Remember the 60's and how they promised us a future of hover cars and jet-pack travel? Well, some of us do, anyway. The rest of you can put down your Tommee Tippee cups and see why the rest of us all believed so hard.
See, our moms were busy creating space-age Christmases. Just like Ethel Peterson who had covered the face of her clock (now at a thrift shop near you) with a half-circle of gold-flocked cardboard. "Stars, pasted onto the blue crepe paper, give 'sky' effect."
Pretty potent stuff, merging forever, the idea of travel, space, and free gifts.
Here Santa rides a rocket -- which they call a "jet" ("cut from linoleum rolls and covered with shelf paper, then painted"). Not only better than that, a reindeer rests on the rings of Saturn.
What the heck can be better than typing "a reindeer rests on the rings of Saturn"? Seeing it. I can't wait to make hundreds for next year's holiday craft fair.
Just Like A Man was a Family Circle column by Byron Fish; the following appeared in the November 1964 issue of the magazine.
A boy can't learn too soon that in math, as in most subjects, there is a male and a female way to work things out. After a lesson in feminine-gender arithmetic my son figures that when it comes to higher powers of reasoning, men are squares.
First up, gender punctuation:
"You are inquiring into a mystery unsolved by man. From the time a female learns to write, she is convinced that exclamation points were invented to be used. She even feels they will go to waste unless they are put into sentences."
That's so not true!!
Regarding ellipsis...
The boy asks, "How about those dots in there?"
The father responds:
Dots sometimes are used for a specific purpose in the neuter, or masculine, gender. If you find a long row of them apparently just thrown in, they are feminine gender."
My husband would have a field day with this... He abhors my continual use of ellipsis...
I, in return, must counter by pointing out that this article is proof that everything is considered masculine unless noted as feminine (and that feminine is lower in status). I'm just sayin'...
"Men teachers probably are told during their training to allow for the more complicated punctuation by girl pupils." :sigh: I suppose I should just be happy there was no mention of retarded or intolerant women teachers.
Then again... no mention of female teachers is rather sexist -- I mean, "It's rather sexist!"
Now we move onto gender in 'rithmetic.
The boy gets the correct answer, but dad makes an ambiguous statement...
So dad needs to explain female math.
"Particularly if he is married." Yuck it up, Byron.
Oh, and it all ends with a cute little story of the little woman besting "daddy". How quaint.
:snarl:
If you'd prefer to read the column in its entirety as it appeared:
Chantilly lace and a pretty face And a pony tail a hangin down That wiggle in the walk And giggle in the talk Makes the world go round There ain't nothin in the world Like a big eyed girl That makes me act so funny Make me spend my money Make me feel real loose like a long necked goose Like a girl, oh baby that's what I like
My mom used to sing this song -- everywhere. My kids even know it now. Hence my darn-near-hatred of the Chantilly fragrance.
The Date Line: Facts & Fancies for the Girl in School, by Jan Landon, as it appeared in the November 1957 issue of Good Housekeeping.
#1 Boys in bottles.
Boys in bottles are a flash fad in Kansas... to get a pickled effect like this, girls back the picture with cardboard, brace them with clothes-hanger wire, and float them in colored water... others just paste glossy prints inside the bottle with rubber cement -- either way is pretty eerie while it lasts.
Ya think?Amazingly, the photo of a bottled-boy is credited to Dare Wright. (I have a huge crush on Dare Wright and her works-- so does Slippity-Do-Da.)
#2 All the, er, cool girls are doin' it...
That outgrown game, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, is roaring back in a new Southern version" "Pin-the-sideburn-on-Elvis." !.....
I wonder if it continued with fat-Elvis too? Girls in the south, who were learning to deep-fat-fry any and all foods, must have continued to love Fat Elvis, right?
#3 I don't think I've ever been so embarrassed to be from Wisconsin...
In Wisconsin they say the girl's "got him drafted" when the boy's hooked...
How cheesy.
#4 I'm beginning to suspect this groovy knowledge isn't for "the girl in school", but for her parents... Like some sort of "how to understand your teenager" and "learn the lingo" advice column.
"It's been a hunk of heaven, but I think I'll jump for earth," means the party, evening, or romance is over.
#5 Of course, every school girl wants to know how the ultra glam college girls are wearing their sweaters...
#6 For the cool girl in school, tips on making an autograph belt. Ingredients are as simple as the sideburn-pinning-girls are: a plain, wide leather belt and press-on gold-leaf.
Next they giveth, then taketh... A crafty idea and then an equally crafty insult.
#7 First a DIY tip for using clothesline rope, painted in bright enamel paint to make "un-run-of-the-mill" necklaces for "medallions". Take that crafty tip and choke on it. #8 Don't like that insult? How about this insult then: "Your mother must have bought you with green stamps!" It is the latest insult. (It may seem weird for a ladies' magazine to give insult tips -- but what sort of person actually takes such advice?)
#9 This next one makes me feel better about being a cheesy Wisconsin girl; at least I'm not from Texas.
Every rooter pops a blown-up paper bag at the kick-off of special games at Amarillo High, Texas
#10 But still, Texas girls are less icky than these girls...
Right after the Chicopee High, Mass., teams wins a big game, girls beg boys for, of all things, the chin straps of their football helmets... straps are prized collectors' items, hung like trophies on bedroom walls.
Hey, don't say, "Of all things," because heaven knows a sweaty chin strap worn by a pimply lad is leagues better than other straps -- begged for or not.
#11 This next bit features "grab-bag evenings", heh heh. Oh wait -- it's not quite the snarky fun it sounds like... The 'grab-bags' aren't ugly girls after all.
"Grab-bag evenings" eliminate squables on group dates in St. Louis... instead of arguing about restaurants and movies, they put ads of all possible choices in two boxes, one for movies, one for restaurants -- everybody goes to the spots drawn by a blindfolded girl.
And that's how Muffy ended up blindfolded in the back of Dale's dad's Buick. Honest.
#12 Little black books weren't enough...
"Fix-up files" are made by Midwest girls to simplify arranging blind dates... they're wallet albums of their girl friends' pictures with statistics and interests listed on the back for the benefit of inquiring boys...
Those 1957 Midwest girls were slutty, pimping their friends; I feel even prouder now.
#13 More fashion advice you need to take -- like a slap in the face:
#14 Yup, a bonus.
An endearing twist in envelope inscriptions is being revived in the Midwest... on letters to girls, boys add a phrase above the address so that it reads like this:
Oh, how I
Miss Sandra Smith 64 Middlefield Rd. etc., etc.,
Gawd, no wonder those boys needed help soliciting dates.
Then again, maybe that "Oh, how I" was code for something.
#15 Don't complain -- you need more tips on how to understand what your peers are saying to you:
"Face in the crowd" is new for someone who'll pass with a shove...
I need that translated, actually.
If you have "the rare disease," you haven't had a date for ages.
No comment. Hubby makes me keep this PG-13 and I think that line is rife with enough innuendo as it is.
Well, as the cook kids say, it's been a hunk of heaven but I think I'll jump for earth now.
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If you're not, your parents will force you to be by making you participate in the beauty rituals of the times.
Cuz let's face it; this little Beautybyg hairdryer, with all its appliques, isn't for the kid to enjoy -- it's to make it more fun for the parents who will have to put the effort into shaping and molding their little girl into the perfect beauty they -- and society -- will love.
And even if she remains ugly, well, at least the parents can prove they did everything they could.
At first I thought this might be some sort of vintage Coke stunt -- you know, first they had Santa present Coke to the brown bears so that they might tell the polar bears of the joys of Coke... And then they wouldn't have needed to create those animated polar bears.
I dunno, the legend of Santa is magical and powerful and I'm a Believer. Anything is possible with legends. And marketing. Santa included.
Which reminds me of a cute story of my son two summers ago...
We were having a yard sale and, as we had lots of old books available, lots of the local book dealers were showing up. One of the local book dealers was stopping by every day of our sale to check out the 'new' old books we continued to bring out as books sold. This gentleman happens to be a bigger man with the snowy white hair and beard. .
Because my then 6 year old was on a mission to A) deny the existence of Santa & B) convince me that there was no Santa (something he'll never ever get me to believe), I had no idea that my son would think this was Santa. On our front lawn. In July.
But he did.
When the book dealer asked my husband a question, my son grabbed my arm tightly and, speaking in that half-whisper of awe, he breathed, "Santa talks."
So, near as I can fathom, his previous notion was that of a mute Santa. That Santa did not exist. But this talking guy on our lawn? He was Santa.
I naturally corrected my son that this man was not Santa, that he was 'just a local book buying guy'. You'd think that would have cemented Santa's death, right? But no; apparently the idea of a speaking Santa put into motion an official Belief of the legend & its magic. Now my son Believes. (At least when he's with me.)
Anyway, the power of Santa's legend is strong.
So are our local legends.
For example, these photos are not of Santa (no matter how those eyes twinkle!). Rather, as we discover via UpNorth Memories - Don Harrison (at Flickr), this man is John "Spikehorn" Meyers, a local legend in Meyers Clare County, Michigan.
Harrison’s most colorful character was John “Spikehorn” Meyers, known to thousands of Michigan residents simply as Spikehorn. He was a showman, naturalist, politician, coal miner, tile manufacturer, furniture builder, inventor, realtor, bear hunter, lumberjack, and above all, individualist. The old gentleman had a fertile imagination under his white thatch of hair and full white beard.
According to neighbors, Spikehorn’s interest in the woods and buckskins developed around 1930, when he opened his Bear and Deer Park established on his property at the corner of US-27 and M-61. Rumor has it the park even contained an occasional buffalo.
Spikehorn and his friend, Red Eagle, dressed in buckskins for tourists and treated them to tales of their adventures in the woods. He enjoyed feeding his pets sweets, popcorn, and pop and loved posing with his deer and bears for cameras.
His enemies were the Conservation Officers, as indicated by the sign in front of his business: “Feed Conservation Officers to the Bear.”
It looks as if those bears love the taste of conservation officers.
Seeing these old photos reminds me that we all have our local legends.
Some are so colorful they cannot be contained in black and white photos, so large they cannot be limited to the mere 3.5 x 5.5 inches of a postcard they are presented upon. But not all of them are.
Some neighborhood legends are much smaller. They don't have to be anything more than the local shut-in, as we October Road fans were reminded this week (in the We Lived Like Giants episode) when Sam was afraid of Physical Phil because neighborhood kids, who do not understand Phil's fear driven behavior, believe Phil drinks the blood of cats and wears a suit made of human flesh.
It sounds silly, but every neighborhood has The One To Watch Out For, the one kids spread stories about... I'm pretty sure that Spikehorn was the goof of his time and neighborhood.
He at least had to have outshone the crazy cat lady.
Which just makes me wonder if hubby and I, as "that crazy collecting couple", should be promoting & preserving ourselves on postcards so that we might live on as legends... You know, past the neighborhood rumors and into Forever...
From a 1953 issue of Mine, a Catholic children's magazine, comes this children's four-panel comic of two little people.
I'm not certain which is Tom, which is Tim; but one's thing's for certain -- one of these Christian fairies is secure enough in his masculinity to wear pink.
Stephen's dad, an amateur artist (as the cake on the right shows) . Stephen wanted to know what, exactly, his dad was trying to draw on these cakes. His dad tried his best to explain, even drawing new versions, but with no luck. After a long search, and with some humorous help from his dad, the book his dad learned cartooning from was discovered. Memory is a fun filter: when it loses things, those things cease to be real, no matter how relevant it was.
We all remember the Trix Rabbit (who began his life in 1959 as a hand puppet before becoming an animated rabbit in 1960), right?
Well, have I got news for you...
The Trix Rabbit "is probably the most striking example of a cereal trickster who closely follows the mythic conventions of the North American tricksters in particular." As proof, I give you an excerpt from Tricksters and the Marketing of Breakfast Cereals, by Thomas Green, The Journal of Popular Culture (Volume 40, Issue 1, Page 49-68, February, 2007):
The plot of his 30-second tales follows a mind-numbingly predictable sequence. The Rabbit observes some kids eating Trix cereal, and decides to disguise himself in order to get some too. At first his plan appears to succeed, but then his manic enthusiasm for the fruit-flavor properties of the cereal cause him to convulse in such a way that his disguise is thrown off and the trick revealed. The kids take the cereal away from him and pronounce the ritual condemnation mantra: "Silly Rabbit. Trix are for kids."
In his basic form, the Trix Rabbit resembles mythical trickster figures in that he is an anthropomorphized animal, like the hare trickster Wakjunkaga. He exhibits the insatiable hunger typical of Wakjunkaga, but not for foods typically associated with rabbits. He desires only the Trix brand breakfast cereal, and is willing to cheat and deceive in order to get it. In the early days of Trix, the variations on the specific disguise that the Rabbit adopted were still closely identified with the plot premise: He was attempting to appear as something other than a rabbit, so a little old lady or astronaut disguise would do. In more recent years the disguises have begun to take on the form of whatever the advertisers perceive as popular with kids at the time, so in the 1980s the Rabbit disguised himself as a breakdancer, and, most recently, a karaoke singer. In any case, the Rabbit is using these disguises, to appear more human than rabbit, which emphasizes the way in which the Trix Rabbit most closely corresponds to the archetypal Radin/Jung trickster.
Jung, in particular, theorized, in a now largely discounted but still interesting way, that the trickster figure represents the psychological state of humanity making the transition from animal to human. Using Radin's description of Wakjunkaga as a touchtone, Jung describes the trickster cycle as demonstrating how the trickster gradually comes to greater levels of control over his selfish, predatory, animalistic impulses—associated with animal physical forms such as the hare, the coyote, and the raven. In this way, according to Jung, Radin's trickster evolves into a thereomorphic culture hero who sacrifices himself to give gifts to humankind, which is the hallmark of humanity in this scheme (144). The Trix Rabbit fits right into this design, not only in the way that his animal form matches that of the Winnebago Indian Hare that Radin studied, but also in the symbolic pattern of his advertisement narratives. The Rabbit desires the Trix cereal, which represents the outward sign of humanity: "Trix is for kids." He disguises himself as a kid, taking on the superficial form of a human in an attempt to make the transition. But the disguise is unable to conceal his baser selfish impulses—which manifest as frenzied enthusiasm—and his true animal nature is revealed to the kids who take away the magical humanizing substance. Whether or not one gives credence to the impact of Jungian depth psychology on the communal consciousness, the cyclical tragic drama played out over and over again produced a verifiable impact in at least one case. In the 1980s there arose such a public outcry about the Rabbit's plight that General Mills held an election allowing kids to vote on whether the Rabbit should be allowed to finally get the Trix. The vote came out in the Rabbit's favor, and he was rewarded with three spoonfuls of the cereal—although his advertisements then immediately reverted to the old formula.
I thought scholarly types might enjoy this bit of info on the Trix Rabbit (the rest of you, just enjoy another video).
Taken from Sears catalogs in 1987 & 1988, these are the characters you slept with, envied your cousin for having, or put your kids to bed with...
(In no particular order)
#1 Pound Puppy Bedding -- complete with musical pillow.
#2 An American Tail Bedding
#3 Ghost Busters Sleeping Bag
#4 McKids Jammies: Notable for several reasons, such as cape and mask (no, the Ronald McDonald pj set doesn't come with a wig -- that's the kid's own hair), and the fact that these pajamas are part of the debut McKids line (1987).
#5 My Little Pony Sleeping Bag
#6 Popples Bedding
#7 Snoopy Sleeping Bag
#8 Retro Boys PJs: Many sets to choose from, presumably because little boys don't want to stop & sleep, so we dress them in costumes so they think they are still playing. Here the models wear Thundercats & Lazer Tag; behind them are Marshal Brave Starr, Superman, Transformers, Silver Hawks, and Masters of the Universe jammies.
#9 Retro Girls PJs: Fewer character selections than the boys, girls could be SuperGirl or She-Ra, Princess of Power.
#10 Pee-Wee's Playhouse Sleeping Bag (I'm resisting all comments!)
#11 Lady LovelyLocks and the Magical Pixietails Bedding.
#12 Barbie & The Sensations Sleeping Bag
#13 Sesame Street Sleeping Bag
OK, so you got more than thirteen, but I cut it as short as I could... I smell a sequel. *wink*
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others' comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Even though Xmas is past, don't knock the winter kids' music -- there's not a hint of Christmas in Frosty the Snowman. Recorded as a cash-in follow-up to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the silly little song gave a personality to every snowman made by kids since (well, up until Calvin took it a different direction) . We even overlook that the song ends with the disgusting death of the main character, and his ominous promise of resurrection...maybe there's something more Easter in the song than Christmas.
