Instead of robbers telling victims to “stick up your hands,” these Chicago robbers had their victims stick out their tongues.
A strange account from 1913:
“Stick Out Your Tongue,” Demands Hold-Up Man
CHICAGO — “Stick out your tongue,” was the command Paul Turner, saloonkeeper, received.
It wasn’t Turner’s doctor that issued the order, but a couple of young men who were overparticular regarding the manufacture of gin fizzes.
Turner’s tongue stuck tight to the roof of his mouth when the demand was backed up by two magazine guns in the hands of the fastidious young drinkers.
Then Turner’s tongue protruded from his mouth in amazement.
“Stick it further out,” came the demand in quick, insistent tones, “and keep it out or you’ll get this” — this being a wave of one of the guns.
Turner’s tongue stuck out like that of a dog on a hot day.
His eyes also stuck far out from their accustomed place when one of the young men walked behind the bar and appropriated all of the money in the cash register and then took a roll of bills from his pocket.
“You look warm,” said one of the men to Turner. “You had better step in here and cool off.”
With that they escorted him to the ice box, thrust him in and locked the door.
It was the latest thing in hold-ups. There was no “hold up your hands” in it.
The youthful robbers proceeded on the same theory that the veterinary surgeon uses when he places a “twist” on a horse’s upper lip. As long as the “twist” is on the lip the horse thinks of nothing else.
Meanwhile, in the living room upstairs, Mrs. Turner was tapping — tapping on a water pipe that runs down through the saloon. That was the signal for Turner to come up to his breakfast. The “ham and” was getting cold and so was Turner.
Mrs. Turner came down to investigate and found her husband nearly frozen in the ice box.
Source: The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.), 26 April 1913.
