As usual, here is my favorite all time Publix commercial. I post it every year at this time.
This commercial ran for a few years from 1987 to 1996 and every time it came on, I would stop what I was doing and watch. It’s part of my Christmas memories of my youth and it’s just one of those things – a song, just like a smell, that brings you back to another time.
The music in Last Train Home is from Still Life Talkingan album by Pat Metheny Group, released in 1987.
To this day, when Pat Metheny is performing, he’ll refer to the song as, “The Publix song.”
The Cracker Jacks aren’t really the original, even though it says it on the bag. They don’t taste the same and there were barely any peanuts in the bag, which are my favorite part. I dumped them in a bowl and there were literally two peanuts in the whole package. Shrinkflation I guess. The box is more fun anway.
The prize inside the Cracker Jacks was some sort of small piece of paper. I don’t even know what it was, I threw it out. They didn’t taste like the original to me, but what do I know, the last time I had Cracker Jacks was when I was maybe 12-years-old.
The Devil Dogs seem to be regular size. If the shrank after all these years, it’s hard to tell. So many of the Drakes and other brands have shrunk the items. Like Yankee Doodles cupcakes are the size of cookies now. Unless I was so small at the time I’m remembering them being larger, but I don’t think so.
You know what I would love to find? These Nabisco chocolate cookies. I remember when I was very young we always had boxes of these in the house. We would get a box each to eat. I remember mashing them up in milk and eating them, which seems a bit disgusting now.
We only had the chocolate, I don’t remember every having the vanilla ones. But just looking at the box brings back the smell and taste instantly.
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If you swipe back and forth on this image, you can see the two options for today’s cartoon.
The stovepipe hat won out in the end. Not just for Abraham Lincoln, but for the cartoon. At the last minute, I changed from the “caught dead” cartoon to the “more formal” one.
I saw a picture of Lincoln the other day and thought, I would love to draw Lincoln. It was the stovepipe hat which drew my attention, and in the end, the hat, which is the star, never made it to the drawing board. At first I thought of funny ideas for the stovepipe hat but the red beanie won out.
I thought it would look funny to put a red woolen hat on him and the cartoons emerged from there. The “over my dead body,” was dark and I’m glad I changed the final cartoon to the fashion-based one.
I’m not sure why I keep calling it a stovepipe hat, rather than a top hat, but I guess in Lincoln’s era it was called a stovepipe hat. In the 1920s, it was called a top hat.
What’s even stranger about the hat is Lincoln here, in 1862, wearing the stovepipe hat on the battle field. It doesn’t seem like the type of thing to wear in a battlefield.
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Today is the first day of school in Miami-Dade County. The private schools started last week.
The reason I bring that up is because I started going through things in my old room at my parents house and I came upon so many things I had forgotten I had like these school newspapers.
For many years, I had a company that printed school newspapers among so many other things. I found all the newspapers I had saved that we printed – years and years worth of papers. I plan on giving them to the schools – a time capsule from the 1980s through the early 2000s.
I used to celebrate the start of school – I used to go to the beach on the first day – the beach was dead due to it being the first day of school – and I had the place to myself.
I was celebrating because business picked up again. My business was dead all summer. There were no school newspapers or other things to print since most of the work I did was seasonal. So I worked for nine months, but for those three summer months, there was no money or business coming in. But starting in the fall and particularly, the first day of school, business picked up again for the year.
It’s interesting going through the newspapers because most have the news of the world, not just school news. There are a lot of movie reviews from new movies of the time – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to the Future and things like that. The kids loved the movies, by the way. There is national news that the kids were interested in and it’s interesting to see their take on all that and how it played out at the time. Lots of pop culture made it into the newspapers – music, movies, tv – Madonna!
I loved those days. The work was easy and I was in schools around the county almost daily. I would go by to pick up the work and then deliver it after it was printed. I not only handled the newspapers, but we printed year book supplements, literary magazines, sports journals and so many other things. I loved being part of that as it kept me young being in the high schools and junior high schools which became middle schools some time in the middle of all that.
I taught the newspaper classes sometimes – meeting up with classes and explaining the process. I was friendly with most of the teachers and office staff.
The black and white newspapers started experimenting with full color and computers took over the schools and rather than my company doing the typesetting and paste-up, the kids did it all and handed the job in ready to print. So I was there at that interesting time of all the tech changes.
I drive by so many of the schools these days and it brings back so many memories as I drive by. It all comes flooding back.
Back then I had my run of the schools. Toward the end of my doing the newspapers after doing it for so many years, something sad happened. Metal detectors started appearing at the front doors and many of the entrances. I had to show my ID to enter and it was the end of those innocent time.
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I saw an image of the Lepage glue with the rubber top on Facebook and memories came flooding back. I remember using it as a child. Then I remember all of these glues – Elmer’s Glue, rubber cement and white paste, also by Lepage.
The glue with the rubber top had a slit in the top of the rubber and you would press down to let the glue out, it looked sort of like maple syrup, only thinner. The Elmer’s Glue we would put on our fingers, the white would turn clear as it dried, and then we peel it off. The rubber cement we made into small rubber balls and we played with them. I think we used rubber glue more than most of them other types of glues here.
And the White Paste. What I remember about the white paste is eating it. Yup, we would eat the white paste. I don’t know why and I don’t remember what it tastes like, but that was the thing to do when you were eight years old.
I remember one time in class, I was “tasting” the white paste and I heard a shriek from the teacher – it was a shriek like you would hear when someone sees a mouse. She looked at me and said, “You’re not eating the paste, are you?” And even at eight years old, I was a quick thinker – I told her, “No, I was smelling it.” A stupid answer but I guess I thought it was better to be smelling it than eating it.
I can almost picture the teacher in my head, but she wasn’t our regular teacher, she was either a substitute or a teacher’s aid, something like that. I suppose the regular teacher was used to us eating paste so it was nothing for her to be shocked over.
It’s amazing how seeing something or smelling something brings back so many memories.
I used to see a Facebook page where pictures of old toys and games were posted. There wasn’t any text, someone would just post a picture and the memoires would start flooding back, people would comment about their memories about the toy or game.
I guess my brothers and I were spoiled because I can’t remember seeing an old picture of something that we didn’t have. Every toy and game that was shown we seemed to have – Trouble, Skittle Pool, Clue, Monopoly, Flintstones things, Operation, Lite-Brite, Creepy Crawlers and even the Hasbro Frosty Snowman Machine, and lots of models – we used to make lots of plastic models and do puzzles.
I don’t know what happened to all these things, I guess my mother threw them out, but when I think of what they are worth now.
The interesting part is that my brothers and I must have shared everything no matter whose toy they were because I can’t remember who owned what. We must have kept everything in one place in the house and just picked and chose what we wanted to play with.
Now it’s all about electronics. Kids have so many electronics that one day will probably seem quaint to them.
Hasbro Frosty Sno-Man Sno-Cone Machine.
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Recently this old west cartoon was published regarding the Pony Express. By the way, the pony express only lasted 18 months – from April 1860 to October 1861. It went bankrupt in that short time, and by then the telegraph was being used which made it obsolete.
I like to do these “living the dream” cartoons once in awhile – it’s usually regarding something that was ultra modern back in the day and we laugh about now. I’ve done old tv sets that were new at the time – getting a whole three channels on a big 12 inch screen; and I’ve done cavemen all confused about the new fangled tech device called fire.
I often think of those times – 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, whatever. Even today, we think we are living in the most modern of times, but think of 100 years from now, how so many of the things we think are the highest of tech will be laughed at as being primative.
I may have goofed with this old west cartoon because people are joking about that being post office is today, only they really aren’t joking.
I ordered a book not long ago which was shipped from California on the same day I purchased it. It got to Florida exactly one month later. One month to the day.
There was a time during election time where I was selling a bunch of election stuff on etsy – a lot was selling, but I had to discontinue because the items which normally take 3 days or less in shipping time, were taking a month or more!
Some of the comments I got from readers regarding the this “living the dream/pony express cartoon,” are:
“It’s still 12 days, with all our automation and computers, only 163 years later.”
“Looks like we need to go back to the pony express.”
“Takes that long to mail something from one house to the neighbors now.”
“Some things never change!”
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This cartoon is all about those Victorian images we see where people are very serious in the photographs. It seems like every single image at that time was a serious thing.
I came across some images online the other day, where people were actually laughing and smiling in the old photos, and this cartoon came to mind – what if they were able to smile and the photographer just told them not to, like in the cartoon here?
Supposedly it took up to 15 minutes at the time for the shutter speed to work correctly and it was easier not to smile. Also, many people had only one, two or three photos taken during their whole lifetime and I guess it was a serious matter.
People also had their photos taken after they were dead – they were propped up with the living and that was a remembrance of a person who may not have had their photos ever taken when they were alive. I’m serious. Look here. It’s called, “Death Photography.”
The cartoon above was done two ways, a part black and white image of the subjects, to mimic the photo being taken and a full color cartoon. If you slide the thingy back and forth you can see what I mean.
Below are a few Victorian photos, some smiling, some not. And I’m wondering the smiling ones look like spur of the moment, and not posed, especially these girls jumping and smiling and laughing in a photo from 1880, so I think that blows the 15 minute time constraint theory. But who knows.
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I bought an original “Hazel” cartoon by Ted Key, done for the Saturday Evening Post.
It’s hand drawn and colored.
Hazel has always been one of my favorite single panel cartoons, along with Our Boarding House, Out Our Way, of course The Far Side and a bunch of others.
I watch Hazel on tv too, one of the nostalgia channels shows two episodes every morning and sometimes I watch, and listen, as I’m drawing.
My goal has always been to sell ephemeral items. I’ve done that in the past with Flintstone cartoon cels and old magazines and magazine advertisements, too.
This Hazel cartoon is from an estate collection of original art.
This early Ted Key ink and watercolor cartoon is done on paper that has been mounted to a board. This would have been done to give to an executive for their wall or even a retirement or going away gift. The cartoon has a hand written caption that reads “You’ll Have To Speak Up” with OK RUN written in blue pencil.
Overall paper that art is on measures 11″ x 8 1/2 inches. It’s not easy to find any hand colored Ted Key originals, so this is extra special.
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Yesterday’s cartoon is an homage to an old Maxell ad. I came up with the idea of the guy sitting in his chair at home being bored due to economic issues of the day and the ad came to mind as I started drawing the cartoon.
One thing though – to get a photo as a reference, I googled “Memorex” and the photo came up – but the crazy part is that it’s an ad for Maxell! And I noticed people who commented on the cartoon mentioned Memorex, which is interesting because this iconic “Blown Away” ad is not serving its purpose – directing people to the correct product, it’s literally sending people to its competitor. But of course it’s one of the best photographs ever. It’s by photographer Steve Steigman.
Even the google search sends the Memorex reference to the Maxell ad. It’s sort of like those ads that we love but we don’t remember what the product is for.
This is the original advertisement, photo by Steve Steigman
Speaking of Memorex, I remember something from high school. We had a class called Rock Poetry and it was all based on current rock music. We studied the lyrics as poetry, which is what they were. We all had to bring in a record or cassette tape (yes, it was back then) and the teacher would pull out a random record or cassette and we would listen to a song and discuss it.
One time she reached into the box and pulled out a cassette and said, “Ok, the next one is Memorex.” And of course we all cracked up. We had to explain to her that Memorex was the cassette tape company, not the name of the recording or band.
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I’ve been reading a lot of old Bringing Up Father comic strips on Facebook, they pop up daily. If you click on these, they will open larger.
What gets me is the detail. I can’t understand how George McManus, the cartoonist, drew the same characters day after day, multiple times in each strip with such precise detail. His linework is amazing.
Brining Up Father featured Maggie and Jiggs, the two main characters. It ran in newspapers for 87 yeras, from 1913 to 2000.
Jiggs is an immigrant from Ireland who comes to the U.S. and wins $1 million in a sweepstakes. So now he is up in the world but prefers his working class life. His favorite food is Corned Beef and Cabbage, which he gets often at his friend Dinty Moore’s restaurant.
The art has an Art Nouveau/Art Deco design, which makes it stand out. When McManus passed away in 1954, other artists took over the strip until its ending in 2000.
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