LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat for Monday.

The office building above is part of our evening walk, and it's not exactly like a settled 100-year-old residential neighborhood. Birch cares not for the architecture because the place is redolent with rabbits. Also, there's an employee table outside where someone dropped a piece of chicken in 2021.

I find the buildings interesting because they're so typically boring: they thought this was just the thing in the mid-60s. The current owners have leaned into the mid-century idea with the signage, and they've painted the buildings so they're not boring things based on punch-cards. I've no idea why anyone thought thin-slit windows were good, unless they were expecting to hold off invaders with teams of archers. Recessed thin windows - well, I suppose it's one wat to keep people from looking out at the world and dreaming about dinner.

Two of them were sacrificed for the Fred and the Finch.

Saturday morning I had a good proper breakfast, all of the delights I reserved for a weekend, and learned to my chagrin that everything they said about my toaster is true. It burns everything. You put it on the second setting for a toaster waffle, it’s a carbonized Frisbee. You put in one slice of bread and set it at 1 and it toasts the bottom half. The settings go up to 6, in case you want to eat one of those scrolls recovered from Pompei. I bought it because it was low profile, thin, and Target was selling it, so I figured that it wasn’t as bad as some reviewers said. It is as bad as some reviewers said. I have to go back to Target now, set the unit and wait for the recognition: oh, you’re seventh today.

After breakfast I realized Oh Gosh: it’s the Postcard Show. It seems like a relic of another life. I would drive there on Saturday afternoon, and sit in the VFW post with a feeling a slight weariness as I flipped through the cards. Everyone here is so quiet and meek, bent over the stacks, looking for a very specific card to fill a gap and void in their life. Or they're not quiet, and want to natter on about their own about cards in the most uninteresting fashion, reminding you that your hobby is in fact quite uninteresting, and you‘re just another guy sitting here looking for an neon sign from 1957.

I always left a little sad, feeling like I’ve been doing this forever. I would go home to the house on Saturday afternoon, there would be nothing going on, Natalie was gone, I was in trouble for not doing yardwork, and so on and so on. It’s not as if I look back to that now and say oh my gosh, how good I had it – obviously there were problems, but that's life. Ups and downs and ins and outs. What matters is getting these things scanned NOW or it'll never happen. 2023 will be upon us and I'll have no cards!

Now is different. It’s something to do and it’ll get us out of the house and around other people, so off we go. (By we I mean Birch, who was content to sit in the car. The VERY COOL car, let me be clear.)

I found the guy who sells the cheap motel cards, fifty cents a throw, and I went through and got enough for 2028. Good for me. There was somebody sitting next to me yakking on about something, he too was interested in old neon postcard signs - but he was utterly uninterested in any conversational response I had. I could've recited the Periodic Table and had the same effect on the direction of the chatter.

Couldn't resist an old hotel:

The Hotel Eau Claire. Good thing they put "Hotel" first because people might be confused. You can find examples of these 20s piles all over the country, but as we well know, they're usually . . . yes, you know. Or they're shuttered. Their era, and everything they represented, is well and truly gone. What do I mean by that? I don't know, I just typed it. But let me think. Ah: In almost every case they were put forth as a civic accomplishment, a testament to the community. There were usually some top-hatted backers, or what passed for the top-hatted class. Earnest boosters who met at the Elks club.

A bit of modernization here. And oh those cars.

I have to think these are the guys who ran the joint, gathered for the official picture.

The country had thousands of blocks like this. Tens of thousands. All different.

A what hotel?

This site on restaurant plates and cups says:

Edwin A. Boss owned the Algona Hotel in Algona, Iowa before he served in World War I. Upon his return he started building a chain of hotels. "He predicated it upon the geographical knowledge that Iowa's county seats, linked by railroads, could provide him voluminous business when he applied his practical experience. By 1931 the chain numbered eighteen hotels, only a few of them leased, and included thirty-eight at its height."

That includes the Pattee of Perry, with its two-lane bowling alley . . . but we'll get to that some day.

Anyway. It's the dreaded Five-Piece weekend (two Bleats, Substack, National Review, National Review online) so I'd best get cracking on the Monday pieces before I say anything else here. That's paying work! Every dollar helps.

In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.

"This portrait is fanciful."


		Read on. It gets worse. Explains her expression, anyway.

From the days when this didn't mean you were going to get something smutty with pretentions to art:

I do wonder how much purchase the name had in 1951. Still some, I'd imagine.

As for Angel: "One obituary called him 'An irascible man with strong opinions and a somewhat draconian manner, Angel was utterly dedicated to the medium of film.'" British film producer.

As the film begins, we see a woman walk up to a phone at a train station.

I'm intrigued by the instructions. What purpose did the button serve?

They had to tell people how to dial?

Anyway, here's our heroine:

She's a mystery writer! They loved movies that had mystery writers for characters. Basic plot: her husband was a crook, and his partner comes to collect money and wreak revenge etc etc. You realize straight away it's a stage play, and there's going to be a lot of Arch Talking. Since Bette is a writer, she has a secretary who handles the typing, and of course she's seduced the secretary's boyfriend.

As the secretary eventually says with a certain degree of contempt, why him? You can have any man you want.

Can she now.

Let us leave the plot aside and venture into the village. This is heaven, for me. It's somewhere in Malham, in Yorkshire. I can't find it. You're welcome to try.