The Skinny -- A Christmas Memory

From Parisian Prairie Charm on Etsy

Everyone has certain holiday memories that stay with them throughout their life.  My most favorite memories of Christmas are the goodies my mom used to make (and still does...), and the time we spent together baking.  We had a double sided bar in the house where I grew up that was between the dining room and the kitchen. Most of the year it was a catch-all for all the things a busy family needed, but at Christmastime, it became the resting place for the goodie smorgasbord! We would have cookies, cakes, and candies enough to last us through to New Year's.  We each had our favorites -- mine are Gooey Butter Bars. 

I always knew that when she pulled out her stack of worn, stained recipes, that the fun was about to begin.  She would stockpile all the ingredients on the bar before baking, buying pounds and pounds of flour, sugars, nuts, and chocolate.  There was also, inevitably, a glass filled with candy canes and a gumdrop tree.  Her recipes were gathered from family and friends, neighbors and little old church ladies.  But the most exciting to me was when she pulled out this book, the Farm Journal Christmas Book, published in 1970.

This book has the recipe for my sister's favorite in it -- Seven Layer Cookies (without that icky butterscotch layer -- we are NOT butterscotch people!).  But I loved it because of the fun, bright pictures of gingerbread houses, candies, cookies, and best of all, crafts.  I looked at it for hours. 

My mom still uses her copy.  I never remember seeing the dust jacket on hers, it was probably lost before I was born.  A few years ago, I was able to find two copies of it -- one for me and one for my sister.  And there are copies that can be found very reasonably (like the one above, available on Etsy for $8!). 

So for today's post, beyond the reminiscing, I thought I'd share some great paper decorations shown in this gem of a book.  They may be designed in 1970, but I think they look pretty current!

  

(The measurement on the bottom lantern for the height of the divot is 1 7/8" and the width is 1 5/16".  Sorry, the scanner got blurry!) 

The Skinny: Nancy Drew is Eighty-Two!

They are easy to spot--those trademark yellow spines. We see them on a weekly basis, either on our own shopping trips, or in neat little stacks on the front counter of the shop where we work. She may have gotten her start in 1930, but Nancy Drew is clearly still going strong.

wendy-spoileralert.blogspot.com

 From 1930-1961, Nancy's stories (#1-#38) were bound in blue, with a graphic dust jacket. The yellow binding began in 1962. And it's not just the covers that evolved. The plots, characters, even Nancy herself changed through those first 56 books. Initially, Nancy's best friend is Helen Corning. Bess Marvin and George Fayne take over as Nancy's closest crew by book 5, and remain essential characters for the rest of the series. Ned Nickerson is introduced in number 7, but Burt and Dave (beaus of Bess & George) don't enter the group until book 20 of the original series. When the early books were revised, the fellows were written into several of them.

In 1938 and 1939, Warner released four Nancy Drew movies, starring Bonita Granville, which further strengthened the popularity of Ms. Drew and her friends (even if her boyfriend in the movies is Ted instead of Ned).  These films take elements from the books, so the plots are a bit of hodgepodge, but highly entertaining.


Some of the changes throughout the initial series are due to the fact that the author, Carolyn Keene, was at least eight different people, hired as ghost writers. Nancy begins the series as a vivacious, adventurous blonde, and transitions to a cool, perfect girl with more skills than her entire social circle (Nancy can do anything!), and never a reddish-blonde hair out of place. Other changes to the series came in the form of revisions to the early titles, which smoothed out racial issues, updated appropriate social standards, and beefed up, or completely replaced, the original plot lines. For this reason, a side-by-side comparison of Nancy Drew books often yields different cover art, different page and chapter numbers, different internal illustrations, and completely different characters, even though your two books have the same title.

Nancy now has over 500 adventures under her belt, and has been published in at least 26 different languages, but those first 56 books are, without question, THE Nancy Drew series. However, her international popularity cannot be denied, even if many countries have changed her name (the French know her as Alice, and in other nations she is Kitty). The Danish seem to think that she is sexy:

#7, The Clue in the Diary

And, of course, Nancy also tends to be highly collectible in alternative formats:

lobby card for one of the films

Madame Alexander Nancy Drew dolls

Earliest version of the Nancy Drew board game

Junk Love Monday: Vintage Crime

They are dark, dirty, and deadly--and there's always a dame (or two). It is the genre of murder, seduction, and betrayal that gave us Sam Spade, one of the most iconic Noir characters of all time. I know that my love affair with vintage crime has its roots in the summers of my childhood, when I watched black and white Perry Mason episodes and adapted the plots for weird make-believe games that my siblings and I played (but rarely understood). Who needs cowboys and Indians when you can have a detective, a damsel, and a dastardly villain? And nothing gets the blood pumping like a good interrogation scene, especially if your grandparents' basement happens to be stocked with a crooked table, a cobweb-covered chair, and a single incandescent bulb fixture with a pull-chain....

But when I saw The Maltese Falcon on the big screen, I was absolutely hooked. I love the mystery, and the darkness, and the diamonds that every temptress wears (along with lipstick that is surely bright red, even in a black and white film). I don't even care that a lot of the time, the plot makes no sense (ever see The Big Sleep?). I just love the look of crime on film, and even more than that, I love the design of vintage crime novels. The titles are compelling: Deep Lay the Dead, Murder in False Face, The Big Midget Murders. And the art is fantastic, whether it is on a dust jacket, imprinted in the binding itself, or on the cover of a classic pulp paperback.

I definitely prefer titles of the 1930s and 1940s. After that, even Perry Mason gets a little less dirty (although my Perry Mason collection goes up through the 1960s), and the heroes become a little more James Bond-ish, and fall a little farther out of the classic Noir category. Actually, one entire bookcase in my house is devoted to vintage crime fiction. Some are hardbound sets with compelling titles; others were purchased purely for the binding or cover art.

I like to group titles together based on a similar theme: anything involving the word "skeleton" is in a stack together; titles with "poison" are lined up in a different section; I even have a few books with "widow" in the title that I put together. Perry Mason and Simon Templar (from The Saint series) occupy two whole shelves together. As I accumulate more titles, I store them (temporarily) somewhere else. Once per year, I dismantle the entire display and start from scratch, so that I can add the new ones in. (Honestly, there isn't much in this world that I enjoy more than an afternoon spent renovating the crime shelves.) I tend to watch the films more than I read the books, but occasionally, I pull a particularly dramatic title, curl up under a blanket, and pretend I'm Sam Spade.