Peckerwood Manor

  Photo: Cellar Tracker.com In the world of cheap wine, there's only one product that staggers to the top of the heap like no other:  Boone's Farm.  This elixir of the gods occupies a special place in gas stations mini marts, liquor stores, and other purveyors of cheap booze. Boone's Farm is the granddaddy who paved the drunken path for others to follow like Four Loko, Mikes Hard Lemonade, White Claw and even my favorite California Coolers (which doesn't exist anymore). Boone's Farm was THE beverage of choice for drunken hijinks. As one would expect, the history of Boone's Farm is wrapped in a brown paper bag of treachery, subterfuge, and savvy business thinking.   EJ Gallo is the maker of Boone's Farm. The company is still family owned and manged by descendants of  Joe Gallo, Sr. and 2 of his 3 sons Ernest and Julio Gallo. The company was started after Prohibition by Joe Gallo Sr. He set out to build a wine empire that would mass produce cheap wine for peo...

Photo: Reddit / r/nostalgia Introduced in 1988 by Nabisco, Teddy Grahams rank as one of the most successful new grocery products in history.  The teddy bear shaped graham cookies came in 3 flavors: honey, cinnamon, and chocolate (my personal favorite). In their first year they generated $150 million in sales (or $380 million in today's dollars).  Damn...that's a lot of bank in one year! The cookies have questionable nutritional value - but who cares they're delicious and damn cute. The cookies were graham crackers shaped into teddy bears (posing with arms up or down). In case you're curious, graham crackers were created back in the 19th century when Sylvester Graham (who was a minister) mixed graham flour (aka whole wheat flour) with molasses to create a sugarless wafer. Why did he do this? Good question.   Sylvester Graham, who believed society's moral failings could be blamed on an unholy diet. Photo: All Thats Interesting You see, Sylvester was knee-deep in the t...

     Photo: The Urbanist.com When film photography was used in the old days, it meant that you had to drop it off to get it developed. Yes kids, his is how photographs were made before digital cameras. Unless you had your own dark room, a person was left with one option: taking the film to a store (drug, grocery, or camera store store). That is until Fotomat hit the scene. Fotomat Corporation was founded in 1965 by Preston Fleet, a rich dude who was into aviation. The company got its start when Preston met Clifford Graham, a serial entrepreneur. Preston was looking for a business opportunity. When he met Clifford (who had a reputation for dubious business practices), Clifford told him about something he saw in Florida. It was a drive-up kiosk that people would drop off film for development and then they would return the next day to pick up their photos. The idea originated with Charles Brown who opened a location in 1965. Clifford and Preston decided to buy out C...

    Photo: NY Film Academy Pile a bunch of kids in a station wagon and head out to the local drive-in. That’s how many families spent their weekends when they wanted to see a movie. I remember vividly going to the drive-in as a little tyke. We had a wood panel station wagon. My parents would pile neighborhood kids or my cousins in the back, throw a blanket over us with some boxes to make it look like it was just junk in the back because they wanted to save money (since drive-ins charged by the per person).  Other times they would put us in the trunk of the car and then let us out when we got in and parked. It was a blast. Good times! Photo: Reddit / r/nostalgia Back to our story. Have you ever wondered how drive-ins got their start? Well, the idea came from a man who wanted to make his mom happy. When movie theaters started becoming popular back in the 1920s-1930s, the seats were small and uncomfortable. Think hard seats made of wood or steel with no padding. Ric...

   Early Nirvana before David Grohl joined. L to R: Kurt Cobain, Jason Everman, Chad Channing and Chris Novoselic. Photo: Reddit/rclassic rock   If you were a teen or in your 20’s between the late 1980’s thru late 1990s, chances are you were into grunge – either the music, the attire or both. The movement that made flannel shirts, unkempt hair, military boots, tattered t-shirts, and high-top sneakers cool got its start as a by-product of the Seattle music scene of the mid 1980s.  There are two parts to the grunge movement: the music and the attire. Grunge music referred to the Seattle sound which was an off-shoot of rock music. It infused elements of metal rock (not speed metal), punk rock, and a bit of new wave. I n addition to combining rock music with elements of punk rock, grunge music also included high levels of distortion, feedback, and fuzz sound effects.   The term grunge to describe the music genre of the Seattle sound was first used in 1981 when Ma...

  Photo: Insider // Twitter (X) In the old days (pre-2000), if you wanted to purchase music you had 2 options: go to a store or sign up for with a mail order company.  Columbia House Club (aka Columbia House Records & Tapes) was the big dog of the music mail order business. It was a convenient way to buy music without the hassle of driving to a store.   Columbia House got its start in 1955 in NYC as an experiment by Columbia Records Music. Company execs realized there were many music lovers who lived out in the boonies where a record store didn’t exist or who didn’t have a car to drive to one.   Back then having a car was a luxury to many households.   So, a light bulb went off in company execs heads: let’s start a mail order record club. To entice people to join they offered a free record just for signing up – very smart of them – because it meant the person was hooked.   To avoid pissing off record stores in cities, new titles would not b...

  When was the last time you  saw a public pay phone? In the old days (pre-1990), they were everywhere. Whenever I walked by one, I would always check the coin slot for change that someone left behind. The most I ever found was a couple of dollars. What a thrill! Nowadays pay phones are a relic of the past. But their demise started long before the adoption of cell phones. The idea of a public pay phone is a classic example of necessity being the mother of invention. The pay phone was the creation of William Gray in 1888. Gray was a tinkerer and one day, his wife had a medical emergency. He went around knocking people's door asking to use their phone but everyone said "nope, get lost you loser".  Gray eventually got his wife to the doctor. The ordeal of trying to find a phone inspired him to create a public pay phone. His prototype was patented and he proceed to establish the Gray Telephone Company.  They began to install pay phones across the USA. He continued to imp...

  Ty Warner. Photo: Ty Beanie Babies Love or hate them, Beanie Babies took over the planet in the 1990s. These cute stuffed toys became one of the biggest toy fads in recent memory that ended up financially ruining many people who viewed them as an investment. Ty Warner founded the company in 1993 after a trip to Europe inspired him to use small beans to make traditional stuffed toys more flexible. Beanie Babies were introduced to the public when Ty attended a toy fair with his creations. The toys became an instant hit for their lovable characters. The nine original Beanie Babies were: Cubbie the Bear, Pinchers the Lobster, Patti the Platypus, Chocolate the Moose, Flash the Dolphin, and Splash the Whale.  The toys quickly became popular and in no time sales took off. To create a sense of scarcity and to push people to buy the toys, Ty began retiring certain animals shortly after their introduction. This led to the toys being viewed as rarity and the fear of missing out fo...