Weird Food and MLKJ Day

Skunk, over at Skunfeathers Blog, has unwittingly sold me on the idea that it is okay to recycle some of your stuff once in a while, as long as it was good the first time.  Well, this is kind of a hybrid, a bit of new and a lot of old, but since the old is from Ought-Five, I think some of you may not have seen it before.  Plus, you can take a poll at the end.  Woo-hoo!  Shades of Excitement!

How this post turned out to be about racism and Martin Luther King Jr. Day was like this:  I was over at Terri-Terri Quite Contrary's blog one day last week and she had an entry about weird foods people eat  called, strangely enough, "Things People Eat," along with 43 comments from people with their own versions (She gets a lot of comments.  In my opinion it must have something to do with the fact that she updates almost daily and is normally interesting, funny, upbeat and personable.  I could try all that to get comments, too. Lolololol.  Writing lolololol is so wrong on so many levels...) which has to be read to be believed.  It started a chain of memories, resulting in this new presentation of a couple of old pieces

I wrote a piece on racism and an experience I had in 3rd grade which some of you may recall.  The two entries from the archives which follow had led to several comments on the old blog saying they thought I was going to write about racism and the derogatory term "crackers," used for white people which led to my writing the entry on race 9-26-05  http://herbthiel.com/index.php?itemid=53 that you may want to click on so you can read the comment left by my friend, Elvin Diaz, First Sergeant, US Army, Retired.  Between our two individual experiences you can get a definite feel for what the 60's were kind of about.

But Terri's post got me to remembering the reactions to this post

From My BD Blog 8-17-05

There are days when I really hate computers, but then I realize that it's just mine that I hate.  I guess I like them all right as a group, it's just this one certain individual that I don't like.  Well, I guess it's more of a love/hate relationship, really.  The computer does keep me connected with all of you and there are getting to be more and more of you everyday, too.  Just, sometimes, I really feel like taking the computer out and smashing it to bits with a sledgehammer, not to be confused, of course, with Sledge Hammer although that .44 of his might be useful.  I could take a gun and shoot the computer full of holes, THEN smash it with a sledgehammer, then pour gasoline all over the bits and pieces and light it on fire and then, after it had cooled, drive over anything left with an old army deuce-and-a-half (two and a half ton truck) and flush any remaining bits down the toilet.  Then I will sit on the curb and blather my finger against my lips until the nice young men in their clean white coats come.

Scott W was telling me that his computer only comes on every fourth time he tries to turn it on, so Scott, if you have made it here to my blog, first of all, I am highly honored that you would take your precious computer time to spend it here, and secondly, I hope the above instructions for computer repair are helpful.

Umm, as I told you guys before, my computer is on the way out.

Okay.  When I was a boy I used to watch my dad butter a pack of saltines and make little sandwiches of them and eat them.  The crackers came in a package that had four crackers together with perforations so you could break them down to the size that is common in grocery stores nowadays.  BTW, does anyone still package crackers that way?

Anyway, my new poll question is about this snack.  I love it.  I will take a whole sleeve of saltines and butter them up (real butter is best, especially for buttering up) and put them on a plate and eat them.  Sometimes I will take a couple of slices of American cheese and quarter them onto some of the crackers.  My wife had never seen anyone eat this snack and my kids are not exactly taken with the idea of them, but I love 'em.

So, anyway, please answer today's poll question and leave a comment.  And Carter and Daveman, if you see a polecat, don't play with it!  Don't touch.  I mean it...

Remember, the good book says, if Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

I got quite a few reactions to that post, mostly negative, but it went kind of like this:

From BD Blog 9-23-05

Some people who read my entry about the crackers that came in the 4-per-sheet packages also recalled them, so I looked it up.  I finally wound up having the following correspondence with Nabisco.  If they pioneered this then it seems logical that when I was a little boy some brands would still come the old way as they tried to catch up.

ME to http://www.nabiscoworld.com:  "...Premium Saltines used to come in big squares that had 4 crackers that were perforated.  The box was the same size as the standard 1 lb. box, but now the crackers come in sleeves.  When did this change and why?..."

"Kraft - Nabisco Email Team <@nabisco.com> Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 1:09 PM To: "herbthiel@" <herbthiel@>

Thank you for visiting http://www.nabiscoworld.com.

In 1959, Nabisco Brands pioneered what has become an industry standard:  the stack pack.  Four columns of crackers, each enveloped in a reclosable wax paper sleeve, rest within a sealed cardboard container.  Later those waxed paper sleeves gave way to the more modern and effective plastic.  Today's stack packs make it possible for consumers to open one sleeve at a time, resealing the remainder and keeping in freshness.

Also, I'm glad to hear your nice comments about our products and company and will share them with our staff. We're proud of our reputation for excellence and work hard to maintain it.  We're continually exploring new food developments and are very optimistic about the future of food production.  Our pledge is to continue to successfully build on our past achievements far into the future.

It was great hearing from you, and remember we're always updating our site so visit us again soon!

Kim McMiller

Associate Director, Consumer Relations"

So there we have it.  If they pioneered it in 1959 and it is now an industry standard, it could take several years or even more than a decade for it to have become SOP for other companies.

Right now I am writing this on my handy dandy laptop.  I am so tickled.  I'm listening to the "Abbott & Costello" radio show right now.  Did you know that you can go to the site that the boys' family started http://www.abbottandcostello.net/ and download a different show every month?  This is different from the Old Time Radio shows link I recently added.  (Click on the "Listen Now" button and enjoy some good old-fashioned entertainment.)  This does not mean that I think every show is good for everyone or acceptable to everyone.  Just like any other media, you have to take the time to find out for yourself what's up.  Toward the end of the "Golden Age of Radio" many of the stars were pushing their shows on a new, modern medium called television and broke ground and paved the way for what we have today from Hollyweird.  That doesn't mean these shows are not good, wholesome fun, but good and wholesome do not automatically equate innocent and there are even some of these that I will turn off.

I do have to say that they were more intellectually honest back then, though and I think that fighting for Truth, Justice and the American way and Law and Order in the Old West are superior to what we have now.

I read an interview with Bud Abbott where he explained how he and Costello rose to fame while burlesque failed.  He said, "Keep it clean.  You can embarrass people into laughing and they won't come back to see you, but if you are truly funny and people are not embarrassed, they will bring their friends to see you."

Remember, THE Good Book says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine..."