A Crummy Commercial

The Brewers served no highlights when the Reds snapped the win streak at 7, had to search for these: But when the Brewers won during the day on Wednesday 9-1 I did get my highlights: So George Webb doesn't have to fry up free burgers for now. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

Wow, amazing - a football type score at the end of May.  And Youtube will serve highlights if they keep on winning ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pLtL-DjIQ  I finally realized something, The Milwaukee Brewers only pop up highlights on my Youtube page if they win :) So when they are on a losing streak I have to search on "Brewers highlights" or it's "no highlights for you !" :) Next day update (2025-05-20): it happened again: Brewers beat Orioles, 5-4   And the third day (2025-05-21) confirms the pattern: Brewers 5, Orioles 2  The mound thingy was unexpected: My Dad used to work at Johnson Controls.   another update 2025-05-22: The Brewers lost: Youtube / The Brewers didn't serve any highlights.  Whoops, I blogged too soon, the Orioles and Youtube served it: 35 year old rookie, HA ! The Orioles broke it open in the 11th, bummer !  2025-05-23 update:  continuing the pattern the Brewers / Youtube served me highlights after the 8-5 win over the Pirates:   2025-05-24:  no highlights, the Brewers lose to the Pirates 6-5 in extra innings.   202...

 This video popped up on Youtube: Any kid who has been to the Milwaukee County Zoo can tell you about riding the train - it was pretty much the most fun thing to see/do.  Now they are getting rid of the steam locomotive and replacing it with a Diesel.  I'm sure it'll be more economical and less of a tinkerer's delight but for me it will remove a little bit of the fun - something about a steam whistle on a train is just different. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was looking at this photo: The only ones I recognize are Bergen and McCarthy source:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1064589890390475/ and at first I thought that everyone was wearing clothes with pinstripes - but then I realized that the narrow white stripes were all over the picture and must be some artifact of either scanning or transmission.  The only person wearing striped clothing is the woman to the right of Charlie McCarthy (the ventriloquists dummy). So I tried doing a visual search with the picture but found nothing better online.  However I came upon this photo: name your musical group: Heine and the Grenadiers ?  Yes, it is Milwaukee source:  http://theradiohistorian.org/wtmjgallery/images/wtmjgrenadiers.jpg from this interesting page: http://theradiohistorian.org/wtmjgallery/wtmjgallery1.html I hadn't thought of Radio City for a long time.  Radio City had studios and the headquarters of WTMJ in Milwaukee.  It was located on the west sid...

For some reason I thought that the company was started in 1924 but I see in this 1965 catalog: source: https://archive.org/details/milwaukee-electric-catalog-765-l-1/mode/2up that 1925 was the year:   Looking through the catalog it is interesting to see generators (didn't know about those - they are 3600 RPM units though, noisier than 1800 RPM units from Kohler) and even battery powered drills (although they were corded to a 12V car battery !). My Dad's cousin Earl was a carpenter in the Milwaukee area.  He (of course) used Milwaukee tools, a professional must have good tools.  But my Dad used a succession of cheap drills - finally in the mid 1990s I bought him a Milwaukee drill - we were starting a project where a hammer drill was required and this drill even came with the carbide bits in the red metal case, nice !   I still have the drill but it is rarely used now, I use the Craftsman battery drill (bought during the pandemic - supposedly made in the USA) for dril...

It is never good when the old hometown gets mentioned online: it does look long and steep but hard to tell https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/2024/06/30/it-just-broke-loose-what-the-brewers-escalator-accident-felt-like/74260968007/ My mother had a phobia about escalators.  I never got the whole story on why but all I know is that she never rode escalators when I was a kid.  When I would go shopping with her to downtown Milwaukee we would always either take the stairs or an elevator at the department stores. It was no big deal until the folks started taking trips to Europe.  There were some places like airports or train stations where she had to take the escalator - there was no choice - so she finally learned a way to take them. But she never liked escalators - I can just hear her response in my mind if this had happened when she was alive: "See ?  I told you" I can kinda see why people might be squeamish about escalators, all those interlocking metal bits in motion ...

I was watching the highlights of the Brewers - Blue Jays game: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Eqy3IGxhGs In the 4th inning the Blue Jays first baseman, Vladimir Guerrero lost his bat which ended up stuck in the netting above the visitors dugout: They eventually got out a pole with a loop on it and freed the bat: Vladimir was happy to get it back: This of course triggered a memory of a long ago Braves home game in the mid-1960s.  I was a guest of our Fox Point neighbors, The Nelsons.  They had season tickets for box seats a few rows behind home plate which was a first for me.  The strange thing was that my classmate, Jerry Nelson would rather have had seats in the upper grandstand of Milwaukee County Stadium !  We did walk up there for a while. The thing I remember was that at some point a foul ball was hit with so much spin or ?  that it got stuck in the backstop (which I remember as chain link fencing not the nylon netting used today).  And after...

I saw this photo of a Milwaukee Braves fan entering County Stadium in 1962 with a case of beer on his shoulder: source: https://twitter.com/AaronNagler/status/1739779854617157654 and immediately thought not of beer or spring or baseball or Milwaukee but antennas: 82 beer cans source: https://ia804504.us.archive.org/3/items/sim_qst_1955-11_39_11/sim_qst_1955-11_39_11.pdf In other words, think of all those empties, steel cans, easy to solder/braze or weld together !  And also, when soda water came in sturdy refillable glass bottles that were perfect as insulators ! Weirdly it also reminds me of one of my earliest Milwaukee memories in 1960 or so when I was 4 or 5.  Walking the alley I found a 6 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon (I remember the red/white/blue steel cans).  Of course no pull tabs, I had no church key, couldn't read so I didn't really know what it was (my Dad wasn't much for beer).  So I pounded on a can with a rock, no luck.  They were pretty tough containe...

Shorpy posted two World War II pictures of kids in Montana who had collected scrap for the war effort.  I can just imagine my Dad also doing stuff like this but in Milwaukee. source: https://www.shorpy.com/node/27288   . source: https://www.shorpy.com/node/27287 These pictures reminded me of one of the few times that the Vic and Sade radio show ever mentioned the war.  It was a Rush episode from April 6, 1942: https://archive.org/download/vic-and-sade-1946-10-10-xx-mr.-zee-moves-in/Vic%20and%20Sade%201942-04-06%20%28xx%29%20The%20Scrap%20Drive.mp3 Of course most of the Vic and Sade episodes haven't survived so there may have been more shows that mentioned the war.  I suppose that people tuning into a comedy show didn't want to hear about the heavy reality of the war, even though the actor who played Rush, Bill Idelson, went to war and was a decorated pilot in the Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Idelson As mentioned previously, my Dad went to Door County one...

. I was watching this video on the ABC TV lineup for 1961: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7vib3qFxhU 26 and a half hours a week seems like a lot - really nothing super great either.  I remember 19 of those shows although mostly via reruns.  My favorite show was Top Cat, a cartoon, hey I was 6 years old.  TC was voiced by Arnold Stang.  Top Cat was kind of an an animated, non-army Bilko show :) But Calvin and the Colonel ?  An animated show by the Amos and Andy guys ?  Yikes !  Maybe they could have added another half hour of bowling, or more Welk, anything else. But I can't fault ABC too much since in 1962 they added the Discovery show in the afternoon, that was a great show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(American_TV_series) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm