You Say, "To-Mah-To"...

And I say, "All of Japan will agree with you"...

To-mah-to...
The name of the vegetable (or fruit?) in Japanese, and the pronunciation of the syllables that decorate this baby T-shirt.

Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in June, so the day of the local Japanese community's annual flea market. I didn't really need a baby T-shirt, but at $.25, the design was too adorable to resist. I'm hoping it will fit a neighbor's one-and-a-half year old, so I can take pictures of him wearing it as he toddles by. He is a fast one, but maybe I can manage to get a rear view—

Two labels sewn inside the collar—

Another item I couldn't manage to resist—

This truly is using your noggin!

There are always giveaway piles, too. I picked up some home-maker magazines—

"Heart and Hand" (above, left) is devoted to recipes and crafts. Here are directions for making gift envelopes from decorative papers—

I like the inexplicable prop here; this hand-made envelope will be just the thing for storing your Blue Eagle tickets!

More seriously, it's interesting how this real artifact can become a context-free prop in a Japanese magazine illustration. I can't find any background, but the image shows tickets printed "In full compliance"—

Globe [?] Ticket Company, Los Angeles
(According to teeny and partly blurred font in magazine image)

The L.A. event may have been held under of the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project, which promoted public performances throughout the country. The Library of Congress's FTP collection includes photos; posters for plays and other public performances are in the WPA poster collection. Though I've seen lots of archival images, I've never come across tickets that from one of these long-ago events.

It's history that is all but lost to popular knowledge. And a depressing, if unsurprising, thing: never try searching "NRA" without adding, Great Depression.

Just Friendly Chats

"A Little Package of Fact, Fun and Inspiration"—published Fall of 1933, "Max K. Aupperle, Custom Tailor, Batavia, N.Y."

Attractively printed, with an inspiring opening slogan and the banner proudly flown:

The text is a mix of quotes, anecdotes with morals, and jokes, under such headings as
The "wisdom" is very much of its period; sample chip—

Among the figures that have attracted men are Venus de Milo, Cleopatra, Ruth St. Denis, and Annette Kellerman. Among those that have attracted women are $1.98.

Considering that the clientele must have been on the upper middle-class side, the booklet has some interesting messages about the economic times. A two-page ad in the middle of the pamphlet says it directly—

...out of the welter of regrets, mistakes and economic post mortems, we have never heard one man, accustomed to fine attirement, express a syllable of self-criticism about his investment in good clothes—not one.

In the face of recession and liquidation, a period happily ended, these men refused to liquidate their self-respect. Being gentlemen at heart, they were clothed as gentlemen. That has helped their rolé and must continue to help.

A page of quotes titled, "A Pullman Seat With," includes—

Marlen Pew, Journalist: "Newspapers are changing. More realistic interpretative news these days. Less tittle-tattle. They breathe optimism. Political partisanship is dropped while the battle for Recovery goes on."

My, but how things have changed!

At least, whenever a Democrat is in the White House...

And from a page-long salute to the 1933 occupant of the White House—

Regardless of politics, America places a high value on the President's smile. It is a confident smile, a potent argument against dismay or discouragement...It is the smile of enthusiasm, of large kindliness, of experience, and of sympathy bred of suffering.

There's reference to an event a few weeks before FDR's inauguration—

When bullets from an assassin's gun whistled past him in Florida, and a vast throng stood terror bound, his smiling outcry flew back "I'm all right."

A few weeks later, talking intimately over the radio to millions of us in our homes, the same assuring voice sustained us and lifted us by its simple, confident words. One sensed a smile in that voice. It was neither a Democratic nor a Republican smile; it was the expressions of a friend who meant to do well by those who trusted him—the whole people.

Yep, times really have changed...

Another interesting item is "On Emptying Your Pockets":

...a man...on emptying the pockets of his old clothes, or righting his private drawer at home...comes across many little things, oddments of various sorts and sizes...

A lone cuff-link, a flattened cigarette case, a strangely shaped stone, a cut-glass bottle stopper, newspaper clippings, pencil stubs, a card with three words written on it, a baby's teething ring, a lock of hair, an insurance premium notice, a memo to buy dog biscuits, the rough working drawing of a new gadget, an old tintype—anything and everything.

Which sounds something like my bookshelves, as I accumulate publications like this one!

Some full pages of the pamphlet are here.

I will dedicate this blog to the spirit of emptying pockets and shelves—just to see what's there.

And to that staunch supporter of The New Deal, Max K. Aupperle (lame jokes and all).