THE NEWSPAPER

The idea of blogging about newspapers came to me from a friend in Michigan. She stated the Detroit Free Press is now doing door to door delivery only on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. If you want the other days paper, one may get it mailed to you. She declined to have it mailed, as she is not able to get to her street side box.

Old Trunks is thinking about how the people of New Solum Township passed around old papers from Norway and were in heaven just to have news, regardless.

Now we have play by play options. Even the local paper adds new news as it happens. How many news channels do you get in your area? More or less than weather channels?

When Fargo had the flood, there was nothing else going on nationally. No politics, other weather, or scandals. So if you wonder why we got so much press, it may be because of that, although I like to think it was because Fargo had courage. Courage, is newsworthy even in this stoic part of the country.

After spending 300 hours reading old papers at the library, I really do think I am okay with a 1915 paper, how about you?

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CHEW THE TWIG--MAKE A TOOTHBRUSH

Did you ever wonder what your grandparents used for a tooth brush, if they used a brush at all? When did tooth brushing come into the picture? Before history was written although not with the type of toothbrush our children use.

As a kid, mother always bought ones with really stiff bristles. She did that because I chewed on the brush, (probably to make it softer), and she thought the stiff ones would last longer. Now, only soft brushes are recommended and if your gums are bleeding from those brushes there is possibly something greater going on it your mouth.

Now they have a nice word for the plaque build up around and under the gum. Mother called it 'trench mouth'. Bleck.

Anyway, let's get back to tooth brushes. The first toothbrush to resemble the modern toothbrush is believed to have been invented in China in the late 1400s, which used the stiff hairs from a hog's neck, attached to a bamboo stick. Can you imagine that?

Moving right along....A man name Addis was jailed for starting a riot in England. While there, he made a toothbrush out of a bone in which he made holes. He got hair from the guard and strung it through the holes, tied and glued it. It was about 1760, he would be released from jail and become a wealthy man. Previously, soot and salt were used.

Mass production of the product in America only started in 1885. The rather advanced design had a bone handle with holes bored into it for the Siberian Boar hair bristles. The problem was two fold, the bristles fell out and the hair bristles didn't dry causing bacteria to build up.

Toothbrushes as we know them today with synthetic bristles are a patent of the Dupont Company in the late thirties.

Now, my question was, what did my grand parents use? What I have learned is the very idea of daily tooth brushing, (or brushing one's teeth multiple times a day), didn't catch on until WWII. Part of the soldiers daily hygiene was to brush their teeth. They brought the practice home to their families. That is when regular brushing started.

Although, as adults, we take brush to enamel, rinse, floss, dig, scrape, and all other capers, some of us, or the children of some of us have wet a toothbrush and laid it on the sink, so when our parent's asked if we brush, we could we did, followed by if you don't believe me feel the brush. Oh, you never did that? Your kids never tried to pull that one off?

Tom said he was always reminded and never did the wet brush trick and he always used tooth paste. Of course.

As for grandparents, well, they had false teeth by the time I was born, but that is a different story for a different day.

Brush!

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THEY MOVED THINGS AROUND!!! PART THREE

Grandma didn't have a problem with where the fresh veggies were in the store, they were in the back yard surrounded by a fence and holly hocks. Freshness was something that happened as the produce was picked, everything else was canned. As for fresh fruit, peaches and strawberries were bought in lug size containers and processed into fruit or fruit jams when it was bought. Blueberries, chokecherries, and raspberries were picked and rhubarb was cut early and made wonderful pies or was made into sauce for seasons of the year items weren't available. She did not complain. Oranges were a luxury.

Grandma didn't wail about how stuff was moved around in the market. In their later years, with $30 each from social security, their trip to the market meant flour, sugar, oatmeal, and other staples which could be mixed and matched to make meals. Meat was only eaten in the winter; the little they bought was stored in the shed away from the house along with the donuts and the pink frosted molasses cookies that were a speciality of hers.

Grandma didn't go to the racks to see what was available. She didn't even go to the racks to see what was on sale. She went to the fabric department and bought x much amount of fabric to make the same style dress and apron she had worn for years. Although there are hundreds of different colored thread, to her there was white and black and it would just have to do.

Never once did we go to Benhard and Julia that lunch of some sort wasn't served. It was okay if you just dropped in. Bread, jelly, sauce, cookies and coffee was always, (underline, underline) offered. Lunch plates and little glasses were used, it made it appear as if you had more. Or, maybe that is what they did with lunch plates.

Maybe we should ask our selves how much we really need to live well.

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THEY MOVED STUFF AROUND PART TWO

Let's leave the market behind and move on to clothing stores.

Old Trunks has shopped at the same dress shop since arriving in Fargo. I like the clothes, I know the sizes are true and I don't have to dress like I am a teeny bopper. Simple, well-made pieces that mix and match. Not brain surgery here. Since retirement closets full of clothes aren't necessary. If I had not retired, I would be wearing green shirt and tan pants, so shopping would be minimal anyway.

My point is they, too, have move stuff around. Clothes that I saw hung in the spring of 2008 are on the rack at full price and they have moved the crystal away from the natural sunlight which streamed into the area.

Unlike the market, this store appears to have brought the necessities forward and moved the luxuries, such as crystal, to an area unflattering to its beauty. Perhaps if one is looking for crystal, one will hunt for it. Perhaps. What is in its place: Fiesta dinnerware. Is the store pushing for brides to pick dinner ware so heavy it will pull the cabinets off the walls? Granted it is beautiful stuff, but $200 for three mixing bowls is a little steep, don't you think? Pyrex, yellow, green, blue, red bowls which nested cost $4.95 a set in 1962, That big yellow bowl raised a lot of bread and mixed a lot of cookies until it shattered decades later.

And yes, I went to look at the crystal!

Do you have your fourth of July shirt ready? It is only a month away!!!

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THE MOVED STUFF AROUND! PART ONE

If you shop at the same stores long enough, you know when they move merchandise around. Although I can understand the transformations, it doesn't mean I am for it.

We all have read articles about how the ends of the aisles at the market and the area next to the register are considered the impulsive areas. I do know that when 'my' market gets new products they seem to stick the product anywhere. It seems like they are saying, "If twelve people can find and buy this product in 10 days, we will put it like with like". Such as it was with Eight O'clock coffee when I was on my testing coffee binge this winter.

Since I shop top to bottom and side to side I manage to find all the new stuff. That is how I found the coffee sandwiched in by the spices. I am over my experiment but the coffee has been moved to the coffee aisle. Unfortunately, the express store, meant to be milk, bread, and fresh veggies and fruits is trying to be the all-for-everyone store; it is a tight zag with a cart to get to the free donuts and, of course, all the necessities appear to be getting farther and farther from the front door.

But my big complaint is a simple one. Anyone that knows me well knows I say white bread makes you dead. But my sweet Thomas loves his make glue ball stuff and he is too old to try to switch him over. He keeps me up to what the inventory in the freezer is.

The loaf said, LARGE. I bought two. They were placed on the side table in the kitchen for him to put in the freezer. He stopped short and asked why I bought them? Questioned, I must have looked at him like whaaaaa? Why did I buy the pound loaves? What did I pay for them. The slip said $1.99 each. They were not the LARGE LARGE, just the LARGE. The conversation waned. They next day he called the store. LARGE was on sale for $1.99, regular $2.39, LARGE LARGE was NOT on sale and sold for $2.49. I felt I had been duped.

It is summer, I like to think I am even more careful about dates, yet, I missed two single drink orange juice recently. Three weeks out and more sour than and old woman with no friends. Does this mean this item is a pour sell? Or, does it mean that I need to bring a permanent marker with me and mark as I go?

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MINNESOTA AND ITS COMMON LOON

Old Trunks would have thought more Loon legends would be available on the Internet to weave into the pictures from the lake this last weekend. One would think with its solid bones, its big feet, and its inability to walk on land would offer more that a story about the Native Americans throwing them into the water because they were clumsy on land and always knocking things over.

For all of us who have heard the cries, the coos, and the warning songs, we are enamored by them. Even Paul, a stoic, mayor-like person who lives next to us at the lake, was out with his camera taking pictures of a loon on her nest. He emailed me his picture, which was taken in the same place I had taken mine!

Every lake appears to have a nesting pair. At a lake with an earthen launch, and no cabins along its shoreline we found a pair back in a cove. I laid down my rod and watched and photographed these magnificently marked water fowl as it preened, scooted along the water, raised up and spread its wings. The Loon didn't seem to care if we watched it clown about as Tom moved the boat about to catch the best angle of the sun on their jet black and snowy white feathers. It was a magnificent experience; I found myself holding my breath. When we stopped watching, my arms ached from holding the camera steady on that windy, water rolling day.

It isn't only Minnesota that has Loons. They can be found in Wisconsin, Michigan , even Wyoming talks about them. In the winter, they go south and to the Pacific area as in Washington State. Here they are in their winter coats and look nothing like they do in the summer.

Now, we will wait for the hatch and watch as the parents carry them on their backs. The parents will feed them for about three months. It is said they will fly in eleven weeks.

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WHAT IS THAT WABBA WABBA?

He came in from outside with a puzzled look on his face. He asked if I had heard it. No, I had not.

"You didn't hear that wabba wabba?"

Again I said, "No, I did not."

It was early morning and I had yet to drink my coffee.

He went back outside and walked around the deck looking up into the sky.

Again he came in and asked if I had heard that wabba wabba sound.

The day passed with another look to the sky and the question about the sound from above.

Fishing came and went. The wind was strong and the bite was poor; something about a frontal system coming in. Rather than took to the sky for wabba, wabba, I scanned each cranny of the lake of many islands for loons. Certainly 275 acres were enough to host at least a pair.

We did find the loons and watched and photographed one clowning and preening for a possible mate for most of an hour. Although watching a bass walk on the water is truly exciting for me, photography is more likely ahead of it. Heaven.

Clouds came up and with five minutes to spare, we were driving back to camp in a big drop rain. It stopped just as we pulled in and I came inside to upload the pictures to the computer and dump them out of the memory stick; promising as soon as I previewed once, I would make dinner.

Tom was outside parking the boat and pulling out the tackle. He came in and asked for the camera. He had heard the wabba-wabba and wanted to get a picture.

The bird flew high, in circles. It went up high in the air with its tail scrunched, then dove with it acting as a rudder. We made additional notes about it, it had short wings, a white under belly, and it made a wabba-wabba sound. The photograph only showed a speck in the middle of the image.

I was invited outdoors. I listened as he pointed out where the bird was. I head wabba wabba. It was real. A bird book in the rack showed no book with those sort of clues. Every page I turned I look at the sound of the bird on the page. Kit, cheer, groans, grunts, clicks, but no wabba-wabba.

Still on the quest, Tom took the high power field glasses out and watched. Another clue, it had a long beak like a shore bird. Tom picked up the book again and read, not the sounds they make, rather the mating ceremony.

It appears that early in the nuptials, the female does the flying and diving first. The wabba-wabba we heard was not 'talking' rather the sound of the air threw the feathers as the dove. There was no sound as they ascended. Our little bird book had not failed us, it was a SNIPE!

Upon arriving home, I looked in the BIRDS OF AMERICA book published by Double Day and Company, Inc. in 1917. The illustrations are beautiful paintings and the information is none richer that our book.

Have a mystery? Stay on task.

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