Natalie made it home through the storm, and all is well. More on the GREAT BLIZZARD OF 2022 tomorrow, if we're not murdered by flakes and drifts.

I went to Hunt and Gather for Christmas gifts, and found nothing I could give Wife, and only one thing I could give Natalie, aside from the 1,294 things I know she'd find interesting. I bought some matches, if you can believe that.

Many new things, or things I hadn't seen before. Two objects of great interest, but we'll get to those on Friday.

There was apparently a cult that worshipped a member of the PTA who'd just come back from Acapulco:

A huge box of slides, never to be used for anything. I don't know why anyone would buy them. The mysteries are endless, though. We can say when, but not where, or who.

That blue. With those browns. It happened. Ir happened a lot.

Another slide:

It says "Piper, Jaffrey & Hopwood" over the parking area. Both were local names. I've never seen this building.

Is she reading something wonderful, or does she have a headache from washing and folding the towels?

What's this? Why, it's an intact, unused Niagara Massage Machine.

They go for $250 on ebay these days.

Sounds like bunkum to me, but the company is still around, selling these zest-infusing devices.

I wondered what this was, aside from the obvious. A beer can in the beer can department. But an odd one, no?

Turns out it has a rich history. It's Scottish!

At the peak of their popularity in the 1970s, Tennent’s Lager Lovelies inhabited a very different country to the considerably more politically-correct Caledonia of today.

The full story here. One of those things you might not know if you weren't there, then.

One more for today:

It's one of my earliest memories of anything. That transmogrification sequence was unnerving.

Wikipedia:

Created by Gene Deitch under the Terrytoons studio (which by that time was a subsidiary of CBS, the network that broadcast Captain Kangaroo), Tom Terrific was made as twenty-six stories, each split into five episodes, with one five-minute episode broadcast per day. The first thirteen stories were filmed in 1957, with the second set in 1958. Captain Kangaroo continued to rerun the episodes for many years. Starting in 1962, Captain Kangaroo broadcast Tom Terrificevery other week, alternating with Terrytoons' Lariat Sam.

So I saw it on the reruns. Note:

All the voices were performed by Lionel Wilson (who later voiced Eustace Bagge from the Cartoon Network series Courage the Cowardly Dog).

Huh. And no one knew. What's odd to me is that I have absolutely no recollection of Lariat Sam.

More tomorrow.

Idaho's most third-populous city, says Wikipedia. Over one hundred thousand souls.

An inscrutable space on the alley. Surely not a door. Odd place for a window.

The Commfercial Building, erected the year of our Lord 1907.

Wonder when the E got clipped.

A church with a most unfortunate and unimaginative addition.

Towns of a certain size always have one of these: a 60s / 70s apartment building of no particular merit, looking like the residences of sexy sitcom residents.

A tidy little thing. It looked more open and friendly, once.

But eventually it looks like this, and people forget.

How many second-story blinded buildings have we seen over the years?

Whatever someone was doing to this, he lost interest.

Ah: Now we see what it used to be. What we don’t know is why it used to be like this.

An inscrutable old ad, possibly one over an older one.

There's a Coke ad in there somewhere.

That damned lamp. That corrugated backdrop. That olde-timey typeface.

OUMB, barely; with a little more 80s cool it could've been better.

GOSH WONDER WHAT THE WHOLE NAME IS

WE MAY NEVER KNOW

Classic old bank, you might say - except when have we ever seen a bank that looked like this, and proclaimed its function thus?

Hmm. Now what could this have been.

Cinematreasures says it was the Pix, or the Frontier. The roof fell in. There were plans to turn it into something else. The same old story.

The nice little modernist jewel box, so clean and crisp at the time compared to all the brick.

This looks like it was either a restaurant or a funeral parlor. Perhaps a fancy restaurant.

Now it’s a Legion hall. Evidence suggests - and don't ask, it's boring - that it always was.

This looks like absolutely nothing to us now, but again: a clean modern building that told everyone the tolwn was on the move. Look at a those big windows, angled for the future!

I don’t know what this ever was or what it’s trying to be. Perhaps another look?

No, I'm still confused.

Not as much downtown as I'd expect for a 100,000 people. It's spread out. Blocks of nothing in particular . . . then this!

That'll do! I know I said I was out of Motels for this year, but I thought I'd post one more.