Picnic Table Lecture
Category: Nostalgia
Nebraska Winter
Take These Jobs And Shove Them
I’ve my thrown my back out several times both sneezing and stepping off curbs the wrong way. I am not cut out to drive logs on the Swift Diamond River in New Hampshire, like these fellows. I am weak.
Nor can I tug wagons o’ tires.
When rubber came to Ohio in 1910, Akron became a boom city, and guys like this were able to breathe rubber fumes all day.
Here’s another job I can’t do due to my fear of heights. Is he washing windows? Is he scaling the sides of buildings to fulfill a male superhero fantasy? All I know is that was 40 years ago, and he ain’t doing it now.
And the last job I wouldn’t want: naked bakery boy.
It’s not because I’m uppity or that I don’t love gluten, because I loves me some glutenny gluten. But I would need an apron. And some sort of hair net so as not to get stray hairs into the sourdough.
Overaccessorizing With Pottery
Spring = Melting Igloos
When Your BFF Is Packing Two Coors Banquets In Her Hair For Later
Coors Banquet beer was black market back in the day, only distributed within some 13 western U.S. states. Per firstwefeast.com, in the 1970’s:
Coors claimed that not only could they not make enough beer, but that their unpasteurized brew demanded being distributed exclusively via refrigerated trucks, lest it “spoil.” Thus, a mystique was built, and soon east coast folks were smuggling cases upon cases of the beer back home after a visit to the Rockies. In 1977, Coors even took out an ad in the Washington Post saying “Please don’t buy our beer,” insisting any in the area was clearly black market, mishandled, and prone to becoming “watery” (you can laugh now). This insane thirst for Coors hit its apex with the release of Smokey and the Bandit, the Burt Reynolds action-comedy about a legendary trucker willing to risk life, limb, and the law to illegally smuggle crates of Coors back to Georgia.
This ’79 ad for said beer plays like an ad for America itself. Coors Banquet is “born where eagles speak, and the sunrise slides from peak to peak.” Clearly, it’s “no downstream beer.”
Woman Trapped In Display Window Since 1920
Spring Break, She Is A’Coming
To me, it looks like Spring Break in the French Quarter. But then again, I’m not well-traveled and have never seen a Brisbane Parade before. This image was taken on January 26th, aka Australia Day, clearly a warm day down under. It’s a national holiday, marking the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and the raising of Great Britain’s flag by Governor Arthur Phillip. And they celebrate with bikinis and floats, as Governor Phillip would have wanted.
A Mercury For St. Paddy
Over-The-Shoulder Look Back
We’ve all seen the celebs walk the red carpet, then pause to give this look.
Granted, they weren’t wearing a calico flour sack like Nemukwunga the Umbakumban. Aborigines living in Groote Eylandt used the sacks as loincloths when modesty was forced upon them. But who could blame them? Flour sacks used to come in all kinds of fun prints!
During the lean years of the Depression, folks would re-purpose the sacks into dresses, shirts, and tea towels.
Of course, some people wear sacks better than others.
And how about those shoes, ladies? I assume the men don’t see them.
Fabulous.
Here, Let Me Talk Down To You
Pace Yourself, Fran
I didn’t even know we had a territory in Samoa, but that’s not surprising, is it? We even have a flag there, a mish-mash of Samoan/USA colors, but it’s odd, truth be told.
It looks like a cheap decal or a page in a first grade coloring book. I get the symbolism of the bald eagle (he looks determined), but as to why he’s clutching a war club and fly-whisk, you got me. They’ve kept this flag longer than I’ve been alive, so I guess it’s all good over there.
The population is about the size of my Austin-suburb city, so surely they have a Starbuck’s and a TJ Maxx and all that’s needed in life. As usual, it makes me want to bust out with songs from “South Pacific.” Isn’t it lovely?
I Don't Get It 