New York Diary

you see the weirdest things...

Yesterday night, I was riding the subway home from GreenDrinks (a place to meet environmentally conscious Manhattanites who like to hit on girls who work for hedge funds, perhaps because, to the uninitiated, "hedge" sounds more like a green leafy thing in your front yard than like a bold statement along the lines of "I work for the man") when what did I see but a man wearing bright purple alligator-skin (snakeskin?) shoes. This, I tell you, was a bit odd.

It was not as odd as the man carrying a 47-pound tin of lard, however. (The can looked roughly like the one pictured, though it was newer and the label was differently colored.) I was shocked! Who knew they even made such things anymore? Or ever?

And why, I had to ask myself, 47 pounds? That's an awful lot to carry around. Moreover, and this is what really got me, it's not a nice round number. Hell, 47? It's prime, at least, I grant you that. But why not 45 or 50?

I've done a bit of research on this question (no kidding), and it seems that historically lard was sold in 50 pound tins. Indeed, lard is presently sold in 50 pound tins as well (just check out the "quantity discount items" at that link!). This makes sense to me. If you're going to sell large quantities of lard, at least have the human decency to do it in some sort of increment divisible by 5. Whoever it is that makes the 47-pound tin-o'-lard is out of step with all the cool kids and their round 50 pounds of lard.

In completely unrelated news, while researching lard I stumbled across a 1904 Supreme Court case that found, among other things, that a licensed margarine dealer could not buy the particularly gruesome concoction of, and in perhaps the strangest ever reference to a Supreme Court decision I quote, "oleo oil, 20 pounds; natural lard, 30 pounds; creamery butter, 50 pounds; milk and cream, 30 pounds; common salt, 7 pounds" while paying a mere 1/4 cent-per-pound tax. Rather, he was required to pay the full Congressionally-mandated tax of 10-cents-per-pound. Reactions: 1. That smarmy oleomargarine dealer! He should have known better. (This actually WAS the government's winning position.) 2. Congress passed a federal tax on margarine, and, moreover, taxed it at two separate rates depending upon its color??? How nitpicky can you get? 3. And in his defence the margarine dealer argued that taxes deprive him of his property without due process of law? Over 10 cents per pound? Perhaps he'd have done better to argue about property taxes, hrmmm? 4. Also, there are margarine dealers looking to turn a quick buck by buying cheap and selling at full markup?

The things I learn in this city.

posted by Skay @ 9:38 PM