Peach Month

August is Peach Month. There really isn't anything deep or revealing to say about the fact. I've never been a huge fan of peaches. I think it's their furry skin, or maybe it's the slight bitterness that creeps through the sweetness of a fresh peach. Whichever is the case, they've never risen above apples and citrus on my list.

This ad comes from the Feburary 1921 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. I couldn't find much information on California Peach Growers Inc. They published cookbooks featuring, you guessed it, peaches during the 20s and touted the virtues and convenience of dried peaches to their customers. It seems the organization operated out of Frezno, but I can't be certain.

Go out and enjoy August, and a peach, apparently it's the month for it.

Quote for August

August rushes by like desert rainfall,

A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a matchflame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.

~ Elizabeth Maua Taylor

Dog Days of Summer

Welcome to August and the Dog Days of Summer. Does that phrase bring to mind a panting pooch? Well, here's an Old Farmer's Almanac piece on the true origin of the phrase.

The 19th Running of the Brickyard 400

It just occurred to me that I've been giving short shrift to the "other" motor sports event here in Indy, the Brickyard 400. Today's race marks the 19th time NASCAR's stock cars have torn around the famous oval. The inaugural year I happened to be living about ten blocks from the track and I learned the stark difference between an Indy 500 and a NASCAR crowd.

Thinking NASCAR would be worse? Maybe you'd expect a little moonshine fueled red neckery? I mean it takes a lot of money to put an Indy car on the race course while NASCAR's firmly rooted in the southern soil of bootlegging and white lightning. Well, if you fell for the stereotypes, you're very mistaken.

Without fail the Indy 500 crowd turned out to be more destructive, disrespectful, and rowdy. That first year of the 400 I sat on my back porch listening. With the 500 the night before the race the air would be filled with the low cacophony of sirens, gunshots, revving engines, and people. With the 400, you couldn't even tell a race event was in town. NASCAR came, qualified, raced, and got out without leaving a metric ton of trash in its wake or turning life in the vicinity of the Speedway into misery.

So, my apologies NASCAR. Please accept this little Champion spark plug ad from the December 1955 issue of Life Magazine as a token of my esteem. I'll try to make your 20th year in Indianapolis a special one!

Death aboard the Seeandbee

Back in 1885 Morris A. Bradley established the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company (C&B). The company operated a popular steamship line from Cleveland, running passenger and freight service to Buffalo, NY aboard the liners State of Ohio and State of New York. With business booming, C&B added to its fleet, christening the City of Buffalo and eventually replacing the aging State of Ohio with the City of Erie which provided night service between Cleveland and Toledo.

C&B saw an opportunity in moving passengers and in the same year as the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage, the Seeandbee joined the fleet and began making regular trips between Cleveland and Buffalo. In her day the Seeandbee held the title of largest and mostly costly liner on the Great Lakes. She was 485 feet from stem to stern and could accommodate 1,500 passengers with 510 staterooms and parlors over four decks. She had an elegant ballroom in which passengers could partake of music and dancing while making the crossing.

The Seeandbee operated from 1913 to 1938, maintain her reputation as the lakes as its most famous liner until, like so many Americans, she was called to war. World War II saw many civilian ships converted for military purposes, and the Seeandbee was no exception. She was converted to operate as an aircraft carrier and rechristened the USS Wolverine. Under her new name she saw service training carrier pilots for shipboard landings and takeoffs. The USS Wolverine operated out of Chicago on Lake Michigan until the end of the war and was decommissioned and scrapped in 1946.

All of this is interesting – well, at least to someone like me who enjoys digging through dusty magazines – but it’s not why I found the little ad for cruises aboard the Seeandbee so intriguing. You see, the ad comes from a 1935 issue of The Rotarian Magazine, a call for business-folk across the Midwest to spend their hard-earned salaries on a little shipboard frivolity, but on August 12, 1940 when the ship docked in Cleveland one of its passengers wouldn’t be disembarking.

Mrs. Benjamin Mozee, a retired teacher from Nome, Alaska, boarded the Seeandbee on July 24^th and, according to her sister, had in her possession a large amount of money as well as three diamond rings none of which were found in her state room. On July 31^st the battered body of Mrs. Mozee washed up on the shore at Geneva-on-the-Lake and, adding insult to the injustice that had been done to her, since there wasn’t anyone who could identify the body, she was buried in an unmarked grave.

The money and jewelry weren’t the only things that had disappeared when the ship docked. Mrs. Mozee had been attended by a maid while on shipboard. The maid was a member of the Seeandbee’s crew and had tended to her during the voyage. Investigators found that the maid had disappeared immediately after the cruise.

When Mozee’s body was identified there could be little doubt she hadn’t simply fallen overboard and drown. The body showed signs of a beating and grease on Mrs. Mozee’s palms suggested she’d been in the crew area of the ship. An FBI investigation followed, but there is no record of there being an arrest, trial, or conviction associated with the murder.

A Day at the License Branch

I spent part of my morning taking care of a few things that couldn’t be handled over the internet or via mail at the local BMV and the experience reminded me there’s a lot to like about the modern age in which we live. I spend a lot of time fondly reflecting on the past and sometimes glossing over its flaws. Here in Indiana we can renew driver licenses and plates via mail or internet, chores which when I was growing up required sacrificing a day on the altar of government inefficiency.

You can tell how I feel about the prospect of spending time at the BMV, but I have to point out that I got in and out within a half hour and without anything more irritating than dealing with a slack-jawed clerk to complain about. The experience was less painful than grocery shopping or the daily commute, still it seems onerous. Maybe turning yourself over to the BMV violates a fundamental human need for self-direction. You walk into the building, take a number, and then spend a few mind-numbing hours waiting to be shuttled from station to station where bureaucratic drones shoot simple if terse questions at you. Maybe it’s the fact that there are two modern American institutions which seem to pride themselves on being openly antagonistic toward their customers: the airlines and the state.

I don’t know, all I can say is what I expected to end with a bang went out with a whimper and I’m okay with that.

Poetry - A Guest at Dusk

A not-so-particular Saturday in July seemed to be a good time for a bit of poetry. Arthur Wallace Peach was head of the English department at Norwich University, a private military college in Vermont. I love his imagery of a dream softly coming to the door.