The Evening Rambler for the last day of 2008

It's interesting what you can find when you clean out a drawer.

I went through a desk in our kitchen today. It had been my mom's, and beside the stuff I had recently put in there, I knew there was a stack of loose, blank paper...including some tracing paper and some carbon paper, of all things.

(As an aside...for a fun experiment, ask a child or a teenager what carbon paper was and what it was used for. Let me know what you find out.)

So you might ask, "Bob, how did they package things for sale before they started putting everything in clear plastic shrink wrap?


Well, sometimes they used a paper band. And not to change the subject, but while I'm thinking of it, does anyone know what year they stopped punching notebook paper with five holes? Not that that's important...but I do vaguely remember that a few notebooks had only two rings.

I'll bet you're itchin' to know what the Useful Premiums were. So, here you go.


Okay, it says Valuable Premiums on the back. I guess they were both Useful and Valuable. Or some of each.

Let's look at the list...hmm...

Only three of the item used electricity*. Two were battery powered (Flashlight and 6 Transistor Pocket Radio), and only the Electric Wall Clock plugged in. Many houses back in the day had an outlet high up on a kitchen wall, to plug in a wall clock. This was before battery powered clocks were common, much less any digital clocks.

I was told once that one reason that power companies took great pains to keep the Alternating Current at exactly 60 cycles per second was so electric clocks would keep the proper time. Even if you lived near the end of the line and the voltage would sometimes be allowed to drift up to 130 or 135 - and you'd burn out a few light bulbs that day - well, by golly the frequency would stay true and you'd be on time anyway.

(*Why, when I was a boy, we didn't have computers or even electronic calculators. No one had heard or even dreamed of video games, VHS tapes, DVD's, CD's or iPods. I tease my kids with talk like this...my youngest daughter's response "Oh dear, not again". Too much fun.)

I digress. Back to the list...

I'm thinking that if this promotion happened today, they wouldn't offer the Jack Knife.

Actually, I doubt that saving up a bunch of 25 cent** coupons would go over with kids today (In fact, I wonder how many coupons were sent in back then). How exciting would it be to save up for a fountain pen, a box of stationery, a stapler, or a pencil sharpener?

Yeah, I thought not. The Wrist Watch might be of interest...if it was digital. And for those who played sports, the Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Football, or Volleyball might be wanted. Notice that "Soccer Ball" hadn't appeared on the radar of our collective consiousness yet. At least not here in the good ol' USA.

And how about this interesting description "Beautiful Teenage Doll". Not a Barbie or any other recognizable brand name. Just a generic doll (not that we were familiar with the term generic yet).

The only item that really caught my eye (so to speak) was the flashlight. I could use another good flashlight. One of these days I'll go to the store to purchase one with some hard earned money. Serves me right for not saving up coupons for 45 years or so.

Anyway, I'm guessing pre-1964 here. At least, there's no ZIP code in the address...and I think those were first used in '64. Oh and Mike, did you notice this paper came from Springfield?

(**And where's my cent key gone? We used to have those on our typewriters - at least, on the old ones. Not to be found on modern computer keyboards. That's inflation for you, I guess. And now that makes me wonder how many young people today know what the lower case c with the slash through it means.)

Here it is again

Happy New Year...here's my wish for a good and healthy 2009 for all of you. I may post more thoughts on that, and some reflections on this Christmas season tomorrow.

Merry Christmas 2008

Here's my hope that all of you reading this had a blessed Christmas today, and a good time with family or friends. And, that you're all looking forward to a good and healthy 2009.

And that's about it for this blog entry. It's kind of like taking photographs; and I did take a fair number today. It seems like you can go hog wild with the camera (or with the blog site) or you can participate in the day's events and enjoy.

So no long rambling entry, but in short, we went to a good Christmas Eve service yesterday evening, and then enjoyed family time at home today. A lot of good moments.

Christmas humor

A few days ago, my son's composition teacher handed out copies of a short essay, written by David Sedaris, for the class to read.

Is it on the internet? Why yes, right here.

Not to nit-pick, but there was a Saint Nicholas of Myra, in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). And I suppose the Dutch didn't intentionally come up with their traditions, with the goal in mind of giving us twenty-first century Americans a laugh.

But it is funny. Enjoy!

The Evening Rambler for December 11, 2008

Genealogy

I've enjoyed hearing family stories and looking at old letters and photographs about as long as I can remember. In 1979 I found out that one of our local libraries has one of the best genealogy collections in the country, and there were a couple of librarians who specialized in the study. I read a couple of books, looked at a lot of forms, learned how to view the census records on microfilm, and in the early 1980's took an adult education class on the subject. Genealogy has been one of my hobbies every since, but in a kind of half-hearted, on again, off again way. I would go through a phase where I would research and write down a lot of stuff, but not record the source.

Word to the wise: Don't do it that way. Always record your source for every bit on information...right from the start. That way, you don't have to do almost everything over, like (ahem) someone I know.

About a year ago I decided to stop worrying about my family tree not being complete, and go ahead and compile everything I had up to now, and get it word processed and scanned all in one place. Then, I'll make CD's for whoever in the family would be interested. Later I could continue my research when I could, and make corrections and updates as I went along.

But I did want to organize the information in the proper format, so it would make sense and not have to be done over again. I checked out a small book on "Numbering Your Genealogy", and learned that of the many numbering systems, four are currently used most. Of those four, I already was familiar with "Ahnentafel" numbering. You start with yourself (or with whoever you make the chart for), and that person is number 1. Then your father is number 2, your mother is number 3, your father's father is number 4, and so on. The more generations back, the larger the number. This is probably the most common system, and works great for ancestry charts, which often show six or seven generations on one page.

What I wanted to learn was a system where you started with the earliest ancestor you had information for, and numbered forward from him or her. I decided to try the "NGSQ" numbering, and started on my father's side, with my great-great-great-grandfather, John C. Wingate. That project is going well, and I really appreciate word processing software for this use. I know some of my information is still scattered about, and I will be adding and editing for a while.

Stories

A list of names and dates can get boring after a while, if there are no stories or photos to go along with the data. So I've started to word process what I can remember hearing about my ancestors. All I know about John C. are names, dates and places...no stories. All I heard about his first son, Isaac E. Wingate, was that his first marriage ended in divorce, and he re-married. I do have a few stories about Isaac's first son, Jacob Wingate, my great-grandfather. Here's part of what I know.

Jake and his horses

Jacob Wingate leased a farm near Beaverdam, in Allen County, Ohio. At one time he had two horses named Tom and Jerry. The photo below, taken on that farm shows Jake with two horses.


(I don’t know if these horses were Tom and Jerry, or two other horses.)

Jacob married Emma Yoakam, and Jake and Emma’s first child was Harry Dale, or as I called him, Grandpa Wingate. Harry had an interesting and exciting life, and there’s much I could say about that, perhaps at a later time.

The musical saw

One talent Harry had was that he could play the musical saw. I was told a story once that he started with a bow made from a piece of lumber the size of a yardstick – or maybe it was a yardstick – strung with hair from the tail of one of the horses. In later years he used a real bow…


Harry playing the musical saw, at his home in Lima, Ohio. Cousin Ron looks on.
(I’m going to guess 1971 here, but I may be off a year or two either way.)

The tie-in with Poppy's front porch

Harry could play entire songs. One summer, Grandpa Wingate came to our house, and then we caravanned south to Poppy’s farm (Grandpa Wingate preferred to drive as fast as he could keep his car on the road, and had little patience for riding with people who kept to the speed limit…people like his son, Albert. Dad didn’t want to ride with Grandpa; hence the two car, 212 mile caravan.)

One day, we were sitting on Poppy’s front porch, and Grandpa got out his saw and bow. We were all an attentive audience as he played. I was just a young kid at the time, but in later years my Mom talked about Harry playing an old hymn, “In the Garden”, and said “It brought tears to your eyes”. I think Mom meant this in a good way, that Harry could really put some emotion into it. What little I remember is that while I didn’t know the song to recognize it, I thought Grandpa’s saw music was nice.

Somewhere along the years, my sister Connie came to find out that our Dad also knew the basics of how to play the saw. In the late 1970’s (maybe 1980), she gave him a bow, and he got a saw and showed us how to play it. Dad made some different notes, but I don’t think he got a whole song out of the saw like his dad did. I then gave it a try and got a note or two, but I didn’t quite have Dad’s skill. And neither of us could play as well as Grandpa Wingate.

Not to change the subject, but...

...after all, this is the Evening Rambler. We had a beautiful sunset here yesterday, so I grabbed my camera. Enjoy...



And finally, here's a clever advertisement.


This came in the mail yesterday. It's a coupon from AMF for one free game of bowling for up to 10 people.

Keeping with the subject of kids and department store Santas, James Lileks posted a fun video on his blog today. Here's the link. Enjoy!

Musical note

Sorry about the headline, but I'm in a hurry.

Over at my blog, Central Standard, I posted about some music that I'm enjoying these days, so if you are inclined to read it, here you go.

And since I'm in a hurry, I'll go no further than this about your post on the Macy's parade, Bob - I'm intrigued by the balloons you suggested and I think I will write a longer post later, but you conjured some nice memories.

Happy Saturday night!