The Saturday Picture Show Special New Year's Eve Edition December 31, 2022

The next time someone tells you that Americans used to be much more dignified, show them this picture from NYE 1938 and then hit them with a custard pie.

We traditionally insert baby angels into our New Year's iconography because they represent a fresh start...but think about that one second, please...

Adding to the confusion: Down South, many people wouldn't dream of New Year's Day supper without black-eyed peas, which are not peas at all, but, rather, legumes, and a proud member of the pea family. They associate this dish with good luck in the new year, and they link collard greens with the kind of green we all want in our wallets, so that's on the menu, too. I will gladly eat greens, but no pea beans, please.

Now, in the Greek culture, they are into pomegranates, regarding this fruit as a sign of luck, prosperity and fertility, and new beginnings. Part of the tradition is the ritual smashing of a pomegranate on the front door at the stroke of midnight. The belief is that the more seeds that come flying out, the more prosperous a year it will be for the family. I do feel sorry for the person who winds up having to clean up the seedy, pulpy mess. Their year can only get better after that, though. 

Back in the day, it seemed like everyone on the East Coast tuned in to see the Rose Parade from Pasadena, CA, on the morning of January 1. It was a great way to see something in color on the brand new Zenith.

Not every culture will celebrate New Year's Eve tonight. The Chinese New Year will be on Sunday, January 22nd, and it will be a year of the Rabbit.

Here's your free wallpaper!

Remember, as much as you might like making your backyard sound like a recreation of the Battle Of The Bulge, there are many people (and their pets) who prefer a lighter version of New Year whoop-de-doo. 

Here is your homework for this week. Print it out and fill it out, and remember, neatness, spelling, and grammar count.

Happy New Year! Be safe and be happy, and think about your blessings!

 

Friday Rerun: Try The Friday Fish Fry

 Do you like Cracker Barrel? I do. I like the chow, I like the blazing fireplace in winter, the antiques hanging on every available square inch of wall and ceiling, the knickknacks and vintage candy in the store, and the unbelievable pancakes, pot roast, and string beans. I love it all. 

They don't put Cracker Barrel in malls or suburban shopping centers; they are along interstates, where their gigantic signs lure drivers who really need a Grandma's Sampler as a solid bedtime tuck-in. The one we like is 20 miles from our house. You never see unhappy, churlish people at the Barrel, because, traveler or local, you will find the eats are good and the atmosphere is welcoming.

But just don't take it from me! Check with Ray and Wilma Yoder, from Goshen, Indiana. As often as people say things like "we've eaten at every Cracker Barrel everywhere," Ray and Wilma really HAVE! This summer, they hit their 645th Barrel, and that's all of them!

Last week, it was Ray's 81st birthday, so they tied on the feedbags at the Tualatin, Oregon Cracker Barrel. 

This part adds up: Ray worked for years as a truck driver. He delivered  recreational vehicles all across the country, and 40 years they began their mutual quest to walk past the rocking chairs in every spot.

“Travel was in our blood and we’ve always liked it,” Ray says in a video the company is putting out.  

“And, of course, the best place to eat was at Cracker Barrel. It took the boredom out of the highway to eat there because it was so much like home — we could order what we liked, and they always had what we liked.”

He is right! How many times have I asked for a side of grits, only to get a quizzical stare and "What's a grit?" in return.

Of course, the company is all in for the Yoders, and once they found out that the couple was approaching the magic 645 mark, they invited them to Tualatin on the house. Which is good, because who ever heard of Tualatin?

"When they arrived, our employees formed a 'clap tunnel' of sorts to cheer and celebrate them,” Breeanna Straessle, spokesperson for the restaurant and store chain, told the TODAY Show.  “We gave them custom Cracker Barrel aprons with their names on them — with four stars, of course, the highest rank.”

And that makes the Yoders the only non-employees to own and operate their own aprons!

Straessie also said,  “We also gave them a few other goodies — a set of our famous rockers, a vintage-looking Coca-Cola cooler, Lodge cookware — just lots of classic Cracker Barrel items.”

A happy man of few words but lots of good dinners, Ray said, “It’s quite special. These little farm kids aren’t used to all of this hype.”

And now what? Do the Yoders retire from the quest?

They do not. As soon as a new CB is opened, they'll hit the road again, this time with their aprons on!

Friday Rwe

Thursday Rerun: Piece of Cake

 We saw more than one German Chocolate Cake over the holidays. Now, if you ask me, German Chocolate Cake is all that a cake needs to be. I am not a big fan of chocolate, and German Chocolate Cake uses a kind of chocolate that is marked "mild dark" and that suits me fine. And the icing! So tasty. Now, cake purists will tell you that it's actually a custard, made by low-boiling brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, egg yolks, and evaporated milk, and adding vanilla, pecans, and coconut to make a gooey slathering for the cake.

As long as I'm sharing my thoughts, I think there is nothing that can't be made better by adding coconut to it.

Something else we need to talk about...German Chocolate Cake has nothing to do with Germany at all. You can go to Bermuda and tell them how much you love wearing Bermuda shorts in summer, and the people of Merrie Olde England are delighted to hear that you toast one of their muffins every morning, and I once told a woman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that any bacon she ate was automatically Canadian bacon. 

But you can't walk up to Hans, the baker, in Munich and tell him how much you love his German Chocolate Cake without him calling you a dummkopf. That's because we call it "German" Chocolate Cake after one Sam German, a baker who developed that sweet baking chocolate for the Baker's Chocolate Company in 1852. 

And old Sam was long gone by 1957, for sure. That's when a woman in Dallas, identified as "Mrs George Clay" in the inane sexist terminology of the day, sent a recipe to the Dallas Morning News for its popular "Recipe Of The Day" column for what she called "German's Chocolate Cake." General Foods, the multinational conglomerate which was absorbed by Kraft Foods in 1989, owned the Baker's brand at the time, and they about broke their necks to pass the recipe on to other papers all over the country.  Within a year, sales of Baker's German's Chocolate were up by 73%, and while none of that money accrued to either Mr or Mrs Clay, we all knew they ate some tasty cakes. 

And they changed the name of the chocolate to Baker's German Chocolate, which is where the old rumor about it being German started.

Two more things I have to say before I go start working off the holiday cakes...you can't take a regular chocolate cake and cover it with coconut-pecan icing and call it German Chocolate Cake. That won't do.

And where did this thing of calling Ralph O'Hoolahan's wife "Mrs Ralph O'Hoolahan" get started? Everyone knows her name is Mitzi...Mrs Mitzi O'Hoolahan! You wouldn't call him "Mr Mitzi O'Hoolahan," would you?

And is it ok to bring a Devil's Food Cake to a church supper?

Wednesday Rerun: Seven Simple Steps to Happiness

 "Happiness depends upon ourselves." —Aristotle

Greek philosopher Aristotle (c. 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) searched for many things in his day: wisdom, philosophy, logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology. He found everything except for the one quest that eluded him in the end: a last name.

But he was wise enough to tell us that we have to make our own kind of music and find happiness where we can. It's true that very few of us have known the pleasure that comes from some stranger knocking on the front door, offering to bring happiness to our hearth and home if we will just let him or her inside to share the latest copy of  The New American magazine, the semi-monthly magazine of the John Birch Society.

Just don't answer the doorbell.

But there is something I found to share from author Minda Zetlin, and she wants to share these 7 Small Joys You Should Make Sure to Add to Your Daily Routine.

Let's take a look at the list!

1. Savor your favorite morning beverage.

So many of us guzzle that morning cup o' Joe like it's the only way to jumpstart our heart.  A lot of us also take some fruit juice, maybe some water too, but the advice here is to taste it! As I sip my morning tea, I like to think about the people in Asia bringing in the crop of Camellia sinensis to fill my Lipton teabag, and send thoughtful appreciation to whoever works the stapler that keeps all the tealeaves inside of the bag. And by the time I'm finished that reverie, here it is, almost 10 AM!

2. Get outdoors.

As a dedicated indoorsman, I realize that until I find a way to get the trash collectors and letter carriers and UPS men and women to back up their trucks to my garage, I will need to go outside from time to time, and that's the least I can do in the spirit of getting outdoors.

3. Talk with someone you care about.

It's true that being alone will drive you out of your noodle, especially if you have two-way conversations with your mirror while shaving, or brushing your teeth, or shaving your toothbrush. Even if you live alone, you need to talk to someone you like, who likes you back, to bring joy to your world. The very fact that you like them is proof that they add something to your life...and don't forget that they like you too! So they get a boot out of talking to you, too, as soon as you finish shaving and brushing your choppers.

4. Take a nap.

Now we're in my sweet spot! I like to go to bed late and get up early, so a little midday nod sweetens the day a good bit. And no one says you need to make like a log for 4 hours, but as Ms Zetlin says, a little catnap "can improve your mental function, memory, and problem-solving ability, as well as improve your mood."

President John F. Kennedy was said to be a fan of a fifteen-minute power nap in the middle of his busy Camelot days. At least, that's what everyone thought he was doing.

5. Read a good book.

Everyone knows that "Reading maketh a full man," as Francis Bacon said, and he certainly would have said "a full PERSON" if he thought about it.

Now all I can think about is bacon.

But books are full of fun and information and challenges to the mind, and there is reason to believe that the habit of reading good books will bring joy.  And the good news is, the libraries are open again, so you can borrow books from there and it won't cost you a daggone cent.

I will admit that as a younger man, I thought that once I started reading a book, I had to finish it, no matter how turgid the writing. But now, in addition to the pleasure I get from reading a great book (I heartily recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) I also get immense joy from not reading anything by John Grisham!

6. Laugh.

Mark Twain was fond of saying, "The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter.” Sure, Twain overlooked a well-placed punch in the nose, but he wasn't wrong about laughter being good for the soul and the spirit. 

But just be sure that your jokes are funny before you unleash them (unless you are a teacher or doctor or boss, in which cases everything you say is a laugh riot) because, as Norm MacDonald said, "Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny."

Google "Norm MacDonald moth joke" to see something funny.

7. Spend a little time doing nothing.

Take this simple test: ask your browser for other words that mean "brain surgeon" or "petroleum engineer" or "rocket designer," and you'll find maybe two or three synonyms at most for these hi-class professions. But Google "do nothing" and the words will come spilling onto your screen like when you hit the slot machine that time.  

It's because of what Abe Lincoln said that one time when he said "I just want to sit home tonight and play with the cat. I don't feel like going to the theater."

Don't make the same mistake! Goof off now before there's no time to! 

Tuesday Rerun: Fla Law Flaw

 You know, over the years of being happy homeowners, we have had all sorts of people come a-knockin' at the door or ringin' the bell. We've had the old fake story of the guy who had a whole truckload of fish set to deliver to a restaurant, but "the restaurant was closed today," so he had all this nice fresh fish he was willing to let go really cheap! Like a fin for a fish. 

And the remodeler who "just finished a job around the corner" and has "just enough material left over" to half-sole our roof.

The one who promised to cut our cable bill in half. I could do that myself, with scissors.

The ones who were sure we need an energy audit, or new windows, or a coupon book that will save you thousands of dollars, or would, if the merchants listed were cooperating on the deal, or even knew about it.

So if you come to my door, clipboard in half, be prepared to be shown the, uh, door. Unless you're selling doors.

We also can't get enough of those "Florida Man" stories, especially when the man in question is the governor. But enough of him. Let's talk about a drunken shirtless man who went off the beam.

But here comes news of a man in Pensacola, Florida, who showed up drunk and shirtless, going door-to-door in an entire neighborhood, looking for a fight. That was a new one on me. He wound up punching a woman in the head, stealing a pizza, running into a fence, and passing out drunk asleep on it.

The charges against 32-year-old Christopher Doyle Norman are for multiple offenses including home invasion, battery, burglary, larceny, and criminal mischief. As with so many American sagas, it all began when he kicked open the gate to a trailer park.

Then, he saw a woman sitting outside of her mobile home, and punched her upside the head. Before leaving that domicile, he damaged the ladder and exterior door, and then moved on down the line.

Next door he came to, he fell through, winding up in the foyer, where the neighbor asked him to leave, brandishing a hammer to nail down his point. Norman left, all right, but first he threatened to  “come back and burn the trailer down.”

Next up was an apartment complex, where Mr Norman paraded around from door to door, daring the residents to “fight him.” The resident of one apartment shut his door and locked it right in Norman's face, resulting in Norman banging his shoulder into the door, damaging the door and the doorframe.

Next, he came to an apartment with an unlocked door. He challenged the two men inside to fight him, and upped the ante by running around the flat, throwing a lamp at them.

By this time he had worked up a considerable appetite, so he grabbed the pizza and chased one of the men into a bedroom. The other man picked up a telephone to call 911, but Norman grabbed the handset and whomped him on the back of his head. 

The two roomies tried to get away by running outside, but Norman gave chase, all around the apartment complex.

And that's when he ran into the fence and mistook it for a Sealy Posturepedic.

Police came along and rounded Norman up. As they handcuffed him, he made vague threats against them.

Should he decide to run for the Florida legislature, his main campaign plank can be that he is no groomer!  

A metal fork (Monday rerun)

 Let me start this by saying that even before my left hand became bedeviled with the arthritis, I always lacked the manual coordination required to eat with chopsticks. I watched instructional videos, I followed the directions on the chopstick packages, I even had one-on-one tutoring from someone proficient in the art of maneuvering food from plate to mouth with the use of two skinny sticks.

"All to Noah Vale," as I recently saw someone write. They meant, "all to no avail," and that's the deal with me and chopsticks. Pass the fork, please.  And the shrimp fried rice. 

I do understand that people have been using the sticks for over 5,000 years, and that a third of the people in the world have mastered the art for their daily dining. But now I feel a little better about letting restaurants wash the fork I use, because a great many of the world's chopsticks are single-use, and that is leading to a serious environmental problem.

It can't be anything but a problem when you think that 80 billion pairs of sticks per year are tossed into landfills. In China, they figure 100 acres of aspen, birch, and bamboo are deforested every DAY to make more chopsticks. There are always efforts underway to get people to switch to reusables, but since disposable is so easy....you know how it goes.

Chopstick factory

Felix Böck, of Vancouver, is working on the problem and trying to get people not to use single-use sticks. The founder of ChopValue, a company that uses recycled chopsticks to create "stunning, high-performance office furniture, home decor, kitchen accessories and games," Böck says, "In Vancouver alone, we’re throwing out 100,000 chopsticks a day. They’re traveling 6,000 or 7,000 miles from where they’re manufactured in Asia to end up on our lunch table for 30 minutes.”

When you put it that way, it seems foolish.

Böck started his business in 2016, on the grounds that if people won't stop using single-use sticks, there's something better than just dumping them in landfills. His people pick up around 350,000 used chopsticks from over 300 restaurants every week, and turn them into bookshelves, cutting boards, coasters, desks, and custom decorations. Böck says his outfit has kept over 50 million pairs of sticks out of landfills since it began.

“Once you see the volume, you think maybe that little humble chopstick can be the start of something big,” Böck says. “My expertise is in bamboo, so I always looked at chopsticks differently. I used to joke to my friends that I would make something out of chopsticks, since most of the ones we use in North America are made of bamboo.”

Of course, you don't just pick up a barrel of used bamboo from The House of Lo Mein and turn that into a set of shelves. First, the sticks are coated in a water-based resin, then sterilized at 200 degrees for five hours. Then a machine breaks the wood into composite slab of board, which get sanded, polished, painted or whatever.

And then, “This material is then the core piece for everything from desks and table tops to home decor,” Böck says.

In case you want to try your hands at making yourself a desk from your old chopsticks, keep ordering from China Delight until you have 10,854 sticks! That's how many it takes.

And, in a neat circular loop, there is a restaurant chain called Pacific Poke that recycles its chopsticks with ChopValue, and then buys decorations and new tables for its restaurants from them!

“I think change starts small, and change can be a very relatable thing that we all know from daily life,” Böck says. “Right now, we’re focusing on the chopstick because it’s a very powerful story, but I think there are so many other urban resources where we can make this work.”

Merry Christmas 2022!

 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Perhaps you'll have a few minutes to spend in a happy memory today, Christmas Eve. This is the text of Truman Capote's short story "A Christmas Memory," and it always takes me to a happy place to read it, so I thought I'd share it with you. If you're too busy today, save the link to read it later, and Merry Christmas to you!

 https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/12/a-christmas-memory-by-truman-capote-short-story

Go here: 

What's orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot. (Friday rerun)

 Many years ago, while working in the county courthouse, I made it a point to gobble a sandwich at lunchtime and then head out on the streets for a post-prandial stroll.

There was a bar on York Rd called The Crease Bar and Grill, and out front, they brought a caged parrot every day when the weather was favorable.

This bird was very intelligent and educated - he must have gone to PollyTechnic - but it seemed that he was half shark.

He'd talk your ears off.

I made a sport of teaching him to say a then-popular expression  ("Reagan lied!") and would enjoy bantering with him as I stopped to chat.

I always wondered what happened to that bird and I think he might have landed in Florida.

Police in Lake Worth Beach responded to a call for "someone screaming for help" inside a house recently, and when they got there, the homeowner was out in the driveway working on his car.

That is exactly how I picture 90% of Florida to be, by the way. Guys in white a-shirts with wrenches in their hand, laboring under the hoods of old Fords.

But he told the officers he could handle the matter by stepping inside, and he did so, returning with a shrieking Psittaciform on his finger.

And he was still screaming for help!

One last parrot story that country singer Mel Tillis told on himself, and he swore it was true.  Mel was in the Air Force, way over in Japan, and wanted to send his mother something nice for Christmas. So he picked out a nice parrot and sent him in his cage back stateside to Mama Tillis.

After Christmas, he had a chance to call his mother, and asked her if she had gotten her gift.  "Yes, Melvin, I got him, and he was delicious!"

"Mama, you weren't supposed to roast that bird! He wasn't a chicken, he was a parrot, and he could talk!"

And Mrs Tillis replied, "Then he should have said something!"

Get Up! Thursday Rerun

 Here we sit in 2022, with all the latest inventions and conveniences, living like I don't know what.

But I'll bet that at least half of us awoke this morning because an alarm pierced our ears as we tried to sleep a little more...a phone, a watch, a clock radio, whatever. My clock radio sounds off at 0505; if not, the cats would pile in at 0506 demanding food, water, and attention, all of which I am glad to offer.

But what if we were back in the olden days, without alarms and clock radios, and I wanted to get up before the rooster woke up and starting his caterwauling?

I would engage the services of a knocker-upper. How about that? More about that in a minute...

Even longer ago, there were candle clocks, invented in China. The deal was, candles were filled with nails down toward the bottom, and allowed to burn all night. At a certain point, the wax would melt all the way, allowing a cascade of nails to make a hellish noise on a metal tray below it. Nice way to wake up, but it must have been tough to set the candle clock to disturb you at some specific time.

And of course, on The Simpsons episode "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" (season 9, episode 10) we see Bart drink 10 glasses of water at bedtime on Christmas Eve so he can get up early the next day to tear into his presents. It's always about the Simpsons for me.

Lisa tells Bart, "You didn't invent that, Bart. The Indians used to drink water to wake up early for their attacks."

To which Bart replies, "It's always about the Indians, isn't it, Lise?"

I hate to tell Bart this, but when you are of Social Security age, ten glasses of water won't let you sleep for more than 45 minutes, trust me.

As society grew, factory whistles and church bells woke some people, whether they wanted to get up or not.  And those knocker-uppers...

Wake-up girl Mary Smith, 1930, London

Bob Cratchit had to get up early to get to the office before Mr Scrooge, so he could put one lump of coal on the fire. People in London, people known as "knocker-uppers" went door to door with a list of what time people wanted to get up. With a long stick in their hand, or a pea shooter for those whose rooms were on the ground floor, they went around doing their duty, getting Scrooge and Cratchit alike out of bed and off to the office.

What history does not tell us is, who woke up the knocker-uppers? Just like how the snow plow driver gets to work in a blizzard, there are things we are not meant to know.

The Partridge Family - Wednesday Rerun

 It's Guest Editor day - because I got this information about one of my favorite carols from a friend online, so I thought I'd pass it along...while you read what Pat sent to me, click on this link and you can see/hear the 12 Days of Christmas on YouTube!

There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me.

What in the world do leaping lords, French hens,

swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

This week, I found out.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were

not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone

during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning

plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

-Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

-Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

-The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

Again, this is all new to me - hope you liked it!

He calls it "Treasures in the Trash" (Tuesday Rerun)

 If there is one thing about me that Peggy would change, and there must be dozens, the chief among them is that I am an inveterate dumpster diver.  I have for years followed the sage advice of young guru and perfect Zenmaster Bartholomew J. Simpson, who preaches that "Poorly-guarded construction sites can be a goldmine."

If I'm passing a construction site, I'm apt to stop and shop in the dumpster. I think anything in there is fair game, and over the years I have come with a door for the bathroom my dad and I added onto Peggy's and my first house, and sod for the yard, and countless Christmas and birthday gifts I have handed out.

Just kidding.  You think.

I come by this trait honestly. My maternal grandfather was always one to come out of his garage bearing some odd artifact, saying, "Look what I found!" And then he and I would marvel at the find, and shake our heads at the very thought that someone was going to throw away such an object of wonder as a pair of pliers that still worked pretty well, or a wooden fruit crate that just needed a little fixin' up.

But, I must bow in humble homage to Nelson Molina, of East Harlem, New York City. He worked 30 years as a sanitation man for New York City, but the great thing about him is that he didn't throw away everything people threw away.

He collected the cool and interesting stuff before the trash truck could mash it to smithereens (have you ever even seen a smithereen? Is it possible to buy just one, or do they only come in a set?) and he has it on display at a sanitation truck depot up in Harlem. He has typewriters, photographs, toys, religious relics, skis, a Native American children’s play tent, a stained glass window and a souvenir tie from the sand 'n' surf TV show ‘Baywatch.’

There is a rule forbidding sanitation workers in New York from taking stuff they find discarded home, and I'm sure that rule is never ever violated, yes sir. But Molina, even though retired, maintains his trash-to-you-treasure-to-him showcase where he used to work, and he will even take you through to see it if you set up a tour in advance.

His favorite item is a heavy Star of David wrought from metal recovered from the site of the Twin Towers to honor a 9/11 victim. How that came to be thrown out is worth another whole blog entry; I wish I knew. But like everything else in the museum, it's something that once meant something to someone, only to be tossed away like last week's magazine.

As were a lot of magazines.

Art for Art's Sake (Monday Rerun)

Over the course of my life, I have met many people of great accomplishment. I've learned from all of them, for better or worse, and one concept I have heard many times from skilled people is that "anyone can do what I do; it just takes practice and dedication."

To be exact, I was interviewing multi-instrumentalist and Hee-Haw star Roy Clark, who told me that anyone willing to practice playing a guitar long enough could learn to play one as well as he. I dunno. I hear lots of people who have been playing (and, I presume practicing) on the guitar for years and years, and they don't pick as well as old Roy.

Sure, we're all bound to get better at things through repetition, but it's not guaranteed, and as evidence, I cite Harvey Korman's efforts to amuse me over the years, and John Grisham's attempts at writing fiction. Swing and a miss, every time.


But a name came to mind the other day that will bring a smile to my fellow Boomers.


Jon Gnagy.

Gnagy (1907 - 1981) was an artist, self-taught, who appeared on TV in the 1950s with shows such as "You Are An Artist" and "Learn To Draw."  We kids watched him and got his home art kits as gifts and did our best, even those of us who are better at drawing crowds of people than drawing anything.

He had that artist-beatnik-beard and mustache-thing going on way back then, which clearly meant to all that he was either an artist or a poet reading beat poetry in a coffeehouse. He was no hipster, though. Jon Gnagy was born in a Mennonite community in Kansas and exhibited his work at the Kansas State Fair, which led to a job as an artist for the oil community in Oklahoma. Having had a taste of success, he went to New York in the 1930s seeking more, not realizing that a Depression was going on. His lack of further success led to what he described as a nervous breakdown in 1935.

The Second World War saw Gnagy working at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, teaching camouflage technique, and at the end of the war he was with NBC for the very first TV broadcasts, at first local, and then across the burgeoning NBC Network.  Early TV needed shows to put on that were easily produced in a studio, and what's easier than putting a camera on a man drawing at an easel.  And in much the same easygoing manner as Bob Ross in years to come, Gnagy, always in his plaid shirts, taught everyone to draw as he had taught himself.

He said that all you had to do was learn to draw four basic shapes: a cube, a circle, a cone, and a cylinder, and then embellish them to form all the images of everything!

''By using these four shapes, I can draw any picture I want. And so can you!'' And so it was that we sat and drew pictures of books stacked outside of tepees, right next to buckets of apples.

Art is so hard to define.

Sunday Rerun: You never sausage a dent

 

I noticed this years ago when we drove to Florida.  To look around at the shops and stores, we could have been in our own neighborhood! There were Walgreens and CVS and Home Depot and Barnes & Noble and of course, McDonald's and Burger King everywhere. There seem to be no more purely local stores, or, at least, not many of them.

And apparently, the old saying about "people being the same everywhere" is true after all, just like your old Uncle Gustav used to say.

A case in point is this story from Neubrandenburg, Germany, where a man was driving his BMW too fast for a man who was trying to cross a street with his son in tow.  The angry German hollered "Stop!" as the car zoomed by, but the car failed to slow down, so the man threw a foot-long sausage at it.

The story concludes with the news that the sausage dented the back right-hand door of the automobile.

OK...to sum up:  What have we learned?

• Some Germans drive too fast, just like some Americans
• You can dent the door of a BMW with a sausage
• Germans have been known to walk around while carrying foot-long sausages heavy enough to dent steel

I have to admit, the same thing could have happened right here in Baltimore, Bakersfield or Beaumont.  The best idea is to drive slowly...you never know what people are toting around on the sidewalk!

The Saturday Picture Show, December 17, 2022

 

Going with the holiday theme this week...we love nothing more than hopping in the car, cranking up the Sirius Holiday Traditions channel, and looking at peoples' Christmas lights. But as we tour the local sights and sounds, one question keeps running through my mind: Where do they store this stuff all year long?

Your free wallpaper for the week...

Who wouldn't want to spend a holiday in this kitchen, what with the spinning wheel and pie rack and oldtime broom? You just know there's a butter churn somewhere!

This is one of those houses that hire a commercial company to string their Christmas lights. They do a great job, and and it's much less work for dear old Dad, but the family will miss out on years' worth of retelling the stories of the ladder falling down on the lawn, Dad running out of Arrow staples for his staple gun and hollering for more, Dad arguing that there is no better outdoor illumination than the good old C-9 bulb...

Baltimore's annual Miracle on 34th Street in the Hampden neighborhood.

This is in Pittsburgh, and I hope my yinzer friends can tell me if it has special significance or what....Do they have a tradition of eating candy apples up there on Christmas?

Baltimore salutes our heritage with the annual German Christmas village at the Inner Harbor. Because of our German forebears, we have sauerkraut at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Firefighters love Christmas! Many firehouses around here have elaborate Christmas train gardens open to the public.

Colonial Williamsburg goes all out to decorate, too. This is the Governor's Mansion.

I always say the best decorations are homemade. Lots of people do really great things with natural objects and hot glue!

Fast Food Thoughts (now that I don't eat it anymore)

Arbys was great when they first came along! They had real roast beef that tasted like real roast beef, and now it's some sort of beefish loaf.

Sherri and Terri Mackleberry from 
The Simpsons

McDonald's had the best fries back then because they cut them fresh out of huge potatoes! You could look in the window and see the guy shoving a giant spud into a press, and out spilled several dozen julienned potato spears, ready for a swim in Hot Oil Lake.

Gino's was terrific because they were here first with their Gino Giant and we always felt that McDonald's ripped off the idea. Plus, Gino's was owned by a giant of a man named Gino Marchetti, who played for the Colts and could be seen working the grill at newly-opened restaurants.

Burger King Whoppers were really truly huge when they came to town. Their catch phrase was "It takes two hands to handle a Whopper" but they forgot that your other hand was dipping french fries into the lake of catsup on your tray. It was wise to eat 1/2 of your Whopper, then, before getting into the french fries. Burger King, beside being the Home Of The Whopper, was also home to the funniest thing I ever saw in a fast food joint. Glen Burnie, MD, 1974: I ordered (and paid for) a Cheese Whopper, large fries, large coke. The girl in front of me ordered and paid for a Whopper Jr, small fries, small coke. When they called out my order first, and put it on the counter, she scooped it up like Brooks Robinson fielding a  grounder behind third base, and out the door she flew, leaving just the whiff of her Patchouli lingering in the air. 

Burger Chef, you kind of felt sorry for them, so you went there knowing there wouldn't be a crowd (everyone was at McD's or Gino's).

I got instant indigestion the first time I ate at Wendy's. I don't know why there was a second or even third time. I do remember a friend working there who told me that today's chili was last night's unsold burgers.

I have said for thirty years that I could easily eat three Nachos Bellgrande from Taco Bell in one sitting and I am waiting even yet for someone to sponsor me in that endeavor.

He Who Writes Upon These Walls

It's said that an Englishman published a book of early graffiti from the walls of public toilets around old Londontown in 1731, and for sure, there was graffiti long before that else (the word itself is the plural form of "graffito," the Italian word for drawings or markings on public walls. That plural form is fun to think about. Say you have one tiny little piece of paper to throw at a parade; that's a confetto. But a bucketful of tiny pieces of paper is confetti! 

And I will wager you that long before the English and the Italians got their pencils out and started doodling on men's room walls, Og the Cave Man was doing the same to amuse Nog, his buddy.

A study in 1983 stated that there are three types of graffiti:

1 - Tourist graffiti ("Marge and Nick Forever" scrawled on the windowsill of a diner)

2 - Inner-city graffiti, which includes tagging, street art, and the marking of turf

3 - Toilet graffiti - anything on lavatory walls. Shortly after the Baltimore Orioles won the World Series in 1983, I saw "Orioles campeão do mundo" on the mirror in the men's lounge at a downtown spot, and I realized that a Brazilian-speaking person was celebrating that the O's were world champs.  I haven't been back to that men's room since, and I really need to go. Er...

 

However, I don't see that much graffiti on men's room walls these days, and while I can't speak for the many ladies' rooms around here, I can only surmise it's the same there. Reasons?

For one thing, maybe not everyone carries a pen or pencil anymore, with digital devices at hand. 

For another, have you noticed, the stall walls are all in that thick non-markable paint? You can't just scrawl: "Here I sit, broken hearted..." without going home and getting spray paint, or making a Word document of your doggerel and printing it out to be glued on yonder Water Closet walls.

For a third, it's reasonable to assume that someone somewhere is watching remotely as you write on the walls, and one week of detention is a high price to pay for writing on the walls at a high school boys' room, I'm here to tell you.

But I think the biggest reason is the internet, which is basically a plugged-in, worldwide lavatory wall with infinite room for people to write what they think, and hide behind the cloak on anonymity that the handle "EDSHEERANFAN43" provides.

You know that's a fake name because it asks you to believe that Ed has 42 other fans.

 

They call junk mail SPAM, for a good reason

I've never tasted Spam, the delightful combination (it's "made of pork with ham meat added, salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite") of porky flavors that comes in a can down in the canned meat aisle at Foodville.

By the way, did you ever wonder why we have the expression "living high on the hog"? It comes from our sad legacy of slavery. People held in slavery were certainly not given the best food by any means, but they noticed that the slaveholders and their friends were eating the better food- the cuts of pork that come from high up on a hog - such as the loin -  whereas they had to make do with the southern parts of the pigs -  the feet, knuckles, hocks, belly, and jowls.

Well you can bet your barbecue dinner that they don't use the expensive cuts in Spam. I never had it as a kid because Dad had enough of it while in the WWII Navy to last him for his first lifetime and this second one he's now enjoying (his ascension day was this very day in 1997). 

So good old Pop was not around to see this latest sad addition to our meat selection - the friends and neighbors over at Hormel have come out with Spam Figgy Pudding.

The new Christmas Spam adds to the original ingredients "fig and orange flavors, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and all spice." 

And here's the good news, in case you're going backpacking - it needs no refrigeration. They call that "Shelf Stable."

Now, in Britain, figgy pudding is a holiday regular. It's a heavy dense steamed cake, not pudding as we think of it over here. It has raisins, currents, and brandy, but where it once was cooked with figs, that's no longer the case.

It might be hard to find this stuff on the shelves, by the way, for the same reason that we cannot understand. But when you ask the Hormelians why they foisted this off on the American public, they say, "The makers of the SPAM® Brand wanted to create a limited-edition seasonal variety that captures the magic, warm flavors and nostalgia we all crave during the holiday season. And with SPAM® Figgy Pudding, the brand did it all in one can."

My second favorite newspaper, the Washington POST, slices up a nice review of Spam Figgy: 

 "an intense faux-orange flavor that brought to mind those horrifically dyed and colored candied fruits that somehow make their way into objectionable holiday sweets, backed by a discordant chorus of baking spices."

It sounds to me like I don't want any, but don't let that stop you!

And I promise you, I checked, and this is not a gag product.

 

Winner winner

It's always amusing when people say they don't play the lottery "until it gets to be like 76 million bucks."

Like they would turn down 75 million bucks. Or 75 bucks, for that matter.

The lottery is a fun fantasy, certainly not a part of the financial planning of anyone sober or sane, and yet, when someone wins, we cheer for them instead of envying them. 

Take Nishit Parikh, a resident of Toronto, Canada. Nishit won 55 million Canadian dollars ($40,238,550 in US dollars) and he is happy because now he “can finally afford a house in Toronto.”

I mean, really. I know housing costs are high and the interest rate is a killer, but I see "SOLD" signs all over, so someone is buying houses in Baltimore, presumably without tens of millions in their wallets.

I'm sure he can get himself a nice little bungalow with his newfound riches.

Our summer home, "Mark-A-Lago."

By the way, Parikh said he usually uses a set of number for his lottery ticket, numbers comprising important dates for his family, but this time he went with auto-generated picks, and look how that worked out for him!

He says he wants to travel to see South Africa and then invest in real estate when he gets home.

If he swings through our town on the way back to Toronto, maybe we can interest him in buying some of the empty abandoned malls and big-box stores that dot Baltimore like chocolate chips on a cookie. It's the reverse of the old "Buy one, get one free" deals at Sears.

Buy one empty Sears store, get another one free!

 

Look out!

Irony! We don't see it coming and that's what makes it so fun. Irony is when you steer your car away from a pothole ahead in the road, only to have your car swallowed up by an unseen crevasse about the size of Delaware, just down the road a piece.

Irony is NOT when you go to a movie and see your friend in line to see the same movie. That is coincidence.

Call this what you will, but the death of English daredevil Bobby Leach (1858 - 1926) was odd.  Bobby was the second person to make his way over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He was ten years late to be first to do so;  Annie Taylor did that very thing in 1901, while it took a decade for Leach to make the plunge (1911). 

That nutty feat does not come without medical complications. Leach was in the hospital for six months, getting over his two broken kneecaps and his one fractured jaw.  A veteran stuntman with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, Leach owned and operated a restaurant where he would hold forth with his customers, bragging that "Anything Annie can do, I can do better."

Bobby Leach the barrel he rode over Niagara Falls, 1911.

To capitalize on his local fame, Leach moved to Niagara Falls, New York and opened a pool hall in 1920. When he was in his sixties, he thought it would be a great idea to swim the noted whirlpool rapids around the Falls. He never succeeded in this endeavor, but one William "Red" Hill, a local riverman, saved his bacon every time. Perhaps Hill should be famous for this.

For all his derring-do, it was a piece of fruit that ended Mr Leach's life. He slipped on an orange peel, the cut became infected, gangrene set in, the leg was amputated, and complications from all this killed him two months later.

So, riding over the huge falls in a barrel, minimal injuries. Orange peel, death.

Life's like that sometimes, and then it isn't.

 

Sunday Rerun: "Roses are red and violets are purple and sugar's sweet and so is maple surple" - Roger Miller

 Faced with a shortage of vital fluid, the great nation has decided that the only course of action would be to uncork some of the precious reserves it has laid up for just such a rainy day as this.

No, we're not talking about the US tapping into our strategic oil reserves. That's old news, and we don't deal in that. We're talking about Canada, the great nation to our north, and they have a shortage of their own. This is serious: they are short on maple syrup.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers has opened the stopper to allow 50 million pounds of their strategic syrup reserves. That's about half of their emergency stash.

70% of the world's maple syrup comes from Quebec. The US, where we know that there ain't no substitute for the real sweet thang, is Canada's biggest customer, but this year, as more people stayed home eating waffles, worldwide demand for real maple syrup jumped by 21%.

People are often surprised to hear that the goo sitting atop their pancakes is made from the sap of the maple tree. The sap is harvested by tapping a metal tap (so that's where they got that term) right into the tree's trunk. 

In Grandpa's era, a bucket was hung from the tap to catch those precious drips, but now, a network of plastic tubes and vacuums collects the drips and transports the product to a syrup refinery.

The trees will only yield sap under very specific weather conditions. This year's short and warm Spring resulted a very low flow, according to industry spokesperson Mrs Butterworth.

That was a fake! I hope you caught it.

But Helene Normandin is a real person. She is the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers' communications director, and she says, "That's why the reserve is made, to never miss maple syrup. And we won't miss maple syrup!" 

She sounds quite resolute about this winter's breakfasts, and she also is when discussing plans to avoid another shortage next year. 

"What we can figure at this moment is maybe the season here in Quebec will start a bit earlier in February, instead of March, and end earlier also," she said.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers will be sticking their taps into some 7 million more trees soon to refill the reserve tanks.

Syrup costs money, and money does not grow on trees. It does grow IN trees, however.

The Saturday Picture Show, December 10, 2022

 

Here's a free wallpaper just for you! And if someone asks you where this was taken, just say, "I dunno. Some guy put it on his facebook page, that's all I know."

From the learn-something-new-every-day department: that white strip of moulding about 8 or 9" from the ceiling is called a San Francisco picture rail. Many of the houses in SF with plaster walls did not allow pictures to be hung in the normal way, so these strips were installed to hang photos and paintings from them as you see here.

Baltimore was once a thriving center for duckpin bowling, but with the closing of the Patterson bowling alley (because Baltimore desperately needs more apartments) there are very few places left to bowl the ducks. The difference between duckpins and tenpins is that the duckpins are short and squat and scatter easily when hit just right by a rolled ball that is smaller than a tenpin ball and has no fingerholes. 

I suppose it's not uncommon in certain parts of the country to see a horse walking around loose on the streets. In Baltimore's Pimlico neighborhood, horses who just lost in the 5th race are often gracious enough to give bettors a ride home. Just ask down at the paddock.

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign! Like the one in the hardware store that says, "Cast iron sinks."  Well, who doesn't know that?

We all had these notebooks for math or compositions, but this one was different. It's the arithmetic workbook of Uziyah Garcia, who lost his life at age ten in the Robb Elementary massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Uziyah was killed because he lived in a nation that prizes the rights of gun owners over the right of children to continue living, studying math, and enjoying this world.  "There's one more kid that'll never go to school, Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool." - Neil Young

The B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore is all dressed up for Christmas!

They called it Art Deco, short for the French term Arts Décoratifs, and it was a way of adding flair and someone's idea of elegance to design, and also add fender skirts to all vehicles, including this simple trike from 1939. 

Judge to turtle: "So who put half a raspberry on your back?" Turtle: "I have no idea, your honor. It all happened so fast!"

You're gonna think I'm kidding, but this is a thing, or becoming one...Butter Candles! The idea is, they add light to your table as you dine, and then you have nice soft butter to put on your roll or croissant or whatever. But suddenly it's dark as you enjoy the roll...