The terrors of traveling by bus in the South of the 1940s

 Kay and Teeny, with a band, toured the South to promote Enchanted Nile Pomade, a hair product marketed to men and women of color. The company couldn't support the cost of a touring bus, so the band traveled in a motley array of second- and third-hand vechicles, which of course occasionally broke down. A few times, one or more members of the band had to take a Greyhound bus to get to the gig while others tended to a disabled vehicle. 

While I don't know if Kay or Teeny were aware of the brutal beating of honorably-dischanrged serviceman Stt. Isaac Woodard, I'm sure they had heard similar tales of punishment meted out to people of color who were perceived to act "above themselves."

https://carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu/isaac-woodard-a-forgotten-story-that-changed-history/

From Kay's Era: Alternative version of Ma and Pa Kettle on film plus the one without Pa

 The Family Next Door:

Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/channels/592159/74891764

"I don't know what you'd call that"

 "I don't know what you'd call that" was Kay's reply to an interviewer in the 1980s, who used a cassette player to play a tape of orchestral dance music from the late 1950s, about a decade after Kay had switched from a music-oriented career to her work as a teacher. 

"The album is called 'Swing Fever," said the interviewer. "Now, would you call music of this type swing?"

Radio sponsors you don't hear today #1

In the age of old time radio, every kind of industry had a program named after it. Some of the products don't exist any more -- tooth powder, for example. Other sponsors are around but their product line or business has radically changed. For example, trains!

The Railroad Hour:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railroad_Hour#:~:text=The%20Railroad%20Hour%20was%20a,on%20those%20written%20before%201943.

"Super Circus" -- no wonder Kay had doubts about early television

 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157618281566139&set=pcb.10157618287081139&type=3&theater

A contemporary of Kay's in a NYC appreciation piece

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/obituaries/Helen-Woods-dead-coronavirus.html?smid=fb-share

My life mirroring Kay's -- part 2 of 2

Kay spit valve rubber band trick https://www.smartmusic.com/blog/dos-and-donts-of-emergency-band-instrument-repair/

Trumpet rim repair -- Kay used marble ashtray and I used marble cutting board. 

The mystery mallet I found in the box, with the joke tag on it. 

I used a modern plastic trumpet stand as my make-do mandrel to straight out a bent bell, but Kay used the kind of wooden mute in popular use in the 1940s.

The first time my life has mirrored Kay's -- Part 1 of 2

I work my way, when I can find some time down through the five orf six remaining boxes of unexamined Kay memorabilia I have. I guess "unexamined" isn't quite accurate, as I did transfer the contents of the original vintage and worse-for-wear storage boxes the items were packed in. Neither Kay nor Teeny had thought of long-term storage; I'm sure they packed these things for the move from St. Louis down to New Orleans and then once they'd gotten the living room lamps and the spaghetti strainer in place, then the rest went into the attic or garage to be 'dealt with later." Been failed to deal with that. 

And then the next generation of family was thoughtful enough not to toss the tattered old boxes into a dumpster somewhere when Kay and Teeny's house needed to be emptied before the real estate agent could list it. The stuff was stored in a different attic  until Hurricane Katrina hit, and then everything that could be salvaged from upper floors was put into a storage unit until everyone was settled again. 

So I got the stuff, and immediately transferred it to boxes which were newer and sturdier, and stacked those up in my attic and basement. In that process, I did glance through things quickly but I'm just now really looking at some notes and letters and receipts and so on that I've never had time to un-box and spread out on the dining room table to go through. 

In my own moves, I've jumbled items together into boxes. At first, items which go together are grouped in cartons. But then after a while things go where there is room for them. So I wasn't startled to come across some loose objects in with what was otherwise a boxful of paper ephemera. It's true that a wooden square-headed meat tenderizing mallet isn't an everyday item but it's not extremely strange either. 

But the one I found about eight or ten inches into a large box had a homemade paper tag tied to the handle with a bit of string. The faded ink on the tag (done in fountain pen, I believe) says "Kay's Wonder Mallet for Musical Instrument Repair."

The rest of the story in the next post. . .

Newspapers of the 1940s

Now that daily newspapers, printed on newsprint, are dying off, it's hard to remember how many papers there used to be, often three or four in a large city. I've been researching newspapers published in St. Louis, as they would have been where Kay got her news when she wasn't traveling. 

Today I was reading some 1940s history and came across a mention of PM, a liberal newspaper published in New York using funds from Marshall Field. I'd never heard of it. This evaporating culture is some of why I do this project; things which were once known to thousands or tens of thousands of people just vanish. 

The geography of Kay's time

Until I began researching Kay's life and times, I don't know if I'd ever heard of Silesia, among other places. I may need a 1940s geography/social studies book to know where countries' borders were, or what nations used to be called 80 years ago. 

Hand-held WWII radio was a part of Kay's life in the 40s