I was with a group of friends a few nights ago. The owner of the house had a grandfather clock that he had just gotten working. I mentioned that the term “grandfather clock” came from the song, and was surprised that no one else in the group had ever heard of it.
I am 60 years old, and the people in the group were all about as old. It wouldn’t expect someone in his or her 20s to know the song, but I thought it known to my generation (and to earlier ones). I probably learned it in elementary school.
Have the rest of you had similar experiences, where you were surprised to learn that something you assumed to be common cultural knowledge wasn’t so common?
I’m almost your age, and I remember the song from my youth, but I never knew the song was responsible for the term! I just assumed that it was an old term and a modern song. Now I’m trying to remember where I first heard the song. Maybe in a music class in grade school?
As for other examples of unshared cultural knowledge, sorry. I got nuttin’.
I had never heard the clock song, and never knew that’s how the name came to be. I’m about your age. This isn’t quite the same thing, but I’m often floored by how little my California friends know about the geography of the East Coast, and how they can’t really appreciate accents, home building styles and food can change as you drive up and down the coast. I guess it’s to be expected if you’ve never been there, but… history!!
Now, how many of these people remember “I’ve got six pence, jolly jolly six pence, I’ve got six pence to last me all my life” ?
ETA: No, I can’t believe either that anyone of the generation of us old codgers doesn’t know Grandfather’s Clock. Yes, I learned it in elementary school music class.
I didn’t know the term came from the song. I know the song! But I’ve never heard of the JC version, we actually learned the “folk song” in elementary school music class in the 80s.
Anyway…there’s a local musician in Cleveland that has always been ubiquitous here, named Michael Stanley. He was kinda big in the 70s and 80s and after that has been a radio DJ and on TV and stuff. I’m not a fan or anything but he’s considered “Cleveland’s son” since he grew up here, for famous here and stayed here.
I mentioned his name to a friend a few years ago, who is my age and also from the Cleveland area, and she’d never heard of him. Never heard of him! I got mad that she didn’t know who he was and she got mad that I was so mad about it but I was like “how far up your own ass are you??”
I did a poll on Facebook of all my my-age-and-my-area friends (and our shared friends) and they all knew who he was. Except one other person, who I’ve also decided has her head up her ass.
I guess this isn’t a good example of “nobody knows but I thought everyone knows” but an example of “everybody knows and it’s super weird that these two don’t know.”
I’m just a little younger than the OP, and I know “Grandfather’s Clock” also. I learned how to play it on the piano when I was a child, and taking piano lessons.
I’m 60, and I don’t know the Grandfather Clock song. When I was in elementary school, I was more familiar with the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, and the Monkees.
Upon what basis do we presume what should be “shared” cultural knowledge?
I know the etymology of the particular word–but then I’m a linguist. (I had never actually heard the song, though, and I’m a fan of Cash.) I bet there are dozens of etymologies of common words the OP doesn’t know, regardless of age, that I could gratuitously contrive to work into a casual conversation, and then proclaim my surprise that such knowledge isn’t “shared,” but that is not my habit. The particular subset of cultural knowledge that one person shares is usually tantamount to other knowledge he or she doesn’t share.
There is no single, unitary depository of cultural knowledge that humans draw upon, but rather countless variations, which overlap, crisscross, or sometimes barely coincide.
Oh goodness me, all kinds of cultural knowledge are disappearing every day. Common wisdom, stuff that everyone knew at one time gets larded over and pushed aside and dies with the last surviving vector.
Do you think the Internet will save you? It won’t. Dig: if you are over 50 and were a kid in the Northeast part of the US, you were probably exposed to the Teddie Peanut Butter commercial on TV, and had a portion of your brain dedicated to storing it, but Google “Teddie Peanut Butter song” and you get plenty about the brand, but no mention of the song. I could sing it for you now!
Sad fact is, there’s an incalculable amount of such essential data that gets dumped over the transom with the passing of each generation. I wouldn’t worry about the Grandfather’s Clock song though. (Yes, I remember it.)
I remember an article in a magazine published by a missionary order where, talking about the consequences of war in… Mozambique I think it was?, one they mentioned was lack of access to feminine hygiene products. Modern ones weren’t accesible because of the war, old methods weren’t remembered well enough to actually be usable. “We’ve heard our grandmothers talk about using some moss, but we have no idea which moss it was or how to prepare it, and Grandma isn’t around to ask her any more.”
