Sunday, February 9, 2025

Realms of the uncanny: Dreamcore, backrooms & liminal spaces

Me, less than a year old, in a stroller on the edge of a liminal space in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania (1971).

A couple of weeks ago, Ashar and I were watching a stream of Eurogamer's Ian Higton as he played a new game called Dreamcore. With the game as a jumping-off point, I learned a lot about dreamcore itself (with a lowercase "d") and backrooms. It's fascinating to see how Generation Z has embraced and adjusted the concept of liminal spaces, creating works that feel both old and new. Their stories (urban legends, creepypasta, memes) and original art are intertwined with the jarring 21st century events and technology that have shaped their lives thus far.

I grew up with fantasy books and movies about liminal spaces (though I certainly wasn't using that term). Two that spring immediately to mind are The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the 1978 movie The Water Babies. I was a kid in various houses with cubbyholes, twisting staircases and unsettling attics and basements that fueled the imaginations of my friends and I, as we sought to transform the ordinary into something out of this world.
 
Now we have cottagecore, goblincore, dreamcore, weirdcore and countless other aesthetics contributing to the culture of younger generations. Additionally, for many of them, there is a deep nostalgia for roughly the period of 1995 to 2005. I won't dive more deeply into all of that, but since it's where this post began, here's a definition of dreamcore from Aesthetics Wiki, a fasincating rabbit hole of a website you could lose yourself in: "Dreamcore is a surrealist aesthetic that uses motifs commonly associated with dreams, daydreams or nightmares, portrayed through media such as images, videos and, on occasion, music." Dreamcore's "base images" often have lighter tones, even pastels, and can involve (but certainly aren't limited to) endlessly rolling hills, clouds, rainbows, bubbles, flowers and empty, nondescript buildings.

And then you have backrooms, or The Backrooms, as the Wikipedia page labels it. There are many places to find the history of The Backrooms online (the lore runs deep), but I really like how Austen Travis described them in a 2023 blog post for Spirit Halloween
"Previous, analog generations told scary stories like “The Hook” around campfires, but modern, digital generations spread online 'creepypasta', like Slenderman, Sirenhead, Ted the Caver, and now, the Backrooms. The Backrooms are an aesthetic and a horror story. Somehow instantly recognizable and inexplicably surreal, the Backrooms began as a labyrinth of yellow rooms and hallways. This seemingly-abandoned space is endless, dread-inducing, and weirdly nostalgic. The first image of the Backrooms, along with all the subsequent images that would appear online, resonate with both our past and our nightmares. ... The Backrooms live at the thematic intersection of creepy, nostalgic, sad, and surreal."
In a review of Dreamcore (the game), Lewis Packwood discusses the overlap between dreamcore (the aesthetic) and The Backrooms: "It’s perhaps little surprise that liminal spaces have captured people’s imagination. Images of oddly empty offices and shopping malls were something we were all fascinated with during the COVID lockdowns of 2020, and although such images have always been unsettling, they are doubly so now in the wake of our collective trauma. But the Backrooms also arose directly from video game logic: the act of ‘no-clipping’, slipping beyond the world the player was intended to see. The aesthetic of repeating textures and echoing endless corridors is drawn straight from the gaming realm."

* * *

All of this got me to thinking a lot about photography, and specifically about the kind of photographs that I enjoy taking and looking at. And there's a lot of thematic overlap. My favorite book of photographs is Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places. Shore has an incredible eye for parking lots, hotel rooms, building exteriors, empty streets, crumbling places. The liminal spaces of America; the places that are more past than present. I think my photographic aesthetic and Shore's would both fit in very nicely with some of those that scare and stir Generation Z. 

So, to close, here's a gallery of photos that sort of fit these themes (some better than others). All of these were taken by me, unless otherwise noted. Some of them have appeared on Papergreat previously, but seem a good fit for this post, too.
Ashar standing in front of both a computer screen and a wall-size photograph at a Titanic exhibit. It almost seems as if he could just walk right into that room.
Chests and luggage gathering dust in the attic of the house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford, Pennsylvania (probably taken by my grandmother).
One of my favorite photos, taken at an intersection in Dover Township, Pennsylvania.
First of two photos of the former LNP | LancasterOnline newsroom, emptied out by the pandemic. Here's the full post.
Stairwell in the building at 8 West King in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 
It's now just a memory.
Family photo that seems to be dated 1939. What lies beyond the door in the back?
Another family photo, circa 1985. I think Mom took this and it's at the house in Florida. Another mystery door in the background.
This is from the 1910s, probably taken by my great-grandfather. Unknown building. Possibly an armory, given the guard out front? This building looked old even then. 
I suspect it's no longer standing. At least not in this dimension.
Inside a surreal antiques store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. See the full gallery in this post.
Parking lot of the Monroeville Mall, near Pittsburgh. Taken from my hotel room window. This was the original "dead" mall, as it was the shooting location for the 1978 movie Dawn of the Dead. Now, tragically, it's a truly dead mall. Just days ago it was officially sold to Walmart, which will likely renovate the property serve its own mindless-consumerism needs. 
Dreamcore? An endless path within a York County cemetery.
This is a real photo! Snapped by me in a back alley in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania. How I lived to tell the tale, I do not know.

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Poetry
is
timeless and
can be
retroactively,
heartwrenchingly,
predictive,
as this haunting
circa 1970
piece
by James
Tate
divulges

James Tate (1943-2015) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who had a prolific career, publishing collections in six different decades, starting in the late 1960s. The Oblivion Ha-Ha, from Little, Brown and Company, became his second published collection, in 1970.

Examining the collection with a fresh pair of eyes in 2016, Lisa Russ Spaar wrote this for the Los Angeles Review of Books: "What strikes me about The Oblivion Ha-Ha is less its surreality than its blend of desire and indifference, the terrible and the humorous, the cliché and the revelatory, the comedic and the tragic."

Tate's work, she adds, "offers the consolation of absurdity, of the ludic, of the collision of worlds, of the intrusion of one world into another."

It's interesting that Spaar, herself a poet, wrote that piece in 2016, the year in which we were fully amid a collision of worlds, a devastating intrusion that drives deeper and crueler by the hour now, a decade later. And so it was that I was inspired by a recent Bluesky post by Peter Montgomery to reshare the Tate poem from page 71 of The Oblivion Ha-Ha that appears in the above photo. You can listen to it here and I'll also type it out below:

The President Slumming

In a weird, forlorn voice
he cries; it is a mirage!
Then tosses a wreath of scorpions
to the children,
mounts his white nag
and creeps off into darkness,
smoking an orange

I hardly think you need me to point out the modern allusions that now seem to emanate from those seven lines, those 32 words, penned more than a half-century ago. It's actually spine-tingling.

The whole collection isn't like that, of course. So if you're looking for a pleasant, thoughtful diversion, I highly recommend Tate's volume. Or perhaps you'll look up one of his much-praised later collections. Three more snapshots of poems from The Oblivion Ha-Ha follow; I especially especially love the last one, which is why I put it as the closer.
Mommy Orange is the only Orange one I acknowledge.

Friday, February 7, 2025

Vintage postcard of Barrose Terrace in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

This vintage postcard showcases a sprawling estate once known as Barrose Terrace, in West Lampeter Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Some background information about the estate appears on Extraordinary Stories from an Ordinary Guy, a blog by a Lancaster County resident who goes by LDub.

LDub writes of the exterior: "The garden was built by Ulysses Grant Barr who was also one of the organizers of Lancaster's Meadia Heights Golf Club. The garden was located just past the golf club where Mr. Barr resided. ...  In 1928 workmen began to blast rock to form the different levels of the flower garden.  It took four years to complete the entire garden. ... In 1933 fountains and lights were added."

A 2022 article by LNP | LancasterOnline's Erin Negley adds: "People could come here from Lancaster city, often by trolley, to see the terraced gardens and fountain or the neighboring golf course." Negley adds that when the house was purchased by its newest owners in 2018, the main structure on the 8.5-acre property had nearly 8,000 square feet of space. Some smart and needed renovation downsized that figure.

There's no year legible on this postcard's postmark, but the one-cent stamp used was first issued in December 1936. It was mailed to an address in Lancaster and the cursive, pencil message states:
Dear Billy,
I am having a swell time. I'm taking horse back riding this year. Try and come to see me. Please write my address is:

Camp Winnemont
N.H.

I will write again but not so soon.
Lovingly,
Your Make Believe Cousin, Polly

Camp Winnemont was a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire founded by Walter H. Bentley, who died in 1945. The camp kept going for nearly two more decades after this death. A 2006 post on Winnipesaukee Forum states: "I went to that wonderful camp in... '62 and '63 - that was the very last year that the camp was going to exist and we were all devastated!!"

Another post on that forum contains this cute Winnemont song that dates to the 1930s:

Oh I'm a hayseed
My hair is seaweed
And my ears are made of leather
And they flop in rainy weather.
Gosh-a-hemlock
Tough as a pine knot
I'm from Winnemont you see.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Guest post: Ashar's awesome shelfies and work as a collector

Ashar, who turns 25 next month, has been creating content on the internet since at least as far back as 2012, and probably earlier. He said I could repost his latest Instagram post onto Papergreat for posterity, and I'm proud to do so...

The long awaited Ryan, Blake, and Colleen Hoover movie/book and Deadpool shelf update ⚔️ \|/

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I love, admire, adore, and respect Ryan and his wife Blake a whole bunch. They are extremely talented, caring, hardworking people that are both extremely good at what they do not only as actors but as business owners.

This collection has been on of my proudest achievements and I’m so immensely proud of it. No words could possibly describe the amount of work, money, and dedication something like this takes especially since some of Ryan’s older movies are extremely hard to find.

Mind you I don’t even own EVERY movie Ryan has been in on DVD yet but that is my end goal. I will admit I honestly don’t really have enough room for anymore of his movies right now because my DVD shelf alone is at capacity since the DVDs alone touch the top of the shelf. You may be wondering if that will stop me from getting or finding more of his DVDs and the honest answer is no it will not. Even if I constantly have to keep reorganising this shelf to make everything fit I will even if it does my head in because it brings me so much joy and gets me ever closer to my ultimate goal.

Also if you’re wondering I have not opened either the Wolverine or Deadpool Limited Edition Aviation Gin bottles nor do I really plan on doing so because I like how they look and they cost me a ton of money so I want them to last for as long as possible even though it has been tempting to open one and have a shot of my fav gin more than once.

This collection has been a big group effort because my friends have significantly helped me grow my collection and I couldn’t be more grateful because this collection is something I’m immensely proud of in every way possible.

I even got a Deadpool sticker decal for my PS4 controller which looks badass af.

I hope Ryan sees my collection and is impressed by it because in all honesty it just shows how big of a fan of his I am.

The last DVD of Ryan’s I got was The Alarmist which I watched for the first time on January 30th 2025.

I really only have one movie left of Ryan’s to watch.

Monday, February 3, 2025

Resimplify Me: Opening the "time capsules"

Resimplify Me, an ongoing attempt to downsize my Stuff, got underway mostly as a soft launch last year. Throughout 2024, a lot of books and other nonnecessities were pruned (sold, donated, etc.), and there's still a long way to go. 

I have decided that the family "time capsule" manila envelopes, mostly filled during the 2010s, are too bulky to continue storing and hauling around. So, even though I somewhat randomly marked them to be opened on dates in the 2030s, 2040s and beyond, it's time to cut open the bulky envelopes and see what's what. 

In advance, I'm guessing that about 70% of the contents will be tossed in the trash and the rest will be either kept (as the "best of the best"), repurposed for crafting or possibly sold. Yes, I know this blog's motto is "every piece of paper tells a story," but that has never made it incumbent upon me to be the one keeping every piece of paper. Perhaps that's heresy, but I assure you I'm not going to run out of ephemera anytime soon.

The first envelope to be opened was a fairly slender one filled when Joan, Ashar and I went to the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January 2011, a lifetime ago amid President Barack Obama's first term.
The contents included the brochures and pamphlets handed out by the various Farm Show vendors, some advertising postcards, business cards, a couple of printed tweets (very odd for 2011, but that's me), and that day's edition of the York Daily Record, which I then worked for. There was also our parking stub and some recipe booklets touting Pennsylvania agriculture.

A fair amount was trashed, although as mentioned this was a skinnier envelope to begin with. Some stuff went to Joan for crafting or postcarding. And the best of the best was kept, having now been downsized to a more acceptable volume. Those going through this remaining ephemera in the future will have far less "junk" to sort through.

On to the next envelopes....

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Book cover: "Monsters and Nightmares"


Here's the first Mild Fear entry of 2025. Mild Fear definitely applies, because nothing on this blog, especially regarding fictitious and literary things that go bump in the night, approaches the horror of certain things transpiring in the real world at this moment. 
  • Title: Monsters and Nightmares 
  • Additional cover text: "Hideous tales resurrected from tombs, decaying graves, vaults of death and the blood-soaked lips of vampires ... GRAPHICALLY ILLUSTRATED"
  • Author: Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987). Other books by Hurwood were covered on Papergreat in 2024 and 2021. Hurwood also wrote under the pseudonym Mallory T. Knight.
  • Illustrator: Unknown, which is a shame. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "The cover artist is not credited, there is a partial signature [not recognized]. The interior artwork is not credited [by more than one artist], only a couple of pieces are signed."
  • Publisher: Belmont (B50-735)
  • Year: 1967
  • Pages: 156
  • Format: Paperback
  • Cover price: 50 cents
  • Provenance: The name Alan Giannini is written in cursive and pencil on the first page.
  • Table of contents: Very colorful chapter titles! See the photo below for the full contents. There are a wer-hyena, a Russian Rip Van Winkle, a haunted vault, screaming skulls, cannibals, demon drummers, banshees, vampires and much more.
  • Excerpt #1: "The count was so overjoyed at this turn of events that he refused to punish the undertaker."
  • Excerpt #2: "To many it seemed as though the end of the world were at hand."
  • Excerpt #3: "Fortunately the concept of therapy through terror came to an end in the 18th century."
  • Excerpts from Hurwood's epilogue: "Take heart, dear reader (as they used to say in bygone day), the worst is over. There is no more need to shudder. You are safe from vampires. They have probably formed a union and would refuse to suck your blood unless it met carefully prescribed standards of purity unattainable in this century. ... As far as ghosts, and other assorted supernatural spirits are concerned, you have little to fear. At the rate the Great Society is destroying old landmarks, houses, mansions, and other assorted architectural relics, there won't be any places left for ghosts to haunt. ... What is the mere plague of the Black Death compared to the perpetual threat of nuclear warfare? ... All of our present day horrors notwithstanding — income tax, television commercials and uglification (to mention only a few) things could be worse. At least we can all still indulge ourselves in certain ways. We can still set forth on that most intimate of affairs, the one that each of us embarks upon each time we pick up a book and read it." 
  • Online thoughts: There's not much in the way of reviews or criticism about this book on the internet. ... In a 2013 post on the Amazing Stories blog about Hurwood's books, the writer mentions Monsters and Nightmares in passing. And he notes: "I think it’s a great shame, but Mr. Hurwood isn’t exactly a household name. He deserves to be one though. ... Several of his books on the occult were short snappy retellings of European and Asian legends of ghosts, demons and various monsters such as werewolves and vampires. Several of the collections were cannibalized and repackaged by the Scholastic Book club under such titles as Ghosts, Ghouls and Other Horrors and Vampires, Werewolves and Other Demons." ... Separately, Lee Harper Oswald mused a little bit about Monsters and Nightmares and Hurwood in a 2020 blog post.
Speaking of nightmares

A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare that I think was partly fueled by the post-operative oxycodone I've been taking. I usually can't remember dreams well, but what I typed up the next morning as I tried to recall/interpret the dream is both a bit creepy and a bit too on-point:
"For a long period, I had been making unsafe and unauthorized trips to the rooftop of the large building in which I lived. I was addicted to the thrill of walking or running across the rooftops. But, even more so, I was strangely addicted to the terror of the presence that followed just behind me, just out of sight, as I went across the rooftops. It was a very dangerous, and I didn't have the feeling that I was always just eluding it as much as it was letting me elude it. But then I stopped the habit and stopped going to the rooftops. But The Presence wouldn't let this stand. It was either intruding into my everyday existence in the lower parts of the house, or calling me back to the rooftops. It was no longer a thing I could resist or elude."

Friday, January 31, 2025

Friday nostalgia: Who remembers 1970s flip-it cartoon books?

Flip books — with their illustrations that change slightly from one page to the next and thus appear to be in motion when "flipped through" rapidly — have a long history that arguably dates back to the 15th century.

For some of my generation, our introduction to flip books was with the pocket-sized books of the 1970s that featured cartoon characters spanning Walt Disney, Looney Tunes, Woody Woodpecker, etc. The books measured about 3.5 inches by 5 inches, and, while all of them had illustrated tales, many of them had the additional novelty of a flip-it story in the upper-right corner that you could thumb through. 

There's this book, for example, The Lost Road Runner Mine, which is credited to Carl Fallberg and was published by Western Publishing Company in 1974 as a Merrigold Press Big Little Book

Fallberg (1915-1996) was a longtime writer/cartoonist, so I'm guessing he's the illustrator of this volume. The story itself is odd, as it gives names and dialogue to Road Runner and his offspring. There's also a villain called Grumbley. Realistically, it's noted that the cactus-filled desert is "only 120 degrees" in the shade. I can vouch for that now. Sigh.

There are a lot of Big Little Books with flip-it cartoons on eBay these days, typically selling for only a few bucks apiece. I'll put this one into a Little Free Library; hopefully someone from Generation Alpha discovers it and is delighted and intrigued. But I wanted to blog about it here first, before downsizing it as part of my Resimplify Me efforts, which have been going well.

What are you memories of flip-it books? Have you kept any favorites on your shelves all these years? Please comment below!

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

From the readers: Jim Lewin, Hatchy Milatchy, Lakeview Gusher and more

Well, I had my gall bladder removed yesterday, so I'm taking it easy and handing off today's post to Papergreat's awesome commenters. Thank you so much for everything you contribute!

RIP Jim Lewin: a wonderful bookseller, writer and human being: Joe writes: "Jim was one of the nicest guys you'll ever find. I loved and miss going to York (Pennsylvania) and stopping at the Emporium to see what new treasures I could find and say hi to Jim. Only knock on him was he was a Bills fan, but he didn't treat me any worse for being a Jets fan. RIP Jim!"

I'm bummed that Jim's beloved Bills didn't finally beat the Chiefs and get to the Super Bowl on Sunday. Perhaps the Eagles can somewhat avenge Buffalo and get the job done against the Chiefs on Feb. 9.

Have a very Fritos Thanksgiving: Anonymous writes: "We have had our stuffing like this for all my years of life (41). My grandma has always made it like this since before 1948 when she married my grandpa. It’s delicious. However we toast the bread, and no apples and no baking powder but everything else is exact. And we drizzle some of the turkey juices over the top (basting) as it bakes. It’s DEVINE!!!!"

Note: The original recipe that I blogged about didn't contain apples or baking powder.

WNEP-TV staff from 1975, including Miss Judy: Anonymous writes: “I remember when I used to watch Hatchy Milatchy with Miss Judy back when I was growing up. Those were the good old days and — take it from this streetwise man — those were good times. Believe me they were good times."

Revisiting the Lakeview Gusher: Dan Brekke writes: "Chris: You posted this five-plus years ago, but it somehow escaped my notice. Thanks again for helping me with the images, and also for the kind words regarding the piece I wrote."

You're very welcome!

Cheerful Card Company can help you earn extra money for the holidays:
 Two more great and appreciated comments on one of the most popular Papergreat posts of all time:

Anonymous #1 writes: "I recently became curious about what ever happened to the Cheerful Card Company, so I looked online and stumbled on this site. I've really enjoyed reading this page. I sold Cheerful cards and other products from their catalog briefly when I was about 12 or 13 years old in the early 60s in Chicago. I quickly figured out that I could make bigger profits by dealing with a local wholesaler (perhaps manufacturer, I'm not sure) called Elmcraft, which I found in the yellow pages, located a few miles from my home. I drove there on my bicycle and found that they had a showroom filled with cards and other products, including boxes of closeouts or marked down cards that I was able to buy for much less than the prices from Cheerful, resulting in bigger profits. I didn't last long; lost interest in it, and I don't really recall why. Until sometime during college, I actually thought I'd have a career in marketing, perhaps sales. As an adult, I am not the least bit entrepreneurial and I hate trying to sell anything to anyone. Nevertheless, I look back fondly on that experience as one of the steps in my personal development that made me who I am today. I'm guessing that many of the people who sold those Cheerful products benefited from the experience far beyond any money that they made."

Anonymous #2 writes: "OMG — this page is a gem! I‘m sitting here in Austria in 2024 reading digitalised comics from the 1960s and found the advertisement of Cheerful Card Company and wondered if I could find anything about them on the internet! And here we are!
So nice to read all the memories of the people who were selling these cards!"

I love that the internet, for now at least, remains a place where great memories like these can live on and be shared.

Straight Arrow Injun-uity card from Nabisco Shredded Wheat: Anonymous writes: "I will always remember visiting my grandfather, who ate 'Hay Bales' for breakfast, and saving the Indian lore card dividers which my cousin and I fought over. We tried to get the full set."

1909 Christmas postcard mailed from Auburn, New York:  Anonymous writes: "I have a stamp collection that I believe is the best single stamp collection in existence. I think I'm ready to let it go. Can anyone help?"

We are intrigued and I'm sure there are many folks out there who would like to help. But you didn't leave any contact information!

Mystery bookstore in Lancaster: Greg's Book Mart: Anonymous writes: "If this is the store I'm thinking of, they sold used books and also crystals and other occult items. They were at the end of that shopping center on Columbia Avenue, next to where the old McDonald's used to be."

The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle: Mark West writes: "I've been a big fan of the series since 1978 (when I was 9) and discovered a hardback of The Secret Of Skeleton Island during a wet playtime at school (I'm in the UK). Loved them ever since and I re-read at least six of the titles a year."

Today I learned that "wet playtime" is what they call it in the United Kingdom when rain cancels playground recess. Over here, we just called it "indoor recess" during grade school. By the way, Mark wrote a fabulous blog (years ago) about The Three Investigators. Please check it out!

A groovy response from the CEO of Whirley-DrinkWorks!
 Anonymous writes: "Great blog you have here. I live in Canada. We used to have Husky gas stations and they had the dashboard mugs. I just purchased one on eBay. Do you know if these are safe to drink hot coffee from? Just wondering about the chemicals and whatnot, since these were made before everyone was concerned about plastic. Thanks."

I do not know about the modern safety of these older plastic cups. That is far, far from my field of expertise. It's a good question. I recommend seeking out quality sources in the scientific field or within your relevant federal government department. It's a good thing you're in Canada, because in the U.S. this type of vital information may become harder and harder to find, the way things are going.


Sunday, January 26, 2025

Memories of the 1980s Jerrold cable boxes

I reposted this Bluesky post earlier this month because it was quite the blast from the past. As I noted, we had one (maybe two) of these in the house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford, where I lived in the late 1980s. (It was my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, my younger sister and me under one roof for a while. Plus Cyrano the cat.)

This was the cable TV box issue by Philadelphia-based Jerrold.1 It typically sat on top of the television (back when televisions were large and had tops, kids). You could access any of three dozen cable channels by adjusting the switch on the far left to top, middle or bottom, and then clicking one of the channel buttons. The dial on the right was a fine-tuner.

Typically, you'd have a printed list of channels somewhere by the box, so that you could decide which channel to watch. Some boxes had a label across the top or bottom showing the channel options. There were remote controls at this time, but not everyone had them. Many cable boxes still required you to get off the couch, walk to the TV and pick a new channel. Surfing was more exercise then.

Here are some memories of Jerrold cable boxes that I've curated from across the internet:
  • "I can hear the click just looking at this photo"
  • "37 channels! Ridiculous, who would ever need that many?"
  • "My uncle had one and I thought he was rich"
  • "That magic box brought 10-year-old me MTV. That's 1986 MTV when it meant something. We had two radio stations in my area and three of them were county music stations. But, now I have access to all the music they had in Denver and LA. From Huey Lewis to Ozzy to Run DMC. Plus Martha Quinn and that guy with the hair."
  • "It’s often what set us apart: The kids who watched Fraggle Rock and those who couldn’t."
  • "My parents had a remote for theirs. It was called me."
  • "I was recently looking through old family albums and came across a pic of my grandfather commandeering that box like it held the nuclear codes. But hey - his command led me to a lifelong love of nature shows and Jeopardy!"

And here's a screenshot from a 2010 post on The Atlee Willis Museum of Kitsch.

There are also lots of memories about the, ahem, shenanigans you could get into with the Jerrold boxes and attempting to access premium cable channels:
  • "Thing about that Jerrold cable box was that there was a PROM chip on the bottom that the cable company could program so that it would scramble the premium channels you weren't paying for. But you could erase the PROM by shorting its pins to ground. With some care, and a long hat pin, you could stick the pin through a hole in the bottom plate and fish around until something sparked. And just keep doing it until you got all the channels."
  • "If you pressed 18 all the way and 16 half way you can see HBO unscrambled."
  • "If I put the channel switch knob between 20 & 32 I got free HBO for years"
  • "Trying to switch it to the scrambled Playboy channel so that you might catch a shot of a boob, though it was green and purple and slanting sideways from the scrambling?"
  • "My grandmother had one of these and one of my uncles (hacked) it with a folded playing card somehow."
Footnote
1. For more on Jerrold, check out this 2024 Retroist article.

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Saturday's postcard: Tuning out the world in November 1962

This postcard was sent from Chicago to York, Pennsylvania, and postmarked on November 9, 1962. The Plastichrome card highlights the George Williams College Camp in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, with the caption stating "Toboganning is one of the most popular of the winter sports at George Williams College Camp on beautiful Lake Geneva."

The cursive note on the back of the card states:
"This is a beautiful and peaceful spot. I haven't read a newspaper nor heard a radio nor seen TV since Monday. See you Sunday."
Getting away from the world, especially in stressful times, is a privilege that not everyone has. But it's not hard to see why someone might have wanted a break at this particular moment. For context, this was just days after the conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when fears of imminent global nuclear war were at their absolute peak.

Other news in early November 1962 included space race and nuclear testing machinations between the United States and Soviet Union, unrest in the Middle East, the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, and the death of Eleanor Roosevelt. 

But, mostly, you can understand why someone might have wanted a vacation from the news in early November 1962, following the unfathomable tension of those 13 days in October.

Here's hoping we don't have a similar showdown with ... checks notes ... Denmark or Panama later this year.
Related posts

Friday, January 24, 2025

Postcard: Addison, Pennsylvania, a chicken, a mystery and french pickles

Here's a postcard of modest West Main Street in Addison, Pennsylvania, that's postmarked September 1913. I first wrote about Addison in 2020, and I think I have at least one more old postcard of the tiny borough somewhere. Maybe I'll get to that one in 2030, but (way) sooner would be nice! I do love old Pennsylvania postcards. Especially those that were mailed.

Zooming in a bit on West Main Street, it appears that the traffic consists of a man and a chicken. 
This postcard was mailed to Miss Mary J. Augustine of Stauffer, Pennsylvania. Or is it Stouffer? This one is a mystery, because I'm not seeing Stauffer/Stouffer on any list of historical Pennsylvania place names or unincorporated communities. The closest I could initially guess is that it's Stoufferstown, in Franklin County, which is named after Abraham Stouffer. But that didn't seem like a great fit. So I did a little more sleuthing.

Mary J. Augustine appears to have lived in Addison at some point, before moving away to the mystery location. This postcard was sent to Mary in care of William Bliss. I found the following in the digitized text of the November 10, 1904, edition of the Mount Pleasant Journal: "A broken front axle compelled William Bliss, of near Stauffer, to leave his buggy on South Church street Saturday evening." The Mount Pleasant Journal was a publication in Westmoreland County. So Stauffer's somewhere in that county, though it's no longer a place anyone refers to by that name, it seems.

The cursive message on the card states:
Read your card was glad to hear you was better [Can't deciper] still alright I canned more tomatoes today have 27 qt now have beans nearly all picked & french pickles made have not hear from Dr. today [Can't decipher]
According to Wikipedia, "Cornichons, or baby pickles, are tart French pickles made from gherkins pickled in vinegar and tarragon." So that's a thing I learned today.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Snoopy (a Peanuts book)


Snoopy is one of the very first books I remember having on my childhood bedroom bookshelf. It was this book, though not this exact copy. This is a replacement copy I picked up after having nostalgia pangs and realizing I should never have divested myself of the original copy. 

I had this book at least as early as 1978, when we were living in Clayton, New Jersey. It's very possible I got the original copy at a book fair or from one of those classroom order forms. That would make sense, given that this was a Weekly Reader Books publication.

Snoopy was first published in 1958. It must have remained quite popular and gone through many printings over the years and decades. This Holt, Reinhart and Winston/Weekly Reader Books edition doesn't have a specific publication date on the copyright page, but there's a 10-digit ISBN listed. I believe that means this hardcover edition must have been published in 1970 or thereafter. 

As the cover portends, this book is devoted solely to four-panel Peanuts cartoons from the 1950s that feature Snoopy, Charlie Brown's beloved dog.

Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts launched as a newspaper comic strip in 1950, so the iconic characters were still in their formative stages during that first decade. And some hadn't even arrived yet.

As Ewomack notes in a 2018 review on Amazon, in this book we get to see "Snoopy thinking, running, needing a toe clipping, doing tricks, rolling his empty water dish, chasing snowflakes, stealing blankets, frolicking, dancing on pianos, running from weeds, calling children 'idiots,' doing imitations, avoiding worms on the sidewalk, sitting on croquet poles, confusing leaves for potato chips and bumping into things. Snoopy represented a form of comic liberation for readers. He often did whatever he wanted to and pretty much always got away with it. He also provided a canine perspective on human activity, a skewed lens through which we could evaluate our own often silly behavior."

The readers and Snoopy also get to witness a pretty amazing moment, if you're familiar with Charlie Brown's fortunes kicking the football. Lucy had already established herself as Charlie Brown's football-holding nemesis in the early 1950s, so maybe Charlie Brown should have just stuck with Schroeder.
As a copy editor, the thing I'm most appreciative about with regard to Snoopy is the "I Before E Except After C" song from the 1969 Peanuts film A Boy Named Charlie Brown. That has helped me with many spelling double-checks over the years. 

Peanuts is a Linus-comfort-blanket of a comic strip for many Boomers and members of Generation X, such as myself. It would be nice to have a digital-free weekend getaway to a cabin in the woods and take along one of those hefty The Complete Peanuts hardcovers, perhaps encompassing the strips of the early or mid 1960s.

But for now I'm just fine with my little Snoopy hardcover.
Fiona Fluffington is bored by Snoopy. This week I learned that she really likes grated parmesan on her food. 
Her other names are IceBear and Mademoiselle Fifi (taken from the Simone Simon film).