From Mensagenda — April 2006

As Time Goes By

I was much surprised when I saw a container of mayonnaise recently. The packaging had morphed in my lifetime from being a round, glass, quart-size jar to being a rectangular plastic container.

My first thought was "Good. Now no one will attempt to use mayonnaise jars for canning anymore, because there won’t be any."

Anyone who’s read a food preservation guide will remember the admonishment: "Do not use mayonnaise jars for water bath or pressure canning! Use only genuine (i.e., Ball or Kerr) Mason Jars."

And anyone who’s tried and failed with mayonnaise jars may well still be cleaning their kitchen ceiling.

Later it dawned on me: The entire issue is moot. I’m one of the few people left on the planet who actually do this (canning) anymore. Today’s tomato growers will look upon you as an alien species if you ask them, "Do you water bath or pressure cook your extras?" This question has apparently gone the way of gingham aprons and corn brooms.

It occurred to me that I was fast approaching the time when I’d begin sentences with, "Well, when I was your age..."

The horror of this was brought into focus when I helped read essays for the Mensa Scholarship award in January. Several essays were eliminated before we even saw them because they were not double-spaced. Did these writers, I asked, even know what double-spacing was? Had any of them seen, much less used, a typewriter? Was I entering my golden years?

I began compiling a list of stories with which to bore youngsters: I remember when the phone had to be attached to the wall! And we could only have one or the phone company would find out and charge us more. Phones were like Model Ts; they came in any color you wanted, as long as it’s black. Phones had dials that gave young fingers whiplash.

I remember when the only time we could watch The Wizard of Oz was on Easter evening. And all the scenes, even in Oz, were in black and white because my dad was waiting until they perfected color TV. Young children were important to a family; they were agile enough to jump up and change the dial, and they could be forced to stand next to the TV holding the bunny ears to improve the signal.

I remember when we got in the car and went to the movies, not got in the car and watched the movie there. The only way to watch movies in the car resulted in hasty marriages.

I remember when pop machines dispensed glass bottles and there was an opener on the side of the machine. I hear TAB and Hires Root Beer are still made, but I haven’t seen them. I have no idea what happened to Bubble-Up.

And I remember 78s. Before iPod nano, before CDs, before cassettes, before 8-tracks, before reel-to-reel, before LPs and 45s, but not before cylinders, there were 78s.

Heavy, black, very fragile records, 78s held one or two songs per side and were kept in record albums similar to photo albums but without the little black corner holders.

Sometime in mid-grade-school years I inherited my grandparents’ collection of 78s. They’d purchased a console stereo that played only 33s and 45s. My little portable record player played 78s, so I got the loot.

And I played them, not that I understood the "grown-up songs," except for one. The lonely lament that stuck in my ear due to repeat playing was "The Four Winds and the Seven Seas."

Unfortunately, the mid-’60s was also the era of spectacularly gaudy craft projects, one of which involved heating 78s in the oven until they melted and developed a rippled edge, gluing plastic fruit in the middle, spray painting the entire spectacle with gold spray paint, then sprinkling it with glitter to make a centerpiece. They didn’t play very well after this procedure.

There went my precious record.

Fast forward 40 years and 6 technologies and I was still humming that song and missing my record when the mail arrived containing a catalog of Collectors Classic Recordings. Hmm. Could I find my song? A thorough scan of the pages yielded nothing.

But then I didn’t know the artist or the label I was looking for either.

Off to Google, where I waded through scads of contemporary references to songs I’d never heard of, all taking place somewhere near the four winds and the seven seas, apparently.

Many pages later I had three names as possible artists. All had recorded the "correct" song, two were listed in the catalog.

Back to the catalog to get the title of their albums.

Back to Google to get the song lists for the albums.

Back to the catalog, and still no hits, even though the Google list told me that the Vic Damone album should have the song.

Quick, call the 800 number for the catalog. Yes! The Vic Damone album did have the song, they just hadn’t listed it. Rattle off credit card number, wait 5 days.

Soon there, in the mail, was a CD with "The Four Winds and the Seven Seas," recorded by Vic Damone.

Despite decades of possible mental distortion, the song sounded exactly as I remembered it. This in and of itself is not that important, but it gives credibility to other memories that others have disputed. If I can verbatim recall a song I haven’t heard in 42 years, odds are pretty good that my other recall efforts are fairly accurate. (So there! Phhhh! and you know who you are....)

Though technology and time march on, they had managed for me to come full circle.

And other things haven’t changed in all those decades. I still don’t like mayonnaise.