I am giving my office a much-needed cleaning today, and I found this little tiny square of paper with a recipe on it.
I don’t know where it came from. The reverse side shows some text talking about some product designed to help pigs gain weight, so it must have been clipped from a farm magazine. Don’t know how it got into this plastic storage tote, and I am amazed that it is in unwrinkled condition.
The recipe actually sounds kind of good. Lots of sugar, of course, but that was life in the 50s (assuming this is from that time period). I mean, this was the regular Jello mix that already had sugar; you’re adding MORE sugar and fruit to this mixture – yikes! I try not to eat extra sugar, so I probably won’t make this one for review. However, one of YOU brave souls might want to take it on and report back.
It is fascinating to me to read old magazines from the 50s and 60s and look at the way our advertising world has changed. I suppose this could apply to television ads as well. I think the drastic change in our advertising completely shows how our world is different now and what the “powers that be” have decided we need in our lives. Think about it: when’s the last time you have seen an ad for . . .
. . . shower curtains? Now, this ad did send me down a bit of a rabbit hole because I had never heard of Kleinert’s before. This from their website:
Isaak B. Kleinert founded Kleinert’s, Inc. in 1869 in College Point, NY, initially known as I.B. Kleinert’s Rubber Company. As an innovative inventor, Kleinert created many enduring products like the shower cap, shower curtain, dress shield, and waterproof baby pants. By the mid-20th century, Kleinert’s had become an international manufacturing powerhouse, supplying rubber life rafts to the US Air Force during WWII.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Kleinert’s expanded its product line to include children’s clothing, footwear, and personal protection products. Embracing e-commerce in the mid-1990s, Kleinert’s launched its first website and grew its direct-to-consumer business.
Since 2003, Kleinert’s, now headquartered in Elba, Alabama, has been a leading manufacturer of products for excessive sweating and incontinence. We proudly produce all our goods in the USA, supporting local jobs. Our customers include Disney, Broadway shows, military academies, and more.
We continually innovate, offering advanced products like Fabrapel-treated fabrics and Sweat Shield Ultra wipes for hyperhidrosis. Kleinert’s remains committed to enhancing lives and extending the longevity of clothing.
The more you know, I guess.
Continuing . . .
When’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .
. . . good ol’ regular curtains? These, of course, are quite prevalent in magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens from the Midcentury. Heck, you could even get a free curtain booklet.
Now, tell me . . . When’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .
Fake stick-on tile? That color rocks my world, by the way. It is always the color I am drawn to when I am buying vintage items. The picture is great as well. He pauses mid-installation to look back at his ecstatic wife in her apron and oddly maniacal expression. Obviously, this was a marriage that worked — for whatever reason.
Oh – notice the “Magic Congowall show” advertised on the inset text? Why does that sound like something I’d like to attend?
When’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .
. . . refrigerators made by tractor companies? (I apologize for the non-straight scan here; this ad came out of a bound book full of Better Homes and Gardens magazines from 1950 and it’s pretty huge; it is impossible to straighten the pages enough to get a straight copy.) I had never seen this company name attributed to appliances until I ran across this ad; I only knew it as a company that made farm equipment. However, Google informed me that IH did venture into the appliance manufacturing sector from 1947-1955, and then they sold out to Whirlpool. I love the totally sexist “femineered” sales pitch and the “Egg-O-Mat” storage option. “Diffuse-O-Lite” as well. Just so 50s and so fun. At some point they would offer colored door handles to match your color-coordinated kitchen:
(Note that they were really set on the “femineered” sales pitch.)
I do miss how one could get appliances to match their kitchen. Now we have white, black, stainless, black stainless, gray, dark gray, light gray, medium gray . . .
I jest, but the color options are severely lacking.
IH also gave housewives a great idea — or should that be “great” idea? Cover your fridge with fabric to match your kitchen!
I notice the third line touts a “door pedal” . . . for what? Why doesn’t my fridge come with a door pedal??
Even more interesting is the text at the waaaaaaaaay bottom, which says that IH was based at 180 N. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I now work just a few blocks from there. Here’s the building after its completion in 1937:
And here is the building today:
And, finally . . . when’s the last time you saw an ad for . . .
. . . a TV with a 19 1/2″ screen — or just a TV in general?
I think manufacturers have just assumed that we are going to go to Wal-mart hunting for the best and the biggest TV we can find.
Back then a TV was part of your household; it wasn’t going to be replaced every other year. It sat like a rock in your living room because after it got wrangled into your house, you were too old and tired to wrangle it back out.
My husband and I grumble while watching our TV provider – Hulu – because it seems like every freaking commercial is either Burger King (with that ultra-annoying off-pitch singing) or an ad for a drug company. Look at the ads in modern magazines; modern medicine has a firm hold on our advertising, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Bring back the ads for curtains and stick-on fake tile. If I have to watch one more time the Wegovy group inexplicably walking down the street like a pack of zombies, I just might be shooting the TV, Elvis-style.
Of course, if this were 1950 and my TV weighed as much as a refrigerator, I would have to think very, very carefully before taking such drastic action because then I’d have to get it out of my house.
Chalk another point up for 1950’s design right there.
Back in my teaching days, I would always look forward to teaching one particular lesson about connotative and denotative meanings of words. While the subject itself is rather dull, I taught the concept through the topic of car design. Why did Ford decide to use the name Fusion? Why does a Chevy Malibu sound like fun to drive? Why does a Dodge Hellcat appeal to a select group of people? Even more fascinating is the psychology behind crafting the car ad. I always had a selection of ads to show my students and we would discuss what the target audience was for the ad, along with the connotative meaning behind the name.
In 1955, Ford employed poet Marianne Moore to help them come up with a name for their hot new product, which ended up being the notoriously unsuccessful Edsel. However, Marianne had submitted several suggestions, with some of them being just completely ridiculous. Here are some of her suggestions:
Hurricane Accipter (hawk) The Impeccable Symmechromatic Thunderblender The Resilient Bullet Intelligent Bullet Bullet Cloisoné Bullet Lavolta The Intelligent Whale The Ford Fabergé (That there is also a perfume Fabergé seems to me to do no harm, for here allusion is to the original silversmith) The Arc-en-Ciel (the rainbow) Arcenciel Mongoose Civique Anticipator Regna Racer (couronne a couronne) sovereign to sovereign Aeroterre Fée Rapide (Aerofee, Aero Faire, Fee Aiglette, Magi-faire) Comme Il Faire
After looking at her list of names, you might feel the way Ford Motor Co. felt when they kept getting these rather strange suggestions thrown their way. In the end, Ford ended up using the Edsel name, and the rest is history.
This story is often used to show how some executives can be completely tone-deaf when it comes to marketing and understanding what people want in a product. However, reading these letters and that story in general is how I became rather fascinated by the psychology behind marketing.
By the way, you can purchase the book that Marianne Moore ended up putting together of her letters between her and Ford Motor Co. It is called Letters from and to the Ford Motor Company.
I once was part of a focus group when I was just out of college. I had a friend who took part in focus groups often as a way to make money, and she convinced me it was very little work for decent pay, so I signed up for one. We were tasked with discussing the renaming of a local hospital, and the whole process took about four hours. We had to listen to their vision for the rebranding, we had very lengthy discussions about different names. I don’t remember all of them, but I remember one of them being Heartland and another being Crossroads as alternatives to the name they did go with, which was Avera. Ironically, that was the name I liked least of the four they presented us because I thought the name sounded like aloe vera, which I guess was probably part of the point. Healing vibes, right?
And now when new car models come out, I think about all the thought and energy that went into that name. It’s got to be getting tougher to name cars these days because – let’s face it – all the good ones have already been taken. Thunderbird . . . Rocket . . . Mustang . . . Falcon . . . Puma . . . names that evoke speed and power were some of the first ones to be used. And we have a Montana, a Colorado, a Santa Fe, a Durango, a Tucson, a New Yorker, a Dakota, and several other place names that are already taken, so obviously car companies are going to have to get more and more creative as time goes on.
My favorite part of the car lesson was the end, where students would be turned loose to design an ad around a fictional car, the name carefully chosen for its connotative meaning. I love seeing the creative names they’d come up with; however, every year there was always a jokester or two that tried to slip something rather inappropriate by me and I always had to give a stern lecture at the start of the project: be appropriate or you’ll be doing it over. I remember getting a car design that was entitled “The Milf.” One was called the “Shaggin’ Wagon.” Many teenage boys tried to work the number 420 or 69 into their model name. But overall, the majority of the names were fun and they made me laugh.
That’s not to say that the real car companies didn’t try to inject a little sexual connotation into their advertising. Behold, the series of 1968 Dodge Toronado ads that liked to recycle the phrase “bold, brawny, and massively male” throughout the texts of the ad series.
I mean, they weren’t even TRYING to market this car to women.
Some other gems:
So not only are they pretty much claiming that their car is as fast as a plane, but they are also claiming it is aerodynamic. Uh . . . I beg to differ. Look at what the inset picture is bragging about: push-button driving! The fifties were so fantastic for this reason.
I always loved this ad because of the incongruity of the picture. The kids are already playing in the water, dad is getting the floaties out of the trunk, but mom just sits there, so in love with her new red Chevy that she doesn’t even want to get out of the car. This was great marketing to women – the color, the perfect family image (always one boy and one girl), and a mom who has been entrusted to drive the car. Bravo, Chevy!
This ad has A LOT going on, and it’s an older ad from 1937, hence all the text. Ads now have little to no text because they know that we’re too busy to read anything. This one’s like a novella. First, the picture. What . . . is . . . happening? Woman driving, which I think is interesting for the year. She is obviously living out some cowboy fantasy here as her car flies over the hills on a ranch somewhere. The best part is the panel of “experts” that Chrysler has picked to offer choice words about their product. We have Lady Mendl, a designer and stylist; Tony Sarg, an illustrator and author; Irene Hayes, a florist; and Isabella Taves Miller, a fashion promotion editor. Why wouldn’t you trust the opinions of such high society?
It’s easy to get lost in some of these old ads, but if you have some hours to kill, check out this site, which has TONS of old ads scanned in that you can search by make, model, and year.
Even after teaching this lesson for 20+ years, I still could not figure out the justification for calling a car a Gremlin. Small and fast, I get it, but do you really want to market yourself as a small, quick, and UGLY product?
This little pamphlet caught my eye because, well, I am an Aunt Jenny to my nieces and nephew. Spry used this character in its marketing materials and recipe books. I’m not sure if Aunt Jenny was not a real person; she was more of an idea of a cook like Betty Crocker. As with many things that I write about on this blog, wondering about how Aunt Jenny came to exist sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, where I learned that Aunt Jenny also had a radio program that ran the astonishingly long period from 1937 to 1956. Considering that the character of Aunt Jenny was invented to sell shortening, this is marketing brilliance. Read all about that radio program and listen to some episodes over at the Internet Archive.
I discovered a tiny little pie pamphlet with my other cookbooks. I have no recollection of picking this up anywhere, so I imagine that it was probably thrown in with some other items that I purchased somewhere. It’s a short little book, but it does have some wisdom about how to successfully craft and bake a pie. I am no pie-baking expert, but I do know that it is a skill to be able to make a good crust that isn’t too thick, isn’t too thin, and won’t fall apart when it’s baked. The title is cute, too: 12 Pies Husbands Like Best. It’s just so 50’s.
Of course, we will have to assume that these recipes will work with <gasp!> Crisco, since even Aunt Jenny couldn’t save the fate of Spry.
I am continuing scans of the Good Housekeeping cookbook series. There are a lot of them, so it will take me a while, but I realized that I had two of the latest scan – Good Housekeeping’s Appetizer Book. Then I remembered that waaaaaay back in the day when I was starting my blog and scanning journey, I had acquired this book somewhere and was looking through it for ideas. To my horror, I saw the following recipe:
I mean, C’MON. Some flavors are just not meant to meld together, amirite?
I decided to use my family to test this concoction out. Their assessment was “not bad,” although I didn’t have the guts to try it. Are YOU brave enough?
Check out this lovely recipe (p. 4) and many others here.
I’m kind of on a scanning kick, y’all. After about a year of not having a scanner because my old one didn’t survive the move, I purchased a new one a few months ago, and now I’m ready to make it earn its keep.
Last week I scanned the wonderfully corny MEAT POWER cookbook, courtesy of Swift. I now have a smattering of other cookbooks that I’d like to scan in, particularly a collection of Good Housekeeping cookbooks that I found all grouped together in a disintegrating binder. The binder’s gone, but the cookbooks live on, and some of them have such great crazy 60’s graphics that I just have to scan them in. Case in point:
Lots of crowns going on in these illustrations. Not sure what that’s about, but it’s goofy enough that I like it. Also lots of angry-looking people with crowns and dorky-looking animals wearing crowns. I dunno . . . but I’m drawn toward funky graphics that have no point.
Ok, I get the first two things are lobsters, but what is that other thing on the right . . . with legs? A table (since there’s a vase on it)? Why does it just look so out of whack?
Lest you think I’ve lost my ever-lovin’ mind, let me assure you that I did not just blurt out this phrase without any inspiration. My inspiration was, in fact, a little booklet published by Swift — the meat company — with tips and tricks for holding different types of parties. The back of the booklet touts the “meat power” – and it’s a graphic that I’ve seen in various vintage groups. I mean, c’mon . . . it’s funny.
Here we have the usual selection of 1950s animatrons (I want to know what mom is thinking in that middle picture!) with everyone living their best life. They even have some spectacular ideas for holding a stag party. Forget those plans of visiting the strib clubs! Here ya go:
Decorations: Make a cigar centerpiece, using at least one cigar for each man present. Write humorous fortunes on narrow strips of paper and tie them on each cigar with ribbon bows. Guests helps themselves to cigars after dinner and read their fortunes aloud.
Games: At a stag party, men usually get together for games of their choice. For extra entertainment, have a soap box contest. The only thing needed is a soap box for the guests to stand on while they deliver a 3-minute talk on silly subjects that they draw out of a hat. Write the subjects on slips of paper for the guests to draw in turn. Sample subjects: “If the barter system is adopted, how much should. a good wife be worth?” and “An effective method of stopping snoring.”
Now doesn’t that sound like FUN?
It’s on page 5 if you need a complete menu for said stag party.
Smack dab in the middle of the booklet is a nice colored insert touting all of Swift’s new products, like square shaped turkey roasts (I wish I were joking). It also contains a nice little reference for how long to roast different types of meat and types of boneless oven roasts.
Whoever owned this cookbook must have used it quite a bit, for many pages wear the proof of various dishes being made, which you can see on the scanned pages. That’s how you know that the recipes must be fairly good.
Last year I turned the milestone age of 50. This year, I turned — wait for it — 51. I remember when 50 was drawing near that I found myself not dreading it as much as I did when I turned the big 4-0. Forty was when I had to start wearing readers and coloring my gray hairs on a regular basis. Forty was when I felt my body start to slow down a bit; it wasn’t as easy to lose weight. Everything began to gather an extra bit of “padding.” Life was busy while I raised my teenage boys and kept on going in my teaching career.
Fifty kind of just appeared because I didn’t think about it as much. Two months after my big birthday, my college roommates came for a girls’ weekend. All of our birthdays are close together; Alex turned 50 on January 3, Suni turned 50 on January 9, and I turned 50 on February 3. So by the time the girls’ trip came about, we were all officially entrenched in our new decade. We had such a fun time shopping in Chicago, going out to eat, and even taking in an Elvis show at Buddy Guy’s Legends with my husband’s band playing. We spent time doing absolutely nothing, and that was perfect. We didn’t really have to pack our time together with activities; in fact, most of our time together was spent at my house.
In my younger years, I was a little obsessed with audio and video recording moments with my life. This obsession has become a little bit of a blessing and a little bit of a curse, for it is completely cringy to observe the idiocy of my younger years. I thought I had life all figured out — and I had no freaking clue. I know that is just the way life goes, but it is hard to watch it now.
And yes, I took plenty of videos of my college roommates and me, and it is interesting to compare us at age 21 to age 50. Back then, we were so worried about what we were going to wear to the bar and spent SO much time getting ready. Was our hair OK? Did we have the perfect shade of lipstick on? Was so-and-so going to be at the bar, do you think? There was so much mental energy that went in to just fitting in – but also wanting to stand out and be noticed by that perfect guy.
Fast forward to age 50, and none of that matters. All of us have been divorced, and two of us are currently remarried to the people we feel we should have married the first time. When we go “out on the town,” the focus is being together and laughing and remembering good times we’ve had in the past. I give zero craps about whether I’m in fashion or if my hair is perfect or if my makeup is on point. Friendships that have lasted over half of your life are rare and precious, and that becomes increasingly obvious as one ages. Our time together is definitely focused on each other rather than ourselves.
This past February, my husband’s band had a week-long gig at Busch Gardens in Tampa, and my best friend from high school decided to also fly down there and spend several days with us there. I marvel how I can rarely see these friends, but when you’re with them in person, it’s like you’ve been with them every day. You fall back into old patterns. Our time together was a breath of fresh air, and I am so thankful for the ones that stick around throughout time.
As of December 2024, I have been an official resident of Illinois, having bought our house at that time. Of course, we lived here longer than that, but we were house hunting and living with friends during that time. The time has gone by very quickly, surprisingly enough, probably because we were spending the past year trying to figure out how all our stuff fit into our new space. Some of it did, some of it didn’t, and we are still in the process of sorting through boxes.
Moving after spending years in the same location is hard because you’re forced to finally deal with all that stuff in the basement and in closets that was easy to ignore. Boxes of pictures, for instance, or sentimental items from high school. It seems inconceivable to throw all those things away, but I tell ya — when you are in the depths of moving and the truck is getting full, it’s mighty tempting to turn off the sentimentality and just chuck it all. I didn’t, of course (although I did throw an entire dumpster’s worth of stuff away), and that is why I find myself in the “too much stuff” predicament. We’ve already made one Goodwill haul and need to make another one soon.
The holidays presented an unwanted gift to my husband and me, as we both ended up with pneumonia. That made the actual holidays and New Year’s fly by, as I was struggling with just surviving while also trying to create the holiday magic for everyone. In spite of how I felt, I was able to create some delectable lasagna on Christmas Eve and prime rib on Christmas Day, so pneumonia lost and I won. Kind of.
When I turned 50 last year, I vowed that I was going to get healthier and stop putting things off that I needed to pay attention to.
Let’s just say that “year of 50” slid by and I most certainly did not stop putting things off, as moving provided a convenient excuse to be really, really busy, and once we lived in the new house, that trend continued. Now I am about to turn 51 and that nagging voice in my head finally got through to me. This WILL be the year that I get healthier — both mentally and physically — by taking care of things that I have neglected for too long and developing some new hobbies that I had avoided taking up because of the endless array of excuses that I tended to supply. I call the nagging voice in my head “Madge,” because I envision her to be kind of a rough-and-tumble OTR trucker with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I could hear Madge say something derogatory every time I decided to put off a task, for instance, or do something lazy. “Yeah,” she’d cackle. “Let’s do that! Good choice all around!”
I hate Madge.
However, Madge started to get to me. I started to realize that Madge was actually the voice of reason that I should have been listening to this whole time. However, listening to a nice, nonconfrontational, sweet version of that VOR would have resulted in my ignoring her. My conscience knew that. So Madge was born, and Madge irritates the hell out of me, but she gets my attention. Whenever I feel like cutting corners or putting something off, there she is in the corner, cackling with cigarette smoke being snorted out of her nostrils as she watches me teeter on the cusp of doing something dumb. There’s nothing worse than being verbally bullied (in my imagination, anyway) by a woman who probably needs to work on herself as well. So, in an effort to shut Madge up and make my own soul happy, I’m going to delve back into my hobbies this year.
I want this year to be a year of reflection and introspection. The last few years I’ve been running with the wind and rarely taking a breather to enjoy downtime. This year I am simplifying for my own good. I want to read more — much more than I already do — and maybe start keeping track of what I’m reading. I want to write more as well, possibly developing a novel along the way. I have helped several people edit books over the years, and I’ve always been a bit jealous; seeing my name on a book cover would be a thrill for me, and I hope someday I am able to see that.
I also want to take the time to make some of the recipes out of the WNAX cookbooks that I’ve collected over the years. I get a kick out of reading those books (most of which I’ve scanned here for others to enjoy!). I’ll spare you the details of why I love these books because I have droned on and on about these for years, but they are gems. There is one particular book that amuses me because the design has a pin as a part of it, like this:
Well, one clever lady, Alice Johnson, decided to put a recipe for pfeffernusse cookies inside the front cover – and use a pin to secure it.
And I just. can’t. get. over. the THREE CUPS OF LARD. Yes, it makes a ton of cookies, but . . .
THREE CUPS OF LARD!!
I don’t care how good these cookies are . . . I just don’t think I could stomach dumping that much lard into a bowl and then proceeding to make something with it.
But hey, if you are braver than I, then go to it – the recipe is right there!
Anyone who has followed this blog for a time knows that I am a big fan of the WNAX Neighbor Lady cookbooks, put out by Yankton, SD-based WNAX from 1941 until the early 70s. They are a treasure trove of recipes, home tips, poems, insights, and pictures from Wynn Speece’s appearances around the WNAX listening area, and that program was a much-needed lifeline to lonely housewives everywhere. I even scanned in several of the cookbooks that I have in my possession, so check them out here!
As I understand, there are a few recordings that exist from this program, but they have not been made public. I hope that someday any recordings that exist can be shared with all of us.
I ran across a short program called Voices on the Prairie from the South Dakota Public Broadcast System. This video shows Wynn as she recalls the start of her career and how it blossomed throughout the years. Have a listen!
