5 September 2017

Just over a month ago, I wrote about an ongoing project that I am working on (See 2 August 2017), transcribing old editions of The Washington County News, the weekly newspaper of my home.  While it is imbedded with little snippets of humor,  most of which I won’t even claim to understand because I guess you had to have been there to get it, some of the funniest entries I’ve come across in the papers are the medical ads.  Yes, that’s right, the medical ads.

Now I’m pretty sure, or at the very least pretty hopeful, that these tonics, balms and elixirs pedaled in small-town newspapers across the country at the turn of the twentieth century,  were actually thought of as cures by their manufacturers and not grand money-making ruses.   But, viewing it from a “modern” vantage point, they seem pretty nonsensical; like Castoria that was touted to cure fever, sleeplessness, diarrhea and constipation in infants or Oxidine that was said to cure biliousness, fever, chills and even MALARIA!  Cure-all medications that could be conveniently mail-ordered or purchased at any local druggist for less than $1.00.

One of the advertisers of these wonder drugs that has repeatedly caught my eye is the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company, who manufactured a vegetable compound for the cure of feminine ills.  Back aches, nervousness, sparks before the eyes, blues and even an impending sense of doom, apparently all documented symptoms of female weakness, didn’t stand a chance against this magic tonic.  See for yourself:

Advertisement dated August 2, 1917.

Advertisement dated August 23, 1917.

 

So when I came across an old Lydia E. Pinkham Cosco-sized medicine bottle in a local estate sale, its contents long-since drained by some haggard Southern woman,  I couldn’t help but smile, giggle, and immediately purchase the darn old thing.

Here’s to you Mrs. Lydia E. Pinkham and to your vegetable compound for still curing the blues almost 100 years later!

 

2 September 2017

And if a man starts to weaken, that’s a shame!
For ‘Bama’s pluck and grit have writ her name in crimson flame!

–Yeah Alabama by Ethelred Lundy Sykes

It is that time again.  Pigskins are back.  The first games of the season have been played.  The Crimson Tide has taken the field and The University fans down here in Dixie are as happy as a pig in slop!  Florida State University has been defeated 24 to 7, and all is well ya’ll for at least another week.

Now I’m not an avid football fan, which is sacrilege in my neck of the woods, tantamount to confessing a disbelief in Jesus Christ, but I have to admit there is something exciting about the boys taking the field, even for a sinner like me.  The grills are lit, the chips and dip are set out, and the spirits, both of the beverage and emotional kind, flow.  Anticipation has built and like starving men in the desert, parched and delirious, fans gather to feast.  And to cheer!

So it was for us.  Along with my husband’s former West Point classmate and his family in their beautiful downtown historic home, where I’d like to think countless others before us had tuned in to first games on rabbit-eared televisions and wood-encased radios; we watched, we ate, we talked, we laughed, we smiled and Alabama was victorious!

My maternal grandmother would’ve been proud.  She was a FAN, having had two sons play for The University back in the sixties.  Viewing from her armchair in her cavernous den, she would’ve helped Saban coach those boys to victory.  I hope she was watching from her heavenly den!

The 2nd was also my hubby’s 45th birthday!  So it was fortuitous that we were able to celebrate his MANY years with friends who knew him when he was young-er and spry-er!  A turtle ice cream cake from Maggie Moos,  great conversation, an Alabama win and the day was a wrap.

 

 

1 August 2017

I recently came across this postcard at postcardy.blogspot.com  and couldn’t resist sharing it today on the first day of August.    (I’m a crazy fool for vintage ephemera and this sight is food for my soul!)

August  is officially here, along with the muggy dog days of summer, and we are all pretty much melting into a puddle of ourselves here in Alabama.  Yet despite the air conditioning thrumming out blessed cold air into darkened rooms with blinds and curtains pulled tight against the harsh summer sunlight, our porch, small as  it may be, still beckons my family and I to leave behind our cool comfort for a while and sit a spell in the heat.

In yesteryear, before the advent of air conditioning, the porch was the best place to escape sweltering oven-like interiors; a shady spot in which one had a heightened opportunity to catch a blessed breeze or an afternoon snoozer.  While we southerners no longer seek it out as a daily refuge from the swelter, it is still the best place to linger with our loved ones on an over-heated afternoon.  Gentle rocking, the tinkle of ice melting in a glass of tea or lemonade, a trickle of sweat running idly down one’s spine; it is an ideal place to read, to think, to converse, to nap.  A place of  rationed movement, where less is more, since it is too hot for much of anything other than next to nothing.

In the rush-rush of today’s 24/7 way of life, moments of stillness are as rare as a summer breeze, but now is the perfect time to take advantage of a moment or two of idleness with the people we love.  Join me today, won’t you,  on this first day of August in a bit of Tuesday afternoon porch sitting?  And if anyone asks why, you can simply blame it on the heat!

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Dateline Alabama August 1, 1704: 

This memorial sign  is located on Highway 43 in Lemoyne, Alabama

On this date in history, twenty-three young women arrived in Old Mobile (Fort Louis de la Louisiane) aboard the ship Le Pélican.  These women, most of whom were orphans and had few prospects, if any,  in France, had been specially selected  for their virtue, piety and industriousness to make the voyage to Old Mobile to become the wives of the colonists of their choice residing there.  Ranging in age from fourteen to twenty, these incredible young women braved the Atlantic voyage, survived disease and entered the two-year old wilderness colony to establish some of  South Alabama’s first families.  To learn more about these Pelican Girls like we did I would suggest Kelly Kazek’s When French Orphans Called Casket Girls Came to Alabama as Wives for Colonists and Amy Chen’s Il y a longtemps…The Pelican Girls in Mobile and Yellow Fever Come Full Circle.