1990s – I Don't Get It

And Yet, What’s Most Disturbing Is Those Vertical Blinds

You guys, I don’t usually share images as recent as only 30-something years old, which I’m guessing this is, but we need to talk about this.

Discounting the obvious crimes of hair and use of cigarettes (and LENGTH of cigarettes; you’ve come a long, long, LONG way, baby), and plaid vest that somehow makes her more street than lumberjack, or even simply the use of THIS as their Christmas card, what bothers me most is those blinds. I remember those blinds in my first years of apartment dwelling. The way they never moved in synchronicity like Venetian blinds or their superior window cousin, plantation shutters. Just try and pull them to the side. You can already hear the swishing and slamming of cheap plastic blind crashing into cheap plastic blind. Erratic! Random!

And oh, what fun to dust them! And even better, what their very existence oft implied, which was sliding glass doors. Who doesn’t love the sliding glass door? You know, the one that only slides seamlessly for a month before catching and stuttering. Or it does that diagonal thing, where it gets off its rollers. Yes, the very same sliding glass door that a criminal attempted to break into in my townhome in the early 90s, when everyone used that same broken broom handle to shove in between the doors as a perfect deterrent. It was only good fortune that my angry queen of a roommate drew said blinds back and showed his horrified face to the thief that saved us. Damn sliding door. Damn blinds. What did they think they would get? A glass coffee table full of Madonna magazines and a TV with an enormous antenna? Hmph.

Quarantining With Toddlers

Peruvian weaver, Peru, 1992 by Stuart Franklin for Nat Geo

It Ain’t No Woman Flesh And Blood

“… it’s that damned old rodeo,” sang Garth Brooks. And while he was singing abut it, Lisa Eisner was attending rodeos and snapping shots across the country. In her 2000 book, Rodeo Girl, we see glimpses of rodeo life, to which many folks are never privy.

However, I think most of us are familiar with this body language.

90s kicker fashion was hard to accept. Those uncomfortable buttoned tops that barely made it to your belly button, and the Rocky Mountain jeans that absolutely did.

Pair it with perms and vertical stripes, and you’re in like Flynn.

A sash means you’re somebody.

Hanging with friends in low places.

Don’t forget your skill set, girls!

Come back tomorrow for some backstage scenes!

The Baby So Cute, You Want To Eat It

At first glance, it’s a combination of everything most ladies crave: carbs and infants. The bakers appear tickled by the appearance of this abandoned babe. And in a sense, little Mairi Chisholm was indeed abandoned in Selkirk, Scotland in 1996. But as the National Geographic article noted, it was common for mothers to leave infants unattended as they went off on brief shopping forays, believing them to be free of danger in the small town.

No modern-day American mother should ever do such a thing. I wouldn’t have even left my baby in an infant carrier in ANOTHER room in my own house. Unless he was sleeping in his crib, he was always supervised. Never left outside alone to pick something up and choke. Never left in a pool to drown, nor a hot car to perish as happens every single year. How reprehensible to leave a baby in a car unattended, with or without air conditioning. I would never leave my purse alone in my car to run inside the 7-11, much less a child. And how much more precious is that?

But for little Mairi in small Selkirk, a town with STILL less than 6,000 people, it all worked out. Mommy got her errands done and perhaps a loaf of bread when she was done. But here is my question: what if Mairi cried? Who attended to her? Could anyone available change her diaper? Was a bottle of formula left at her feet? I can’t even imagine.

Working The Same Block

"In Search of the Corn Queen" — “In Search of the Corn Queen”

These two gals are all gussied up for the Cairo (pronounced by locals as “we don’t care-o”), Illinois River Days festival in 1990, but they don’t look too excited about it. Touted as “America’s most depressing city” by www.cyburbia.org, it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume these gals got the heck out of dodge before the millennium ended. More recent images from 2008 show what downtown has become.

http://www.cyburbia.org

However, if you simply travel 21 miles north to Ullin, Illinois, you can witness the beauty pageant held at their modern-day River Days, which is still going strong.

And these Little Miss Sunshines, having traded tights and tap shoes for strappy sandals, seem a lot more excited about it.

This Is How We Do It

September 1, 1997

Two Medicare-eligible ladies in sensible flats don their finest LSU purple apparel (they have spirit, yes, they do) and enjoy a pre-game tailgate lap luncheon.

leggs

This House Possessed

Actually, This House Possessed was a 1981 made-for-TV Parker Stevenson movie that gave me the willies in my formidable years. But it wasn’t nearly as scary as this shot of men being chased by a house. I bet they could give Usain Bolt a run for his money in the 100 meter dash.

When we think hurricane, we probably think of Katrina, but 1998’s Hurricane Georges was no picnic for folks in Key West. The 90-mph winds tore through homes on Houseboat Row.

Houseboat Row