As my friend The DLC pointed out, I have now blogged just about everything and now pathetically spend my time posting links to my own blog, where I previously opined on whatever subject is being discussed. I constantly catch myself thinking about writing something just to discover that I wrote about it at length last year or the year before. That’s why when we came back from the apple orchard on Sunday all I had to do is search and find my last year’s post about apples and another one about the apple recipes. Even my photos looked the same – the same place, the same apples. Luckily we made a little detour or I would’ve had nothing at all.
The Main Street in the city of Ottawa, KS hasn’t changed much since the old days. As a matter of fact it looks very similar to the old photos of Neosho, MO I recently posted, they must have used some standard project for the smaller rural towns.
This is what the Main St. in Ottawa, KS looked like in 1942:
This is what it looks like now:
We got off the highway in Ottawa to wait for the apple orchard to open and promptly found ourselves in the middle of the antique car show known as Ol’Marais River Run. I don’t consider myself a giant car fan and all the talk about cubic inches, shaved hoods and custom paint jobs does nothing for me, but it’s hard not to stand in awe admiring the time when a car was a work of art. These cars may not have been the safest or the most technologically advanced but they represent the era when the car was still a wonder, an object of pride, an engineering dream trimmed with chrome.
Due to some peculiar historic and political circumstances the cars of my childhood looked almost identical to these, so strangely these shows are just as nostalgic for me as they are for someone who grew up here.
The car show had a feel of a State Fair complete with signage:
…Elvis and Marylin:
…delicious food:
…Republican Party:
…and boyscouts:
In the olden days, before the Ad Wizards took over our lives, the states had simple nicknames. Nebraska was known as a “Beef State”:
Iowa had to settle for the “Pork State”, Alabama went with the “Heart of Dixie”
Arizona called itself “The Grand Canyon State”
and Missouri was known as it is known now as “The State That Thinks It’s Better Than Other States But Is Sadly Mistaken” but is was hard to fit on the license plate.
After the show we finally made it to the orchard:
This year seems to be one of the best years for apples, trees were heavy with fruit.
I spent a few minutes on the pond:
enjoying the wildlife:
Here is what the pond sounds like:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a28tgsr3jRg
We picked 25 lbs of apples:
…paid a visit to the country store:
Took another look at the giant apple in the sky where all the worms go after they die:
…and were home in no time.
Continuing with the subject of vintage magazine ads, below are some full-page clips advertising food and soft drinks. It’s interesting to see which products survived into today, as well as trace some common items to the days when they were first introduced. Advertising and marketing were pretty much absent during my childhood – people having to deal with shortages did not need additional enticement to buy things. I don’t recall seeing any commercials on TV or in print until the mid-1980’s. Now, when technology provides a way to block most TV and internet advertisement, I find myself marveling at these old ads, probably because they look so naive and amateurish compared to the slick ways the goods are being sold to us today.
We’ll start with this subtly racist ad for Aunt Jemima pancakes.
In calendar years I am 38 but just like the dog years go by much faster then the human years, I think I am much older then an average American born in 1969. To prove that, I will list a few items that I and my parents used in our everyday life that were not antique, just normal things you could find in an average household, and then we will see what age group will admit to knowing what these are:
1. Calculating aids.
The Slide Rule. In the movie Apollo 13 when the spacecraft was in trouble bunch of geeky-looking engineers whipped out these little secret weapons. Some people can still beat a computer with this thing, if not in speed then in physical strength. I actually learned slide rule use in school and used it for a period of time. We didn’t have calculators, I think I got my first one in the 8th grade.
My Mom was an accountant and she used abacus at work. Some people could do miracles with this things. Try to multiply two numbers using the abacus and you will know what I mean.
Lastly, to finish this high-tech roundup I’d like to mention trigonometric tables. In the absence of calculators to find values of trigonometric functions, squares, square roots, logarithms and other math calculations we had to page through these tables. It wasn’t hard to do but sure makes you appreciate your little scientific calculator.
2.Reel-to-reel tape player. This is the exact model that we owned. My Dad purchased it when I
started talking to record my first words. This player worked fine for the next 22 years and probably long after we left it to somebody. It was very heavy but I remember dragging it around town to record music from friends’ tapes and records. This is how music was downloaded in my time. Get some tape, bring your recorder to a friend’s house, wait for a couple of hours while it’s recording, lug your player back home.
3. Color TV. In 1976 or 77 my Dad bought our first color TV. It was still a rarity. This TV was extremely heavy and had vacuum tubes inside. There was no cable, just 3 over-the-air channels and no one even knew what the remote control looked like. You could always tell that TV was on by glowing tubes inside.
4.Drafting Board. Before the AutoCad drafters stood in front of these and actually drafted. I had a drafting class in the technical school and my uncle let me use his board for some time. For those who don’t know, drafting is hard and tedious and I always sucked at it. That was the main reason why I chose to study electrical engineering – electrical drawings can be done with template. Until you drew a gear in 3-d with a quarter cut out you don’t know what pain is.
5. Kerosene Burner. My Grandma actually used this to cook. She lived in the rural area and when propane wasn’t delivered she fired up one of those. It was smelly but it did what it was supposed to.
6. Transistor radio. This is the exact model we had. The writing on it said “50 years if the Great October Revolution” so it was made in 1967. I mentioned before how we (and the rest of the country) listened to Western Short Wave Stations to get real news and happenings in the world. There were even shows with banned rock-music. The strange ting was that they kept making these radios and then had to scramble radio transmissions.
7. Our first washer.This was just a plastic tub with an electric agitator. The process was simple:heat the water in the bucket on the stove, dump it into the washer, put the clothes in, turn on. When the timer went off you had to manually empty it with the attached hose, repeat the process to rinse, then wring out the laundry and hang it outside to dry. Still, it was a miracle machine.
April 12th is the Cosmonautics Day celebrating the first manned space flight accomplished on that day in 1961 by the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. I mentioned it last year so today I will just post some pictures and a video clip.
Space theme in the Soviet Greeting Cards. Notice that the Soviet postcards didn’t include any text so a person had to actually write something, not just sign their name under some sappy Hallmark verse.
Lastly, this song “Do you know what a guy he was” about Gagarin became the Song of The Year in 1971. Gagarin would have been 75 this year.
I could’ve used my 800th post on something worthwhile like my thoughts on health-care or bitching about the first day of school moving even closer to the last day of school, but I’ll post another recipe. After all, the health-care is not going anywhere and school already started, but the eggplant season may be over at any time.
This is probably the simplest recipe you will find on this blog. You will need only 6 ingredients: eggplant, tomatoes, flour, (olive) oil, garlic and salt.
When picking an eggplant try to get an evenly shaped one so the slices are similar in size. Slice the eggplant in about 1/4 inch slices.
Dust with flour on both sides…
…salt lightly and place in the skillet on medium-low heat with a pretty decent amount of oil in it. If you salt the eggplant beforehand it will start losing liquid and shrivel.
Cook eggplant on both sides. It doesn’t need to brown, just poke it with a knife or a fork, if it easily goes in – it’s ready. Remove on paper towels and cook another batch.
The eggplant seems to soak up great quantities of oil, keep adding as needed. While the eggplant is cooking, slice some ripe tomatoes.
Assemble the final product-a slice of eggplant, a slice of tomato, pressed garlic to taste.
I ate everything you see on this plate by myself in one setting.
This could be a side-dish, or a Hors d’œuvre, also called “zakuska” in Russian – something that goes well after a cold shot of vodka. Just as good or better on the next day. Keep refrigerated.
Now pour yourself an aforementioned shot of vodka, drink it, eat an eggplant-tomato sandwich. Do you still want to argue about health-care or schools? Repeat. How about now? I didn’t think so. At this point you would start singing a Russian folk song but since you can’t how about this one, it sounds equally stupid.
The Slide Rule. In the movie Apollo 13 when the spacecraft was in trouble bunch of geeky-looking engineers whipped out these little secret weapons. Some people can still beat a computer with this thing, if not in speed then in physical strength. I actually learned slide rule use in school and used it for a period of time. We didn’t have calculators, I think I got my first one in the 8th grade.
Reel-to-reel tape player. This is the exact model that we owned. My Dad purchased it when I
Color TV. In 1976 or 77 my Dad bought our first color TV. It was still a rarity. This TV was extremely heavy and had vacuum tubes inside. There was no cable, just 3 over-the-air channels and no one even knew what the remote control looked like. You could always tell that TV was on by glowing tubes inside.
Drafting Board. Before the AutoCad drafters stood in front of these and actually drafted. I had a drafting class in the technical school and my uncle let me use his board for some time. For those who don’t know, drafting is hard and tedious and I always sucked at it. That was the main reason why I chose to study electrical engineering – electrical drawings can be done with template. Until you drew a gear in 3-d with a quarter cut out you don’t know what pain is.
Kerosene Burner. My Grandma actually used this to cook. She lived in the rural area and when propane wasn’t delivered she fired up one of those. It was smelly but it did what it was supposed to.
(and the rest of the country) listened to Western Short Wave Stations to get real news and happenings in the world. There were even shows with banned rock-music. The strange ting was that they kept making these radios and then had to scramble radio transmissions.
This was just a plastic tub with an electric agitator. The process was simple:heat the water in the bucket on the stove, dump it into the washer, put the clothes in, turn on. When the timer went off you had to manually empty it with the attached hose, repeat the process to rinse, then wring out the laundry and hang it outside to dry. Still, it was a miracle machine.
