New Hampshire Green Leaves Blog

Toys Of Yesteryear

Housecleaning and downsizing often resurrects items long in storage leaving you with the decision about whether to keep or donate to the rummage sale. Toys are a good example of this. For some, it’s easy. Dolls went quickly for me as I was never much a doll player, probably because they weren’t interactive. Barbie dolls were considered too pricey so I got the cheapie knock-offs. Those are long gone and not missed. The only doll that ever got an enthusiatic reponse from me was the Chatty Cathy doll.

The one I got had a pull-ring in the back of her neck. Yank on it and she had a dozen or so sentences she would recite one at a time each time you pulled the string. This was pre-electronic tech so what she had inside her was basically a phonograph record. This worked great until I wore the darn thing out pulling on the string so many times. Sadly her voice degenerated to an unpleasant grinding sound and that was the end of Chatty Cathy. A pity since an intact Chatty Cathy with a good voice box commands a pretty decent price as a collectable vintage toy.

Another vintage toy I wish I still had was a little scooter I sat in and pushed around when I was a toddler. It looked like a zebra, with four wheels, a wooden tail and head painted like a zebra. The legs had coverings similar to the cores of paper towel rolls also zebra painted. An internet search has turned up nothing like what I remember. The closest I could come was this.

Even this doesn’t quite look like it but it gives a rough idea of how it was shaped. I rode that thing incessantly around the house (I was about four or five but remember it quite clearly). It was a great way to burn up excess kid energy. It’s a wonder I didn’t wear ruts in the floor. I probably drove my parents totally crazy which may explain why it disappeared once I outgrew it. Off to a rummage sale (alas, *sniff*…).

At one time we had more than one Slinky toy about, but over the years something would happen to them. They would get bent or damaged in some way so they could no longer slink anymore. So those are gone as well.

Still, a suprising number of toys managed to withstand the attentions of both myself and my kid brother to survive to the present day and are definite keepers, not to be given away or sold. One was a little wooden pull toy put out by the Holgate Toy Company.

With sturdy wooden parts and a strong pull string, it’s still in good shape and would still be good entertainment for a small child. I also still have some wooden blocks of the same above design, probably put out by the same company. A few tinkertoys still survive and on my bookshelves I have a small plastic ferris wheel. I have no idea what toy set it came from but it still endures and will even spin if you push it with a finger.

There’s a vast menagerie of plastic dinosaurs, farm animals and various critters still present from many Christmas gifts over the years, enough so they could fill a toy zoo twice over.

But by far the most entertaining toy (and likely the most hazardous) was the Creepy Crawler Set. We had two versions, one which made bugs of various sorts and the other you could make weird looking critters which could fit together in any design you wanted. The set consisted of a electric heater, with metal form molds. Plastic goop stuff came in bottles and you would pour the goop into the molds and ‘cook’ them on the heaters producing all sorts of odd looking critters. Apparently these things were a lot more dangerous than I remember.

However, I don’t recall either my brother or I burning ourselves on the hot cooker or getting sick from the plastic fumes. We must have done the cooking in a well ventilated area because we both survived to tell the tale. And I still have a bagful of the plastic beasties. The cooker, molds and goop are long gone but the Crawlers survive in all their creepy glory.

All of these will be sticking around for a while, because they bring back memories of a simpler time (or at least it seemed simpler). But that’s how housecleaning usually works. You can junk some stuff and shed nary a tear but some of it you just can’t bear to part with. That probably signifies what’s really important to you.

Can’t say for sure what the Creepy Crawlers signify, though.

Have a safe and happy winter.

The Saga Of the Cane Toad

The cane toad, native to Central and South America, is a large warty toad, poisonous with big paratoid glands (the round spots located behind the eyes near the neck) which exude bufotoxin as a means of defense. They are prolific breeders, with a female often laying between 8000 to 25000 eggs embedded in long strings of jelly. Most of the tadpoles, which themselves are poisonous, usually die during the time they metamorphose to adults as this is the time when they lose their juvenile toxins and are defenseless until the adult paratoid glands develop. Their main enemies at this critical period are … well ….other young cane toads, who cheerfully devour their brethern.

Their voracious appetites and rapid reproduction caught the eyes of agriculturalists, hoping to find a ‘natural means’ of controlling crop pests. One place they were brought in, was Australia. In 1935, about a hundred toads were introduced, with the hopes they would have an impact on cane beetles, who were attacking sugar cane fields. Needless to say, things did not work out as was hoped.

One would think Australians would have learned their lesson with the debacle of the introduction of rabbits back in the nineteenth century.

But evidently not. As with the European rabbit, with no natural enemies and an ideal environment, the toads did what their predecessors, the rabbits, did, which was reproduce like mad and spread like a bio-tsunami across the landscape. It’s hard to say what the Australians hate more now, rabbits or cane toads.

Efforts to control the exploding numbers of toads, now estimated to be 250,000,000, have been fruitless. The march of the toads seems relentless as they overrun not only ecosystems but human towns and cities, devouring anything smaller than themselves and poisoning inquisitive pets who lick or bite at them. Efforts to control them, ranging from introducing sterile males to compete with fertile males, using cane toad toxin to trigger cannibalism in tadpoles, or just bludgeoning the things to death with a hammer (illegal by the way) have born little fruit.

But a curious thing has been happening while humans have been pulling out their hair over their latest screw-up. It seems the local wildlife has begun a counter-offensive.

Recently white ibises have been observed ‘playing’ with cane toads. The birds are often called ‘bin chickens’ by locals for their habit of foraging in trash cans. But this insulting nickname may get dropped in light of what’s happening. It turns out the birds weren’t playing, they were stressing the toads, forcing them to release their poison, then either wiping them on grass or rinsing them in a nearby water source. Then the ibises would eat the toads without ill effect.

And they are not the only ones who have stumbled on a way to devour the formerly inedible cane toad. A local species of crow has developed the simple expedient of flipping the toad on its back and tearing open the abdomen and eating the non-toxic internal organs. Rakali water rats have also mastered the trick of eating the toad without running afoul of its poison by using the same technique.

If this doesn’t heighten your respect for the intelligence of animals in figuring out how to do all this, then I don’t know what will. There must have been a hefty amount of experimentation, fueled by hunger, by the ibises, ravens and water rats, before hitting on the best method of getting a meal out of these unpleasant invaders. Bird brains indeed!

Food for thought, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Have a happy and peaceful New Year.

Sugar and Spike

Having old comic books can serve as a doorway to old memories dating from childhood. You can’t get that from today’s magazines. Many comics nowadays are over-hyped, overly violent along with a generous dollop of overt sexuality. They are aimed at young adults rather than pre-adolescents as they often were when I was a child. Tied in with blockbuster movie franchises now, they are milked relentlessly for their money making capacities rather than fueling the fantasies of readers. Even the formerly innocuous Archie comics have developed a darker tone and the artwork has lost the charm of yesteryear, either the art looking amateurish or attempting to match the ‘realism’ of the major comics such as Marvel or DC. An advertisement splash for the Riverdale tv series on Netflix looks more like something for Children of The Corn, rather than the humorous teen-age hijinks of the fifties, sixties and seventies.

What a far cry from the bright, optimistic plotlines and artworks I can recall. Archie comics were always fun to read, not anything you needed worrying about getting nightmares from. Even DC and Marvel portrayed the heroes endlessly battling against villains and usually winning. If they didn’t win, all was not lost as you could count on a rematch between the good guys and the bad guys.

A favorite I can recall was an odd little comic series put out by DC comics, called Sugar and Spike.

Written and drawn by Sheldon Mayer, it depicted the antics of a pair of toddlers name Sugar Plum and Cecil ‘Spike’ Wilson. When adults listened to the tots, all they heard was ‘Glx’ or ‘Blox’. But when Sugar and Spike spoke to each other or to other babies (both human and animal) they were perfectly articulate, speaking a baby language all their own. Sheldon modeled their mischief making on the behavior of his own toddler children, creating a delightfully clever off-kilter comic which was successfully published for many years.

Sheldon Mayer is also responsible for Superman being the well-known icon he is today.

The story is that he came across Siegel and Shuster’s unsold Superman comic strip which delighted him enough, so he touted it towards his employer Max Gaines who finally took it up and got it published in the iconic Action #1 comic published in June 1938. The rest, naturally, is history.

Sheldon began illustrating Sugar and Spike in 1956 with the stipulation only he could write the stories and draw the mischievous toddlers, an arrangement that would never fly today in the present corporate environment. His quirky humor permeates the entire comic consistently throughout the series. He even signed his own artwork as can be seen in the corner of the lower right hand panel.

Other characters were added, as time went on. Bernie the Brain, an infant super-genius, was one, allowing the kids an opportunity to play with his wacky inventions (and get into all sorts of trouble naturally), or provide explanations about the baffling behavior of the adults in their world. Their creator was consistently able to maintain the lighthearted plots without any loss of quality.

Sheldon continued producing his comics until cataracts forced him to stop for a time. By the time he had surgery to correct the issue, and resumed drawing, the industry had changed. While he continued drawing Sugar and Spike until his passing in 1991, these issues were published overseas, with only a few of the stories being reprinted in the USA. Arrgh! What a loss!

No one has been able to successfully replicate Sheldon’s work on Sugar and Spike, a product of his unique creativity and sense of humor. DC comics has recently produced an version of Sugar and Spike, showing them all grown up and running a very peculiar detective agency which “handles problems and mysteries that the superheroes can’t handle themselves”. Needless to say, all the original charm is gone, smothered under a distasteful layer of cynical edgy scripting.

I’ve long since read my few copies of the original Sugar and Spike to pieces many decades ago, so will be keeping an eye out at flea markets and yard sales in the hopes of acquiring back issues at a cheap price. These little gems are well worth the getting.

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving, or as Sugar and Spike would say; “Glyx, blox, snzx!”

Sugar and Spike trying to figure out Christmas tree

Autumn Observations For 2022

On the eve of Halloween, we are half way between the beginning of fall and the beginning of winter. The weather so far has been reasonably benign with enough rain to bring an end to the drought conditions which afflicted my area this past summer. Minor frosts have gnawed away the tender vegetation, though as yet no deep freezes to harden the ground.

The brilliant fall foliage which made an excellent display this year has dropped away, literally, giving me an opportunity for aerobic exercise in the yard. I do not use those noisy abominations called leaf blowers. A conventional rake is my tool of choice along with an old beat-up plastic garbage barrel for collecting the leaves. The leaf litter gets deposited in a variety of spots around the house including as mulch for my gardens. All will rot down eventually, returning the nutrients they contain back into the soil for future trees and plants to take up in their turn.

The hawthorn trees in my front yard have dropped a percentage of their leaves, revealing bright orange-red berries. The berries reputedly have medicinal properties, being a source of antioxidants, anti-inflammatory substances, and may lower blood pressure and cholesterol. I haven’t tried them out, but the lovely glossy color does make it tempting.

They are popular with squirrels, turkeys and robins though my hope is that they will attract other berry-loving birds such as mockingbirds, cedar waxwings or the ultimate Holy Grail; ruffed grouse or bluebirds.

Turkeys have been trekking through the neighborhood recently. The flock I saw a few days ago numbered about fourteen. I couldn’t get close enough to determine if they were males or females, as in the fall turkeys will congregate in gender segregated groups, toms with other males and hens with their female offspring in their own group. The turkeys I photographed on my front lawn several weeks ago appeared to be females.

The usual fall invasion of mice into the house brought out my mouse traps. I show no mercy to these little rodents as they gnaw incessantly, can damage wiring and spread disease to boot. With a good crop of acorns this year, their population has boomed along with that of gray squirrels and chipmunks. Good pickings for the red fox I have seen occasionally short-cutting through the woods in back of the house. I can usually tell when he’s about by the shrieking crows which follow him as he goes.

Another predator of mice and rodents showed up recently in my garage. As I was returning from a walk and stepped into the garage, something scooted rapidly by near my feet. I caught a glimpse of a reddish back and assumed at first it was a red squirrel. But the movements weren’t right so I retreated back outside to see what would pop up.

Turned out it was a short-tailed weasel, a long lean creature, still in his summer colors. Attempts to capture a picture of this ferocious little beast for my blog were futile as he moved so fast, all I got was pictures of a blurry brown smear. So I had to cheat and download a little picture from the Internet.

I had wondered where the chipmunks disappeared to and I guess this answers my question. Weasels are relentless hunters, generally devouring anything smaller than themselves and, if they can, anything larger they feel they can tackle. They are the bane of chicken farmers everywhere as once inside a coop, they will kill any bird they can grab, often eating only a few internal organs or perhaps the brains, leaving the rest for the unhappy farmer to curse over. But if he will clean out the mice, I won’t begrudge him a few chickens (I don’t own chickens anyway).

That’s all for now. Until next month. Happy Halloween!

Halloween pumpkin with dancing cat and owl

Patent Medicines

Vintage advertisements are always fun to look at, giving a window into the early world of consumerism. These advertisements offered solutions to all your problems, be it indigestion, graying hair, wrinkles, jangled nerves or other issues. The promises they made were often extravagant.

Parker’s Hair Balsam would have you believe an aging codger can be transformed into a happy, youthful looking husband with children playing at his feet. Apparently it does more than just color the hair.

Some hucksters made use of Native American sounding names to give their product added veracity.

The front of this little vintage advertisement card lists many ailments treatable with this marvelous ointment. But if that doesn’t convince you, the reverse of the card gives a long list of ailments which most definitely can be relieved. If it’s sold by all druggists, it must be good!

I have to admit to a certain skepticism about sore throats responding to something slathered on your skin. Scurvy and rickets are nutritional disorders, but never mind that. All will be completely cured. Regrettably an Internet search revealed nothing about this product or what it might have contained, so there’s no way to tell if it actually had any virtue.

The next ad is a little more forthcoming.

Here we get a breakdown of the helpful ingredients in this cure-all. Sarsaparilla contains antioxidants so is potentially useful as an anti-inflammatory. Stillingia, also a root, is an old folk remedy for bronchitis, hemorrhoids and syphilis. Yellow-dock has anti-inflammatory properties and was used in respiratory ailments, as a laxative and also STD infections. Mandrake root is reputed to have effects similar to the other ingredients but can cause dizziness and vomiting, if the dose is too large.

Iodide of Potassium could potentially help the thyroid while Iodide of Iron served as a catalyst. It sounds like the druggists tossed a little bit of everything into their concoction in the hopes of helping their ailing customers. It’s hard to say if this medicine really helped its users but it brought its creator James Cook Ayer considerable success. Advertising was key to his popularity and while he took a fair amount of criticism from competitors, he did quite well for a while.

If his medicines did little good, at least they likely didn’t do much harm either. Not so for other patent medicines which often had alcohol, cocaine or opium as their main ingredients. Especially chilling was the use of radioactive elements such as radium as a curative, which led to the gruesome death of Eben Byers. A noted golfer, the Tiger Woods of his time, he had suffered a painful injury and seeking treatment fell victim to Dr. Bailey, a Harvard dropout posing as a physician, who recommended Radithor, a nostrum laced with radium, which he was hawking as a cure-all. Unaware of the hazards of radiation, the unfortunate Mr Byers swallowed the concoction twice a day for three years until he began developing symptoms of weight loss and bone deterioration which led to the loss of his entire lower jaw and finally his early death.

It was this tragic case which strengthened the FDA’s powers allowing them to eliminate quack cures of this nature off the market and away from vulnerable customers.

As resource shortages plus inflation begin biting, home cures and medicines are starting to make a comeback. Along with their return is the risk of quack nostrums reappearing. One way to avoid mistakes of the past is to inform oneself on how your body functions and what works best for keeping you in good shape. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If illness does crop up, knowledge of herbs and different therapies will help you distinguish between real healing and abject quackery.

And who knows. Perhaps those charming little advertisements of yesteryear will return, better vetted, touting genuinely helpful products.

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