Uncategorized

Love at the Five and Dime

149 Comments

Today is singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith‘s birthday. She’s 59.

A commercial broadcaster once told me that he appreciated a public radio show I worked on because we played Nanci’s music. I guess she wasn’t commercial enough to be featured on his station very often, but we had the freedom to embrace good music that was not going to make a lot of money.

At least one Nanci Griffith song did become a top 5 country hit – as done by Kathy Mattea. But Nanci’s is the version we played.

She has ardently promoted reading and featured books on many of her album covers, back when album covers mattered. Those looking for political statements in the poetry would find a distinct leftward tilt.

With her latest recording, Nanci has become more openly political and expressed unabashed support for the Occupy movement. Apparently this is not a topic that can be addressed with a pretty ballad, though I hope the hand-clapping Hell’s Angel boys are optional.

Things certainly do change.

One criticism of political songs is that they don’t have much staying power. Things happen. Conditions change. The topic shifts. Before long people can’t remember what it was you were talking about in your musical commentary.

But nothing is immune to change, and the fog of time obscures everything, eventually.

In addition to those suffering personal economic distress in the form of foreclosures and job loss, the “I’m not all right” assessment in that second song could certainly apply to Woolworth’s, featured prominently and innocently in the first song. The company closed all its five-and-dimes and retired its well-known name in the late 90’s to focus on a new retail strategy through a string of mall outlets called “Foot Locker”.

Yup, that’s all that’s left of Woolworth’s. Somehow I don’t think that lovely Five and Dime song would sound the same with the line “… she made the Foot Locker counter shine.”

Good thing Nanci Griffith was there to write the song at a time when people still knew what Woolworth’s was all about.

Name a favorite song, poem, book or work of art about something that is no longer around.

149 thoughts on “Love at the Five and Dime”

  2. i saw her play at the guthrie about the time she recorded that video. she was surprised that with all the songs she has written that is the one that took and was os well received. also look at her hands in the second recording vs the first one. she had carpal tunnel surgery done right after this recording and i am pleased to announce she is doing fine. is it just me or does she look like a cross between hilary clinton and johnny cash int hat second recording?

    Like

    Reply

  3. Good morning. There must be a lot of songs about horse drawn carriages and sleighs. I can think of one, Over the River and Through the Woods. Of course there are still some horse drawn carriages and sleighs, but not like there were years ago. My Grandfather operate a livery stable when my mother was young. He became a farmer when cars replaced horses as the primary means of transportation.

    Like

    Reply

    1. You don’t have to go back to carriages to find obsolescence. I like this because of the enumeration of railroad lines, very few of which still exist:

      Like

      Reply

      1. Yes, cars also put an end to many passenger trains. When I was very young I did take a few trips with my family on passenger trains and not too long ago we took the passenger train that goes North to Churchill on the Hudson Bay. You can’t get there by car.

        Like

        Reply

  4. Good Morning all. Dale, great music, love the clappers! I am delighted to have the chance to share a poem I have been reading and re-reading for the last year, Edwin Markham, The Man with a Hoe, inspired by the painting L’homme a la houe Jean-FranƧois Millet (1814-1875). As it happens, I found a virtual movie on YouTube and have attached it—I was distracted by the movement of his mouth but enjoyed the sound. I don’t know if painting and poem qualify as “no longer around,” they are at my house. The sentiments in both certainly relate to Nanci Griffith’s subject. I don’t think I can attach Millet’s painting but worth a google if anyone has time, adds weight to the poem.

    The Man with a Hoe
    ~
    Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
    Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
    The emptiness of ages in his face,
    And on his back, the burden of the world.
    Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
    A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
    Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
    Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
    Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
    Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
    Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
    To have dominion over sea and land;
    To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
    To feel the passion of Eternity?
    Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
    And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
    Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
    There is no shape more terrible than this–
    More tongued with cries against the world’s blind greed–
    More filled with signs and portents for the soul–
    More packed with danger to the universe.
    ~
    What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
    Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
    Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
    What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
    The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
    Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
    Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
    Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
    Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
    Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
    A protest that is also prophecy.
    ~
    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    Is this the handiwork you give to God,
    This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
    How will you ever straighten up this shape;
    Touch it again with immortality;
    Give back the upward looking and the light;
    Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
    Make right the immemorial infamies,
    Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
    ~

    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    How will the future reckon with this Man?
    How answer his brute question in that hour
    When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
    How will it be with kingdoms and with kings–
    With those who shaped him to the thing he is–
    When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
    After the silence of the centuries?

    Like

    Reply

    3. Very powerful, thanks for posting, Nan. I too found his mouth distracting, so I just closed my eyes and listened.

      Like

      Reply

      1. i had an 8 yrear old nephew get thrown out of a ballgame recently. he was the catcher and as the game wore on the umpire had up to that point been fairly consistant with perametere on what was a ball and what was a strike. then on the fatefull pitch on a 3-2 count when it mattered most a ball that had been called a strike all day was called a ball. my nephew under his breath he thought said “what have you been smoking?” more than you want to know about the home life at the nephews house can be realized here, but jim i just dont see the connection

        Like

        Reply

        1. I think the song and the poem are about the same thing. They both indicate things are going badly and a big change is needed.

          Like

  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This one I’ll have to think about since nothing is coming to mind at this early hour. However, as soon as the other ‘boons start listing, I’ll think, Oh yeah, that one.

    Like

    Reply

  6. After the Great War, the horses that had served Australian troops so valiantly were all led off to be shot in the head. Only one survived to be returned to Australia. This song by Eric Bogle is both about that barbarity and a reminder of cruelty inflicted on all the horses sent to war. My father served in a National Guard cavalry unit before WWII. Fortunately, when the war started, that unit was broken up and reconfigured so no more horses were obliged to make charges into machine guns.

    This song by Eric Bogle is about something that no longer exists–the war horse. We can rejoice in that while reflecting on all the anguish inflicted on horses in centuries of war.

    I see that WordPress is still convinced I look like a doily.

    Like

    Reply

    1. This is the saddest song I have ever heard. great piece. For a long time I lived at Lake & Lyndale next to a building that must have housed, at one time, La Societe des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux, 40 & 8. Before the building was sold it was cleaned out. I dumpster dived to rescue pictures, some framed, none from WWI era. One is from 1921, the 1st annual convention held in Winona.

      Like

      Reply

      1. My favorite hardware store (on Grand, near MacAlester) used to house horses used (I think) for transportation. The wonderful general store in Cornucopia used to house horses used in the lumber trade. When I was a kid horses were used in Des Moines to pull milk wagons. It always fascinated me to watch them. The horses knew the routes and knew which houses to stop by because people in that spot “took” milk from that dairy.

        Like

        Reply

        1. I heard a story about a horse that took the cream from a farm to the creamery on it’s own without anyone riding along. It also went to the neighbors and took their cream in and then returned the neighbor’s cream container before returning home.

          Like

    2. No one that I can think of does this kind of song better than Bogle. His concerts have you alternately weeping and wetting yourself laughing.

      Like

      Reply

  7. There is, of course, a ton of music about things no longer around: sea chanteys, cowboy songs, most of the railroad songs. As a reader of history, most of what I read these days is about things that no longer exist. I’m just finishing “From Scotland to Silverado”, a compilation of two shorter works by Robert Louis Stevenson, in which he sailed, in 1879, to America in a berth one step above steerage and vividly describes the passengers he sailed with and the experience in general. The second half of the compilation is entitled “The Silverado Squatters” and is an account of the time he spent living in an abandoned shack on top of a mountain near Calistoga, California on the site of a defunct mining town.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Wonderful books as is his “Travels with a Donkey in the CĆ©vennes”
      He was one of the great travel writers during a golden age of travel writing.

      Like

      Reply

      2. Nice. Thanks. I will be selling my collection of travel books this fall, about 175, depending how wide the definition of travel.

        Like

        Reply

        2. I would love to come to browse your collection, too, Clyde. Maybe I shouldn’t because we’re pressed for space, but travel books are irresistible. And cheaper than travel. Don’t have to find someone to feed and walk the dog, water the garden, eat up the leftovers in the fridge either. Let us know when.

          Are you sad to let them go?

          Like

        3. Kind of but I need to. I will keep a few. I will work up a list and post it sometime in August or so.

          Like

  8. Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity
    During that summer
    When unicorns were still possible;
    When the purpose of knees
    Was to be skinned;
    When shiny horse chestnuts
    (Hollowed out
    Fitted with straws
    Crammed with tobacco
    Stolen from butts
    In family ashtrays)
    Were puffed in green lizard silence
    While straddling thick branches
    Far above and away
    From the softening effects
    Of civilization;

    During that summer–
    Which may never have been at all;
    But which has become more real
    Than the one that was–
    Watermelons ruled.

    Thick imperial slices
    Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
    Dribbling from chins;
    Leaving the best part,
    The black bullet seeds,
    To be spit out in rapid fire
    Against the wall
    Against the wind
    Against each other;

    And when the ammunition was spent,
    There was always another bite:
    It was a summer of limitless bites,
    Of hungers quickly felt
    And quickly forgotten
    With the next careless gorging.

    The bites are fewer now.
    Each one is savored lingeringly,
    Swallowed reluctantly.

    But in a jar put up by Felicity,
    The summer which maybe never was
    Has been captured and preserved.
    And when we unscrew the lid
    And slice off a piece
    And let it linger on our tongue:
    Unicorns become possible again.

    John Tobias

    Like

    Reply

    4. And now I want watermelon. Or more specifically, the lovely yellow-meated watermelon I got last year from my CSA. It was sweet and flavorful and had seeds you could spit across the lawn. Didn’t sing up again for the CSA so I am in search of the heirloom yellow watermelon…

      Like

      Reply

  9. This is what immediately comes to mind…though maybe it was the Nanci Griffith tune (and her fabulous clappers):

    I don’t think we have a shared sense of this being a shared country anymore. We seem so much more fragmented than even when I was a kid (in the disco era…another thing that is gone – though maybe that’s for the best).

    Like

    Reply

    1. There might have been a time when we tended to think this land is our land, but I think Woody wrote that song because he knew that things weren’t right as in Nancy Griffith’s Hello No song.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Precisely. It continues to be my favorite “patriotic” song because it is protest and request for a better place and speaks to what the country could and should be. It was not, however on the approved list of patriotic songs to choose from when I was in 4th grade and students in the class took turns choosing the morning’s “patriotic” song. Bah. That year soured me on many otherwise good songs. And taught me an early lesson in propaganda.

        Like

        Reply

    1. i sure like this one. thanks steve.
      hows the tree that used to be in your back yard? want to write a poem about the tree that was in steves back yard til the wind blew strong and it came down hard

      Like

      Reply

      1. It fills my yard and that of my kindly neighbor, Jeff. We can’t tell yet what damage it did to my garage. I can’t get to my garage, so I’ve moved my car to the front. Turns out this is not covered by insurance. šŸ˜¦

        Like

        Reply

        2. Only a third of the tree fell, but that piece is so big it is sprawling all over and we don’t have a clue about what it did to my garage. I still have a very big tree in the yard. And no, it didn’t hurt the car.

          Like

        4. The damage done to property by a downed tree is covered (subject to deductions) but the tree itself is not. Even if it fills your yard and makes life impossible, it still is not covered. Your policy would be the same, almost surely.

          Like

        6. Verily Sherrillee: no, I am not sure that wouldn’t be helpful. I know next to nothing about the cost of all of this, but it could be devastating to my little economic boat.

          Like

        7. I wish I were closer to all, y’all. Steve, I’d join the crew with the chainsaws.
          I think we need pictures…

          Like

        9. seriously steve saturday night and sunday morning to avoid the heat is the reasonable time. we can help out and get the big chunks outta the way.

          Like

        11. Things seem to be happening fast, tim. My big fear is that someone could be hurt. The tree limb is at an angle, not flat. Some little branches could be cut up safely. I worry about bigger branches.

          Like

        13. I can do 2:30-4:30 (I have to be someplace else by 5:30 and I have to be clean when I get there!). Steve, not to worry about me anyway…. I am very careful when I have the chainsaw going and I wear a safety mask as well!

          Like

        14. tim’s bringing koolaid… hope it’s not electric! Hm – chainsaws and koolaid.

          Like

        15. Isn’t there a joke about not drinking the kook-aid??

          I’m working on it; I hope to be there.

          Like

        17. The joke refers to jimmy jones giving everyone koolaid with poison and the Jonestown massacre. Interesting read on Jimmy’s political influence and the cult it evolved into, im not hoing to drink the koolaid means I’m not buying the story you are offering.

          Like

    1. Smiling and applauding wildly! Thanks Beth-Ann. I knew from the get-go that today was going to be a wild romp in response to Dale’s request. So far you folks are outdoing yourselves.

      Like

      Reply

    2. no relation except in my head but i guess you would need a clock with innsards in order to get these kind of sounds too wouldn’t ya.
      both tunes remind me of being home sick form school and the theme songs on the matinee movies. must have been part of the deal. i dont remember specifics but both tunes are strong memories thank b a

      Like

      Reply

      1. Many years ago, what we call “public TV” began as “educational TV.” This was one of the favorite tunes used on educational TV, a classical piece that wouldn’t scare off too many bourgeois watchers.

        Like

        Reply

  18. The Unicorn
    from the book “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1974)

    A long time ago, when the earth was green
    and there was more kinds of animals than you’ve ever seen,
    and they run around free while the world was bein’ born,
    and the lovliest of all was the Unicorn.

    There was green alligators and long-neck geese.
    There was humpy bumpy camels and chimpanzees.
    There was catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you’re born
    the lovliest of all was the Unicorn.

    But the Lord seen some sinnin’, and it caused him pain.
    He says, “Stand back, I’m gonna make it rain.”
    He says, “Hey Brother Noah, I’ll tell ya whatcha do.
    Go and build me a floatin’ zoo.

    And you take two alligators and a couple of geese,
    two humpy bumpy camels and two chimpanzees.
    Take two catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you’re born,
    Noah, don’t you forget my Unicorn.”

    Now Noah was there, he answered the callin’
    and he finished up the ark just as the rain was fallin’.
    He marched in the animals two by two,
    and he called out as they went through,

    “Hey Lord, I got your two alligators and your couple of geese,
    your humpy bumpy camels and your chimpanzees.
    Got your catsandratsandelephants – but Lord, I’m so forlorn
    ’cause I just don’t see no Unicorn.”

    Ol’ Noah looked out through the drivin’ rain
    but the Unicorns were hidin’, playin’ silly games.
    They were kickin’ and splashin’ in the misty morn,
    oh them silly Unicorn.

    The the goat started goatin’, and the snake started snakin’,
    the elephant started elephantin’, and the boat started shaking’.
    The mouse started squeakin’, and the lion started roarin’,
    and everyone’s abourd but the Unicorn.

    I mean the green alligators and the long-neck geese,
    the humpy bumpy camels and the chimpanzees.
    Noah cried, “Close the door ’cause the rain is pourin’ –
    and we just can’t wait for them Unicorn.”

    Then the ark started movin’, and it drifted with the tide,
    and the Unicorns looked up from the rock and cried.
    And the water come up and sort of floated them away –
    that’s why you’ve never seen a Unicorn to this day.

    You’ll see a lot of alligators and a whole mess of geese.
    You’ll see humpy bumpy camels and lots of chimpanzees.
    You’ll see catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you’re born
    you’re never gonna see no Unicorn

    Like

    Reply

  20. OT – Don’t know how many baboons are tennis fans, but for what it’s worth, Federer has just beaten Djokovic in the semi-finals of Wimbledon in four sets.

    Like

    Reply

    2. Murray has just prevailed over Tsonga, in four sets, in the other men’s semi-final, setting up a final between Murray and Federer on Sunday. I had better take an additional dose of my blood pressure meds.

      Like

      Reply

  21. I think we can celebrate the rarity of diptheria, smallpox, widespread tuberculosis, tentanus, polio, measles, and scarlet fever these days (at least in our part of the world). I don’t know of any songs or poems about epidemics.

    Like

    Reply

    2. There’s Jimmie Rodgers’ TB Blues. I wouldn’t get too complacent about diseases, though – TB still crops up in Latin America, and is increasingly resistant to treatment.

      A neighbor of a friend of mine died of a tetanus infection a few years ago; one of the ironies about these once-common diseases is that doctors fail to recognize them when they do show up in the clinic.

      Like

      Reply

      1. I got pertussis (whooping cough) as an adult in 1999 from a child who’d never been vaccinated. It took me six months to recover.

        Like

        Reply

  23. I can’t keep up with you guys because I’m at work and the phone is ringing off the hook with people calling to ask me why the fish are dying. They are dying because it is way too hot. Soon I will be able to say that there once were fish…

    Like

    Reply

    1. cant you leave a recording of president george w bush saying global warming is not a reality and then cut to a second part saying the fish are dying because of the excessive heat? we will be with you shortly but e are checking to see how mitt and the tea party stand on global warming differs form w’s. this is a recording……..

      Like

      Reply

  24. Okay – Morning Show memory banks…what is the song about the town that gets flooded and becomes a lake? I have meant to find that song, and looking online is getting me nowhere fast. It’s a sad and mournful tune about “progress”…The imagery of the homes under the water is stunning. Help?

    Like

    Reply

    1. Gosh, Anna. I think I have that at home on CD somewhere. I know exactly which one you’re thinking of. Let me ponder on it.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Was it Slaid Cleaves?

        by Slaid Cleaves / Nicole St. Pierre . . . Happy Valley Music, BMI/Just Fauxk Songs, BMI
        from the CDs Wishbones and Sorrow & Smoke: Live at the Horseshoe Lounge

        Thereā€™s an old dirt road just off Route 9
        Fades into the lake at the low water line
        Sometimes I wander down that road alone
        Remembering the town that I once called home

        I grew up in the valley, every neighbor a friend
        Until the modern world started creeping in
        One day came the lawyers with cash in hand
        And swore that our village would light up the land

        The dusky waters move cold and slow
        And ghosts of a village still wander below
        Homesteads of families and friends forevermore
        Haunting the valley below this sparkling shore

        Surrounding the valley was a painted red line
        Drawn by Company men, like marking a crime
        A silent reminder that all inside it must go
        Or be lost to the rising Dead Riverā€™s flow

        Some folks took the money, started grinding gears
        While the rest of us held out for twenty-odd years
        We watched our town like a photograph fade
        As the Company came to take it all away

        They tore down the church, the schoolhouse burned
        They dug up the graves, the wheels of progress turned
        They got Dutchieā€™s Store and Havenā€™s Pool Hall
        When the dozers rolled it shattered us all

        The dusky waters move cold and slow
        And ghosts of a village still wander below
        Homesteads of families and friends forevermore
        Haunting the valley below this sparkling shore

        Old May Savage stayed as long as she could
        Her house on the hill towered over the flood
        It rose up alone in the dark of night
        Its face on the water in the cold moon light

        I shake off the memories, on my lips a prayer
        Thanks for the grace and the beauty down there
        And while the porch lights glow all over the state
        Thereā€™s nothing but darkness under the lake

        The dusky waters move cold and slow
        And ghosts of a village still wander below
        Homesteads of families and friends forevermore
        Haunting the valley below this sparkling shore
        They haunt the valley below this sparkling shore

        Like

        Reply

      1. I was going to suggest that one, but then thought better of it. I, for one, don’t miss all the work involved in doing laundry in those old washing machines. I do love this song though.

        Like

        Reply

        1. I hear you, PJ, on the terrible work involved in laundry in earlier times. A woman was lucky if she only lost one day of the week to washing up, and that left other laundry chores to fall in other days.

          Like

  26. Kool-Aid: A Memory

    It is, perhaps, the arrival of an A & W Drive-In on the edge of the town which spoils the sweet simplicity of mixing and drinking Kool-Aid. Or it is the whole culture of consumption beginning in the late 1950’s of which A & W is only a first invasive force?

    Kool-Aid is an innocent treat of a more sheltered era. Wonderful, special. Sweet, flavorful. Above all, sugary. Leaving a stain above the mouth curved to the shape of the glass.

    Kool-Aid comes in envelopes for, if Clair remembers correctly, a nickle each. He can picture the envelopes in rows in their own special rack at the end of an aisle in the grocery store where Gary works. At first only a limited number of basic flavors are available, such as cherry, strawberry, and grape.

    Fill a two-quart pitcher with water. Tear off the top of the envelop. Pour the contents into the water. Add sugar. (Could it be as much sugar as Clair remembers?) Stir the contents until all of the sugar dissolves. (Despite a vigorous stirring, the last dregs from the pitcher are strongly sugary sweet, but who would waste it?) Put the pitcher in the refrigerator to cool for later consumption. Or, if you forgot to ask mother to do it far enough ahead of time, pour it in a glass with ice. (Ice does not come quite so readily from the freezer part of the non-modern refrigeratorā€”usually called an ā€œicebox,ā€ as if people sensed that something much more convenient was to come.)

    The definitive summer mid-afternoon childhood treat is to come into the kitchen and drink Kool-Aid from a condensation-dripping glass on the oilcloth-topped kitchen table. In canning season, when the kitchen is stifling hot from the fully-heated wood stove, the full glass is taken outside to drink on the front or back porch.

    When the menfolk of the family are out working in the field and need to be brought a meal or an afternoon treat, it is never Kool-Aid. (Who wrote that rule, or is memory faulty?) Instead, it is plain water in a quart jar with wax paper over the top held in place with a ring. (Wax paper, never a lid; do not waste a lid; save the lids for canning.) Pure water is more thirst-quenching. All that sugar is likely to increase thirst instead of diminishing it.

    Some evenings all or most of the family sits outside watching their panoramic view of the sunset, falling late at night, far to the north of the western point on the horizon denoted by the fire tower. On such evenings Kool-Aid is served, even to the adults. Otherwise Kool-Aid is for mid-afternoons. For children.

    At first the Kool-Aid is mixed in a stout clear glass pitcher with a star burst on the side. The glasses are an eclectic assortment, most of which were product jars designed to then be used as glasses with TV and cartoon characters painted on them. In the 1950’s some product containers were meant to then be used in a second practical application, such as flour sacks and peanut butter jars.

    Later, as another sign of the television-driven consumption culture, the Kool-Aid is mixed and served in a tall aluminum pitcher and matching tumblers painted in off-shade colors, such as peach, pale pink, lemon-lime green, and pastel blue. The glasses sweat nicely on a warm day and never break. But Kool-Aid tasted better in a Lone Ranger or Donald Duck glass.

    About the same time as the purchase of the aluminum pitcher and tumblers, lemon-flavored Kool-Aid appears. It tastes fine, that is, unless you do on occasion get real lemonade, made with real lemons by a real mother. Otherwise Kool-Aid lemon flavor is watery and weak, too sweet, lacking the acid bite of true lemonade.

    Then root beer flavor comes, which seems to hasten the end of Kool-Aid’s appeal. Kool-Aid root beer is too much like, but very unlike, the flavor of true root beer even before the A & W invasion. A bottle of pop was rare but not unknown.

    Kool-Aid is only for summer. Except Clair’s birthday falls awkwardly just before Christmas, and Maryann’s birthday comes in early spring, which is really still winter. Kool-Aid must, nevertheless, be served. With cake larded in thick sugary frosting. And with icing-topped sugar cookies.

    ā€œAnd all the winds go sighing,
    for sweet things dying.ā€
    Christina Rossetti ā€œA Dirgeā€

    Like

    Reply

    1. Wonderful memories, Clyde. Only when I was an adult and saw how much sugar went into Kool-Aid did I stop drinking it. It just wasn’t Kool-Aid unless the pitcher and the glasses were heavily beaded with “sweat.”

      Like

      Reply

      1. I used to have one of these pitchers… sent in about a gzillion Kool Aid envelopes for it. And a fun money-making venture was the Kool Aid stand in the summer. I know it wasn’t a money-maker for my mom who provided the Kool Aid and the sugar and the paper cups, but those nickles and dimes seemed like a fortune to us.

        In a related note… I’ve met the lumberjack who played the part of Kool Aid in this commercial a couple of years ago!

        Like

        Reply

    3. I, for one, am still drinking Kool-Aid, grape flavor, thank you very much.
      Family events or dinner at my parents still includes a picture of green Kool-Aid. Mom had the Tupperware things to make your own Popsicle. Kool-Aid Popsicles were never quite right; they were always sticky.
      And for a few years I could find something like Mountain Berry Kool-Aid that I really liked but can’t find it any more.
      I mix it in the green Pioneer Seed Corn jug and take it in the tractor with me.

      Like

      Reply

  27. Sweet and lovely – Kool-Aid is a part of my summer childhood, too. Though I grew up with it in an oblong Tupperware pitcher that seemed to have been designed for just such a purpose (when the cost of a packet had doubled to a whole dime) – the pitcher was exactly the right size to hold 2 quarts, easily slid into the fridge, indented just at the right spot for smallish hands to pour from it…wiping the condensation from the glass onto your face or licking it off the sides to help get all of the “cool” out of the Kool-Aid.

    Like

    Reply

  28. I once read a book of my mother’s called Party Line that was probably written in the 50’s. I think it was written by Louise Maxwell Baker – at least that’s Google’s best guess. When I was a kid we actually did have a party line for a little while, just before extinction.
    Then there’s this:

    Like

    Reply

  29. There is one more, but I don’t know where to find it. Michael Monroe wrote a fun but heartbreaking song for the last Morning Show – some of you must remember it. It is a great song. I’d love to have a copy of it. Does anyone know?

    Like

    Reply

    1. Mourning The Morning Show Michae…

      var so = new SWFObject(‘http://static.4shared.com/flash/player.swf’,’mpl’,’470′,’53’,’9′);
      so.addParam(‘allowscriptaccess’,’always’);
      so.addParam(‘flashvars’,’autostart=true&skin=http://www.songarea.com/images/songarea/silverywhite.swf&file=http://www.michaelmonroe.info/mp3/01_mourning_the_morning_show.mp3′);
      so.write(‘mp3player’);

      michael monroe songs

      Gosh – hope this works. Embedded from a Michael Monroe site. Mourning the Morning Show.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Thanks, VS! The link works. I’ve wondered where I could hear that song again. There is a quick clip of Jim Ed doing Dr. Kyle near the end! šŸ™‚

        Like

        Reply

  33. OT but follow-up from re my sister who fell and shattered her shoulder: she has been put permanently in a nursing home, which is a blessing for her over-taxed husband. Hard truth for my wife.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Oh dear. I’m glad at least it’s a clear decision – hope it’s a good place for her, Clyde.

      Like

      Reply

    2. Sorry to hear that, Clyde, but a shattered shoulder will be very hard to recover from and she’ll be pretty helpless in the interim, so perhaps it’s for the best. Hope it’s a good one.

      Like

      Reply

  36. What a treasure trove of a day, Babooners! It’s finally cool enough to be here at the computer – than God for the break in the heat wave. Will finish reading and listening tomorrow…

    Like

    Reply

    1. šŸ™‚ Reminds me of a summer job in 1969 when I was in college — selling phone service over the phone, naturally. Touchtone feature was new that year and very popular. Phones all colors of the rainbow. Remember pink Princess phones? Odd job for me because I hate talking on the phone. Always have.

      Like

      Reply

    2. BiR, we missed you today. Bill and I were just saying earlier that it was probably too hot for you to reach your computer šŸ™‚ Things are finally cooling off, thank god.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.