Cultural literacy test: I guess we’re some distance from getting in trouble for saying “WC.”
Explain in the comments. (May be emergency comments today again. I'm working on it.)
“Well, that was before my time,” you say. It was before my time, too. A friend of mine who’s ten years younger would get it, but he’s a TV history devotee. I don’t want to say “geek” or “nerd” because I’m tired of the terms. We have gone from using them derisively to using them as a badge of coolness. But most things about which people are geeks or nerds aren’t really very cool, whereas studying the cultural anthropology of men in the 1960s who wore dark suits and skinny ties and sat on stools and acted like nervy birds pecking at the culture while preening before their reflection in the camera lens - that is cool, because, well, suits and skinny ties. Are we clear?
There, I’ve given you another hint.
Related: on WML the other night, Johnny Carson was a panelist. The occupation he was supposed to figure out was “Marriage Counselor.” He asked one of the standard questions: “Could I use your services?” If the show had been shot 25 years later the house would have laughed for 5 minutes, and you can just imagine him staring at it with blank, mild, Carsonesque confusion, and you can also imagine him figuring it out while everyone laughed.
Busy day, retirement-wise. Made some inquiries about the pension, as in, WHERE IS IT. Takes them three months to get it going, I guess. Apparently it comes as a total surprise when people actually apply for it. What? What money? Oh, that money! Well, it's around here somewhere. Let me check behind the fridge. Set up an appointment for gutter-cleaning estimate. Reconfigured an automatic bill payment to the new accounts - and you’re thinking stop, stop, I’m still processing that last news about the gutters. Okay.
Ready? So I had set up auto payment, but got a bill with a note that auto-payment was not enrolled. Huh. I’d done that. Called the customer line, got a cheerful guy who asked for my name, and then said “Oops.”
“You hate to hear oops from the power company,” I said. "Could be a Slack message from the nuclear plant."
He laughed and said he’d mistakenly closed a program, and he’s be right with me . . .
“Do you want me to sing some hold music?” I asked. I'm retired! I got all the livelong day to jaw and jape!
He did not, but appreciated the offer. It’s interesting how some people in the customer-facing part of a huge business can seem genial and helpful right away, the minute they start the call, and how that changes your attitude. (Or should, if you’re SPITTING MAD.) Some people pick up with a tone of bored resignation, and radiate indifference.
I mention this only because I called the Water Department with a question, at 4:30, and was informed they all went home at 4. Why? Because they can. Whaddya gonna do, go to the other water-supply company?
Another sign of too much energy leading to grief: I googled printer / scanners, looking for something new. Such sadness comes from this decision. So many options. So many opinions. So many sites that have helpful reviews offered up out of nothing but altruism, of course. I don’t know what I was thinking. It is a nation-unifying issue, though. It is our Five Cent Cigar.
Oh, there was much more. Yes, there was power washing. I started on the sidewalk before a moment of brilliant clarity descended on my disordered mind, and some wise voice, somber and wise with the accumulated weight of the ages, said you do not have to powerwash the sidewalk. So I stopped, and went to the patio to shop-van the excess paver sand. It's a different machine. I have no desire to shop-vac everything, but as I said on X today, I am tempted to get a peddler's cart, load up my 1800, and walk the streets shouting POWER WASHING. POWER WASHING! like some Lower Manhattan rag-man.
Their website says: “Our community was named when William Mann, John Bentz, and William Kneeland decided to flip a $20 gold piece for the honor of naming their settlement. Mr. Mann, being the lucky one, named it Sterling, after his hometown in Illinois.”
Here’s the proud town whose newspaper we sampled yesterday.
I can’t get any closer, because it jumps back to 2007.
I don't think it's a bank now. I think it was rehabbed to be something other than a bank, but you can add gilt letters and people know it's a restoration with a different purpose.
In this case. ART.
Big Brother, little brother
Oddly, and pointlessly, horned. Well, not pointlessly. You know what I mean.
That’s one way of telling people it’ll never be rented for anything ever again.
I wonder what’s in there. Something has to be in there. Lots of something.
This sight would make the Mobridge founders and boosters weep: what happened, and why doesn’t anyone care?
Although for all we know, they had their share of old ramshackle buildings, too.
Another pointy-top building. Interesting windows.
And it is . . .
The Rustic Inn. Scars of its old friend still visible. Well, neighbor. Don’t know if they were friends.
We all know what this is. Or was.
Do most folk know, though? I’m curious. If you’re 18 and you grew up in the burbs of a large city and never made it out into the great beyond, do you grasp instinctively was this was?
Down the street - can’t get closer or it’s back to blurry 2007.
Or can we? Oh heck let’s go anyway.
Empty. What was it? What did they make in there?
More points! It’s the town of pointy-top’t buildings! It's the sort of thing that makes me think they had a fire, and hired one guy to rebuild everything.
Glad the sign’s still up, but let’s be honest: it’s ugly.
2007: T'was
Now, T’isn’t. But what’s that on the surviving building?
A parable mural?
The solid arena, where shows and demos and graduations and all manner of civic events have been held, so generations can have memories of spilling outside after a marvelous time, drinking in the summer evening air, wondering where to go for Coke and pie.
Info:
The Scherr-Howe Event Center (Mobridge City Auditorium) is a public building that has been on the National Historic Registry since 1986. It was built as a WPA project in the 1930s and houses 10 early murals from renowned Native American artist, Oscar Howe. Howe painted the murals in the 1942, starting on April 18 and ending on June 22. On June 5, Howe was inducted into the US Army at Fort Snelling, but he received a 14 day furlough to finish the project. The murals were restored in 2014.
Odd. This is 2007 . . .
And this is 2022, with an old brand from the 70s.
Signs of a 40s or early 50s renovation. Could even be earlier, if the blue was painted on. But if the blue is original, I’m saying 1947. There.
The Brown Palace. Named after the famous one in Denver, perhaps?
No: Arthur Brown, local businessman. Also Lord of Hellfire. Strange world, his.
Sigh.
What was this?
It was a store. The old Mascot can be seen in this postcard. And it's the building we saw above with the WRANGLER sign.
What?
They still exist!
The chain’s bankrupt, and the company that took it over went bankrupt, and the wikipedia page says there’s just two left. Is this one, or did they just keep the sign after the parent company withered away, figuring no one would come around asking for it to be removed?
OUMB, 2007
And today. Eh.
State of the Art OUMB, right here:
And that’s Mobridge. More than I expected.
That will do for today. No, it won't! Motels. Hit the road, and I'll see you around. IF YOU'RE NOT SEEING COMMENTS, HERE ARE THE EMERGENCY COMMENTS FOR TODAY
