Blowing a Cloud, Taking a Puff
Considering that the original premise of this series of columns was the relative scarcity of postcards showing people indulging in tobacco, compared to movies and TV shows of the same era, we have been showing off examples for a while now. But I maintain my original opinion. Joe Friday or Paul Drake probably lit…
Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That CIgarette
Now, as you’ll recall, in a blog titled “And Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women,” we examined the use od cigarettes on postcards. Although cigarettes are everywhere in mid-century movies and television, we argued, on postcards they were primarily used to indicate a young woman who, like the one shown on this Seventies poster of…
LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 14
Matt was late for work the next morning, for which he blamed Ada Silberwetter. It was not her fault; he knew that. He was so exhausted after an evening of conversational combat that he should have taken to his bed as soon as he and his mother got safely back to the apartment. Instead,…
He Called For His Pipe
As we have, in this space, considered the place held in postcard cartoons by cigarettes and cigars, it is only logical to move to the pipe. (I dislike to throw spoilers into my text, but those of you who were planning to come around next Wednesday to read about snuff, snoose, or other similar…
But a Good Cigar is a Smoke
Last week, in this space, we considered what the cartoonists who worked on postcards had to say about the smoking of cigarettes. The subject is a little larger than we could cover in one column (which gives us an excuse to return to it later) but we did see how often a woman who…
LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter Thirteen
Three meals had been spoken for; the bonbon in the gold wrapper had departed, perhaps to return one day. Ada announced there would be tie enough to solve five murders before anything like food arrived. The dim light of a candle and gold-shaded globes in the ceiling fell now upon the body of evidence:…
And Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women
This Seventies poster showing off a postcard from the Nineteen Twenties shows one of the matters of social history made obvious when one watches mid-century television programs. Everybody smoked. This can be explained only partially by observing that many shows were sponsored by tobacco companies. Those same companies had worked hard to make their…
How To. Or Not
I’m used to hearing that the things I spent time learning in school are now obsolete, irrelevant or offensive. I was proud of my ability to identify British Guiana, French Guiana, and Dutch Guiana on the map of South America (they were in alphabetical order from left to right) but that’s a little less…
LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 12
The crisp, bright host led them to a table by a window. Matt stayed way back, damp and sagging in a suit which had already seen a full day’s work. Fog drifted past, outside the window. He was glad that it was outside and he, at last, was inside. Warm and damp was better…
FICTION FRIDAY: Storybook Romance
“I’m doomed to live single forever.” “Oh, I don’t know. If Your Highness fixed up that haircut, and showered a little more often.” “That’s not the problem, My Lady. My parents offended my fairy godmother, Ashsiaix….” “Ashsiaix?” “Yes, the fairy godmother with white streaks in her purple eyebrows. My parents…
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