Nose Blowing in Appalachia and the rest of the Western World in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Whatever happened to handkerchiefs?
For several years following World War II -- in fact for well over two decades after the war -- men and women of all stations carried a square of cloth called a handkerchief into which they blew the contents of their nose throughout the day, and even during the night if they were unable to sleep because of an uncomfortable accumulation of mucus in their nasal passage. Men generally carried handkerchiefs made entirely of cotton. Women of a higher station, and those who aspired to such, blew their mucus into a dainty and more delicate cloth made of silk. Farmers and fishermen and men of other muscular occupations would usually carry their handkerchief in one of their hip pockets and their wallet in the other. Most of these men would leave a part of the handkerchief dangling outside the pocket to make it easy to extract. Men of a more refined lifestyle generally wore more refined clothing, and they carried their handkerchiefs folded into a flat wrinkle-free square fully inserted into a hip pocket such that no part of it was visible until it was removed and used to receive some of the contents of its owner's nose.
Men at the top of the social scale who dressed rather formally in their daily pursuits often displayed the top of a dainty silk handkerchief that they carried in the left outside breast pocket of their suit coats or formal jackets. These dainty silken cloths had no relation whatsoever with noses or the contents of noses. They were there for show, full stop. Indeed some of these very special men would not even publicly blow their noses into their hip pocket hankies, for fear of breaching some unspoken and imagined rules of decorum regarding humanity's dealings with its nasal mucus.
Very few of these dandies have ever resided in Appalachia, and this has piqued the interest of social scientists throughout the world. What is it, they ask, that makes Appalachians accept with equanimity every man's method of dealing with whatever is in his nose? So serious was this question that as it entered the mainstream of public discourse lawmakers and journalists and paper companies joined in and promoted their respective positions. The most plausible answer is simple: The population of Appalachia consists substantially of Brits, three or four generations removed, and Brits will blow their nose however they wish, and will happily allow their neighbor to do the same without complaint or accusation.
Some lawmakers, although none from Appalachia, proposed legislation making it illegal to blow one's nose in public in any town or city with a population of greater than one thousand souls. Others proposed laws making it illegal to blow one's nose period, without regard to population or where the nose happened to be. Under this proposed legislation, if one blew one's nose, even in one's own home, one committed an offense.
Of course the journalists made hay of all this public discussion. They finally had a topic that involved every human on the planet. This thing had reach, and it had legs! But neither the lawmakers nor the journalists were able to bring about much change in the matter. It was the paper companies who slowly and methodically changed the nose-blowing behavior of most humans in the western world.
As early as twenty years before World War II paper companies had begun manufacturing facial tissues which they promoted to women as useful for the removal of makeup. Soon a secondary use emerged, and it quickly became primary. By the early 1930s many people had begun to use facial tissues as disposable handkerchiefs for blowing their nose. At first this took place in venues where a box of tissues could be placed, but when one was out and about one still used a cloth handkerchief to receive and store whatever resulted from blowing one's nose. And then, between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s the paper companies brought about the Great Change. They began selling facial tissues in pocket-sized packets. The world tried them, cast aside the mucilaginous, slimy, filthy cloth handkerchiefs that contained two or three days of accumulation of nose blast, and never looked back.
The Appalachians joined in this change from cloth to paper, but it never was a big deal for them. And truth be told, some of our elder Appalachians never used either cloth or paper even before the Great Change, but instead used their thumb or index finger, or both, to expel the content of their nose. They did this by pressing firmly against one side of their nose while blasting through the other side.
Someone who was practiced in the art could do this with just one hand, holding it above the nose and using the thumb on one side of the nose for the first blast, and then the index finger on the other side for the next. This almost always worked. Following the final blast the nose blower would usually have to wipe away some residual mucus, but no problem. A quick swipe with the back of the hand across the wet area, and then discreetly wiping that hand across the side of one's pants, and one was ready for whatever was next on the agenda. Life was good.