Want to buy or sell something? Check the classifieds
  • The Fedora Lounge is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Search results

  1. Haversack

    The Nazi Gold Train

    Otter wrote: "Even if it is "just" an armoured train, how often do you come across one of those these days ?" Surprisingly enough, the Russians have just recommissioned four armored trains that had been in use up to 2009. The following, (admittedly from Russia Today), has videos of them...
  2. Haversack

    Who, overall, was the biggest (male) movie star of the Golden Era?

    Another all-but-forgotten bit about the original lyrics of Puttin' on the Ritz is that Thursday evening was the standard one night a week that maids had off. So an extra frisson of excitement for the slumming types was the possibility of seeing the Help dressed to the nines.
  3. Haversack

    What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

    Last night I saw A Tale of Two Cities (1935) for the first time. I've always known that it had one of Ronald Coleman's most famous film roles, (Sydney Carton). And indeed his portal of the unhappy, dissalute, but brilliant lawyer was excellent. (Having a telephone book voice does not detract...
  4. Haversack

    1940's England

    A couple or three of the Ealing Studio comedies referenced above that I would particularly recommend for scenes of England are A Run for Your Money (1949), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and Passport to Pimlico (1949). Both ARFYM and PTP were primarily shot in London and show a lot of...
  5. Haversack

    Golden era restaurants & cuisine of the era

    Corned beef hash and eggs is still pretty common at breakfast places out here in Northern California and Oregon. A couple butcher shops here in San Francisco pretty regularly sell corned beef has as well. Take it home, fry it up in a cast iron skillet so that it gets a good crust, plop a...
  7. Haversack

    Dressing Down For Church Has Gone Too Far, CNN Article

    Based on my experience of wearing knee-breeches, (knickers in American parlance), when hunting with a group of traditional hunters in southern Germany, I found that spending all day out in the fields and forest, your lower legs get much dirtier than the rest of your trousers. In such...
  8. Haversack

    What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

    I just came back from the Castro Theatre where then have just shown for the first time the restored Sherlock Holmes from 1916 staring William Gillette. The movie was considered lost until a copy was discovered in France last year. Gillette's portrayal of Holmes is considered the ancestor of...
  9. Haversack

    What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

    The past couple of nights I watched two movies from the '50s I had not seen before. One was The Sweet Smell of Success and the other was War and Peace. TSSoS made me wonder if there was anything specific that Walter Winchell did to Burt Lancaster. I was also surprised to see that the...
  10. Haversack

    15 Old House Features that we were wrong to abandon...

    The catalog houses were by the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Mich. (Previously the North American Construction Company), W. J. Sovereign - President. O.E. Sovereign - Gen.Mgr. Cable Address "Aladdin," Western Union Code. Founded in 1906. Aladdin Industries, (previously the Mantle Lamp...
  11. Haversack

    15 Old House Features that we were wrong to abandon...

    Sears and Aladdin were the two big names in pre-1940 catalog house kits. (Aladdin stayed in business into the 1980s). Sears sold their line under the name Honor-Bilt and Aladdin called theirs "Built in a Day" and "Reddi-cut" In general, the materials supplied by these two companies were of...
  13. Haversack

    15 Old House Features that we were wrong to abandon...

    Here in San Francisco the standard lot size is 25' x 100' with zero setback. Hence most houses appear to be row houses, (but actually are not). There is considerable variation however. Bernal Heights was built up 1906-1940 with houses for workers to buy. In order to be more affordable, the...
  14. Haversack

    The Art of Social Kissing.

    I recall that when my grandfather took me to England in the mid-1960s to visit and show me off to relatives, (I was about 10), he told me not to think it strange when he and his elder brother kissed when we finished our visit with them. He was in his 70s then and said that he and his brother...
  15. Haversack

    The End of the Collector Mindset

    If I am remembering correctly, not only was that particular head librarian unapologetic about having the disposed of the books, he was also wanting to replace the professional librarians who dealt with books with library pages who's primary duty was the reshelving of books. After all, the...
  16. Haversack

    The End of the Collector Mindset

    San Francisco's Head Librarian, who with the architect was heavily involved in the design of the City's new library in the mid-1990s, repeatedly stated that books were a thing of the past. The fact that the new library's design had much less shelving space than the old was, from his point of...
  17. Haversack

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Not much anymore. I occasionally set up the old Panasonic I've had since the early '80s. Compared to then, its a desert. Not even the Russian Woodpecker to keep one company. Back then I was amused that Radio Moscow had two English broadcasting services. One was in British English and one...
  19. Haversack

    Vintage Mailboxes?

    Back when I was doing construction estimating for a variety of contractors I got to see the plans for several large postal facilities. An intriguing feature of these places are the system of sealed galleries over the mail handling spaces. These galleries all have one-way view ports, are...
  20. Haversack

    Electric meters on the side of houses in the 30s and 40s?

    One of the interesting features of houses and small apartment buildings here in San Francisco are the tiny windows at street level to allow the meter readers to see the gas and electric meters. This is because most buildings here are zero-lot line with the meters located inside the garage...
  21. Haversack

    What's something modern you won't miss when it becomes obsolete?

    George Bernard Shaw had his own solution to telephone interruptions. He did most of his creative writing in small hut at the bottom of his garden. Its amenities were a chair, writing table, wastepaper basket, book shelve, and wall-mounted telephone. He had the telephone fixed so it could only...
  22. Haversack

    Your Most-Often-Consulted Reference Books?

    Looking at what I've currently got out on the desk next to the keyboard: The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, (A 1570 cookery book); Henley's Formulas for Home and Workshop; and a third edition, ca. 1936 of Architectvral Graphic Standards.
  23. Haversack

    Was there a "Fox News" back in the day?

    Atticus Finch wrote: "By getting his news from several sources, a person could begin to get a balanced picture of what was actually happening in the world." I remember my grandfather, the rancher, telling me once that during the Second World War he would listen to both Allied and Axis radio...

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 2,733 (members: 42, guests: 2,691)

Forum statistics

Threads
110,293
Messages
3,097,673
Members
54,866
Latest member
MrSavage
Top