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Re: rushing the can



Hi,

On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Anderson, Ruth wrote:
> Does anyone know the meaning of "rushing the can"?

No luck in coming up with a specific definition, but Edgar Rice Burroughs
in his 1916 story, "The Mucker".  The second paragraph of the quote below
seems to define it:

"They were pickpockets and second-story men, made and in the making, and
all were muckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or pick a
quarrel with any stranger who did not appear too burly. By night they
plied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind the
feedstore and drank beer from a battered tin pail.

The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, empty, to the
saloon across the street, and returning it, full, to the alley back of the
feed-store was solved by the presence of admiring and envious little boys
of the neighborhood who hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these heroes
of their childish lives.

Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble band, and
incidentally picking up his knowledge of life and the rudiments of his
education. He gloried in the fact that he was personally acquainted with
"Eddie" Welch, and that with his own ears he had heard "Eddie" tell the
gang how he stuck up a guy on West Lake Street within fifty yards of the
Twenty-eighth Precinct Police Station."

also:

[from a history of Beer]:
There was perhaps more beer consumed in St. Louis while the breweries were
running full blast than in any other city of its size in the world.
Carondelet drank constantly, and Kerry Patch spent its evenings indulging
the now lost art of rushing the can.
http://www.beerhistory.com/library/holdings/kingofbeer1.shtml

Cheers,

Susie

Mary Sue Stephenson
Senior Instructor & Coordinator of Information Technology
School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
604.822-6392 [voice]  604.822.6006 [fax]

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