by david allan van nostrand | Jul 20, 2026 | Americana, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine, The world around us, Young moderns
My concept of hobos was taught me by tv. The first I remember was a hobo that came thru Mayberry. Opie liked him right away, but the hobo turned out to be a ne’er-do-well that was teaching bad habits to the gullible kid. Andy put a stop to it, of course. TV and movies...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 13, 2026 | Americana, Items in the News, The 1960s, The Wayback Machine
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters didn’t sing moon-June-spoon songs like most white bands. Their songs were considered by many to be raunchy, a catchall word that captures things earthy, sexual, and vulgar. Their 1954 song Annie Had a Baby was salacious (“She can’t...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 29, 2026 | Americana, Inventions, Items in the News, The Wayback Machine
Three very bad man are after the money they think Audrey Hepburn has because her husband stole it from them and he has turned up dead, thrown from a train in his pajamas. The police gave her the small travel bag they found with his body. Inside were a few francs, a...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 15, 2026 | Americana, Herds, Marketing, Rituals
Butch Cassidy’s Hole-in-the-Wall Gang were mostly robbers of banks, stagecoaches, and trains at gunpoint, sometimes dramatically, as portrayed in a dynamite explosion the gang set off when Woodcock stubbornly wouldn’t part with Mister E. H. Harriman’s money. But to...
by david allan van nostrand | May 17, 2026 | Americana, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine
Daniel Webster was America’s most famous orator, statesman and congressman of the early 1800s. As a lawyer, he argued more than 200 cases before the United States Supreme Court. Old Dan’l’s oratory was so strong that it would last for hours and leave...
by david allan van nostrand | May 11, 2026 | Americana, Fads, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine
In 1859, the Great Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge on a tightrope. Then he did it with a wheelbarrow, blindfolded, on stilts, and carrying his manager piggyback. In 1876, Maria Spelterini crossed the same gorge by tightrope, the only woman to do so. And in 1901, Maud...
