This is one of those days when the jukebox in my mind refuses to be silent.
It’s not playing all my favorite memories. Instead, it’s playing a bunch of jingles for products that may or may not still be on the market. Since we had a quiz yesterday, I decided to turn this topic into another quiz and see how many of my readers can recall some of those jingles and products.
1. What was brewed on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay?
2. With what product will a little dab do ya?
3. What product proclaimed that the wet head is dead?
4. What commercial used the phrase, “With a bee and a bi and a bo and a bop”?
5. What brand of gasoline kept your car on the go… for business or pleasure… in any kind of weather?
6. What star did the man with whom “you could trust your car to” wear?
7. What product ‘hits the spot; two full glasses, that’s a lot”?
8. Besides wanting to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, what did those singers want to buy the world?
9.What product’s commercials invited you to “Be happy, go _________, it’s light-up time’?
10. What car did Dinah Shore want you to drive when she invited you to “See the U.S.A.”?
Unlike yesterday’s quiz, I’m not going to divulge the answers right away. Watch in the mail, I’ll never fail, if you don’t see the answers by Tuesday you’ll know I’m in jail. Or, I simply forgot to include them. You might need to remind me.
One of my high school classmates (please note that I did not use the adjective “old” to describe her) sent me a quiz that prompted me to address the subject of misnomers. I immediately went to the Internet to track down the logic behind misnomers and to see if I could find any other good examples.
The first place I visited was Wikipedia which provided answers to both of my questions. That site listed a number of sources of misnomers, along with some examples of each. They included:
Older names being retained. A perfect example of this is the ice box.
Well-known product names being used generically. Kleenex, Xerox, and Jell-o are the examples given.
Ambiguity. The example given is the ‘parkway’ which was so defined because the roadway traveled through park-like surroundings. Of course this has led to more than one comedian pointing out that we drive on parkways and park on driveways.
Association of an object with something other than its origin. See question number 2 in the quiz for a perfect example of this.
There are a number of other sources listed and the entire article is worth reading. But, before you do, see how well you can do on this test.
1. How long did the Hundred Years’ War last?
2. Which country makes Panama hats?
3. From which animal do we get cat gut?
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5. What is a camel’s hair brush made of?
6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7. What was King George VI’s first name?
8. What color is a purple finch?
9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10. What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?
If it makes you feel any better, I guessed correctly on one and knew the answer to another. That gave me a twenty percent success rate. I doubt if that would be a passing grade at any level.
Check your answers below:
ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ
1. How long did the Hundred Years War last? 116 years
2. Which country makes Panama hats? Ecuador
3. From which animal do we get cat gut? Sheep and Horses
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? November
5. What is a camel’s hair brush made of? Squirrel fur (So that’s what happened to all the squirrels in our yard. And I was blaming it on the fox.)
6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? Dogs
7. What was King George VI’s first name? Albert
8. What color is a purple finch ? Crimson (I guessed this one right!)
9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from? New Zealand
10. What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? Orange (I knew this one!)
There are so many words and phrases we use on a daily basis that would make no sense at all if we stopped and questioned them. If you can think of any we missed, feel free to share them with us. Please click on the comments button to do so.
Because my father was raised in South Jersey and still had family living in that area, most of our annual vacations were taken at the shore.
I can vaguely remember riding in the old Chevrolet. As I recall, it was a green car that looked something like the one in this photo.
Gone by 1949 but not forgotten
I always thought that car was a 1943, but while looking for a photo I discovered that Chevy didn’t make any consumer cars that year. They were too busy building military vehicles.
In any case, you’ll note the car had a large back seat area. It was large enough (and I was small enough) that I could lie on the floor and use the middle hump as a pillow. My older brother had the luxury of lying on the shelf by the rear window. (Back then, seat belts in cars were non-existent.)
I vividly recall looking up and out the windows and watching the utility poles flash by as we ’sped’ down the road.
In those early days, we were only able to speed between Irwin, Pennsylvania and Carlisle, Pennsylvania – a distance of about one hundred and sixty miles. In the late 1940’s, the total distance we traveled was more than four hundred miles and much of it was on the old U.S. highways that went through dozens of small towns.
Many of those old highways were three lanes that required drivers to be extremely careful when passing. That middle lane – used by motorists going in both directions – resulted in many head-on collisions.
We usually began our vacations late on a Friday night. Dad would come home from work and sleep for a few hours while mom packed the car. Then, around midnight, we’d start on the long journey. We lived about forty or fifty miles from Irwin and it was mostly city driving. The Penn-Lincoln Parkway did not exist and there were lots of traffic lights.
From Irwin, we’d sail along the ‘new’ turnpike that had opened for traffic in 1940. When we got to Carlisle, we’d return to the U.S. highways and continue our eastward trek.
As I recall, we sometimes avoided Philadelphia by passing through Wilmington, Delaware. If we did go through Philly, we’d cross over the Ben Franklin Bridge.
By eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, we’d be greeted by Uncle Lewis and Aunt Nellie. I’m sure dad was exhausted, but Lewis and I were ready to go crabbing and fishing.
In 1951, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was opened from the Ohio line to Philadelphia. That cut an hour or two off the trip and also made it possible for us to stop at a Howard Johnson’s for more than gasoline.
Coincidentally, a song that sticks in my head because I heard it so much during our travels between Pittsburgh and South Jersey was also recorded in 1951.
Les Paul and Mary Ford were popular recording artists of the time. Several years later, they divorced, but Les Paul continued playing guitar and began designing his own line of guitars. I’m sure my step-son, the rock star, has heard of Les Paul guitars… but he might be left wondering who the guy in that video is.
Getting back to our vacation journeys… the Walt Whitman Bridge opened in 1957 making the trip even easier. Then, in 1965, the Atlantic City Expressway opened.
Today that trip that took at least eleven hours in 1948 can be accomplished in under seven.
Many people have come to take the Interstate Highway System for granted… as though it has always been there. For the younger generations, that is absolutely true – it has always been there!
But those of us who remember being stuck behind trucks and buses winding their way along two-lane U.S. highways cannot thank President Eisenhower enough for pushing the idea through congress.
However, let me let you in on a secret.
If you are not in any big hurry to get from one city to the next, get off that Interstate and follow the old U.S. highways. In many cases, you’ll find the road surface to be in much better condition. It has been resurfaced and doesn’t carry the heavy burden of trucks, buses, and cars.
If you like looking at old buildings (many, unfortunately, abandoned) along with farms and forests, you’ll find the travel much more interesting.
Just keep the secret to yourself. We don’t want everybody to get off the Interstates. Smelling the roses won’t be so sweet if you’re stuck in a traffic jam.
In 1984, I dragged my family on a cross country tour. In six weeks, we covered almost ten thousand miles, visited twenty-nine states, and saw two oceans.
I was forty years old at the time and thought I’d seen just about everything one could imagine. But when we arrived in Vernal, Utah, my mind went into another sphere.
To begin with, I saw Reddy Kilowatt.
The one and only! Watt a lot of jobs he does!
I hadn’t seen the logo of the electric companies in years, and yet there he was – standing proudly in front of the local power company.
Things got even more interesting when we decided to visit the Vernal Dinosaur Museum. Walking around and looking at the displays gave me the strangest feelings – I’d been there before! And yet, it was my first visit to that part of our country.
Finally, I looked down and noticed a small brass plate attached to each display counter. It read, “Donated by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
These were many of the same display cases I looked at when I was a grade school student on my annual feed-trip to the museum. The only things that were missing were the basement cafeteria and milk in the one-pint glass bottles.
I asked one of the employees to explain why the museum in Pittsburgh had donated so much to a museum in such a small town as Vernal, Utah.
The answer was quite simple. Andrew Carnegie had hired a team of archeologists to go out and find dinosaur bones. That team found them in the area of Dinosaur National Monument… just outside Vernal, and sent them all back to Pittsburgh.
An escapee in Pittsburgh
Carnegie then selected the best specimens to be placed in the museum in Pittsburgh. He sold the rest to museums throughout the world.
Eventually, the people from Utah had had enough and insisted some of the bones should stay where they were found. To repay the state of Utah, the museum in Pittsburgh sent the display cases, along with many artifacts from around the world, to Vernal to provide them with a ‘world-class’ museum of their own.
If you’ve ever visited Dinosaur National Monument, you know that today, every effort is made to leave the bones where they are found.
I want to thank the author of a dinosaur website who calls himself Dinoguy for reminding me of my visit to Vernal. If you’ve ever been interested in being part of a ‘dig’, this is the guy you need to talk to.
Ever since I started sticking pins in that map on Facebook, my spirit has been urging me to go… somewhere… anywhere!
My wanderlust was not helped at all by our Memorial Day activities.
A group of folks from church got together for a cook-out yesterday and I found myself reminiscing about Atlantic City’s Steel Pier with Karen Taylor. Karen grew up near Burlington, New Jersey, which is the town where my ancestors landed around 1676.
Karen was fascinated by the fact that, on my very first date back in 1961, my lady friend and I went for a ‘ride’ in the diving bell. Karen had done likewise many years ago and had never encountered anyone else crazy enough to go under water in that big metal monstrosity. The sad part is we both agreed that we couldn’t see anything as we peered out the small portholes. The waves crashing on the beach made it impossible to see any kind of fish.
Karen and I got to talking about the diving bell after a discussion of the ‘diving’ horses on the steel pier. Personally, I never thought the horses got any real thrill from jumping off the platform into the ocean. In fact, as I recall, the ‘diving board’ dropped out from under them. The horses had no choice in the matter.
My other memory of that day in Atlantic City was sitting in the large auditorium on the Steel Pier and listening to Xavier Cugat and Abbe Lane.
Naturally, all of this talk made me want to rent a house on the beach and return to the spot where my family vacationed all those many years ago.
Of course, if I couldn’t do that, I’d have no problem returning to Texas and walking along the River Walk in San Antonio. A visit to the San Diego Zoo would be nice… especially if we won the lottery and could take our grandchildren along.
There are so many places I’d love to see again… almost as many as the people I’d love to see again.
But there are also those places to which I’ve never been. Winning the lottery would go a long way toward paying our airfare, meals, and hotels as we visited Rome, Athens (not the one here in Georgia), Berlin, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Brussels, and so many other places.
I know that I will now be watching the travel web sites looking for that great bargain. When I find it, we’re gone!
I guess I could’ve listed this as ‘childhood memories’. Gogi Grant was much younger when I heard this song for the first time.
My oldest son recently found a Facebook application that allows one to place a pin in a world map for every city and town one has ever visited. I’ve been having a ball with it!
So far I’ve stuck pins into 329 cities in nine different countries. I knew I’ve been to a lot of places, but I’ve never had a good way to pin-point exactly where I’ve been… until now.
When I started blogging I had every intention of writing about many of the places I’ve seen. Going through the maps and sticking pins has already brought back some memorable events. Watch for future posts concerning the results of my being the next-of-kin to the wayward wind.
In the meantime, my hats off to all our veterans and those currently serving in the military. They’re our only hope for everlasting peace on earth.
It was only recently that I looked at my dresser in a new light.
Mom & Dad's Dresser
It had belonged to my parents. I’m not sure how I wound up with it, and considering how much stuff I have crammed into it, I’m not sure how my parents were able to share it. I guess each of them had their designated drawers. I’d venture to say they didn’t have an abundance of stuff like I do.
I have shirts in there that haven’t fit me in years. As soon as I lose weight, those shirts will become a regular part of my wardrobe.
The more I think of it, there’s no doubt my parents simply didn’t have more clothing than they needed at any particular time. They lived through, and lost a home to, the Great Depression.
From what I’ve been told, dad never was out of work for any extended period of time, so I’m not sure how they lost their home. Perhaps the bank was sinking and recalled all outstanding loans. If my big sister reads this and has an answer, I’ll pass it along to you.
In the meantime, I want to let you in on the secret of this dresser. It also served as the family’s treasure chest. After the Depression, mom and dad no longer trusted banks… and they weren’t about to be taken in by this F.D.I.C. nonsense.
The safety deposit boxes
Removing the drawers of this dresser reveals the wood panel beneath each drawer. As a child, I sometimes watched my parents ‘handle’ dad’s pay. I don’t know if he was paid in cash, or if he cashed his check on the way home, but by the time they got to the dresser, he had a hand-full of bills.
Each envelope in the dresser had a designation: mortgage, food, insurance, utilities, car payment, and so on. The money would be divided among the envelopes and dad would be left with enough to cover his carfare for the next pay period.
When it came time to pay the bills, mom would take the appropriate envelopes and we would walk to the bank in Crafton. She could pay the mortgage and the utilities right there at the bank. For other bills, she’d purchase money orders, place them in their respective envelopes, and drop them in the mailbox as we walked home.
To my knowledge, up until mom’s death, my parents did not have a checking or savings account. Later in life, my sister talked dad into opening a checking account.
I should also mention there was at least one other envelope in that dresser, That was the one marked ‘Vacation’. Every payday a certain portion of the paycheck went into that one so we could enjoy a trip to the Jersey shore.
My guess is there was one other envelope marked ‘birthdays and Christmas’, but I never saw that one.
While my parents methods might be seen as silly by people who did not suffer through those tough economic times, I’ve seen lots of folks who would benefit by employing a similar method… and the discipline to make it work.
Working with St. Vincent dePaul and the Lutheran Church outreach programs I’ve seen lots of people who simply don’t plan ahead. Looking at their paycheck stubs, there is no reason for them to behind in their rent and utility bills… and yet they are.
That’s because when they get paid, the money goes into the pocket rather than the budget. When they see something they like and want, instead of putting money into a designated envelope and saving for it, they buy it. Then, when the bills come due, the pocket is empty.
To be honest, there are times when I’ve fallen prey to that type of behavior. But I have a credit card. I can charge my impulsive purchases and still be able to pay the monthly bills. I may not be able to pay off my credit card for that month, but when the interest begins piling up, I learned enough from my parent’s frugality to put the credit card away until I can get the balance back to zero.
Perhaps living with my parents’ wall safe all these years has been a constant reminder to live within my means.
Facebook has a program that tries to bring old friends back together. Every time I sign on, a box appears on the upper right suggesting I might want to ask so-and-so to be my friend.
In many cases, I have no idea who so-and-so is. In fact, on one occasion, I made a comment about the so-and-so who kept appearing. It turned out that he was the brother of a friend from church. Since so-and-so and I had a mutual friend, Facebook decided that they two of us should be friends as well.
In that instance, I declined. However, last evening, Molly Clements was the so-and-so in the upper right corner. Years ago, I knew a Molly McCoy, the daughter of Paul McCoy. I also knew a George Clements. Somewhere along the line I had heard that Molly married George’s son, Paul. Could this be the same person?
When I received a note from Molly, all doubts were erased. It is one and the same. Therefore, Molly and I are now friends… again.
When I first moved my family to Georgia in 1977, my first wife quickly joined St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church in Alpharetta. I was not much of a church goer in those days, but I would attend the covered dish dinners and other social affairs.
Then, along came Mary Smith (a former Broadway actress) and Carla Crowell (the Choir Director) with the idea that the youth of the church should present a play. That first year, they decided to do Godspell.
We went for the sole purpose of supporting the youth. We expected very little from a group of untrained thespians.
We were blown away! The kids put on a marvelous performance. The singing and acting was superb. Everyone raved at the performance that was far beyond ’surprisingly good’, it was well beyond anything any of us expected.
The following year, the youth presented Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dream coat. Again we went with low expectations. This was the first time the play was presented anywhere off Broadway (Mary Smith still had connections) and we figured the kids would have a difficult time topping their performances in Godspell.
We were wrong again. The show was terrific.
In later years, the youth presented Once Upon a Mattress, the Mikado, and several other plays.
And how did all these wonderful memories come back to me? Molly McCoy Clements played the lead in Annie Get Your Gun.
You might say my inspiration for today’s post came courtesy of Facebook. I wonder who the so-and-so will be for today.
Tomorrow’s post could be about just about anything. Excuse me what I go check my Facebook page.
I began writing this blog on May 22, 2008. After one year, the statistics are as follows:
Visits: 10,541
Posts: 358
Comments: 145
Categories: 14
Busiest Day: July 17, 2008 with 144 visits.
The most popular article was the one about Kennywood Park School Picnics.
Aside from the Home Page, the most popular page has been the Sermons I’d give if someone allowed me to do so.
My initial thought for starting this blog was to find people who enjoy reading my writings. It’s my hope that those readers may someday encourage me to write a book. Those same people would, hopefully, be willing to buy such a book.
Let me know if you have any interest. Be honest. Should I continue to write or is it time for me to submit my application to Wal-Mart. I’m sure I could do a good job of greeting customers.
You may have already done the math and know I failed to fulfill my promise of ’something new every day’, but 358 posts in 366 days isn’t bad. I won’t promise to do better in the future because I was born with wanderlust. Sometimes my travels put me in a position where I can’t get to a computer.
I will promise to do my best… on my honor! (I used to be a Boy Scout although I really wanted to be a Girl Scout. OK, so I flunked the physical.)
Posted by jimsjourney 
Posted by jimsjourney 
Posted by jimsjourney 
Happy Anniversary to ME!
May 22, 2009My bride and I on Tybee Island
I began writing this blog on May 22, 2008. After one year, the statistics are as follows:
Visits: 10,541
Posts: 358
Comments: 145
Categories: 14
Busiest Day: July 17, 2008 with 144 visits.
The most popular article was the one about Kennywood Park School Picnics.
Aside from the Home Page, the most popular page has been the Sermons I’d give if someone allowed me to do so.
My initial thought for starting this blog was to find people who enjoy reading my writings. It’s my hope that those readers may someday encourage me to write a book. Those same people would, hopefully, be willing to buy such a book.
Let me know if you have any interest. Be honest. Should I continue to write or is it time for me to submit my application to Wal-Mart. I’m sure I could do a good job of greeting customers.
You may have already done the math and know I failed to fulfill my promise of ’something new every day’, but 358 posts in 366 days isn’t bad. I won’t promise to do better in the future because I was born with wanderlust. Sometimes my travels put me in a position where I can’t get to a computer.
I will promise to do my best… on my honor! (I used to be a Boy Scout although I really wanted to be a Girl Scout. OK, so I flunked the physical.)