Yeah, my apologies to any Herberts here, but when I hear “Herbie”, I do think of a teenage dork, wearing white socks with sandals.
By the way, I do try hard to not make assumptions about people by what they wear… but damn, dress socks with shorts (and especially with sandals*) does make someone look like they have no idea how dweeby they are.
*eta: or better yet, flip flops, so their tube socks have to bunch up between the first and second toes. Ewww…
Heh ( sheepish smirk )
They’re the only kind I wear. They’re never visible though since I only wear brogans, or pull-on leather Wellington or Frye type boots.
I went to school in northern Indiana in the last 1960s/early 1970s. I was occasionally teased for wearing white socks, but nobody ever called them Herbies. It was just “Are you a White Sox fan?”
My preference is the sloths from the DMV in Zootopia.
I know there are several Michiganders on this board, but I didn’t know you were a former Michigander, however briefly, Qadgop-- for the first 6 or 7 years of my life. I used to work in Livonia (years later, of course; no child labor laws were broken).
Yeah, I left Wisconsin at age 6, as my dad climbed the corporate ladder. So I got to be an honorary ‘Flintstone’ with 2 years in that city, followed by 4+ years in Livonia, where I became one of the original mall rats by hanging out at the Livonia Mall in elementary and junior high school. There I learned the term ‘witches night’ for Halloween Eve (which also happens to be my birthday). No ‘herbies’ though.
Haha, though it’s a perfectly obvious nickname now that I hear it, this is the first time I’ve heard that residents of Flint refer to themselves as ‘Flintstones’.
I always knew it as “Devil’s Night”. In the suburbs it meant writing profanity on car windows with soap and throwing eggs or rotten tomatoes at houses. Also toilet-papering front yard trees. I was mostly a good kid, but one Devil’s Night when I was around 14 or so, I did run with a bad crowd, and I’m not proud to admit I threw a few tomatoes and soaped a few windows.
In the city of Detroit though, Devil’s Night meant full-on arson, burning down abandoned houses. At its peak in the 80s, hundreds of house fires a night overwhelmed the Detroit Fire Dept. A community movement called Angel’s Night finally (mostly) stopped the widespread arson, starting in the 90s.
Yes, you’re right. I mis-recalled. Devil’s night it was. And it sure got out of hand a lot, including during the riots of the late 60’s.
As a kid, I always thought it was weird that “Devil’s Night” was the night before Halloween, not the night after. The very phrase “trick or treat” implies that if a treat is not given, then that house will pay the consequences. If Devil’s Night was the next night, the non-candy giving houses could then be pranked. Not that I’m endorsing the idea, it just seemed like it would have made more sense.
Are you saying this wasn’t cool?
Not familiar with “Herbie;” '60s Catholic school term was, “Fairy socks.”
This is what I came in to suggest. I never heard the term before, but this seemed like the obvious souyrce.
Herbie was a character in the brand Z American Comics Group (ACG) series Herbie that ran from 1963 to 1967. I don’t see him wearing white socks in any images (heck, I can’t se his socks at all), but if was wearing any, they’d likely be white
Actually, on the cover of Herbie #1 he appears to be wearing white socks