Yoo-Hoo or boo-hoo?

One of the interesting things about shopping at Tractor Supply is that they have candy you don't see elsewhere. Your average gas station has to make room for the 98,000 varieties of Reese's, so they don't have space for Big Hunk Bar or Mallo Cup. Or this.  

As an adult who remembers Yoo-Hoo chocolate drinks fondly, I felt compelled to purchase this candy bar. I'm not sure Yoo-Hoo is well known outside the northeast, where it originated in 1928 (in New Jersey, to be specific). Yogi Berra was a pitchman for it for decades. In the eighties it was still considered a regional favorite.

Yoo-Hoo is not exactly chocolate milk, as its unusual composition allows it to stay fresh at room temperature, and its more watery consistency puts some folks off. But there's no denying it has a very particular type of chocolate flavor that most people enjoy. 

It that way it is like Hershey milk chocolate, and for the same reason -- bizarre American inventiveness. Milton Hershey was already rich from his caramel business when he decided to get in on the ground floor of the milk chocolate craze that was sweeping Europe. He went to Switzerland to learn the secret -- making milk chocolate is a lot more complicated than you'd think -- but the Swiss wouldn't tell him. So Milton just invented his own process, resulting in that unique sour-milk tang that sets Hershey's apart from all the other milk chocolate to this day. 

Similarly, juice bottler Natale Olivieri set out to make a chocolate beverage and just worked it out on his own, using canning methods to make a shelf-stable chocolate drink. Thus, nothing else tastes quite like a Yoo-Hoo.

Or does it? Does this Yoo-Hoo branded chocolate bar have the same taste? That is what I set out to discover. 

And the answer is -- not really. I kind of thought it did, and then maybe it didn't, so I bought a bottle of Yoo-Hoo to compare it directly. I have to say no; it's similar but not the same as the unusual Yoo-Hoo flavor. 

Here's why:  

Yes, the Easter candy giant Palmer of Reading, Pennsylvania, manufactures the Yoo-Hoo chocolate bar under license. Palmer chocolate is the sort that you give to kids, because they don't know enough to be discriminating in the least. It's fine -- but it's not great. And I think they failed to really capture the Yoo-Hoo taste. So while there's nothing wrong with it -- hey, even so-so chocolate is still chocolate -- I fear it does not live up to its label. But it’s still a break from the 98,000 Reese’s varieties.

So that's my report for today. It's been a while since I did one of these, taking a caloric hit for the team to help you spend your candy allowance wisely. You're welcome! 

Axcents.

As you may know, I grew up within the friendly confines of the Five Boroughs, raised by parents who had grown up in Brooklyn and Queens. My father was a real dese-and-dose guy, possessor of a classic accent most associated with New York. A friend of mine had fun with the meme generator regarding the way we speak:

The last one's an expression rather than an accent, but ask anyone who grew up before 2000 in the city what they call ground beef and you're likely to be told chop meat.

The New York accent has spread to New Jersey, counties of the lower Hudson Valley, and a good ways out into Long Island, as the blue-collar population moved to the 'burbs in fits and starts in the postwar era. But what we think of as the New York City accent is much different from what people in the Civil War period considered a New York accent. I don't know much about it, but some examples of now-extinct northern American speech are detailed here.  

What people consider a street-level New York accent was spread and has been perpetuated by the movies. Wise-crackin' cabbies, surly cops, gum-chewin' secretaries, tough private eyes, all kinds of New York City working stiffs populated the pictures, and America loved 'em. 

Curious accentologists will find a good summary at a Wikipedia page, believe it or not. It notes that some of the classic features formerly associated with the New York accent, like goil for girl, are extinct in practice. I suspect that the spread of Italian Brooklyn accents in New York wiped that out, making the New Yorker sound less like Moe and Curly ("a woise guy, eh?") and more like Vinnie Barbarino ("Whussup?"). 

Obviously the city has been crisscrossed with different ethnicities and languages and foreign accents over the centuries, making an ever-changing mélange. I wouldn't want to be a professor of this stuff, because by the time you catalog it, it's different. O. Henry wrote of New York, "It'll be a great place if they ever finish it," but that will never happen any more than the accent will stay put. 

Standing on rocks.

Just a brief observation today, apropos of nothing: Guys like to stand on rocks. Gals too.

I was in the dog park, with the dogs, because it's silly to go without them, and there are a bunch of trees and agility toys and water bowls and such around, and also large rocks here and there. I found myself standing on one such boulder while watching the boys. Why? Well, in the dog park it's nice to stand somewhere that you can suppose the dogs haven't pooped on, but as I reflected on this I realized I always stand on rocks. I think you do too. Standing on rocks in water is actually #15 on the list of All Instragram Photos Looking the Same.

The urge to climb on a rock, small or large, is even stronger than the urge to climb a tree. Put any male of any age, and any tomboy of any age, next to a tree, and that person is eyeing the lower branches thinking, "Maybe..." But that person is probably already standing on a rock.

Try it yourself. Throw a party this Labor Day. Move a big old boulder into the yard. Soon as things get going some boy will be standing on it. Later, some beer-powered manboy will stand on it. Further on, someone's Aunt Tillie will stand on it. This actually works even without beer, although that moves things along.

I think this urge may go back with us quite a ways.

Just gotta get on that thing.

There is something vaguely satisfying about standing on a rock, even if it doesn't improve your view at all. A king-of-the-hill feeling.

I even remember walking late at night on a jetty on the Jersey shore, happily going from slick black rock to slick black rock, until my foot went in between a couple of them and I broke my fall by slapping my hand down on a rock, hard. I'm sure it would have been more painful if I'd been sober, but in that case it wouldn't have happened. My hand swelled up some and hurt for months. It could have been worse.

I'm not one to go climbing big rocks like those knuckleheads in advertisements who are shown clinging to a cliff by one hand. I never remember what they're selling -- cars? Travel? Life insurance? I always admire how much faith they put in their helmets while dangling three hundred feet above the ground. Yeah, that'll save you.

No, I just want a nice big rock to stand on for a moment or two, and that will settle me down. Maybe a tree with really strong limbs nearby. Not too tall. Just tall enough for me to climb a ways up and yell "I'm king of the world!" Then the fire department can get me down.

Summer sag.

I think it's safe to say that we've reached the point in August when summer has overstayed its welcome. The Great Lileks once blogged that all seasons do. You hit a point when the thing that the season is best known for becomes a drag. The hairy canines are certainly tired of it.

But to be fair, this has been nowhere near a really hot summer, just a really soggy one. Local reports in the northeast about the rainfall have been leading with the unlucky car dealer in Little Falls, New Jersey, whose inventory went for a short and unhappy sail. And we can't blame this one on Hurricane Shlomo or whatever; this is just been flat-out rain.

Everyone is out of sorts. If you had a vacation, it is over; if you didn't, like me, you want to kill everyone who did. I know retired guys -- pretty much all of them on government pensions, or phone company pensions, which is the same thing -- who went on vacation to "get away from it all." Get away from WHAT? You're RETIRED. But I just smile, nod, and plot revenge.

Nah, that would take effort, and it's too humid for effort.

I do appreciate that being away can be relaxing, even if you're going to someplace very similar to home. I know moms who have gone to "get away from it all" to a rental house where they still have to cook for their ungrateful families. And it's not like a parent is every really on vacation, not unless you've managed to dump the kids on Grandma. But when you're someplace for which you are not responsible, you can breathe a little easier. The roof needs shingles. Lick o' paint would help the bathroom. These windows are looking old. Well, that's the owner's problem, not mine. So you can relax.

Unless, like me, when you do travel, you expect to come back to find that the house that you do own has burned to the foundation.

I think the ideal vacation for me would be to be sedated for a week. Knock me out Sunday, wake me up the following Saturday. Just five solid days of sleep. Right now that sounds like the greatest resort in the world.

Where in Hell am I?

In giving out directions to our house, we and those who receive them have noted that they differ in small but potent ways from those offered by Google Maps, Garmin, and other GPS services. It's not surprising. Good as these technical assistants are, they don't live here.

Determinism supposes that to know everything is to be able to predict everything, but even Google doesn't know everything. The locals would know which road is shorter even if less direct, which road is a total speed trap, which road takes you to the part of town where drug dealers rule the streets.

The latter happened to us in the scenic and historic town of Paterson, New Jersey, the state's tenth most dangerous town (but they try harder!). It's a town full of dead factories and abandoned buildings. While trying to get back to I-80 one night, Garmin sent us all over the place, and eventually straight to the worst neighborhood in town. Twice. In my brand-new car.

I thought I'd done something stupid, until I happened to hear another guy complain that the exact same thing happened to him, in Paterson.

Garmin was either trying to kill us, or just didn't have all the facts.

Sometimes I would fight Garmin over an issue, like I got wind of a backup ahead due to a tractor trailer incident or something ("Major problems on the 287 where a truck full of condoms has collided with a truck carrying chicken parts; police blame delays on rubbernecking"). If I pulled off the highway to seek another route, it would try to direct me right back to the problem I was trying to avoid. Eventually it would say huffily, "Recalculating." I'd offended it.

Look, Garmin, if your directions require me to drive through Hell, I'm not doing it, okay?

Norway's a little out of my way.

It makes me worry that self-driving cars and trucks are going to be a problem. Not that I think they'll crash through "Bridge Out" barriers and plunge into lakes---although we can't rule that out---but that I think they'll be forced to take bad routes, be hijacked constantly, and run things and people over to protect their own contents. They'll make instantaneous but poor judgments. They may even be worse drivers than we are!

Go figure.

Hobroken.

Looks like my working from home led me to miss all the fun in Hoboken yesterday.

I went through Hoboken to get to Manhattan for years. On our side of the scenic lower Hudson Valley, you have a choice if you want to take a train to Manhattan: Cross the river by car and pick up a train that goes straight to Midtown, or take a train close to home that goes through New Jersey. Used to be you would have to go through Hoboken, then take the PATH train to Midtown or to downtown; then they opened Secaucus Junction, which offered a transfer direct to Penn Station.

I expect Secaucus is going to get a lot more business starting tomorrow.

It's hard to tell from this or the other pictures, but the tracks are below the platform, and the tracks end in a large springlike cushion that helps stop a train coming in faster than the regulated 10 miles per hour. I can't understand how this happened.

Before the train gets into Hoboken it runs slowly (very slowly, if you have an important meeting first thing in the morning) along a stretch where there is nothing but switches and control towers and stuff that I have no idea what it is. There is no way that this train blew into the station without being seen moving too fast. Was there was warning? Did someone announce on the PA at Hoboken, "Get the hell away from Track Two!" Not from what I've heard.

But didn't the engineer know what was happening, and call in "Hey, I can't stop!"? He was treated at the hospital and released, so it wasn't apparently a terroristic action. Those guys usually make sure they get killed along with a lot of people. (I admit it was my first thought when I heard the news.)

So there's a million questions right now and very few answers. I feel terrible for everyone involved, from the woman who was killed to the many who were injured to those who are just going to be terribly inconvenienced. There's no way into town that is not jam-packed at rush hour, and when something happens that disrupts one of the travel methods it makes the others more miserable for everybody.

For the record, the train that crashed was on the Pascack Valley Line, which is not the one I took. But the woman who was killed was not actually on the train, but on the platform. Hoboken Terminal averages 15,101 passenger boardings each weekday, and everyone I know up here who's taken the train has been through that terminal. I guess it could have been me, but as always, it could have been anybody.

Smell like Bruce.

I came upon an interesting bit of disputed trivia, about Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, 1960s teenage boys, soap, and maybe Star Trek.

As Springsteen fans know, his first real band when he was a short, skinny teenage dork in Freehold, New Jersey, was called the Castiles. Brucebase reports that the band played at least 115 shows, and also made some recordings.

The site also reports that the band was named "after a brand of soap." Peter Ames Carlin, in his book Bruce, said the name of the band was a "tribute to Castile shampoo, the brand local teams seemed to favor".

They're both right and wrong, I think.

Castile is not a brand of soap but a kind of soap; as Webster's tells us, castile soap is not made from animal fat, as many soaps are, but is "a fine hard bland soap made from olive oil and sodium hydroxide" or other vegetable oils, originally associated with Spain's Castile region. Back in the 1960s there was not quite the preponderance of soaps that there is today, and certainly nothing like the vast variety of shampoos. I found precious few trademarks on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site using the name "castile" that dated to that era. So who was making castile soap when the Castiles began playing in 1965?

Kirk's Castile Soap, made with coconut rather than olive oil, has been around since 1839, and is still around today. I suspect this was the soap that the boys in the Freehold area liked, and it would have been perfectly acceptable to use it as a shampoo too. (Pace Carlin, although Kirk's makes a shampoo now, but I would guess that they didn't fifty years ago.)

Bottom line: If I'm right, you can find out what Bruce and his buddies smelled like in 1965 by buying some Kirk's. I got this bar at Walmart.

Is it worth the effort? Well, if you're into non-animal-fat soap, I suppose this is a good option. It's not expensive; it's a nice, soft soap, feels pleasant on the skin, and doesn't seem to be any more drying or less effective at cleaning than your average bar soap. The scent is mild, not perfumey, and not at all coconutty, at least to me, so you don't smell like a big piña colada as you mosey down the boardwalk.

As for the Star Trek thing: I was just imagining if the Castiles had actually used the brand name rather than the type of their favorite soap, and called themselves the Kirks. In 1965 they might have sounded like a religious folk group from Scotland. But in September of 1966, they would have sounded like Star Trek fanatics. And they kept playing until 1968, so the name might have grown uncomfortable.

I guess they could have changed it to the E Street Band or something.

Eat more chicken.

I've been doling out some classic recipes from cookbooks I inherited, all of these promotional cookbooks from various food and drink cookbooks. We've so far enjoyed the wok cookbook, the Coke cookbook, the beer cookbook, the Waring Blendor cookbook, and Sue Swanson's cookbook from the days when Swanson was a major chicken company on its own.

Those days of the mighty C. A. Swanson & Sons were in the 50's; by the time the late 80's rolled around, Swanson was a small trademark owned by Campbell's, and the only Swanson products were canned poultry and broth, as now. (And the frozen dinners too, but they were on the way out.)

So the cookbooks in the late 80's were small, and sad.

The cover is not too bad, but the interior is all black print, no recipe pictures.

The labels on the Swanson stuff have not changed much, but we know roughly when this booklet came out. How?

Because the 20-cent coupon expired on October 31, 1990. Which was a Wednesday, BTW, in case you do your shopping on Friday.

Most of the recipes in the booklet are pretty typical, some chicken salads, soups, some more complicated meat dishes that required broth. Nothing inspiring, nothing too awful.

Except maybe these:

Yes, that is a recipe for Reuben sandwiches made with canned chicken instead of corned beef.

Whichever Reuben came up with the sandwich would be rolling over in his grave. Unless he was still alive in 1990, in which case maybe he was just rolling over. Oh, who knows.

I'm not a big fan of the Reuben sandwich, but I respect it. There is a possibility you might not mind these Swanson Reubens too much. The power of the sauerkraut and the Russian dressing might overwhelm the bland chicken and help you not miss the corned beef. But if you're going to all this trouble to get the cocktail rye and the sauerkraut and the shredded Swiss, why not go the extra yard and get the actual corned beef? Or if you must ruin it with canned meat, why not ruin it with canned corned beef?

Campbell's, as a company, may not be that bright even now. Certainly they've done nothing for their hometown of Camden, New Jersey, which is supposedly even worse than Newark and Paterson, and I've been lost in both of those. I may have to split my Campbell's expenditures on outfits like Progresso (General Mills), College Inn (Del Monte), and Valley Fresh (Hormel) until Campbell's gets it act together.

Reubens with canned chicken. Feh.

Scary!

We hear occasionally that the economy is doing swell now, free from all the doldrums that have plagued us during the slowest economic recovery ever. But I have my doubts. Most of the evidence I can offer is anecdotal, and as we know, the plural of anecdote is not data.

One anecdote comes from Route 17 in New Jersey. As all Tri-State Areans (Areans? Is that a word?) know, Route 17 takes you through Paramus, one of the nation's great retail corridors. Mile after mile of chain stores, restaurants, mom & pop shops, fast-food joints, International House of Pancakes, specialty shops, banks, appliance stores, furniture stores, bookstores, pet stores, grocery stores, sporting good shops, etc, etc. etc. When the Internet boom started to kill off brick and mortar stores, Paramus endured. But the last seven years have seen many longstanding shops close, of various kinds (specialty sporting goods seem hard hit, from my observation). 

But don't worry! Help is on the way!

In the former location of an Eastern Mountain Sports is a Halloween store, replete with all your Halloween needs. Spirit is the largest chain of these I've seen, but this is another. They possess a dead retail location for six weeks or so leading up until October 31, then they disappear, leaving the space empty for another ten and a half months (unless lightning strikes and a new full-time tenant moves in). On a bus going north through Paramus on September 18 I counted three such temporary Halloween shops along Route 17.

On the east side of the road. There were more on the west side.

And a Party City.

I guess it's better than leaving the stores empty to rot, but this seems like an awful lot of Halloween. I have to wonder if we've reached peak Halloween. The National Retail Federation expects a big year, but spending was down in 2013 from 2012. Because of the economy. Which is doing better. Despite all the empty stores along Route 17 in Paramus.

So who the hell knows.

Interestingly, these same empty stores don't open as temporary Christmas retail locations. It's probably because every store becomes a Christmas retail location, even hardware stores---less so for Halloween, so there's a bigger opportunity.

But then again, it might be because Christmas is good...and Halloween is eeeeeeeviiiil!!!

Ooooh! Scary!