Jack Manassas and Company

While looking for something else entirely, I found a box of  'Appleford's Cooking Parchment' that appears to have been made in 1935.  It is a real eye-opener!  The directions all over the box (and in the brochure that miraculously stayed inside the box for the past 82 years) are completely different from anything you read about parchment paper today-- You probably think it just prevents cookies from sticking to a cookie sheet. In fact, Parchment Paper was never meant to be used with cookie sheets.  I'll bet you didn't know that you must wet the sheet before you use it.  You can wrap several types of veggies in parchment paper bundles and boil them in the same water without transferring flavours between them.  You can-- and should-- wash your parchment sheet after use, and use it over and over again. Of course, maybe the sheets inside the box are made of different stuff than today's parchment paper.  The box originally contained ten sheets, neatly...

The thing that struck me first about Joyce was the laugh. We had an open house for our small group at church—I don’t remember the exact details—but Joyce was there, and at one point she let loose with an enormous belly laugh. It was a laugh that someone laughs when they haven’t laughed for years. A hungry laugh, a laugh of desperate starvation. A laugh that told the world, “Maybe I don’t have to be alone anymore.” She started coming to our small group each week. All the adults in Joyce’s family tended to die of heart attacks when they hit 50, so Joyce worked out at the gym. She was one of the fittest people I knew. Her husband had run off with the secretary and left her to raise their children alone. She did a good job, and by the time I got to know her, they were grown, had moved out of the house, and were living on their own. Joyce was witty as well as very smart, a good friend, and a marvelous cook. She was also lonely. Small group ...

In 1969, it probably seemed like a good logo for Cream Soda-- But with the advent of a certain emoji, maybe not such a good choice.  At least they didn't color the soda brown... On the other hand, I bought a bottle just to take this photo.  Maybe not such a bad marketing move after all, eh?

And Now for Something Completely The Same... Against my better judgement, I watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Netflix.  Halfway through, I got a great idea! What this world really needs is a NEW movie– “Planet of the Apes King Kong!” It starts in Planet-of-the-Apes 1936.  A group of ape explorers finds a mysterious island with ape natives that try to convince the ape explorers to turn back from the enormous bamboo gate.  Naturally they go through the gate anyway–and they find a Giant Human! One thing leads to another, and the Giant Human finds his way to the top of the Ape-Empire State Building, carrying a lady-ape. Apes in biplanes attack, and the giant human falls to the pavement. “T’was Beauty killed the Beast.” That’s the basic outline.  Remember–You read about it here first...