Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 13:31:50 -0500

From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM

Subject: No tickee, no washee



An item in LINGUIST #7.1499 put me in mind of the old line "No

tickee, no washee", i.e. "If you don't have a ticket, you don't get

the clean laundry back". I learned it as a fixed phrase with no

context; presumably it originated with reference to the

turn-of-the-century stock figure of the "Chinese laundryman". Was it

a punch line that outlived the joke, like "That was no lady, that was

my wife"? (I remember as a child puzzling over the latter, and over a

period of years reconstructing the original from allusions and

take-offs that all presumed the reader/listener's familiarity with

the original.)



Mark A. Mandel : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com

Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200

320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/