Author: DOuG pRATt

The Man Ain’t Got No Culture

I’m going to come out about something, so I can’t back out of seeing it through to completion. Not that I would want to anyway.

Thanks to WhatsApp, I’m working with Prue on her memoir. Some of the cultural references she makes are challenging. She mentioned the name Diaghilev. When I pleaded ignorance, she added the name Nijinsky, and thanks to that I found this documentary.

https://youtu.be/lmsR8eR2-MI

The video is narrated by Tilda Swinton, who played Dr. Strange’s teacher the Ancient One. Hah! So my Marvel Comics background isn’t completely irrelevant.

One of Prue’s earliest memories is of a German V1 rocket overhead in London. They were called Buzz Bombs or, as she remembers them being called, Doodlebugs.

Petula Hangover

There’s an Ed Sullivan channel on YouTube, and if Ed were alive to see it he wouldn’t recognize it as a TV channel by his understanding. Most of the material has been added over the past year, presumably after a deal for advertising money was made. There’s now a massive collection available for viewing, restored to the best possible quality.

Petula Clark is very well represented, although there is at least one Sullivan appearance I know of that’s missing. I stayed up much too late a couple of nights ago, indulging my Petula crush. My father bought our 23″ RCA color console in August, 1967, making this appearance the first time I saw Petula on TV in color.

That performance is typical of Petula’s American TV appearances. A couple of months earlier she was taped, apparently in Quebec, being much more herself, delightfully bouncy and flirtatious. This was typical of her style when performing in France, where they called her Sexy Pet before she joined the British Invasion of America.

P.S. I found the one I thought was missing. It was posted back in March. That dress must have been uncomfortable and/or hot, because the moment the song is done she starts taking it off. Maybe it’s a costume change to another number, but if so I don’t know it.

Blog @ 33⅓

Today is this blog’s 15th anniversary. This month is also the 50th anniversary of starting my high school job. 50/15=3.33 — a third of what I consider my adult life or, by shifting the decimal point, the speed of a rotating LP, which seems fitting. My job was in this building, which was originally a W.T. Grants store.

For $1.60/hour, I washed dishes at the Bradford House restaurant, at the far end of the store, where the white posts are. I worked very, very hard, and how well I remember the logo and pattern that’s on these cups and saucers.

My junior year of high school I worked up to 25 hours/week washing dishes. Note the restaurant’s hours on this old ad.

Finishing a 5-10 PM shift on Fridays, there were many Saturdays I returned to work at 8 AM and worked fourteen hours. I’m sure it wasn’t legal for a 16-year-old kid to work a 14-hour day, but I was desperate for the money.

At end of my junior year, a kid who worked part-time as a cook graduated. He left for Canada, where he could be certain of avoiding the draft by attending McGill University. I was given his job, along with a raise to… wait for it… $1.85/hour. The 14-hour Saturdays ended, and from the start of that summer, through the start of the following summer, I filled the plates at the restaurant, rather than wash them.

Being a short-order cook was challenging, but it was a lot of fun, and I held similar jobs in college. After high school graduation, I quit the Bradford House when I heard about a summer job working for the town’s school system for $3/hour. The exact same pay I would earn four years later at the radio station.