Lovin' the shiny and the retro
I saw this posting on Etsy this morning and I just had to feature it. Any readers from Nebraska desiring a chrome table? This one is so unique — from the black trim to the crazy pattern on the Formica. Even better: the seller will deliver it within a 100 mile radius of Fremont, for a small fee. Even if you don’t live in NE, it’d be worth the shipping costs to bring this baby into your home, methinks.
If I had to name this Formica, I’d name it “Party People.” 😀
I usually write posts for Cracked Ice & Chrome during the weekend, when I don’t have “school stuff” on the brain and I can actually sit down and think for extended periods of time. Well, the powers that be in the internet world decided that I didn’t deserve internet this weekend, so I had go without during Saturday and Sunday. After a call to customer service of our local ISP, however, I not only received a new modem, but also realized that my router might need new firmware. After a quick update, all was right in the world.
I had a feeling that “all y’all” wanted to desperately view some really wacked-out internet ads, so I clipped one for your viewing enjoyment. I don’t even remember where I saw this ad, but it still astounds me, for several reasons. For one thing, don’t ever make a picture of a baby blue. EVER. It’s not normal, it’s not right, and it makes mothers everywhere cringe.
I’m sure the developers of this “tool” meant well . . . or maybe their site was designed to deliver fifteen bajillion spam messages from your email account — who knows. Whatever the case, they should never, ever have created this image:
All I can tell from the above picture is that this baby is the product of an asphyxiated clown.
Do me a favor and don’t give these dorks any hits on their site, k?
Sorry to leave you with this image, but it’s midterms and I have roughly 150 things to grade. Where’s that teaching assistant of mine? Oh, yeah. There I go dreaming again.
Until next time . . . (when I have more pleasant things to write about, I hope.)
I try to go for a walk at night whenever the weather allows it. There’s a blacktop that runs out of town and is infrequently traveled, thus making for the best walking spot around. About 1/2 mile into my walking pattern, I pass a ranch house set back a ways from the road. Most nights there’s a dog lying down beside the house, and that’s where this love story begins.
I don’t know what kind of sense this dog has, but she’s eerily smart. She knows that when I’m walking one direction, my walk is just beginning, and she’ll just lie there and calmly watch me go by, but the minute she sees me coming the other way, she leaps up from her position and gives a little yelp as she lumbers up to the highway to see me.
She’s an old dog, and it’s hard for her to run, but I always patiently wait as she initiates our reunion.
Although she always starts out running, by the end it’s evident that her old legs are making the best effort ever to get to me, and she lapses into a slow walk.
At last she reaches me, and I take the time to pet the mangy mutt (I say that with the utmost love). She’s a farm dog, so her hair is always caked with dirt and she usually appears as if she’s been swimming in the creek. But she’s always loving, and always quiet, and she always stands there ever-so-still while I give her attention.
She’s been around us humans long enough to know some little tricks as well, for after I get done petting her and start to move away, she dashes ahead of me (as fast an an old dog can dash) and stands sideways in front of me like a doggie roadblock, forcing me to pet her a little more. She knows when enough is enough, though, and after pulling this trick a few times, she lets me go on my merry way.
I always wonder how she knows to only run to me when I’m coming back from my walk.
I wonder how she learned the roadblock trick.
I wonder how old she really is.
And as I’m wondering all of this, I have a sneaking suspicion that all that’s on her mind is where the nearest dead animal is located so she can go roll around in it ASAP. I mean, c’mon, she’s a dog. That’s akin to eating better than sex cake for us humans.
Ain’t she cute?
I almost didn’t write a post for 9/11, but it just felt wrong to let this day go by without something. I would hate the date to become another ho-hum factoid that everyone takes for granted. As the tributes often proclaim, we must always remember. And here’s why.
On September 11, 2001, I was in my third year of teaching at a small Midwestern school, and I was also 8 months pregnant. The school year was new, spirits were high, and I was excited to meet my son in a few short weeks. Imagine my shock when the high school principal rushed in my room, looking panicked, asking if I had the TV in my room. (The school I was in then didn’t have a lot for technology; internet was slow, and the rooms did not have cable TV in each room. Each floor had a TV on a rolling stand to use for showing movies, etc.) I said no, then asked what was going on.
He held up two fingers and blurted out, “Two planes just hit the World Trade Center.” Then he disappeared around the corner, on the hunt for the TV.
Unfortunately, he had made this proclamation in front of my class, so I didn’t have a chance to process this information before the comments starting erupting.
“Cool!” One sophomore said. I turned toward him, blinking with confusion, as I asked him, “Why do you think that’s cool?”
“Explosions are always cool!” he replied.
“Not when people die,” I replied, my mind scrambling in how to make this a teachable moment while also yearning for some extra information. I decided to go down to the office and figure out what was really going on. Needless to say, the mood was somber.
“It’s our boys who are going over there if this is terrorism,” one lady replied, her big eyes sad. “This is bad.”
The other teachers in the office nodded as questions were fired at the school secretary. Did anyone have TV? Could anyone get internet? What was going on? Was it terrorism? Should we just go on teaching?
That last question seems silly, because it was, after all, my job, but the heaviness of a nation changed was hanging in the air, and it didn’t seem right to just go on.
Returning to my classroom, I flipped on the radio, which was crackling with updates every minute. Turning to my computer, I tried in vain to get internet reports or pictures of what was going on. If my students could see what happened, I thought, they would no longer think it was cool.
The mood changed quickly as the enormity of the situation started clicking in my students’ brains. Estimates of ten thousand casualties floated out of the radio. Ten thousand! Eyewitness accounts of seeing the planes hit the building, with the subsequent explosions, turned the light of amusement in the kids’ eyes to one of uncertainty, and even horror.
“This isn’t a video game,” I cautioned my kids. “This is real. This is happening. People are dying.”
And as a class, we sat there, listening to the radio as my computer tried to grab any pictures from the overworked ‘net. (It would take three hours for a single web page with pictures of the event to load.)
Then one of the towers collapsed, and the mood blackened even more as the radio reports fretted about the number of people left inside when the building collapsed. Reports of jumpers caused the kids to look at each other, their eyes betraying the cool facade they tried to present.
I began to suspect that many of my students didn’t understand what the WTC even was — what it looked like. After all, Manhattan was far enough away from Iowa that it might as well have been in a different hemisphere. All of that was “over there.” Most small-town Iowa activities did not concern the WTC, so why bother?
“Why can’t they just get everyone out of there?” one girl asked. Her question was answered by the reporters, who talked of elevators that didn’t work and people trying to flee down hundreds of flights of stairs. Deep inside, I think we all were wondering: would we be able to make it out?
Then the second tower fell; the decimation seemed never-ending.
I don’t remember much about the latter part of the day, mostly because as the news reports continued, and the story of Flight 93 came out, I knew that my country had been indelibly changed forever. I disliked the feeling of doom that permeated our little school, and the chaos-spreading rumors that caused normal adults to act like panic-stricken teenagers. Our principal gave everyone permission to go uptown and get gas, as he had heard that a gas shortage was imminent as a result of a pending war with countries that supplied our gas. Going home, I noticed that the lines wrapped around the block for the handful of gas stations in town.
I thought about the baby growing in my tummy, and what the future held in store for him. I tried in vain to dampen the ever-growing panic in my gut.
The next day, I had an OB appointment in a neighboring town. After the appointment, I went to Wal-Mart for some quick shopping. It was about 10:00 a.m., and the store was nearly deserted. This from a Wal-Mart! The usual chatter over the PA system was silenced, and all the TVs in the store were tuned to the same channel, which showed the President as he tried to calm a nation in turmoil. His speech echoed around the empty store, and I still recall the surreal feeling of being in Wal-Mart with hardly anyone else there. As the President continued to speak, I became aware of yet another noise coming from the back of the store. Evidently, some senior citizens had gathered for bingo in the delicatessen area, and I heard their intermittent cheers as one lucky soul or another won a round. Life tried desperately to go on as normal, but no one felt normal. Everyone I saw in the store seemed to have that same haunted look that said, “Do you know if life will ever go back to the way it was?”
That experience remains the most poignant of those days after 9/11, because it was the most obvious evidence that our nation had something horrible happen to it, and for once we were paying attention. For a few days, we didn’t give a crap what Britney Spears was up to. For awhile, we were truly united.
Look back, remember, and keep the American dream alive. It’s there. It always has been.
Let’s make sure it always will be.
I got the stand that I wrote about in my last post. 🙂
It’s in rough shape and will need to be repainted, as most of the gold paint has flaked off or is corroding off. Note the subtle difference between this stand and the one I found on Etsy last week that I posted about:
The only difference seems to be in the lay of the lines going up the side. I happen to like mine better, but it’s curious as to how two products would exist with such a minimal difference between them.
Looking at this stand, I wonder a couple things. Obviously the bottom is used for newspapers or magazines. But what about the top rack? The wide spaces between the bars makes it impractical for what you’d think it’d be for — holding cigarette packages or other smoking paraphernalia, keeping them close to the ash tray. However, I’d think it’d also be impractical for holding things like magazines or a telephone book, because really — who’d want paper products right next to the place where ashes would be flicked? The top rack is an enigma, for now. Any opinions as to what to use it for? Anyone have one of these stands in their house “back in the day”?
More importantly, does anyone have a rectangular ash tray measuring 5 5/8″ x 7 3/4″? Because, you know, I’m starting to feel like the search for this ash tray (one that has already commenced) is going to be akin to finding that good old needle in a haystack. Or finding the perfect shade of red lipstick. I’m still working on that one.
Yes, it’s a bit of an odd thing to write an entire post about. Normally, I don’t give much of a thought to magazine racks, but a recent visit to the local antique store changed that. As usual, I found something that I liked, but didn’t buy, because I wanted to “think about it.” Then I went home and thought about it and realized two hours after the store closed that yeah, I wanted it. Too late! My adventure will have to be continued another day.
Truthfully, it wasn’t that I wasn’t sure if I wanted the rack, for I liked it well enough. But the top part of the rack has a shelf with a hole in it, designed to hold an ash tray (of course). The original ash tray had been replaced with a really ugly ’70s one, and I hesitated in buying the rack until I could be positive that I could find a replacement ash tray. Etsy to the rescue! I found several that I think might work. I just have to confirm the measurements.
I was surprised to find one on Etsy that is almost exactly like the rack that I’ll be buying. Here it is:
Almost everything is identical — except for the lines on the side of the rack. What caught my eye to the rack in the local store was the way the lines started off wider apart at the top, then converged in a near-V formation toward the bottom. Hellooooo, atomic lines! This one has everything but that.
So I’ve been spending some time on Etsy, messaging random sellers with requests for the specific dimensions of their ash trays. There’s a chance they think I’m nutty, and I’m OK with that. But hey — if I can find a replacement and have this rack sitting in my living room, I think it’d be a nifty thing. This rack may already be affecting my choice of adjectives.
If you have fallen in love with this little magazine rack, you can have the one on Etsy. Happy ash tray hunting!
