Espantoonville

Baltimore is so special! Police officers the world over carry night sticks and billy clubs, but here if they whack you upside the head while resisting arrest, (or, as happened to a friend many years ago while I watched, refusing to stop making a plaster cast of a fire hydrant) they do it with an espantoon. The link provided serves merely to illustrate that I'm not making this up, because you won't find it in any of the on-line dictionaries I've tried. My 1966 unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language has this entry: "es-pan-toon (a proununciation I haven't the characters for), n. (in Baltimore) a policeman's nightstick. [alter. of SPONTOON]" Now, you may quibble that it does not differentiate the Baltimore in Maryland from the Baltimore in Ireland or find the sexist reference to a law enforcement officer offensive, but, hey! A better question might be; "Why do you still have a 1966 dictionary hanging around?" or better yet; "Molly, don't you have anything else to do?" Yep. Excuse me while I go call the Visionary Arts Museum and see if they want my valentines yet.