More anniversaries

Jan 20 is one of my anniversary dates.

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When I got out of prison, my first experience with independent life was in this duplex in Stillwater. I restarted college on Jan 20, 1970.

My Zenith Trans-Oceanic helped to pull me out of the walls and back into the larger world via shortwave.

Jan 20 also marked the start of cooking and housekeeping for myself.

I was trying to do the vegetarian thing, without any cookbooks or Youtube tutorials. Most males in that era were NOT trained to cook, so it took a while to get halfway edible food let alone a balanced diet.

I’ve been cooking for myself ever since, except for some years in the ’80s when I was working long hours and relying on restaurants. Most of the time I’ve been mostly vegetarian, but no longer pretending to do it for morality. My gut simply doesn’t handle big doses of animal fat.

Now I’m trying for a more analog life, trying to get out of the digital walls and the more literal “virus” holocaust walls, so the duplex has become a symbol of independence and autonomy. Cooking is a big part of an analog life. More time in the kitchen chopping and preparing food means less time at the computer and more connection to muscles and senses.

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Admittedly the 55th anniversary of 1970 isn’t a nice round number, but I feel like marking it. Others were equally unworried by not-so-round numbers…

In the 1930s most automakers were celebrating their 10th or 25th year, or their 1 millionth or 2 millionth car. Ford was already up to 25 million.

Hudson seemingly missed its 25th so decided to mark the 26th. Author John Conde, after a long career as Nash/AMC public relations man and historian, had some professionally sympathetic fun with this dubious anniversary:

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In 32 years of writing publicity for American Motors this writer often was urged to contrive “milestone” news pictures, but none equaled this one. The occasion was Hudson’s 26th anniversary, and a 1935 publicist discovered that 2,262,810 cars had been built.

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Later they got it together for the 30th, which is at least a decade mark.

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Couple days later, a nice resonance. EnidBuzz showed a health food store at Market and Grand, owned by the same family since the 70s. The family is finally selling the building. I remember shopping there around 1973. By that time I had figured out how to cook good meatless food with ordinary ingredients from Safeway, so I wasn’t really interested in the specialized and expensive Health Foods. Before the 70s, Health Food advocates recommended ‘punishment foods’ like Wheat Germ and Seaweed and Raw Milk and Granola. Now, thanks to RFK, weirdness is back in fashion, which may push normal people away from the whole notion of good nutrition.