Nostalgia

From Gorges’ Grouse blog

Kitchen cupboard — my grandmother had one like this. That thing on the left is a flour bin and sifter.

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Nostalgia

Demolition Derby

I have attended a couple of uniquely-American demolition derbies in my knickers days. The secret was to run into other cars going backwards so that you didn’t destroy your car’s radiator which meant steam-belching mechanical inoperability (you lost).

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Nostalgia

From reddit Pics

Once common ... a steam engine in Colorado ...

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Nostalgia

Laurel and Hardy in “Busy Bodies”

Nostalgia

From daily timewaster

Nostalgia

From daily timewaster

Nostalgia

From Powerline blog

Nostalgia

How many of you dear readers remember gum ball machines ... which, for a penny, you could get a small orb of bubble gum in one of many primary colors? Usually you needed two or three to make a good chaw. But, in order to encourage kids to be gamblers, if you got a speckled gum ball, the merchant owed you a nickel ... maybe for a Clark candy bar (or five pennies for more gum balls.)

Nostalgia

trddit Pic

Back in innocent times ... bang, bang ... your dead!

Nostalgia

Scotty dog magnets ...

Looking Back

I’m adding a new feature to this blog ... a looking back to oldiie but goodie posts. The first such entry is Childhood Memories, originally published in October, 2006. It contains my memory snippets from the 1940s and 1950s that you, kind readers who lived in these times, might find nostalgic. You others, learn what life was like back then. Enjoy!

Quotable Quote

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. -- Peter De Vries

Nostalgia

Nostalgia -- An arcane word that is used to evoke one's salad days

Horn & Hardart -- An early attempt to automate the ordering process in the food service industry

Fletcher's Castoria -- A childhood laxative that tasted just like rootbeer

Answering machines -- "Please leave a message ... beep!"

Shoe x-ray -- A machine in front of most shoe stores where kids could see their toes inside their shoes

Cap guns and water pistols -- Gun toys, mostly for boys, that "killed" imaginary injuns and soaked pesky girls

Carnival sideshows -- Bearded ladies, geeks, hoochy koochy girls, human pincushions and sword swallowers

Steel roller skates -- Skate boards and in-line skates have generally supplanted old-fashioned steel roller skates

Dad's Old Fashioner Root Beer -- I seem to remember Mom's and ever Junior's versions too

Land-line telephones -- I still have one (non-cordless) for when the power goes out

3 cent postage stamp -- The cost of first-class postage for many years

Brooklyn Dodgers -- Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Carl Farillo, PeeWee Reese, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe

Gum-ball machines -- If your penny produced a speckled gum ball, you got a nickel

Sears Roebuck catalogue -- Toilet paper adorned with bra and girdle ads

Toonerville Trolley -- Bucolic wisdom offered up weekly in the Sunday "funny papers"

City chicken -- Ground veal formed around a Popsicle stick and fried to look like a chicken leg (back when veal was cheaper than chicken)

Lash LaRue -- An oater (western B-movie) hero who used a whip more often than his six-shooter

Single-gender restrooms -- Old fashioned modesty

reddit Gallery CLXXXIII

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Nostalgia

A Small World

Missionary and Child

Drinking Buddies

Dramatic Sunset

Another Closing, Another Show

There is a bit of nostalgic news today that once touched my life ... that famous celebrity bistro, Elaine's, is soon closing ... after Elaine (Kaufman) herself died this past December.  See: Elaine's Closing.

Now for the nostalgia -- back when I was single in New York City, I was a bit of a regular at a bar called Tinker's at 74th Street and Second Avenue.  One evening in 1964 at around nine in the evening, a rather heavy-set Jewish woman with horn-rimmed glasses came into this bar and started chit-chatting Tinker (Ward).  They appeared to be close friends.

After a bit, both she and Tinker told most of us bar regulars that we were all invited to go to another bar further uptown ... a bar that this imposing woman was just opening.  We all piled in a few cabs and tumbled out somewhere in the high eighties.  We then previewed what appeared to be another nondescript bar that was about twice the size of Tinkers.  I say “previewed,” because, there were just a few other people in the bar arranging tables and getting ready for the real opening in a day or two.  I took no real notice of the bar’s name.  We were all treated to a few drinks ... I can’t remember who bought, Tinker or this woman ... and then filtered back to Tinker’s to finish our evenings in our usual libertine manner. 

I found out much later, after this new bar had become quite famous, that what we had previewed was “Elaine’s.”  Maybe it was my imagination, but I always felt that the few times I went into Elaine’s thereafter, Elaine would look at me sideways ... like she was trying to remember who I was.  I never told her.