Tag Archive | Yakima Washington

… Barnum’s Animal Crackers

Apr18

… on the porch

April 18, 2023

This is an update to a Tuesday Newsday Classic from April 18, 2017

April 18^th… it conjures up that most famous poem by Longfellow which begins…

“Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.”

But that’s not the important topic this week. Nor is our topic the catastrophic earthquake which all but destroyed San Francisco on April 18, 1906.

No, today we honor the Animal Cracker. Yes, April 18 IS “National Animal Cracker Day.”

The crackers were first imported to the United States from England in the late 19^th Century. They proved so popular that Stauffer’s Biscuit Company began production in York, Pennsylvania in 1871. It was in 1902 when they became known as ‘Barnum’s Animals’ and were packaged in the circus themed boxes which are so recognizable. Just prior to Christmas that year a string was added to the box so the cookies could be hung on a tree. Now, over 100 years later, the boxes still retain the string but I doubt many know why there is a string!

Some other interesting facts from the Infallible Wikipedia:

animal crackers “Barnum’s Animals Crackers are all produced in the Fair Lawn, New Jersey, bakery by Nabisco Brands. More than 40 million packages of Barnum’s Animals Crackers are sold each year, both in the United States and exported to 17 countries worldwide. The cookies are baked in a 300-foot (91 m)-long traveling band oven. They are in the oven for about four minutes and are baked at the rate of 12,000 per minute. About 15,000 cartons and 330,000 cookies are produced in a single shift, using some 30 miles of string on the packages. This runs to nearly 8,000 miles (13,000 km) of string a year. Those bright circus boxes are produced in three colors – red, blue, and yellow – with different variety of animals on each.”

I know all of you would be disappointed if I didn’t share some personal anecdote which relates to our topic. So with apologies to Longfellow, here it goes:

Listen my readers and you shall hear

of the midnight antics from Senior year…

It cost but a quarter for of box of treats,

Yes Animal Crackers for boys that were neat.

Up to the front porch of our desire’s house

My friend Snide and I always sly as a mouse.

A poem attached to each as a clue

Just “who,” it asked, “left these cookies for you?”

The unlucky ones found bushes and trees

Draped with rolls and rolls of contraband TP

Animal Crackers, though, were more easily bought,

Since, heaven forbid, we didn’t want to get caught.

The animal crackers caper was a one year thing for me. The summer before senior year I had been dating a guy, but he had gone away to college in September of 1974. There were some letters exchanged, but it became obvious that the relationship was all but over. So, along with a few select friends, we had lots of free time on Friday and Saturday nights, especially since we were not the party hardy kind of girls.

There was this one guy from choir that I was maybe, sorta interested in. But I doubt he knew I existed.

To be sure, I’m not sure exactly how the whole animal crackers thing started. What I do know is that Toilet Papering houses was all the rage in the 1970’s but it was also a messy thing AND you were likely to get caught. There was another challenge in that local stores would not sell large quantities of it to teenagers, so obtaining it was problematic. Did I mention getting caught was not on my list of good ideas? Did I mention that I DID get caught once which was motivation to not have it happen again?

So instead of TP, we found the boxes of Animal Crackers at the 7-11 on 16th and Summitview Avenues in Yakima. We would then write out the poems on paper and tape them to the boxes. Finally, under cover of dark, we would drive to the street where the guy we liked lived, park a half a block away, and then sneak up to the porch to leave the cookies. We did NOT ring the doorbells or make any noise whatsoever.

To this day I have no idea if these guys ever figured out who left the boxes. That’s not entirely true. In the spring of my senior year, having never gotten any traction with Choir Guy #1, I left cookies one night for a new one – Choir Guy #2 – who I had actually gotten to know during practice for the annual musical. I’m pretty sure HE knew who left the cookies. We ended up dating for two years. So apparently the great Animal Crackers caper worked at least once. And all for a quarter and a little creativity

For those who want to know more about these tasty treats I direct you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cracker

*Eisenhower High School’s Football coach lived just up the street from us… and was frequently adorned with TP from loving students. Photo of his house from the 1972 Reveille Year Book.*

It’s A Hullabaloo!

Apr11

April 11, 2023

Hullabaloo

This is an update to a Classic Tuesday Newsday from April 11, 2017

Last week I shared the amazing feat of the Beatles and their five songs at number one through five on April 4, 1964. Well this week we are going to go forward two years to April 11, 1966. It was on this date that the last episode of the TV program ‘Hullabaloo’ aired. What? You’ve never heard of Hullabaloo? Neither had I but here’s what I learned from the always Infallible Wikipedia:

“Hullabaloo was an American musical variety series that ran on NBC from January 12, 1965, through April 11, 1966 (with repeats to August 1966). Similar to ABC’s Shindig! and in contrast to American Bandstand, it aired in prime time.

Directed by Steve Binder, who went on to direct Elvis Presley’s 1968 ‘comeback’ special, Hullabaloo served as a big-budget, quality showcase for the leading pop acts of the day, and was also competition for another like-minded television showcase, ABC’s Shindig! A different host presided each week—among these were Sammy Davis, Jr., Jerry Lewis, Gary Lewis, Petula Clark, Paul Anka, Liza Minnelli, Jack Jones, David McCallum and Frankie Avalon—singing a couple of his or her own hits and introducing the different acts. Chart-topping acts who performed on the show included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas & the Papas, Dionne Warwick, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Sonny & Cher, the Supremes, Herman’s Hermits, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the Animals, Roy Orbison and Marianne Faithfull.”

I can guaran-darn-tee that my mother would have had that TV off in a heartbeat if this program came on. Of course my mother also banned us kids from seeing Gunsmoke and the Monkees (which, ironically, was the show that took over the time slot vacated by Hullabaloo).

My mother’s philosophy was that impressionable young minds needed to be protected from such decadence. Dancing like this, as a friend of mine commented recently, was not tolerated in the early 1960’s. And those who did dance in such ways must have been ‘those kind of girls.’ In some ways my mother was a feminist in that she objected to women being judged upon their looks and their bodies and certainly would have found this display quite inappropriate. By today’s standards, this compilation is rather tame.

Which got me to thinking about my own experience with dancing. Up until I joined the Rainbow Girls in 1971, I had maybe only ever been to one ‘dance’ – which would have been at Wilson Junior High School. Now, to call it a dance was really a misnomer. More like an excuse for the young teenagers to hang out in the cafeteria after school with the girls clustered on one side of the room and the boys on the other while loud music played. Occasionally some boy would cross the invisible line, a warrior marching bravely to battle, and ask a girl to dance. Mostly, however, the boys remained on their side and the girls on theirs.

But, back to the Rainbow Girls. Our group, called an Assembly, boasted over 70 members in the 1970’s and once every four months a new set of officers would be installed. This was, of course, cause for a celebration and the party afterwards was crowded and ALWAYS included a dance which featured, for several years, a live local band.

Unlike that first Junior High experience, people actually danced at these things! Well, at least the older girls seemed to while us younger ones hung out in a group we dubbed ‘The Wallflowers.’ But that was, not apparently, entirely accurate as my diary from May 29, 1971, chronicles my first Rainbow dance ever:

“…the best part (of the installation) was the dance. A.L. asked me to dance a fast dance which wasn’t that fun. Well we (who ‘we’ is I have no idea) were talking to ‘Becky’ and she decided to get somebody to ask one of five girls to dance. Well, BB asked ‘Sally’ and his friend asked me.”

I go on to write that the particular song turned out to be a slow one. And there was nothing WORSE than slow dancing with some guy you had never met. The whole experience apparently left my stomach in knots.

Okay, so maybe there was something worse. And that would have been the time I was dancing with a guy – initials of DW – who I had a bit of crush on. It was a slow dance which, when you have a bit of a crush on a guy, is a good thing. A slow dance, in the 1970’s, often meant that you had your arms around each other, eyes closed, and were swaying together to the music. All very romantic. That is until the moment when someone taps you on the nose.

That someone turned out to be my Dad who happened to waltz (literally) by with my Mom since they were chaperones! Talk about embarrassing. That event is etched in my memory. My parents are both laughing as they continue waltzing past. I was mortified but I think “DW” thought it was funny.

There were many, many more dances over the years which followed but there was something special about those first few. It was definitely a Hullabaloo!

*What dances in the 1970’s looked like for teenagers. From the 1974 tolo dance as pictured in the Eisenhower HS Reveille yearbook.*

Streaking!

Mar28

They Call Him The Streak

March 28, 2023

A cultural phenomenon swept through the United States in the spring of 1974, exposing the public to, uh, ‘things’ never before seen. I’m talking, of course, about ‘streaking.’

On March 28 of that year, one of the writers for the Tonight Show stripped down and streaked on air much to the surprise of host Johnny Carson.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/crime-history-streaker-flashes-tonight-show-host-johnny-carson/article/412541

This was not the first or the last incident and it may have been connected to the release
the previous day (March 27) of Ray Steven’s hit record “The Streak.” The song reached number one on the charts in May 1974 and remained there for three weeks.

Famous photo of the ‘Twickenham Streaker’ from April 20, 1974

Streaking took place at the Academy Awards, on college campuses, and at sporting events for several months. The record for simultaneous streaking was set at the University of Georgia when 1,543 students disrobed on March 7, 1974. By summer, however, the novelty was gone and streaking ran off into pop culture history.

Of course The Infallible Wikipedia has laid itself, um, bare, in sharing information:

“The high point of streaking’s pop culture significance was in 1974, when thousands of streaks took place around the world. A wide range of novelty products were produced to cash in on the fad, from buttons and patches to a wristwatch featuring a streaking Richard Nixon, in pink underwear that said ‘too shy to streak.’

Perhaps the most widely seen streaker in history was 34-year-old Robert Opel, who streaked across the stage of The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles flashing a peace sign on national US television at the 46th Academy Awards in 1974. Bemused host David Niven quipped, ‘Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?’ Later, evidence arose suggesting that Opel’s appearance was facilitated as a publicity stunt by the show’s producer Jack Haley Jr. Robert Metzler, the show’s business manager, believed that the incident had been planned in some way; during the dress rehearsal Niven had asked Metzler’s wife to borrow a pen so he could write down the famous line, which was thus not the ad-lib it appeared to be.”

Of course, Ray Steven’s song lives on as a reminder of far more fun and innocent times in the spring of 1974. Here’s the YouTube video for all to enjoy!

Eisenhower Senior High School in Yakima – where I was a student at the time – was not immune from the phenomenon. I have a distinct memory of the school being all abuzz with talk that Mel C. had streaked during PE class! Mel was quite the character and of all the students in the school, he was absolutely the one to buck convention and go buck naked.

I knew Mel because, like me, he was on the Reveille staff. Between Mort, the editor in chief, the assistant editor, Dick, and Mel, the copy editor, yearbook class was never boring. Like the time Dick climbed out of one of the second floor windows onto a flat roof adjacent to the room, taking a desk and chair with him, and then sitting outside at the desk. It was Mel who locked him out there. The sarcastic wit and barbs never ceased with that trio.

Our adviser, Mrs. Scholl, seemed to enjoy the guys’ shenanigans and they never got in trouble. But in looking at the annual, not a single photo or reference exists to chronicle the day Mel C. streaked at Eisenhower High School in the spring of 1974. Either the event was a bridge too far for the administration or, since not everyone carried cameras with them all the time, it was not chronicled. What a loss. I think every student there wanted to see that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaking

Most of the 1974 yearbook staff. Mel C., Ike’s first, and likely only, Streaker is in the cowboy hat. Mrs. Scholl, our adviser, is the woman with the bun hairdo. To the left of her is Mort, right behind her is Dick W. This author is at the left side of the photo, sitting behind the gal with the plaid pants.

This article is a reprint of one which was published six years ago on March 28, 2017. The story from my high school days has been expanded.