Consoles weren’t always so bad, come sit by the fire children and let me tell you a story. (Reposted from reddit)

Posted on December 14, 2014 by The Old Wolf

This lovely bit of writing by /u/OneYearSteakDay over at reddit really resonated with me, because I lived through it from the other side of the age barrier. I have reposted it here with the author’s permission, and with the same gracious license I have bowdlerized it just a bit to make it suitable for all audiences (the original can be read here). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. (Turn on the fire while you read it for some nice atmosphere.)

A glorious fire crackles¹ in TrueAudio nearby, blazing with 16.78 million shades of red and orange; the PhysX logs pop and break, falling apart to reveal the beautifully tessellated embers casting real time reflections against the mip mapped stone walls.

This story doesn’t start in 1984, that’s just when my part of the story begins. President Ronald Regan was in a vicious battle for the soul of planet Earth, When Doves Cry by Prince was at the top of the Billboard hit list, great films like Terminator left lines reaching around the street, and the home PC; the Macintosh 128k, was selling for the low, low price of just $2,495.00.

It was the most glorious of times, it was the bleakest of times. The foundations on which our great PCMR Empire is built were being formed, our first allies in the fight were the wealthy and the strong, those who could afford a home computer of their own. This is not their story, I cannot tell their story because I was not wealthy, I was not strong, I was a peasant and I loved it.

On my sixth Christmas in 1990 my parents got me my first gaming console: The Nintendo Entertainment System. I eagerly unwrapped the beautiful box and unpacked all the items. I pulled out the console and set it aside, I pulled out a mass of wires and confusion and handed them to my father, I pulled out a slim square with a picture of a man jumping over fireballs and a a duck, I pulled out a neon orange gun, finally I pulled out the last piece: A shiny gray block with four buttons and a cross on it. I had used a keyboard at school, but this strange gray block was much smaller, it was easier to hold, my six year old fingers could reach all the buttons and I was in love.

My father spent an hour that Christmas day trying to connect the Nintendo to the TV. (You youngins don’t know how good you’ve got it with HDMI and DPP! Try getting a semi corroded RF connector to communicate well with a TV that lost it’s set screws and then we’ll talk.) Once finally installed and connected I inserted the cartridge and pressed the power button.

GLORIOUS! The massive 24″ television screen displayed a beautiful image in 64 vibrant colors, speakers blazed amazing mono sound and I was enraptured. I pressed the button designated “Start” and the speakers let out a chime as I was thrown head first into World 1-1. I had played games the computer at school, but this was completely different! The school computers were slow, they didn’t play sound, and their screens had 62 fewer colors than this amazing NES. [Ed. Green or Amber and off. Off functioned as black.] It was obvious to me that Christmas morning that Computers were vastly inferior to this amazing piece of engineering attached to my TV screen.

The whole house came together to play. Mom and dad were as likely to get killed by a rebounding koopa shell as I was, dad was much better at shooting ducks than myself, but I was still better than mom. Much laughter was had as we tried to get used to this four button and a cross rectangle, when I ran right my entire body would lean with it, my hands jumped when Mario jumped, my heart raced when Mario fell, truly this rectangle was vastly superior to the keyboards I was used to at school!

As the years passed I acquired more games and more consoles and they were all adopted as members of the family. The Sega Genesis came next, and it was edgy, new, fast, a quantum leap beyond anything that the NES or school computers could offer. Sonic the Hedgehog could run over 700 miles per hourand my dad’s Chevette could only do 50 miles per hour down hill. Vectorman could shoot 3D blasts in any direction, Megaman on the NES could only shoot forward. Comix Zone had branching story paths and spectacular art, where as on the Nintendo there was only one path: Forward. The obvious technological improvements over the past were obvious. I was hooked.

Next came the stately SNES, my heart and soul, my bread and butter, my breath and blood. The SNES wasn’t more powerful than the Genesis exactly, but it has something the Sega didn’t: JRPGs. To this day I still have the Chrono Trigger cartridge with a New Game+ starting 120 hours in. To this day I still relish playing the opening level of Mega Man X3 when I got to play as Zero for the first time. To this day I still fawn over the beauty that is Yoshi’s Island.

Seriously, game developers, a good art style will always trump good graphics. To this day I still regard Kirby Super Star as the quintessential Kirby game. To this day I love the SNES and all that came with it.

It was in 1999 that my family got our first computer. Check these specs:

3gb hard drive

32mb of ram

28.8kbs modem

550mhz Intel Pentium Processor

Integrated floppy disk drive

Integrated CD reader

Stereo sound

This computer was dope. The hard drive had more storage than anyone could ever need, the ram was excessive and never completely filled, the processor was blazing fast and thanks to the CD rom drive I was able to install the bundled games quickly and permanently. Truly it was glorious my brothers!

When I finally got the opportunity to try this new piece of technology the first thing I did was load up the included copy of Mechwarrior 2. (Someone remake this game please. Please. Please.) True 3-D, yo! No longer was I constrained to go forward or right, now I could go left, or backwards, or use my jump jets or….

“Wait, what’s this bluescreen with all the numbers? How do I get back to the game?”

I had played a lot of hard video games in my time, games that would mercilessly defeat me, games like Bucky O’hare, Mega Man 2, and Mega Man X2, but I’d never encountered a mechanic that would cause the entire screen to turn blue! I died so hard that I couldn’t even get back to Windows. I restarted the computer and tried again. This time I didn’t get a bluescreen, this time I got a popup window informing me that I had performed an “Illegal Operation” and then the computer shut down. Then an enemy used some attack on me that slowed down my whole computer and prevented my Mech from receiving input from my joystick. Then a crowd of enemies ambushed me and froze my screen while they killed me. Seriously, Mechwarrior 2 was harder than anything I had ever played before. I had never been hit so hard in Mega Man or Mario that I had to restart my NES! I played Mechwarrior 2 on and off for years, but I was never able to “win” the game because the enemies played so many dirty tricks on me.

Clearly PC gaming was not for me. I went back to my consoles and remember experiencing to many memorable experiences. I got a PSX and fell in love with games like FFVII, FFT, Mega Man X4, Vagrant Story and so many others, none of which had enemies that would force me to restart the console and all of which were extremely fun to play. I got an N64, which had the first controller I ever held with an analog joystick. This was revolutionary! A 3D controller for a 3D console, brilliant! Super Mario 64, no bluescreens, no slow downs, 3D, fast game play, no need for a PC. Then came Star Fox 64 and the invention of the rumble pack, a true killer app for home consoles! This was an amazing time to be a gamer, and I do feel a tinge of regret that many of our younger brethren didn’t have an opportunity to experience it first hand.

With the PS2 and Xbox things began to change. All of the sudden the perfect game play I had experienced on my perfect consoles began to slip. Sometimes the console would slow down, sometimes it would stop all together, sometimes it wouldn’t even start up the game I had put in. They both offered DVD playback, but that could damage the PS2 and the Xbox required a special adapter. They both offered connection to the internet, but the PS2 didn’t do it very well and the Xbox required a subscription. They both had save features, but the PS2 used an expensive 8mb memory card and the Xbox used it’s built in 10gb mechanical hard drive.

The Xbox was the last console I ever bought (except for the Wii, which I regard more as a toy than a gaming console) because the Xbox was the end of a generation for gamers. Because the Xbox came with a hard drive and an internet connection now publishers and developers could upload patches and new content on the fly. Because publishers and developers could fix games retroactively there was no longer the need to ship finished, quality checked games. More and more broken games began coming to the market and many gamers began to leave their consoles behind.

The increased complexity of the consoles themselves also caused problems. I feel bad for anyone who owned a first generation PS2 because the DVD readers broke constantly. I feel bad for anyone who had to get a replacement HDD for their Xbox because they had to pay money to lose their saves. (I don’t feel bad for anyone who owned a GameCube because you could fire that sucker out of a cannon into a volcano filled with angry flaming lava bees and it would still play any GC game you threw at it.)

Thus the Xbox killed the console as we old-timers knew it.

What you have to understand is that there was a time when consoles just worked; they were single purpose units, dedicated solely to playing video games without suffering from the overhead of an Operating System running complex hardware. The NES just played games, the SNES just played games, the Sega Genesis just played games, the N64 just played games, the PSX just played games, (and audio CDs, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment) and my friends, they were glorious! Because these games couldn’t be updated, fixed, patched, enhanced, rebroken, repatched, then forgotten they had to be released in working order with good game play. The idea of buying a broken game because Ubisoft will be fixing it soon anyway would be frightening and confusing to gamers of this era. And I am a gamer of this era.

Not long ago; only two generations past now, the console and the PC could coexist peacefully in the same home, each serving it’s respective purpose, each with it’s own strengths and weaknesses. Today “consoles” are nothing more than weak mini computers, and that is unfortunate because they could be so much more. Having seen both the zenith and the nadir of console gaming I can assure you that consoles have so much potential, but they’ll never realize that potential so long as they’re trying to be something they’re not. Like a feather weight fighter boxing the heavy weight champion, modern consoles have reached too far for their own good, and while strong in their own right they cannot win against this opponent.

And that children is why so many elders of the PC Master Race have gigabits worth of roms on their hard drives, burned ISO files of old PSX games sitting on the shelf, and choose to play Pokemon Red on their cell phones. There were good times, and there were great times, and that you may not get to experience them saddens me. The roots of the console tree are strong, the trunk is thick and sturdy, but the branches creak and crack under their own weight. You may live to see the day when this tree is nursed back to health, but first we must look back at what made the tree so strong in the first place.

The last of the logs pop as the hearth darkens, real time shadows dance about the stones, now defined by feathery ambient occlusion and the cooling shades of of 256RGB reds and yellows. I warm my hands over the few remaining embers and remember the days when Final Fantasy VII had the best graphics the world had ever seen and sigh.

TL;DR: Consoles used to be gaming machines, made for gamers to play video games. They were accessible, they were stable, they were affordable, they were powerful and they were fun. Then Xbox and everything bad now.

I can’t describe adequately how much this bit of writing pleased me, because I was one of those dads who struggled with rusty RF connectors as my oldest son got his first NES in around 1985. He could whup my honus at Mario 1 – I kept falling down those never-sufficiently-to-be-accursed pits, and rarely made it past 1.1 – but I was a better duck hunter.

This period of gaming indelibly affected me. My current phone ring is the Peloponessus segment from “Battle of Olympus.” I have a customized ring in case my ex ever calls me: “Still Alive,” from Portal. And sometimes I find myself whistling the theme song from “Bubsy.” As the author intimated, these were times never to be forgotten.

My thanks to /u/OneYearSteakDay for the wander through the mists of memory.

¹ Glorious fire located by /u/testsubject12a and /u/N0sc0p3dscrublord

Ersatzkaffee

Posted on December 13, 2014 by The Old Wolf

I can’t drink coffee any longer, and haven’t since 1969. I used to consume it by the gallon, or by the thimbleful when I lived in Naples, Italy – lots and lots of thimbles. Back when “uno normale” cost 50 Lire, the equivalent of 8¢.

Nowadays my caffeine addiction is fed in other ways.

But there are times when a hot cup of something hits the spot, and this idea has never really appealed to me:

Enter Erzatzkaffee, a German word meaning “coffee substitute.” I remember hearing my mom talk about this when I was a kid back in the 50s, and the impression I got was that it was made from anything they could find, sorta like this:

Apparently it wasn’t quite as bad as all that. Mit herzlichem Dank an Benutzer Helmut0815 over at the Axis History Forum, I found this:

In wartime Germany as well as in early postwar era there was of course a massive shortage of coffee as Germany was cut off from it’s resources. Real coffee was only available on the black market.
So the people drank Ersatzkaffee widely known as “Muckefuck” (from french “Mocca faux” = false coffee) which was made from roasted chicory roots, malt, barley, rye, acorn and many other things which were available. Of course this Ersatzkaffee did not contain any caffeine.

Some popular brands were Linde’s Kaffee-Ersatz-Mischung, Kathreiner Malzkaffee, Koff and Effka.

After I gave up coffee, I took to drinking Postum™, once a ubiquitous feature of Greyound Bus waystations all over the country, to be found in little packets right next to the Sanka™ instant coffee, but over time its popularity faded and it was discontinued in 2007. Fortunately for me, Eliza’s Quest foods acquired the trademark and Postum™ is now once again in stores and can be had online.

The product was responsible for multiple foilings of “Mr. Coffee Nerves:”

After a two-year stay in Austria, I came home converted to Caro™, which tastes a lot closer to coffee:

Fortunately for me, Caro™ is marketed in the USA as Pero™.

These products are based on malted barley, chicory, and rye, and although an inveterate coffee drinker would probably think they taste like panther piss, after a while they grow on you if you can’t have the real thing.

A lot better than pencil shavings, at any road.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Eating the Cowboy’s Best Friend

Posted on December 12, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Original Caption: Women line up outside a butcher shop to buy meat in North Cheam, Surrey, England, on April 17, 1942 during World War II. (AP Photo)

World War II brought rationing and deprivations on both sides of the conflict, but horse meat was not rationed. An extract from the BBC website WW2 People’s War:

Strange things on the dinner table

Over-riding all these trifling discomforts was the non-stop foraging by the housewife to provide some variety in her family’s meals. I cannot recall ever being literally hungry, but the country had been reliant upon imports, which were now impossible because of the sea blockade. Everything was scrupulously rationed and we ate some strange things to supplement our diet.

Tea tablets were used to make the tea look stronger; babies’ dried milk or ‘National’ milk was added if it could be obtained; and saccharine was used as a sweetener. Some even resorted to using honey or jam. What a concoction – but we drank it. Bread was heavy and a dull grey colour, but it, too, was rationed – so we ate it.

Sweets were devised from a mixture of dried milk and peppermint essence with a little sugar or icing sugar if available. Grated carrots replaced fruit in a Christmas or birthday cake, while a substitute almond paste was made from ground rice or semolina mixed with a little icing sugar and almond essence. Dried egg powder was used as a raising agent, and this same dried egg could be reconstituted and fried, yielding a dull, yellow, rubbery-like apology for the light and fluffy real thing – but there was nothing else, so we ate it.

Bean pies and lentil rissoles provided protein to eke out our meagre meat ration, and the horse-meat shop, which previously had sold its products only for dogs, now bore a notice on some of its joints occasionally, ‘Fit for Human Consumption’. This horse-meat was not rationed, but it did have to be queued for and sure enough eventually it appeared on our table. It had to be cooked for a long time and even then it was still tough. Nevertheless, it did not get thrown out.

In complete contrast, one highlight for me was the coming of spam from America. It was an oasis in our desert of mediocrity; an elixir in our sea of austerity. It seems to me that it was meatier, juicier, and much tastier than it is now. (Tricks of memory again, no doubt.) We ate it in sandwiches; we ate it fried with chips; cold with salad; chopped in spam-and-egg pies, until, of course, it ceased to provide the variety we longed for, but I never tired of it.

Whale meat – completely inedible

The benefits of eating fish were widely proclaimed, but again it was very scarce. Fishing was a dangerous occupation in mine-laden waters and the pier was a prohibited area, so fresh fish was a novelty and a luxury.

The ultimate came, however, when the government hit on the bright idea of combining fish and meat and urged us to eat whale meat. Where, or how, the whales were caught and brought to England I do not know. There must be a limit to how much whale one ship can carry, and one whale alone would provide a lot of whale steaks, but newspapers and the wireless told us how to prepare and cook the stuff, and sure enough, in due course, it appeared in the shops. From there, inevitably, it found its way onto our table.

It had been soaked overnight, steam-cooked, and soaked again, then blanketed with a sauce, but still it tasted exactly what it sounds like – tough meat with a distinctly fishy flavour, ugh. Just this once the next-door’s cat ate it!

Yes, we laugh about it all now, yet after all these years I still cannot bear to see good food wasted or thrown away – but I think I could make an exception with whale meat.

We lived in Switzerland for about 6 months back in the 80s. In Boudry, a small suburb of Neuchâtel, there was a boucherie chevaline (horse butcher) just down the street. I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but you can see some lovely ones at the website of Boucherie chevaline de Préville in France.

My kids had some when we visited friends, and they enjoyed it, if I recall correctly what they said. I’ve had horsemeat, and find it sweeter and more savory than beef, but not as gamy as venison.

Here in the USA, horses were so much a part of our history – especially with regards to the colonization of the West – that eating them was virtually taboo, and in the eyes of many remains so today. From an article at Slate:

Why don’t Americans eat horse?

Because we love our beasts of burden. As with many food taboos, there’s no settled explanation for why most Americans are perfectly willing to eat cows, pigs, and chickens but turn their noses up at horse. Horse-eating, or hippophagy, became popular in Europe in the 19th century, when famines caused several governments to license horse butcheries. Today, horse meat is most widely available in France, Belgium, and Sweden, where it outsells mutton and lamb combined. While Americans have occasionally consumed their equine friends during times of scarcity, the practice just didn’t catch on. It may be that so many Americans forged intimate relationships with horses during our founding and expansion that eating the creature seemed morally wrong by the time of the nation’s major food shortages of the 20^th century.

I noted with interest that many articles like this one that conjure up images of horror regarding the last hours of your daughter’s beloved Blossom are written by folks who would think nothing of trotting down to their local Piggly-Wiggly for a nice T-bone steak.

That said, there are articles that take the other side of the debate, such as this one at Philly Mag, or one at Business Insider which points out there’s really no good reason not to eat Blossom.

If horse meat ever shows up at my grocery store, I’ll probably buy it on occasion in the same way we stock up on lamb when it goes on sale. For me, meat is meat. Although the description in the extract above about whale meat is enough to put me off trying it, even absent the ecological considerations.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

McDonnel’s Drive In, 1935

Posted on December 9, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Not Mickey D’s, this was long before that concern was a gleam in Ray Kroc’s eye.

Had to make a few edits when I found some updated information about the first photo.

“Eat in Car” early drive-in at Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Hollywood, California 1935. Photo by John Gutmann. The location looks a bit different than the two earlier photos below. This may have been after a remodel.

McDonnel’s at night, circa 1931.

The staff waits for customers, 1931.

Here is a link to a current view o the location on Google Maps.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

I love the people of Chamula. Belch

Posted on December 7, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Now, aside from several trips to the barrios of Tijuana to help build houses for Project Mercy, I’ve never been south of the border. So I can’t say I know the people of Chamula, a small town in the Chiapan highlands in the South of Mexico, but their syncretic religion fascinates me, a blend of Catholic and Mayan beliefs.

But in an odd blend of the traditional and the modern, the Chamulans have a higher regard for Coca Cola™ than the Hawai’ians have for Spam™; to them, it’s a sacred libation.

Praying in San Juan Chamula church. Image courtesy of mam.org.mx, which now appears to be defunct. This picture would have been taken surreptitiously, as photography in town is difficult, and in the church entirely forbidden, a transgression which can get you ejected. It’s not lost on me that one of the bottles shown here is Pepsi, but you know, any port in a storm.

What follows is an extract from a blog post by Julieta Cárdenas at the College Hill Independent, who describes the relationship between Coke™ and the Chamulans far better than I ever could. Her entire post is worth a read.

Coke and Candles

In Chamula, Coke is everywhere. Not just in small businesses and eateries, but also places of worship. Within the ash-covered walls of the Church of San Juan, women wearing black llama-fur skirts kneel on floors flooded with pine needles. Men and women alike melt the bottoms of the candles and use the liquid wax as an adhesive to stick candles of different colors onto the floor, arranging intricate, abstract patterns. These patterns are complemented by the carefully arranged coke bottles that sit adjacent to them. I look around—there are many, many gallon bottles of Coke on the floor of this church. The aromatic warmth from the pine and smoke is contrasted by the cold-red plastic label of the bottles. All around me, people are using these branded, corporate soft-drink bottles for prayer.

Chamula is an autonomous town about 30 minutes by van from San Cristóbal de las Casas. The people there, of Mayan descent, gained their freedom from the Mexican government and Catholic Church by ejecting foreigners from their town in the 1970s. Chamula maintains its own leadership, police force, and prison system. It is independent to such an extent that it forbids people born elsewhere to live in it or join its culture: that is to say, it is endogamous.

I had come to Chamula because I had remembered the town from a previous visit when I was fourteen, and wanted to revisit and try to learn more about the culture than I had before. I had also wanted to get some pictures, but photography was forbidden inside the church, and I had to ask permission before taking pictures of anyone. These rules, although reasonable, made me feel like an outsider in a town where, ironically, residents make a considerable profit from sales of artisan crafts to visitors. Although the small town is a site of tourism, as a non-resident of Chamula you cannot help but be constantly reminded that you are only a visitor.

It was peculiar to observe an exclusive community—stringent about upholding a boundary between the indigenous and the imported—also incorporate a first-world soft drink into their religious practices. Luckily our guide, a man from San Cristóbal who spoke English, Spanish, and Tzotzil—the Chamula Mayan dialect—offered an explanation. After leaving the church, we headed to the home of a local woman, who demonstrated her weaving techniques on a handmade loom with homespun thread, and gave us homemade tortillas sprinkled with pumpkin powder and rolled into delicious cylinders. Standing in the path of a number of hens, and against a backdrop of finished textiles, our guide elaborated on the significance of Coke in religious terms. The people of Chamula believe in a syncretic religion—a hybrid of Mayan and Catholic beliefs—that mixes the iconography of the Saints with more ancient symbols like colored corn, which comes in red, yellow, black, and white varieties, each color bearing spiritual significance. This color symbolism manifeststhroughout the church, in candles made from animal fat or beeswax and most prominently in half-filled glasses of vibrantly colored beverages. Among these beverages are Pox (pronounced posh)—a white sugarcane-based liquor—various orange-flavored drinks, and, of course, Coca-Cola.

A Refreshed Perspective

Coke, distinctively dark brown, has become a representation of the black corn that is sacred to the people of Chamula and to many of Mayan decent. (Black candles are thought to get rid of envy. White is for the tortillas, an offering to the Gods. Yellow is for money, and red is for health.) Each color means something, and the specific placement of the candles on the floor represents different votive pleas to the Saints.

Coca-Cola has not only found its way into Chamula culture for its color. It serves a functional physical cathartic purpose as well—the gaseous qualities of Coke make it invaluablein the context of the preexisting religion; its carbonation has taken on spiritual significance.

When I was a kid, I was delighted to know that the ~~Japanese~~ Chinese consider belching after a meal to be a high compliment to the chef, and it is supposedly appropriate in India as well. But:

The Chamula people believe that burping is a purgative mechanism. It provides an outlet for the body and the soul, a release for the negative energy that affects a person in need of healing. (Emphasis most decidedly mine.)

Do you hear that? Do you hear that? Now, I’ll thank you very much if the rest of you would just kindly rise up out of my face about my sacred purging of negative energy.

The Old Wolf has belch spoken.

The Garbage Disposer in 1951

Posted on December 6, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Having mentioned the Kiplinger Magazine in my previous post, I happened across this article in the same issue, and found it a fascinating look back to the year of my birth, six years after the end of World War II. An appliance most of us take for granted these days, and even consider when looking at a home to purchase, was at that time still a novelty. The article gives a look back through the chronoscope at what some people were thinking about this new-fangled device. From Changing Times, The Kiplinger Magazine, October 1951.

PRIVATE PIG IN THE KITCHEN

Almost a million electric garbage disposers are now in use, and they are putting the garbage man out of a job

GARBAGE is a nasty word. When fed to hogs, it was an even nastier name: “swill” or “slops.” The delicate refer to it as “food wastes.” Whatever you call it, it’s a mess when the bottom drops from a soggy paper bag as you rush the stuff to the kitchen door.

You may never face that domestic crisis again. A revolution is going on that may make the garbage can as outmoded as the privy.

Its successor will he the electric garbage disposer, that mechanical pig that sits under the kitchen sink, gobbling up your garbage and washing it down with cold water.

If you have a disposer now, you know why housewives love it. It ends a lot of fuss and muss. It eliminates smells and drippings. It speeds getting meals and cleaning up afterward. It’s self-c1eaning, and stray dogs can’t knock it over. It puts flies, roaches, rats and mice on a starvation diet.

If you still stick to the garbage can routine, you’ll probably switch to a disposer sooner or later. This gadget is catching on fast all over the country. In the Los Angeles area alone, 10,000 units are installed monthly. Home builders feature them in new houses. A Midwestern city installed them all over town and fired its garbage collector. Last year sales were nearly double those of the year before.

The mechanical pig was almost 20 years old before it began to go to town. General Electric put its Disposall on the market in the early 30’s. But by the time World War II came, only about 100,000 disposers were in use – not many for a nation that buys over 3 million vacuum cleaners a year.

One reason for its slow start was its price – well over $100. Housewives were skeptical, too. Could it really chew up their garbage like the ads said? Would it last? Some city officials, fearing ground garbage would clog sewer mains and overburden treatment plants, outlawed disposers.

An answer to the durability question came from Edward J. Zimmer of Chicago’s Plumbing Testing Laboratory. He ran a disposer for a year, cramming in as much waste as a family of eight would have in 25 years. For seasoning he fed in big helpings of ashes, sand, granite, paving blocks, glass, nail, even a few iron fittings. After a year his disposer was still grinding away. It was a little slower, but it continued to grind well.

Time has furnished another answer. The earliest disposers have now been in use for 15 years. They still work well. Apparently they will last 20 years, as their makers claim.

The disposer is not a hazard to sewer systems. In Zimmer’s test, the disposer scoured out sewer lines instead of clogging them. Experiments at the University of Texas and e1sewhere proved a reasonably well-built sewer could carry off with ease whatever the disposer sent its way.

Meanwhile, health officers have jumped on the disposer bandwagon. They have long opposed feeding garbage to pigs, because that may lead to trichinosis in people who eat garbage-fed pork. Besides, garbage cans are feeding stations for disease-spreading flies. The disposer can end both threats to health.

Prize exhibit in the disposer showcase is the little Indiana city of Jasper (pop. 6,000). Garbage was a headache there. The city paid farmers to collect it. People complained about the service. It was hard to get bidders for the job. It cost the city $6,000 a year. If Jasper were to set up its own collection and disposal system, the bill would be $13,000.

The city’s engineer-mayor, Herbert Thyen, thought city-wide installation of disposers would make Jasper a garbage-free city and save money, too. The city council agreed. It got the state legislature to pass a law permitting Indiana cities to use home disposer garbage systems and to float a bond issue to pay for them.

But Jasper decided not to force a disposer on anyone who didn’t want one. So it passed up the bond issue idea in favor of asking each householder to buy a disposer for a bargain $75. Local banks made loans to those who needed time to pay. Soon 1,000 families-enough to set the plan going-signed up. The mayor estimates Jasper will save $13,000 a year on garbage collection, plus $6,000 it used to spend spraying garbage cans.

Some authorities question these savings.

Garbage is only 10% of a city’s refuse, they say. The other 90% must still he collected. Also, the extra flow from universal use of disposers would up the cost of sewage treatment by about 60 cents per person per year. Jasper’s new plant is bigger than what would have been needed for garbage-free sewage alone. Nevertheless, 156 cities are considering following Jasper’s lead.

In a few cities, you still can’t have a disposer because local ordinances forbid them. Some bans exist where sewage systems are inadequate, or so close to it that they can’t handle even a small additional load. Others are holdovers from the days when the effect of disposers on sewers was unknown.

But the price of the disposer plus the cost of installation is still the biggest hobble on the mechanical pig. The average unit sold last year cost $135. Some installations cost more than the disposer itself, up to $150. The average is $65. It adds up to an investment most families think about twice.

Even so, the industry is doing nicely. It’s not big time yet, but ifs on its way. In 1949, 175,000 disposers were installed. In 1950 the total was 300,000. At the first of this year 775,000 were in use, 87% of them having been installed in the last four years.

There’s more competition now, too. One manufacturer had almost all the prewar business. Today, 15 makers are in the field, including a healthy proportion of small outfits.

At 300,000 units a year, the disposer business is still in its infancy. When it hits a million a year, it will be grown up. How soon that day comes depends on how much steel can he spared from defense. Right now, shortages are in prospect. But when the million mark is reached, the garbage can will be on its way to the museum.

HOW TO RETIRE YOUR GARBAGE CAN

In the market for a garbage disposer? Follow these steps:

Consider your sewer system. If you use regular city-type sewers, you can probably use a disposer. They’ll work with septic tanks, too, if the tank is big enough. Minimum size is 500 gallons. Larger sizes arc recommended if you have more than two bedrooms. If you use a cesspool, better forget the whole thing.

Check local laws. Before you commit yourself, be sure your town permits disposers. There may be special installation requirements, too. Your dealer will know.

Measure your sink.. If the drain opening is 3 1/2 to 4 inches across, a disposer will fit. An adapter fits some disposers to larger openings. It is possible to enlarge small openings.

Get the Installation costs. It takes both au electrician and a plumber to do the job. It may run you 20% to 150% of the cost of the disposer itself. So find out what it will cost in your particular case.

Pick your disposer. There are just two types. In one, you open the top and put in garbage as it grinds. In the other, you fill the hopper, close the top, and then switch on the unit. With 15 makes on the market, there are price differences. So shop around.

Add up the costs. Price of the disposer plus installation is what you pay. Figure it will last 20 veers and cost about 5 cents a month to operate. Don’t forget you’ll still need trash collection for metal, glass, seafood shells, paper, rubber, large bones. But you may not need a pickup as often as before.

Treat It fairly. Follow directions on what to put in and what to keep out. Learn to tell, by the sound, when the grinding is done. Switch off promptly to save money.

In 1951, if your disposer cost $150 and you were socked $135.00 to install it, that would come to equivalent value today of about $2,600, definitely not chump change. But given some of the problems mentioned in the article, which were pretty endemic to society in those days, it’s easy to see why the idea caught on, especially as prices dropped.

From Mad’s Dave Berg Looks at the USA, illustrating another common theme in the 50s and 60s. Some of us are still looking for Bolsheviks under our beds at night…

Of course, as we were reliably told by Hefty, you don’t necessarily need a disposer to handle that problem:

Nowadays you can find a serviceable model at a home-improvement store for about $100.00 and install it yourself. There are more expensive models, of course, but the cheaper ones work well and usually last around 10 years.

But now, the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. An interesting article over at Remodelista covers pros and cons and gives tips on composting for those who are able to do it. As for us, we are fortunate enough to live in an area that permits backyard hens, which means we put almost nothing down the disposal and virtually nothing compostable into the landfill, and it comes back to us in the form of eggs. (The girls are taking a break at the moment, but if they don’t get with it our garbage will come back to us in the form of chicken enchiladas, which puts me in mind of this cartoon by Adrian Raeside:

Some older homes can’t handle a disposal well, and this should be taken into consideration. We bought a home that was built in 1950, before disposals were a household word. The downstairs kitchen was added later, and the contractor didn’t provide a big enough rise-over-run ratio from the new plumbing to the sewer main, so the long run of pipe would fill up with sludge which had to be rooted out from time to time. New construction should never have that problem.

In the end, the less we put down the pipes the better. it’s convenient and the technology allows for it, but there are increased costs in terms of sewage treatment, and if one can recycle, compost, or reduce waste in any way, then that’s the best way to go if we’re wanting to reduce our impact on island earth.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Original “Glasses for the Lazy”

Posted on December 6, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Edit: If you’re just chancing across this post, be sure to read the delightful comments below by Janet Warner Reid, the oldest daughter of Clarence Warner.

This image has been propagated all over the net by various content aggregators whom I will not mention here; I saw it in a collection of interesting tidbits shared with me by my good wife. At the New York Daily News I was able to find an attribution:

Caters News./ Published: 04/28/2014 12:58:23

What intrigued me about this image is that I have a pair made in 1951 which I inherited from my dad. One temple is missing and the remaining hinge is corroded closed, but these are the real McCoy.

Look closely between the lenses and you’ll see this logo:

Mark Cross is a premier luxury leather goods company, and still going strong. If you want a $2500.00 fine leather men’s travel bag about the size of a laptop case, they’re just the company for you. Armed with the brand, I was able to come up with this:

Changing Times, The Kiplinger Magazine, October 1951, Page 38. For what it’s worth, Kiplinger is still in business as well.

Naturally, if there’s a good idea, you can be sure someone in China will make it for cheap.

This pair is called Bed Prism Spectacles, made by a Chinese outfit and for sale via Amazon.com for $13.05. Given that the original set by Clarence S. Warner sold in 1951 for $19.95, the equivalent of $182.00 today, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal. Of course, it’s hard to tell the quality of these new knockoffs (and there are many, many versions out there), but I know the ones sold by Mark Cross were top-drawer.

The idea is great, but there are some drawbacks. If you’re nearsighted like me and wear glasses, they don’t work all that well. Contacts would be an obvious answer, but then one would need reading glasses for close-up work if you’re farsighted as well. Like me.

But I’ve had these in my treasure collection since 1989 when dad passed away, and it’s nice to know I have a pair of the originals, made by a company that makes only the best.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

“I’d rather get a root canal than do [X].”

Posted on December 4, 2014 by The Old Wolf

I remember hearing this phrase many times when I was growing up, and always wondered why it was held up as an example of something to be feared.

This recently-found cartoon backs me up.

Then I had one.

The procedure was not really that horrid from the “sitting in the chair” standpoint, because I couldn’t see what was going on, but I remember that it just took a long time. I think if I had seen this animation (the Internet didn’t exist back then), I might have had even more reservations about going. Ow ow ow…

Now, I already had a crown on the affected tooth, so the last bit wasn’t necessary, but I had no idea this process was so involved.

The biggest challenge was the fact that I ached for three months after I had it done. It was insane. I wondered if I was going to have to have the thing done again, but eventually the pain subsided.

And thinking about this whole thing brought up a whole raft of memories about dental work… and I had a lot of it done as a kid.

See, the thing of it was, I was terrified of needles. I started getting cavities in my teeth before I was 8, and had a lot of my baby teeth filled, and I refused to let the dentist give me anæsthetic… so I endured countless sessions in a setup that looked a lot like this:

Image found at aacd.com

This may be a bit older than the 50s, but the basic setup looked the same as the one Dr. Glick used on me. No high-speed drills here, just that belt-powered grinder, and despite the agony I still refused the Novocaine.

I found out how foolish I had been when I broke a tooth or lost a filling or something when I was at summer camp in Maine, sometime around 1963. They ferried me to a dentist in town, and I told him that I didn’t want anæsthesia. “Mhm,” the dentist responded. “Open.” And then the son of a bitch stuck me.

The blessed son of a bitch. Sheesh. If only I had known. Dental work still isn’t fun, but a little pain up front is certainly worth a lot less torment for a couple of hours.

A few weeks ago I went to a local dentist for the repair of a broken tooth. I thought for sure I’d have to get a crown on it, because the entire inside surface of the tooth snapped off – but I was pleasantly surprised. A tiny bit of drilling, two applications of bonding, and I was as good as new – at least for this time. The whole thing took about 10 minutes. I mentioned to the dentist that the advances in dental technology were astonishing, and he said that not much had really changed in the tools, but the materials were where the miracles were taking place. I can’t help but agree, with the exception of the digital x-rays that they do these days.

First they put me in this contraption that whirred all around my head and did a complete 360° scan, and then the technician put me in the chair and zapped me a couple of times with this baby:

Handheld, she didn’t even have to leave the room. No developing time to speak of – all digital. I couldn’t help but be reminded of this:

Howard Tayler, author of Schlock Mercenary, holding a replica of Sergeant Schlock’s plasma gun manufactured by Doc Nickel, who in his own right not only manufactures some really awesome paintball stuff but also draws The Whiteboard, a webcomic vaguely about paintball.

It’s funny, but with all the advances, I still miss the old rinse-and-spit routine so common in the old days; you can see the cup and spit bowl in the office picture above. It may not have been as hygienic, but I could get a lot cleaner than the spray/suction routine they use today. And, I got sprayed with Lavoris™, a cinnamon-flavored mouthwash that seems to have vanished from store shelves, only to be replaced by foul-tasting chemical ersatz copies which taste like camel piss.

Imagine my delight when I found out that this wonderful stuff is still available online:

I scored some at Drugstore.com, it was a bit cheaper than Amazon’s offerings, and it was every bit as pleasant as I had remembered it. Now that’s cinnamon.

I’ve had a lot of dental work done in my life. Almost all my teeth are filled, and a number have been capped. I have all my wisdom teeth, and even they have been filled. I just have soft teeth, I guess. But I have all 32, and I’m grateful for the technology that has helped me preserve them. I still don’t like that accursed needle, but as I learned long, long ago, there are prices and benefits to that choice, and the benefits far outweigh the price.

And, I still hope I don’t ever have to have another root canal.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Playing in the World Game

As One

Consoles weren’t always so bad, come sit by the fire children and let me tell you a story. (Reposted from reddit)

Ersatzkaffee

Eating the Cowboy’s Best Friend

Strange things on the dinner table

Whale meat – completely inedible

McDonnel’s Drive In, 1935

I love the people of Chamula. Belch

The Garbage Disposer in 1951

The Original “Glasses for the Lazy”

Caters News./ Published: 04/28/2014 12:58:23

“I’d rather get a root canal than do [X].”