By ALAN SCHERSTUHL
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Trailblazer's Almanac and Pioneer Book
Date: 1975
Discovered at: Brass Armadillo Antique Mall, Grain Valley, Missouri
The Cover Promises: In America, the tree bark peels like banana skin.
Representative Quote:
page 23, “Moles have an extremely remarkable sense of precision.”
A compendium of forecasts, horoscopes, oddball facts and advertisements for only the most embarrassing of products, the 1975 edition of Trailblazer's Almanac and Pioneer Book is hardly designed for hardy folk hero-types like the buckskinned elf on the cover. Instead, it's aimed squarely at a vanishing demographic: depressed, trivia-collecting farmers who pay as much attention to moon phases as Catholic newlyweds of the 1950s.
Today, it stands as a chilling portrait of the hardships afflicting family farmers even in the 1970s, perhaps the last decade in which they had a chance.
A typical ad suggests the difficulties of soil cultivation...
...but also the all-American belief that new products will make the difference.
The difference between joy and torture: the Troy-Bilt 2-in-1 Roto-Tiller Power Composter.
Between the ads, Trailblazer's Almanac gets down to the business of prognostication. Sometimes, it's undeniably helpful.
Sometimes, it misses the mark.
Between forecasts, Trailblazer's Almanac offers icebreakers perfect for the moments after you and your kind have squatted down on your hams but before you feel up to puzzling over how the country turned mean.
Mostly, though, this makes farm-life seem like hell. Ads for pep pills, mail-order wives and funeral insurance abound. Among other things, the advertisers assume the following about Trailblazer's Almanac and Pioneer Book readers:
* Flat-chestedness.
* Loneliness, with an anti-miscegenationist tinge.
* A fear of man and beast.
* Incontinence.
* But not, like, girly incontinence.
* A secret wish to luck out of farming.
* Depressing dreams.
Highlight:
A full page ad titled "The Lazy Man's Way to Riches" opens with a boast of how it will trick you -- the incontinent, wifeless, under-developed, whites-only farmer dreaming of saw-sharpening and pirate's booty -- into mailing ten dollars to Joe Karbo.
... this ad took about 2 hours to write. With a little luck, it should earn me 50, maybe a hundred thousand dollars.What's more, I'm going to ask you to send me 10 dollars for something that'll cost me no more than 50 cents. And I'll try to make it so irresistible that you'd be a darned fool not to do it.
Karbo goes on to brag that his home is worth $100,000, that he only works 8 or 9 months a year, that he has stocks, bonds, two boats, a Cadillac and time to spend with his family. He promises his “Lazy Man's Secret” doesn't require “education.”
Or “capital.”
Or “luck,” “talent” or “youth.”
It demands just one thing: belief.
In Joe Karbo and his accountant, whose name is available upon request.
Click for more exciting "Studies in Crap!"
Showing 1-7 of 7
What�s that, Party Host? Do you need your Catholic kin? Well I am still here�still trying to get SOMEONE�ANYONE to pay attention to me. Hillary has been eyeballing me pretty harshly lately and if folks don�t start paying attention to me, I am sure to �commit suicide�, or whatever the code word is that Clintons use before they whack you.
As such, I want to be on the record right now that I DO care about your plight. I can say as a Catholic that your pig castration is in full alignment with the moon. In fact, if Amtrak goes there, I would be happy to attend and speak to whatever size crowd you can muster. Just don�t tell them I am coming�that tends to keep people from attending for whatever reason.
We are hopeful that on his way to the Damascus of economic crisis, McCain has what we Catholics like to call an epiphany about the debates and heads to Mississippi instead so your pig party can proceed as you planned. See you there!
John McCain has called for a suspension of crap archving until the straightening out of the financial markets!
I felt that torture when I squatted down on my hams and got castrated. Can you send me a Rupture-Easer, but make it a 2-in-1 Troy-Bilt if you know what I mean? My nutsack still feels worse than a buckskinned elf at an orc barbeque.
Also, since I no longer have nuts, maybe toss in a Wate-On?
Wake up and pay attention to what your posting!!! And show some hometown pride!!! The Rupture Easer is available by mailing to 811 Wyandotte in KC, MO, which is totally convenient for me during my twice a year ruptures.
Damn! My pig castration party is scheduled for Friday evening (so we can watch the debates afterward), and I forgot to check the 2008 prognostics.
Perhaps my Catholic kin can give me a calendar update...
like
dislike
