Old Photos: St. Benedict’s Abbey
These photos were taken in 1955 at the St. Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS.
Here is the rest of the set and a more contemporary set.
Note: I will delete all comments I find offensive so don’t waste your time.
Continue reading →Oh Trader Joe’s, Your Croissants Are Calling…
Oh Trader Joe’s, Your Croissants Are Calling,
From end to end with chocolate at heart.
I should have bought a case of those pastries
But I did not, I wasn’t very smart.
The next morning:
Twenty five minutes later:
Oh, Trader Joe’s!
Them Apples
As my friend The DLC pointed out, I have now blogged just about everything and now pathetically spend my time posting links to my own blog, where I previously opined on whatever subject is being discussed. I constantly catch myself thinking about writing something just to discover that I wrote about it at length last year or the year before. That’s why when we came back from the apple orchard on Sunday all I had to do is search and find my last year’s post about apples and another one about the apple recipes. Even my photos looked the same – the same place, the same apples. Luckily we made a little detour or I would’ve had nothing at all.
The Main Street in the city of Ottawa, KS hasn’t changed much since the old days. As a matter of fact it looks very similar to the old photos of Neosho, MO I recently posted, they must have used some standard project for the smaller rural towns.
This is what the Main St. in Ottawa, KS looked like in 1942:
This is what it looks like now:
We got off the highway in Ottawa to wait for the apple orchard to open and promptly found ourselves in the middle of the antique car show known as Ol’Marais River Run. I don’t consider myself a giant car fan and all the talk about cubic inches, shaved hoods and custom paint jobs does nothing for me, but it’s hard not to stand in awe admiring the time when a car was a work of art. These cars may not have been the safest or the most technologically advanced but they represent the era when the car was still a wonder, an object of pride, an engineering dream trimmed with chrome.
Due to some peculiar historic and political circumstances the cars of my childhood looked almost identical to these, so strangely these shows are just as nostalgic for me as they are for someone who grew up here.
The car show had a feel of a State Fair complete with signage:
…Elvis and Marylin:
…delicious food:
…Republican Party:
…and boyscouts:
In the olden days, before the Ad Wizards took over our lives, the states had simple nicknames. Nebraska was known as a “Beef State”:
Iowa had to settle for the “Pork State”, Alabama went with the “Heart of Dixie”
Arizona called itself “The Grand Canyon State”
and Missouri was known as it is known now as “The State That Thinks It’s Better Than Other States But Is Sadly Mistaken” but is was hard to fit on the license plate.
After the show we finally made it to the orchard:This year seems to be one of the best years for apples, trees were heavy with fruit.
I spent a few minutes on the pond:
enjoying the wildlife:
Here is what the pond sounds like:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a28tgsr3jRg
We picked 25 lbs of apples:
Continue reading →
…paid a visit to the country store:
Took another look at the giant apple in the sky where all the worms go after they die:
…and were home in no time.Old Newspapers: Remember the 80’s?
Previously: Remember the 80’s?
While
staring at womendoing research for my previous (and future) post at the Johnson County Central Resource Library – home of the new amazing microfilm readers, I couldn’t help but save a few unrelated pages. Going through the old newspapers with the benefit of a hindsight is a bit strange; we know which companies, technologies and trends survived and which ones failed; we realize that investing in Apple was a good idea but buying Atari stock probably wasn’t; we know who won the VHS – Betamax rivalry and even when the winner itself became obsolete; we know which policies would be successful and which are still affecting society in a negative way.These clips are taken from the Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times published in January 1981 and in January 1986.They are in no particular order.
Continue reading →Old Photos: Van Cliburn
The history of the Soviet-American relations includes only a few episodes that achieved a mythical status and were passed down from the people who witnessed these events to their children just like tales were told and retold long time ago. Even though my generation was born or was too young to remember, all of us knew about Khrushchev’s trip to America, Soyuz-Apollo flight, Fischer- Spassky Chess Match, and Van Cliburn winning the First International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.
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