Everyone's seeing the new logo from the front so I thought I would show you the other side.
No reason! No suggestion that there's even an "other side"! It's all great. We have a new logo, which has four points, like the number of letters in PTSD. I had a jangly morning, since I had a piece in the paper about the governor's residence, a detailed discussion of its style and history, and the intertwined lives of the lumber man who built it with the state's culture and industry -
Kidding! It was Seven Things You Don't Know About the Residence But Probably Should. Anyway I got letters from people who said er, that picture, it's not the interior of the residence. It's the reception room in the State Capitol. Gah. No. Please no. Not this. I went back to the digital photo archives to find the picture I'd used, hoping against hope that the cutline info was wrong and it had said residence erroneously . . . couldn't find it.
Then I thought: what if the picture in the paper isn't the one I submitted? I hadn't seen the story in print that morning. I found a copy, opened up to page 3 . . . and my friends, the clouds parted and shafts of light shone forth and the trumpets of heaven forth their glory, because it was a different photo. I'd never seen it before. It wasn't my fault.
(As it turned out, it wasn't really the fault of the person who added it, because it was mislabeled in the photo archives as residence, not reception.)
You have no idea what sort of terror this produces. That morning sluice of correction-dread is not something I will miss.
An interesting fact I picked up one day: it wasn’t just Texaco that had roving bathroom inspectors.
From the late 1930s until the 1960s, Phillips employed registered nurses as "highway hostesses" that made random visits to Phillips 66 stations within their districts. The nurses inspected station restroom facilities to ensure they were clean and stocked with supplies. They also served as concierges, spreading goodwill for the company by helping motorists identify suitable dining and lodging facilities. (Union 76 employed similar hostesses, called the "Sparkle Corps”.)
I’d be interested to find the origin of the phrase “Highway Host.” I suspect it has no single origin, and arose organically in different places and different times. There was a small chain of restaurants in the Fargo-Moorhead area called Highway Host, which of course we called the Highway Heist. Clever high-school lads. Probably a reference to their prices.
This was the logo.
The signs did look like that, complete with the awful carriage lamps on top. Let’s stop there, they have two lights on top of the sign. The good must be good!
As for Union 76, I do remember this:
Beginning in 1967, Union 76 distributed tens of millions of small orange foam balls with the 76 logo, meant to be impaled on the radio antenna of a car.[citation needed] These were popular especially in the Greater Los Angeles area, where they are still seen.[citation needed] In the winter of 1968, wind and snow created drifts in Spokane, Washington made it difficult to locate cars without whip antennas and the orange 76 ball on them.[citation needed]
Cite me, if you wish. I was there, and I remember seeing them in the parking lots. Cannot speak for the contemporary manifestations in LA, though. I wonder when they ditched the Sparkle Corps.
Phillips 66, Union 76 - why the numerical names? Various reasons for Phillips. Union’s gas had a 76 octane rating.
While we're on the subject: remember our discussion of the Matawan style of Texaco stations, and how our local example was being renovated? It appears they left the style intact on the back.
This I do not understand.
Except now I do. The light-colored stone is original. The dark fake stone, which wraps around the entire back of the building, was added sometime between 2019 and 2021. I've never known any refurbished gas station to double-down on its original design.
AAAAANnnnnd who cares, I know.
A note about the Substack, and my reasons for launching it:
Reason #1: I don’t want to lose the rhythm of column writing. In my head I am always looking for something that will fit the particular niche. When you know you have to produce two pieces of a set length that will have a particular tone - in this case, humorous - you walk around with your antennae a-twitch, because everything could be something. In fact, everything is something. It’s just a question of whether you can get 550 or 800 words out of it.
In almost every single case, I can, but are they the best words? So you winnow and wait and something goes ping! And you know you have it. You found a phrase, an idea, an angle, and it opens up the blank page. This is not some magical process or secret skill - it’s simply what the job requires.
After I had finished my last column for the paper - sorry, it’s not the paper, it’s the StarTribune, I keep ignoring the memo - I found myself walking around downtown and feeling the absence of attention. I didn’t need to be looking for things, extrapolating, wondering what might be fodder. And I hated it. I felt as if I had no purpose anymore.
Then I thought, hey
Just don’t stop
Hence the Substack. Why not put it on the Bleat? Because the Bleat is the Bleat, and the Column is the Column. I can’t explain it more than that.
Reason #2: Like every other greedy cash-addled person on the internet, I would like to make some more money. I do a lot for free, which, when you think about it, is rather stupid. But as I’ve said, imagining myself looking noble in a 19th century oil painting where I stand on a windblown cliff regarding the distant vista, I am old-old-old school internet, from the era when we all answered the call and volunteered. Money? Oh right, well, maybe some day but for now, we got to fill this bunker up with coal. Start shoveling, lads! Sing a shanty if you like!
The price will be five dollars a month for eight columns and four amusing extras that are not columns. This comes out to 41 cents per piece, more or less.
It will take time to build, and I have no idea if it will reach the amount I am paid at the paper.
Why would I use that as a metric? OH NO IDEA NO CONCLUSIONS could be drawn from that.
Finally finished a show I started watching nine years ago. I have watched Narcos from the beginning, and even though the third season of the Mexico iteration really bit the wax tadpole, and even though the attenuation of the show over the years makes it blur post-Escobar into innumerable scenes of well-dressed thin-faced bearded men acting pensive, and hotheads shooting up the joint, I’m glad it’s been there, year after year. It has the most wonderful rue-soaked title theme:
Later years starred the curiously named Scoot McNairy, who I knew from the exceptionally good Halt and Catch Fire. In both cases, prickly, smart, unsympathetic, but someone for whom you root.
It’s odd to think that none of the events in these two shows, their sweeping account of the Colombian and Mexican drug trade and its effect on the cultures of the region , would have happened if everyone in the USA had turned up their nose at the product instead of sticking it down over a mirror. The existence of the vast market deformed the societies that produced the drugs. The impact of the drugs was never shown in the series. They might as well have been moving Pop Rocks.
Have you ever heard of Amado Carrillo Fuentes? He was one of the main characters of the last few seasons. The obligatory "smart guy whose quiet dignitas sets him apart from the hot-headed young men coming up."
Guy was worth $25 billion. At one point he went on the run and had plastic surgery to change his appearance.
However, during the operation, he died of complications apparently caused either by a certain medication or a malfunctioning respirator (there is very little paperwork regarding his death).
Two of Carrillo Fuentes's bodyguards were in the operating room during the procedure. On November 7, 1997, the two surgeons who performed Carrillo's surgery were found dead, encased in concrete inside steel drums, with their bodies showing signs of torture.
This has led to some think he didn't die at all. I'm just curious about the docs-in-drums. Someone found some steel drums, popped the lid, saw concrete, and thought "well we'd best crack this open and see if it contains anyone, possibly surgeons."
To prove he was dead, the government released a photograph. Oh yeah well that totally settles the matter. (Warning: Grinchy corpse.) DEA says it was him, based on fingerprints.
I don't know. Twenty-five bill ought to buy you a good lipo team.
It’s 1955.
Who are they looking at, these fine fresh well-scrubbed American youths?
A person who isn’t appreciating Coke, perhaps. That guy who’s drinking the clam juice. Looks Italian.
Why is he pretending to drive? The door's open.
Perhaps that’s not his wife, but his wife’s friend, and it’s all he can do not to stare? Oh gosh she's got those great pins on the seat and everything don't look don't look
Did you know that in the past, when you hit the gas to pass someone, your windshield-cleaning system faltered?
WHAT ARE YOU DOING PASSING ON A TWO-LANE IN A RAIN STORM ANYWAY
He’d know, because . . . reasons
I wonder if he knew that one of the roles he might have thought beneath him would put him in a strange pantheon that assured he would be discussed, if only in passing, in the year 2024, when comic-book fans ranked the Jokers?
Make your home a gay, bright place of excitement and gracious leisure living - with asbestos!
I'm not going to do that har-har/horrified reaction BECAUSE ASBESTOS OMG, PAST IS BAD.
I wonder how many of those reconfigured rambler rumpus rooms survived into the 21st century. The tile would be prized now by vintage enthusiasts, who’d be willing to live with the you-know-what.
