Making Capt. Swinfish’s Bay Rum Aftershave
Several years ago I was in the Orvis store in Manchester, Vermont, where I bought, among other important things such as a cap and fly-tying cement, a 10 oz bottle of Bay Rum Aftershave. I love it. It smells clean and fresh, the odor doesn’t linger, and it tightens the freshly-shaved face or, in my case, freshly shaved head. Tightens it like bongo drums. I don’t mean to imply that my head resembles bongo drums and I don’t need anyone tapping a beat on my cranium but a man likes a tight head after shaving. A month ago, my bottle ran out and I decided to make my own. After all, why (more…)
The Vampire Girl Who Lost Her Heart
Abigail Padden located the following transcript one afternoon while helping me unpack boxes at the Imaginactory, surprisingly enough from the collection of Big Benny Cubbage, strange as is the idea of the illiterate stink-pot having any collection beyond commemorative beer cans. I have copied it word for word, leaving all errors in punctuation and orthography, partially to preserve the freshness of the document and partially to give my editor a break.
As near as can be ascertained, the interview was the first of a short-lived attempt to document the history and folklore of Sycamore Shadows. Several transcripts, of which this is one, deal with the prevalence of “consumption” (tuberculosis) in 19th Century Sycamore Shadows. From other notes, it may be assumed that the interviewer was a nurse, though she was not a native of the area and nothing else is known of her life. (more…)
Cramer’s Navigator
Cramer’s Navigator was the GPS of the early 19th Century; the essential guide to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for travelers before the age of steam and continues to be a valuable source of information about the natural appearance of the Mississippi River & Ohio River drainage before the encroachment of civilization. (more…)
