The Vintage Reader

It's in the cards

Every once in a while I have to visit P22 and see what's new. Right now, if you spend $100, you get an awesome deck of cards. Wow!! I love P22.

Mmmm... now that's good bass!

Well-made items never die--and apparently their blades never need sharpening, either.

Noblesse oblige

My 10th grade honors English teacher, Mr. Hinkle, tried to teach us about noblesse oblige when we read "A Rose for Emily". At the time, it just seemed like one more point in the lesson plan, an unfamiliar term that he was defining for us.

Now I know better.

Because today, I got a note from the 20th reunion committee that says that the venue for the reunion has been changed--to a country club. I did some searching and found that the Class of '83 had their reunion there too. I couldn't find anything online that says exactly when this particular country club quit being "restricted," but I'd be willing to bet it's within my lifetime. I'm sure it's within Mr. Hinkle's.

The thing is, the folks who are planning the reunion aren't being snobbish or exclusionary. At least, I'm sure they don't see that they are. They were nice people in high school, and they're probably nice people now. They're just clueless rich people, with a well-developed noblesse oblige. They like the country club, they're comfortable there; why wouldn't the rest of us be? Why wouldn't the people whose grandparents, and maybe even parents, were turned away (or never considered applying) because of their race, or their religion, or maybe because their money came from the oilfields rather than from their grandfather's bank, be happy to go there for their high school reunion?

I'm sure it wouldn't even occur to them that those of us who were more Molly-in-Pretty-in-Pink than Molly-in-The-Breakfast-Club might have some issues with country clubs. They were places where the rich kids hung out in the summer and worked on their tans. They came back in the fall, looking healthy and tan, with natural-looking streaks in their hair, sporting new Polo oxford shirts and Levi's 501's. Those of us who worked at the mall or slung ice cream or herded little kids around all summer came back with bad perms and pastel retro-print shoulder-padded shirts because we didn't know any better... or worse, off-brand oxford shirts with a running horse instead of a polo player, with Calvin Kleins from the discount store and fake gold add-a-bead necklaces, because we did know but had no way of implementing that knowledge.

"This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: 'Poor Emily.'"

[I don't remember whether Mr. Hinkle covered the tried-and-true double use of jalousie or not, but that would have been a good one too.]

But anyway.

There are plenty of good reasons not to have the reunion at a country club. The fact that these people didn't seem to see any of them doesn't mean that they're bad people, or that they're snobs. They're blind, though, and the noblesse oblige that allowed them to be effortlessly polite--nice, nearly chummy, even--when one of us who didn't belong showed up at one of their parties, or joined Junior Board, or ran into one of them at our dad's office picnic or a church function, lets them think that they're doing The Right Thing by invoking the privileges of second- or third-generation country club membership to host our reunion there.

More...

More on radio cabinet restoration, with U.S. products this time.

Note to self

Here's how to refinish a radio cabinet. (Although... if you're restoring a radio, do you really want to use plastic bottle caps, spray-painted black, to replace the old Bakelite knobs? I don't.)

I swear it worked on Tuesday.

Really. It did. What have I done now?

And WHERE THE HELL IS MY PIZZA?

(Sorry, but it's been, like, an hour. I miss the days when it was free after 30 minutes.)

If you missed it last week...

You can catch Wonderfalls again on Thursday.

Gone, but not forgotten

Looks to me like Retro is gone, gone, gone. Sigh.

Finally fixed!

Finally fixed the CSS so the top bar doesn't do that weird annoying thing anymore. Seriously, looking at the stylesheet I have no idea what I was thinking.

Spring Break movies

My spring break movies are newer, and I picked them because I actually saw them both during Spring Break, 1985:

The Sure Thing


and

Ladyhawke


And I find that I want to see them both again. Right now.

Spring Break reading

It's spring break (here, anyway), so I brought out my favorite spring break book, which I've been writing about all week anyway. And along the way I found a couple other interesting books with fun covers, too. So here they are.

"Glendon Swarthout's snaky new novel about the lizardy college kids who live it up in Florida each and every Spring."

"Life is like a long blind date. The Social Chairman of a boys' dorm calls the Social Chairman of a girls' dorm and says he needs some flesh for Friday night, no foul balls, nothing too brainy, all queens and amenable, can she supply? And she says yes, she can, but what about the boys, the girls will want vital data and stuff. To which he snorts what for, they'll be seminal, and hangs up. You are some of the flesh supplied. You wonder what the boy will be like, what will happen on the date, where you'll go, what you'll do, will it be great or the all-time fall-through, and Friday night you tear around like wild getting ready to be beautiful. The buzzer rings. You make an entrance and meet him. You go somewhere and do something. Maybe you have a real ball, maybe it's hell, maybe both. But no matter what, before you can really know each other, you and life or you and your date, you've mingled or said no and it's over."

"This is not going to be one of those Riviera-go-rounds by smutty little girls. What's immoral about them is that they don't enjoy either writing or bedding. Or one of those campus comedies in which the kids listen to jazz all day and mattress all night and never go to class. Most kids do go to class. But I admit sex is very important in a book today. You watch the people in a bookstore or by the paperbacks in a drug store, turning the pages with that bored yet hunting expression. They are not looking for literature. If I'm anything, it's realistic. To be read you have to heat it up. So if this book is ever published and you are someday browsing around in a bookstore or drug store I hereby announce that the sex in it will be found exclusively on pp. 16-17, 41, 110-114, 160, 163-165, 199, 242-248, and 311. Also pp. 74-78 and 219 and 331. So if sex is what you happen to be interested in you may turn at once to these pages and save your money but if you are deeply concerned about such crucial topics as The Influence of Walt Disney on Religion, Large Families, Education, Virginity, The High IQ, Faith, The Luck of Henry Thoreau, Stimulation, How Society Makes It Tough for Kids, Love, etc., and a slew more, and would also like to read an account of what is probably the most gallant and selfless and inspirational deed ever attempted by young people, at least in this era, buy the book.
"I want serious readers, not a bunch of BB-stackers."

--From Where the Boys Are, by Glendon Swarthout

I just love this book. Long run-on sentences, nonsensical semicolons (although that's explained), Midwestern co-eds, Ivy League talent, sibilant underwater chorus girls, revolutionaries, beatniks, jazz musicians, and TV Thompson (I had noticed that there was a character in this book by the same name as my favorite childhood character--well, one of them, anyway--but until this week thought it was a coincidence).

Oh, and BTW, did you know that "nerd" used to be spelled with a U? It's true. It used to be nurd.

# # #

"Me, Gidget, in the Eternal City! Roma, I call it, like the natives do. It was full of ancient masonry, fettucine, vino, fountains, moonlight--and Jeff and me..." -- Gidget Goes to Rome, by Frederick Kohner

To tell you the truth, the story on this one is negligible. As far as I can remember, I've never even been able to make it through the book. I've tried the original Gidget also, and find Kohner's writing style completely incomprehensible; Swarthout had a gift for making it sound like it was written by a teenager without making it sound like it was... well... written by a teenager.

What gets me about this particular book is the picture. First of all, take a look at the caption underneath the picture:



That's right. Cindy Carol. Blond ingenue who went on to star in... one other movie. But does this picture:



...look like a Cindy to you? Not only is that not a Cindy, I don't think it's even a female. And yet, I'm equally certain that it's not Ms. Carol's co-star in Gidget Goes to Rome, my favorite guy of the 60s, my Moondoggie, James Darren* (more recently of Deep Space Nine fame). So who is this Guyget? I don't know.

*I'm only two degrees of separation away from Moondoggie. My college roommate knew him, due to the fact that her father was kind of a celebrity in the 50s and 60s and they ran in the same post-Rat Pack group of young celebrities. One thing I never expected to hear from my freshman-year roommate was "James Darren? I know him." "James Darren, from the Gidget movies?" "Yeah, my dad goes out on his yacht with him sometimes." I don't even remember how it came up in conversation. It seems like an odd topic for a couple of 18-year-olds in the mid-80s, doesn't it?

# # #

"Lois turned to Steve. Her eyes were hard and unforgiving. 'There must be a less shocking project you can work on.'
'I can't leave this one in the middle,' Steve replied. 'I've wasted too many years. I have to finish it to get my Ph.D.'
Professor Addison came to his protege's defense. He wished his daughter were less bound by convention. 'I persuaded Steve to return to teaching.' He paused, 'But I think it's time you see this anonymous letter, Steve. It says corruption among college students is a lie; that our kids are good kids. At least they were until Steve Macinter came along.'
'Steve,' Lois blurted out. 'I want to give up this dangerous project which people are interpreting in the worst possible way!''
'There are people who misinterpret democracy too.' Steve retorted. 'Is that a reason to give it up?'
Lois was rigid now. 'How dare you compare your dirty project with democracy!'" -- College Confidential, by Irving Shulman

Wow. What can I say after that? Except that if you think you've seen this movie, and you think it starred Annette Funicello... aha! You're wrong! That was Beach Party, the first in the famed series of movies, in which an anthropologist studies the dating habits of teenagers on the beach. This one starred Mamie Van Doren (as you can see by the cover of the book), Steve Allen, and Jayne Meadows. And the guy who's studying the teenagers is a college professor, not an anthropologist. Big difference, you know.

What is UP with Project Gutenberg?

I've been following this controversy on the PG volunteers list recently, and I've got to say, if PG doesn't do something I can see it losing all its volunteers, sputtering, and dying. And Michael Hart, who used to sound like the very soul of reason (circa 1994, the first time I tried to volunteer--it's much easier now that Distributed Proofreaders is here) now sounds like a defensive old guy who's getting a little dotty--at least, in his posts to the volunteers. His comments have gotten increasingly strange recently. We'll see what happens.

Wall, Fry mah hide!

Just ran this page through The Dialectizer, set to "redneck." The last entry turns out to be an analysis of Whar the Fellas Are and Bless the Beasts 'n' the Chillun. :-) Go play. It's Spring Break, after all.

Oh flam me a flim

I found this site, the official site for Glendon Swarthout, when I went looking for a link for Where the Boys Are earlier. It's an excellent site about the entire Swarthout family. And I got a surprise: Glendon Swarthout, author of my favorite book in 8th grade (Bless the Beasts and the Children), was also the author of my favorite book in 4th grade, TV Thompson. Clearly, I had good taste early on.

If you aren't familiar with Glendon Swarthout, you need to be. If you don't like westerns, don't start with his westerns (except maybe The Homesman). I'm going to try out my new Amazon affiliate links to get you started, but hey, if you'd rather buy them from his family, that's fine too.

So here's the shameless commercial part, where you can click through and impulse-buy your little heart out:

Bless The Beasts And Children, a novel that to this day remains my most-kept-by-people-I've-lent-it-to book. Seriously, you should look for this one at book sales with the great 1960s cover, or the one with the cover photo from the movie. And really, you can skip the movie unless you're a Billy Mumy fan. And the Carpenters' song? Ewwwww!

The Homesman, a good solid story with an interesting view of women in the west. Kind of like Larry McMurtry with an edge.

I can't find any sources for Where the Boys Are, but I got a really nice edition on eBay for a couple of dollars last year. Even if you know the movie, you don't know the book, trust me. It's my favorite Spring Break book of all time, featuring co-eds who converge on Ft. Lauderdale in search of sun, Ivy Leaguers, and Life, told in this completely wonderful 60s college patter--who knew "goodlooks" was an adjective?

Two great sites that see sites together

I'm thinking of asking these folks to be Vintage Reader's sister site. I look at the unrestored campers and can see what they looked like new... and what they could look like restored. Camping and reading... reading and camping... an Airstream with an awning, a campsite by the lake, and a comfortable lawn chair. Who could ask for anything more?

Oh, and a good beach read.

Vintage tips

From 1003 Household Hints and Worksavers, the 1963 edition. [Apparently this pamphlet was a freebie you could get at your local bank; it probably had a different cover, depending on the bank. Mine has pictures of the various branches of The Western Savings Bank of Buffalo. I don't think this bank still exists, but at least one of the buildings looks familiar; I'll have to drive around this weekend and see if I can spot them.]

58

Rhinestone pins and buckles turn "brand new" when soaked in gasoline for about 15 minutes, then rubbed with a flannel cloth. [I wouldn't try this on your rhinestone-studded cigarette holder.]

39

Another way to give your veils the nice smooth firmness and body you want is to place a piece of waxed paper over them when ironing. Even rain-soaked veils will regain their look of newness with this treatment. [This really works. I once used it on the tulle skirt of a formal that had been mailed in a box and it sprang right back to life.]

55

Plastic hangers are very ornamental and available in a variety of colors to match closet accessories. Designed functionally, with rounded corners, they are easy on your clothes. So easy to keep clean--just wipe with damp cloth. [Who cleans their hangers?]

Oh, to be this young

...and be able to write this well.

My Role Model

Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?, an analysis of how well certain classic authors would do on the new SAT essays.

Loos3 weight and look young. Increase your energy for sex. Refinance your Saint Louis Home and get cash out. Pay Your Bills With Government Money.

...Or at least read some wonderful Spam Poetry.

Frozen drain pipes, again

People still seem to be looking for the frozen drain pipe item for whatever reason, and Google is still pointing them to the main page instead of the archives. The entire frozen drain pipe saga, complete with links to sites that might actually help you thaw your drain pipe, is here.

Tie one on

I'm watching Gilmore Girls, and Rory has found instructions for tying a bow tie on the Internet. I decided to test the authenticity of the script writers (...although how could I possibly question the people who have given us such gems as "Christian rock, there's an oxymoron for you" while Sam Phillips is doing that sly little la-la-la thing in the background?). I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams with this:

Heart&Sew: How to tie a Bow Tie

Seriously, you've got to see this. The instructions are printed backwards, so you can print them out, stick them in your shirt pocket, and read them in the mirror as you tie your bow tie.

Ah, the power of the Internet.

Save a sign

Okay, first of all, TV people can't write. Believe me, I spent a year ripping apart stuff like this and putting it back together so that it read vaguely like it was written in English.

Yes, the writing is awful; it was never written to be seen on a page. But read it anyway. Find out about the sign that might disappear from Route 66. Give them some money. Every dollar helps keep another piece of Americana from slipping away.

It's all a matter of perspective

The Raven's 'Poe'