Category: Nostalgia

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.

mises.org

Enjoying Outdoor Weather Together

Thanksgiving 1954
Aug 14, 1937 San Antonio, Texas

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.

National Geographic January 1968

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.

giphy.com

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

Hold Steady To Grandma, Lest She Fall Down

I saw this pic and immediately thought of the 1947 poem:

Hold steady to grandma, lest she fall down

Let grass stains stay clear of her three button gown

‘Twill not be flattering should she choose to go prone

Give up the ghost, and leave Grandpa alone

But what of Aunt Doris who clings to the wrist

Of my sweet Cousin Lois who dare not resist

For fear that the lips of Doris get flubbery 

As she sobs while Uncle Jim hides behind shrubbery

Has he donned trousers? Hast thou the knowledge? 

He only had two years at community college

He lettered in arm wrestling; his grip was quite strong

To his daughter Eleanor, the gene passed along

And now she stands confident, with nary a frown

Holding steady to grandma, lest she fall down. 

 

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.

LIFE 1967

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.

giphy.com

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.

http://www.hotelroomsearch.net

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.

  1. That’s unhygienic to stack chips on a table (and nearly impossible).
  2. We all know each chip bag contains precisely 14 chips, not dozens.
  3. 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!

 

September 9th, 1936

Austin Antique Mall

Rare is the time that an antique mall image has a date on the back, like this one of these two stylish ladies did. In addition, it was also printed with “Alton E Bowers Photo Service.” A little world wide web research shows that Mr. Bowers opened his first photo studio 101 years ago in Reading, Pennsylvania. He retired 40 years later in 1956. When Vince Bellman took over the business at Bowers’ retirement, he modernized the printing process and expanded.

Per www.readingeagle.com,

Alton grew his business by picking up film orders to develop from drugstores and process in his studio. He served as a military photographer in World War I and would join Orville Wright in a crude biplane to snap photos high above Reading.

Lori [Bellman’s daughter] said that when Alton Bowers began his photography business 100 years ago, he had an amateur finishing service, which was not something that was readily available. Most of his business was portraiture and quick photofinishing.

Because of the weight and bulk of the camera equipment, portraits came from the studio, Lori said. She explained that the development of the compact and lightweight Brownie camera changed people’s ability to get photo prints, “and everything started being amateur and home-accessible.”

In 1977, Alton E Bowers Photography Studio was the first in the country to open a one hour photo lab. Who knew this one picture would lead to such historical information?

AustinAntMall005