Monthly Archives: November 2019

Baby Boom Toys (Part One!)

One of our neatest amenities here in western New York is the Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester. Our younger son went three time last spring, and he’s almost 40! We accompanied him on one of those trips, and we’re way MORE than 40!

And one feature of the museum is the National Toy Hall of Fame. From the cardboard box to the yo-yo to Nintendo and Star Wars… and even the humble, simple stick… the Hall of Fame applauds and commemorates the playthings of many lifetimes.

The Baby Boom generation is perhaps the FIRST generation of kids to which our society paid a lot of systematic attention, AS KIDS. So as a certified card-carrying Boomer I thought we’d take a spin down memory lane to see the toys we grew up with… introduced no earlier than 1946. Do you recall…

PLAY-DOH. It was actually invented as a wallpaper cleaner in the 1930s, and remarketed to kids twenty years later. They sold two billion cans in fifty years.

The FRISBEE and the HULA HOOP. These gargantuan plastic fads were both marketed by Wham-O in southern California. I suppose that the name of the hula hoop was inspired by the approaching statehood of Hawaii. Using the hula hoop seems like a frantic, even frenetic activity, while the slow glide of the Frisbee cultivates serenity.

After some hesitation, Ohio Art paid what for them was a record price for a European creation that they euphoniously named ETCH A SKETCH. They started production on July 12 in 1960, and orders ran so high that they didn’t stop until noon on Christmas Eve. Like Pay-Doh, Etch A Sketch embodied creative, imaginative play. You could create almost anything you liked, and imagination made it twenty times more so.

BARBIE was controversial from the start, and indeed was somewhat based on a highly sexualized German doll. But that was opportunistic – when she found “Bild Lilli” on a European trip, Ruth Handler was already planning an adult plaything with a wide array of fashions – a 3-D paper doll.

Soooo… Barbie presented an unrealistic, and even ridiculous, body form. She also provided opportunity for imaginative play and unbounded aspiration, especially when Mattel presented her in an endless array of occupations and avocations both traditional and ground-breaking, AND in time adding non-white characters (including non-white Barbies) to the line.

MR. POTATO HEAD was originally (1949) a set of accessories and facial features to pin onto a potato. In 1952 Hasbro started providing a styrofoam head, and in 1964 moved to plastic. Coming from Rhode Island (Hasbro’s home) as I do, I note that Mr. Potato Head was once the official state tourism spokesman. I’m not sure that having a spokesman named Potato Head is the best marketing move, but at least he provided immediate recognition.

TONKA reportedly means “big” in Dakota, and it fits the memorable line of toy trucks! I imagine that most Boomers enjoyed Tonka Trucks immensely someplace along their way. I know I did.

Silicone-based SILLY PUTTY was developed as a potential rubber substitute doring World War II, and soon got used for goofing around at parties. It was first marketed on a small scale to adults as a party toy in 1949, almost died out due to rationing in the Korean War, and therafter was sold with ads aimed at kids. THAT turned out to be a big success.

We’ll look at more in a future blog, but for now… how many do you remember? How many did you have? Which ones would you love to have right now?

Thanksgiving Ups and Downs

The Pilgrims didn’t celebrate the first Thanksgiving – Euro-Americans had been doing that for a century before they came along, and even in English America, Virginians beat them by almost 20 years.

From time to time George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation, and governors of some states, including New York, got in the habit of doing so annually. Here in the northeast custom coalesced around celebrating on a Thursday in November, though WHICH Thursday varied. Some presidents, such as Jefferson, flat-out refused to proclaim Thanksgiving.

In 1816, “the year without a summer,” there would have been little rejoicing, and nothing to eat in celebration. Southern Tier folks would have had NO reason for thanks when the Erie Canal opened in 1825, destroying our local economy. But 1826 (when slavery ended in New York) and 1851 (when the Erie Railroad revived our financial fortunes) would have been good occasions for joy.

Abraham Lincoln called for a day of Thanksgiving to take place on the last Thursday of November, in 1863. The midst of the Civil War might not seem like an opportune moment. But Meade smashed Lee at Gettysburg in 1863, sending him fleeing back to Virginia, never to regain the offensive. Grant slashed the Confederacy in two and reopened the Mississippi. Union victories were enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in tens of thousands, and America was finally enlisting African American soldiers in THEIR tens of thousands. Americans had cause to be thankful.

Since 1863, the November-Thursday Thanksgiving has been an annual event, and in the late 1800s, turkeys became irrevocably (and involuntarily) committed to the celebration.

The 1865 celebration would have seen fervent thanks for victory in the Civil War, along with sorrow for the dead and disabled.

In 1918, Americans would have been giving thanks that the Great War had ended, just two weeks earlier. But the war’s deaths were still immediate. They were also still reeling from the devastating death toll of the Spanish Influenza, which had not yet fully died out. War jobs were ending, and the Curtiss Hammondsport plant laid off about 600 workers. Prohibition was coming in, ruining vintners, grape growers, and all their support industry. Farmers had bought equipment to replace the young men going into uniform, and now owed years of time payments even as farm prices crashed. So 1918’s would have been a very uneasy Thanksgiving.

Depression-era Thanksgivings would have had an undertone, or even an overtone, of desperation and fear, even as President Roosevelt experimented with date changes in hopes of stimulating Christmas shopping.

In 1935, thanks would have been tempered because of the catastrophic July flood that stole 44 lives.

In 1941 we’d have been thankful we were not in the Second World War, worried about Axis victories, and feeling guilty that other people’s suffering was lifting us out of the Depression. We still had a week or two of peace to enjoy, but silver linings would have been hard to find for the ’42 and ’43 celebrations.

In 1945 we’d still be missing our recent dead, and transition from the wartime economy was still shaky, but overall we’d have found it a very good year since the war’s end in August.

The Baby Boom Thanksgivings were mostly upbeat, and kids spent those mornings watching Captain Kangaroo host the Macy’s Parade on TV. In 1963 the holiday had a somber edge, with President Kennedy’s murder just six days earlier.

Thousands of local folks celebrated Thanksgiving of 1972 in trailers trucked in by the federal government, their homes uninhabitable, or gone forever, in the Hurricane Agnes flood.

Since 1942, by Congressional action, we’ve celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. I hope that for you, this year’s holiday is one of those good ones.

11-11-11

Back in 2008, I was at Dick Kurzenberger’s 90th birthday party in the National Soaring Museum. “Dick,” I asked, “were you actually born ON Armistice Day?”

With his usual big smile, he assured me that he was, and I had visions of Dick being born as bells rang and flags waved and everybody burst out singing. But his obituary a few years later told me that Dick had been born November 11, 1918 IN GERMANY. Now my vision was completely different – a baby boy coming into a world of fear, despair, and defeat.

World War I ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The effect had been spoiled a bit by the “false armistice” a few days earlier, when a newspaper reporter’s draft article was mistakenly sent out to the world. But it was for real this time. Businesses closed. Bath, Penn Yan, and Hammondsport had impromptu parades and motorcades. Steuben County’s monthly draft contingent was held at Addison, then told to change trains and go back home. People lined up to pay a quarter (benefit of Red Cross) and ring the Bath fire bell. “Mark this date down in your calendar,” the Hammondsport Herald wrote while monarchies crashed, “as the last day of the Middle Ages.”

Over in England the bells rang and townsfolk shouted in celebration as Wilfred Owen’s parents were handed a telegram. Their son had been killed in action, exactly seven days before. “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?,” he had written a year earlier. “What candles may be held to speed them all?”

There were downsides to the peace. Within a few weeks the Curtiss Hammondsport plant closed for good, throwing 600 people or so out of work. As agricultural prices collapsed, many farmers staggered under time payments for equipment they had bought while the hands were off in uniform. On top of that, the Spanish influenza was still killing millions.

Over in Germany the fleet had mutinied, the Kaiser fled the country, Communist uprisings seized many local governments. Even before truce negotiations, millions of soldiers had already dropped their guns and started walking home. Corporal Adolf Hitler went hysterically blind.

Pat Buchanan insists that the Allies double-crossed Germany – that Germany only wanted a temporary cease-fire for peace talks, and the Allies forced a surrender. But an “armistice” was only face-saving. The top generals had ordered the Kaiser to quit, and the government to surrender. They had lost, and they knew it, and a quick surrender was the only way to stop complete chaos.

Soldiers soon “forgot” that they had deserted in millions, and the generals proclaimed that THEY hadn’t lost the war, no sir… they’d still have pulled it out, but they were stabbed in the back by civilians – especially socialists, diplomats, and Jews.

Germans were appalled and enraged by how HARSH the peace terms were, though actually they were based on the terms that Germany forced onto France in 1871. Loss of territory. Occupation of territory. Expensive reparations. Plus they lost their emperor, and had to substitute a struggling republican government. All of which seemed utterly unreasonable when applied TO Germany, rather than BY Germany.

Reparations for France and Belgium seem more reasonable when we remember that Germany laid plans long before the war to rule any conquered ground with mass murder, and that’s exactly what they did. In addition to that they stole much of the occupied territories’ industry and took it back to Germany, and as they retreated they destroyed what was left.

German voters rejected Hitler, of course – repeatedly – and he was shoehorned into power by a backroom deal. At the heart of the deal was the filthy truth that President von Hindenburg had decided to destroy democracy… in collaboration with the generals, the industrialists, the financiers, the Catholics, the monarchists, the Nazis, the other right-wing groups, and most of the Protestants.

France, of course, in similar straits following 1870, had pulled itself together, paid its reparations AHEAD of time, and built an honest-to-goodness democracy. The 1918 Armistice ended the Great War, but it didn’t deliver the new world that most people dreamed of. But the problem wasn’t with the peace, or even with the Treaty of Versailles. Germany, Russia, Italy, and Japan were not doomed by destiny. They had plenty of choices on how to use the peace. The choices they made were bad, and they dragged the rest of the world down with them.

Something to Do in November!

November seems like the month of NO. No snow. No leaves. No sun. No fun. November.

But, let’s face it. We’re not completely at the mercy of the elements. We can still find ways to enjoy ourselves.

Sooooo, what CAN we do? Hmm.

Our museums have inside activities. Rockwell Museum and Arnot Art Museum are each hosting a portion of a show that explores Crafting Identity. We saw the foreign works at Arnot, and found them thought-provoking. We also enjoyed again seeing the permanent collection, heavy with 19th-century representational works, but we like to expand our horizons. We’ll soon be catching the domestic pieces at Rockwell, too.

Glenn Curtiss Museum is having a “First Across” centennial exhibit on the US Navy’s 1919 expedition that made the first transatlantic flight, in a Curtiss seaplane. (Eat your heart out, Charles A. Lindbergh.) National Soaring Museum opens its dollhouse and miniatures show on November 16… always worth a drive up the hill. And Corning Museum of Glass has a special exhibit on the role of glass in our first moon landing, fifty years ago. Yates County History Center in Penn Yan has a special exhibit on Groffdale Mennonites… their faith, their customs, and their lives among us.

Off-Monroe Players in Rochester does a free Gilbert and Sullivan production every November… this year it’s Ruddigore, with six performances between the 15th and the 24th. OMP performances are always a load of fun.

Clemens Center in Elmira is presenting productions that range from Disney Holiday Party on Tour to The Diary of Anne Frank.

Our region has deer, bear, and bobcat hunting seasons on some dates in November, along with squirrel, pheasant, ruffed grouse, and various small predators.

On the other hand, that can put a crimp into your hiking. But minimally you can still walk, and let’s face it – even though it’s snowing as I write this, that doesn’t have to keep us immured inside, and on top of that there will be PLENTY of nice days this month (along with some bad ones). Take a walk down the Main Street in Naples or Canandaigua… follow the audio tour of Bath… hike the rail trail through Elmira, which has just installed new mileposts.

When you get a half-way decent day, visit the marinas or waterfronts at Penn Yan, Geneva, Hammondsport, Canandaigua, Watkins Glen. They’re a very different world, and a much quieter world.

Go, not necessarily to the mall, but just to your local supermarket. Stroll through, taking the time to EXPERIENCE your visit. Take in all the Thanksgiving decorations, and get yourself into the season a little bit.

If you’re out on a walk or a drive, especially with kids, see how many decorative turkeys you can spot along the way. If each of you takes one side of the street, you can make a little contest of it.

Make sure you get your Scouting for Food bag out. And/or make a gift to the Food Bank, or to your church’s food pantry, to help those who are hungry as the year gets cold.

Put your bird feeders back out! Thanksgiving to Easter is a good rule of thumb here in bear country. Our juncos are back, here in Bath, though in reality they only go up to Mossy Bank Park – they’re pretty much altitude migrators, rather than latitude migrators. Birds in your yard are a promise of spring!