Things that occur in my world; or maybe just in my mind, that may or may not be of interest to you. Sometimes these thoughts revolve around my perception of the world; sometimes not. I just try to have fun and enjoy my time. Welcome to my world as I perceive it. An added plus is that I will share my Notgeld Collection occasionally.
I had to run some errands today. Julie went with me because she wanted to go to the library. After spending some considerable time at the library we made our way to Sam's Club. I decided to take what I call the "scenic route", which simply means I don't want to go the normal straight shot way. i wanted to go the long way. Today it took me through downtown Waco, across the Brazos River, and along Elm Street in East Waco. I've always liked this route because I get to drive past areas and places that remind me of my younger days. For instance, today we drove past DeMaria's Bar-B-Que and Jasper's Barbecueon Clifton Street. I am reminded of when I was very young and my dad would take us to a barbecue place on Elm where they served you on butcher paper. I think it was DeMaria's when they were at their old location closer to Clifton Street.
I also commiserated upon the loss of Paul Quin College for the Elm Street area and how I thought the entire area would be much better had the college not moved away.
As we were approaching Sam's Club I mentioned to Julie that Collin Street Bakery would be building a restaurant on I-35 behind the Sam's Club. I understand that the restaurant will look similar to their other restaurant on I-45 in Corsicana, TX.Upon mentioning this to Julie, she reminded me of a visit we made to the bakery when she was maybe 12 years old. The family was in the bakery looking at all the cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and other delicious baked goods. Everyone in our group was making their selections and getting them bagged up. When it was Julie's turn we asked what she wanted. She thought for a moment and puzzled over what to get.
Finally she asked, "Can I have a hard roll?"
We chuckled and told her yes. Here we thought she was building up to something spectacular and yet she simply asked for a hard roll. It seems that she thought they just looked good.
I spent Wednesday night cruising the Internet for old time radio shows. I found a lot and listened to a few while I worked on the blog. Thursday night was different. This time I spent my time looking for old time TV shows.
Wow! If only the day was 48 hours long I would be happy.
As I search for things on the Internet I sometimes think I need GPS. I mean I sit down and know exactly what I'm going to look for and what I'm going to do; and I start. It always seems to go downhill from there. Take for instance last night; I planned on researching classic or old time TV shows. (Really, I just wanted to try to find some episodes to watch. I mean gee, sometimes TV with 100+ channels gets a little boring.) Anyway, I start out on YouTube and find the pilot episode for Fibber McGee and Molly on NBC in the 50's. So I watch.
Then I do a search for classic TV. This, of course, yields a gold mine. So I proceed to visit a few. The first is Like Television. There you can download many classic series and watch to your hearts content and it's easy too. The shows are divided into various categories which makes it relatively easy to find what you want. They also have films, commercials, and cartoons. Then I headed to TV Land. They have a few episodes to watch but I didn't stay long. After that I mostly find links to web-sites that are databases and the like; good to read but not much if anything to watch.
BONANZA!! And I don't mean the show, although it can be found there.
See, I told you it could be found there. Anyway, I look for Fibber McGee again and watch a few of the videos and then somehow jumped to Jack Benny. One of the Jack Benny videos had Mel Blanc on it. So then I started watching videos with Mel Blanc. You know Jack Benny once said, "There are only five real people in Hollywood. Everybody else is Mel Blanc." After Mel Blanc for some reason I started watching Spike Jones; John Denver; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and Patty Duke. That's quite a variety of music videos, and in the middle of all of those I watched some episodes of The Life of Riley and The Patty Duke Show. And all the while I open more screens and look up information about the shows and read about them. Of course when I do that I can't watch the shows, I can only listen. Then I try to write my blog while I am reading and watching and listening and talking to Chris and Julie and tending to the cats and walking the dog and taking out the trash and, and, and.....No wonder I'm tired!
Good night or good morning or good day or good grief!
Yesterday I was going through some of my old radio show cassette tapes. I must have around 600 individual shows on cassette. I know that's not a lot in the grand scheme of things when you consider that Jim and Marian Jordan of "Fibber McGee and Molly" fame had over 700 episodes of their radio show. I decided that I needed to transfer all of them to CD so that I can listen to them more. Chris and I listened to them a lot when whenever we traveled. The truck doesn't have a cassette player so that takes care of that. I will sometimes pop them in a cassette player and listen to them before going to bed. The only problem with that is I generally end up going to sleep in the middle of a tape and then the batteries run down after playing all night.
I decided to look up on the Internet the best way to transfer the shows. One thing led to another and I ended up searching old time radio shows. I came across several really good sites. Some of the sites allow you to download the shows and listen to them on your computer. Old Time Radio Fans is a good site to visit for this purpose. They have several shows listed many categories. A couple of other good sites are Radio Lovers and The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
I also found a site that offers over 22,000 old time radio shows recorded on CD in MP3 format. The site is 40s Radio Mysteries. The site is divided into categories and shows within each category. I'm not sure of the quality of the recordings but when each CD has upwards of 75 - 100 shows (Exact number varies by show) and only costs $7.00 each you really can't go wrong.
Now I can't decide if I want to transfer mine or just purchase sets from 40s Radio Mysteries.
I read some interesting information in yesterday's Waco Trib. It was describing the development taking place in downtown Waco at Heritage Square. It was announcing that Rosati's was going to place a second location in Waco at Heritage Square. Rosati's is a restaurant that offers authentic Chicago style pizza.
This started me to thinking about pizza when I was younger. When I was a wee lad I vaguely remember a pizza place in town named Pepe's Pizza. I don't remember much else about it though. As I got a little older my most vivid pizza memories involved Chef Boyardee pizza in a box. At that time I thought pizza was crust with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese. When I was in junior high my parents took me to a Shakey's Pizza for my birthday. Boy, I thought that was great. Especially the olde time Dixieland band. Years later the Shakey's closed.
When I was in high school the place to go was Poppa Rollo's Pizza. It was great and they still have a loyal following. They showed Our Gang movies and other old black and white movies. I guess you could say they offered the original "Black and White Overnight".
I've grown up and so has Waco. Waco has many more pizza places now than I can name. So do the grocery stores. The best pizza I've found in Waco besides Rosati's is at Double Dave's. Their buffet is great and well worth it.
Living the life of leisure as I do during the summer I have lots of time. Often, I spend this time on the Internet and watching movies on TV at the same time. Yeah, I know it's rough, but someone has got to do it.
Last night I was watching "Task Force"with Gary Cooper. During the movie I was on the Internet when I came across an interesting web-site. The name of the web-site is "What Does Your Phone Number Spell?" It pretty much does what you think it does. Type in any phone number and it spits out all of the possible combinations. The 7 letter mnemonic for the Waco ISD Department of Elementary Education phone number 755-9523 is 7559 LAD. I suppose that one is appropriate. When I tried the number 755-9568 which is the WISD Department of Deaf Education I got an eight-letter mnemonic that seemed oddly appropriate, 7559 LOUD. And this interesting eight-letter mnemonic7559 GAIN belongs to the department of Accountability and Instruction.The movie is over and Gary Cooper survived World War II again.
Mike Rowe and "Dirty Jobs" is next. We'll post and then get ready for class. Today I have my first summer class. I suppose I will be doing something useful today.
These good gentlemen are the Main's. More precisely, Bob Main's family on Chris's mother's side. Starting in the lower right section is Bobby's grandfather; lower left is Bob Main's father; upper left is Bobby's uncle; finally at the upper right there is "?". Sorry! That's what it says on the back of the picture.
The next picture is Myrtle Norris. This is Chris's grandmother. Chris says that the picture was probably taken around 1918. I like the hat. Wouldn't the women of today look grand wearing hats like that now? Nah, I really didn't think so either.
Myrtle again. Looks like June and Virginia in tow.
Look at this mischievous lad. Looks like he can't wait for the picture taking to end. Must have important things to do. Oh this is a picture of Chris's dad, Henry, when he was but a lad.
My, my, my. Look at him now. Well, not really now, but then. You know; when this picture was taken about 9th or 10th grade.
