Saturday's postcard: The Penn Restaurant in Warren, Pennsylvania

This is an undated mid-century postcard for The Penn Restaurant on Route 6 in Warren, Pennsylvania. There's a message on the postcard, but no stamp or postcard, so perhaps it was hand-delivered or sent in an envelope.

The Penn Restaurant is no longer around and I can't find much history about it online. But there's a mention in a 2022 article by Brian Ferry in the Times Observer of Warren. The relevant excerpt:

Stephanie Proukou wants to bring back a taste of home.

She has a lot to choose from.

“At one point there were like seven restaurants in town and my family owned four of them,” Proukou said. “The Lazy Susan was my grandfather’s. My grandmother had the Penn Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. My cousins, the Spiridons, had Blue Manor. And then my dad had the Warren Sub Shop.”

Before moving back to Warren recently, Proukou had been away for decades, but people remember her family’s food. One dish stands out — Teddy’s Steak Sub.

“Every time I came back to Warren, everybody would say, ‘I’ve never had a steak sub like your dad’s steak sub,” she said. 

It's possible (likely?) that The Penn Restaurant has been closed for decades. But if anyone has any memories or information about it, please share them in the comments.

The message on the back is colorful. And it's written to the "Plant Wive Chief's" of Mercer Street in New Castle, Pennsylvania:

"Hiya Good Girls. Here is where we chow up. Try and send you a card from Jamestown New York.

Roman Gypsys.

Joe & [can't decipher]"

Someone also wrote, in pencil, "No Beer" and "Arrow shows where we sit."

There are stories behind the back of this card. And we'll never know them. Sigh.

Other Warren-related posts

• Obscure nostalgia: 1970s plastic mugs from Whirley Industries
• A groovy response from the CEO of Whirley-DrinkWorks!
• Postcard: Mixing Christmas thanks and an oil fire in Warren County, Pa.
• They don't make high schools like this anymore

My 20 favorite first-time watches of 2024

I'm not sure they had a good grasp on how best to market Black Narcissus back in the day.

I watched just under 100 films in 2024, most of them with Ashar. Movies from just about every decade and several different countries. About 10 were watched with the crowd at Terror Trader's Spook-o-Rama nights in Tempe. Following on the heels of the 2022 and 2023 lists, here are my 20 favorite first-time watches from 2024, listed chronologically by year of release:

• The Black Cat (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer)
• Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937, Sadao Yamanaka)
• The Body Snatcher (1945, Robert Wise)
• Dragonwyck (1946, Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
• Black Narcissus (1947, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
• The White Reindeer (1952, Erik Blomberg)
• Love Letter (1953, Kinuyo Tanaka)
• Godzilla (1954 Japanese original version, Ishirō Honda)
• The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)
• Cash on Demand (1961, Quentin Lawrence)¹
• Night Creatures (1962, Peter Graham Scott)²
• Kill, Baby, Kill (1966, Mario Bava)
• The Swimmer (1968, Frank Perry)
• The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (1968, Noriaki Yuasa)
• Kelly's Heroes (1970, Brian G. Hutton)³
• The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy)
• The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974, Jorge Grau)⁴
• The Holdovers (2023, Alexander Payne)
• Past Lives (2023, Celine Song) 
• I Saw the TV Glow (2024, Jane Schoenbrun)

High honorable mention: Roma (2018), The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), Vampyr (1932)

Honorable mention: Midsommar, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Rasputin the Mad Monk, Late Night with the Devil, IF (2024), Paper Man (2009), Deadpool & Wolverine, The Descent⁵, Mystery Train, Tower of London (1939), Shock (1946), And Now the Screaming Starts!

Best movie that I did not vibe with at all: Asteroid City

Best sequel that was surprisingly fun: House II: The Second Story

Most laughed-at for its awfulness: Burial Ground (1981)⁶

Biggest letdowns: Infra-Man, The Keep, The Fog (1980), Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Master of the World 

Best made-for-TV movies: Pray for the Wildcats⁷, The Night Stalker

Best TV mini-series: The Fall of the House of Usher

Best rewatches: Fargo, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, L.A. Confidential, Man on the Moon, Wonder Boys, Malice, Psycho, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Carrie, Jaws, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Capote, Chungking Express, American Movie (1999 documentary), The Lost Boys, Johnny Dangerously, Cabin in the Woods, Foul Play, Do the Right Thing, The Shining

Footnotes

1. A new Christmas classic for the list. I mentioned last month we were going to try to watch this, and we did.

2. Original UK title: Captain Clegg

3. This was our Donald Sutherland memorial film

4. When I was growing up, this was usually Let Sleeping Corpses Lie in the TV listings. It has had many other titles, including Zombi 3, Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue and Don't Open the Window.

5. This was the most uncomfortable watch of the year. Claustrophobic, dark, unrelenting and completely without cathartic moments. I praise it on technical merits, but I cannot say I enjoyed it.

6. "Mother, this cloth. It smells of death!"

7. What more could you want? It has Andy Griffith, William Shatner, Robert Reed and Marjoe Gortner.

Book cover: "The Sheep Look Up"

As 2025 gets off to an unsurprising, catastrophic and gut-wrenching start with the southern California wildfires, it's appropriate to go with something somber and dystopian for the first featured vintage book of the year.

• Title: The Sheep Look Up
• Author: John Brunner (1934-1995)
• Cover design: Mark Rubin and Irving Freeman of Plum Studio. Read a little more about the cover on this 2016 post on Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. 
• Publisher: Ballantine Books 
• Format: Paperback
• Year: This is the November 1973 first paperback printing. The novel was first published in 1972.
• Cover price: $1.65 (equivalent of about $11.50 today)
• Pages: 461
• Dedication: "To Isobel Grace Sauer (née Rosamond) 1887-1970 In Memoriam"
• 
  Chapter titles: The novel is broken into 12 months, starting in December and ending in November. Each month has numerous short chapter titles.
• Epigraph: "PLEASE HELP KEEP PIER CLEAN THROW REFUSE OVERSIDE" — Sign pictured in God's Own Junkyard, edited by Peter Blake
• First sentences: Hunted? By wild animals? In broad daylight on the Santa Monica freeway? Mad! Mad!
• Last sentences: "The brigade would have a long way to go," the doctor told her curtly. "It's from America. The wind's blowing that way."
• Random excerpt from the middle #1: But if it was the simple life they were after, how come they used electricity? It was all very well to say it was clean power and be generated from waterfalls and tides. The fact stood: It hadn't been.
• Random excerpt from the middle #2: Naval commander: This is an emergency announcement from the Department of Defense, Navy. Hear this, hear this, all personnel currently on shore leave in the following states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, California. Report at once to the nearest Army or Air Force base or National Guard headquarters and place yourselves at the disposal of the commanding officer. Your assistance is required in quelling civil disorder. That is all.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.91 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt #1: In 2020, Susan Budd, author of the highly recommended novella Felicity, wrote: "Why are all the dystopian novels I read in my teens coming true? I have to keep reminding myself that this is science fiction from the 70s, not real life here and now. ... When I first read The Sheep Look Up, I enjoyed it as I did most science-fiction — as a work of pure imagination. I didn’t see that Brunner’s dark vision of the future was a prophecy that I would see fulfilled. I was too young and unaware. ... Believe it or not, this book was the assigned reading in a high school English class I took back in the late 70s. Coolest teacher ever!"
• Goodreads review excerpt #2: In 2021, Bradley wrote: "The darkness in these pages should have made everyone in the '70s perk up and pay attention. We ignored all the warnings, however, and here we are. Again. And now we live in John Brunner's novel."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.2 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt #1: In 2017, G wrote: "Plot-wise this is a bit dated, because the book has a massive focus on pollution, which some countries are in the process of correcting. You can look at this another way, though: what if the world didn't uncover the concept of 'green energy'? This is a good book in that sense. Lots of interesting thoughts and visuals. The main problem is that it's a tough read. It's disjointed with its scenes and characters, reading more like a short story collection than a true novel. There are also poems and fake commercials scattered throughout, along with ultra-short pieces (character interviews, conversations, quick events, and so on). So this is a good book to read, but I'm not sure I'd call it easy to get into."
• Amazon review excerpt #2: In 2019, Dena from Australia wrote: "Written in 1972, the dystopian world depicted in this book was remarkedly prescient. Readers can relate to many of the circumstances, ranging from the inability to develop effective antibiotics, to the deliberate poisoning of the environment to pursue maxi profts. While we have made a little progress in mitigating the worst aspects of predator capitalism, the ascendance to power of politicians such as Trump and his local and global equivalents threatens the survival of our world in much of the same way as depicted in the book."
• A few blog posts about the book: Gaping Blackbird, Salon Futura, Kate of Mind, and Mirabile Dictu. 

Related Papergreat posts

• Sci-fi book cover: "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang"
• Surviving on Spaceship Earth
• The optimism of 45 years ago: "Doomsday Has Been Cancelled"
• Book cover: "Moment in the Sun"
• 1974 Scholastic book: "Captain Ecology, Pollution-Fighter"
• "The Monster Maker": A sci-fi film about pollution that didn't get made
• Postcrossing message of peace from Kazakhstan to Germany*

*-I'm no longer as optimistic as I expressed in this 2016 post.

We haven't had meaningful rain in Florence since roughly Labor Day.

Saturday's postcard of a long-ago motel in North Miami

Motel Rotunda — or is it Rotunda Motel, as printed on the back? — looks like it would have been a swell stopping spot for weary travelers. Perhaps for a family that had just spent a long day driving south, south and further south down the length of Florida, toward the tip. Or an exhausted door-to-door Bible salesman.

As this postcard, snapped by photographer Dick Deutsch and published by Pan American Publishing Corp., details, the motel was centrally located to area attractions, had color TV and featured a "delightful" recreation room. 

I can't find much about the motel's history, though. And it's long gone, like so many other roadside motels that once dotted America. Postcards are about all we have to document its history, and that it even once existed. Without these images, the structure might fade entirely from memory and history, like David Hemmings at the end of Blow-Up.

The caption on a different postcard indicates that the motel was completed in December 1950 and that other amenities touted included tile showers and bath, and free ice cubes in the sitting lounge. The owner at that point was an M. Lanzalotti. And a Florida archives postcard has Jesse N. Koehler as owner and manager.

Today, a peek at Google Maps finds that the former location of Motel Rotunda is an intersection with six or seven lanes of traffic in all directions. Businesses there include Walgreens, Five Below, Denny's, Jivana Nails & Spa, a BP gas station, Vitamin Shoppe and LA Fitness. They will all be ephemeral, too.

Is Motel Rotunda too long gone for anyone to have memories of working there or staying there overnight? It would be great to know more and record it for posterity.

Snapshots at the start of 2025

Tiny book: "Instantaneous Personal Magnetism Debunked"

Happy New Year! Big Boi welcomes 2025 with this tiny book. It's so small he could probably open it with his paws and read it himself while lounging on the couch. But, like me, he'd probably fall asleep after a page and a half.

The staplebound Instantaneous Personal Magnetism Debunked is 3½ inches by 5 inches and 32 pages. It is one of the hundreds of millions of pocket-sized Little Blue Books published between 1919 and 1978 by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company. This one, No. 1395, indicates that it was edited by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) himself. (Side note: I've been planning a Haldeman-Julius post since Papergreat's launch, and one of his books can be seen in the lower right of the photo in this blog's very first post. I still plan to get to it someday.)

Instantaneous Personal Magnetism Debunked, by Ben Moore, was copyrighted in 1929. It's an essay that dissects and debunks a popular book of the time: Instantaneous Personal Magnetism, which was written by Albert Webster Edgerly (1852-1926) under the pseudonym Edmund Shaftesbury and published by Ralston University Press. Outside of his "self-help" books, Edgerly advocated some truly horrifying ideas that I will not repeat here.

It's nice to see that Edgerly/Shaftesbury was debunked and ridiculed by some of his contemporaries. Here are some passages from Moore's little book:

• "To an unmagnetic personality such as my own the inducement was irresistible. I signed the coupon in the corner of the page, and in due time received the volume."
• "The new light which is shed by the author on many of the hitherto perplexing problems of psychology, biology, physics and other sciences, is little less than amazing. For example, it has long been erroneously thought that to be devoured by a wild animal is a process causing more or less discomfort to the devouree. This idea is disspelled by Shaftesbury in a few well-chosen words: 'Life dies most happily and most easily in the clutches of other life. The bird that must end its days in the slow process of old age suffers many a month of torture waiting for the end; but in the jaws of the cat or the fangs of the snake it finds a pleasurable release from the agonies of living; an enjoyment that is participated in by the victim as much as by the devourer.'"
• "The extraordinary faculty of Shaftesbury for assembling accurate statistics is indicated by the following note on divorce: 'Where two persons are drawn to each other by the power of magnetism, they never separate, and there has never been a divorce in any such case.'"

Moore's debunking essay is one of several wedged into this small booklet. The others, on the same general topic of charlatans and shady sales techniques, are by Cloyd Hampton Valentine, Marc T. Greene and Ballard Brown. This passage by Valentine remains painfully relevant a century later: "Yes, there is no doubt at all that Americans, on the whole, are a trustful folk, not readily regarding with suspicion any person or thing, surprisingly prone to believe what they are told, if the telling carries the least degree of conviction, and to believe what they read, too, if only the subject is set forth in large type an in sufficiently forceful language."

***

With this post, Papergreat has now published posts in 16 consecutive calendar years.

I resolve not to support AI "art" again after this apocalyptic post

Admitting up front that this post is hypocritical, my resolution for 2025 is to cease all use and support of AI-created "art" in 2025 and, overall, to greatly reduce my reliance on AI. Illustrations created by AI lead to the loss of human creativity; constitute the theft of intellectual property; financially harm human artists; accommodate the spread of misinformation and propaganda; and are a massive drain on the power grid, contributing to environmental harm and global heating. 

AI sucks. Of course, a lot of things suck right now. And these AI images generated while I was selfishly messing around earlier this year pretty much sum up the state of things headed into 2025.

Rest in peace, President James Earl "Jimmy" Carter Jr.

This is my only postcard of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died today at age 100. The postcard was published by Coral-Lee¹ and the caption on the back states:

"President and Mrs. Carter "take the wheel" of the U.S.S. Eisenhower during the president's inspection of the U.S. naval vessel. In the early 1950's Jimmy Carter served in the Navy and has often proudly related his experiences. Winston-Salem, N.C., March, 1978"

The man behind President Carter, I'm 99% sure, is Vice Admiral William E. Ramsey (1931-2018), who was the first commanding officer of the Eisenhower, a nuclear-powered Nimitz class aircraft carrier.

Here's an excerpt from the remarks President Carter made on March 17, 1978, upon visiting the Eisenhower: "As President of the United States and as Commander in Chief, I've had a chance today to be reassured that our Nation is strong, that that strength is being used to preserve peace around the world, and that the destiny of our country rests on the shoulders of strong men like yourselves, who exemplify superb service and courage in one of the great ships of the greatest navy in the greatest country on Earth."

Carter, by the way, is the only president to have earned the Submarine Warfare insignia, known as the "Dolphins" badge.

He and his wife Rosalynn (who died in November 2023) lived modestly after his one-term presidency ended in January 1981. As The Washington Post notes: "Mr. Carter declined the corporate board memberships and lucrative speaking engagements that have made other ex-presidents tens of millions of dollars. He said in the 2018 interview that he didn’t want to 'capitalize financially on being in the White House.'² ... For decades, the Carters spent a week a year building homes with Habitat for Humanity, the Georgia-based nonprofit organization that constructs housing for low-income people. Wearing their own tool belts, they helped build or renovate about 4,300 homes in 14 countries."

That's a damn fine legacy.

Carter is the first president I remember. He took office in early 1977, when I was 6 years old, and I recall lots of conversation about how interesting it was that a kid (the Carters' daughter Amy) lived in the White House. Once 1980 rolled around, I was well aware of the Iran hostage crisis and the intense news coverage, which included a running counter of the total days the hostages had been held. But I certainly didn't grasp the politics behind the situation.

It wasn't until many years later that I had a deeper understanding of Carter's legacy, of his successes and mistakes, and how his loss in the 1980 presidential election greatly shaped the world we live in today. 

Footnotes

1. Coral-Lee was the nickname and business name of Coralie Sparre, a teacher and avid postcard collector who got into postcard publishing when she retired. As this 2021 article by Bill Burton on Postcard History notes: "She decided that there was a need for postcards that documented the contemporary world. Her first project was a series of cards on the Presidential administration of Jimmy Carter, who had just been elected. Her first project became a 12-card set, but by the time President Carter left office she had published 72 cards. She assembled all of them into an album that she personally presented to Carter in late January 1981 in the Oval Office."

2. Ahem.