Salvation army counters

Question

every hit returned in a search on the phrase :
-"salvation army counters"
( - which is of course from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" )

has something to do with "Suzanne".
So I think it's not a very common expression apart from that song.

Also, we refer to "cashiers" in the US, not "counters" ( assuming that's what that means. It sounds English english to me )...

( however,
" She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army cashiers "
- doesn't ring quite the same way...)
For another thing, I thought Salvation Army was free, with neither counter nor cashier. (but I could be wrong how it operates.)
Anyone know for sure?
I mean is the phrase a pure Cohen coin,
or was it already in circulation before he added value ?
~greg

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]every hit returned in a search on the phrase : -"salvation army counters" ( - which is of course from ... mean is the phrase a pure Cohen coin, or was it already in circulation before he added value ?[/nq]
The Salvation Army operates shops which sell second-hand clothes, to raise money for their charitable purposes. So "rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters" would be things picked up in one of these stores. The "counters" are either tabletops on which the goods are displayed, or, more likely, the desk where they are paid for. The cashier is a person; the counter is a place.
Leonard Cohen is a Canadian, isn't he? Not that it makes much difference.

Fran

Usenet · Answer

~greg wrote on 26 Apr 2005:
[nq:1]every hit returned in a search on the phrase : -"salvation army counters" ( - which is of course from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" ) has something to do with "Suzanne". So I think it's not a very common expression apart from that song.[/nq]
I can't think of any other instance in which I've read or heard it.
[nq:1]Also, we refer to "cashiers" in the US, not "counters" ( assuming that's what that means. It sounds English english to me )...[/nq]
a "counter":
W3NID: counter (noun)

4 a : a table, shelf, or other level surface usually of a heightconvenient for a person standing before it and over which transactions may be conducted : a table, case, or shelf on which goods are displayed and over which payment for purchases is made : any article of business, store, or institutional furniture that separates clientele from personnel and over which transactions are made b : a long and somewhat narrow serving area flanked by a row of stools eating at the counter rather than taking a table : flat working space on the top of kitchen equipment or furnishings
[nq:1]( however, " She is wearing rags and feathers From Salvation Army cashiers " - doesn't ring quite the same way...)[/nq]
That's because a "counter" is not a "cashier". And cash registers don't ring these days: they're electronic.
[nq:1]For another thing, I thought Salvation Army was free, with neither counter nor cashier. (but I could be wrong how it operates.)[/nq]
Nah. When you go to the Salvation Army store to buy second-, third-, or fifteenth-hand stuff, you gotta pay cash for it. The SA is a private religious organization, not the government.
[nq:1]Anyone know for sure?[/nq]
Nobody knows anything for sure. Go to the library and read some David Hume. Actually, anything about epistemology would be good.
[nq:1]I mean is the phrase a pure Cohen coin,[/nq]
I think that ought to be "coinage", but the semantics might have changed recently.
[nq:1] or was it already in circulation before he added value ?[/nq]
You might want to keep your day job, Greg. You won't make it as a humorist if you continue to insist on using boring wooden-nickel clich?s as metaphors.
I'd bet that some hippie somewhere said something like, "Yeah, man, like I got this at the Salvation Army store on Grand Avenue in San Rafael. It was on the same counter as the cash register."

Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.
"You've got to get over this idea that there's a rule for everything." Professor John Lawler, U. Michigan

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]every hit returned in a search on the phrase : ... was it already in circulation before he added value ?[/nq]
[nq:1]The Salvation Army operates shops which sell second-hand clothes,to raise money for their charitable purposes. So "rags and feathersfrom Salvation ... a person; the counter is a place. Leonard Cohen is a Canadian, isn't he? Not that it makes much difference.[/nq]When BBC Radio 4 interviewed Suzanne about it a year or two ago she made a point of mentioning that she'd always been interested in recycling and such, and that the stuff she got was really good and not readily obtainable elsewhere. She was a little hurt at any suggestion that she might just have been a cheapskate, and I sympathise: my tails (though not the toppers, Laura may be relieved to learn: I got those little suckers by fair and square conventional methods I know it's hard to believe any decent humanbody would actually buy something from Moss Bros, but, for the grey one, well, I was in a hurry, so suck on it, snobs), like a fair few of my books, came from ye olde original Oxfam shop.

(This may even have been in the dim era before they repellently called it "Oxfam".)

Mike.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]When BBC Radio 4 interviewed Suzanne about it a year or two ago she made a point of mentioning that she'd always been interested in recycling and such, and that the stuff she got was really good and not readily obtainable elsewhere.[/nq]
I am surprised that anyone would think that. These days, shopping for clothes at the Salvation Army is a mark of originality. Of course, now there are shops which sell stuff that the owners bought at the Sally Ann, and are now selling at much higher prices as "vintage clothing".

She was a little hurt at any
[nq:1]suggestion that she might just have been a cheapskate, and I sympathise: my tails (though not the toppers, Laura may ... ye olde original Oxfam shop. (This may even have been in the dim era before they repellently called it "Oxfam".)[/nq]
When my son went to boarding school, he had to be kitted out with blazers and sports jackets. The local menswear stores could only offer jackets that were either two sizes too big, but had long enough sleeves, or the right chest size, but with sleeves that barely made it past his elbows. All this for $250 each, before alterations.

We went to the Goodwill shop in Westport, and found a cashmere blazer for $30, that we didn't bother to have altered, and a tweed sports jacket for $10, that I could let out the sleeves on.

Of course, it helps that the shop was in Westport, where people give cashmere blazers, morning suits, and evening wear to the Goodwill after a couple of wearings.
Fran

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]song.[/nq]
OK, since you made gratuitous mention of me there, I challenge you to attend the boink wearing your bunny ears and one of those toppers. (I'll be the one in the corner, pretending I don't know you, frowning over a half-finished Sudoku, accompanied by the Harold Shipman lookalike with his top tucked in and his halo shining.)

Laura
(emulate St. George for email)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]The Salvation Army operates shops which sell second-hand clothes, to ... a Canadian, isn't he? Not that it makes much difference.[/nq]
[nq:1]When BBC Radio 4 interviewed Suzanne about it a year or two ago she made a point of mentioning that ... elsewhere. She was a little hurt at any suggestion that she might just have been a cheapskate, and I sympathise:[/nq]
Uh-huh. Anyone who's willing to import tea and citrus fruits directly from China is no cheapskate.

John Dean
Oxford

Usenet · Answer

Thank you all for your responses.
I have learned much from each of them.
( except possibly "Cyber-Cypher"s
or, as we properly spell it here: "Cybernetic-Cipher" meaning:

4. something of no value or importance.
5. a person of no influence; nonentity. imagining himself as somehow involved
in the study of systems and control. )
( btw,- when he was asked why he called his new science "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener replied:
"I didn't know what else to call it." )
Now, hard as I try, I do have to admit,
the conclusion does seem to be inescapable
- that - for once in my life
- I have finally asked,
(- of such decent innocent strangers too!, )
- a stupid question!
Nevertheless, I will try.
(this is probably just passive-aggressive behavior on my part, for those who care about such categories.)
I realize now that ultimately what I was reacting to was not to the word "counters" after all.
It was to many people's apparent reaction
to "Salvation Army".
Some things said in the responses are what made me realize this, - but especially Mike's quoting
from the BBC Suzanne interview
"She was a little hurt at any suggestion
that she might just have been a cheapskate, "
In truth, I already knew that some people do
apparently react to the line in that way,
But I could never understand why.
I guess I just assumed that everyone already knew
a lot more about the times in question
than they apparently do.
So that they must have been reacting
to something else about the line
than "Salvation Army".
And all I could think of was
that had to be "counters".
Before and after the times in question, "Salvation Army" may have had "cheapskate" connotations
- for many.
But during those times, as I thought everyone knew, - it just didn't.
Back then "Salvation Army" was no different then "Army Surplus" or "Bread and Roses" or any of a dozen of others of the sort.

For sure, - many people thought they could insult other people about it, or at least they tried to .
But even they knew better.
Whatever they thought about it - whatever anybody
thinks about it now - they knew at least that it was something else entirely.
It was "counter-culture".
And it no longer exists.
" We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S. Thompson
I guess I just assumed everyone knew about it from high-school history if not first hand.
Suzanne felt that she had to defend against the misperception of "Salvation Army". That didn't even occur to me so I deconstructed "counters" instead.

And it was the cognitive dissonance between the "free" (as I thought it- or at least out of a context where "cheapskate" would be much more likely applied to anyone buying new, rather than recycled, thus supporting the military industrial complex, at the expense of the earth, and their souls;
- in other words, having nothing to do with the amount of money involved -) Salvation Army, on the one hand, and the business-tainted meanings of "counters"
on the other.
It just got to me for a moment and it created a black-out in my mind around the, -apparently often 1st listed - and certainly not unknown to me
-dictionary meaning of "counters"
as being, quite simply, synonymous with
"tables on which items are displayed."
The business-like
"Take it up to the counter, kid, and pay for it
you no-good hippie Jane Fonda - John Kerry
- lovin' commie pinko ***!"
just didn't jibe, during that moment,
with the digger-Zeitgeist of those times,
as I remembered them.
We have "counters" at buffets and greasy-dinners. ( for fat people - not Suzannes)
And I have browsed through many fire-salvage book sales, held in large warehouses, housing books stacked high on row after row of tables - not "counters". They're called "tables". You select books from the "tables" and bring them up to one of the "counters" to pay for.
It's a "counter" that supports the cash-register.
In other words, all the other contexts that immediately came to mind where "counters" might naturally occur, - they all seemed to be tainted with food-stuffs and dirty-money,

So different from that one single context, "Suzanne" - where it's colored instead with romantic imagery, (although a bit sticky in honey)
The "Suzanne" context is so familiar that I, too, , wasn't even capable of realizing just how unusual
it was even during the moment I'm referring to.
( It seems to be a gestalt
- comes and goes with me too.)
I think it may be that the song itself actually shifted the connotations so that it isn't in fact unusual anymore.

But it is hard to remember.
Books - definitions - scholarly etymologies
don't help with this kind of thing. The shades of associations I'm trying to differentiate are harder to separate out, one from another, than are all the different epistemological theories in the world, one from another, for example.

But if so, then it would not be the only thing the song did it to.

It is impossible for example today
to recall how striking the words:
"And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers"
were when first heard.
(After which of course every
"lousy little poet .. tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson" tried for the effect)
Finally, however, I see my mistake here.
And I see the line a lot clearer.
And it's still a good line.
It's a great line.
Especially since it's got that timbre - that subtle overtone over "counters"
-which is: "counter-culture."
Though unheard today.

Anyway,
I certainly didn't intend any disrespect for the Salvation Army! After all, they supplied the uniform for half my generation.

Or for Suzanne Verdal, - G-d forbid!
Or for the English language!
( be it American, or any of the lesser *** dialects; - British, Canadian, Australian, ... )
By the way,
when I say "English",
I am referring to the application of spin to the cue ball in the table ( or "counter" as some may prefer to call it) game of "pool". (The English call it "side" I believe.)

The expression is sometimes used for any kind of 'spin' -applied to anything, -as in :
a "counter":

and my reply:
Do you think maybe you could take the English off that, and say it again in plain English? )
)
~Greg.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]OK, since you made gratuitous mention of me there, I challenge youto attend the boink wearing your bunny ears and one of thosetoppers.[/nq]
Not a chance: I left the ears behind after the party.

Mike.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I am surprised that anyone would think that. These days, shopping for clothes at the Salvation Army is a mark ... stuff that the owners bought at the Sally Ann, and are now selling at much higher prices as "vintage clothing".[/nq]
Why, I wonder, do Americans not have a nickname for the Salvation Army (=BrE Sally Ann =AusE Salvos)?

Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.

NB mail to my.spamtrap (at) verizon.net is heavily filtered to remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I am surprised that anyone would think that. These days, ... are now selling at much higher prices as "vintage clothing".[/nq]
[nq:1]Why, I wonder, do Americans not have a nickname for the Salvation Army (=BrE Sally Ann =AusE Salvos)?[/nq]
Here in BC's capital one hears the English 'Sally Ann'. A 'salvo' would be regarded as absurd; this, after all, is a naval base.

But back to Frances' point, I quite often drop in to one or the other of their several stores here, on the off-chance of finding a 'vintage' computer. Yesterday, (Mr Valentine may be interested to hear) though the machine is outside my usual collecting interest, I could not resist a $4.99 Mac 'all-in-one' Performa 580CD. Works too, with an IBM compatibility card already installed. All it needed was a mouse and keyboard.

Salvation army counters

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