As *spoon* as Arch comes back from vacation Hepcat will still be Hepcat.

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Hep, at your leisure I'd love to see a close up of the Shindig and Outer Limits game box. Love your collection and display cases. You have enough stuff to charge an admission fee to see !

The Shindig game I've never yet photographed but I have plenty of shots of my Outer Limits game:

Here as well are scans of some of my Outer Limits cards that Topps issued in 1964:

Thanks. Just like your comics, everything seems to be in pristine shape. Love it !

Here are a few photos of my Batman Book and Record Sets including some of the interior pages:

Here are a few photographs of my Superman Book and Record Set:

And here are pictures of my Wonder Woman LPs:

Now that spring is less than a month away, a young cat's thoughts turn to ... ice cream! And the brand I most fondly remember from my younger days was Silverwood's. The slogan for Silverwood's Ice Cream was "Smoother than velvet", and you can take it from me that the slogan was no lie. If there's one thing we felines know it's dairy!

My older sister worked at the Silverwood's ice cream plant on Bathurst Street in London not far from our house for a couple of summers in the sixties. She brought home a whole set of very cool Air Force trading cards for me in 1963(?).

They were a premium enclosed in Creamsicle and Fudgesicle wrappers like this one from Winnipeg:

I worked at the Silverwood's ice cream plant myself for part of the summer of 1973 although by this time it had moved to the southern outskirts of London by Highway 401.

The Silverwood Dairy got its start in London early in the twentieth century. It soon carved out a strong position in Ontario markets including Toronto using the slogan “You can’t beat our milk, but you can whip our cream”. Like other dairies of the time, Silverwood's provided home delivery service using horse drawn carts. Here are a couple of pictures of Silverwood's milk wagons:

The horse drawn carts were gradually phased out after WWII although Silverwood's still had a few of these wagons wending their way along London's leafy streets until sometime in the mid-sixties. It was back in 1963-64 that my mother and I saw that the train car being backed into the Labatt Breweries plant had somehow collided with a Silverwood's horse much to the detriment of the latter. Her uncharitable comment at the time was that Labatt's didn't want people to drink milk....

Silverwood's continued home delivery well into the seventies using Divco trucks like this one pictured doing deliveries in Toronto's Parkside neighbourhood:

Silverwood's continued to grow by acquisition over the decades and by the early seventies had become the largest dairy in Canada with operations from coast-to-coast. Trucks such as these were a not uncommon sight on Canada's highways in the seventies and eighties:

In the meantime Silverwood's launched Mac's Milk Stores in 1963 which also grew to become Canada's largest chain of convenience stores by the seventies.

In 1984 though the Silverwood Dairy was sold to Ault Foods, the dairy subsidiary of John Labatt Limited just down Ridout Street from Silverwood Industries' head office. Ault Foods had acquired the rights to the Sealtest name brand in 1981 and the philistines at Ault decided to discontinue the proud Canadian Silverwood's brand name for the dairy business and go with the American corporate brand name Sealtest instead! Imagine that! One London company vandalizing another. I was incensed. I would have pulled the corporate fat cat who made that decision at Labatt's out of his chair and given him a sound beating!

Ironically John Labatt Limited revealed just how shallow its commitment was to the dairy business just a few short years later. Labatt's.sold off the dairy business in 1996-97 with the ice cream operations going to Swiss multinational Nestlé. So Silverwood's ice cream, butter, milk, they've all been consigned to history. The only thing that remains of the proud Silverwood's Canadian brand name is an occasional sighting of Silverwood's eggnog around Xmas and perhaps yogurt. Otherwise it lives on only in the memory of dairy enthusiasts and local history buffs such as myself.

Here are a few pieces of Silverwood's memorabilia from my collection. First of all a menu from a closed diner in Dundas, Ontario:

A butter wrapper:

A Dixie Cup:

The spoon that Silverwood's distributed for use with the cream top bottles the company sold:

Slot car racing was hugely popular with young boys in the mid-sixties. Ads such as these were a common feature in DC comics at the time:

And this Cap's Hobby Hints appeared in the DC comics that hit the newstands fifty years ago in February 1966:

So the number of commercial slot car tracks in the United States like the ones in these pictures had reached 3500 by late 1965!

Slot car racing started out as an off-shoot of building plastic car models. Kids built Monogram, AMT, Revell and Cox kits such as these to race at their local tracks:

1/24 scale Revell Lotus 23 at left and the above 1/32 scale Monogram Ferrari 330 P/LM at right:

Imagine being able to race the model car you had just built! Model building was very popular with kids in those days so it's not surprising that the number of commercial tracks exploded. I knew of three right in my own home town of London, Ontario in 1966.

What killed the hobby by the end of the sixties was that slot car racing technology advanced so quickly in the 1964 -1967 period that kids found their lovingly built cars to be uncompetitive within months if not weeks of purchase. Moreover by 1968 kids couldn't master or even afford the best technology/techniques available. And with the advent of ever more aerodynamic bodies made of lightweight Lexan instead of traditional styrene plastic, the link to model building was broken. Therefore a new crop of ten and eleven year olds didn't replace the fifteen and sixteen year olds moving on to other interests, e.g. real cars, guitars and girls.

There are still quite a few tracks across the country these days though. For example:

Buzz-A-Rama in Brooklyn, New York

PJ Raceway in Ronkonkoma, New York

TSS Hobbies in Monroe, Michigan

Mid-America in Bloomington, Illinois

Buena Park Raceway, California

Dallas Slot Cars

The Race Place in Holly Hill, Florida

Metro Slot Car Raceway in Montréal, Québec

Strikingly good looking pre-built cars by companies such as Scalextric, Carrera and Revell-Monogram are popular these days. For example, this 1/32 scale Scalextric Ford GT:

This 1/32 scale Scalextric 1970 Charger Daytona:

This 1/32 scale Scalextric Lola Nighthawk:

These 1/24 scale Carrera 1934 Ford Coupes:

And this 1/24 scale Carrera 1941 Chevy:

But Revell-Monogram and other companies still make kits available as well for those who like to assemble and paint details on their own cars.

The tracks have strict specifications for races these days so that ordinary hobbyists are not at a disadvantage to those willing to employ the latest expensive technology in their cars.

Here are scans of a dozen of my favourite Joe Kubert covers from my collection:

One of the reasons I really enjoy visiting Montréal is that it's still replete with mid-twentieth century casse-croûtes and other establishments featuring my type of dining:

Over the Easter weekend I had kisielius which is a jellied berry pudding with roughly the consistency of applesauce. Here in North America it's typically made from cranberries because it's traditionally served on Xmas Eve which is a time when fresh cranberries are still widely available in grocery stores:

Kisielius is a light, refreshing dessert bursting with flavour and is something any berry lover can appreciate. It's popular throughout northeastern Europe where it's made from cherries, raspberries, strawberries, currants, in other words whatever berries are at hand. A thinner version is often served as a hot or cold beverage, particularly in Russia. (Warning: Never buy the kisielius mixes sold commercially in northeastern Europe. They're just a jelly dessert and simply awful.)

I topped my kisielius off with my gourmet version of Dream Whip.

I substitute 35% whipping cream for the milk called for in the Dream Whip recipe. I need the extra calories to maintain my fighting edge.

I tried something new yesterday - a Lemon Jell-O parfait.

I mixed up the Lemon Jell-O with lemon juice in place of half the water. I let the mixture set. I then beat the Jell-O into a froth with an electric mixer.

In another bowl I beat up some Neilson Whipping Cream.

I then thoroughly mixed the contents of the two bowls together with a spoon to get a creamy frothy lemon parfait. It was delicious! Here's how my parfait looked topped with sprinkles:

I've been making myself Dagwood sandwiches this week incorporating these ingredients:

Three slices of Wonder bread.

A slice of Schneiders ham.

A slice of Piller's oven roast turkey.

A slice of Piller's smoked chicken.

A slice of Brandt olive/pimento loaf.

A slice of Schneiders meat, macaroni and cheese loaf.

A slice of Schneiders bologna.

A slice of Cracker Barrel marble cheddar cheese.

A slice of Cracker Barrel Swiss cheese.

A slice of Armstrong Monterey Jack cheese.

Sliced tomatoes.

Sliced cucumbers.

Sliced radishes.

Sliced onions.

Lettuce.

Horseradish sauce.

Gunk (a mustard, mayo and spice condiment).

Mustard.

Miracle Whip.

Pepper.

A tiny bit of salt.

So I strolled down to the Metro supermarket in downtown Toronto at lunch and picked up a freshly baked submarine roll, three packets of mustard and a box of Hostess Cupcakes that were on sale:

Back at the office I sliced the submarine roll in half and added the following items which I'd brought from home:

A slice of Schneiders meat, macaroni and cheese loaf.

A slice of Schneiders bologna.

A slice of Schneiders ham.

Two slices of Schneiders smoked turkey.

A slice of Cracker Barrel marble cheddar cheese.

A slice of Cracker Barrel Swiss cheese.

A slice of Armstrong Monterey Jack cheese.

Sliced tomatoes.

Sliced cucumbers.

Sliced radishes.

Sliced onions.

Lettuce.

Three packets of mustard.

Two packets of ketchup.

Two packets of pepper.

One packet of salt.

I washed my office made sub down with a Coke. Since it was a big sandwich, I went moderate on dessert. I refrained from polishing off the entire box of cupcakes and ate only a two-pack.

A delicious lunch to be sure! As an added bonus I'd put a dent in the surplus of ketchup packets we had in the office fridge. I hate to see good food go to waste.

I like to hit one of Les Rôtisseries St-Hubert whenever I'm in Montréal for either some rotisserie chicken or a hot chicken sandwich, plus a millefeuille of course:

My favourite St-Hubert location is the one at La Gare Windsor:

But since I'm not in Montréal, I settled for a big slice of one of these for supper yesterday:

Here's Cowboy picking out a tie for a big date with a hot pussycat:

I thought I wanted that "one fish two fish" tie when I saw it, but then I saw the Droopy one, and I REALLY want that one.

Tex Avery was the animator of many/most of the Droopy cartoons for MGM. The other tie features the Wolf and the Girl(Red), two other Tex Avery creations for MGM. Droopy would on occasion step in to rescue Red from the Wolf.

I'd highly recommend this book to any student of cartoon history:

Tex Avery was the animator of many/most of the Droopy cartoons for MGM. The other tie features the Wolf and the Girl(Red), two other Tex Avery creations for MGM. Droopy would on occasion step in to rescue Red from the Wolf.

 

 

 

 

I'd highly recommend this book to any student of cartoon history:

 

 

Yeah, I recognized the third tie, just didn't think it was a very good representation of the character. The Wolf would be GREAT, just doesn't look that good on this one, at least as much as I can see from the picture.

Here's Deuce (2005? - 2015 R.I.P.) modelling a different Wolf and Girl tie:

More Cowboy!