Midcentury not-so-modern
Zoo Lou of St. Paul writes: “Subject: Vintage TV and the episode of ‘The Honeymooners’ that left me shaking my head and saying: ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
“As a big fan of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney in ‘The Honeymooners,’ it was a real pleasure reconnecting with this classic sitcom when the Catchy Comedy channel (226 in St. Paul) had a marathon the weekend of August 12 and 13.
“One thing that always caught my attention was Ralph and Alice Kramden’s drab, barebones apartment, which made a cell at Alcatraz look like a suite at the Hilton. There was no radio, phone or TV, and the furniture consisted of a table and a few chairs. Oh yes, the tiny icebox still used real ice, and the stove looked like it came from a yard sale at the Ma and Pa Kettle farm. With all these ‘amenities,’ it’s no surprise their electric bill was once 86 cents!
“Ralph, who was about as subtle as a rogue elephant, was constantly berating Alice about something, once accusing her of sitting around the apartment all day doing nothing while he toiled behind the wheel of a bus. An incredulous Alice fires back that she mops and dusts and does the dishes every day (which must take about 10 minutes). Finally, she declares she’s getting a job and they’ll just have to hire a maid.
“It’s hard to believe that Gleason, who was very demanding and had complete control of the entire production, could have gone along with an idea as inane as having a maid for their puny apartment. The maid they get is a big, ornery woman who says she doesn’t do windows (there are only two), any heavy lifting, and gets overtime for parties. I would say she could do her chores in five minutes, then watch TV and listen to the radio (oops, no TV or radio). Nice work, if you can get it.
“In the end, the maid quits — and guess who she goes to work for? Ed Norton (Carney)! Now that makes perfect sense, because Ed’s apartment has three windows and you know how hard it is to keep windows clean. Just ask Alice.”
The passing show
Or: The best State Fair in our state!
An Old Guy reports: “A Few Notes from the Amateur Talent Contest Six Years Ago.
“A crowd was forming before 6 o’clock. A beautiful young girl, probably about 8 or 9, wore a lot of makeup and was practicing her dance routine while waiting in line.
“I was part of the first group allowed up the stairs. I picked a seat about seven rows up from the main drag. The row was empty for 40 minutes or so. An older couple joined me on Row 7. Not long after this, [ . . . ], the dancer, her mother, a very attractive woman I assumed was an aunt, and Grandma laid claim to Row 6 and effectively warned off numerous others. Eventually, Dad, Grandpa and various cousins filled up Row 6. Mom got up from her seat and came back with beer at least twice. I could sense her nervousness.
“Even after the show had started, a tall young man [Man Bun] and [Girlfriend] crowded in to my left, and a few minutes later a woman in her 30s [Earrings] sat next to me. [ . . . ] performed brilliantly, a tiny dot on an enormous stage. Not long after, a couple of young women did ‘River Deep, Mountain High.’ Before their song ended, their CD accompaniment failed. They carried on as if the rest of the song was a cappella. They were allowed to perform it again later. [Earrings] and I commented to each other we had seen this happen before: Technical difficulty can rear its ugly head anywhere.
“[Man Bun] stood up to applaud after every single performance. When [Earrings] stood up to leave before 10 p.m., [Girlfriend] moved past me to give [Earrings] a big hug (they knew each other). I did more rising and falling than a Catholic in his pew. I had an absolute need to hear from the stage if [ . . . ] had won. I endured another half-hour before the judges’ decisions were announced. The State Fair Orchestra played four tunes. The awards table was moved to center stage. The usual group of Fair board members was introduced.
“I was out of my seat with wild applause when I heard [ . . . ] had taken second place. The family erupted in mad cheers.”
Our times
Or: Now & Then
Lucky Buck: “Subject: Really?
“Dropped my grandson and his buddy at the Fair around 10 this morning, thinking I could get them around 6:30 tonight. Called me about 1:30, asking if I could pick them up. Sure, but why so early? Answer: too many people and scarce Internet, so they could not connect with their friends.
“I was gobsmacked, as I used to work the St. John’s dining hall all day with an afternoon break to walk around. Did this every day for years, back when it cost around a dime to get in or maybe 25 cents.
“I did not have to pay; as a worker for the church, they paid my way in. What a deal for a 10 year-old.”
Fellow travelers
Gregory of the North: “Subject: Youthful travels.
“Wife’s question: Where did you go on vacations as a child?
“My parents loved to travel. As such, we visited many sites around the U.S. east of the Mississippi. Prior to my birth, they had explored the West (and Route 66), and after retirement, they spent half the year in the Southwest.
“There were no freeways or Interstates when I was a kid, so most trips were made on two-lane highways. The earliest car I remember them having was a 1953 Hudson Hornet.
“The Hudson Hornet had many innovative features at the time, the most famous of which was the ‘step down’ design, wherein the floor of the cabin was actually below the level of the rocker panels. This was accomplished by mounting the cabin between the frame beams rather than atop them, which then was standard practice for automobile builders. It came with an 8-tube AM radio, with an antenna placed on the roof in the middle of windshield rim. It had a large external visor that could be adjusted for shading and airflow. The car had a very low center of gravity, making for easy turns, and had a spacious and very comfortable (plush, even) cabin. Tinted windows were standard at the time, as were full white-walled tires and rear fender skirts. Optional equipment were fender ornaments that lined up with the outer edge of the tires. The trunk was huge, and the power plant was a 308-cubic-inch (5.0 liter) twin-H six- cylinder engine, with two carburetors producing 145 horsepower. It was the largest 6-cylinder available on a street-legal car at the time. It could outrun any stock car on the street, and my father made full use of its power. Racing versions of the Hornet could barely be matched on the race track, holding an 83-percent first-place NASCAR record. I go into such detail because this was my father’s pride and joy, and with it he taught me to appreciate the characteristics of a high-quality car. The list price of the Hudson Hornet was $3,099 ($35,481 in 2023 dollars).
“We took the Hudson on many trips, including to Crystal Cave and the Dells in Wisconsin, to Lake Roosevelt in northern Minnesota, to Tampa/Saint Petersburg in Florida, and many day and weekend trips. In those days, it was a three- to four-day drive to Florida, staying overnights in what was still a pretty new invention; the motor hotel, also known as a motel. The going price then was $1 per person, which would mean $3 ($35 today) per night for my parents and me. The rooms consisted of a bed and a bathroom. There were no televisions, or radios, or showers, or continental breakfasts, or any of the things we take for granted today. Everything was paid in cash — or what then was called American Express ‘traveler’s checks.’ They came in denominations of $10, $20 and $50 that I saw, and were considered safer than cash because, if stolen or lost, they could not be used by anyone but the one who bought them — or that was the belief, anyway. They mostly have been replaced by the plastic card and the ATM, although they still can be purchased today in regional denominations such as the Euro.
“In 1956, when he was 35 and my mother was 33 and I was 8, my father bought a 1955 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. He got it cheap (for a Cadillac) because it was an unpopular color (gray) and was lacking in some signature Cadillac amenities like power windows and air conditioning. He was very proud of his Cadillac, and bragged about his having bargained the salesman down to $5,000 even ($56,193 today). The car was the very definition of a land yacht: very long; as wide as was legal; a 250-horsepower 331-cubic-inch V8 engine, the epitome of power in an American production car at the time; plus power steering with automatic transmission. The image below captures the feel of the car, but as I mentioned, ours was gray in color at a time when multicolor flamboyance was the style of the day. (The color below informally was called the Golden Goddess.)
“In 1958, in this car, we took an extensive tour of the Eastern U.S. (I proudly wore my Minnesota Bicentennial shirt so often my mother finally hid it in the luggage.) There were both my parents, my mother’s father, and me. And the car still had plenty of room. We first headed south, through Wisconsin, Illinois, and on to Louisiana. We spent a couple of days in New Orleans, then headed over to Florida, having gone through several cities of the Deep South — a real eye opener for this boy. We saw Jim Crow in action and segregation everywhere. We saw many impoverished people, most of them Black. Prior to this trip, I’d had little experience with anyone who was not White. Thrown into contact with them, I was fascinated. I will never forget an old Black gentleman (who probably was younger than I am now) coming up to me and saying: ‘Y’all want a handful of eyes?’ I was puzzled. He asked again. My mother finally said: ‘He wants to know if you want a handful of ice.’ Being very hot, I eagerly accepted it. I don’t know whether my father paid or tipped him, but he certainly deserved some recognition. I thanked him profusely myself.
“My father was a strong supporter of civil rights, having served closely with Black soldiers in WWII. My mother was more dubious, having had zero interaction with Blacks, and uneasy about the supposed sexual rapaciousness of the Black male. This made for interesting conversation between my parents, upon which I eagerly eavesdropped. In addition to their different experience with the races, they also were divided sharply in their politics. My father was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat; my mother, equally convinced of her preference for the Republican Party. She was not shy about sharing her belief that Eisenhower had saved us from war with China during the Korean War. My father recounted dinners with Hubert H. Humphrey. These discussions waxed and waned throughout the trip, especially through the South.
“After a visit for several days with my father’s uncle, and my thrilling first ride in a small airplane, we drove up the East coastline, not stopping until we arrived in Washington, D.C. There we toured all of the tourist sights, even climbing the Washington Monument. We saw Congress in session (although I do not remember what they were debating at the time) and toured the White House. (President Eisenhower was not there then.) We next stopped at the house of an Army friend of my father who lived in Newark, N.J. and stayed with them for a few days. While there, we went to New York City. We visited the Empire State Building (then the world’s tallest building, I think), climbed the steps inside the Statue of Liberty, and dined on oysters at the Rainbow Room in the Chrysler Building. I appeared on TV, as I was randomly interviewed about the ‘Shirley Temple Show,’ and a large group of kids who also had been interviewed got to tour the NBC studios afterward.
“Returning west, we visited the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, saw plenty of Amish buggies, and cut down to see Memphis and Nashville, then back up to Chicago, where we stayed with a friend of my mother’s and her friend’s family. From there we toured all of the tourist sights of the Windy City. Entering Wisconsin felt like we almost were home, even though we still had a full day of driving ahead of us. Arriving home in the middle of the night, I found out the next day that with the frequent side trips we’d made, we had traveled about 3,000 miles.
“I dutifully reported the details of my travels when I returned to elementary school. I say ‘dutifully’ because cross-country travel was so rare in those days that any child who went anywhere noteworthy was given up to an an hour of class time to report on it, answer questions, and, whenever possible, display photos and souvenirs. Teachers and other classes sometimes even attended, and because we were kids, most of the time was spent responding to teacher-directed questions. Sometimes we missed the point. For example, the teacher asked me to describe the most important place I had visited. Rather than cite the White House or the Statue of Liberty or Independence Hall and Liberty Bell, I said Tennessee, because that was where Davy Crockett, then a heroic figure to many a child, had originated. I had to be guided back to Washington and Mount Vernon and the White House. I remember discounting those visits by commenting that Mount Vernon was an old house full of a dead guy’s stuff (it was, of course, the home of George Washington) and when describing the White House, I noted that President Eisenhower wasn’t even there at the time we visited.
“Such were the travels of my youth. As a parent and grandfather myself today, and understanding the challenges they faced, I am even more appreciative of the experiences my parents gave me.”
Till death us do part
An entry in the Permanent Spousal Record maintained by The Gram with a Thousand Rules: “My husband was an engineer at one of the Twin Cities television stations. It was a given, whenever the television station ‘cleaned house’ and brought a Dumpster onto the premises, that all the engineers would retrieve ‘good stuff’ from it and lug it back to their homes. My husband was the Biggest Lugger.
“Our basement and garage housed an amazing assortment of defunct television sets, microphones, cables of mysterious origin and oh, so much more. Occasionally he would have a burst of energy (usually motivated by a scheduled heart operation coming up), and he would rent a small portable canvas dump bag, and he would fill it to the top. In spite of those feeble efforts, there still remained a humongous amount to dispose of after he died at age 94. My sons and their wives spent many weeks helping me sort through 69 years of accumulation.
“I can be eternally grateful, though, that many years ago, he did (reluctantly, I might add) agree to dispose of The Action Cam. I have no idea what he intended to do with that large van when he was the lucky guy who gained title to it, but oh, my, he was flying high that day. He came home from the television station followed by a tow truck delivering this colorful wheel-less monster to our premises. ‘Park it right here next to the driveway!’ he shouted with poorly contained glee. ‘I have the cement blocks all lined up to support it!’ he hollered.
“Our double-wide garage was too full of ‘good stuff’ to leave room for any vehicle, and since the driveway already contained an inoperable Austin, an old rusty blue car, plus the red van we were currently driving, the Action Cam was placed next to the driveway on the grass near the curb. It drew quite a bit of interest in the neighborhood because the TV station was running an attention-getting campaign with one of these vehicles. The Operational Action Cam drove around the city and surreptitiously filmed people at work and at play, giving these ‘lucky’ souls each a brief moment of fame . . . or embarrassment.
“With the exception of a group of young boys who spent hours performing stunts on their bicycles at the end of our driveway, the rest of our neighbors presumably realized this Action Cam was out of service and began to ignore it, but the friendly fellow who picked up our trash evidently didn’t realize that. We watched him each week as he would get out of his cab and smile brightly at the van as he flexed his muscles and expertly hoisted our cans into the truck with a dramatic flourish. I was outside one week when he arrived, and he asked me when he was going to see himself on TV. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him when I saw the crestfallen look on his face after I wordlessly pointed to the cement blocks supporting the vehicle.”
The Permanent Siblingly Record
Auntie PJ: “Sometimes family members have a psychic connection: getting the same idea at the same time; getting a gut feeling to call a relative, and its turning out to be the right time to do so; and so on. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences.
“My brother Tom had a huge urge to pick up some trash he saw in the street in front of his house. Smart thing to do, since it was the birthday card I had sent him! How it wound up on the street is a mystery. Tom peeled away the dirty envelope and found the card undamaged. He called right away to tell me about this odd experience. We both started humming the ‘Twilight Zone’ theme!”
Vanity, thy name is . . .
Friendly Bob of Fridley: “Saw this Wisconsin plate a few days ago: ‘SOBSTRY.’
“Maybe a Packers fan.”
What this world has been needing
Kathy S. of St. Paul: “Subject: We need buckets.
“At least 20 years ago, while working in a lab, I decided that the world needed more buckets. Computer scanners able to copy pictures were fairly new and rare — and, by current standards, clumsy. I had one on my desk, and scanned some family pictures onto my computer. But I could not take any of my files to any place where I could save them or print them out, because no floppy disk I had access to was ‘big enough’ to hold even one of the scanned pictures. There were no thumb drives back then, and I couldn’t attach my computer to the Internet to send a file anyplace. I had to delete the scanned pictures because I had no bucket that could ‘carry’ them. Though now, of course, I could easily do so.
“Hearing about the fires in Maui and listening to a debate about energy sources tonight reminded me of my old frustration with buckets. We now plug devices into power sources or networks, and carry around batteries to make power portable — though at least one company uses proprietary plugs and cords, so their devices don’t play well with others. If I ruled the world, that would be illegal.
“Buckets help the world go ’round. I wish I could send a lot of them to Hawaii right now.”
Come again?
Another episode of creative hearing, reported by Rusty of St. Paul: “My hearing has been shot for some time. If there is a secondary noise going on, I can’t hear a primary conversation well.
“Today my friend Karl was out on my deck explaining to me about a mixed family belonging to his sister-in-law and her second husband. This was while my neighbor was out mowing her lawn.
“He said his sister-in-law raised her second husband’s young daughters from his first marriage as though they were her own. And that they grew up with her young son from her first marriage, Travis.
“What Karl told me was: ‘And they grew up with Travis.’
“What I heard was: ‘And they grew up with crabs!’
“I pointed out that crabs were treatable, and he answered: ‘Well, they got used to them.'”
BULLETIN BOARD MUSES: That is a . . . strange reply. How’s Karl’s hearing? (Or was he being . . . funny?)
Joy of Juxtaposition
Comics Division
The REF in White Bear Lake: “Subject: Chubby Checkered.
“Adjacent panels, in the August 11 SPPP”:
The sign on the road to the cemetery said ‘Dead End’ (responsorial)
Triple the Fun of Lakeville: “In the July 13 BB, Bill of the river lake had a submission speculating about the state of Illinois putting a BUMP sign by each of many bumps in their road.
“Apparently someone with Minnesota’s DOT had the same idea, but followed through with it.”
Mixed messages
The Grand Duchess of Grand Avenue: “Spotted this at Cub in West St. Paul and started laughing. Worker bee came over to see if I had any questions. I asked how they can advertise the fish as ‘dressed,’ as it obviously wasn’t!
“He just shook his head and as he walked away andf said: ‘I’ll be right over here if you need anything !'”
Our times
Elvis: “Subject: Tip inflation.
“The phrase ‘tipping fatigue’ headlined a story Elvis read this week, and it hit home. Elvis has gotten used to ordering food at a counter, and then the iPad-like screen being rotated around for him to add a tip and sign his name. Sort of sign. Elvis was never taught in school how to make his signature with only a single finger, rather than gripping a pen and using his whole hand. Elvis realized a while ago that no one cared really what the ‘signature’ looked like in the little box on the screen. Elvis often chooses to use his non-dominant hand (finger?) to scribble some meaningless indecipherable line that is blithely accepted as his signature approving the charge on his card. Elvis is Older Than Dirt and can remember when signatures were carefully scrutinized on the back of cards, and clerks had to check a small newsprint booklet filled with stolen card numbers.
“Elvis was with a friend at a busy deli last Saturday afternoon. They ordered two sandwiches and a couple of drinks. The screen was spun around, and the lowest suggested tip amount presented to him was 18 percent. The middle choice: 23 percent. The last: 28 percent. This seemed a bit steep for the situation.
“The deli expected Elvis to stand in line and give the order to the cashier. After paying, Elvis was given a cup and went to a machine to get his own drink. He then went to a table that had been vacated by a previous customer, but not wiped or cleaned. No little numbers were given out for someone to bring the food to Elvis. Instead, his phone buzzed with a text message summoning him back up to the counter to pick up his food and walk back to the table. After eating, Elvis took his basket and set it in a plastic bin and pushed the wrapping and cup into an overflowing garbage can.
“A few minutes earlier at the counter, Elvis had felt a bit stingy and ashamed as he hit the ‘custom tip’ option on the screen to pay. He put in about a round dollar amount of a bit over 10 percent, and this seemed appropriate.
“Elvis is not at all against paying people a decent wage, and knows that working in service industries is hard. Tips are unfortunately the source of most of the income many workers receive. However, Elvis judges the tip amount based on the service received.
“On occasion, Elvis can choose to go to a restaurant where a host greets him and shows him to a table that has been cleaned after the last customer used it. After Elvis is given a menu, another person often comes and fills water glasses. A waitperson arrives and, after some small talk about specials, takes the drink order. Next the food order is placed, and the food is brought to him, along with any additional needs being taken care of. After eating, the plates are cleared and the bill brought to Elvis. He can take his time reading the bill, and writing in a tip amount before signing with a pen or leaving cash.
“Elvis has for years tipped 15 percent or more, often close to 20 percent. He has been known to put a few extra dollars on the table as he leaves if the person paying didn’t leave what Elvis felt was enough. (Often his parents seemed to tip at only about 10 percent.)
“There is a large difference in the amount of service between these two experiences, and Elvis feels he will continue to tip accordingly. The sandwich Elvis had at the deli was good, yet the price was not very different than if he had gone to a sit-down restaurant. Tip inflation seems to have hit us hard recently, and technology has made it more difficult to make your own decisions, especially in a busy or rushed situation.
“Maybe other Bulletin Board readers feel differently.”
Band Name of the Day: Handful of Eyes
Website of the Day:
Bulletin Board 