So… Didja get your entry in for the Name a Snowplow contest with the Ohio Turnpike commission? Some of the winners from last year were in the paper recently and I have to say they were pretty clever. This year’s contest ended Sunday, so we’ll have to wait and see what takes the $100 gift card prize–eight of them, one for each of the maintenance garages on the ’Pike (Ones you might recognize are at Canfield, Amherst, Boston and Hiram. If you are a long-distance type, you might know Castalia too–it’s where the Blue Hole used to be…still is, for all I know.). Anyway, last year’s winners included the following : Snow Force One, Darth Blader (I liked that one), Snowbi-Wan Kenobi, Snow More Mr. Ice Guy( These two, too). Somebody did go with the British public sense of humor to suggest Plowy McPlowface as well. Anyway, the competition has been sponsored by the NEOhio Buick dealers, and it’s been a hoot.
November has arrived, in full force, and I have been forced to go searching for assorted winter accouterments–warm socks, bigger earmuffs, wool sweaters, etc.–which got thrown into hiding for the Christmas Walk; I may never see some of those items again, I fear.
The list of events to be celebrated in November is winding down–All Saints, Election Day, Daylight Savings switch, Veterans Day are all done with; the full Beaver Moon, Sadie Hawkins Day (Anybody else remember the cartoonist, Al Capp? He was a great satirist; just the names of his cartoon strip’s characters were a hoot : Jubilation T. Cornpone, Moonbeam McSwine, Appassionata von Climax, Earthquake McGoon–great stuff), lesser-known saints, St. Martin of Tours, St. Hugh of Lincoln, St. Hilda of Whitby, St. Clement and St. Andrew don’t get a lot of good press…although St. Andrew does get to be the patron saint of Scotland and has his cross (a saltire, or x-shaped cross) as part of the Union Jack of the United Kingdom–must be his reward for protecting the creators of Scotch whisky (That’s the way they spell it.); he ought to get something for that.
Thanksgiving, of course, is the next biggie, followed at a breakneck pace by saints and celebrations of all sorts–you will hear about them, possibly from me, right on through the end of the year.
Apropos of all that and the upcoming, aforementioned Thanksgiving is a snippet from the OFM , “Fill your hearts with old-time cheer : Heaven be thanked for one more year.” Indeed.
I’ve finally been able to get some shopping done for the shoeboxes collected by the Samaritan’s Purse organization. Last collection day is coming right up, so I’ve got to get a hustle on; I’ve been a little busy, ya know. Anyway, I went looking for small boxes of crayons for the little kids and had a hard time finding just plain crayons, not fluorescent ones or glitter ones or magic markers or anything fancy, but do you think that I could find any that were not in giant packs or at amazing prices (or both). Same sort of thing with balls–every kid ought to have a ball, at least for a little while, not to make it to the major leagues–besides , balls don’t fit real well in shoeboxes, inflatables, forget about it. So on Sunday in the AB-J there was a book review of a brand-new publication titled Color Capital of the World, Growing With the Legacy of a Crayon Company. The author’s name was/is John W. Kropf; he was the last twig on the family tree which was responsible for the American Crayon Company. I vaguely remember their principal product, which was Prang crayons–they did pencils too, I think; there are people out there who collect antique pencils and crayons, in case you have any. The name came from Louis Prang who was dubbed “the father of educational art in America”, and was applied to “new & improved” wax crayons–with colors( prior to this, crayons only came in black and were used by carpenters)– and replaced really bad-quality chalk which was found in most schools. American Crayon Co. was a commercial conglomeration of sorts, including the Parmenter Crayon Co., Western School Supply and the Tiffin Crayon Co of Sandusky; Sandusky was where the company settled and grew. The company closed in 2002, when a lot of things were closing in Sandusky and elsewhere, so Crayola(made by Binney and Smith) is the big wheel, but it is being chased by the Rose brand and some outfit called Cra-Z-Art. Don’t know where the Color Capital of the World is now, probably wherever they dream up those names for shades of paint. Anyway, anyway, I got a stash of all kinds of stuff to put in the boxes–they don’t want candy included, darn it, but I do understand that–and should be able to wrap the lot up and deliver them in time for the take-away.
Turkeys are in hiding, except for the one which annually gets chosen by the President to be “pardoned” and sent to a farm in Virginia or somewhere. Too late for the frozen ones.
