they’re doing. A few years ago, I played a few rounds of petanque – we know that game in America as bocce – with a few swells in France. The older gentleman wanted his ability to measure distances between the balls and the goal to be precise and unquestioned, so he removed his with which he made the measurements. Much amusement was had, as Cokesbury would say, watching this fellow play and make his measurements while at the same time trying to keep his pants up. Make sure to include such guests among those playing quoits, to keep the others chuckling.

Next we move on to a game that will absolutely stun your guests into wanting it to pass quickly, yet enthrall those of an anal retentive bent who are able to not only grasp the game’s core but also enthusiastically wish for it to continue round after round because they’re so damn good at it.

Excuse Me. The leader asks the first player a question which demands an excuse. The excuse must be given in words beginning with the player’s initials. As an illustration – the leader might ask, “Where were you last night?” The player, whose initials are IMC, replies, “Excuse me, I was ironing my clothes.” The leader asks another player whose initials are AMC, “Where were you yesterday?” He replies: “Excuse me, I was airing my cat.” And so eth leader goes around the circle. Anyone making a mistake must take the leader’s place and ask the questions.

Why aren’t you playing?

Excuse me, boring jerk dementor.

Now on to a game that could result in nuclear-explosion level double-entendres, which should be kept until the end of the party so the guests will remember it the most and forget how boring the rest of the evening was.

Guessing Words Representing Things Done on A Ship. In this game one player is sent out of the room. The other player agree upon some word ending in "ing” which represents something done on board a ship, such as sleeping, eating, talking, sailing, commanding, laughing, scrubbing, cooking, washing, bathing, shaving, playing, etc. When the player comes back into the room, he may ask questions about his word, for example, “Where is it done?” “How often is it done?” “When did you last do it?” “Is it done in the kitchen?” etc. When the person who has been sent out guesses the word, the one who gave it away must next go out and so the game continues.

The more juvenile members of your guest roll ought to be able to keep this one going for hours.

That’s it, aside from refreshments, which should be “canned goods, such as might be salvaged from a wreck. For example, each one, or each couple, might be given a small can of sardines with opener, a box of soda crackers, a bottle of soda water, a jar of pickles or olives Another suggestion would be to serve canned baked beans, buns, pickles, and coffee in tin cups.” Remember to have your guests sing or hum the Gilligan’s Island theme as they eat, to add to the authenticity.



Bon Voyage. And bon appétit. This might be a good time to get rid of the canned hominy and beets you have in your pantry. Remember, shipwrecked people will eat anything. Just ask Gilligan. Tune in next week for the Bride and Groom Party, which Cokesbury describes as “very clever,” a sure sign of hilarity.

Automobile Party?

Remember, now, that in 1932, the automobile was the iPhone, the MacBook, the whatever-widget that everyone had to have. And like our Macs, our PCs, even our Commodores and Ataris and Tandys and Texas Instruments, just about everyone was getting in on the business of making cars, just as everyone got into the business of making computers or social networks these days.

Autos were important status symbols in 1932.

Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d research a bit and find out the number of American-made autos one could choose from in 1932. The list is not short. And remember, these are car companies listed here, not brands held under the umbrella of only a few companies, as we have (OK, as we had) today:

Packard
Auburn
Studebaker
Albatross
Alma Steam
New Era
Pierce-Arrow
Peerless
American Austin
American Bantam
Brewster
Continental
Cord
Crosley
Powell
Rauch & Lang
Rockne
Stout Scarab
Cunningham
Detroit Electric
deVaux Continental
Dymaxion
Essex
Stutz
Terraplane
Willys
Deusenberg
Franklin
Graham
Holtom
Jaeger
Littlemac
Marmon
Martin

Remember still these are only the car companies operating in 1932 that are now defunct. Some were bought out by others. The odd one may survive as a brand sold by a completely different car company today. And there were hundreds – really, hundreds – more that did not survive through the 1910s and 1920s to see the light of day in 1932.

Americans were thus overwhelmed by the variety of choice in an automobile. Nevertheless, many chose to buy and defended vociferously their choices.

Sinclair Lewis used the automobile as a central character in many of his novels of the era.

In Main Street, Lewis uses the automobile to represent the new preferred leisure of the middle class, much as computers and the Internet are today:

Her liveliest activity now was organizing outdoor sports in the motor-paralyzed
town.

The automobile and bridge-whist had not only made more evident the social divisions in Gopher Prairie but they had also enfeebled the love of activity. It was so rich-looking to sit and drive--and so easy. Skiing and sliding were "stupid" and "old-fashioned." In fact, the village longed for the elegance of city recreations almost as much as the cities longed for village sports; and Gopher Prairie took as much pride in neglecting coasting as St. Paul--or New York--in going coasting. Carol did inspire a successful skating-party in mid- November. Plover Lake glistened in clear sweeps of gray- green ice, ringing to the skates. On shore the ice-tipped reeds clattered in the wind, and oak twigs with stubborn last leaves hung against a milky sky. Harry Haydock did figure-eights, and Carol was certain that she had found the perfect life. But when snow had ended the skating and she tried to get up a moonlight sliding party, the matrons hesitated to stir away from their radiators and their daily bridge-whist imitations of the city. She had to nag them. They scooted down a long hill on a bob-sled, they upset and got snow down their necks they shrieked that they would do it again immediately--and they did not do it again at all.

In The Job, Lewis again mentions the automobile as a goal attainable by many through application of their skills in efficient work – and lays the groundwork for work that is accomplished not for the sense of accomplishment or fulfillment but for the acquisition of material goods and the maintenance of the lifestyle those goods bear with them:

A vast, competent, largely useless cosmos of offices [he writes, in describing the city]. It spends much energy in causing advertisements of beer and chewing-gum and union suits and pot-cleansers to spread over the whole landscape. It marches out ponderous battalions to sell a brass pin. It evokes shoes that are uncomfortable, hideous, and perishable, and touchingly hopes that all women will aid the cause of good business by wearing them. It turns noble valleys into fields for pickles. It compels men whom it has never seen to toil in distant factories and produce useless wares, which arenever actually brought into the office, but which it nevertheless sells to the heathen in the Solomon Islands in exchange for commodities whose very names it does not know; and in order to perform this miracle of transmutation it keeps stenographers so busy that they change from dewy girls into tight-lipped spinsters before they discover life. The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air. Efficiency of production they have learned; efficiency of life they still consider an effeminate hobby.

And finally in Babbitt, Lewis paints the auto as we recognize it today: As a status symbol:

“I don’t mean to say we’re perfect,” {Babbitt says]. We’ve got a lot to do in the way of extending paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it’s the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!”

“That’s the type of fellow that’s ruling America to-day; in fact, it’s the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there’s to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.”

Babbitt, ironically, laments at the end of his novel that his son does not aspire to become a Solid American Citizen, but rather longs to become a mechanic to work on automobile engines. The Solid American Citizen, obviously, is meant to drive and own and consume the products of commerce, not be involved in their production or maintenance, unless through supervision. That sounds altogether too familiar. Plus ca change, you know.

The Automobile Party, which we will examine Sunday, epitomizes the era and its fascination with acquiring the newly mass-produced goods the nation has to offer. Laugh at them if you will. Then look around your own home or apartment, and gaze in wonder at the junk you've accumulated. Then laugh at yourself.

The Book in Action?

The best way to enjoy The Cokesbury Party Book, of course, is to observe one of the parties listed therein in action. I have, as yet, not been brave enough to host such a party, because my wife and I already have the reputation for being among the most boring hosts on the planet, a reputation we don't need help shaping.

But are these parties boring? I don't know. From an ironical standpoint, they're at least darned interesting.

Sinclair Lewis, in his novel Main Street, walks us through such a party -- themed similarly to parties in the Cokesbury book -- given by Carol Kennicott at her home in the village of Gopher Prarie ostensibly to shake the town's denizens out of their party mold of bringing out the same old stories, the same old gags, the same old "stunts" that they trot out at any party, much like the midly entertaining uncle we all have who tells the same stories at every party he attends and gets laughs, because everyone knows the stories and loves their uncle too much not to laugh.

So here are bits of Carol's party, taken from Chapter 7 of the book:

"We're going to do something exciting," Carol exclaimed to her new confidante, Vida Sherwin. She saw that in the growing quiet her voice had carried across the room. Nat Hicks, Ella Stowbody, and Dave Dyer were abstracted, fingers and lips slightly moving. She knew with a cold certainty that Dave was rehearsing his "stunt" about the Norwegian catching the hen, Ella running over the first lines of "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," and Nat thinking of his popular parody on Mark Antony's oration.

"But I will not have anybody use the word 'stunt' in my house," she whispered to Miss Sherwin.

The grinning Bea brought down-stairs a pile of soft thick sheets of paper with designs of lotos blossoms, dragons, apes, in cobalt and crimson and gray, and patterns of purple birds flying among sea-green trees in the valleys of Nowhere.

"These," Carol announced, "are real Chinese masquerade costumes. I got them from an importing shop in Minneapolis. You are to put them on over your clothes, and please forget that you are Minnesotans, and turn into mandarins and coolies and--and samurai (isn't it?), and anything else you can think of."

While they were shyly rustling the paper costumes she disappeared. Ten minutes after she gazed down from the stairs upon grotesquely ruddy Yankee heads above Oriental robes, and cried to them, "The Princess Winky Poo salutes her court!"

I've got to admit that the second the Princess Winky Poo saluted her court, the part of the court that represented me would have taken a quick hiatus until the entire hullabaloo was over. Especially considering what happens next:

As they looked up she caught their suspense of admiration. They saw an airy figure in trousers and coat of green brocade edged with gold; a high gold collar under a proud chin; black hair pierced with jade pins; a languid peacock fan in an out-stretched hand; eyes uplifted to a vision of pagoda towers. When she dropped her pose and smiled down she discovered Kennicott apoplectic with domestic pride--and gray Guy Pollock staring beseechingly. For a second she saw nothing in all the pink and brown mass of their faces save the hunger of the two men.

She shook off the spell and ran down. "We're going to have a real Chinese concert. Messrs. Pollock, Kennicott, and, well, Stowbody are drummers; the rest of us sing and play the fife."

The fifes were combs with tissue paper; the drums were tabourets and the sewing-table. Loren Wheeler, editor of the Dauntless, led the orchestra, with a ruler and a totally inaccurate sense of rhythm. The music was a reminiscence of tom-toms heard at circus fortune-telling tents or at the Minnesota State Fair, but the whole company pounded and puffed and whined in a sing-song, and looked rapturous.

Soooo, anyone for Trivial Pursuit? Did people really have parties like this? Is this what made Prohibition such an unattractive thing? Of course, this takes place before Prohibition, if such a thing can be imagined. Yes, it's a conservative small town. But these are educated people, especially Carol, leader of the pack.

And remember, the party has a theme. Read on:

Before they were quite tired of the concert Carol led them in a dancing procession to the dining-room, to blue bowls of chow mein, with Lichee nuts and ginger preserved in syrup.

None of them save that city-rounder Harry Haydock had heard of any Chinese dish except chop sooey. With agreeable doubt they ventured through the bamboo shoots into the golden fried noodles of the chow mein; and Dave Dyer did a not very humorous Chinese dance with Nat Hicks; and there was hubbub and contentment.

Hubbub and contentment. That's the goal of any party, right? Now remember your host here (me). I must admit the best contentment from a party thrown at our house comes when the last guest has left and I can finally sop having a good time and start enjoying myself -- reverting to my hermit ways as my own hermit wife does the same thing. Why, a few weeks ago we did have a conversation. Via chat in Facebook. And our computers sit kitty-corner to each other in the study. So we're not the partying types.

And we do go to themed parties these days. Well, themed as we allow them to get. My favorite includes the theme of Adults Play Board Games in the Basement while the Children Wander Aimlessly Upstairs, Upset Bowls of Ice Cubes and Neglect to Clean them Up. The theme is getting together. We don't have board game-themed food. Thank Heaven. What kind of food goes with "The Family Business," a card game wherein each player represents a mob family out for blood against the others?

So did they have fun at these parties, like the parties in the Cokesbury book? Evidently so. Witness what was written in The Dauntless, Gopher Prarie's paper the week following the event:

One of the most delightful social events of recent months was held Wednesday evening in the housewarming of Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott, who have completely redecorated their charming home on Poplar Street, and is now extremely nifty in modern color scheme. The doctor and his bride were at home to their numerous friends and a number of novelties in diversions were held, including a Chinese orchestra in original and genuine Oriental costumes, of which Ye Editor was leader. Dainty refreshments were served in true Oriental style, and one and all voted a delightful time.

Yee-haw.

Tomorrow, we get to the first party -- a wild celebration of the New Year that involves spelling, make-up, bound women and oysters. But not in the way you'd expect.