Culture – Page 58 – I Don't Get It

Mr. Green, He’s So Serene, He’s Got A TV In Every Room

Snoopy Was A Carnivore Who Probably Ate Horses

Painting done not by Norman Rockwell, but Douglass Crockwell. Seriously.

Ah, yes. In the years before talk of puppy mills and Pit Bulls & Parolees, folks would go to the Pet Shop and actually procure puppies there, not just on the days when the Humane Society pimped strays on Saturdays. Can’t you just smell their little puppy breath and the softness of their puppy heads? This is part of a 1956 ad for Friskies.

Now, I’ve had plenty of dogs in my day, and they all liked meat. Carrots, no. Cabbage, wouldn’t touch it. Celery, forget it. But chicken and beef and pork? Yes. Basically any of the Chipotle proteins, dogs like. Now in case you didn’t skim the ad up top, it says Friskies contains “lean red horse meat.” Yum! Giddyup! So we can safely assume those beagle puppies were into horsemeat. It makes me wonder about Jemima. Jemima was the beagle we lost last year to cancer, and she looked nothing like Snoopy, who is also purportedly a beagle. Even this Pinterest image shows you that Snoopy and beagles have hardly anything in common. But I bet they’d both eat horse meat.

And turkey.

And bacon and eggs.

Maybe, just maybe, they’d both like watermelon for dessert, like this happy beagle.

But then it’s strictly back to horse meat.

Enjoying Outdoor Weather Together

This poor boy got the sunken eyes of his mama, and both ladies’ shoes makes their feet look like hooves.

The lady at the tippy top gives me the heebeejeebs. Those bangs… But what a festive smattering of smocks!

This one here looks about a century old, whatwith the bunned hair and flouncy floor-length gowns. Check out this happy lass and her parasol.

Blasé Balloon Blower

While it may sound like the name of a royal princess of Wales, Charlotte Amalie is actually the largest city of the United States Virgin Islands, located in St. Thomas. Below, you can see the celebration in Charlotte Amalie on the 50th anniversary of Transfer Day, which marked the transfer of the islands from Denmark to the United States in 1917. Last year, of course, they celebrated a full 100 years.

While an enthusiastic sailor on shore leave from the cruiser USS Newport News (and he might be smoking Newports, to boot) hurls a ball at the weighted bottles at Carnival Village, the broad donning the Faye Dunaway floppy hat seems none too thrilled to either score his hits nor score his number. She has spent all day blowing up balloons, and her cheeks are as stretched as Dizzy Gillespie’s.

Note the look of awe on the boy in the far back.

Paw-Paw & Me

Why Paint The Town Red When You Can Paint Your Home Pink?

Even more cliche than those drugstore Father’s Day cards referencing golf and ale consumption and handyman tools, are the ones that show Dad taking a paint roller to his bird’s egg blue brick house and painting it Pepto-Bismol pink.

Okay, so he’s actually painting a pink house blue. That makes more sense. Perhaps Mom just painted it pink a month ago for Mother’s Day, and now it’s HIS day and his color. He gets eleven months of blue, but she only gets four weeks of pink. That’s not fair.

But, really, what’s wrong with the pink? Pink houses were so coveted in the 80s, in fact, that John Cougar Mellencamp even wrote a song about it.

Here he is in the video, excitedly pumping up the cheerleader and sweat-domed, sleeveless buddy whom he had recruited to paint the basic white clapboard house behind him. All hail pink houses! And really, ain’t that America, for you and me?

The ad continues with way more paragraphs than necessary, as was the way back in the day, when people weren’t reading posts on phones and had plenty of time to sit and read a short-story-length ad on paint.

And what mid-century dad didn’t appreciate a can of SPRED Glide-On, not to be confused with Astroglide? Glidden also made a latex wall paint called SPRED Satin, for even fancier fathers.

So maybe Dad didn’t want a pink house for good reason. What do you think? A palace fit for a king? Not even for a vacation house? Sometimes less is more.

Is This My Cowardly Lion?

It’s not often that I get to say “I’m too young to remember this,” but since I wasn’t alive in the 60s–hey, I’m too young. I was flipping through my 1967 LIFE and saw this image of Bert Lahr.

It didn’t make me want to eat Lay’s. It didn’t make me want to wear a blackjack dealer visor. Instead, it raised red flags.

That’s unhygienic to stack chips on a table (and nearly impossible).
We all know each chip bag contains precisely 14 chips, not dozens.
Bert looks uncomfortable, like he’s wincing through back pain. In fact, he DID die later that year, in December.

If you’re over 55, you may recall this ad. It’s chock full of everything that makes people cringe these days, and I don’t mean the minimalist background. Racism and poor acting and stealing, oh my!

I’ll choose to remember him as the Cowardly Lion, and not as the Lay’s pitchman. RIP.

Put More Sugar In Lisa

This ad from my May 19, 1967 LIFE blows my mind. (scroll down for larger type)

It literally says, “Make sure you get sugar every day. People need what sugar’s got.” People don’t need more sugar. I’ve got plenty of sugar in me. I’ll tell you what I need: Lisa’s life. Lisa’s got it made. Trust fund much? I don’t see anything here about clocking in and working for the man.

Now THERE’S a metaphor!

No Hoodlums Here

That look on his face on the far left…

I Can’t Wait To Die So I Can Haunt This House

Victorian era peeps rarely looked happy to be alive. Maybe it was the ten minutes each morning spent lacing up boots or corsets or angling their hats just so. Maybe it was the frustration of pier and beam homes on those windy cold winter’s nights, wishing they had concrete foundations. The only information written on the picture was that Agnes is the girl on the left, and Lois is the girl on the right. Lois is the only one who seems to be enjoying the day, possibly because swings. No swings = stern.

She Loves Me Like A Rock

How’s this for the mother and child reunion? What joy radiates from both of their faces. You can see why I couldn’t pass this snapshot up.

With Mother’s Day coming up, I thought I’d share a few pics of mothers and their children. She looks tickled to death that her son was granted a furlough to visit her.