The Language of romance
Baby was a term of endearment in the 1920s, cash referred to kissing, and cashing my baby meant kissing my sweetheart. A sheba would cash her sheik after he had dropped a load of lettuce on her. If a bearcat caught her sheik exchanging cash with another choice bit of calico she would likely give him the bum’s rush. The term cash for kissing was so common that fire extinguishers would inform those exchanging cash that the bank was closed. A necker was a woman who wrapped her arms around her companion’s neck, and necking connoted the same meaning as it does in the twenty-first century, more or less.
A baby vamp was an attractive young woman who enjoyed a high level of popularity with young gentlemen. Baby vamp was a term mostly used by women, and was not an indication of approval. While men might admire her gams, women could sniff at her stilts, a less complimentary term for slender legs, implying they were excessively thin. A baby vamp might promise a young man on the dance floor a check, which he could come back later and exchange for cash, when there were no fire extinguishers around to chill the mood. Male dancing partners with baby vamps for more than one dance were known as gigolos.