In answer to someone's question about the double in Romancing the Stone, I always thought that was a Howda(sp?) Double Barreled Pistol, a gun used for repelling attacking tigers attempting to dine on the occupants of the wicker "chairs" atop elephants.
Howda" is how they say Houdini in Timbuktoo. A "Howda' gun makes the jungle beasties vanish like Houdini on a Halloween night. Possible that Ithaca patterened their "Auto_Burglar" sawed-off wrist breaker on the "Howda"-- concept--
RWTF, you just had a continent warp there. (Almost as bad as a time warp!) Timbuktu is in Africa (Mali, to be more exact), not India. They didn't hunt jungle beasties from howdahs in Africa, one reason being that African elephants don't take kindly to being ridden. So howdah is a term you might hear--or might have heard, in times past--in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), but not Timbuktu.
