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Thursday, April 28, 2022

Soda bottles!

Some of y'all may or may not remember that among a great many other things, I like soda.  Can't drink much of it, but I like the old bottles and the old advertising.  Anywho, I've got a friend who collects soda bottles, and on a whim I decided to get one for him (it was a vintage Mountain Dew bottle).  Today he returned the favor and brought three of his bottles for my mom and me to look at.

The blue Layne's bottle and the frosted Pepsi bottle in the center have my beloved old hole in the road embossed on them.  Good ol' Malden!  The Layne's bottle has the name on the side and the bottom...
...while the frosted Pepsi bottle just has it on the bottom.  My friend says this bottle had a paper label at one time, which makes sense.
The last bottle, on the right, has New York City stamped on it.

I have a bottle like that last one myself, but it has "Malden, MO" on the back of it...and it's pretty grubby.  Here's the bottle...

...and here's the stamp.

I never thought to look on the bottom of my bottle for markings.  No time like the present!

Nope, just the brand of glass and patent info.  Anyway, my mother said that Malden Pepsi tasted better than any other she'd ever tasted.  In fact, her family wouldn't drink the ones from Flat River!  It was all about the local water, and the minerals and God-knows-what that the water had in it.  I wonder if the citizens of Waco, Texas felt that way about their Dr. Pepper?  I'd love to ask someone!

Thank y'all for your kind attention!  I know not everyone is into soda.

Bottoms up,
RagingMoon1987

UPDATE, 5/19/22:  My friend brought two more bottles for my perusal today.  One of them is a milk bottle.

Yes, once upon a time milk came in glass bottles that could be sterilized and reused.  This particular brand is Broguiere's, a brand that is still in existence, barring a closure in 2019.
Since the company is so old I don't know how old this bottle is (Broguiere's still sells milk in said glass bottles), but it's still a nice bottle.  Notice that a one-dollar deposit is offered for the return of the bottle.
Pity that beverage bottles aren't treated that way nowadays.  I know that plastic bottles are safer than glass, but in a day and age where the environment is everyone's pet concern reusing glass bottles seems more sensible than trying to recycle plastic bottles.  But who has common sense anymore???  I certainly don't claim to (LOL).

As to the soda bottle, it's mine now!  My friend gave it to me, so now I have a New York companion for my Malden bottle.  I love it!

Friday, April 22, 2022

Last dance with Mary Jane...

...one more time to kill the pain!  Probably this would've been a good post for Wednesday since Wednesday was 4/20, but I didn't get her on the twentieth.  This is Mary Jane, and if you've got a good memory then y'all may recognize her.

One day in 2019 a patron/friend brought both Mary Jane and her childhood Cissette to show me.  What an honor it was to see them both!  I'd never handled either a Mary Jane doll or a Cissette doll before.  Well!  This past March 18th rolled around, and my patron/friend was in again.  When I inquired about the well-being of the dolls (I playfully do this with my fellow dolly lovers) she said "I may just let you have Mary Jane.  I don't think my kids or grandkids would appreciate her."  The "may" in that sentence turned from a possibility into a certainty yesterday, so here's Mary Jane, Terri Lee's main rival.  I've always wanted a moody, broody, pouty little Terri Lee to add a little more 'tude to my mostly sugar-and-spice collection, but Terri Lee is crazy-expensive so her obscure lookalike will do nicely.  For the record, a well-kept Mary Jane can also go for a decent price.  Not a Simon and Halbig-level price, mind y'all, but a hundred bucks isn't so bad for a hard plastic walker.

Mary Jane came in two incarnations during her brief appearance in the dolly world, one with a hard plastic head, and one with a vinyl head.  A company called Freydberg made the hard plastic dolls from 1953 to 1954, and Togs and Dolls Corp. made her from 1955 to 1957.  Since my doll has a hard plastic noggin she's one of the older dolls.  I think Mary Jane's expression is hilarious.

She was born to unseat Terri Lee and she knows it!  Unfortunately a lot of Terri Lee fans think that Mary Jane isn't as pretty as Terri Lee is, and I...well, as much as I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth I have to agree.  Terri Lee is supposed to be a little girl doll and she looks the part.  Mary Jane is also supposed to be a little girl doll, but her face has drooping cheeks and an overall haughty expression that make her look like an older woman on a little girl's body.  Haughty look aside, Mary Jane does have pretty eyes.  These eyes apparently flirt and sleep, but I've not yet gotten them to do either.

Mary Jane is a walker like Saucy Walker and a couple of my other older dolls, so I figured her eyes would move with her head as she walks like Saucy's do.  But it turned put that all I need to do is lie her on her side.

Ewww, I don't think I'll be doing that.  I was also able to slide Mary Jane's eyelids shut, buuuuuut...I'm not sure I should do that!  Don't want to break her, after all!

Regarding size Mary Jane is a relatively small doll, being significantly shorter than Rita Cheryl.  Notice that I have a very hard time standing Mary Jane up straight, due largely to her walking mechanism (which is in perfect working order).

I've read that Terri Lee and Mary Jane are not the same size, so clothes sharing is OUT for the two of them.  Big surprise there.

I spent most of yesterday hunched over because of a nasty back spasm (I've apparently inherited my daddy's trick back), so receiving Mary Jane was a tremendous pick-me-up.  She may lack Terri Lee's moody innocence, but she makes up for it by being a character of her own.  I feel honored to own her.

Love and Tylenol,
RagingMoon1987 

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Time to eat: Nashville bound?

Oh jeez, I hope so!  My sister applied for a gig at a school in Nashville, and she hasn't heard back from them yet but she got on great with the people there so we're all cautiously optimistic.  Sister says that this gig would be beneficial for both her and her husband, so the whole family is keeping their respective fingers crossed.  It would be nice to have them four hours away as opposed to nineteen hours, and even though Sister has never been a fan of cities she says that Nashville isn't so bad.  Typical of the south, LOL.  But then again Sister reported liking the airport workers in Detroit too, and they're definitely NOT southern!

In honor of this new development, I present...something of Tenney's.  No, I never will be Tenney's biggest fan, but I do like some of her accessories, including her picnic set.
I particularly like the art on the back, where Little Miss Taylor-Swift-Wannabe is chowing down on her food.
That's your typical southern gal, lounging on the picnic blanket with her shoes off.  I remember my family spending a Fourth of July like that, out at my grandmother's where the sand burrs weren't so cotton-pickin' fierce.  It's amazing what difference a measly five miles can make; Grandma's farm was five miles out of town, and she didn't have sand burrs, while they're thicker than a whale blubber sandwich here in town.  As an aside, Mama had set out the blanket to keep us kids out of chiggers, but we found 'em anyway.  Good times, LOL.  Anyway, I've paid so little attention to Tenney over the years that I had no idea her mom owned a food truck.  According to the box, that's where the grub came from.

When I opened up the box all the items were individually wrapped, and I got a hearty LOL out of this sticker.
The chicken, the potato salad, and the watermelon chunk all had that sticker.  Like I'm gonna try to eat tiny plastic doll food.  I will admit that the chicken makes me hungry, though.  Anywho, one of the items that came with this set is a menu, one that displays the name of the food truck.  Makes sense.
Mmmm, I could get behind a menu like this!  Mrs. Grant offers white meat options and dark meat options, plus hot wings and the sandwich that came with the set.  The sides include fried pickles, one of my favorite things, but Tenney opted for the potato salad.  She also opted for the sweet tea, though water and lemonade were also available.  Mmmm, I won't knock that decision!
But then again, no one but no one makes better sweet tea than my mother does.  Granted, she loads it down with sugar so it's not the healthiest stuff on the planet, but it's delicious.  Anywho, here's Tenney's stuff all spread out...
...and here's a closeup of the grub.
Rita Cheryl, my little New Yorker, will be partaking of this meal today.  Here's the sandwich.
Y'all, I never would've dreamed that pickles belonged on chicken until I had it that way at KFC.  If you've never had chicken that way, I highly recommend it.  On the other hand, I DON'T recommend eating it open-face style like Tenney apparently does, because it goes everywhere.  That said, look at the texture on this!
Certainly looks good enuff to eat!  The bread is painted on both sides to look lightly toasted.
Tenney's side of choice is a foodstuff that I'm not in love with:  potato salad.  I love potatoes, but I've never been a fan of potato salad.  This stuff looks good, though the potato chunks look a little round to be potatoes.  Maybe Mrs. Grant used a melon baller?  Or maybe this is those tiny little seed potatoes cut in half.
Either way the potato salad comes in a striped bowl...sort of.  The design is a sticker rather than paint.  Ugh...my sister ruined every toy she or I ever had with stickers, because she picked the stickers off.  Anyway, here's the insignia; it matches the menu.
The potato salad itself appears to have spice on the top (paprika?) and some parsley...I assume that's parsley.  I can dig that.  There are even veins molded in, but those are hard to see.  
Parsley's kind of a family joke; sometimes when there's a lull in conversation I'll randomly repeat the line from The Tale of Peter Rabbit:  "...and then, feeling rather sick, he went looking for some parsley."  I don't know about y'all, but if I'd eaten enuff to be nauseous like Peter Rabbit apparently did, I would NOT be looking for something else to stuff my gullet!  Apparently Tenney didn't feel the same way, because she brought along a hunk of watermelon.
Good, good, I'd been wanting a hunk of watermelon for my girls.  This is just your stereotypical red watermelon with seeds, though yellow watermelon without seeds is every bit as good.  Indeed, the best watermelon my family ever ate was yellow and seedless.  That was the first time in my life (and so far, the only time) that I picked the whole slice up and ate it straight from the rind, like people do in cartoons.  Tenney's hunk of watermelon is small enuff that Rita Cheryl could hold it if I could rotate her palm up (I can't).  But at the same time it would be big enuff to be satisfying.  Like the chicken it's nicely painted...
...and nicely molded.
Ah, there's nothing like watermelon on a hot summer day!  And what better to wash it down with than the aforementioned sweet tea?
The glass of tea is actually my favorite item in this set, because if the lighting is right one can see the "ice" in there.
There's also a lemon wedge in there.  Nice!
I happen to have a glass of iced tea from Etsy packed away in my horde of doll stuff.  Let's see how the two compare.
Reminds me of an old Luzianne tea commercial.  The voiceover goes "Let's see if these Lipton drinkers can tell the difference between Lipton and Luzianne iced tea" or something of that stripe...and the glasses are different, AND the tea itself is a different shade.  Yeah, I think the Lipton drinkers could tell the difference!  I like the Etsy container better, but it's definitely not as portable as the Mattel container!  Notice that the lemons in the Etsy tea glass are shaped like Mickey Mouse.  The Etsy proprietor is (I presume) a Disney fan, because just about all of her stuff is Disney-themed.

Right then, back to the picnic set.  Most of this stuff can fit into the little cardboard carrier...
...but not all of it.  The chicken won't fit, especially if it's in its container.  When taken out of its container the chicken sort of fits, but boy howdy would that make an awful mess if it were real food!
Good thing Tenney included a napkin. 
That bad boy is made out of cloth too, kinda like the napkins at fancy restaurants...and not-so-fancy ones too, for that matter.  Colton's isn't really all that fancy, but their napkins are cloth.  Their napkins come wrapped around their silverware, which is not the case here.  Tenney's grub did come with a fork, but it wasn't wrapped in the napkin.  Likely that could be done, though.
Tenney had a specialized hand for holding crap, so she could probably hold this fork.  Rita Cheryl can too, but I have to cram it between her fingers.
Lastly, the blanket.  It's reversible.
I like gingham, so I usually have that side up.  The blanket rolls up and has ties to hold it together, plus a handle that allows this blanket to be carried like a duffle bag.
Unfortunately, rolling the blanket up and then tying it like that makes the fabric wrinkle like mad.  The cloth isn't heavy enuff to let the wrinkles hang out, the way they do on my own blouses.

With that, Rita Cheryl is ready to dig in.  LOL, it was late afternoon when I took this picture, growing dark and beginning to thunder, but Rita Cheryl gave no flying burritos.
My girl comes from the land of deep-dish pizza and loaded hot dogs, but she's loving that chicken!  I would too, if my stomach would allow it, LOL.  The older I get, the wimpier my stomach is.  So I'll deviate from my usual outro and give this set ratings in a few categories.

QUALITY:  Four out of five.  The molding on these items is good, as is the painting.  The two cloth items are well-sewn and have no raggy hems or holes or tears.  The food carrier came bent, but since it's flimsy cardboard I'm not terribly surprised by that.  It can be straightened again.

DURABILITY:  Three out of five.  Most of the items are plastic, and the fork is made out of metal.  However, there are paper items that can be easily bent out of shape (like the cardboard carrier already is) or outright destroyed.  The cloth items (the napkin and the blanket) feel sturdy enuff, but if a little kid is determined enuff even the best cloth item can be annihilated.

VERSATILITY:  Oh...four out of five.  Some AG items are obviously specific to one or two characters, but this set can be used by just about anyone.  Not a Tenney fan?  Not a problem.  The "Georgia" on the menu can be a family friend or somebody like that.  The individual food items can be used in some of the larger sets, like the campus snack cart that Miss Emily loved so terribly.  LOL, Mama liked that set too; I may have to shell out the bucks for that set someday.

AGE GROUP:  The box says ages eight and up, and I agree.  Five out of five on that recommendation.  That fork is small enuff to be a potential choking hazard for small children and pets alike.

TASTE:  Rita Cheryl gave it ten out of five, LOL.  She says it's been a long time since she's had watermelon that juicy and crisp, and the chicken and the potatoes both had the right amount of spice.  She did wish the blanket were a little thicker, but that's got nothing to do with taste.

Whether you're a Tenney fan or not, if your doll is a foodie they might like this set.  Heck, if you are a foodie then you might like this set!  Since all of Tenney's collection is archived this set can only be found on the secondary market, or on good ol' eBay.

Chow down! 
RagingMoon1987

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Yikes...

I said last night that it was the first time I'd seen a tornado warning make reference to power flashes and severe damage.  Well, tonight the jig is up. 

Apparently everyone from a novice storm spotter like myself on up to the National Weather Service got duped by erroneous reports.  There was never a tornado, even though the radar had a nasty hook.  The white mark on the radar returns was a massive hail shaft.  The thunderstorm that tracked through Walnut Ridge did have a nasty-looking wall cloud hanging from it, and radar did detect strong low-level rotation, thus the tornado warning was justified.  Calling an emergency was not.  Oh well, everyone makes mistakes!  

Cheers to all,
RagingMoon1987

Friday, April 15, 2022

Sneak attack

In keeping with my policy of sharing when the weather goes insane, here I am with a crash post.  The weather got off to a rough start this week, but we had almost ten days worth of warning so we were ready.  And then all it did was rain hard where we are.  Other folks got tornadoes last Wednesday though, so I shouldn't brag.  Tonight's event is something completely different, as we got...oh, I'll say about three hours of advance warning.  At three o'clock this storm system was nothing, and by the time I got home from work it had mushroomed into this.

It's never good when the text of the warning says that the tornado is confirmed, but...it gets worse!
Tornado emergency is the highest warning level one can get.  It means there's a verified tornado, it's not going to change direction or dissipate, and you're in the path.  Here's what this mess looked like as it moved into Walnut Ridge.
Here's the radar return without the warning box.
I'm not sure if that white stuff is a debris signature or a hail spike, but either way it's bad.  The text of the tornado emergency keeps getting worse too; it's rare when the text talks about power flashes, but their presence is enuff to confirm the tornado's presence.
Walnut Ridge has apparently taken a direct hit.  Cars got flipped over.
Sirens are sounding in Jonesboro now, and KAIT mentioned Monette and Leachville needing to watch it.  Monette and Leachville both got hit hard in December.  It's a  nasty night on the Arkansouri border, kids!  I'm praying that it's not as bad in Walnut Ridge as I think it is.

Stay safe,
RagingMoon1987