JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

The December 31, 1920 edition of the Pasadena Post spotlighted (mostly) grinning photos of the paper's staff and local businessmen. Given my penchant for going down research rabbit holes related to anything quirky I stumble upon, this series will look at some of the stories behind the smiling faces.  Pasadena Post, December 31, 1920. He might be smiling out of habit but, based on the information I found about Clarke Bogardus, he may have hid plenty of pain behind that grin. At age 17 he enlisted for service in the First World War, ending up in an ambulance unit.  During the Second Battle of the Marne in August 1918 he, according to his obituary, "contracted a disease from which he never fully recovered."  Pasadena Post, June 5, 1920. After the war, he wrote the Post 's "Motor Gossip" column. He later established an advertising agency and was involved in Pasadena Preferred, an organization promoting local growth. By the late 1940s local papers periodically p...

August 14, 1947 was a busy day on the global history front. British rule in India ended, as the subcontinent anxiously prepared to split into the new nations of India and Pakistan. In Germany, 22 former attendants at the Buchenwald concentration camp were sentenced to hang ("22 NAZIS TO DIE FOR ATROCITIES" screamed the Star 's main headline). In Tel Aviv, violence between Arabs and Jews escalated, leading to fears, according to the Globe and Mail, of "the worst racial conflict in the Holy Land since 1939." At home, Torontonians endured a week-long heat wave which was blamed for causing two deaths that day: a 60-year-old man who suffered heat prostration and was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Mike's Hospital, and another man who died at his home on Lauder Avenue. Temperatures hovered between 90 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit around the province, and were accompanied by high humidity. The heat caused factories to close early. In Ottawa, government offices clos...

Illustrated by Betty Maw. Originally appeared in the April 1942 issue of The Canadian Forum . - JB

Back in March, I posted a series of ads of meat products with varying degrees of edibility produce by Burns & Co. in the late 1940s. Fine products such as Spork , Speef and tinned fried hamburgers . Turns out I missed at least one ad in the Burns campaign. The potatoes in the hash are finely chopped alright - it's hard to distinguish them from the corned beef or whatever bovine byproduct was tossed in the vat. One can still find versions of franks n' beans in the musical fruit section, but how many claim to have a "delightful oriental-spiced tomato sauce"? My guess? A dash of soy sauce. As for the chile con carne, how spicy is a Spanish smile? If compared to types of pepper, would such a smile rank as bell, jalapeno or Scotch Bonnet? Source : National Home Monthly, July 1948