Noir Office Fan

The noir detective’s office has been progressing, albeit slowly and in the background. The latest addition is a little gift provided by two close friends, a Barcol Eight two bladed Bakelite fan.

The Barber-Colman (Barcol) company once was the largest manufacturer in Rockford, IL with a nearly 65 acre facility that made everything from temperature controls to garage door openers. The factory now sits empty, it’s once busy corridors gathering dust. Like in so much of American manufacturing, the well-paying jobs that once fed and clothed a generation have been shipped to third world countries where it can be performed at slave labor rates of pay under sweat shop conditions.

I did an Internet search for Barcol fan ads and came up disappointingly empty. I did turn up a 50’s era garage door opener ad that ran in the Rotarian magazine. Sometimes its striking how much these ads remind me of the suburb where I grew up, right down to the coffered garage doors. This is an image of suburban sprawl before the term carried the negative connotations it’s associated with now. You’re seeing an image of the blue-collar American dream Ozzie and Harriet-style; a three bedroom bungalow on a tree-lined street with a two car garage and a swing set in the backyard.

Dreams die hard, though. That same neighborhood in 2013 is a run-down second-ring suburb. The streets are in disrepair, the sidewalks are cracking and heaving more every winter, and Dutch elm disease or emerald ash borers have killed just about every shade tree. The people who occupy these 50’s bungalows can barely hold on, their dream is to make the mortgage and maybe put away enough to send their kids to college. But I digress.

I stumbled across a page from a 1939 catalog that features the Barcol Eight. It's probably appropriate that the fan which will be stirring the air in my little detective's office is the cheapest model available. Now we'd never consider something like a power switch or speed control as options, but Barcol produced a fan that had neither. You got one speed and if you wanted to turn the fan off you unplugged it and liked it. The trade of was you paid a  whopping $2.35 for your fan. As for my part, I’ll have to perform some minor repairs before plugging my Eight in. It has an iffy cord and the one time I dared plug it into an outlet it made a grinding noise that suggested it might burst into flames. I’m guessing I’ll either be cleaning the motor or replacing it.

 

Happy National Doughnut Day

It’s the first Friday in June and that means National Doughnut Day. You might be thinking, “What’s this? Another corporately produced holiday and one that takes advantage of America’s poor eating habits?” Well, National Doughnut day actually has quite a long history. The event was created by The Salvation Army in 1938 as a way of honoring the women who provided comfort to soldiers during World War I by serving coffee and doughnuts.

In 1917 the Salvation Army concluded that some of the needs of US soldiers could be met by founding canteens and social centers (called huts) which served baked goods, provided supplies for writing and sending letters home, and provided for mending the soldier’s clothing. These huts typically consisted of six staff members, four of which were women whose job was to “mother” the boys. About 250 Salvation Army volunteers performed this canteen service in France during the war, earning the women who staffed the huts the moniker “Doughnut Dollies”.

In 1919 Billy Frisch composed the song Don’t Forget the Salvation Army (My Doughnut Girl) to commemorate the service of the Doughnut Dollies and Arthur Fields later released the tune on an Edison Blue Amberol cylinder.

So, while you’re enjoying a complementary glazed Krispy Kreme with your morning coffee just remember this day really commemorates more than deep fried dough. Then again, there’s nothing wrong with a National Deep Fried Dough day, is there?

What Did You Do Today

I spent the day fussing with car problems and when I sat down at the keyboard I'd achieved a pretty good snit of feeling sorry for good old me. Then I came across an interesting fact, on this day in 1944 the invasion of Normandy began. Thousands of young men stormed the French beaches beginning a new phase in the liberation of Europe. I guess a little car problem isn't so bad after all.

Thanks to Shorpy for the great photo of New Yorkers watching news of the invasion scroll across the New York Times news line.

The Beaches of Normandy

A LIFE photo of a soldier crawling through the surf under German machine gun and mortar fire.

Most of us probably don’t connect June 6^th with anything more than balmy summer weather and maybe a little vacation time with the family. Turn the calendar back to 1943, though, and you will land on the day of the Allied invasion of Normandy, D-Day. So, while enjoying the tranquility of summer pause a moment to think of all those young men who perished on a French beach for the sake of freedom and say a silent thank you to those who gave everything for what we all too often take for granted.

Dextrose!

Dextrose, simple sugar and carbohydrate supreme. I never thought something like dextrose would need to be promoted, but then I came across this ad during one of my magazine forays. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the phrase “America’s finest packaged desserts…” before reading this ad and I’m still not sure it’s an endorsement. Now we read processed foods and, even if we don’t listen, the doctor voice in the back of our minds starts making disapproving noises. I’m guessing the ad executives who put this one together had an inkling they were on thin ice too since they resort to putting prepared in quotes.

Corn Products Refining Company (now the innocuously named Ingredion) was based in Westchester, IL and manufactured dextrose from corn (read corn syrup) as well as raw materials for corn starch and corn oil. In 1955 the company got in trouble with the IRS for its hedging practices and ended up appearing before the Supreme Court. They lost the case and wound up on the short end of the IRS’ tax paddle. Something tells me there isn't enough dextrose food-energy sugar in the world to sweeten a dish of back-taxes.

What drew me to the ad was the maniacal cheerleader-cow girl-patriotic-fairy mascot. She’s got those helter-skelter eyes that say she really needs to cut back on the coffee and the corn sweetener and possibly start a course of anti-psychotics before someone gets hurt. I can’t imagine a mom looking at that image and saying, “yeah, that’s what I want in my kid…the jitter fairy.”

100 Years Ago: June Breezes

There are a lot of things that we’ve come to take for granted. Take what’s considered a staple of modern life: air conditioning. Central air has become so common for Americans that when I talk about how I grew up without it I’m reminded of the “walking twelve miles to school barefoot” stories my dad used to drag out. It isn’t fair how time makes codgers of us all, even those of us who’ve taken a vow never to engage in finger-shaking lectures about appreciating what you’ve got. Anyway, I come to bury my youth, not praise it.

100 years ago, General Electric ran this ad for its hot and relatively new gadget, the oscillating fan, in Popular Mechanics. Reading the copy makes me realize how much the world has changed in a century. A modern commercial for air conditioning bombards its viewers with terms like “sub zero”, “arctic”, and the like while the GE ad talks about bringing the breeze into your office or home. Maybe the hyperbole is a symptom of a world where everything is branded. We no longer have the Polo Grounds, Candlestick Park, or the Hoosier Dome and I’ve even seen rumors of a corporation buying the rights to name newly discovered species. It makes you feel a little like the Grinch – all the noise, noise, noise, noise!

Its days like this, when din gets so loud that it seems to become one big featureless sound-scape of self aggrandizement that I disconnect. I put on some old jazz and retreat to my detective’s office. I open the window and turn on my little oscillating fan and listen the soft whirr and the sounds of the birds outside.

Quote for June

If a June night could talk, it would probably boast that it invented romance.

~ Bern Williams