She Forgot To Bring Him Back

Despite what you might conclude from my last few entries, I didn't blow *all* my money last week on old postcards.

Truth be told, I also blew some of it on a "new" cylinder for our 1903 Edison home phonograph.

That cylinder features Ada Jones's rendition of "She Forgot To Bring Him Back."

According to Wikipedia, "Ada Jones (June 1, 1873 – May 2, 1922) was a popular mezzo-soprano who recorded from 1905 to the early 1920s. She was born in Lancashire, England but moved with her family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of six in 1879. She started performing on stage, including juvenile roles in the 1880s. In 1893 or 1894, she recorded some musical performances for the North American Phonograph Co., most popularly known, 'Sweet Marie'. But the demise of this company ended this recording career and it was not until 1905 that she returned to recording, after a few years doing performances at such locations as Huber's 14th Street Museum in New York City. She recorded several duets with Billy Murray and Len Spencer. She sang in a range of accents and dialects."

Thanks to YouTube and pghcoyote, you can hear what I hear when I slip this cylinder on our machine if you want to:




FYI: Our machine doesn't look much like pghcoyote's.

If you want to know what it *does* look like, watch this video that was posted by desoto1961:






NOTE: If you watch desoto1961's video with the sound on, you'll also have the pleasure of hearing another selection from Ms. Jones.


ANOTHER NOTE: If you're interested in learning how to work an old Edison home photograph, see the excellent demonstration video that desoto1961 has posted here.


YET ANOTHER NOTE: Old Edison home phonographs aren't as rare as you might think.

Ours happens to be the 200,187th one that was made.

Please let me know if you happen to have #200,186. I'm kinda curious as to where it ended up.

Back To The Future

Here are the other 4 postcards I picked up at the antiques store on Monday:














It's been a long time since the US has hosted a world's fair.

The last one I can recall was Knoxville's way back in 1982. It didn't seem like much at the time and it's almost vanished entirely from my consciousness now.

Wikipedia tells me that there was another one in New Orleans in 1984 but I can't recall ever hearing a thing about it.

Wikipedia also tells me that one was going to be held in Chicago in 1992 but it ended up being cancelled.

If we were to host one now, what sort of exhibits would best represent our country? An obese ostrich sticking its head in the sand in a fruitless effort to ignore global warming? The space shuttle Atlantis turned into a homeless shelter? A complex system of pipelines filled with cement representing political gridlock?

How much do you think attendees would be willing to pay for a souvenir rust belt?

All I know for sure is that we certainly have all the room we may need for whatever exhibits we do decide to build (or ask India to build for us).

Today's newspaper tells me that Cleveland alone now has 20,000 vacant lots.

Not enough? Well, Philadelphia is said to have another 40,000.

And Flint and Buffalo allegedly have tens of thousands more....


Of course some Americans might think world fairs are a waste of money - relics of the past that long ago outlived their usefulness in the age of the Internet, American Idol, and meth labs.

Those Americans might be right, but if so why was the most recent world's fair such a record-setter?

Did you even hear about it?

It was held in Shanghai in 2010.

According to Wikipedia, "It was a major World Expo in the tradition of international fairs and expositions, the first since 1992. The theme of the exposition was 'Better City – Better Life' and signifies Shanghai's new status in the 21st century as the 'next great world city'.... It had the largest number of countries participating and was the most expensive Expo in the history of the world's fairs. The Shanghai World Expo was also the largest World's Fair site ever at 5.28 square km. By the end of the expo, over 73 million people had visited - a record attendance - and 250 countries and international organizations had participated. On October 16, 2010, the expo set a single-day record of having over 1.03 million visitors enter the exhibition that day."

What was going on in the US on October 16, 2010?

Well, according to The New York Times, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, Angelo Mozilo, agreed to pay $67.5 million to settle a civil fraud case against him; Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was promising to do more to fight unemployment; and Attorney General Eric Holder was promising to fight efforts to legalize marijuana.


I wish I could walk into a store today and buy a flashy new postcard promoting the wonders of American know-how and technology, but... I can't.

I've tried.

As far as I can tell, I can't even buy anything here that even acknowledges the recent Shanghai World's Fair. I may as well try to find a condom dispenser in the rest room of a Catholic cathedral.

So I settled for buying these artifacts from a time when our future actually looked brighter than our past.

It's not that I prefer living in the past - it's just that the future I was promised as a child seems to have been foreclosed on and is no longer available.

At least here in Ohio.

Maybe I would have better luck finding that future if I tried Googling it using Mandarin?

Will It Go Round In Circles

Here's another postcard that I picked up at the antiques store on Monday:





It shows the Cedar Point midway as it looked circa 1963.

That's about the time of my first visit.

I can distinctly recall going on The Rotor ride that can be seen just to the right of center in this photo. It was basically a big round barrel of a room that required riders to stand up against the inside wall of. The wall seems to have had the brown color and slightly rough texture of the back of a pegboard. Once everyone was in place the door was closed and the room began to spin clockwise (as seen from above). Once it got up to speed (maybe one complete revolution every 5 seconds) the floor dropped a foot or so and you were left stuck in place thanks to centrifugal force. Soon the floor came back up, the ride slowed, and you were free to go.

It was one of the few rides I looked forward to riding as a young child and I seem to have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Part of the fun involved climbing up a set of stairs to an observation balcony and watching others being spun around while you waited your turn. The stairs and balcony had a distinct back stage feel - shadowy and abandoned. I can remember stopping midway along, looking around at the dull blue/gray walls and floor, and wondering if we were really where we were supposed to be. It was an odd space to find in the middle of a sunny amusement park. (Apparently the ride had exterior side walls that are absent in this photo.) I guess we must have taken another set of stairs down to the entrance door but I can't remember those.

What I do clearly recall is that a giggly young farmgirl-type with a straw hat was on the ride directly opposite me and once the ride got up to speed her hat went flying to the center of the spinning room. She seems to have gone out and retrieved it before the room stopped spinning. I wondered if she would be punished for this obvious violation of the rules. Of course she wasn't (and probably went on to a life of increasingly reckless activities as a result).



As the antique dealer sold me this postcard he shared the story of how he'd been on The Rotor years ago and gotten violently ill as a result. According to him, they got rid of the ride soon after this.

This prompted me to tell my story of how I'd gone back to ride it in 1973 expecting to relive the great time I had as a child and ended up with a terrible headache instead.

It turns out that our bad experiences may have occurred on a different version of the ride than existed during my initial visit. I'm told that the first version lasted from 1961 to 1964 and a second version lasted from 1967 to 1984.

According to David W. Francis's history of Cedar Point, The Rotor was created in 1948 by a German inventor by the name of Ernst Hoffmeister. I shudder to think what Ernst might have been inventing instead had the Germans not lost World War II by then.

Is it possible that Hoffmeister and his Rotor are responsible for my damaged inner ear and the extreme bouts of vertigo that I've been experiencing in recent years (and described in some detail in an entry I posted last October 29th)?

I don't know.

I doubt it.

But the thought did cross my mind yesterday after I suffered my first drop attack of the year.

Was there really a time when I thought that the sensation of being spun around was entertaining?

I guess being able to stop the spinning after a minute or two makes all the difference in the world....

Unsent Mail

Here's a little something that I picked up at an antique store yesterday:







FYI: Postage for US postcards was 4 cents between January 7, 1963 and January 7, 1968.

I don't know why Bill never ended up actually mailing this after putting a stamp on it but maybe he realized too late that he didn't know Stuart's address.

I hope it wasn't because he had second thoughts about boasting about what he had learned. If I ever learn as much, you can bet that I'll have no qualms whatsoever about boasting about it here, on postcards, and every other way I can think of.

You don't suppose Bill went out and drowned while trying to learn how to bike in the water and his parents later found this tucked away in his suitcase, do you?

Whatever the case may be, at least Stuart now knows Bill was thinking of him at least once in his life.

Well, provided Stuart reads this blog.

If he doesn't, well... I for one will sleep good tonight knowing I've done all I could to enlighten him.

Another Unexpected Lunch Guest

It seems that most of my recent unexpected guests have been of the skunk and raccoon variety that prefer to show up in the evening when it's too dark to record their impressive munching skills.

Today, however, a guest showed up just an hour ago in broad daylight.

I think it was someone new - but I suppose it might have been the same guest I posted a video of back on July 21 if that guest has been enrolled in a rigorous weight loss program for the last few weeks.

What do you think?







Seems pretty determined to get in, doesn't he?

If any of my stuff turns up missing in the next few weeks, you can count on me forwarding these images to the police.

Five More Reasons To Love American Women

Just in case you need five more reasons....


----- Church attendance among women sank by 11 percentage points since 1991, declining to 44%. A majority of women no longer attend church services during a typical week.

----- Bible reading has plummeted by 10 percentage points, declining from half of all women reading the Bible during a typical week (excluding that done during church events) to just four out of ten doing so today (40%).

----- Sunday school involvement is less common among women these days, down seven points from the 24% mark noted in 1991.

----- Women have traditionally been the backbone of volunteer activity in churches. However, there has been a nine point slide in the percentage of women helping out at a church during any given week. That drop reflects a 31% reduction in the non-paid female work force at churches.

----- The only religious behavior that increased among women in the last 20 years was becoming unchurched. That rose a startling 17 percentage points – among the largest drops in church attachment identified in the research.


Those are some of the key findings of the Barna Group's latest examination of religious trends among Americans.

You can find more details at Barna's website but why would you want to spend another moment online when you could be out there in the real world rewarding these rapidly evolving women with your hugs and kisses?

Or at least a handshake and a pat on the back.

Or chocolate. I hear chocolate is good, too.

Go on - you know you want to!

(If you need a written permission slip in order to be excused from work or school, just let me know. I'll even be happy to write you TWO if you happen to be a woman yourself.)

A Different Kind Of Dream...

I've had many different kinds of dreams over the years but none quite like the one I woke up from this morning.

Perhaps the closest thing to today's dream are those in which I had no idea where I was or what time of day it was and it took me a minute or so to successfully reorient myself.

Those rare dreams I've had in which I'm not sure if I'm alive or dead aren't quite as similar but perhaps generate the same sort of existential unease.

Those dreams in which I think I'm awake but can't keep my eyes open and keep wondering why things are no clearer than they are in a dream remain in a class all their own.

Anyway, in today's dream, I couldn't recall how old I was.

Somehow my sleeping mind came to the conclusion that I was older than 18... but not yet 21.

When I woke up shortly thereafter and realized I was more than 30 years off, I felt... surprised... disgusted... and robbed.

For a good part of the morning it was difficult to escape the feeling that I'd gone to bed nearing the prime of life, only to wake up long past it....


If I dare to fall asleep again tonight, will I wake up tomorrow another 30 years older?

Will the next entry to be posted here be written by an octogenarian?

Probably not.

But dare I take that chance?

Would you?

*Wondering if I could hire someone to do all my sleeping for me*