I too have a sudden craving for Hot Marie Blass, washed down perhaps with a cold glass of Pople.

We’ve reached a new milestone here, a content-loop, a great sloshing from one trough to the other. It can be summed up thus, in this erarly 1960s ad from the Crown Drive-in near my house.

This was something I didn’t add to the Wednesday Misc Substack, which is devoted to material removed from the Monday Substack. So now I’m posting deleted Substack material to the Thursday Bleat. Insane! OR IS IT? Might it be a ploy, a way of opening the curtain a bit to show the wonders and pleasures of the paid tier? Probably. I should note that I set it to free, so go ahead and enjoy, on me. But right now let’s talk about this chicken.

There’s a region variant called Yankee Fried Chicken, and the Google AI response, a feature I hate, says “The core ingredients usually include chicken, a creamy sauce (often cream of chicken soup, sour cream, and onion soup mix), and possibly some chow mein noodles.” But I don’t think that’s what this is. I think they just stuck “Yankee” in place of “Kentucky” to make you think of KFC. They were also indicating the laxity of trademark enforcements in that era, figuring that they’d just get a cease-and-desist letter , if any lawyers bothered to look at ads in the Fargo newspaper. I mean, it’s rather blatant. They’re not even trying to come up with something new.

Unless "Finger lickin' good" could not be copyrighted? No, it's protected by the iron bonds of law.

The Substack piece also mentions King Leo’s, which we have discussed here from time to time, including their disastrous revival. I did find some more ads.

It was a System! At its peak, there were three.

One ad contained a picture of the staff, with the tagline “Those magnificent men in their frying machines.” Clever. The photo was quite degraded, but I did some touch-up and colorizing before turning it over to AI for upscaling and “creative” revision.

Then, for the hell of it, I had it animated.

It’s the confidence with which the AI does nonsensical things that appeals to me.

I also mentioned the Crown Drive-in. Subsequent research (bored clicking through newspapers.com on my lunch hour) revealed that had been built in the 50s, when there wasn’t much up there at all, except for Hector Field, the airport. It was originally the Polar, which made a slight ding! noise in my head: the Polar Package Store was nearby. Same owner, I’m guessing. I remembered the Polar’s sign: it looked as if it was heaped with snow.

And so it was.

Hector Field, by the way, had a jet airplane mounted on a pedestal, in my memory. It signified the base as the home of the Air National Guard, the Happy Hooligans. Did I make up the airplane on a pedestal, thinking of model airplanes?

I wish my father was here to answer such things. But perhaps he might have forgotten.

Well, there's this: in the Substack piece I mentioned a memory of a place called "William's," on University, and wondered whether I'd made that up. Later today, while searching for Crown ads:

Whew!