New discovery: Woodstock Handmade Houses

I'd never heard of Woodstock Handmade Houses, written by Robert Haney and David Ballantine and photographed by Jonathan Elliott, until I liberated it from the clearance shelf at my local Half Price Books (ha! love that I can still make scores there). It is funny to find a relic from upstate New York here in San Antonio, but it's not like I'm the first New Yorker to relocate to this godforesaken place, and doubtless not the last. Anyway, this book is light on words, heavy on spectacular photos, but here's the first lines from the introduction:

When the American dream still seemed a good trip, about seventy years ago, some nonconformists got together to explore a different lifestyle up in Woodstock, where the Catskill mountains start getting tall. They were mostly artists, craftsmen, tinkerers and thinkers. In those days they got labeled: Bohemians. Today, perhaps they'd be tagged freaks. Their first shelters were sometimes just a hunk of oilcloth or a free flop in a farmer's barn. But when they really started to build they went heavy on imagination, light on money.

Let me say up front that while I admire the houses-yurts-forts-domes-secret hideouts featured in this book, I don't think I'd want to live in one. I'm intimately familiar with New York winters and these singular domiciles don't seem to come equipped with many of the basic amenities. But, holy crap, aren't they incredible? I mean, call it outsider art, hippie homesteads, freecycled, upcycled, the original green design, whatever. Some rose out of the ruins of old schoolhouses, churches or barns; others appear to have sprouted from the trees. 

According to the introduction, both authors had built and resided in their own handmade houses. I wonder if they're still standing? Or if any of these houses remain? The book was published in 1974 so who knows? I'd like to assign some intrepid reporter to go find out, please.

That ’70s childhood

I was born in 1968, which makes me a true child of the ’70s. I was two when the dazed-and-confused decade began and 12 when it ended. I guess that means that I "came of age" in the ’80s (does anyone come of age outside of novels?), but I formed my aesthetic in the ’70s. At least that's what I've been telling myself these last few years that I've been obsessing over vintage decorating books, especially those of Sir Terence Conran. And finding this detailed illustration of what looks like a Studio 54 after-party in some old box in one of my parents' many storage units confirmed that notion.

Yes, people, I am the wielder of the Flair pen who created this marvelous time-capsule drawing on a 5" x 8" sheet of notepaper, most likely in sixth grade. Take away those swingers with their Halston dresses, ample cleavage, martinis and cigarette holders and you have yourself one hell of an estate sale—or a page out of any of Conran's house books. Note the fully stocked bar, the Marimekko-style wall hanging, the abundant houseplants (in wicker! and macrame!), the built-in hi-fi, the purple-and-red color scheme, the Arco-style floor lamp... and is that a picture of the Manhattan skyline over the bar or an actual window? It is most definitely a window into the consciousness of a certain New Jersey middle-schooler: Moving into a rad pad in NYC, something out of Apartment Life magazine, was my dream. And I did end up living in (many) NYC apartments, but funny how my home didn't start to resemble this ideal till I moved to Texas. Make of that what you will.

Stripes and stripes forever! From Conran's The House Book.

Treasures from Throwaways: possibly the best vintage craft book ever!

Summer means not being able to go to estate sales with the clockwork regularity I'm accustomed to during the school year, but it also means catching up on some crucial sorting/organizing/downsizing projects, particularly with regard to my piles of books. I just rediscovered this 1976 gem, Better Homes and Gardens Treasures from Throwaways, and I'm so sorry for you all that I've only got just the one copy because look at this typewriter! You know you want the book that provides the instructions for a "Typewriter Note Holder":

The secretarial pool is no place for a standout like [this] typewriter. Instead, this old machine has joined the executive ranks and now functions as the most unique message center a family ever had. If you think painting a typewriter is a lot of work for just a message center, think of it as creating a piece of pop art—and sign it!

Well, now that is waaay too much work for me, but then I never actually craft any crafts (unless they involve walnuts or pinecones and googly eyes)—I just like to gawk at books like these. I do think this typewriter message center is magnificent, just perfect for one of those pared-down "landing strips" you see touted in the shelter mags and on design blogs. Really, I love everything about that photo, including the prop styling (who is Liz? Who is Bill? Who is Chester? Why does that mug have a "5" on it?").

But as an erstwhile fancy magazine editor, I find this craft project more poignant than loopy. Who even reads magazines now let alone wallpapers their bathroom with clippings from Vogue? This actually reminds me of what my bedroom walls looked like back in the 80s, and, come to think of it, the cork walls I've had in various former offices. Though the book instructs crafters to "preserve your 'cover' job with a clear protective finish," which would make sense in a bathroom (think what the moisture would do to this collage), they also say you can "leave the magazine pages as they are for quick patch-ups—adding new pages to fit your fancy and to maintain the fanciful wallscape." Madness.

Paging through the book now, I'm not sure why I chose to feature this TV Tube Chess Set instead of various other crazy crafts (I might have to continue this post in the near future with more pics). I guess it was just the idea of someone actually having access to TV tubes, let alone transforming them into a chess set. But according to the editors, it was no big thang: "A check at any TV and radio repair shop will net you all the old tubes you want." If you say so!

And finally, we have The Victrola Teen Bar, because who doesn't recognize the genius of gutting your heirloom Victrola?  You won't be able to spin Granddad's 78s anymore, but you can use it to serve popcorn and Cokes to the wholesome teens in your life:

An old Victrola will never replace stereo or TV as entertainment, but as a teen-age party center it's still "the cat's pajamas." Or, in latter day linguistics, it's really cool!

To put it in latter-day linguistics, LOL.

Paperback of the week: Sexy Heloise

Just when I thought I had every volume of sexy ’70s Heloise, another incredible paperback turns up in someone's musty garage. Check out this hot mama, multitasking Enjoli-style. She looks so smug, and deservedly so—not many hausfraus look that fine in short-shorts.

You may recall that Heloise, the silver-foxy purveyor of syndicated household hints in your local newspaper (if, in fact, you are familiar with newspapers), is a homegrown heroine here in San Antonio. Her books are ubiquitous at garage sales and goodwills, but I don't often run across this series published by Pocket Books in the 70s. Love.

What the children got: the ongoing saga

In honor of my younger magpie's sixth birthday today, I bring you the latest accounting of their estate sale scores. The Native American outfit, above, is completely awesome. The tomahawk is not lethal, but she can now add "archery" to the skills section of her resume.

The older child insisted that I buy this copy of Trudy Phillips, New Girl. I applaud its darling cover, but I'm reasonably certain she's never going to read it.

This box of beads and sequins was a straight-up bribe, purchased to buy me a little more time at the infamous Owl Estate Sale. No one has touched the beads since I bought them—though they HAD to have them at the time—but I expect one day they'll meet their fate in a vacuum-cleaner bag.

I must confess that I was the one who bought this Lite Brite, without any nudging or nagging from any small child. I wanted it! I've wanted it for, like, 35 years. That commercial was irresistible. I don't know why my parents never gave it to me, but I rectified that wrong when I found this Lite Brite in the back of someone's closet. The box is beat to hell, but the lites are still brite. Don't we all just want our children to have what we didn't have? Happy birthday, kid.

Paperback of the week: Isaac Asimov's Lecherous Limericks

I wasn't aware of Isaac Asimov's naughty side until I found this 1975 Fawcett paperback at an estate sale, its saucy cover a beacon amid piles of books about Christianity. But I'm not surprised since all the best sci-fi is at least a little bit tawdry, right? Asimov, it turns out, wrote five volumes of dirty limericks and at least one ribald humor book, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man. I consider this just one more credit earned toward my estate-sale continuing education degree—yet another arcane fact to tuck away till needed (e.g., crossword puzzle, Jeopardy appearance, nerd-cocktail-party fodder).

At some point in my adolescence I was also fond of writing limericks (innocent ones) but it's hard to see the genre ever making a comeback. Then again, haiku had its hipster-ironic moment (or am I making that up?), so I guess anything is possible. I gotta say, as much as I want to love this book, it's a stretch. A hundred limericks is a lot of limericks, even if some are "boldly illustrated." Here's a sampler:

"A Poor Example"
An Olympian lecher was Zeus,
Always playing around fast and loose,
With one hand in the bodice
Of some likely young goddess
And the other preparing to goose.

"Zoological Comparison"
A stately giraffe, when he necks,
Or a hippo, when he's having sex,
Aren't worth a tut-tut
To the bellowing rut
Of the great Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"Reward of Industry"
A woman most gorgeously stacked
Thought screwing a glorious act.
So, for finding a niche
For those who were rich,
She was diamonded, minked, Cadillacked.

"Valedictorian"
A luscious young student at Vassar
Was hailed as a top-of-the-classer.
But not in her studies
You old fuddy-duddies
For she shone as a great piece-of-asser.

That's just the tip of the iceberg—a phrase I'm sure Asimov could've double-entendred nicely—but you get the gist. His material is pretty dated, meaning there are more rape jokes than the average person who wasn't a Republican congressman of a certain age would find palatable. The coolest thing about this volume—apart from the blank pages in the back where you're invited to "write your own limericks"—is that on the page opposite each limerick, Asimov offers up a little critique and/or anecdote. Who could write a hundred limericks let alone remember the circumstance surrounding the writing of each? For the Vassar limerick, he recalls giving a lecture at Smith College and how excited he was to stay in the (all-girls, obviously) dormitory, till he saw his room, which had only one door—and it opened to the street. Buzzkill!

Pity the poor sensuous dirty old man, if you can.

Better than Atari

Right, so this thing.

Lindsay "scored" this Roberts Rally IV proto-Atari game console at a crazy ’70s sale—my friend Burgin, who hit it on the first day, breathlessly, rightly described it as "It's like your ’70s childhood exploded in this one house—you've got to go!" How could we not go?

Lindsay gets a little glazed when surrounded by the totems of his childhood, so he was in heaven, despite the children whining and pulling on his clothes and asking for things. (Where was I? In the room with all the books of course.) Unfortunately, he made a classic estate-sale error: He saw something he liked: a working Atari, with games. He picked it up, examined it, then put it back down, undecided. Never put anything down! If you see something and kinda like it, hold it close till you've made up your mind. Officious estate sale workers might try to pry it from your hands—they'll offer to relieve you of your burden, to write up your ticket—but you just wave them away till you're sure. When Lindsay finally decided to get the Atari, he went back to the room and saw another guy with it tucked under his arm. ARGH.

It's a terrible, empty feeling. Naturally he had to fill that void by buying something else, and the something else—the Roberts Rally IV pong game thingie—is still covered with dust and sitting in the garage. Apparently there's a small problem with the battery pack (there isn't one) but he's confident that he can make it work by crossing some wires, you know, when he gets around to it. And when he gets around to it, the kids will lay down their wii microphones long enough to play the four games built in to the system: hockey, tennis, squash and squash practice. Woo-hoo, squash practice!

Marvelous

I scored these mint-conditon 1976 and 1977 Marvel comics calendars at a great sale in a great neighborhood. I remember there were flash-flood warnings that day but I braved the deluge because the sale was in a long, low brick ranch that I'd driven by millions of times—I had to see what treasure was lying behind its midcentury facade! My fortitude was rewarded: One room had nothing but boxes of pulpy paperbacks and comics, humor books of the ’60s and Mad magazines. That was one hour of glorious sifting. Sigh. Anyway, I knew at a glance that Lindsay must've had these calendars when he was a kid—10 or 11 years old and, I understand, an even bigger comic book geek than he is now. Whoever owned these calendar originally was a similar geek—they are perfect, not a mark on them, not a tear. No one crossed out the days or noted birthdays, god forbid. They were only a quarter apiece so naturally I bought them and when I presented them to Lindsay that evening (I couldn't wait till his birthday), he was, as expected, quite verklempt. He floated down memory lane for a spell, stroking the pristine pages, ogling the amazing artwork and eventually put the calendars on the side table at his end of the couch. Which is where they have remained ever since, in the pile of guitar magazines and cooking magazines.

See, that's the conundrum. What do you do with a calendar once the year is over? Recycle it. Or, if you love it, tear it apart and frame the art? And mar the perfect integrity of the calendar? How could you even think of it, right?? He would never countenance that. We could sell these calendars to some other comic book geek for around 50 bucks a pop and let that guy slip it into an archival box or showcase and pull it out for fondling whenever the mood strikes. Right. That's sooo gonna happen.

Blocked

When I was a little kid, my primary source of tunes was an AM radio made by GE in the early ’70s. It was a clear plastic cube and you could slide photos into the sides. I never bothered changing the photos; I remember really liking the samples it came with, particularly a sunny blonde you can see here. Of course I was able to confirm the accuracy of this ancient memory because I found my old radio on etsy (sold, alas).

The second I clapped my eyes on this Photo Block, atop a faux wood-grain desk in some sad little office in some drab house, I thought about my old radio sitting on my dresser, about that sunny blonde, about Dan Ingram spinning the top 40—Wings, Olivia Newton-John, the Stones—on WABC, long before WABC became just another voice in the cacophony of talk radio. According to wikipedia, WABC had an incredibly strong signal so "especially in the afternoons and evenings, WABC was the station teenagers could be heard listening to on transistor radios all over the New York metropolitan area." So true—but it wasn't just teenagers.

Yes, I had another one of my sentimental moments, and it only cost me 50¢ to prolong it.

This photoblock, which is unfortunately not a radio but does still have its original sample photos, was manufactured in 1971. What is it about me and 1971? I'm only just now noticing, some 60-odd posts later, that so many roads on this blog seem to be leading back to that year, when I was three.

Nothing earth-shattering happened in my world when I was three. Three is pretty much summed up by one mental image: me, a sunny day, walking across the grass in my backyard, wearing a white shirt with a pale green mushroom on the front, and matching pale green pants. That's all I've got for three. (Four is me sitting on my mother's best oriental rug, cradling a red-patent leather purse I got for my birthday. Two is sitting on a tall black stool at the kitchen counter eating a hamburger with my brother, possibly on the day we moved into our house. At least something exciting happened when I was two.)

My kids are now 5 and 8, same age as me circa the 1970s. My mother saved some of my finer items of clothing from that era—a long patchwork skirt purchased for a Bicentennial celebration, a yellow Indian cotton caftan embroidered with tiny mirrors—and my kids actually wear them. Sometimes that freaks me out.

But what freaks me out more is trying to imagine what will evoke Proustian cravings for madeleines in them thirty years from now. Obviously my house is replete with vintage midcentury stuff, so will they be waxing nostalgic over Danish modern candlesticks or Knoll furniture or plastic photo blocks? I don't think it works like that. I grew up in a Victorian house chockablock with Victorian furniture and bric-a-brac, as well as some Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts. None of that stuff sets my heart racing at an estate sale. It tends to be the ordinary household objects, the books, records and the toys.

From my vantage point at the kitchen counter, I'm gazing around my house trying to figure out what is contemporary enough, of the aughts enough, to lodge in my daughters' memories. All-Clad pots and pans? OXO kitchen gadgets? MacBooks, ipads, iphones? US Weekly? Nespresso machine? Weird to imagine them on their hovercrafts, flitting from estate sale to estate sale (what more useful application could there be for a hovercraft?), exclaiming over a Braun travel alarm clock or a Hello Kitty bath mat or a pair of Missoni for Target rubber rain boots—shelling out whatever wampum passes for future currency in exchange for a wallow in aughts nostalgia...

I recently read a Kurt Andersen essay in Vanity Fair in which he laments the blah samey-sameness, the lack of originality, of the past few decades. If you compare the art/design/pop culture/hairdos of the 1950s with the 1970s, or compare any 20-year span, things look wildly different. But once we hit the ’90s, the needle kinda got stuck in the groove—music and fashion become indistinguishable. You can certainly quibble with many of his examples (namely music) but the fellow is certainly right for the most part:

"Ironically, new technology has reinforced the nostalgic cultural gaze: now that we have instant universal access to every old image and recorded sound, the future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past."

Somehow, by the end of the essay, I was feeling a little bad about myself, like I'm part of the problem. But not bad enough to change my ways... Next time I try to catch up with my backlog of scanning, I'm going to do the armload of Kurt Andersen–edited Spy magazines I picked up at a library sale a couple years back. For some reason, I didn't save any of my Spys from back in the day when I was a subscriber so I was pretty thrilled to find them, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Hometown heroine #2: Heloise

One of the immutable laws of used-book foraging: Every thrift shop in America will have at least one Hints from Heloise; if not Heloise, then it shall be Erma Bombeck's If Life's a Bowl of Cherries, Why Am I in the Pits? Or else: Helter-Skelter.

In San Antonio, the likelihood of running across a Heloise book increases exponentially—have I ever been to a Goodwill or garage sale without spying a volume or three of her handy hausfrau hints? Don't think so. The proto-Martha Stewart, who's written a ton of books and whose columns are still syndicated in some 500 newspapers—who knew there were so many newspapers left?—is one of San Antonio's few local celebrities (I already addressed the city's meager supply of those here). Owning one of her books is pretty much a given, like having a big metal star on your garage, a windmill on your lawn and a copy of Lonesome Dove in the guest room.

The brief history of Heloise is that her mom was a very resourceful military wife, who started writing a column for the Honolulu Star in 1959. She groomed her daughter, whose name was not Heloise at the time, as her successor, and by the time Mom died, the daughter had given up her dream to become a math teacher and was ready to dispense hints about eradicating body odors, wine stains and ring around the collar to an eager populace. Now an attractive 60something woman with silver shoulder-length hair, Heloise seems pretty cool. According to her website, she tools around her neighborhood—which I think is rather near mine—on an old-school Russian motorcycle. Her schnauzer rides shotgun in the sidecar (I recently saw a similar photo of Brad Pitt in Us Weekly, but son Pax was riding shotgun, not a schnauzer. Stars: so like us!). My husband swears he saw her driving a black Lexus with tinted windows over by our supermarket—the HINTS vanity plate was the tip-off. As far as I know, Heloise doesn't have a daughter who plans to change her name to Heloise upon her mother's death and assume the mantle of homekeeping maven, so you have to wonder—like the employees of Oprah's Harpo media, or Martha Stewart Omnimedia's stockholders—what will happen when Heloise passes on.

So, her books are pretty ubiquitous in these parts but the series I've collected here, plucked from three different sales over the past seven years, seems to be fairly rare. Published by Pocket Books in the early ’70s, they feature a sex kittenish fantasy of a housewife on their covers. From her pantyhose to her sexy orthopedic shoes and deer-in-the-headlights expression, this chick is a ’70s wet dream. She reminds me of the women in the Playboy magazines my friend's father used to hide in the back of his bedroom closet (he didn't hide them well enough, obviously). The laundry-themed cover is so "Oopsie, I pulled a Bobby Brady!" And the one where she's pulling a little red wagon full of Coke bottles—WTF? Where is she going?? And the career gal cover with the totally random St. Bernard is just baffling.

These covers are a tad misleading, however. I regret to report that the tips inside these books aren't even a teeny bit racy. Just the usual collection of chestnuts culled from readers' letters about how to eliminate shower curtain mildew and how to throw a "stew party"—alas, no tips about how to throw a key party.

The resolution will be televised

Happy New Year, all...In honor of resolution-makers everywhere, I bring you the Disco Body Shaper. So much more awesome than resolving to go to the gym! Not to mention cheaper. This was $3 but I bought it on the last day of a sale so it was half price. Back in 1977, it retailed for $9.95—adjusted for inflation that would have been... I have no idea, but certainly more than $1.50 and a lot less than a gym membership.

If you're wondering if I've actually taken the Disco Body Shaper for a spin, the answer is hell no. I'm sure the foxy ladies (and the dude wearing silver spacesuit) in these completely rad late-night commercials all popped their knees, dislocated their hips and knocked their spines out of alignment using the "scientifically designed, precision made, ball-bearing action exerciser." Seriously, it looks dangerous, doesn't it? I get rug burns just looking at these commercials.

There are two things I can generally count on when I go to an estate sale: that there will be an assortment of walkers/canes/wheelchairs/hospital beds/shower seats, and that there will be at least one piece of exercise equipment—hat rack/nordictracks, deflated stability balls, dumbbells, Thighmasters and Soloflex knock-offs. This probably says something meaningful about the cycles of life—despite our strivings for physical perfection, our bodies inevitably crumble—or maybe just that this is the kind of fungible crap none of your surviving family members wants to inherit. Perhaps a resolution to join the gym isn't such a bad idea after all.






And here, the once-ubiquitous Soloflex print ad that used to hang on my bedroom wall. Just cuz writing this post made me think of Soloflex man for the first time since, like, 1983.