{"id":25548,"date":"2010-02-22T10:02:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T17:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=25548"},"modified":"2020-02-22T10:04:08","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T17:04:08","slug":"origins-of-on-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=25548","title":{"rendered":"Origins of “On On”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where does \u201cOn On\u201d come from? Who knows? The only thing I\u2019m fairly certain of is that it didn\u2019t come from hashing.<\/p>\n

A few years ago I got into an argument with another hasher. He insisted it was a hasher who first came up with the \u201cDrinking Club with a Running Problem\u201d motto, sometime in the 1970s. I said I didn\u2019t think so, because if you Google \u201cdrinking club with a ______ problem\u201d you\u2019ll find drinking clubs with mountain climbing problems, drinking clubs with bicycling problems, drinking clubs with yachting problems, and so on.<\/p>\n

The earliest documented use I\u2019ve found dates back to 1946. \u201cA Drinking Club with a Motorcycle Problem\u201d appears on the patch of\u00a0an early outlaw motorcycle club, the\u00a0Boozefighters MC<\/a>\u00a0(the\u00a0bikers who raised hell in Hollister, California in 1947, inspiring the 1953 Marlon Brando movie\u00a0The Wild One<\/em>).\u00a0If you can find a quote from G or Torch Bennett or Horse Thomson where they used the motto in the late 1930s or early 1940s, I\u2019ll reconsider. But as far as I know we never called ourselves a drinking club with a running problem before the 1970s.<\/p>\n

The other day, after I\u00a0wrote about Hash Haven<\/a>, the online support group for hashers dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts, members there had a long debate about what many of them see as a hurtful, politically incorrect, and exclusionary motto used by some hash kennels: \u201cNo Poofters.\u201d That never originated in the hash; it came from the\u00a01970 Monty Python Bruces sketch<\/a>. In the heyday of Monty Python, a lot of hashers thought the no poofters refrain was funny, and somehow it morphed into an unofficial motto.<\/p>\n

How about \u201cRule Number One Is There Are No Rules\u201d? It\u2019s possible a hasher first said it, but if you Google it you\u2019ll find it\u2019s a widely used phrase.\u00a0Thomas Edison<\/a>\u00a0allegedly said something similar in 1903: \u201cHell, there are no rules here. We\u2019re trying to accomplish something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, back to \u201cOn On.\u201d This morning Chippendale sent me some information on the\u00a0Royal Air Force\u2019s 272 Squadron<\/a>, which flew anti-submarine patrols from Scotland in WWI and long range shipping escort missions in the Mediterranean\u00a0during WWII, and whose motto was \u2026 well, you\u2019ll never guess:<\/p>\n

\"272<\/a><\/p>\n

The plaques and patches I looked up all say On On, but the linked history of the squadron says it was actually On, On! (with an exclamation point, which is how many hashers say it as well). Looking at the symbol of the armored knight, I can\u2019t help wondering if the phrase dates back even farther \u2026 possibly even to the Crusades?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no point to any of this, other than to say that the hash knows a good thing when it sees it and isn\u2019t ashamed to borrow when necessary. On, On!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where does \u201cOn On\u201d come from? Who knows? The only thing I\u2019m fairly certain of is that it didn\u2019t come from hashing. A few years ago I got into an argument with another hasher. He insisted it was a hasher who first came up with the \u201cDrinking Club with a Running Problem\u201d motto, sometime in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hash-house-harriers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25549,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25548\/revisions\/25549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}