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When I entered the store I’d seen a big stack of orange tote bags. Thick fabric. Small. I thought: these are attractive, and cheap! Just $2.99. But then I thought I would never, ever use them, because they were too small. No one goes into the grocery store to pick up a few things and thinks oh, my reusable bag is the standard size. If only I had something smaller. I was relieved to realize I would not buy one, at all, ever. So what to get? Lots of new items. Mini pies, pecan or apple. Bread of a streusel variety. Powdered pumpkin crinkle. A variety of carbs and sugars, in other words. I moved along. Needed peanuts. There were two choices: unsalted, and half-salted. I wanted full-salt. Not for you, not today. Bananas? Sure. The price has gone up 4 cents. I can eat that, literally and figuratively. Yogurt? Sure; wife loves it for mid-morning snack with granola. They had a new flavor, cranberry-clementine. She’d been enthusiastic about it, so I got more. Egg nog flavor! Well, ’tis and all that. Which brings us to the Caramel Clotted Cream endcap. As I was looking at the new things a clerk bounced up like a cricket, beamed at me through her owl-colored glasses and said Hello! It was one of the old-timers who’s been there since the store opened, I swear, and she was the one who had asked “I’ve always wondered if it was Lye-lex or Lill-eks” when I went in the day I quit. When I was pumped full of extraordinary emotion. Remember that? Buck Dharma had called me. The guy at the liquor store said “congrats on your retirement,” because he was a Bleatnik. A wonderful day. I’ll ever be grateful for all that. The clerk said that she’d moved. She’d moved into a retirement community. It was a big deal for her. I said I understood. We’re downsizing and moving, so I know how that goes. “Where are you going?” She asked, as everyone does. And I said: “I don’t know.” Because I don’t. One night I’m looking at houses close by and after two hours I looking at new construction in far-flung exurbs an hour from the city, because after the last two years - ever since the column was axed, the job redefined to “no humor, no opinion,” the carjacking, the end of Jasperwood, the end of the neighborhood, the end of, well, you know, I feel like a metal splinter the city has been trying to push out. Daughter, in texts tonight, cautioned me against moving far out: I am a social person and need interaction. Correct. But if I’m going to be alone in a house maybe I’d rather be in a new one with lots of space and a green-screen studio in the big garage, a yard for Birch, then a 1983 townhouse - high ceilings! Two bedrooms! Popcorn ceilings! Smoked-glass mirrors in the bathroom! - in a curvy street in the burbs, with nothing but big box stores and low-slung malls eight-lane roads and no sense of urban compression. Every option bites the wax tadpole. For the first time I noticed her name on her tag - a nickname, no doubt, but it was delightful and made me laugh. We chatted a bit more about this and that, including the exact nature of the Clotted Cream. When I went to check out I chose the lane manned by another old-timer, someone with whom I’ve had a hundred hellos over the years. I was behind a well-off well-groomed suburban mom who - and do not take this unkindly - was the sort who had ten Stanley drink mugs and was first in line to get the Starbucks Bearista and would use the phrase mani-pedi unironically. She was telling the clerk how she absolutely had to have the $2.99 orange tote, they were So. Cute. When she left I said to the clerk that the totes were a psyop, a devilish trick, a cruel experiment. Management knew they’d never be used, because they were too small. Not good as a wine carrier. Not good for shopping. Not practical when compared to the alternatives, but, they were cute, and $2.99, and so they would be snapped up by exactly the sort of customer he’d just helped, and no criticism intended, just saying, this company knows its demographic. I went over to the liquor wing of TJs because I needed to pick up a box of Shiraz. Monday is Red Night, and on Fridays, I still insist on the 4 PM wine and cheese break. I get one of the leftover wedges from Kowalski’s massive cheese department - no peeking, just get the small one under three bucks - and then I go home, slice it up, find crackers, pour a little ration of wine for the ETBF, and tell her it’s time to take a break from her labors. It seems civilized and she loves it. A nice little moment. Pretty sure she’s still leaving in four and a half months, though. I’m auditioning for a job for which I’ve already been fired. The clerk in the liquor department was cheerful as the rest, and we joked about this and that. He asked if I wanted a bag for my box, and I said no, I'll use the built-in cardboard handle, the mark of fine wine. That's when I realized it would've fit perfecty into the orange $2.99 tote.
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It’s 1951, at least at first. These are taken from the 50s ad site, the absolute end, so you won't notice I stole them for a few years. The old treasured myth of the genteel learned hobo the others call "the perfesser." It's a good life, full of romance and freedom, but you got to watch for the bulls. Also, the Perfesser fell under the wheel trying to catch a freight the other day. Lost a leg.
The ad, by the way, is making a political case. The Google AI summary of the Fair Play campaign. based on a link to a trade industry mag:
I don't know if it accomplished anything.
1951 These ads show the end of the golden age of rail travel. How up-to-date was the rolling stock? Couldn't tell you. The cars were air-conditioned, though, so there'd been some improvements.
It's just planes except it takes all day and most of tomorrow.
Come up and dream! Of what?
Part of the appeal of these ads is the dress code. It's so grown-up and civilized. I'll step aside and hand the mic to wikipedia:
Well, no, and I don't know why anyone would expect that it should be.
Note the rather precarious and hard-to-access and curiously small luggage rack. I've traveled like this. It's great! I'm tempted to do it again, but the last time I took a sleeper it was careworn, and there was - really - a used diaper in the trash bin in my room.
"In times like these, our country has no greater asset than plants already tooled up and in production of necessities of national defense."
"In times like these" "National Defense" Not a sentiment that comes to mind now for most when they hear "1951." Oh, isn't all that stuff over?
1953. I've taken the Empire Builder, but not when it was under the Great Snortin'.
No jarring modernistic touches. They didn't say these things carelessly. The target market was annoyed by that stuff.
It has to be noted that these are literally the only ads in the magazine with section with black people.
And his name, of course, was George.
Food about which you can be truly ambivalent!
Passenger train travel, it should be noted, had peaked 30 years before.
That'll do. Thank you for your patience, and don't forget: there was a free Substack yesterday. Consider a paying subscription, as they say. Six months hence I'm going to need the scratch.
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I was looking at the new items at Traders Joe, as one does. Such innovation, so proudly announced. Caramel Clotted Cream! No idea what it is but I have come to believe that it is not clotted in the sense of “left to sit out for a long time, and rotten," but "Clumpy and thickened in an interesting way that goes good with bread pudding, perhaps.” I thought: I could bring this to Walberswick on my next visit! Except it was made in the UK. Coals to Newcastle and all that.
