Welcome to Postcard Friendship Friday. Here's a hitchhiking postcard from the mid 20th century, publushed by Cecil C. Dixon and Curteich.
Beauty in Butte Postcard
The caption on the back says:
Room for Me? Ordinarily motorists seldom stop to give strangers a "lift". The earnest dramatic appeal of this winsom Miss should win a ride from anyone.
Now, what does one do about a yellow stop sign? Does it mean "speed up" like many do for a yellow light? Or does it mean "roll through the stop sign" instead of properly stop. Oh wait. That's what everyone does anyway. Yellow stop signs do exist: this page has a history of stop signs and their colors.
News broke in the past couple of days about the soda ban in New York City. It seems pretty silly to me, and it is being proposed in a haphazard fashion: 7-11 will still be able to sell you big gulps, but Yankee Stadium won't. I wonder how people will get around it; bring your own cup? Two small cups taped together? Sell the sodas in a sort of wine skin, so it doesn't meet the definition of a cup?
New York Soda Nazis: "NO SODA FOR YOU!!!"
And since the ban is for drinks sold in "restaurants, cinemas, street vendors and stadium concessionaires", what if Yankee Stadium licenses with 7-11 to turn the concessionaires into convenience stores to get around it? And it doesn't effect milkshakes, so it really has nothing to do with calories, does it?
Bloomberg said that the soda ban will become as popular as the smoking ban in NYC. I disagree: the smoking ban is popular because it got rid of the problem of smokers forcing others to smoke in these restaurants. I've never ever heard of anyone forcing anyone to drink sodapop: it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist
Does anyone have any silly laws in their town? I can also think of the government-run farm market that outright bans products from other states. This might seem like a good idea, but isn't trade between states protected under interstate commerce?
I'm going to do some posts in the near future: one with a list of fictional trains, and worst politicians.I am looking for suggestions for both lists.
Fictional trains? That's the easy one. The trains have be fictional. That's all.
Worst politicians? That's harder. I want this to be interesting, so there are some rules. And this is the way it is. comments with obvious attempts to get around these will be removed as trolling.
Sen. Batson Belfry
The politician needs to be an American from the last 20 years or so
The politician has to be real. No fictional ones. I might do those later. Sorry, Senator Batson Belfry.
No nominees for hackneyed partisan reasons ("she's a Tea Party stooge". "He's owned by Big Labor". "He's a socialist". "She's in the pocket of the 1% and the big money interests"). Ho-hum ones like nominating someone for consistently voting against the issues of the working class, a record of eroding the freedoms of the Constitution, votes in lockstep with the Democrats, etc. will also be removed. I will be leaning toward singular outrageous incidents.
No one who has had anything to do with the George W. Bush campaign or presidency, the Barack Obama presidency and candidacy, nor that of any other President or administration, or major campaign for the Presidency. Partisan sniping... er... talking points about these have been done to death. I know a lot of people hate Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Sarah Palin, but everyone knows why they are hated and are why. So they are off the list. And sorry, Dick Nixon, I know you are tanned rested and ready, but not enough for this list.
Today is Bob Dylan's birthday. I've heard a lot about it on the radio, including an account ofof him boxing at a local boxing gym. Looking on Google, it appears he likes to box all over the place. I guess I never figured ol' Bob to be a boxer!
One of his most famous songs is "Like A Rolling Stone", from his album "Highway 61 Revisited". I've featured postcards and posts about the sights and attractions and marvels along this highway (the area of the Hiawatha Valley and Wisconsin's Coulee Country and Indian Head Country): including the Indian Head, Peppy the Lake Pepin Monster, Mt Trempealeau, and the ruins of the Melchoir Brewery,
Rollingstone Minnesots Air View Postcard
Rollingstone Minnesota Street View Postcard
A couple of very old postcard images of Rollingstone are found above.
Rollingstone is also not far from the Mississuppi River, and is nestled
in the bluff country that lies between the river and the Great Plains to
the west.
Rollingstone (no space, one word) is a small town in Winona County, in southeastern Minnesota, with a population of 664, just shy of a devil's total.I have found in a few places that supposedly Bob Dylan spent time in Rollingstone, and named the song "Like A Rolling Stone" after the town.
The music of "His Bobness" has been covered by many others, often with wonderful effect. One of my favorites was Bear McCreary's version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" for the recent Battlestar Galactica series. The song itself is an important part of the plot, and is apparently hardwired into human DNA.
From the March 29, 2012 Traverse City Record Eagle. A drain commissioner's work is never done.
The same paper has in the past referred to Muslin clerics in Iraq. True 'men of the cloth', I suppose. And this recent editorial speaks of the Cherry Repubic.
The postcard below is of the boat lake in Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, MD. It is postmarked May 20, 1940, which is 72 years ago as of today.
Postcard of Druid Hill Park, Baltimore MD - 1940
Druid Hill Park remains 72 years later, as most old parks do (not many parks get eliminated over the decades). Click here to read about it. The pond in the postcard probably does not remain anymore: "Many of the park's older fountains and man-made ponds have been drained,
allowing nature to reclaim those areas. However, many of their
structures remain partially or completely intact."
Druid Hill Park was racially segregated at the time of this postcard, and it would remain so until the "... practice was challenged on July 11, 1948 when 24 black tennis
players, protesting the city's discriminatory policies, were arrested
for playing on the park's "white-only" tennis courts. The names of the
protestors are commemorated on the Baltimore Tennis Club Marker, located
adjacent to the Conservatory along Druid Park Lake Drive"
The writing on the back says:
How are you doing? Forgot to tell you to water my pansies. So if you get this before they are dead water them. Vi's place is very nice but I guess you won't get to see it because they are moving next Friday. See you soon. Be good. Me.
To Mr. A. A. Russ in Parma, Ohio
I mainly know Parma, Ohio as the butt of jokes from an old horror-host TV show called "The Ghoul".
The early seasons of the "Drew Carey Show" even had a song about Parma called "Moon Over Parma". You can isten to it below:
There is also music related to this park. The R&B band "Dru Hill" is named for it. One of their songs, "These Are The Times" is below:
