When The Crackers Have Gluten, And Gluten Makes Your Date Homicidal
Category: Nostalgia
Depression-Era Santa Starved From Lack Of Milk & Cookies
Actually, Santa wasn’t the one lacking that year. The UT Zeta house hosted a Christmas party for needy children, and a makeshift Santa proved too svelte for the outfit. It does make you wonder if folks left out perfectly good milk and cookies for Santa during the lean years.
The irony is that the tradition didn’t even START until the lean years. In an era of such economic hardship, many parents used the gesture as an example of generosity and gratitude for the gifts they would receive on Christmas Day. The Greatest Generation indeed.
Halloween 1949
It’s Halloween of 1949 at the University of Texas at Austin, and Nautical Nellie is excited to see the ghoulish costumes of her peers. 
Just a girl and her horse. That seems normal, right?
When The Hallmark Movie Is A Rerun
Hybrid Cats & Hybrid Corn
Four-year-old Trent Petersen enjoys three parts corn to one part cat at his family’s farm in Exira, Iowa.
Only Interesting People
Ooh-la-la! Très exclusive. Only for the interesting people! Why, you’ll find novelists, actresses, professors, and big-game hunters on French Line! Only the best and brightest are allowed aboard, where they serve table wine complimentary. Much fancy! The servers even speak the English because that’s civilized.
One wonders how the French ever got pegged with a rep for snobbery.
“Children Are A Poor Man’s Riches” – English Proverb
What a blessing has Johann Inauen, and I don’t mean his pipe. Son Reto could not be more smitten with papa, enjoying a childhood on a small Appenzell dairy farm in Switzerland. Idyllic indeed.
Great-Aunt Minnie Loved Her Some Charles Marion Russell
*CMR created over 2000 Old West paintings, such as the one above.
Hurtling O’er The Hill
Back before climate change, we had winter, and folks use to ski in water that would freeze and make snow. People used gravity to ski from the top of the snow to the bottom of it. Sometimes they snapped their shins or skied right into a tree and died, but other times, they caught the wind under their skis and soared, ever briefly, high above the crowds, catching the cold crisp air beneath their feet, alighting upon the soft snowy incline and gliding to the stretch.
S Is For Bridge
Ever seen the likes of this before? Not me. Not around these parts. Maybe it’s a Northern thing. This S bridge in Hendrysburg, Ohio was built with “manholes,” or safety niches where a pedestrian could get out of the way of a runaway team of horses. While many S bridges were generally used for crossing curving streams with uneven banks, this one served a more unique purpose. Motorcars eventually made the bridges obsolete.
New Englanders Live Four Years Longer
Back in the summer of 1932, everyone who was anyone was planning to travel up to New England on account of the boss eclipse that would “never again” happen until the year 2000.
And my favorite part of the ad?
This. They live four years longer. Longer than whom? All the other states?
Well, some New England states still make the top 10 in terms of longevity, but the latest 2018 rankings show folks in Minnesota live the longest: 78.7 years old on average. Mississippi ranked 51st (the study includes Washington, D.C.), where it’s 71.8 years. For results on your state, click here.
In the meantime, if you live in Mississippi, make sure to watch these crucial factors: tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and bad diets. Or get yourself up to New England pronto!
Winner Of Atlantic City’s First Bathing Beauty Contest
Miss Washington, above, won the title in September of 1921 with knees “daringly bare.”
By 1923, hemlines had shifted to show yet more thigh. Can you even imagine wearing stockings to go swimming?
By 1935, the winner received a crown, robe, scepter, and a moment on the throne.
No wonder Atlantic City has been immortalized in art.
I Don't Get It 