Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

“You guys have it easy”

Nationality: Mexican- American
Age: 41
Occupation: Quality Assurance Manager
Residence: Harbor City, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/2012
Primary Language: English

According to my source, in the marine core, whenever the senior group is about to graduate, they tell the new recruits who’ve just come in that they are having a much easier time than the ones graduating. Depending on who’s in charge and the current politics, it actually does fluctuate in difficulty, but the graduating class always tells the newer recruits this even if it’s slightly untrue. Regardless, there’s no such thing as easy marine core boot camp. According to my source, it’s so difficult that half the guys don’t make it to graduation.

My source heard this when he was beginning his training when he was in his 20s, and says that the men who do it do so to make themselves feel better and make the new group feel like they’re not as tough as older ones are. He claims that it’s human nature to want to think that you’re better and stronger than the next guy coming through. It may also be that intimidating the new trainees into wanting to be better and stronger than the group before them is both a sort of initiation ritual and a way to sort of inspire the new recruits.

I’ve personally seen this sort of thing in junior high and high school regarding certain classes and P.E., so it’s definitely seen outside of this setting and can apply towards different situations.

“He who smelt it, dealt it”

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 65
Occupation: Business Owner
Residence: Fullerton, Ca
Performance Date: 4/26/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“He who smelt it, dealt it.”

This saying is a comment in response to an accusation that one has passed gas, and is more or less a way of saying that the accuser is the guilty one and only looking to place the blame on someone else to avoid the embarrassment of owning up to it. This phrase is usually used when in groups of three or more, and usually entails someone smelling a foul odor and calling the offender out on it. My informant said that one of his brothers told him this phrase when he was younger, as well as the follow-up phrase that “whoever denied it, supplied it.” It’s basically a way of humiliating each other and making light of a natural bodily function that is otherwise unseemly.

Theoretically it could be labeled as a proverb in that it implies that whoever brings up an unspoken problem is likely at fault for it, and the same can  be said for anyone who denies having caused the problem. However, to this collector’s knowlege it doesn’t usually come up outside of the specific situation of passing gas.

 Annotated: This saying was used as a joke with a double meaning in season 2, episode 16 of South Park, in which the protagonists were trying to find who was to blame for the recent trend of telemarketers taking advantage of elderly people by selling over-priced jewelry. The gold jewelry would be given to their relatives, who would sell it to the pawn shops, who would then smelt it down to be remade into new jewelry to be sold again. The joke was that the smelters were at fault for the entire scheme, hence “he who smelt it dealt it.”

Automobile Modifications

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

My informant’s grandfather worked in auto shops, and had a lot of friends who did the same. Between them, they passed around tricks for modifying cars.

One technique was to put a spark plug in the exhaust pipe so that when pulling on the choke, the fuel would come out partially unburnt, causing fire to emerge from the exhaust.

Another was to turn around the back seat of the car and put belts on the steering wheel, then driving the car in reverse by using the belts to steer.

Apparently these men are frustrated that cars are no longer manufactured according to methods they understand, which makes sense, especially considering they can no longer use their know-how to modify their cars in the ways they might want to, as if a community they were a part of has been partially erased by industrial and technological progress. All that they really have left are their memories of the way people used to treat their cars, and perhaps their own preserved vehicles. As time marches on, traditional mechanics will likely find themselves left by the wayside even more, only strengthening the folk bonds that remain between them.

Family Meditation

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English

From interview with informant:

“My family, every time we go on a big trip, like whether it’s an emotional trip or a physical trip, we all have to sit in the same room on a different surface and take a moment of, like, repose, that my father decides. We take or moment, and then we stand and we go on our journey. I don’t know if it’s a Russian tradition or a Jewish tradition or something from my dad’s family, but it’s something that my family does.”

This is a simple custom that makes a lot of practical sense. It serves to bring the family closer together while preparing for potentially arduous or important times in the near future. It sounds a lot like a moment of prayer, but the informant made it sound very secular, more like meditation and contemplation. It could have any mixture of cultural, religious, or familial roots like the informant suggested. A secularized Jewish prayer, perhaps, or just something a family member thought of that stuck. Not sure about the “different surfaces” aspect. That certainly makes it sound more like something specific to this particular family.

Emo’s Grave

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/25/12
Primary Language: English

Informant account:

“There is a district, a sort of suburban district in Salt Lake City, Utah called ‘The Avenues,’ and it runs from A to Z. At the top of the Avenues is the oldest cemetery in the state. It was established when Brigham Young lead the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley. Anyway, there’s one grave site called Emo’s Grave. And that’s the epitaph, ‘Emo.’ There’s no birth date, there’s no death date. But it’s that kind of gated sort of memorial where there are benches inside but nobody can sit on them because it’s gated around. But you can reach through, and there’s sort of a crevice that’s been chiseled out of the grave itself, where initially I guess the family left flowers or something. But, um, regardless it’s cold stone.”

“On certain evenings, usually Friday the 13th or the evening thereof, um, teenagers will go up to Emo’s Grave and from inside the stone, smoke will start emanating. And this has been corroborated by several different accounts. And then someone will walk up and say ‘Emo’s Grave, Emo’s Grave, Emo’s Grave,’ and they will put their hand inside the crevice and it will feel warm. And people have left things there in the late evening to come back the next morning to find them gone, and these aren’t just, like, berries and things that birds can pick up because for one a bird can’t get in there, and for two, like I said: Not light things. So there’s a bit of supernatural suspicion that surrounds Emo—this mysterious individual named Emo—and his grave.”

I then asked how he came to hear about this piece of folklore, to which he responded:

“It’s become a sort of rite of passage for teens to go up to the Avenues cemetery and go through this Emo ritual.”

So I asked the next logical question, did he do it?

“I did.”

What happened?

“It happened.”

Did he find anything?

“We found ourselves to be scared. Because, this is like thirteen, fourteen years old, right? And it might have been—your mind fills in what you want to see. I mean it’s the same concept with the face on Mars. You want to see the face and so you do. But I swear there was smoke, I swear there was heat. We left a note; it was gone the next day, so, yeah, eerie.”

My favorite piece of folklore that I collected, I really couldn’t have asked for better. It’s a rite of passage that’s become traditional for these Salt Lake teens, and best of all my informant actually went through it. I suspect Emo’s Grave has proliferated because of the aesthetic of the site itself, bolstered by these ever increasing accounts of people visiting the grave under the right conditions. Along the way Friday the 13th got tied in with this death-based ritual, as well as the rule of three. I love the way my informant seems perfectly aware of how amusing and perhaps slightly ridiculous the whole thing might sound, but when talking about his own experience at Emo’s Grave is sure that, as far as he can tell, things happened that he couldn’t rationally explain. A testament to the power of folk rituals.