Joggle

Joggle-verb- move or cause to move with repeated small bobs or jerks.

Ten days after I moved here, and only my third day as a DHEC employee, I went to my first staff meeting.  Not really knowing what to expect, I imagined it would be a long, drawn out event, where we discussed many important things relating to the office.  In my mind, everyone would report on various things happening in their respective departments, and the meeting would take a good hour or so.

Not so.  In a format that's been recreated 17 times since I've started working here, we had a brief meeting, followed by a minor report from another co-worker, and then we broke out to have department meetings.  That first department meeting is where I first heard the word "joggle."

All of the WIC people had filed into the break room, and we started with introductions, seeing as how I knew no one.  Before long, we were talking about various personal hobbies, and not long after that, someone brought up the topic of my supervisor's business, which she runs with her husband.  Together, they build and sell joggling boards.  I forget how she initially presented the concept of the business to us, but more than a few of us had a confused look on our face.  After a few moments of purposely throwing around some business-related lingo to confuse us a little more for her amusement, she took a little time to explain what exactly she and her husband create.  It's actually a pretty interesting lesson in history, so joggling boards will be today's topic.  Enjoy your Southern trivia for the day!

First of all, let me describe a joggling board.  Traditionally, they are made out of pine, which is a more pliant type of board.  This is important, as the main function of the board is to move...a lot.  The vertical ends of the boards have rockers on the bottom, allowing the board to move side to side, and are topped with decorative finials.  The main part of the board itself can be somewhere between ten and sixteen feet, and is traditionally painted "Charleston green."

The history of the joggling board in the U.S. starts in Stateburg, South Carolina, at the Acton plantation.  The owner of the plantation was a widowed man who, after the death of his wife, invited his sister to come live with him and take care of the house.  The sister suffered from rheumatism, and wrote to some of her Scottish cousins about the toll the disease was taking on her body.  According to popular lore, upon hearing that the previously active lady's only source of exercise was to ride around the plantation in a modified carriage that could accommodate her chair, her cousins sent her a model of a joggling board, hoping it would allow her to get some exercise that wouldn't exacerbate her condition.

It must have worked, or at least been interesting enough, because joggling boards soon became popular and started popping up all over the "Lowcountry" and remained popular until World War II, when the price of the materials used for the boards became prohibitive.  Historians also like to point out that during the height of their popularity, joggling boards played a part in the courtship of many young Southern couples.  According to historians, the man would sit on one end of the board and the woman on the opposite side, and through "joggling," they would eventually end up sitting together in the middle of the board.

So, by now you're either laughing at the word joggling, or just getting over laughing at the word.  I purposely didn't try to define the term, other than what's at the beginning of the post, because I've found that I can't really do it justice.  So rather than search for words I don't have, I'll leave you with this YouTube link.  This is actually a joggling board my supervisor, Kristi, and her husband made and displayed at a local home show last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G43yIxuB8lo

I hope you've enjoyed this tiny peak into another part of Southern life.  Happy Sunday!