one-way ticket to Palookaville

one-way ticket to Palookaville

English

Noun

one-way ticket to Palookaville (plural one-way tickets to Palookaville)

1. (idiomatic) A return to a primitive state.
   • 1954, On the Waterfront:

     It wasn't him, Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, "Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on Wilson." You remember that? "This ain't your night"! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money.

   • 2012, James Howard Kunstler, Too Much Magic:

     History does run backward now and then, and the centers of civilization shift from one place to another, but we've never seen anything like what we face: the crash of a turbocharged cheap energy economy along with an ecological catastrophe perhaps beyond the biblical scale. History is also not symmetrical; you don't necessarily go down in the same sequence backward. What we might get instead could be just a one-way ticket to Palookaville instead of getting to relive the sixteenth century.