Snapshot & memories: Down the shore

I'm estimating that this photo is from 1978 or 1979. My sister Adriane and I are at the Stone Harbor, New Jersey, beach house of our friends from Delaware County, the Mancills. We look very spiffy in our matching sweaters, which tell us that this wasn't taken in the middle of the summer. I don't know if I can say anything nice about either of our pants, though.

I have three specific down-the-shore memories that involve crabs:

1. When I was very young and at the beach, I would dig holes all afternoon and be fascinated by the sand crabs (aka mole crabs) that I uncovered. They were about the size of marbles and quite harmless; I remember they'd tickle your hands if you let them squiggle through.

2. The Mancills' house was along a large inlet and you could lower crab traps off the backyard retaining wall during high tide. We'd catch all sorts of things, not just crabs. Definitely a few flounder. And I think a starfish or two, though my memory is hazier on that. One time we caught a small "regular" crab and it escaped the trap when we brought it up and started to scamper along the ground. I got too close and its claw grabbed my finger, which caused a mini meltdown on my part. Mom loved telling that story.

3. But the major meltdown on my part came the first time we pulled up the trap and there was a horseshoe crab inside. I was not prepared. I had never heard of horseshoe crabs. I had never seen a horseshoe crab. And then suddenly this thing with no face and a spike protruding from the back was in the cage. I screamed and cried, leading to me getting teased about the incident for decades thereafter, even long after I learned what amazing and harmless creatures they truly are. 

Other snapshots and memories          

• Adorable little me on Mulberry Street
• Kitchen at Willow Street house in Montoursville
• Me and Pop-Pop in the kitchen
• Commodore 64 corner
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Me & Cyrano
• Me in a Star Trek shirt
• All kids do these days is play video games
• Posing with a Saturn V in 1982
• The Phillies are hot, and so was I
• Relocated fire engine in Montoursville
• Family outfits of 1972
• Our little bookstore
• Well-dressed for first day of nursery school
• At the Penn State computer lab

Monetizing liberty (1911 postcard)

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — sure.

But the most truly American thing of all is the pursuit of making a buck.

This looks like a nice postcard that's patriotically highlighting the Liberty Bell, one of the foremost symbols of the United States' struggle for independence. Upon closer examination, the text of the front of the card states: 

"Proclaimed liberty throughout the world. The ENTERPRISE Meat and Food Chopper proclaimed to housewives liberty from the old fashing chopping bowl."

It's an advertisement, y'all. The postcard was published by Souvenir Post Card Company and printed in New York. This one was postmarked on October 24, 1911 — 115 years ago, a few years before World War I — and mailed to Mr. William Bixler of Lickdale, Pennsylvania with a one-cent Benjamin Franklin stamp. Maybe William was considering buying an Enterprise Meat and Food Chopper for his wife as a Christmas present. You know, to give his wife the gift of some "liberty."

The text on the back states:

"There will be a greater profit from pork products this Fall than from hogs on the hoof. Equip now with an ENTERPRISE Sausage Stuffer and Lard Press. Longest service — more profitable all the time. Air cannot enter the casing. 

"Enterprise Meat and Food Chopper. Retains all the juices, because it does not mangle the material, but cuts like shears. Come in and let us show them to you.

"George Krause Hdwe. Co.

Lebanon, Pa."

Having outlived their use to capitalism, Enterprise's choppers and grinders and stuffers are now just offered on the resale market as antiques. Well, I guess that's capitalism, too. Folks trying to make a buck off pieces of the past. Maybe the Liberty Bell will end up in an auction some day, too. (Don't mind me, I'm just grumpy as I write this.)

Arizona's bicentennial meteor crater

While we're slouching toward the next month's semiquincentennial — 45.5% of respondents to an LNP | LancasterOnline poll said they were "indifferent" to America's 250th birthday as it undergoes what is arguably a slow civil war — the celebrations of the United States' bicentennial were much more robust in 1976. 

For example, Arizona's famous Meteor Crater had its own bicentennial-branded postcard 50 years ago. 

Published by Petley Studios¹ of Phoenix, printed by Dexter Press and with a photograph courtesy of American Airlines, the back of the postcard has a somewhat amusing caption:

"The world's best-preserved impact-collision crater pocks the earth about six miles south of U.S. No. 66 between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona. Energies released to form this crater (sixty stories deep and 4,150 feet in diameter) were greater than our nuclear blasts. Diamonds were formed instantly, limestone was popped like popcorn, and iron meteorite was vaporized."

Footnote

1. Anne L'Ecuyer's blog The Posted Past ("We trade loneliness for connection, one postcard at a time") has an excellent, detailed post about the history of Petley Studios. It begins: "Bob Petley launched Petley Studios in 1945 with twelve comic postcards. Then, he spent the next four decades photographing the mid-century Southwest from behind a windshield."

Related posts

• Hoping to see UFOs for 1976 bicentennial Independence Day
• Some Phillies Fever from the Bicentennial summer of 1976