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When you've been around as long as Le Page's Glue, the name is
bound to get stuck into everyday speech. And then some...

"There are two kinds of people in the world: The ones who ate the paste in kindergarten, and the ones who didn't.

Those of us who did, know who we are. We measured long afternoons spent doing construction-paper art not in hours, but in cubic mouthfuls of Le Page's. We never wanted cookies and juice because we'd already filled up on glue..."

            - Mag Ruffman, TV personality


In Canadian politics: In regards to the issue of abortion in the 1980's, the Créditistes taunted the Catholics on the Liberal side because they "seem to be seated on six inches of Le Page's glue; we do not hear a peep out of them."


"DOPEY AND GRUMPY

(Published August 23, 1996)

If my generation -- whatever the letter designation society gave us -- claims no other distinction, we can at least say we were known as the "drug culture".

Yes, when you're a child of the 60's, phrases like "flower power" and "turn on, tune in, drop out" evoke understandable pride.

You name it: marijuana, peyote, magic mushrooms, Le Page's glue, drugs turned people my age into the insightful, socially aware, politically sensitive, prematurely gray bunch that we are..."

            - Dan Rector, The Rector Scale


"Throw together a lot of funk, punk and polka, a bit of reggae, country and thrash, a dollop of stuff your mom listens to, a bottle of Le Page's glue, a dead fish and a bald eagle with a head full of plastic explosives, shake 'til you're nauseous and bake in Mr. Dressup's Tickle Trunk for the duration of one episode of Shaft and the voila...you've got what fan's have come to expect from Skingerbreadman; loads of energetic, bass-fuelled dance-pop with more funk than you can shake your pogo-stick at."

            - Bio for Canadian Indie Band 'Skingerbreadman'


"Wait a minute -- did I just hear you say it was you who's been making those calls?

Ooops-- call waiting just beeped. I'll call you back.

Don't bother. I already found out all I need to know.

And what I DON'T know won't hurt me! At least that's what Moms always said. Like the time she abruptly ended her sentence.

We were left up to our armpits in Le Page's Glue and elbow macaroni ....damn that Martha Stewart.

I quickly went to work on a new recipe for macaroni in a delicate glue sauce.

Damn...all the pots and pans were still dirty from last night's college hi-jinx.

I loaded the dishwasher and aimed it carefully."

            - Anonymous rant found on the web


As he went back to reading, Abby concentrated on her tray. First she added a scrape of I Sure Can Believe It's Not Butter to her single slice of sourdough (there's a tasty tongue twister fer ye). Then she squeezed lemon on her salad and peppered its fan of anemic-looking sliced tomatoes almost beyond recognition. As she pulled her coffee cup nearer, Phillips stopped reading and edged the cream and sugar toward her. Abby waved them away. ..."Dieting?" he asked in a condescending tone. ...Abby looked up at him. "This is what I always order here. It's safe. I can't handle their Le Page's Glue Sauce."

            - Janey Milstead, Abby & the Silverlake Angel, Chapter 7


"Fraternities and Initiations and American Life, 1946
The Sweet Sweet Taste of Asophaedita

...Field trip initiation took place the next day, on a Saturday. A Saturday when the sky comes an inverted bowl of milk-white honeysuckle holding in the heat that arching man-self stumbling towards fruition. This was our flowering, our debut, our initiation into the sacred state of manhood.

We were instructed to bring to our deserted beach isle the following:

  • Le Page's Airplane Glue
  • One Bottle of Castor Oil
  • One Dozen Eggs
  • One Box of Kellogg Corn Flakes
  • One Bottle of Red Fingernail Polish
  • Two or Three Onions
  • Five Gallons of Second Hand Crankcase Oil
  • Five Pounds of Pillsbury flour
  • Asophaedita.

    ...They probably spent their weekends in far more creative pursuits than having their rear ends swatted purple, then being dragged out on some isolated sand-dune to be blindfolded and stripped naked, then have their pubic hair painted with airplane cement and Fire-Engine Red fingernail polish, both of which, in combination, were a bitch to get off nascent body-hairs..."

                - W. L. Warren, ralphmag.org


    "The ambitious debut of Steaming Toolie yielded a mansion of song built with toothpicks and Le Page's glue. Twenty-five short songs inhabit this mammoth beast, and I still get weepy listening to it today."

                - A review about the band Steaming Toolie
                  and their release Snowbreeze Glitter, 1995/1998


    Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp once referred to jazz clubs as "crude stables where black men are run until they bleed, or else are hacked up outright for Le Page's glue."


    Joseph Cornell's Duchamp Dossier, c. 1942-53

    Discovered in artist Joseph Cornell's studio shortly after his death in 1972, 'The Dossier' is a record of the friendship and working relationship between Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Evidence of meals enjoyed together appears in the form of inscribed items such as a napkin from the Horn & Hardart automat or a menu from a Greek restaurant in Duchamp's neighborhood. Gifts from Duchamp to Cornell date back to an inscribed reproduction of the Large Glass given in 1934, and also include a small "assisted readymade" involving a Le Page's glue carton as an impromptu Christmas present.

    Special thanks to my friend James Neubauer for spotting this photo on the cover of a 1999 issue of Lola art magazine!








    Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in.

    "What Lepage gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity.

    "The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue gun," Yossarian answered. "It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air."

                - Catch-22, Joseph Heller


    A Cup of Kindness,Yet.

    You write, and in
the pages spaces


                 Le Page's to glue
spaces to fill and in the swell 
evening moment, paste and cut 
the spaces to erase the view

 
of glass, CUT TO vases 
you will use,                       fill half                   with you

 
the other half                                                  with water 
and in the evening email, 
no word from your daughter, 
no words for your daughter.

 
                                    The Eleven O'clock sags;
 
in tonight's spaces: old cathode-rag cutouts 
swollen with news, alive with chatter, searches for 
love in the lonely hour, ms. /now ms./ lonelyhearts 
gather only, devour choice cuts of alt.binary.exposed, 
mesh net and unblushed rose,

 
                 if you can believe that 
                                you will believe anything,

 
sits dazed in the glare of oncoming laughter, as 
she and her new lover enter through excuses,
excite one photon, perhaps; and forget -- 
the x son-in-law heading god knows
 
where,  
like a message that won't quit, you sit still 
wondering which lesson failed? The one 
with too little insistence? Or the one with too much?
 
 (the place where all 
 daddies learn the meaning of resistance.)
 
Love has looked at riskier investments,
then slumps for all its be-blind worth, 
the white pages begin to call upon themselves. 
Time tires of time preserved on lovelorn faces. 
Time tires of time.

 Instead, you crack an old tomb,  
 listen to voices that might have once been; sampling:
 
                                           just wind there now, blood red 
                                           buttons and the wind, wrapped 
 
in a gift of wine-red wool - a silhouette 
of ready-to-wear, thin things to replace  
long ago and yet, like another door 
displaces might-have-beens that opened  
onto vacant, even older voices, Ipecac and lace.
 
Little but the pattern of shadow remains; 
dust prints on dark glass panes. Best gracefully  
withdraw from the house of auld lang syne.
But first, let's put another on the wall, (cut & paste it) 
just in case, just in case.  In this place of public scenery.
                - Red Slider, A "Widely Published Poet"


    Gerald clapped his hand to his face, with an exclamation of acute pain.

    "My dear boy, what is the matter?" cried his mother and Hildegarde in one breath.

    "It is--nothing!" gasped the boy, sitting down on the edge of the verandah. "Where is the glue?"

    "The glue!" repeated Hilda.

    "Le Page's glue! My nose has become disjointed, and I would fain repair it. I am suffering excruciating torments; but don't mind me. Go on your towelled and triumphant way, and leave the noseless wretch to pine alone!"

                - Laura E. Richards, Hildegarde's Neighbors, Chapter XIV Roger the Codger - 1895


    Thanks to Jeff Fuller for this clip of Our Gang from a 1933 episode, Forgotten Babies, featuring an old can of Le Page's Glue (with the brandname blacked-out, of course), and the hijinks that ensued!


    Spot the Le Page's mucilage in these screenshots of the film Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, about legendary game show host/CIA assassin Chuck Barris, starring Sam Rockwell!