Five and ten and fifteen

[“Five and ten and fifteen cent turkey dinner. Woolworth’s Dime Store.” Photograph by John Collier Jr. Amsterdam, New York, October 1941. From the Library of Congress. Click for a larger view.]

I think that window displays at night are inherently mysterious. And I thought so long before reading Steven Millhauser. This window has an added element of mystery: just what constitutes a “Farmer Week” lunch or a “Country Style” meal — in addition, that is, to pie, ice cream, donuts, and hot fudge sundaes? Where’s the turkey?

This display is in the window of a Kresge’s, not a Woolworth’s, but who am I to contradict the Library of Congress?

A related post
A Boro Park five-and-ten

Your work age

A quiz from The Washington Post (gift link): “How to tell your real work age.”

I came out as a mix of mostly Millenial and Gen X:

~ 39% Millenial
~ 34% Gen X
~ 20% Boomer
~ 7% Gen Z

Please don’t tell anyone I’m retired.

The Apostrophe Protection Society

The Apostrophe Protection Society, founded in 2001, ceased operations in 2019. Its founder, John Richards, died in 2021. Now, under the leadership of Bob McCalden, the APS is back (The Irish Times ). Here’s the society’s website.

The apostrophe plays a small but critical role in these pages. My favorite apostrophe: the one that brought me a box in the mail, marked RATTLE OK.

Related reading
All OCA apostrophe posts (Pinboard)

Fn

For Mac users only: Adam Engst explains The Hidden Secrets of the Fn Key (TidBITS).

Sluggo-head

“I’m a mash-up of childhood innocence and toxic masculinity, Zippy!” Zippy meets a Sluggo-head with muffler-man pants in today’s Zippy.

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

Healing up

Our narrator, Hermann Karlovich, is nothing if not self-conscious. He boarded a metaphorical bus when embarking on his narrative:

Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (1966).

I was surprised to see “heal up” here. I think of it as contemporary (right now) American language, but the Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from 1676: “A fontanel had been made in the same leg, which he was forced to heal up.”

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

[First published as Отчаяние [Otchayanie] in a Russian literary journal in 1934; then in book form in 1936; then in Nabokov’s English translation in 1937; then in revised form in 1966.]

On the waterfront, continued

Those three guys hanging out on the waterfront? Geo-B has them covered.

Vagaries of shopping (Premium edition)

Might someone have an idea why a store would be wiped out of Premium Saltines days before Thanksgiving? Is there some traditional dish that makes use of them? I welcome your thoughts.

Three mascots

In today’s Zippy, three mascots: Gertrude, L’il Softee, and Good Sam. I remember Gertrude from childhood. I remember Good Sam from a highway. L’il Softee is known to me only from today’s Zippy and a subsequent Internet search.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Yes, you can buy vintage toilet paper on eBay.]

Being a liberal

“Perhaps more than ever, there is an urgent need for a clear understanding of liberalism — of its core commitments, of its breadth, of its internal debates, of its evolving character, of its promise, of what it is and what it can be”: Cass Sustein offers thirty-four statements to explain why he is a liberal (The New York Times, gift link).