Received a collection of postcards from my brother Jay recently, who picked them up at an estate sale, where occasionally one finds such things.
One of them featured some period-specific doggerel about Oklahoma, with 7-24-40 written on the edge, which no doubt was when the card was new. It wouldn’t have been the only gag postcard of roughly that vintage. The card was printed by Curt Teich (it says Curteich on the card), as so many were, on behalf of Mid-Continent News Co. of Oklahoma City. No copyright date.
Nothing like a wild-and-woolly oil patch, eh? That’s the vibe, of course, but some specifics are a little hazy. The populace is “boost”? As in, prone to steal? And what was it about wearing dresses to their knees for big girls and wee ones? A sideways comment on Oklahoman female morality? Also: “whist out” in the morning? The context is clear enough, but that’s a turn of phrase that seems lost to time.
Rain blew through last night and so did cool air. Dropped temps by about 20 degrees F. compared with yesterday, making today feel like a pleasant day in October. The days ahead look to be warm and dry: a nice run for declining summer.
Spotted near a suburban street recently in Du Page County.
I parked – off the road – and took a look. I drive this street fairly often, maybe twice or three times a month, and hadn’t noticed this descanso before. That probably means a recent accident, though a simple search using the street and town names and a few other items turned up nothing. A look at a fatal accident database with a helpful map pinpointing the incidents (just the kind of thing to set your teeth on edge) told me there was a fatality on that road in 2017 involving one car, one drunk driver, and one death.
If this were that person’s memorial, it seems odd that it was take so long, so I doubt it is. My search wasn’t conclusive, but that was as far as I wanted to take it. Someone died unexpectedly on this uncrowded, obscure suburban street, and someone wanted to remember that person.
When I see a car decked out like this, I admire the effort that went into it. Spotted in a large parking lot in Normal, Illinois, a little over a week ago.
That effort is more than decorating the car’s surfaces. Cars move around. This isn’t going to be set and forget. What happens when you drive on the highway in that machine? Or a hard rain falls? Or wind gusts, even when it’s parked? Things fly off, of course. Lose, replace, lose, replace. The enthusiast who owns this car has to work at it that much more, and more often.
So – interesting to look at, but I wouldn’t want it in my driveway.
What’s that, I thought from far up the street. Possibly a Ford Falcon? Not a model you see much on the streets any more.
I got closer and no, it was a Chevrolet Bel Air. I’m not enough of a car aficionado to pinpoint the model year, but it looks early ’60s to me. Still not something you see much on our 21st-century suburban streets.
My grandmother drove a Ford Falcon. Shorter than the Bel Air, if I remember right, and somewhat rounder. It was the last car she owned, an early or mid-60s model. Again, I’m not enough of an expert to know the exact year, and it isn’t something I would have asked grandma.
I have scattered, but fond memories of riding in that car. It was gray and mostly, I believe, she drove (when I was with her) the short distances to shops she traded at, such as the Handy-Andy grocery store on Broadway in Alamo Heights, or to Brackenridge Park for my amusement.
Oddly enough, besides reminding me of grandma and the Brackenridge Park Eagle, the memory of that old car makes me also think of survivorship bias. There was no seat belt in the back seat, though the the front had lap belts. I usually rode in the back as a kid and, of course, survived the beltless experience. I consider this good fortune.
Some older people – my age, and I’ve seen it in writing – thus come to the conclusion that making children wear seat belts or other safety devices while in a car is merely the heavy hand of a nanny state. Hey, I survived my belt-free childhood in the ’60s! That’s an example of a statement that’s true but also dimwitted. Are there no children (or anyone else) in their graves from that period who would have survived had belts been in use?
The light is fairly long at that place, so I had time to document his presence not long ago. I don’t know that I see him every summer at this location, at the intersection of two major roads here in the northwestern suburbs, but I know I’ve seen him there over the years. With his straightforward message.
Did a lot of things today, some involving more effort, other things less. None had a higher aggravation factor than trying to put a tent back in the package that it came in. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, in favor of keeping the various parts of the tent in more-or-less the same place, whether that’s the garage or in the back of a car.
Earlier this year, I bought a new tent from a large physical retailer, a non-brand I didn’t know, with the idea that there will be a revival of tent camping in this household. Been what – 10 years? The old tent is pushing 20 years, and while it was in good enough shape the last time I set it up a few years ago, it has been leaking since its third summer. As much as a few inches of water inside the tent, that one time in Wisconsin.
New tents, on the other hand, even those that claim only to be “weather resistant,” should not leak the first time they are set up, and only the second time they are rained on. The rain was fairly heavy over the weekend, but not as heavy as it can be, and I expected it to stay dry inside. No. The water wasn’t near the door, either, in case it was a matter of leaving it unzipped a bit, but on the other side from the door. A matter of a lousy seam, it seems.
As I was pondering taking it back to the retailer, I noticed (this morning) that two of the four guylines had broken. Just because of the stress of being anchored to the ground, since there was little wind last night. That settled it. Back in the box and back to the store, never mind the aggravation, and good luck getting me to buy that non-brand again.
I didn’t imagine it: Bashful Bob’s Motel in Page, Arizona, was a real place, which I called “a real, honest-to-God tourist court” more than a quarter-century ago. I still have a card I picked up when we stayed there in 1997.When we returned to Page two years ago, the renovated place was the pleasant but less interestingly named, and more expensive, Lake Powell Motel. Bob Wombacher was nowhere to be found. Not a surprise, since he died in 2011.
I suspect, but don’t actually remember, that we met Bob briefly in May ’97, when we checked in. Running an honest-to-God tourist court is (was) usually hands-on work for the proprietor. In our time, someone with a name like Wombacher, if he left any trace at all, can be found on the Internet.
Turns out Bob was more than a tourist court operator. He left a legacy of obscure humorous poetry, according to a curious site called Porkopolis, the “arts, literature, philosophy and other considerations of the pig.” (Which has a page devoted to Arnold Ziffle, I’m glad to say.)
Bob wrote a poem about pigs, or at least referencing pigs. A collection of Bob’s – Rhyme Time – can be found here. It includes such verse as (picked at random for their brevity):
“Just Following Orders”
I step inside my fav’rite store And spy a cone inside the door. “Wet floor,” it states, and so I do Exactly what it tells me to. Then, rather wishing I had not, I’m banished to the parking lot.
“All Set”
I’ve saved enough money To last me for life. The children are grown; I don’t have a wife. I’ve got enough money. Yes, plenty and then some. To last me forever. (At least ’til I spend some.)
“Half-Pint”
It isn’t that I’m little. I’m just not very tall. Until I grow, I’m last to know When rain begins to fall.
I also wondered: Bashful Bob? I always considered that a just bit of alliterative whimsy on the part of Bob, but I now know there was a song of that name recorded by Bobby Vee. Mainly because I just found out.
Maybe the song title was an inspiration for him. If so, it was still a bit of Bob’s whimsy. Mr. Wombacher seems like the kind of guy to name his business after a teen-idol pop song of an earlier time, just for fun.
I call it “Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps.”
Garage deaccession continues, if I can borrow such a tony word for the process of sorting and disposing and squirrel damage cleanup in the unheated structure toward the back of our lot. The other day I found a bag of Lincoln Logs. A bag of sad, battered logs. Many are cracked and chipped or even partly missing. Also, there are no roof slates. That’s an important thing to go missing.
I’m pretty sure they aren’t my childhood Lincoln Logs, since they were in better shape – I think — and anyway, this feels like a yard-sale acquisition that our daughters never took to, and was quickly forgotten.
Someone glued together two two-notch logs.
If they were trying to get a four-notch log equivalent, they didn’t get it.
I built a simple structure (see above), for old time’s sake. The rest of the logs are now in the trash. Maybe I’ll add the structure to the broken mug and plate midden in one corner of the yard, and let the elements do their work.
Yesterday afternoon was hot and windy, something like a baby sirocco, kicking dust from the baseball field in the park behind our house. Eventually a smattering of rain came, and the wind died down. Not enough rain to soak anything, but toward the end of the day, enough to produce a large, vivid rainbow to the southeast.
Images naturally do its vividness no justice, but I made a few images anyway.
Also yesterday I thought about someone I don’t think much about, someone I hadn’t spoken to in over 15 years, when we were both at the funeral of a former coworker we had in common. When the person you think about is a journalist (among other things), it’s easy enough to check to see what she’s written lately, as I occasionally have done over the years. But not in the last two years at least. I know that because, to my shock, I found out she had died in August 2022 at only 59.
Her name was Janan Hanna, and we were close, once upon a time. Throughout 1989, to be specific, just before I left for Japan. RIP, Janan.
In hopes of keeping the backyard rabbits from eating our budding tomatoes and other summertime plants, Yuriko has been leaving lettuce and carrots out for them. I’m not sure that will work. For one thing, they don’t seem interested. Bugs Bunny might eat carrots, but actual rabbits not so much.
Was Bugs ever seen eating anything else? I’m hardly the only person to ask that important question, and the answer is yes. I remember some of those listed cartoons, especially “Baseball Bugs” and “Hare We Go,” from which I might have learned the term mess, as in a place to eat. As for why carrots were the nosh of choice for Bugs, that was reportedly inspired by Clark Gable eating a raw carrot in It Happened One Night, a detail I’d forgotten.
A family of rabbits now occupy the backyard, including a large adult and two or maybe three juveniles, who are often spotted eating grass. They might live under the deck.
It’s hard to get close enough to them to capture an image. Even at a young age, rabbits are wary critters and fleet of foot. I figure they’ve taken to the yard this year, much more than previously, because there is no dog on patrol any more, and somehow they know it.
