Sorry, had to get that out of my system. I’ll try not to let it happen again. Personally, I’ve never really understood why people go for bags of money. Not only are briefcases more discreet, but they keep the bills nice and crisp. The only logical occasion for putting money in a sack (with or without the dollar sign on the side) would be if you were robbing a bank. And at that point, it seems kind of silly to complain if you get mugged during the getaway.
“Officer, that man stole the money I robbed from the bank!”
“You did what now?”
“Oh crap.”
Also Adam, I’ve finally gone through the entirety of your archives. You’ve got an amazing thing going here, and I look forward to enjoying it for a long time to come.
“Thank you, Fat Tony. However, in the future, I would prefer a nondescript briefcase to the sack with a dollar sign on it.”
The sack thing goes back to cartoons. Cartoonists tended to draw the simplest things because animation is hard and simper makes the process go faster, and what’s simpler than a sack? Also they need to establish roles quickly, so it quickly tells you a character is a thief when there’s money on a sack he’s running with. Not as true in modern cartoons, but the stereotypes of old stick with us and can even be mocked, such as in that Simpsons quote.
Money IS also transported in sacks, so if you’re robbing the armored car, or during the loading/unloading process, I guess it works there.
Actually, back in the day, they did but they weren’t the poke style loose sacks depicted in cartoon iconography.
I saw a museum display of them once. But the bags actually looked more like very heavy duty canvas vertical envelopes with riveted leather seams at the top and bottom.
Back in the 19th century trains carried most of the mail. If a train wasn’t stopping at a town, they used to just put the mail in a heavy canvas bag marked with Postal Service eagle and snag it on a special hook raised on a post as the train roared by at full speed. (That took some practice to master. )
Trains transported money and other valuables as well in similar types of bags. Bags carrying cash were marked with large dollar as visual controls to prevent $5,000 from being left swinging on a hook out in the middle of nowhere.
It was safe to do so because, despite their common depiction in movies, train robberies where very rare. . It was almost impossible to actually board a moving train from horse back and the only time trains were stopped and alone where when they where sidetracked waiting for another train to stop. You couldn’t know when a train would be sidetracked without real time scheduling information which was almost impossible to get. Besides, the crews, especially the postal clerk (by law), were heavily armed. Money was kept in heavy safes. Like museum robberies or bank hacking today, train robberies became fictional tropes because of their difficulty and not their ubiquity.
A lot of people in the 19th century saw big bags of with dollar signs being offloaded trains and carted around. That’s possibly where the cartoon iconography started.
Either that or Thomas Nast being creative like 95% of our iconography. The man knew how to pack a lot information into one panel.
Ich bin erste.
Sorry, had to get that out of my system. I’ll try not to let it happen again. Personally, I’ve never really understood why people go for bags of money. Not only are briefcases more discreet, but they keep the bills nice and crisp. The only logical occasion for putting money in a sack (with or without the dollar sign on the side) would be if you were robbing a bank. And at that point, it seems kind of silly to complain if you get mugged during the getaway.
“Officer, that man stole the money I robbed from the bank!”
“You did what now?”
“Oh crap.”
Also Adam, I’ve finally gone through the entirety of your archives. You’ve got an amazing thing going here, and I look forward to enjoying it for a long time to come.
“Thank you, Fat Tony. However, in the future, I would prefer a nondescript briefcase to the sack with a dollar sign on it.”
The sack thing goes back to cartoons. Cartoonists tended to draw the simplest things because animation is hard and simper makes the process go faster, and what’s simpler than a sack? Also they need to establish roles quickly, so it quickly tells you a character is a thief when there’s money on a sack he’s running with. Not as true in modern cartoons, but the stereotypes of old stick with us and can even be mocked, such as in that Simpsons quote.
Money IS also transported in sacks, so if you’re robbing the armored car, or during the loading/unloading process, I guess it works there.
Actually, back in the day, they did but they weren’t the poke style loose sacks depicted in cartoon iconography.
I saw a museum display of them once. But the bags actually looked more like very heavy duty canvas vertical envelopes with riveted leather seams at the top and bottom.
Back in the 19th century trains carried most of the mail. If a train wasn’t stopping at a town, they used to just put the mail in a heavy canvas bag marked with Postal Service eagle and snag it on a special hook raised on a post as the train roared by at full speed. (That took some practice to master. )
Trains transported money and other valuables as well in similar types of bags. Bags carrying cash were marked with large dollar as visual controls to prevent $5,000 from being left swinging on a hook out in the middle of nowhere.
It was safe to do so because, despite their common depiction in movies, train robberies where very rare. . It was almost impossible to actually board a moving train from horse back and the only time trains were stopped and alone where when they where sidetracked waiting for another train to stop. You couldn’t know when a train would be sidetracked without real time scheduling information which was almost impossible to get. Besides, the crews, especially the postal clerk (by law), were heavily armed. Money was kept in heavy safes. Like museum robberies or bank hacking today, train robberies became fictional tropes because of their difficulty and not their ubiquity.
A lot of people in the 19th century saw big bags of with dollar signs being offloaded trains and carted around. That’s possibly where the cartoon iconography started.
Either that or Thomas Nast being creative like 95% of our iconography. The man knew how to pack a lot information into one panel.
Cool, pre-history to the history I know. I knew about the mail, but not the money bags. Neat.
Well, I know what I’m doing with the bag used to clean out the cat box from now on!
The last panel reminds me of the old joke –
Q: What’s invisible and smells like carrots?
A: Rabbit farts.
Well, I think that we can all agree that “Used Monkey Diapers” would be a great name for a punk band.
Last panel
You reused a joke from where bug changed a monkeys diapers.