Don't Hold the Mayo - Spread it on these Ten things!

Don’t Hold the Mayo,  Spread it

on these 10 Things

1. Your plants!

Here’s a professional florist’s secret for making the green leaves, greener and shinier. Dab a bit of mayonnaise on a paper towel and rub it on the leaves, keeping them shiny and bright for a month or more.

2. Are you plagued by the remains of a Hillary (or Trump) for President sticker?

Don’t spend four dollars for expensive goo removers. Never scrape at it with a knife, razor blade, or a chisel. Simply rub the entire surface of the sticker with mayo and let it work for seven to ten minutes to dissolve the glue, after which you’ll easily be able to rub out Trump (or Hillary).

3. Spread it on your Head!

Pretend your hair is a forest of plants and do the same thing to your hair as you can do to your plants – make it shinier and greener (if you have green hair). But seriously folks, you can use Mayo as you would a fine and expensive hair conditioner. Load up your hand with a tablespoon full of mayo and massage it in to your hair. Cover your head, a towel will do, and wait a few minutes. After shampooing, your hair will be moisturized and have a lustrous sheen.

4. Beat that sap!

Is your car suffering from drops of sap, pine pitch and other unwanted droppings from trees? Do the birds make your car a target gallery for their disgusting little bombs? Grab the mayo and spread it on the affected areas. After a few minutes you can take a soft cloth and wipe away all the poop and goop!

5. Shed the Dead!

Tip Number Five: Remove dead skin from elbows and feet. I knew a person who used to take a sharp kitchen knife and hack away at the dead patches. Often as not she cut off the dead patches along with some live patches. This is not only painful but dangerous. Use mayo instead! Rub it on. Leave it on for ten minutes and then rub away the dead areas with a face cloth or a loofah sponge.

6.Tickle the Ivories!

If the piano keys on your piano or the one at the club, are yellow, put mayo on a cloth and tickle those ivories. Tickling sounds good, but actually you need to apply the mayo, let it sit for several minutes and then wipe off and buff the keys to make them look brand, spanking new!

7.Spurn the Burn!

Sunburn bothering you? Mayo to the rescue. Rub in the mayo on the affected areas and leave it on. You will be moisturized and the pain will be lessened.

8. Strong Nails!

Yes mayo can make your fingernails stronger. Put about an inch of mayo in a dish or a cup and tell your fingers to dive in. Keep them in for five minutes. Wash with warm water and repeat the process every week or two.

9. Remove crayon marks.

Did your kids, Picasso and Michealangelo, decorate your wooden furniture with crayons? Is it a mess? Mayo to the rescue. Slather it on, leave it for several minutes and rub it off!

10. The Top Tip!

Take it back a notch. You’ve done enough work. Time for a break. Take one teaspoon of mayo, two slices of bread, three strips of bacon, and four slices of tomato and make a great BLT!

The Lost Cities of "Pile-of-Bones" and Hot Springs

Pile-of-Bones (The City) - It went missing in 1900

Actually it was the names of Pile-of-Bones and Hot Springs that were lost, not the communities themselves. They were among a number of places in North America with names that were not considered proper. In the case of Pile-of-Bones, a group of citizens threatened to leave town if the name was not changed. In Hot Springs, the townspeople decided on a new name because of a radio broadcast. Get the story behind the story in this second installment of Bill Russo's series of tales of Lost Cities - it's the followup to the short book "Getting Rid of Swillings Mills", also available for free.        

Here's a sample from the chapter......

     

Pile of Bones

Though some communities may have acquired a genteel name through debate and perhaps voting, there was no choice for the residents of Pile-Of-Bones, Canada. The name was quickly and summarily changed shortly before the year 1900.

Pile-Of-Bones literally sprouted up from an 1882 map.  It showed that the route of the great and powerful Canadian Pacific Railroad would pass by a certain parcel of arid and featureless grassland; which had but one distinguishing characteristic - a mountain of buffalo bones that glistened when the sun shined.

The Lieutenant Governor of Canada's North-West territories just happened to own that land which quickly birthed a sleepy village. In a national scandal, the collection of shacks and shanties therein, were designated as the seat of territorial government. By the middle of the 20th century, the ragged little village of Pile-of=Bones mushroomed into a major city.

      The first 'house' built in the city of Pile-of-Bones

Today it is a capital city and the seventh largest metropolitan area in Canada. What about the name Pile-of-Bones? Apparently that handle didn’t sit well with Princess Louise, the Dutchess of Argyll. She told her hubby, the Governor General of Canada, that she wanted to name the community after her Mother, Queen Victoria of England. And thus was born the city of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

In 1900 the town had about a thousand residents.  By 1916, some 30,000 people called it home, and a hundred years later in 2016 Pile-o-Bones/Regina had a population of over 216,000 making it the second largest city in Saskatchewan.

What’s in a name?  I think the good people of Regina would say, ‘a lot’ - for it is hard to imagine that Pile-of-Bones would have grown so big without its new name.

***

The community of Hot Springs didn't lose its name because folks hated it, in fact most townspeople loved the name.  Why did they change it?  Radio.  They did it because of a radio program.  It happened at a time when radio was so powerful that one program - Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' - caused widespread panic.  But it was not an Orson Welles show that caused the name switch: it was a comedy/quiz show.  To get the rest of the story for free, follow this link...  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/742885

Think the Red Sox Started the Jimmy Fund? Guess again. It was the Boston Braves!

Everybody knows that the favorite charity of the Red Sox is the Jimmy Fund, but few people realize that the Fenway Park crowd had absolutely no involvement with the charity’s beginnings.

That honor goes to Boston’s other major league baseball team, the Braves. 

Flashback to 1948: the most exciting season in baseball history. The Boston Braves won the National League Pennant with a record of 91 and 62.  The Boston Red Sox finished the regular season with 96 victories and only 58 losses. The New York Yankees only won 94 games so the Fenway nine should have been the American League Champs; but Cleveland, led by 19 game winner ‘Bullet’ Bob Feller also won 96 games.

The fans’ hopes of a subway series between Boston’s two Major League ball-clubs were dashed when the Red Sox lost the ‘winner take all’ playoff game 8 to 3 despite Bobby Doerr’s 27^th home run of the season.

What has all this to do with the start of the Jimmy Fund?  Plenty - all season long a 12 year old boy named Einar ‘Jimmy’ Gustafson had been tuning his radio to WNAC to listen to Jim Britt call the play by play for both teams, the Braves and the Sox.  At the time only home games were broadcast, so Britt did the Sox while the Braves were away and vice versa.

Also, starting that year (1948) some games were televised on WBZ TV, Channel Four.  Jim Britt also announced those broadcasts.

Young Jimmy liked both teams at first, but there was something about the Braves.  True the Red Sox had Ted Williams, the last four hundred hitter. 

But the Braves behind Spahn and Sain, managed to beat the odds and win their first pennant since the Miracle of 1914 when they went from eighth place in mid season to first place and won their only World Series in Boston.  The team would win only two more…..one when they were the Milwaukee Braves and one more as the Atlanta Braves. 

Between them, Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn won 39 games. As for the rest of the pitching staff, all of Boston said, “Use Spahn and Sain and then pray for rain!”

Warren Spahn of the Boston Braves had 363 wins - the most of any left hander in the nearly 150 years of pro baseball.

More than anything Jimmy wanted to go to the ballpark to see his favorite team in action.

There was no chance of this because he was undergoing pioneer treatments for his cancer, under the direction of Doctor Sidney Farber (founder of the Dana-Farber Institute)

Enter Ralph Edwards, host of the wildly popular radio (and later TV) show “Truth or Consequences”.  On May 22, 1948 Ralph broadcast his show live from Jimmy’s hospital room in Boston.

Edwards spoke to Jimmy before the national radio audience of perhaps 20 million listeners.  As the 12 year old spoke with the host of the show, one after another the entire Braves team crowded into Jimmy’s room. 

“What would you like Jim?” asked Ralph Edwards.

“Since I can’t go to the ball park to watch them play, I’d really love to have a television set so I could see the Braves from my hospital bed.”

Ralph Edwards concluded the show with a plea to listeners to help Jimmy get his wish and to help Doctor Farber with his research on the new ‘chemotherapy’ treatments.

Ralph, Jimmy, and the Braves spoke, and the people listened and responded with not only enough donations to get Jimmy a television set; but they also poured in more than $200,000 to start the “Jimmy Fund”.

The Boston Braves adopted Jimmy and his fund and helped it grow bigger every year.  The Braves drew 1.5 million fans in 1948 but it was their last hurrah.  In less than a decade they would move on to Milwaukee and later Atlanta….but before he left, owner Lou Perini made a call to Tom Yawkey, owner of the Red Sox and asked him to adopt the Jimmy Fund.

Yawkey happily agreed to do so and today, about seven decades later, the Jimmy Fund can lay claim to helping save many thousands of lives as well as advancing cancer research.

What about the original Jimmy?  He had a rare form of cancer with a very low cure rate in the 1940s.  But he survived and lived quietly running his own trucking company.  He was out of the spotlight for many years. But in 1998 Jimmy threw out the first pitch at a Red Sox game to a standing ovation.

Longtime Jimmy Fund supporter Ted Williams was at the game that day and met ‘Jimmy’ for the first time.

“I’m your biggest fan” were the words spoken by one of the men.  No, it was not Jimmy speaking to Ted Williams.  It was the hall of famer himself, talking to the person who was the inspiration of the Jimmy fund.

Ted Williams - the last 400 hitter

Later at the Dana Farber Institute, Ted Williams spoke about his recent fund raising activities and said that meeting ‘Jimmy was by far the biggest thrill of my trip.”

To make a donation to the Jimmy Fund, visit the website:

http://www.jimmyfund.org/ways-to-give/

Here's the Dog You Should Get!

That's a question asked a million times a week and there are almost as many answers as there are inquiries!

Here's the advice the wiley old storekeeper Anse Peckins gives to Cisco DaSilva in the book, Jimmy Catfish:

"What kind of dog should I get to help me on my cranberry farm?"

"Well Cisco, it needs to be a working dog. There are two kinds of working dogs.  You got your herders and you got your guarders.  Obviously the guarders live in the house with you and protect you and your family.  Those are dogs like the Rottweilers, German Shepherds and Dobermans. They are loveable, big, strong and will die for you but they are not very smart.

The herders: They're the most intelligent of canines.  They will boss your herd; watch over your sheep, your mules, your cows, your horses and even your chickens.  To anybody who knows anything about herding dogs, it begins and it ends with Border Collies. They’re acrobatic, faithful, obedient, and the most intelligent and rational dogs in nature.” 

"Listen  Anse, I think I need me a pretty big dog.  What kind of size do they have?"

"You know very well that it is not the size of the dog in the fight.  It's the size of the fight in the dog that counts.  They are about half as big as a Rottweiler.  They are actually the perfect size, about 40 pounds for the male and a little less for the girls."

Anse Peckins took da Silva to a breeder in 'old' Orleans, on the outer tip of Cape Cod where they found a spectacular pup just over a year old, who had a thick coat that was almost all black, with a large splash of white at the throat.  The most striking feature of the energetic youngster was his big blue eyes that shined like blazing opals.    

Cisco immediately fell in love with the blue-eyed ball of energy who reached his full growth rapidly and became a valuable asset to the farm.  He'd move the chickens where ever Cisco wanted them.  Bouncing like a prize fighter, he'd scamper to and fro and round up the horses, mules, and cows that comprised the growing herd. 

 The young collie could even open the barn door when it was time to let the animals out to graze, and then close it later after he had wrangled them back inside. 

By actual count, Cisco said that "Blue" as he now called his collie, understood over 1,000 English words and responded correctly to them every single time.

In the bogs, Blue flooded or drained the cranberry vines by grasping the handles of the dam valves with his mouth and opening or closing them as needed.

The dog was even able to save the cost of a hired man at harvest time. Cisco brought a long, thick rope to the back end of the bog and ran it from one side to the other.  Blue grabbed one end of the rope in his mouth while Cisco tied his section to his wheel-chair.  Placing the rope on the surface of the water, they dragged it to the opposite end of the flooded bog, capturing the floating cranberries as they went along.  Blue scampered up and down as if on springs as he pulled his side, and Cisco's muscled arms easily moved the wheel chair and his end of the rope.  They wrestled the ripe, floating berries to a corner for easy retrieval.  The work went so well and swiftly that the unlikely pair finished far ahead of schedule.  

***

Excerpt from Jimmy Catfish, available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords and all other major online retailers worldwide. https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Catfish-Beginning-Bill-Russo-ebook/dp/B00XH8XY9Q/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Catfish-Beginning-Bill-Russo-ebook/dp/B00XH8XY9Q/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Another Pile of Bones For the Valley of Death

HEADLINE, AUGUST 3, 2017:

BODY OF TEXAS DOCTOR FOUND AT THE BASE OF CANYON IN NATIONAL PARK

Doctor Sarah Beadle, 38, of Texas is the latest victim of the Valley of Death.  She was hiking at the bottom of a canyon with two youngsters, aged 10 and 11 when their water ran out.  She left the children at a 'safe place' while she went in search of life giving water.  She found none, and authorities found her body this week.  Luckily the children were rescued before they too succumbed to the unforgiving heat of summer.

"3.4 million acres - a massive swath of the hottest, lowest, driest, and most barren landscape on Earth. It's a place so desolate and forlorn that the first people to venture into it, called it 'The Valley of Death'. And yet it has an unmatched, mystical beauty that tempts even the meek to set aside their fear and walk upon the sun baked trails leading to ever more danger and intrigue. Join me now for a virtual tour of The Valley of Death."

Get the full story of the Valley of Death in the book by Bill Russo for FREE!  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/726636

Here are a few photos from the book, each picture has hundreds of fascinating stories to tell and many of them are featured in the book.

Frozen in time - one of the mammoth wagons of Death Valley. 

Eighteen mules and two rugged horses dragged the wagons to market, each loaded with more than 20 tons of Borax.

MMA fighter and Actor David Legeno lost his battle with the Valley of Death

 Zabriskie Point, where the legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni wanted to make the 'Great American Film'....instead he made a cult classic universally derided by critics and ignored by the 1970s audiences.