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Dartmouth Superstitions

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Title: Dartmouth Superstitions – Annie King

General Information about Item: 

  • Customary Lore, Magic Superstition 
  • Language: English 
  • Country of Origin: Canada 
  • Informant: Annie King 
  • Date Collected: 11/06/21

Informant Data: 

  • Annie King is 19 years old and is a member of the 2024 class at Dartmouth college. She is in her second year of being on the Dartmouth Women’s Ice Hockey team, however, due to COVID this is the first season she is actually playing with the team. She is from Regina, Saskatchewan Canada where she was born and raised. 

Contextual Data: 

  • Cultural Context: The cultural context is that gatorade is a common sports drink among athletes. The Dartmouth team even has gatorade on the benches during their games and gatorade has been promoted by many professional athletes in commercials. 
  • Social Context: The social context is that Annie is one of many people who drink gatorade before the games. The magic component in this superstition is drinking the gatorade in ¼ increments and if she doesn’t do this she will play bad. 

Item: This is a magic superstition that comes from the category of customary folklore. 

Transcript: “I Always have to wear a purple under armour sports bra under my gear. I drink the gatorade in specific ¼ increments so ¼ before warm ups, ¼ before the first period, ¼ before the second period, and ¼ before the third period. 

Informant’s Comments: 

  • Annie also told me that if she doesn’t drink gatorade before warm ups she will have an off game. She also mentioned that these two superstitions brought her sister good luck when she played hockey, so she passed them down to Annie hoping that they would bring her luck as well. 

Collector’s Comments: 

  • This is one of the most specific superstitions I collected, but it is nice how Annie has kept her sister’s superstitions alive by bringing them to college hockey. 

Collector’s Name: Gabby Billing 

Link

K&B purple

Informant: Libby Flint, age 59, New Orleans resident of 36 years, originally from Upstate New York and Vermont. Collected May 22, 2016 and recorded on iphone.

Verbal Lore: Folk speech, Slang– associated: material lore

context: a deep lavender color that is associate with the Katz and Bestoff (K&B) drugstore chain

transcript:

“ There is something called ‘K&B purple’ that is a deep lavender that was used by the  Katz and Bestoff or K&B drugstore chain. Alas, that chain was bought bout by RiteAid.  Peoplw round here still know ehat shade K&B purple is.”

Collectors Commentary: The color is most prevalent on the awnings of riteaids in uptown and downtown new orleans RiteAids because the store did nto repalce the original purple awnings for the colors accociated with the Rite aid chain. Becaiuse K&B was a New orleans owned and run store  it was associated with new orleans and the city was sad to se the chain die and be bought out by a national chain. The purple color of the K&B stores was so bright and ubiquitiuosly associated with the store and thereforw with NO, that most new orleanians automatically associate the color with the city. It is  unique bit of slangbecaise of that historical and cultural connection with the city and the fact that the K&B chain did not exist outside of the city.

Informant info: (Left to Right) Sadhana Puri, age 20, Jessica Link, age 20, Alex Ledoux, age 21 all from New Orleans, LA

Transcript:

“Jessica: Do you guys like K and B, or like K and B purple.  Do you have your old people talk about that.

Alex: The store.  The grocery store.

Jessica: K and B used to be- Walgreens or Rite-aid bought all the K and B’s

Sadhana: Oh Yeah, but K and B was the local drug store.

Jessica: and it had an iconic purple color.  And so people will say like oh that’s K and B purple.  At least my grandma will,  She’ll point to something that’s the color purple and she’ll be like that’s “K and B purple.”  It’s not purple

Sadhana: That’s funny.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

 

Keywords: New Orleans, K&B, purple, Katz and Bestoff