Yearly Archives: 2024
Small American Towns
“The country had changed since the last time he d been through this way. Many of the little country towns, which had seemed prosperous, even smug, back in the seventies when he’d last made this drive, had been hollowed out, their storefronts empty, their economies wasted by out-migration, the collapse of small farming, the big box stores; their civic life was composed largely of the high school football team, the big signs painted on the water tank, the brick walls of the low, sunburned buildings: GO COUGARS! GO HAWKS! GO REBELS! On the dusty streets of towns named for nineteenth-century cattlemen, pioneers, heroes of the Civil War, they now saw few descendants of such people, only little clots of dark-skinned men and signs in Spanish. The Indians were slowly reconquering the land, for the white people had everything but enough children, and the children they did have wanted the life they saw on television, not the life of the small American towns.”
— The Return by Michael Gruber
How do pharmaceutical companies come up with names for new drugs?
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In 2022, the top three most advertised drugs on US TV were: Rinvoq, Dupixent and Skyrizi. Which got me thinking about how pharmaceutical companies come up with names for new drugs, so I asked ChatGPT. Continue reading
The Death Business
“Religions are in the death business: preparing people for death, pretending to send them off after they’ve died, making believe they know what happens afterward, and explaining to the dead person’s relatives where they think their loved one might be now. Without death most religions don’t have a whole lot to live for.”
— Sit Down and Shut Up (Brad Warner)
Wes Scott’s Speed Wagon
The following is from the Autumn 2015 issue of Air Cooled News (An Official Publication of The Franklin Club)
In 1933, The Reo Automobile Company shipped 800 leftover 1933 Reo “Flying Clouds” to the Franklin Automobile Company. Franklin engines were installed and they were sold as 1933 Franklin “Olympics.”
In 1934 Reo still had unsold “Flying Clouds” so they decided to cut them off behind the front door and build pickup trucks. It is possible that at least one of these pickup trucks was shipped to Franklin where an air cooled 1934 Franklin engine was installed and it was sold as a 1934 Franklin “Speed Wagon.” If that did happen, the truck cold have looked exactly like this one.
In 2012, Wes Scott traded a Model A truck for the remains of a 1933 Franklin “Olympic.” This would provide the chassis for the Franklin “Speed Wagon.” In 2013 Wes’ son Donald found a 1934 Reo Speed Wagon in Shaniko, Oregon. This would provide the cab.
The bed for the “Speed Wagon” came from a Reo pickup in West Plains, Missouri. Richard Harry of Wisconsin provided an extra set of fenders so pickup rear fenders could be made from two sets of sedan fenders.
Another Franklin Club member, Ed Joy of Idaho provided a nice green hood that matched what was left of the original paint on the cab. The goal was to make all the pieces look like they came on the truck originally and to build a truck that could be used and enjoyed. At the Fall Midwest Region Meet in Clinton, MO the comments ranged from “When are you going to paint it?” to “Don’t touch it we like it.”
Wes is going with “Don’t touch it.”
Wes’ garage/shop/farm is just about 20 minutes from where I live and some car buddies drove me down and introduced me. Wes was kind enough to let me record a little video (5 min) of his amazing collection of Franklins and Model A Fords.
This brief video barely scratched the surface (you should forgive the expression) of Wes’s amazing collection. I hope to have another opportunity share some more.
More vintage pickup trucks
Two new arrivals at Paul’s Home for Vintage Pickups this week. Not really a home since they’ll both be snapped up once Paul has given them a little love. He makes sure they run and are safe to drive but not much more (well, new tires of course). The Brown Bomber is a 1972 Ford F-150 and The Yellow Peril is a 1970 Ford F-250.
Sell me in thirty seconds
In my dozen years in small town radio I wrote a lot of commercials. Mostly thirty-second “spots” but lots of :60’s (more expensive). It wasn’t uncommon to finish a four-hour on-air shift and sit down at a manual typewriter and bang out ten or fifteen “spots” working from a newspaper “tear sheet” or a salesperson’ scribbled notes. And most of these commercials were scheduled to begin airing the following day so someone had to get in the studio and produce the ad. Point being, there was little demand or time for creativity and the sponsor wasn’t inclined to pay for it in any event.
For a variety of reasons, a :30 second ad had to be :30 seconds. Not 27, not 32. So we followed a rigid format. Given a normal reading speed, a thirty second ad was about 75 words, usually eight lines. Yeah, you could try to get cute and clever but the client wanted to hear about his business. His products or services. And if the client was a supermarket… price-and-item. As many as you could jam in.
So, no, this was rarely creative writing. It was short, simple, declarative sentences. Not a word or phrase to be wasted. I like to think I still write this way.
When email took over from letters and faxes people wrote long-winded tomes that went on for paragraphs. I went through a phase where I would put my entire message in the subject line with “see above” in the body. If it needed more space than that, I would call them or go see them. To this day I think of this approach as “write like you talk.” Which was the final test for radio commercials: reading the copy aloud before going into the studio.
“Being negative also helps you appear smart”
Following thoughts from an article (Chicken Littles Are Ruining America) by David Brooks in The Atlantic. (No link because it’s behind a paywall). He warns “doomsaying can become a self-fulfilling prophecy)
Being negative also helps you appear smart. In a classic 1983 study by the psychologist Teresa Amabile, authors of scathingly negative book reviews were perceived as more intelligent than the authors of positive reviews. Intellectually insecure people tend to be negative because they think it displays their brain power.
Believing in vicious conspiracy theories can also boost your self-esteem: You are the superior mind who sees beneath the surface into the hidden realms where evil cabals really run the world. You have true knowledge of how the world works, which the masses are too naive to see. Conspiracy theories put you in the role of the truth-telling hero. Paranoia is the opiate of those who fear they may be insignificant.
The Good Life
Yes, there is a sameness to many of the images I share here. But it is the best kind of sameness. A reminder of how sweet life and home can be.
Target practice
Some years back I had a sheriff’s deputy do a security check of our home. He looked at the locks on our doors and places around the house where someone could… lurk? He didn’t find anything obvious. I asked about best firearm for home protection and he immediately said shotgun. A few weeks later I purchased a Remington Model 870 12 gauge. I had some reservations about having a gun in the house but decided I’d rather have a gun and not need it, etc etc. It occurred to me I’d be much more likely to pull the trigger if I could do so without killing the intruder so I investigated “less lethal ammunition” for the shotgun.
Once a year I take the 12 gauge into our woods and fire off a few rounds, just to stay familiar with the weapon. The weight, the recoil, the sound, etc.
I was firing from about 20 feet from the targets on the assumption I’d never be farther away from someone who got inside our house. The blue circles are the wadding from the shotgun shells; the yellow is birdshot; and the green is 00 Buckshot. I’m not a great shot but with a shotgun you really don’t have to be.
