A Crummy Commercial

There was this guy: in 1939 everyone in the USA knew what this guy was about source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley Yes, old Doc Brinkley - he sold potions and treatments over the radio to cure: EVERYTHING !  Eventually he moved his station to Mexico where he could boom his disinfomercials over all of the USA.  And he did advocate goat glands for restoring virility, yikes ! But then there was this (I think I heard Norman Gilliland point out the Doc Brinkley reference on the discontinued  Old Time Radio Drama  program on Wisconsin Public Radio): https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Jack_Benny_Singles_1939-1940/JB+1939-11-19+Mary's+Thanksgiving+Poem.mp3 1939 was Dennis Day's first season on the program taking over the singer/stooge role after Kenny Baker left.  At about 8:20 Dennis is about to sing when Mary interjects an amazing line: Jack:     Oh Dennis ! Dennis:  Yes, please ? Jack:    How about a song before we get inv...

Bing had this as the background pic for August 19, 2026: The USN stubby carrier plane is a Brewster Buffalo XF2a-1 from 1938 in the full size wind tunnel that would later become NASA Langley.  Unfortunately it was torn down but still, amazing scale ! source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-Scale_Wind_Tunnel The Brewster Buffalo wasn't preferred by the Navy, they liked the Grumman Wildcat F4 and Grumman Hellcat F6 better.  But those wacky Finns liked the Buffalo: https://historynet.com/brewster-buffalo-finland/ When I was a kid I built a Grumman F6F Hellcat model plane.  I can't remember the vendor, probably Revell but maybe Monogram ?  It seems to me that AMT was the goto for car models.  Now that I think of it while the propeller turned there wasn't much else you could do with a model plane, except look at them, maybe dust them (or maybe not ;).  The upstairs room in our house in Fox Point had two built-in dressers with small display shelves above...

With the recent tornado, mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/07/tornado_0277261982.html I was wondering where the Olsons lived in 1938 when they went to see the Tom Mix Circus.  Just through dumb luck, I finally found where the Olsons lived in 1938 here: 5th entry: Charles A. OLSON source: https://content.mpl.org/digital/collection/AMP/id/445 By the 1940 census they had moved to Milwaukee and when my Dad was born in 1930 they lived in Portage. Thanks to Google I was able to let my fingers do the walking and found 527 W. Prospect on the map: And using Street View I got a glimpse of the house: hopefully the recent tornado didn't mess things up I remember my Dad saying that they lived on the Fox River - his dog (a collie named Laddie) had the run of the back yard to the railroad tracks.  Grampa had rigged up some kind of overhead wire which allowed Laddie to run free.  Apparently Laddie would periodically escape the wire.  When they moved to Milwaukee Laddi...

An EF-2 tornado rolled through the Fox Cities south of Green Bay on Monday July 27, 2026 midday. like the start of The Wizard Of Oz    source:  https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2026/07/27/menasha-appleton-grand-chute-see-significant-damage-after-tornado-storm--live/91069036007/ Northeast Wisconsin has seen it's share of tornadoes over the years.  I posted previously about the Tom Mix Circus performance in 1938 which was cut short by a bad storm (bottom of the page): https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/08/vital-secret-order-decoded.html The Neenah historical Society has an interesting post here about the incident: https://www.facebook.com/neenahhistory/posts/10158291911653225/ before the storm in Neenah The Tom Mix Circus used trucks instead of a train The Olsons lived in nearby Appleton then, Dad would have been almost 8 years old on July 10, 1938.  He and my Grampa attended the Tom Mix circus that night - possibly it was a birthday present ?  Wet can...

The first joke from Annie Hall was mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/01/another-one-of-my-elmers-has-died.html But, as the literalist, seeing an old Australian magazine ad made me remember the final joke from Annie Hall : source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3feAYfyjzk Here is the ad originally from Pinterest: From other sources I gather that Ke-Peg was (don't think it is available in the USA) a paint on or wipe on substance for fresh eggs to prevent moisture from escaping out and bad stuff like oxygen and germs from getting in.  From the months of peak egg laying mentioned you realize this is a southern hemisphere ad. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/has-anyone-ever-used-kepeg-egg-preserver.226412/ The peg in Ke-peg may refer to polyethylene glycol 400 or PEG-400 (described as a clear, colorless viscous fluid): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEG_400 Apparently PEG 400 is the active ingrediment in Visine ?: Mineral oil is an alternative coating t...

I remembered that my 8th grade English teacher, Miss McGrath, would read aloud to us from the book: H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N .  So I did a little searching and found out that Leo Rosten (pen name: Leonard Q. Ross) started publishing the Kaplan stories in the New Yorker Magazine. I fired up my copy of The Complete New Yorker and quickly found the Rosten stories:    In a way they are perfect as separate short stories since the 1930s were a different time with plenty of unfortunate stereotypes and language usage.  So a little taste goes a long way. But I also saw this ad (the New Yorker used to be able to sell a LOT more ads than they do today): Interesting in that this was a compact set made to run from 6 volts and probably included either an RF stage or an extra IF amp to boost the gain.  Plugging the price into the inflation calculator: Wow, that is a LOT of money today and considering that the Depression was still an ongoing thing, yikes, I wonder how it sold ?...