New Scaratings

When I was a little kid, my mom bought rubber boots with steel buckles for me. (Early 1950's) They were a great invention when you put them on, but when five-year-olds came home after playing in the snow, those freeking buckles were frozen shut with ice, and our little fingers were numbed as we struggled to unsnap those suckers. They remain to this day one of my most unpleasant memories of my childhood.

Did any of you old guys ever experience the torture of trying to get those God damn things off by yourself, when you were a kid...?

Sadly, I think they still make them. I sure as Hell hope that today the Child Protection Services people consider putting these terrible things on a younsters feet as child abuse...!

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"The game is afoot."

How about the ones without buckles? Those were the ones that once you went outside and and then maybe got your socks a little bit wet which in turn made them difficult to remove. Removing them required twisting and pulling which usually resulted in your legs being about 6 inches longer. Maybe that's what happened to me.

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Middle age is when a broad mind and a slim waist exchange places.

I was just talking in class about Christmas catalogs...such as the Sears catalog.

I remember circling toys that I wanted and never got. How I miss the good old days.

TIEFLY, your mentioning of the Sears Catalog brings back memories from a very long time ago for me. They are good memories of sitting on the couch with my mom going through the Sears Christmas Catalog in the Garden Apartments in Geneva, New York, picking out what I hoped Santa would put under the tree for me on Christmas day in the early 1950's. It was a time when I still believed in Santa Claus, and thought that Sears worked with Santa.

I can still remember the Sears farm set that came with two cows, five chickens, a horse, ducks, bales of hay, of course a barn, and other farm things.

Things were simpler back when Santa was real and Sears delivered the goods under the tree Christmas morning.

p.s. Somehow the word "Rosebud" keeps coming to mind...

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"The game is afoot."

Cloudy, I still wear galoshes. But I am an old Chicago Polach. They are great.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

We all called it a "John Wayne", but I now know it was officially a P-38. When I was in the Marine Corps (1969-1973) we all wore them on our dog tags chain. The "John Wayne" was the smallest can opener ever invented. It opened K-rations in WW-II, and we still used it to open C-rats during the Vietnam War. Sadly, I don't think they are needed anymore, now that the MRE has replaced C-rats.

I'm pretty sure I still have my "John Wayne" in my old Marine Corps footlocker in my garage. Does anyone else still have their old P-38 "John Wayne"?

As small as it was, it would open up a can of C-rats in a jiffy.



When the C-rats cans were empty, Marines would put pebbles in them and string them low between trees on the perimeter to provide a warning, if the bad guys were trying to sneek up at night.

p.s. C-rats always came with a small pack of four (six ?) cigarettes, which I gladly collected from non-smokers. I seriously doubt, that with the war against smokers today that the MRE comes with a pack of cigarettes.

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"The game is afoot."

Cloudy, God help me but I actually liked C rations. They also came with a book of matches, and a packet of coffee, sugar, whitener, and coco and a few sheets of toilet paper that you might be able to wipe a sparows ass with. Chicken and Noodles was my favorite along with the canned chocolat brownie.

PS, Ilost my P38 a few years back. On occasion it came in handy.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Frank, I may be wrong, but I'm guessing that you are not a smoker. If I'm right, can I have that little pack of "Winstons" that came in your C-rats...?

p.s. I thought that there were only four cigarettes in them, but there may have been six. Can you remember how many there really were?

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"The game is afoot."

My memory is it was a four pack. I smoked, but I always got L&M's. I was never luky enoughto get Winstons.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Yeah, I thought it was four, but I ran across something, while Googling it that said there were six cigarettes in them. Maybe that was during WW-II or the Korean War.

Smoke 'em, if you got 'em.

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"The game is afoot."

I would have thought that Lincoln Logs and TinkerToys would be gone by now. I guess they are still around, but they ain't made of wood anymore. Now they are plastic.

.........


Yeah, Legos are plastic, but Lincoln Logs and TinkerToys should be made out of wood.

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"The game is afoot."

I think Tinkertoys, by definition, should have always been made out of tin.
But I'm a stickler. I like to stickle.

Were that to be true, what then should erector sets be made from???

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/```\
(o\_!_/o)

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Burning autumn leaves in the city is no longer allowed, but I can remember when it was. Even though it posed a danger, the wonderful smell of those burning leaves is something I will never forget.

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.............................................................................................. Goodnight I'm going to bed.

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"The game is afoot."

One lap around the track used to be 440 yards. Now it is 400 meters. Before you know it, the traditional ten gallon cowboy hat will be measured in liters. Going metric is something an old fart like I am doesn't like. I don't care how much sense it makes to go metric, I don't like it. As we head that way, before long many common English expressions such as "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.", and many more will will become arcane, and our children and grandchildren will have to seach Google them to find out what they mean. Knowing what 5,280 feet equals, will become an obscure NTN question on "Showdown", that only a few will get for 1,000...

"A pint's a pound the World around."

"I'd walk a mile for a Camel."

"Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile."

"The whole nine yards."

"Baseball is a game of inches."

and of course there is music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftwTJW8ViAI

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"The game is afoot."

You will always be a relic of the 19th century...

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

ZOG, you've got the wrong century. I am a relic of the 20th century. The 20th century, on balance, wasn't all that bad, despite the wars, the Great Depression, and some other stuff. It's your turn now to strive to become a relic of the 21st century. Good luck, so far you guys are off to a shakey start.

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"The game is afoot."

I'm fully aware that the 20th century was 1901 to 2000, and the 19th century was 1801 to 1900, etc. And I knew that when I posted yesterday. Most of the world went metric in the 20th century! Which makes you a relic of the 19th (if not the 18th.)

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

So far, this actually seems to favor using the metric system; I think 400 is a "nicer" number.

As for the rest of your post, Cloudy, I'm in complete disagreement. In my opinion, the US should just make up a plan for complete metrication within the next five years. After that time, perhaps by the first day of 2018, usage of the metric system (at least by public or commercial groups) should be mandatory. I would have no problems adjusting to such a change, and I don't think anyone else would, either. This is something that is long overdue.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

I'm not so sure about that. So why don't we compromise and call 420 the nicest number?

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/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

With Zellers stores in Canada on "Target" to vanish into history, that got me to thinking about other bygone department store chains I remember

Woolworth's
Woolco (bought out by Wal-Mart in similar manner to Target buying Zellers)
Eaton's
Aikenhead's Hardware (assimilated by The Home Despot)

And Consumers Distributing, which had a rather interesting business model. Kind of a hybrid between a store and a mail-order service, customers would peruse a catalog (at home or in the store), scribble down what they wanted on a form, and a service clerk would go into the back room and fetch the ordered items. Trouble is, items were often not in stock, which was a big pain in the ass for anyone who made a trip, waited in line, and waited some more for anyone to figure out they wouldn't be able to complete an order. CD itself went out-of-stock in 1996

But I will give credit to Zellers for attempting to exit as gracefully as they can, even going so far as to see their mascot reintroduced to the wild
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_rHRUOxUtA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Ppq8kbtf4

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/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

The metric system falls short when it comes to non-mathmatical things such as writing. It doesn't lend itself to poetry, titles of books or movies, songs, slogans, adages, and many other things people write about that others enjoy.

"Give them a centimeter and they will take a kilometer." doesn't fly.

How would The Who have done, if the lyrics of this song were "I can see for kilometers and kilometers"...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4BBQMjbX3c

(I will add that the Fahrenheit measurement of temperature is more precise than Celsius, because Fahrenheit degrees are smaller units than Celsius degrees.)

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"The game is afoot."

Small potatoes. The metric system is so much more practical, than I'm not about to dismiss it over clichés and song titles!

I don't think a difference in indoor or outdoor temperature of 73 or 74 degrees Fahrenheit is significant. Both are essentially 23 degrees Celsius. Therefore the "lack of precision" argument of the Celsius scale simply does not fly. If precision is that important, one could always add a decimal place, i.e., 23.1 degrees.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

ZOG wins, so it's time to move on...

Who remembers Laika?

Please don't Google the answer to this question. If you don't know, just sit back and see who remembers Laika.

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"The game is afoot."

Poor doggy...

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."