Smells

When I spilled too much onion powder into the pan when making hamburgers, our house turned into the hallways of the apartment building where my paternal grandparents lived.

*

When I opened my dad’s toolbox in search of a smaller pliers wrench, I smelled the Dial Gold soap that my dad and mom used for — what? forty years? And I found the wrench I needed.

Delicatessen, or food store?

[6215 and 6219 Fort Hamilton Parkway, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

Fort-Hamilton-Parkway-and-New-Utrecht-Avenue: that was something of a mantra of my childhood. I spent most of my early sentient life living less than a block from the intersection of Fort Hamilton and New Utrecht. But I lived far enough from 62nd Street never to have noticed these two stores, separated only by the doorway that led to one or more upstairs apartments — if these stores were even in business in the early 1960s. If they were, how would I have chosen between them? As a kid, I would have gone to whichever store I had been sent to.

The WPA tax photos show another pair of grocery stores competing side by side on 11th Avenue, an independent grocer and a Roulston’s outlet. But here both stores appear to be independent. Browsing through Brooklyn Newsstand, I’m surprised to see that penny profit had some currency as an advertising gimmick, In 1922, a department store offered a “Penny Profit Sale.” In 1940, a furniture store touted “Pennies profit to us — $$$$$ saving to you.” And in 1947: “Mays penny-profit prices make every day a sale day.” Did anyone believe it? In any event, the name must have packed more oomph that “S. Trencher’s,” though trencher is a fun name for someone selling food.

Penny-profit was hardly limited to Brooklyn. A glance around the Internets shows a butcher shop, a dry cleaners, a discount store, and several grocery stores that touted a one-cent-thin profit margin.

Today no. 6215 may still house A to Z Video, whose metal security door is down in every Google Maps photograph between 2012 and 2022. No. 6219 appears to be improbably residential. Both properties are valued at $1 million+. Many pennies.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

HCR on SCOTUS

On more bad news.

Today’s Zippy

Today’s Zippy: all Griffy, all Nancy, all Sluggo.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” Stan Newman offering an easier puzzle. I didn’t find the puzzle especially easy or especially satsifying. See 60-A.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, ten letters, ”Treatment you won’t take lying down.” Kinda arcane?

8-D, fifteen letters, ”What got Welles on Page One.” Well, okay.

14-D, eight letters, “Where Cash recorded ‘A Boy Named Sue.’” Um, no. The place has, after all, a name. As did the boy.

17-A, ten letters, “Broadly speaking.” This answer, who uses it?

52-A, three letters, “Panelist’s cry?” Just ridiculous.

53-D, five letters, “Cruise’s first Oscar-nominated role.” Who knows? I had to look it up, which gave me 52-A.

65-A, ten letters, ”The Last Man on the Moon author.” Really Trivial Pursuit.

I think this post has amounted to a 60-A, ten letters, “Festivus recitation.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

HCR on SCOTUS

Heather Cox Richardson writes about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.

[More bad news to follow.]

Salomi and prosciuth

[Lassie, her friend Jeff, and an enemy. From the Lassie episode “The Dognappers” (December 3, 1961). Click either image for a larger view.]

I like to watch Lassie when I fold laundry. I’m not ashamed.

But I had to stop folding and hit Pause when I saw that window. I thought I knew what was up, and the wider view clinched it.

The show’s writers might be having a joke, or trying to have a joke, on Italian-American prounciation, though no one would change the /a/ sound of salami to an /o/ or spell the word with an o. And in Italian-American Italian, prosciutto is properly pronounced /pro-SHOOT/. If the writers aren’t joking about pronunciation, the odd-looking prosciuth might a joke on the improbability of an Italian grocery store in Calverton. Or maybe the writers just didn’t get it right.

The food names in the other window might help sort out these possibilities, but the signage is just too blurry, at least for me. I enlarged, experimented with contrast and resolution — just too blurry.

*

An astute reader sees copicoli and provoloni in the other window, and suggests that the propmaster was having a joke. The propmaster for this and 283 more Lassie episodes: Mariano Tomasino. He must have been having a joke.

Related posts
All OCA Lassie posts : Bafangool! : Capeesh? : New Jersey Italian : Parlando italiano a Brooklyn

And a 2004 New York Times article has more about Italian-American Italian.

Dream-machines

The narrator has fallen into “an uneasy friendship” with John Wolfson — Wolf.

Steven Millhauser, “The Room in the Attic,” in Dangerous Laughter (2008).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Avocado pareidolia

[Click for a larger smile.]

I see the eyes and nose over the left side of the smile, or, from Gus’s point of view, the right. His name is Augustine Vocado, A. Vocado. He runs a fruit-and-vegetable market (that makes sense) in one of the city’s older neighborhoods. A. claims to know Mac, the man who lived on my office floor: “Oh, me and him go way back.” I have no way of knowing if he’s telling the truth.

Related reading
All OCA pareidolia posts (Pinboard)

Footage / Fish

“Footage / Fish”: so says the webpage. More specifically: 1940s French Women Sardine Industry Cannery Workers Brittany Vintage Film Movie. Dig the coiffe. Dig the stacks.

Thanks, Brian.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)