A long long time ago in  late 1989, my Rally Cheeseburgers and waffer fries and bachelor eating had added a pot to my belly.  So, I'd heard that this slimming milkshake program was the way to take off the pounds, add energy and start feeling better. Replace breakfast and lunch with a serving and a sensible dinner. Okay. Right.

It was fairly cheap as it was still a pretty new product. I bought it from where I worked at the time, Hills Department Stores.  I love old classic price tags like this. The sand in the can, not so much.

Actually, I will say that after choking these "milkshakes" down for two months and eating less at dinner, the crap worked! I lost 20 pounds. I then went to a step down mode to just breakfast. Ground up fish bones for protein really worked. I had the good idea to make this particular can into a bank. I was saving $3-4 a day by not having lunch so I'd stuff it full of a few bucks every day and have a million dollars before I turned 80. What a great idea. Plus, I'd be a LEAN MEAN FIGHTING MACHINE! Just call me "OX". Swallowed a lot of aggression, and also a lot of PIZZAS eh heh heh pizzas... (John Candy)

09/24/89 was when I started it. I think it may have hit about $35 until I needed the money to go out for a night of beverages and burger at the Airport Brown Derby. 36OZ Bud Ice was $3. Aps were half price. A burger was about $6. At some point I taped off the lid and forever used this for storage of junk. The junk inside may have changed over time, but I've had  most of this junk in the sand container for a bit. Wanna see? Of course you don't. Get down and give me fifty!

Since I had moved away from mom, you know I needed to get stuff. I needed to clean stuff. I needed to cook stuff. However, I was still living in small spaces so I bought a tiny ironing board with twist off legs. Did I ever iron more than 3 shirts? Nope. Did I ever use this more than 3 times? Nope. Did I end up throwing the iron away when I left it under the sink and it was leaked on? Yep. But by gosh, I still have these legs...

There are a lot more of these to come on this blog, but here are two of them. Yes, we had to be idiots and wear these buttons while we were working at Northeast. I especially liked the name tags that said "Ask Me About The Warranty". "I thought your slogan was NO BULL?" "Well,  do you see any majestic livestock roaming around in here? You see any cow chips? Good, now for $100 I can warranty your tube, parts, for 5 years. Here is why you need it on a $199 1902 from Zenith."

Not your father's nameplate. My friend Pete had one of these. A 2 door version of a Chevy Ci-motherf**kintation. The OMEGA! It was a horrid car, but it ran. It WAS his father's Oldsmobuick. I found this portion of a name plate  from some random Olds on the street someplace, so it's my memory of his wheels.

This is the sansabelt to the drive of a RCA 2 Head VCR. Boomer had "loaned" me a VCR years and years ago, and the belt went bad so he replaced it. He game me an extra if said damage happened again. It never did and I returned the loaner VCR when I got a new one for Christmas. I still have the belt. Maybe if that VCR needs a new one...

SORRY!

The previous picture was brought to you by the sole game piece I have remaining from a board game called SORRY. It's a sorry little piece of junk isn't it? EH?  Now for a bit of history. When I worked in Indiana, my company was moving into a new building that was an old train barn. We toured it. It was dirty and a real mess, but I got me a souvenir. This RR spike. It brings me back to when I was but a shaver and we found these all the time near the junkyard where we lived. I used them for digging and burying junk. I had a lot of junk back then. I did live near a junk yard. Root beer marble with a plastic cap over it? Keep that there for my buried treasure.

Finally, a mystery item. I couldn't guess what this was. It had some sort of writing on it but it was a mystery to me. It was more like a scroll rather than printing. I thought it might have been the instructions for a toaster judging by those two swoops. Maybe it was Laverne DeFazio's dandruff I'd saved being a big fan of Laverne and Shirley.  No..it was as it was...

I was working at some really crappy jobs. Hills was pretty crappy. Great place to work but the chain was bankerupt and they had to pay us in cash every other week. Why was it so crappy? In my portion of the warehouse, I had 8, 3 tiered rolling storage racks about 10 foot long each. 4 of them were filled to the brim with all sorts of crap. I worked the toy department and had sporting goods, automotive and hardware as well. The majority of this "old" stock in my warehouse space was just that. Most of it I couldn't find prices for and the stuff I did, it was marked down to damn cheap prices. So, with my 8' section on the sales floor for clearence, I started stocking those shelves with that junk and it started selling really well. I figured I'd be done with all of that crap in a few weeks.

I was told by my boss after two weeks that, it was a great thing I was getting rid of stuff we hadn't sold for two years. However, please stop!  it turns out that while total dollars for my department was up, margin (profits made) were in the toilet. In other words, leave that crap where it belongs. Taking up space forever in the back room.

Needless to say I was really bummed and left shortly thereafter. This is the turning point in my retail career where I realized that retail sucks. Don't sell old stock? We're a STORE. That's what we do!  Meanwhile, I got a job as a Bagel Boy but was really thin between paychecks. I did have a bit in my bank account, but my wallet was bare. I put this single in the envelope and put it in this sand can and vowed never to be that poor again.  It didn't work, because I fell down the credit vortex a few years later, but I never spent this buck. Awwww, sweet story? What the hell man?  Tell us about the 96 feet of board games or the fat guy that worked as a store dick and caught perps by watching the mirrored roof tiles from the next aisle! Another time...

ARF! -Ric