Depression-Era Santa Starved From Lack Of Milk & Cookies

1937 Cactus

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.

https://northpole.city

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?

“Children Are A Poor Man’s Riches” – English Proverb

Nat Geo, Jan ’86

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.

artofmanliness.com

Pococurante Peacock

https://jualayamhias.com

What’s a male peafowl got to do these days to catch a lady’s eyes? Even I, a nonbird, am impressed by such brilliant plumage. She is, in effect, pococurante. Hint: it doesn’t mean “a little bit current.”

https://thesaurus.plus

Hurtling O’er The Hill

The Minneapolis Journal, Glenwood Park

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.