Posted 8 years ago
Indianabot…
(859 items)
"Old Crow" whiskey was very well known for the large variety of advertising figures used to promote their product. The first picture shows the crows that stand around 33" tall. The other three pictures show some variety of smaller advertising pieces that were used.
Back in the day at my catholic elementary school St. Veronica's (1-8 grade), we had a carnival every year in a huge green canvas army tent with booths to play games to raise money for the school/church. Big burly men with a giant truck would come during the school week, and sledgehammer big tent poles right into the blacktop of the yard and raise that huge tent. I can still smell that tent in the hot sun.
The entire tent was lit day and night with strings of naked light bulbs strung on wires down the center of the tent and over each booth. The hot, heady, dusty, musty smell of the canvas and the heat and the strange shadows cast by the light bulbs still are etched in my mind. It was fantastic! The only sunlight was through two large flaps for entrance & exit.
Among the booths of ping pong ball goldfish & turtle bowls, carnival glass toss, mystery grab bag fishing booths; many of the games were 'wheel of fortune' types where they had a numbered mat and a numbered wheel. You placed one thin dime on the numbered mat, and they spun the wheel. One of the more popular booths was the Liquor booth. The salami booth was another winner!
I remember playing the liquor booth every year, and winning me sainted Irish grandmother, Ruth Finn Rogers herself, a bottle of Old Crow several times! I think the first time, I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Yes, they let the kids play it, but you had to have a parent with you to take your prize! I was so PROUD to win that booze because my grandmother 'needed' it so much!!
She'd come down almost every weekend from San Francisco for dinner at our house in San Bruno. She and my mother would drink Whiskey or Bourbon Old Fashions. (Pops was a Vodka/Tonic guy.) Every time she'd take a sip of that first drink, she'd lift it up and say "First one today, and God knows I need it"! LOL - funny thing is, she only ever had the one!
Saturday night was always a huge Dungeness crab feed & dance. Monday at school, the stink of the crab shells, spent liquor & cigarette butts in the dumpsters was pretty rank!
Everytime I see Old Crow - I think of all that! Ahh - memories!
Awesome Celiene....loved that story!
Great memories Celiene...thanks for sharing them.