I know it’s the weekend, friends, but I’m giving us all a homework assignment.

Get yourself a treat and enjoy it next to your glowing-est window. Make sure it’s otherwise dark inside, and make sure it’s good and quiet.

When you think you’re finished, look just a little bit longer and listen just a little bit more…

Then on you can go.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to dig through a big box of army issued artifacts belonging to a relative who had served as a Lieutenant during WWII. Little pieces of history to hold in my hands that hinted at both the epic and ordinary routines of an enlisted man.

1. Pre-Packaged Stationery Set for writing your mom, sweetheart, or (apparently) your secret seductress.

2. Front and back of a military matchbook.

3. Look what this book warns: This document must not fall into enemy hands!

4. Four pack of cigarettes.

5. Just some of the pins the Lt. had been awarded.

Included in the box was a letter the Lieutenant’s secretary had written to him a year after the war ended in which she described how hard it was to return to civilian life. How much she missed the camaraderie of those she served with, and the strong sense of purpose. She even lamented the changing styles of women’s fashion she was now forced to select from, instead of her government-issued uniforms.

Again and again in the letter she said how hard it was to “get back into the swing of things.”

I hope she eventually did. I hope she went on to have a good, full life.

I’m really revved up to introduce to y’all a company that was just this morning introduced to me.

From the slick and sick Gasoline Cowboys website:

“Before WWII, Motorcycling was seen as a sport. The A.M.A. (American Motorcycle Association) sanctioned competition racing, hill climbs and recreational events such as the Gypsy tours. Many motorcycle clubs sprang up and each wore it’s own distinctive riding apparel, usually a colorful wool turtlezip sweater complete with decorative name and town embroidered on them. Likewise racers were sponsored by either the motorcycle manufacturer or by local dealers who would outfit their hero in tough sweaters for practical reasons of promotion and easy recognition on the track.

As war clouds gathered, racing and motorcycling in general was put on hiatus till hostilities ceased. When peace broke out in 1945, American servicemen were demobed. During the war, they had earned regular pay, but found little to spend it on. Once back home with wallets full of cash many of this generation bought motorcycles.

Many felt bored with civilian life after the perilous war years and some chose to seek out other adrenalin junkies. This resulted in the forming of hundreds of small motorcycle clubs with names like the ‘Lucky 13’s’ the ‘Top hatters’, ‘Ramblers’, and the ‘Bombers’. Members wore club sweaters; rode in formation not unlike the bomber squadrons and partied together.

Founded in 1920 by William P. Dehen, who made his mark by making hardy woolen sweaters for the American sports man. When you get a sweater from us, you are not buying a remake or a replica. Dehen has been making motor clothes and racewear for 89 years. Dehen’s unbroken lineage – still making racewear woolens and jackets on American soil since 1920. So we really mean it, you get to wear the real deal, not a copy.”

So…wow! Gasoline Cowboys will even create custom sweaters for your own crew. My mind’s racing, thinking of names for my own gang, wondering who might be tough enough to ride in and out of trouble beside me.

As a child of the 80s, huge sections of my school vacations were spent watching NBC daytime. Scrabble and Santa Barbara were my favorites but my local affiliate must’ve not aired Super Password during it’s five year run ever, for whatever reason, or it would’ve been another childhood treasure.

I didn’t really even know the show existed (at least in its late 80s incarnation) until I found it last month in this, the summer of my 33rd year, re-running on the Game Show Network.

But it’s all the better seeing the show with virgin eyes at this later stage in life. The neon-lettered opening credits, the talk show meets Tron-ish set, host Bert Convy’s endearing awkwardness, the has-been celebrity guests…none of these things could I have appreciated appropriately as an 11 year old like I can and (twice a day) do, right now.

And the fashion! At least every other episode Mr. Convy harasses some post-pubescent sister from Gimme a Break or mullet-ed heartthrob from Dynasty about their sweatshirt worn as a dress or Navajo patterned gentlemen’s loafers, to which the celebrity guests always shrug sheepishly and reply, “That’s the style!”

In recent episodes Susan Anton and Marla Gibbs sported shoulder pads so wide, they almost plowed Bert right off his podium.

The TIVO catches twelve episodes of the show a week – and it’s the machine that can barely keep up with me.

I mute and pause the program at just the right moment, forcing my favorite friend to play along with me and the show…thinking how I could get them to guess the word BARREL or STAMPEDE or FRANCE with hopefully just a single one-word clue.

If you get the GSN channel, check or re-check the show out. I halfway/totally think the world used to be a better place mostly because there used to be more daytime game shows where winning even two thousand dollars felt super duper fine.

My favorite friend came back from a business trip with a mad stack of expensive, imported men’s mags for me. My favorite was the British-based BUCK.

I find the majority of higher-priced men’s mags rather irrelevant to my life. Waifs with chin-length bangs, shirtless on sand-dunes, slinking around in seven-hundred-dollar cigarette jeans just does not dial anywhere near my frequencies.

BUCK chucks away with all that junk and instead offers pages upon pages of street-style standouts, low-cost covetables, sartorial showcases of pseudo-celebs, and even retro-tinged recipes.

If I still lived across the pond I’d be certainly swapping pounds for BUCKS month after month.

Early 1900s German book covers.

Today h(y)r collective posted a moccasin oxford by South2West8. A similar shoe I’ve been using as inspiration is this Weinbrenner x Beams collaboration, found deep in the pages of an issue of Free & Easy magazine.

I quite like their dweeby, Dad-ish appearance. I’d wear them with plaids or fishermen sweaters and imagine myself an office worker at the Packard Saw Mill. Well…I’d wear them that way if the shoes weren’t found only in Japan and I could ever actually procure a pair, of course.