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Need some help from an older generation....

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by bwright, Jun 23, 2009.

  1. bwright

    bwright Member

    Ok, so call me a young'un. On the suggestion of many in the book thread, I'm reading The Best American Sports Writing of the Century," and stumbled across a word I don't recognize. Google, Wikipedia, etc. didn't come up with anything that made sense to me.

    "The girls! Levi's, stretch pants, sneaky shorts, stretch jeans, they press into the crowd with lively narbs and try to get their hands up in front of Junior and say: 'Come on, Junior, do my hand!'"

    I've asked a couple of, ahem, more experienced folks I work with (the story was written in the mid-sixties) that I thought might know the term, but they didn't. What the heck is a narb?
     
  2. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    Paging spnited. spnited, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
     
  3. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    A narb is:

    <a href="http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2009/02/04/trevor-takes-two-narb-wins-double-shot-at-love/">A resident of Narberth, Pa.</a>?

    The <a href="http://www.narbreview.org/">National Advertising Review Board</a>?

    A <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=N.A.R.B.">No Apparent Reason Boner</a>?

    Sorry, can't help you.
     
  4. MartinEnigmatica

    MartinEnigmatica Active Member

    Continuing off buckweaver's urban dictionary search, there's:

    1. narbs
    a small nartually formed chunk of weed.

    Edit: I would also guess that's not the answer.
     
  5. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Yeah, spnited. Pull up your sneaky shorts and get your narbs over here.

    (BTW, Who is "Junior" in the mid 60s? Junior Johnson?)
     
  6. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    That's my guess. Don't have my BASW handy to see which story he's talking about.

    Only thing I can think of in the context of girls "with their lively narbs" is something like a bright hair ribbon or something fans would hold, like a small pennant or souvenir.
     
  7. MartinEnigmatica

    MartinEnigmatica Active Member

    Yeah, it's Junior Johnson:

    http://www.esquire.com/features/life-of-junior-johnson-tom-wolfe-0365
     
  8. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    I'm older than Spnited and I've never heard of the word.

    Is Tom Wolfe the author?
     
  9. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Or, since it's Wolfe, "lively narbs" could just mean "nubile breasts".
     
  10. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    Shit. I read that piece when it was first published in Esquire.
     
  11. bwright

    bwright Member


    Yep. Pretty good article (obviously... it is in Best American). Raises a lot of questions, though, due to my whippersnapper status.
     
  12. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    As I recall, I always had a preference for the women with lively narbs.
     
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