The Vintage Reader

I've been feeling a fair amount of house guilt ever since reading this post the other day. We haven't done have that much, and we've had our house twice as long. So late yesterday afternoon I decided I could no longer live with the peeling wallpaper in the entry hall, and Mr. Vintage Reader and I went out to the hardware store to buy wallpaper removing gel and some paint that ended up being soooo the wrong color. But the wallpaper remover was excellent, and we got the red 80s-country-patterned wallpaper off. And unintentionally, also the paper tape that was apparently holding the plaster to the wall in one corner.

So this morning (yes, Easter morning) we went back and exchanged the paint for a lovely shade of yellow courtesy of Martha Stewart, and also picked up some patching plaster and self-adhesive mesh joint tape.

I love this stuff. I ended up repairing not just the corner where the paper tape had been, but two other corners that were cracked, as well as some fairly large holes in the plaster that apparently were papered over previously. We're letting it dry overnight, then tomorrow we'll sand it and prime it, and paint it later in the week. I can't believe we've put this off for so long--patching plaster really wasn't as big a deal as I thought it would be. Next project: the hallway, where we discovered some MAJOR cracks when we peeled off the awful pastel 80s-country-patterned wallpaper.

Which reminds me: what on earth would possess not just one, but TWO previous owners to decorate a 1920s American Foursquare (with Arts and Crafts influences) in 80s country??

Vintage definitions from Meet the Malones, by Lenora Mattingly Weber (copyright 1943), which I picked up at a thrift store yesterday:

I thought there was no way I could love Secret Fun Spot more. And then I saw the trailer for Flip: A Short Film.

If only I lived in Pasadena: eBay item 6952158402 (Ends Mar-27-05 17:43:10 PST) - 1940s WOODEN DELL (Map Back) PAPERBACK BOOK RACK, #1

Wow. Write a negative review of a book and you're a "Gen-X whiner" and a "hate-anything-Christian liberal" who "doesn't matter," at least according to the book's publicist. And that's just the tip of the iceberg--be sure to read all the way down to the end to read the whole bizarre exchange, where she also compares the review to Nazi propaganda. Sometimes you just have to wonder: do these people have any idea how totally insane they sound to normal people?

(via Booksquare)

Another good mail day: I got The Pendragon, by Catherine Christian. It's just what you think it is--the legend of Arthur. But told by Bedivere, as an old man, looking back. As I recall, the author intended to strip out the romance and write it as a sheerly historical novel; that's a fairly common way to treat the legend now, but I guess, judging from the author's note, that it wasn't done so much back then (1978).

I used to read this book every spring. And then I changed jobs and no longer had borrowing privileges from the library that had it, and nearly every year since then I've thought about trying to track it down. This year, I finally did. So now I can see if it's as good as I remember it. Great weekend reading!

So Superman wasn't always such a nice guy. It's not like he's the devil.

Andre Norton (1912-2005) - SFWA News

Andre Norton, who published her first novel in 1934 and her most recent one... well... next month, has died at 93. Besides publishing 130 books over 70 years, she also started a library and designed and sold jewelry on eBay.

From Building Your Home Life, copyright 1966, by Inez Wallace and Bernice McCullar:



I have a hard time believing that any teenagers who are not characters in books by Betty Cavanna or Rosamond duJardin ever actually had "teen taverns" and formed entertainment committees (although committee-forming does seem to be a standard Baby Boomer trait, so maybe that one's not so far off). But mainly, I just want the recipe for Hot Ziggedies.

Yesterday was a red-letter mail day. My Edward R. Hamilton package finally arrived, and now I have my long-awaited copy of Making Miniature Villages in Polymer Clay. I've never done anything with polymer clay, but this book is particularly inspiring because the houses are tiny and detailed and beautiful. I didn't realize when I bought it from Amazon Marketplace that the seller was Edward R. Hamilton, long-time purveyors of remaindered books (you might know them by their newspaper-like catalog). The author also sells signed copies, but I didn't know that until I had already ordered the book.

Also, I received my recent eBay wins, Faith Baldwin's Bride of Broadway and a lovely, pristine sewing book by McCall.

I've been after Bride of Broadway for a long time. It's the fifth entry in Dell's 10-cent series, which launched in 1951 and didn't sell very well; I suspect people had a problem paying even 10 cents for books that looked more like pamphlets. It's actually a bound short story with an awesome GGA cover by Wesley Snyder. The story first appeared in 1935 in Cosmopolitan, which at the time was a family magazine and bore little resemblance to its current incarnation.

One of the things I've always found interesting about authors like Faith Baldwin and Grace Livingston Hill is that their work is reprinted over and over for DECADES, and readers don't seem to care. I love Faith Baldwin, and I think most of her books are timeless; Grace Livingston Hill doesn't hold up as well, but many of her books are still charming (others have spots of maudlin weirdness, like at the end of Rainbow Cottage when Sheila and Angus are flying off straight from their wedding--which the brazen hussy Jacqueline has crashed, and gotten her comeuppance--and Sheila says something like "Oh Angus! Wouldn't it be wonderful if our Savior would take us up in his arms right now, so that we could begin our eternal life together?"). In the mid-80s, a Christian publisher picked up Grace Livingston Hill's books and published them with lovely old-fashioned covers. Even though I had been collecting her for a while even then, I could never resist those covers when I went to the office supply store (which in the area I lived in was also a Christian bookstore). As I recall, Wal-Mart carried some of the titles as well, although not all of them. A whole new generation of readers was introduced to Grace Livingston Hill.

I would love to see the same thing happen with Faith Baldwin: maybe a series of some of her best--my list would include White Collar Girl, The Incredible Year, District Nurse, and Blue Horizons--with retro cover art. Some of the Dell Mapback covers (Self-Made Woman or Skyscraper, for example) would be gorgeous as reproductions. Kind of like Hard Case Crime, but with romance.

I swear, every time I hear "What I Did For Love," even if it's silly and cheesy (like in Connie and Carla, which we just watched), I get a little teary. Don't know why. It's that very last we did what we haaaaad toooooo doooooooooooooo that breaks me up every time.

Sometimes I watch these things and wonder how I lost music and theater. If anyone had asked me 20 years ago if I would ever give up music, I would have thought they were insane. I don't even listen to much but classic rock anymore, but then every once in a while, like this morning, something like "Love Makes the World Go 'Round" will just float up to the surface and make its way out. Or, like at lunch today, I'll hear the last half-minute of something and think "Hey, that's Paul Desmond," and know I'm right.

I have no idea where these things come from. I didn't even know I knew all the words to "Love Makes the World Go 'Round"; I played bari sax in Carnival, and didn't think I was paying that much attention to what was going on up on the stage. But somewhere deep in my brain, along with things like my 6th-grade best friend's phone number, RLIN search commands, my college roommates' birthdays, and how to use a scale ruler are lyrics to a hundred show tunes.

The International Harvester fridge was not one of these. If it had been, you can bet it would be humming away in my kitchen even now.

The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction collection at the University at Buffalo has launched a database of crime fiction. You can search by author, title, publisher, subject heading, cover artist, era, setting, character, or key word and get a detailed annotation (a few of which were contributed by yours truly).

I've moved on to the 50s: Frigidaire Kitchen of the Future, 1957.

I could spend days at Ephemera Now.

Wow. That's all I can say about this one:

So Modern! So Convenient! A Retro Kitchen Remodel

When I met Mr. Vintage Reader, he was in possession of something I had never seen before: an International Harvester refrigerator. It was a white behemoth with glass shelves and a heating element that defrosted the tiny freezer at the touch of a button. When "Friends" premiered, we noticed that there was one exactly like it in Monica's apartment, which gave it a certain cachet at the time. And best of all, it was only $35!

The refrigerator served us well for several years, but then we moved into a house with a tiny kitchen, and the only place a refrigerator could go placed its massive bulk too close to the basement door and kept it from opening. We regretfully bought the cheapest small fridge we could find and waved goodbye to the International Harvester, but it's probably still running its big honkin' heart out somewhere in the lower Midwest.

To tell you the truth, I've never really missed it. Unlike a lot of old appliances that have as much as or more utility than modern ones (our toaster dates to 1937 and makes perfect toast), refrigerator technology has improved significantly over the last 50 or 60 years. While there's a lot to be said for longevity, those coils got REALLY dusty, and as nifty as the heating element around the freezer was, it was a pain to defrost.

Still, I love the style of old refrigerators. The kind my grandparents called "the icebox" and kept stocked with Eskimo Pies and cream soda. The kind that came with a Hall pitcher (my Hall refrigerator pitcher collection started with the one that came in my grandparents' Westinghouse). This looks to me like the best of both worlds--a fridge with a retro look but modern features: Retro Refrigerators by Big Chill Fridge.

Big Chills are not cheap ($2300 + shipping--ouch!) but they are beautiful. If you've got one of these lovelies, I hope you'll leave a comment and remark on whether it's worth the money.

Beautiful magazine ads of kitchens from the 40s (do you sense a theme this morning?): The Old-House Kitchen: Scenes from 1930s and 40s Kitchens

Fans of the American Girls series might recognize this 1940s kitchen from their reading. Be sure to mouse over the picture; when you click on the links you can get some nifty information about appliances and dinnerware.

And for the record, this IS the kitchen of my dreams.

Just in case you don't have enough old photos of your own (never a problem in our house), you can buy some at Snapatorium.

Hair hair

While looking for a new look for spring, I came across this fascinating page of Hair History. Learn about the Breck Girl, the Gibson Girl, the styles of the 40s, and other interesting stuff about the history of hairstyles.

Personally, I found it fascinating that stylists are still required to learn how to do finger waves.

What to do on a sick day

I injured my back shoveling snow yesterday. I'm taking advantage of the downtime (and my dreamy muscle relaxant-enhanced state) to put up some photos I took nearly a year ago of Route 66 in Oklahoma.

Oh my goodness!

I'm very happy this morning because I just found that I've been blogged at one of my favorite blogs, Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.

Ivan mostly writes wonderfully in-depth commentary about old movies, but also looks at vintage TV and radio shows, and sometimes other nostalgic stuff. I particularly enjoy his comments about the place most of us get our old movies these days: cable TV. For example, from this post:

American Movie Classics, which does on occasion manage to showcase a movie worthy of its moniker, was showing The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), two films I like very much made longer by the fact that AMC apparently has to cut into them every five minutes to provide a bathroom break for what I’m assuming is a large audience of the incontinent.

Thrilling Days always has the curious effect of making me want to go back to what I used to do here--review old books--even while knowing that my reviews lack the kind of depth that I enjoy so much in his.