Before Plastic Wrap, Remember Wax Paper?

by Wyatt Newman

You can still buy it, but does anyone use it--wax paper? I have some, only because I have one recipe that calls for cooking it by protecting it in wax paper in the process. I've had the roll for years, and it will probably still be in the drawer after I am gone. I remember my mom using it to wrap everything, just as we use plastic wrap today. When she packed lunches for me in my grade school days, my sandwiches were so neatly and lovingly wrapped in wax paper. What kid today would do what Ron Bodvin did in our 6th grade classroom-- create his own wax paper? Ron was a creative jokester. I will never forget the adolescent fun we had when he (the following is a bit gross, so you may want to go to the next paragraph), stuck a finger in his ear, pulled out a chunk of earwax, rubbed in on a piece of tablet paper and proclaimed he had created his own wax paper.

Wax paper brings back another memory of a school chum--Bob Cartwright. Bob had nothing to do with wax paper himself. His name, Cartwright, inspired me to come up with a nickname, based on a wax paper product: Cutright Waxed Paper. I was, and still am, fond of nicknaming people. Cutright Waxed Paper had a TV commercial with a catchy jingle. The words are not all that clear to me these fifty years later, so I may paraphrase, but it used cartoon figures, had a small female chorus that sung,

Zippity Cutright doesn't stick.

Zippity Cutright does the trick.

To wrap a sandwich (a brief musical refrain played here),

Or cover a bowl--

Use Cutright, Cutright, Cutright,

In the ?????? I have no memory of what the final words were, but that last word rhymed with bowl. I'm pretty sure it was "roll".

You can easily guess how Cutright was tied to Cartwright. I nicknamed Bob "Zippity" Cartwright, usually just referring to him as Zippity. Norm Cooper was the only one I recall who adopted the nom-de- nick. We were all on the track team, and I can remember us cheering Bob on by yelling, "Come on, Zippity!" It seemed so appropriately natural...Zippity and running a race. Bob never seemed to react to the nickname. Easy-going Bob wasn't the type to react to many things. He laughed a lot, seeing humor in many things, but apparently didn't think being called "Zippity" was that funny, but he didn't seem to be bothered by it, eithe. I don't remember Bob ever getting the slightest bit angry about anything. When I greeted him at the 20th and 40th reunions with a hearty, "Zippity!", he kept a blank face. Obviously, the creator of the nick-name, me, remembers the nickname and its origin, but the name, unlike the wax paper product, "didn't stick" with Zippity--er, Bob.