Can you just imagine?  Celery soda? THEY STILL MAKE IT!!!    Dr. Brown’s sodas now come in six flavors- Cream Soda, Cel-Ray, Black Cherry (my favorite), orange, ginger ale and root beer.   The Black Cherry and Cream Soda are also available in diet. Dr. Brown’s soda is typically sold in 12-ounce cans and in one-liter and plastic bottles as well as two-liters in Black Cherry, Cream, and Root Beer flavors. Dr. Brown’s soda is also available in a 6 pack of 8 ounce glass bottles.  Did we mention it’s kosher?  Yep. It’s even kosher!

In 1943, Blue Bell Inc. acquired the Casey Jones Company… who had been making jeans since 1905.  The combined knowledge promoted the Wrangler line of jeans, designed with cowboys in mind.  In 1947, style 11MW (which was Men’s Western) was introduced, using 11 oz denim and a rust-proof zippered fly.  Midwest-Vintage goes on to say this, “Wrangler, like Lee initially used the arcuate stitch on the back pockets, but this was quickly replaced in 1948 with the “W” stitch. It is interesting to note that the Wrangler label or the back of the jeans has never been produced in leather. The Wrangler label was first made in pressed card and then in plastic for a simple reason. The Wrangler jeans were designed for cowboys and when the leather label and leather saddle came into contact they would stick together. These jeans had a “Blue Bell” label sewn on the back of the zipper fly with the sizing and the world “Sanforized”.”

It is interesting to note that these earlier products had both the Wrangler and Blue Bell logo sewn into them!

(from Wikipedia)” The Norwegians producing leisure slippers of the moccasin style in the 1930s began exporting these to the rest of Europe where they were taken up by visiting Americans,and championed by the American Esquire magazine. Some photographs included with the Esquire feature were of Norwegian farmers in a cattle loafing area. The Spaulding family in New Hampshire started making shoes based on this design in the early 1930s, deeming them loafers, the general term for slip-on shoes that remains still in use in America. In 1934, G.H. Bass (a bootmaker in Maine) started making loafers under the name Weejuns (sounding like Norwegians). The distinctive addition was a strip of leather across the saddle with a diamond cut-out. Initially only worn in the summer at home, the shoe grew in popularity in America to become a significant part of men’s casual shoe wardrobe, though back in Europe its ubiquity has never reached the same degree. When American students in the 1950s wishing to make a fashion statement took to inserting a penny into the diamond-shaped slit on their Weejuns, the name penny loafer came to be applied to this style of slip-on and has since stuck, though the practice itself does not continue.^“

Bass still offers Weejun style shoes, and even has a particular “Weejuns” category in their catalogs!   Shop and enjoy!

It seems Manny, in WWII, was out on the town with the boys from his unit, and met up with some girls. Not wanting to get in any trouble, they all gave false names to the girls. Trouble was that Manny fell in love, and it took him more than a month to tell her that his name wasn’t really Henry.

His wife called him Henry until the day he died this past year. My friend just gave his brand-new son a middle name to honor his uncle Manny.

The baby’s middle name is Henry. Now this might not have made you choke up like it did me, but it was nice to be able to write a story about true love!

A product similar to the original product was reintroduced in 2003, but then was reformulated into what is now sold as the Moisturizing Therapeutic Shave Lotion.

According to Wikipedia:

“Barbasol became a very popular shaving cream. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, many print advertisements were used to support its growth. Many of the print ads featured men and women in situations that would be considered risqué for their time.

The company also used several famous spokesmen throughout the years, notably star baseball players Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby as well as football legend Knute Rockne”

Check it out, and happy shaving!

At the time the soda was introduced, inventors were commonly given credit for soda flavors, so this actually debuted as “Ward’s Orange Crush”!  By 1918 it was available as far away as Canada, and by 1919 Norman Rockwell was commissioned to paint the advertising posters for Orange Crush, which by the 1950′s would be available as far away as South America, New Zealand,  Europe, and Africa!

Lemon Crush and Lime Crush were also introduced early in the company’s lifetime, 1919 and 1920 respectively. It is now available in literally dozens of flavors, worldwide!

Get yourself a cold glass bottle of Orange Crush and enjoy the summer weather!

So keep in mind, when you take home some Friendly’s Ice Cream from the grocery store- you’re taking home history!

Lets give you a little history on the little white sneaker…

This is direct from Wikipedia:  ”A plimsoll shoe or simply plimsoll is a type of athletic shoe with a canvas upper and rubber sole, developed as beachwear in the 1830s by the Liverpool Rubber Company (later to become Dunlop). The shoe was originally, and often still is in parts of the UK, called a ‘sand shoe’ and acquired the nickname ‘plimsoll’ in the 1870s. This name derived, according to Nicholette Jones’ book “The Plimsoll Sensation”, because the coloured horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the plimsoll line on a ship’s hull, or because, just like the Plimsoll line on a ship, if water got above the line of the rubber sole, the wearer would get wet.”

BUT WAIT… There’s more.  This is where it gets interesting….

“As it was commonly used for corporal punishment in the British Commonwealth, where it was the typical gym shoe (part of the school uniform), plimsolling is also a synonym for a slippering. ” (you know… smacking someone around with a soft shoe to punish them)

“They were generally black or white with a few in brown.

In most of North America, they are known as sneakers or tennis shoes, depending on the regional dialect. In the UK these shoes were compulsory in schools’ physical education lessons and today are still generally known as Plimsolls or pumps. Regional terms are common for these. In Northern Ireland and central Scotland they are usually known as gutties; “sannies” (from ‘sand shoe’) is also used in Scotland. In parts of Southern England and Wales they are known as “daps” or “dappers”. There is a widespread belief that “daps” is taken from a factory sign – “Dunlop Athletic Plimsoles” which was called “the DAP factory”. However, this seems unlikely as the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary of “dap” for a rubber soled shoe is a March 1924 use in the Western Daily Press newspaper; Dunlop did not acquire the Liverpool Rubber Company (as part of the merger with the Macintosh group of companies) until 1925.In South Africa they are called tekkies and in East Africa Tackies allegedly because that is how the rubber went in the sun. In India, white plimsolls are often worn by school children and are known as Keds. The brown version is used by most police and military units as a gym training shoe; they are also part of the uniform of a batman (military). or else”

That was the Keds tie-in…

Keds  as a brand were introduced in 1916, by US Rubber (later called Uniroyal).  They were first mass-marketed with the designation of “sneakers” in 1917, because the canvas uppers and rubber soles made no noise

SOOO… now you know more about the little white sneaker, and that they came in more colors.  Let’s show you some links!

These are the British Army style plimsolls, which you’d use for WWII reenacting, available at What Price Glory:

And THESE are several styles of ‘Keds’ you can still get just about anywhere:

This shoe was originally intended for sports, but because of its stylish lines and clean look, it soon became popular with young men and women all over, with all different sorts of clothing!

So to keep your feet comfy and stylish, a retro pair of black-and-white saddle shoes with the bubblegum pink rubber sole just might be the way to go at your next retro event!