Trailer Trad Tunes: An Alpine Start to Your Winter

Trailer Trad Raleigh: Pick-up Party Provisions

I discovered this really cool vendor while looking for appetizers to bring for some parties that I was planning to attend this past weekend. Lo Mo Market is a cute truck parked at the Boylan Heights farmer's market every Saturday. It somehow manages to pack lots of fresh, local groceries onto a little truck that acts as a tiny grocery store. It doesn't seem possible but it's a tidy, cute little operation. Everything from fresh salad greens to free-range eggs and meat to crusty loaves of bread. 

Some Asheville-made Roots hummus  and yummy Maple View Farm eggnog from Chapel Hill and I was nearly set. 

The hostess gratefully accepted the North Carolina made goodies so I was allowed into the party.

Trailer Trad Attire: Just in Time for Christmas! Canada Goose Sale

This looks like an amazing sale on beautiful, practical parkas made in Canada and filled with goose down by Canada Goose. And, yes, the retail prices listed are what you have to pay normally.

-I'd like a 'ski patrol' red parka with a fur collar please. This sale will be over ASAP so hurry.

The Swiss Even Do Rock Posters Well.

Photo credit: P.O. Palustris

Trailer Trad Raleigh: Lost in the Asian Supermarket

Recently, my daughter wanted to make a recipe to share with her class. The recipe was for traditional desserts made for the Japanese Tanabata and Chinese Qixi festivals. This required a trip to a very large Asian supermarket to load up on weird, awesome stuff. The market is called A & C Supermarket and it was really cool. It's basically identical to a 1970's era supermarket but filled with nothing but wild, unusual stuff. The store was clean, the people were friendly, and the prices were pretty cheap overall.

Lil' Bean took the rice flour and red bean paste, etc. from the market and made these awesome traditional Japanese cookies/cakes. They looked exactly like little pumpkins!

Trailer Trad Tunes: Dear Raleigh

Trailer Trad Time Travel: Little League Football

How many of you guys played little league football in the 1970's? If you jumped up and said  "Hell, yeah! It got me into high school football and those were the BEST years of my LIFE!" I have a feeling that you were: A. The Coach's Son which implies that B. You were the quarterback. -Or, you were a 'skill position player' (they're referred to as 'athletes' on ESPN now-a-days) and, so, also enjoyed your time in little league. For the rest of us, it was hard, sweaty labor with little or no enjoyment while 'playing' the sport. 

I started playing at seven years old and archaic, tribal lessons of manhood were taught there on the hot, dirty field next to Sinclair Elementary in August. Those fun tackle games amongst the fallen leaves bore no resemblance to summer practice where competition for approval replaced fun and being tough was ingrained. This is so different from how little boys are involved in sports today. Make sure all of the kids get rest and water. Make sure they all get positive encouragement. Give them all a trophy. Give all of the kids opportunities to touch the ball. Make'em play soccer. 

So why did I play? Because I actually liked football. My brothers and I loved watching the one or maybe two televised football games on Sunday and those great old 1960's NFL films ("Frozen tundra of Lambeau Field") drove us into a frenzy. Afterward, we rushed out to play backyard tackle football in the brisk afternoons with the other kids. So, being a pretty dense little boy, I would forget every summer how un-fun little league was and sign up. The first clue that woke me up was the annual 'molding of the mouth-guard.' Of course, mouth-guards were required before you could suit up for practice and, so, you boiled the hard plastic until it got soft and comfortable in your mouth and then it hardened again around your teeth and gums. -Not comfortable, especially during a game when it cut your mouth and prevented easy breathing when you were already gasping and doubled over. But they helped in the summer heat when colliding with the others during tackling drills like Bull-in-the-Ring. One of the ONLY times I remembered my mom playing Mother Hen was one afternoon when she confronted the coach about the wisdom of little kids being involved with helmet on helmet contact over and over. I was mortified that she had stepped in to basically protect me from the coach.

Ah, coaches. Little league football coaches are well-adjusted guys that are not trying to relive their lost youth, especially in small Southern towns in the 1970's. Yep. On second thought, they could be kind of like today's youth soccer coaches but with 75 more pounds and 75 fewer I.Q. points. But I stuck with it because I didn't want to give up and I wanted to be like my older brothers. Stretch was a wide receiver who switched to first base in high school and Bobby was a rarity, even back then. He 'looked like me' and was a star running back and defensive cornerback on the area Pop Warner powerhouse. He never played high school ball though and I never knew why for sure. We were new in town and coaches often played favorites and friend's kids often got the best slots. Bobby sure was fast though. 

That left me. I was relegated to some sh*t position like offensive guard every year. This position basically meant sprinting and bashing into people. I could go whole seasons without touching the ball in a game. This was broken up by huddles that consisted of learning when 'hike' would be called and listening to the cocky jerk de jour quarterback tell the 'athletes' which receiving routes to run. I watched the better-looking cheerleaders and scarfed concession stand Marathon bars (remember those?) to break up the monotony. 

Playing football at seven years of age, I arguably experienced many of the basic things that 20th Century American men where supposed to learn; being on top meant glory and girls, being on the bottom meant a lot of order taking and sweaty labor, aggressive male-on-male rivalry, following orders through a chain-of-command. I guess that the question is "Today, do our boys need more or less of this at a young age?" -I honestly don't know. Didn't kill ME. Thoughts?

Trailer Trad Raleigh: Boylan Bungelows

Boylan Heights is a little enclave that sits in the shadows of the Raleigh downtown but it's quite overlooked by many who aspire to live 'Inside the Beltline.' Funky without being overly-so, the neighborhood was built at the turn of the 20th Century and retains nearly all of the Sears Roebuck houses and other shingle-style homes of the period without being too "Ye Olde-ified." Hmm... could be a nice little walk or bike to work for your's truly one of these days....

 

I stopped  by a teeny little farmer's market in the Boylan Heights neighborhood on my walk and had a great time talking with the North Carolina farmers about their produce and meat. Chinese cabbage, radishes, purple green beans, and assorted peppers for Lil' Bean and fresh, free-range bratwursts for me. Went straight German with Brats in beer with an onion and then I popped in the fresh, purple beans which turned the more familiar green as they pan cooked in the carmelized demi-glaze. What a fantastic, classic Octoberfest meal served with a nice Sierra Nevada Torpedo. "Strong performance Dad," was Little Bean's critique. 

Trailer Trad Transport: Goin' (Jeep) Commando!

 
I spotted this very nice vehicle the other day in my neighborhood. It's an open-air back seat Jeep Commando and its pretty darned cool. The paint is spot-on hunter green and not too much has been done to mess it up. However, the model probably wouldn't be my first choice between, say, an International Harvester Scout II or Land Cruiser in the same color and condition. For one thing, I believe this is an early 1970's AMC vehicle. -No offense Mitt (Romney's dad was once CEO of AMC I believe) but I don't dig that brand very much. Must be those Pacer flashbacks. Second, I think that some of these were actually called 'Jeepster' instead of Jeep. Jeepster? -Sounds a little too cute for me. For example, would Hum-Vee ever allow itself to be called The Hum-Vee-Ster? -On second thought, I guess 'Hummer' isn't that great either!

But despite these quibbles, this vintage Commando is just right and some Broughton H.S. kid or NC State frat boy is very lucky to drive it around during these beautiful early Autumn days in Raleigh.

Trailer Trad Time Travel: Washington D.C.'s Center Market

I found these cool old photos of the long-gone Center Market at the National Archives Flicker page. The market was located where the National Archives is today, bounded by Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Ave, 7th Street, and 9th Street, NW. It was designed by Adolph Cluss and was built in 1871. It was demolished in the 1920s presumably to make way for the present Archives building.

 

Photo credit: National Archives

Trailer Trad-gedy: Funny Founders

The web comedy "I Made America" released in 2012 features The Founding Fathers as 'fish-out-of-water' comedy fodder that provides more than a few chuckles. A right-wing political action committee gets tired of always wishing that TJ and rest were around today to fix things and figures out a way to teleport them to modern Chicago. In one episode, their overseer from the PAC brings them Chinese takeout. "Ah, food from the Orient!" Ben says. Funny.

Trailer Trad Collecting: Late Summer Finds (reshown)

At first blush, this lamp looks like an ordinary study lamp, doesn't it? I found it in the basement of an estate sale and it is considered to be an important piece of Bauhaus design. Designed by Christian Dell for the German manufacturer Kaiser Idell in the Forties, its streamlined design and great manufacturer's stamp on the top will look great on my desk.

More shop stools. I've come to favor the steel ones with weathered oak seats. I acquired the short one on the left this past weekend. It may have been used by porters and ticket takers on America's railroads during the Thirties and Forties.

North Carolina is a very beautiful state and I'm blessed to be here. Which is the State more noted for; its mountains, its Piedmont, its Sandhills or its miles of beautiful coast? Sometimes, I think that its wonderful western, mountain region is given short shrift. That's why I was so glad to find this wonderful poster from the U.S. Forest Service.

It is a nice, large size poster in it's original oak frame. How old is it? It could be from the Fifties but I'd guess that it is considerably older. Notice that the road is referred to as a 'Turnpike' or a fairly major road. -But it's a dirt road! And it's also hand-colored, which also places it in the Early Fifties, at latest.
I found this 1940s Indian blanket hanging in a closet of an estate sale. The colors are great and look great on my Mission Oak rocker.
This piece of folk art is a 1930s era water tower from an 'O-Gauge' train set-up. I sold the other pieces, like the ticket station and the lighted bridge, but kept this statuesque tower for myself.

What can I say about this leatherette and steel lounge chair? Makes me want to open up my collar and listen to it's wisdom. "Listen," it would say. "I went through times like this in the Seventies. -Go to the bar and order something with bourbon in it and make it Jim Beam-no small batch rubbish. Then, come back here and recline. No argument."

It must have been hard to sell refridgerators to homeowners one hundred years ago. "We will sell you this thing that will sit in the corner and keep things from rotting." "-Really?" This Turn of the Century salesman's sample was meant to help people invision what an 'Alaska' brand ice box would look like. A lot easier than lugging around an actual example!