Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
A stack of Guideposts and Plus magazines
Date: Late '80s to early '90s
Discovered at: Overland Park estate sale
The Cover Promises: "Orville Redenbacher: Nobody wanted his popcorn."
From the deeply depressed to those bored at their aunt's house, each month millions of Americans page glumly through Guideposts, the inspirational leaflet for people who find Parade too hardcore.
Founded by positive-thinking kingpin Norman Vincent Peale and his wife back in 1945, Guideposts balms its readers' fears of change with gentle reassurance. Are you upset that America today doesn't feel exactly like you thought it did that one night you were sick and your mother rubbed your chest with Vicks Vap-O-Rub? Then lay down with a stack of Guideposts!
That's from the January 1990 issue. Note the mopiness ("The whole world except me"), the fear-based over-reaction ("I decided I would quit my job"), and the narcissistic belief that minor changes to our lives will result in apocalpytic horrors ("What if I hooked into the wrong system and sent planes to Russia?") Get Guideposts cranky, and it could be Fox News.
But like all Guideposts stories, Linda Neukrug's computer piece has a happy ending. The last lines:
"Each day I found it a little less scary and myself a little more wise -- wise enough not to be scared of change. And to show you how I know this is so, I even (eventually) typed this story on my computer."
And that computer grew up to be Paul Harvey!
(Also, chillingly, just as Linda Neukrug came to know computers, computers would one day come to know Linda Neukrug.)
Also in this issue:
A six-page spread on the topic of "Honesty." (Next month: Courtesy!)
Article "Sauerkraut, Sauerkraut," which opens with "Sauerkraut! Wonderful sauerkraut" and closes with "Thank You, God, for sauerkraut."
An invitation to enjoy a holy stone suppository.
Anyway, here's some deeply sad covers from Guideposts and its sister publication Plus: The Magazine of Positive Thinking.
So, lonely Americans -- even celebrities -- need to learn to be our own best friends until such time as God consents to fashion a mate for us to luck into at the world's worst restaurant.
It's not hard to imagine that some readers of these magazines might harbor some dark, secret thoughts: Should I leave this family? Could painkillers numb me until I stop caring? Should I do whatever I can to take some of these bastards down with me?
The most depressing cover of all addresses these thoughts directly.
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These covers were making me feel pretty bad about myself until I saw Miss Teen Georgia's. I will do it, Miss Teen Georgia, I will!
Real funny stuff. But you could take practically any magazine from the 80's and early 90's and pillory its style. Culture has a way of evolving and making the culture of the past look like a joke. Guideposts today looks nothing like the Guideposts of the past, and contains stories that are very much relevant in today's world. People like feel good stories, and always will.
My aunt doesn't read these, but my sister does, and she's in her 20s. She knows they're cheesy but she says "Sometimes I just want to feel good for a while." The day "Pay It Forward" comes out on Blu-Ray, I'm buying her a player.
Is Miss Teen Georgia's cover quote actually an invitation to "just do HER"? Oh my lack of God! I always suspected that pageants worked that way.
BTW, her hair is AWESOMELY the Nineties!
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