2017 Recap (Finds Unseen)

I know that I haven't been blogging for the last few months, but I've been intending to blog.  That's something, isn't it?  I've got a folder full of photos to prove it.  That's right.  I found the time over and over again to take pics of stuff for the blog, but not to actually put them in the blog.  It's hard to be me sometimes, let me tell you.  Sigh.

For the next few posts. I'm going to dump as many of those pics out as I can to at least give a snapshot of the junking for the last half of last year.  That should give me a handful of quick posts and enough time to at least get the rest of the month planned out.  Plus, I know everyone likes finds posts.  Right?

Ready?  Let's go!

Let me start with the first finds of 2018 (or at least a teaser), courtesy of the New Year's Big Flea.  This was what Gran, my granny cart, looked like at the end.

Care to guess what's inside?  I'll give you a hint:

It's the start of a vintage clock radio collection!  I bought a couple from the guy, and he made me an offer I could not pass up on the rest.  There are nine all together.  That's the benefit of shopping on the last day of the Big Flea.  Tomorrow, I'm pulling my Christmas out of the booths.  I have a good idea about what to replace it all with.

If I remember/have time, I'll get some pics of everything else in the cart.  We'll see.  By the way, did you catch the helpful advice printed on one of those boxes?

Words to live by.

I found all this stuff in an alley during junk set out.  It looked to me like someone had cleaned out a relative's house and bagged it all up for the junk pick up. Someone had ripped open all the bags and scattered stuff everywhere.  (DON'T EVER DO THIS!)  I ran home and got a bunch of bags and filled them all up with stuff.  This is a pretty representative sample.  Bith the Jean Nate powder and the Stanback stuff had never been opened or used.  The Jean Nate made me think of this girl named Gina who sat across from me in my Trigonometry class during my junior year of high school.  She was always carrying on about Jean Nate stuff and how good it made her smell.  She would actually say things like: "Gee, I smell good today."  Isn't it odd the memories this stuff brings back?

Most of the stuff from this find was paper goods and ephemera.  There will be pics of some of it later.

When you find a cheap Thor helmet, you just gotta buy it.  Then take a selfie while wearing it.

The long, shaggy, slightly disheveled  look I'm rocking these days kind of fits with the viking motif, doesn't it?  For Odin and Asgard!

There's an old Democratic Club down the street from us that was gutted and renovated over the course of last year.  The dumpsters yielded wonderful salvage treasures like these.  I love the detail work on the hinges.  I found a dozen or so of them, and they've been popular items at the booth.

Sadly, I also found some awesome wooden drawers and two wonderful tables at this site.  They went straight to the booth, but I did set them all up for a nicely staged photo, only to have my phone battery give out before I could take it.  They all sold on the same day to the same person, so I never got a picture, but they were awesome.  Two of the drawers were the old cash drawers from the bar. 

In case you didn't know, a Democratic Club is a lot like a VFW or American Legion post, basically an open bar.  I had the pleasure of speaking at one in the 90's, when we were trying to get LGBT anti-discrimination laws passed here in town.  I learned that you don't ever go to a group to talk about anything, when they've invited you to come after the bar has been open for two hours, even if they do say they're Democrats.  I actually met the then-Democrat state Senator for that district (which included my neighborhood) who told me I could shove the information I had brought "up my ass."  A year or so later, he switched to the Republican Party.  Again, odd memories, huh?

Does anyone know what this is?  I thought it was some kind of jewelry holder, until I realized that there was nothing to keep it from sliding off.  I bought it because I thought it looked cool.

Half-Price Books does this traveling clearance event in several cities every year.  For the last three years, Louisville has been one of the sites.  They reserve a big room at the fairgrounds and fill it with stuff.  Nothing is over 2 bucks, and a bunch of stuff is less.  This was my cart at the last one.

Not everything at that sale is new or recent.  There plenty of vintage items, like this trivia game from the 70's.  The book below might be my favorite find from that sale.  I love kids books. I got it for the title--I'd never seen the word "Brimful" used before--and the Tasha Tudor art.

You gotta grab your finds where and when you find them.  All this stuff was a curb find when I was on the way to the bus stop one day.  I crammed it all in my booth bag and still managed to catch the bus on time!  The baskets were an appreciated find.  I use a lot of them for displays.

People seem to like these big family-style Bibles, so I  pick them up whenever I can find them cheap.

This is an odd, little display I made in my salvage booth.  Nearly everything in it was a curb find.

I think that will do it for this installment.  There will be more to come.  Now, if you will excuse me, I have some fresh buns in the fridge and I have to go get them out.

Elegy for Adam West

I've hesitated to post this, because I don't want to be seen as making light of his death or the loss his family and friends are feeling right now.  Still, there's something in it that pretty perfectly sums up that very loss.  At least for me.

There were several times in the Batman series when the Caped Crusaders have been presumed dead and Gotham City goes into full-fledged mourning.  This is not from one of those episodes.  In fact, Batman isn't even visible in this scene, which is one of my three favorite scenes from the whole show.  Nevertheless, this is one of those scenes that pretty much sums up the appeal and beauty of the whole show. 

Victor Buono as King Tut seemed to relish his every moment on screen, tearing into every line in order to take it straight over the top chewing every bit of scenery to a pulp as he went there.  Adam West brought that same relish to his portrayal of Batman, only where Buono over-played, he chose to under-play.  His Batman is one that's smooth as hell, cool as all get out, and totally in on the joke, even though he appears to be clueless at times.  You have to watch West closely to pick up on everything he packs into his performance.  It's as stuffed with goodies as Batman's utility belt.

Back to the scene.  Batman and Robin are trying to rescue a kidnapped heiress from the clutches of King Tut, who wants to make her his Cleopatra.  Robin has been nabbed by Tut's men and tied up.  Batman, after a brief Bat-Fight, was clobbered by Tut and placed in a sarcophagus.  This leads to the cliff-hanger ending, as Tut submerges the sarcophagus in a vat of water in order to drown Batman.

And we get this wonderful bit of dialogue:



We had just laid down for a post-yard sale nap on Saturday, when Keith decided to check his phone for news.  He rolled over, shook me and said: "I hate to wake you up with bad news, but Adam West has died."  My first thought was:  "He's on his way to that great, big belfry in the sky."

I know there are those who would probably prefer to use "Bat Cave" in that sentence, but it seems much more appropriate to me to use a line from the show itself.

I'm just a bit too young to have caught the show in its original run.  I had not even turned two when it debuted!  I've watched the reruns since the 70's, though, making up for lost time.  Adam West was a aprt of my childhood, teen-agerdom, and adulthood.  This was one of those blows that hurt.  At this point, unless I've missed somebody, only Julie Newmar and Burt Ward are still with us.  Everyone else is off having a grand cast reunion.  Maybe it's in the belfry.  Maybe it's in the Bat Cave.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are left without a Bat-Channel to tune into tomorrow to see how Batman gets out of this one.

Farewell, Adam West.  Thanks for all the Bat-Memories.  You're already missed.

Retro Y'all!

This one is stuck in my head a lot these days, because it plays at least once a day in the Peddlers Mall.  I chose this version over the others on YouTube because of the "enthusiastic" hand clappers in the background.  Can you imagine putting "Back Up Hand Clapper" on your resume?  (Although I do have a secret fantasy of shaking a mad tambourine onstage with a happening band for one special performance.  Too bad I have no sense of rhythm.)

By the way, as much as I love Madonna, we'll not ever talk about her cover version.  Talk about something that should have been shot down as soon as it was proposed.  Some songs are sacrosanct classics, you know.

I have memories of being about fourth or fifth grade and getting an LP for Christmas--one of those educational types--that was all original songs for kids about American history.  I can still remember snippets of the songs.  The one about the stock market crash in 1929 had a chanted refrain ("Stocks are going up!  Going up!") that kept building and building until the crash happens.  I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the album or who put it out.  Of course, my copy is long, long gone.

It's one of those things I would love to find one day at a thrift, if only to prove to myself that I am not hallucinating and that the opening song really, inexplicably, was......American Pie!  Surely, I cannot be misremembering something as bizarre at that.  Surely.

The reason this sticks out in my mind is because I remember having to ask my mother what "rye" was the first couple of times I heard it.  I thought that the good old boys were drinking whiskey and eating bread, but since the song said they were "drinking whiskey and rye" I thought they were putting the bread into the whiskey.  YUCK!

I also had to ask what a "levee" was.

I've never been able to turn up anything on the internet about this album.  I just keep running into references to Don McLean, Madonna, or that damn movie.  Anyone who could help me prove that I'm not insane would be much appreciated. I know I'm not making this up in my head.

If you need or would like to read an interpretation of the lyrics, you can start here.  There are several others out there.

Retro Y'all (Black History Month Edition)

This was the Homecoming theme at my high school the year it came out.

We Interrupt This Recently Sort of Defunct Blog to Bring You a Moment of Nostalgic Warmth and Silliness

I'm okay.  I promise.

More tomorrow.

In the meantime, dance along!

The Greatest Find EVER. EVER! EVER! DO YOU HEAR ME???? EVER!!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

It is no secret by now that I am a HUGE Batman fan, I think.  But over and above and beyond and before that I am a Wonder Woman fan.

So when I found this at a parking lot sale on Saturday, I took to skipping and singing and squealing all over the place, despite the heat.

BEHOLD!

You seriously have no earthly idea how long I have wanted one of these.

She's missing her tiara, bracelets and boots, but I don't freaking care.  Her arms and legs have been glued back on, most likely because the band holding them on gave way with age, but I don't care about that either.  She's absolutely, totally, perfect to me.

She's seen a lot of action, my little Amazon princess.  Most likely, it was fighting evil gods and monsters, overthrowing dictators, and, of course, whaling the ever-loving shit out of her enemies with her Throwing Wheel.

According to the Wonder Woman collector site, this doll was produced in conjunction with the 70's TV show, but I have some questions about that.

For one thing, I am pretty sure I remember seeing these dolls advertised a few years before the show aired.  For another, this part of a set that included Nubia, a character from the comics in the early 70's, who never appeared on the show.  Finally, even on the WW collector site, they show a picture of this doll in the box WITHOUT the Lynda Carter image.

Personally, I think these were produced pre-TV show and, later on, a new box was produced with the Lynda Carter graphic to tie in with the show.

One of the things I love most about my Wonder Woman is her painted on top.  A later version had a cloth top.  Also, her blue eye shadow. 

Speaking of the WW collector page, I was tickled to see some other things on there that I also have, like this mirror, and this beach towel, which I have had since I was in 7th or 8th grade.  There's also this invisible plane toy, which I had when I was a kid, but don't own any longer, sadly.  Also in the "former possessions" category is this album.  I remember that the bullets bouncing off her bracelets were recorded as this odd tinkling sound.

And before you say anything, Shara.  Yes, she is a doll.  But she's NOT creepy.  Wonder Woman is NEVER creepy.  Only fabulous.  ALWAYS fabulous.

Can you say "FIERCE"?

PS Dig those eyelashes.  They are so stiff that her hair gets stuck in them.  Awesome.

All together now:

AMAZON SISTAHS HOLLA!

Stars on 45???

Getting the obvious reference out of the way first:



I do realize that there are no actual 45's in this post.  Despite the small size, these are all to be played at 78 or 33 rpm.  Also, none of them have the larger hole in the middle.  Still, in my mind they are the size of 45's, so I can call them 45's.  Technicalities be damned.

So we left off the record haul with this mystery photo:

Whatever might it be?????

This stack actually comprises the bulk of my purchase.  I saw them and I just had to have them.  I have no clue whether or not they'll sell, but they brought me right back to my roots, in a sense.

Whenever I look through a bunch of singles, I try to look for the brightest colored sleaves, cardboard sleeves or booklets.  That will usually lead me to what I most want:  vintage kids' stuff.  In this case, it was an unexpected motherlode. 

CHILDREN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL RECORDS!!!!!

It's not really a children's record set until you find some made on bright-colored, unbreakable plastic.

All of these are Southern Baptist recordings, dating from the 70's, or so I would guess from the cover art.  Nothing is dated.  Broadman Records is a branch of Broadman Publications, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Church when I was growing up.  More on that part later.

Like many of you, I had music classes in elementary school where the teacher would drag out the record player and we would sing along to the songs.  Well, they used to do that in Sunday School too.  All of these records are for children five years old or younger.  They were apparently quite popular.  I have worked in a lot of different churches in a lot of different places teaching kids for Sunday School VBS and the like, and I have seen these things everywhere.

Heck, I even found a few of them kicking around in church resource closets as late as the 90's.  They were sitting in dusty stacks, along with a record player, and sometimes, even an autoharp, which for some reason was a standard instrument for Southern Baptist children's departments back in the day.

Side note:  I really want to find an autoharp at a yard sale some day.

What gets me most about these records is how trippy the covers are.  Especially for kids' records.  Extra-especially for kids' religious records.  Seriously.  Take a look.

 This one about the most normal one of the bunch.  It's also my favorite.  Despite the title, Louis Armstrong is nowhere to be found.  Pity.

And now, the trippiness begins.  The girls on front look okay.  The freaky grassy petally stuff could be explained away by perspective.  But....

These dudes on the back are definitely on something!

AIEEEEE!!!!  Flee the terrifying instrument people!  Flee!  FLEE!

If you check out these credits, you'll see that the same people are responsible for these records.  In fact, the same crew did just about everyone I found.  Southern Baptist Sunday School music was a steady gig back in the day, it seems.

Also, most of these recordings were made in New York.  Nothing too odd about that, until you stop and think a minute.  Broadman Publishing is based in Nashville, a city with a recording studio on every corner.

Please don't kiss me, scary North Wind dude.  Please.

All the records I found had a code written on the front, like for a cataloging system.  I thought it might have been a church library (Remember those?), until this fell out of one sleeve.

The Sunday School Board is in charge of, you guessed it, Sunday Schools for the Southern Baptist Churches.  They produce the curriculum and materials that are used in classes.  It makes sense that they would have a library with copies of these records, because the Sunday School lesson books used to call for a certain song to be used with a certain lesson.  The lesson would also include the title of the record the song came from, as well as its ordering number, if the church didn't have them.  Some of these songs were used over and over again for years.

The Sunday School Board is also based in Nashville.  My comic shop is part of a very small chain, which includes a store in Nashville.  For these special sales, sometimes the stores will trade off stock with each other, which is more than likely how these ended up here in my shop.

By the way, these agencies have reorganized and renamed themselves a few times over the years.  I have used the original names here, because:

1.  It's what's printed on the records.
2. Those were the names used when I was growing up.
3. I'm too lazy to look up all the changes.
4. It would take up too much room to explain it all.
5. It's largely irrelevant to this post.
6. It gives me an excuse to make a list.  I like lists.

I have no clue whether anyone will want these.  I definitely let a bit of nostalgia crowd my thoughts.  Still at 25 cents a pop, I'm not out too much if this turns out to be a bad idea.  I had fun going through them all, at any rate.

One final question;

Why is one of  the men in black on the cover of a children's record?

Retro Y'all--Saturday Morning Edition!

Family Photo Parade

I avoided the temptation to call this "Phamily Photo Parade."  I have a thing for alliteration, you know.  Too many comic books as a kid.

My great aunt passed away the other day.  She was the last surviving member of my grandparents' generation.  The family has been going through some of the photos, etc that she left behind, and one of my cousins sent me some pictures of my mother, among others. 

I was really touched by this gesture, since there were a couple in the lot that I didn't have and one I had never seen before.  A few years before he died, my grandfather divided up the family photos between my mom and uncles, but he did so in a really random order.  Instead of keeping family units together, he just sort of made piles for each of them with no importance given to the subjects of the photos.  As a result, there are some pictures of my mother as a child that I always wanted and do not have.  Included in this lot were a couple of shots of her as a young child, which really touched me.

They were such a great and unexpected treasure, that I thought I would share a few here.

School picture of my mother

Another one

Guessing at her age here, but I think this was taken in 1943-1944.

My brother and me on my ninth birthday.  STYLIN'!

I had never seen this pic of my grandfather (center) with his parents and my mom and uncle.

Uncle Larry's school pics.

Since we're rapidly approaching my 50th year, and I keep getting more and more nostalgic, I may dig some of the photos I have out and scan a few sometime.

Stuck in my head

I came out of the shower the other day with this stuck in my head:



If you're around my age and you watched Saturday morning cartoons as a kid, you probably remember the great Schoolhouse Rock shorts.  Usually, I get hung up on the math (naturally) or history shorts, but grammar is what invaded my head the other day.  I think it's because I've been encouraging my classes to write within the context of out math classes.

Another imminently hummable, irresistibly catchy one:



Hey!  That's not fair!  Giving a guy a shot down there!  Gotta love it.  I think the girl with the rainbow "Wow" would look awesome on a retro style t-shirt.

I love this one for the names alone:



The next time I get on the bus, I'm going to holler out:  "Who let that rhinoceros on this bus?"  That piano line is really pretty.

And, finally, nouns:



I love how the pop culture references were already a little dated when this one first aired in the early 70's.  I have a sneaky suspicion that you can sing this one to this tune (and vice versa).  I haven't tried it all the way through, but parts of it seem to work in my head.

Closing Time

The liquor store down the street from us seems to have closed.  When I say "right down the street,"  I mean it.  It's three doors from our house.  Ordinarily, I wouldn't be commenting on something like this.  Liquor stores are not places I normally frequent.  Family-owned, neighborhood-based businesses, though, are an interest of mine, especially those with a long history.  All of that describes this place to a "T."

The beer advertising in the windows has been replaced by curtains.  The lights are out.  There's a notice on the front door about where to deliver mail.  The really cool big neon sign of the beer bottle popping its cap has been taken down.  When I first came to Louisville, it used to still work, but over the years, it kind of deteriorated.  It was still kind of a neighborhood landmark.

This was just a little mom and pop business, the kind where the family lived upstairs or in the back of the business.  The elderly woman who owned it still lives in the building.  I don't know a lot about the history, but I'm pretty sure she kept the business going after her husband died.  When I used to have to catch an early bus to work, I'd see her coming out of the back of the building to open the business up.  I used to wonder then what kept her going.  Now, I'm kind of hoping that the decision to close was her own, not something forced on her by doctors or her children.

The closing of this little corner liquor store won't attract big attention or news.  In fact, I'm not sure myself how when it happened and I walk by the place every day.  I just happened to notice the curtains the other day.  Like I said, these kind of places interest me, because there are fewer of them left all the time.  The little Dairy Dell not far from us has a for sale sign up.  I guess you could say that it's a sign of the times we live in, but it's hard not to be a little nostalgic, or maybe a little wistful, when a place like that closes.

Places like that were once touchstones for neighborhoods.  Longtime residents dropped by for a visit or to catch up on gossip.  Those kinds of businesses were anchors and landmarks.  Even when I was a kid, you could find dozens of them everywhere.  I'm not trying to make any to make any kind of grand statements here about anything, at least not this time.  I definitely do have my opinions and biases, but for right now I'm just feeling a little reminiscent about a place I never visited, but was always there, just three doors down.

And then I peek above the curtains and see all the classic beer promotional items that are still hanging on the walls and my inner junker kicks in:  What's going to happen to all that cool stuff?  And the cycle goes on.

 

A polite invitation deserves a polite answer

These two panels from last year's Free Comic Book Day edition of Pippi Longstockings made me giggle.  In fact, they make me giggle every time I've read them.  I know.  I know.  I have a low threshold for humor and am easily amused.  You're talking to the guy who just has to tell his math class the Little Mermaid joke* as soon as they get to a certain topic.

Indeed.

Waitaminute!  What's that about a Pippi Longstocking comic book? Does such a thing really exist?  Why, yes.  Yes, it does.

Probably a lot of folks my generation (and maybe those just a tad older) mostly know Pippi from the dubbed movies that made their way to this country.  When I was a kid, the TV station that is now the local Fox affiliate was just an independent station that showed syndicated shows and reruns of older TV shows, many in black and white.  This was in the days before dozens of cable networks did the same thing, so it felt like a change from what the network affiliates were doing. 

It was on this station that I watched Gilligan's Island every day, years after it went off the air.  I Love Lucy, The Addams Family, The Munsters, I watched them all, as if they were being aired for the first time.  I thought it was awesome.  They showed classic, uncensored, Warner Brothers cartoons in the afternoons.  Those early versions of Bugs, Daffy, etc were a raucous bunch!  I guess I was a little bit into vintage and retro stuff, even then.

On weekends, they used to do what they called "Movies Four."  They'd show old movies all day, each with a different theme.  They'd use the same themes for weeks, and when they'd shown all the movies for that theme, they'd change to a different one.  One of those themes was "Pippi Longstocking Theater."  I wasn't that wild about the Pippi movies, even as a kid the dubbing bothered me.  I was usually waiting through for the "Godzilla Theater" to come on, where the dubbing didn't bother me.  I've never been very consistent.

This is actually the second time in the last few weeks I've been pondering the whole Movies Four experience.  One of the other themes they used was "Shirley Temple Theater."  News of her passing the other day brought it all to mind, then I found this panel, while catching up on some comics.  Twice in a few weeks means I need to blog about it.

It is kind of sad that I'm just now getting around to reading last years FCBD books.  Free Comic Book Day 2014 is just around the corner!

*What did the Little Mermaid wear to her math class?  She wore her Algae-Bra!**

**Don't hurt yourself laughing.***

***I'll be here all week.  Don't forget to tip your waitress.

Just Another Bit of Bronze Age Silliness

I actually bought this one off the stands back in the day.

So, I was Google searching for pics for the "Things I Like" post, I ran across this absolutely fabulous Superman cover from the early 80's.  My inner nine year old is giggling again.*  It's a totally mediocre comic, but what awesome cover!

*Not sure why I've decided it's my inner nine year old.  I was a teen-ager in the 80's.

Oh Dear!

Superman has lost his head!  Uh oh!

 

 I'm not that much of a comic blogger any more, but I picked this one up with a bunch of other comics at YesterNook the other day and could  not resist including it here.  How cool is that?  No matter how old I get, this kind of DC comics Bronze Age silliness still tickles my inner 9 year old to death.

I'm betting most of the cool, satirical comics sites have had their way with this one years ago.  I'd be really surprised if the awesome Mike Sterling at Progressive Ruin hadn't already poked some loving fun with this gem ages ago.

Fun Finds: The Catechism Game!

I remember my days back at Our Mother of the Perpetual Perpetualness School with fondness.  On Fridays in Lent, when we were finished with our lessons, Sister Mary Ignatia would play her nose flute for us.  Then, Sister Mary Clarabelle would get into the "special closet" and bring out....

THE CATECHISM GAME!

It was an exciting time, for sure.

Seriously, stuff like this is the reason I love shopping at Catholic thrifts.

Saturday Nostalgia

When you deal in nostalgia and spend your spare time hunting for it, I guess it's inevitable that your own nostalgia hormones kick in from time to time.

Here's one of my favorites from bygone days.



It seems like lots of folks get all misty-eyed over the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons.  I doubt that there is a person in my age range who cannot sing the preamble to the Constitution.  However, I think these old food and nutrition spots are a tad neglected.  Let's rectify that.

This is another one of my faves.  It's probably the message that has stuck with me the longest.  To this day, I tend to prefer just a dab of condiment on things, instead of gloppy globs.  Gloppy globs are disgusting.  I even get light cheese on my pizzas!



While I was searching for clips to use in this post, I was kind of surprised to come across some that I had no memory of.  None.  At all.  In fact, I would swear that I'd never seen them before.  I guess that goes to show exactly how overlooked these spots really are!

Here's a couple of the ones I didn't remember.





Can you be nostalgic for things you didn't really experience yourself?  Or maybe the truth is that I really just like old cartoons and pop culture trivia?  Whichever it is, I wish you all happy nostalgia hunting today!  if you find yourself getting hungry while you're out hitting the sales, why not try a hunk of cheese?

Is it wrong of me to think of "hanker for a hunk" as a double entendre?

I have to do this one...

I know I've done this one before, but I have to do it again.  It's that time of year and I have to make it official!



There!  Now it's Christmas time!  Let the festivities begin!