| A Word Edgewise
by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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PEOPLE AND TOOTHPICKS MAKE HISTORY
Ever notice how many people reach for, or ask for a toothpick after a meal? Well, you may not have occasion to count, but the answer is thousands. Most all restaurants, whether of the fast-food variety, or more fancy places, furnish there beside the cash register toothpicks in dispensers.
Picking teeth becomes a habit. Toothpicks, for some people, serve the same purpose as a pacifier for babies. They are adult pacifier. When the adult becomes irritable or hard to please, he just sticks a toothpick in his mouth and savors a bit of sucking tranquility. It has been so for many years. Some people grow a long finger nail especially for picking teeth--which have to be picked.
Even in my life-time, when store-boughten picks were not so much in evidence, many people whittled kitchen matches to make their own toothpicks. There was a little hazard in that variety because they broke rather easily and splinters might be wedged between teeth--such a catastrophe can keep your mind occupied for hours, and the effort to get both hands in the mouth to dislodge the pick becomes quite a struggle. Never mind, the kitchen match could be chewed to a nice soft brush to pick and clean even without being whittled. So could a limb of a polecat bush, favored by snuff dippers in our neighborhood.
Evidence of picked teeth led anthropologist Christy G. Turner to declare, "As far as can be empirically documented, the oldest demonstrable human habit is picking one's teeth." In 289, Agathocles, a tyrant of Syracuse, died when his toothpick had been soaked in poison. That was his own special, permanent toothpick, too.
People had toothpicks made from wood, ivory, silver gold, all with specially carved handles, even inlaid with gems. Muhammad had one carved from aromatic aloe wood dipped in holy-water at Mecca. He had a special servant, "master of the toothpick", who carried it for him--behind his ear.
Special rules of etiquette grew up around the use of the little sometimes ornamental instrument. In 1393, rules were published about the ill manners of picking ones teeth during the course of a meal. But even manners change. In the 1700s the ornamental variety of toothpicks was worn about the neck on decorative chains. Ladies in elegant ballroom gowns felt they were not properly adorned without their ornamental toothpicks. Even a woman's dowry might include several gold or silver toothpicks which remained her own even after she married and all her other goods became her husband's.
Disposable toothpicks were first made in Portugal where they were hand-whittled from wood, boxed and sold. In 1865, Charles Foster, who had bought some of the Portuguese made ones, decided to market disposable picks in the United States. He worked for a wooden shoe-peg manufacturer in Boston, and was allowed to experiment with the equipment until he developed a machine that could cut toothpicks mechanically.
Creating a market was a problem, but with the help of some Harvard students who ate in fancy restaurants and clubs and demanded toothpicks after dining, he established a market. The factory he established, in Maine, though it is no longer in the hands of the Foster family, is the biggest producer of toothpicks in the United States. The only hands to touch the toothpick after the logger who cuts the tree and supplies the birch log is the person who picks his pearly whites after a meal. Mechanically the plant produces 20 million toothpicks in an average day.
Did you ever look up at a tree towering over a picnic and wonder how many toothpicks it would make? That question was put to Richard Campbell, vice president of Maine operations. He couldn't answer that, but said that he once figured that one year's production, laid end to end, would circle the globe 30 times.
Consumer Products Safety Commission reports that 8,800 accidents are reported each year caused by careless pokings and piercings with toothpicks. That doesn't even include the professional baseball player that chews a toothpick for good luck--even when he goes to bat. What a target for a pitcher!
So whether you pick your teeth at the table, or behind a napkin, with a flat toothpick or a round one, disregarding what Miss Manners might say, or if you choose peppermint or cinnamon flavor for your teeth, or just as a pacifier with your store-bought teeth, you are not alone in your dire need to pick. Through the ages, the great and the not-so-great, have picked
their teeth, too.
I found historical information in an article by Sue Hubbell in the January 1997, Smithsonian.