Tom McMahon

Can You Identify These 4 Ladies?

Can You Identify These 4 Ladies?

Hint: The one on the right played the first "Bobbie Jo" on Petticoat Junction.

Another Hint: The one on the left played in 15 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Click on the photo for the answer.

An Old-Fashioned Oil Can With An Old-Fashioned Spout

An Old-Fashioned Oil Can With An Old-Fashioned Spout

Betcha it's been a while since you've even thought about these old cans, eh? I don't miss them at all, do you?

Mayo Clinic Ash Tray

Mayo Clinic Ash Tray

Times were different then.

Going Steady In The 1950s

Going Steady In The 1950s

Yukon Wilderness Survivor Helen Klaben Kahn Today

Yukon Wilderness Survivor Helen Klaben Kahn Today

From the March 2007 newsletter of The Explorers Club - Northern California Chapter (PDF file):

Helen Klaben Kahn has told the story she related to a crowded Chapter meeting hundreds of times. She says each time is different, a bit more reflective. After all, the event that catapulted her to celebrity happened 44 years ago. It was the winter of 1963, that she responded to a newspaper ad in Fairbanks, Alaska. She had come north the previous summer on a lark, responding to another classified for someone to share driving and expenses along the AlCan Highway, from New York City. She had never left the environs of her Brooklyn home; she was twenty-one; she was seeking adventure. She thought they must need a teacher in Fairbanks. (They did not.) ...

Helen spoke with charm and humor, exuding an optimism and joie d’vivre that was the enabling personality that carried her through the ordeal. She is a woman filled with curiosity; her experience has brought upon her an inner calm. ...

Helen Klaben Kahn held the assembled crowd in rapt attention as she remembered the experience she endured those many years ago. Her demeanor put all at ease to ask questions. It was a rewarding evening. She ‘roles with the punches’: due to traffic she was a bit late in arriving; as she scurried up the roadway from parking, a rogue wave hit the seawall drenching her from the rear. (I assure you she was wet!) Unabashed, she toweled her self, sat for a moment and proceeded to speak. Explorer stuff.

Sounds like a very neat lady. We wish her all the best!

Frank Flores Brings Back His Father's Plane

Ralph Flores Plane in 1998, 35 Years Later

From The Seattle Times:

So last September [1998], Flores found himself flying somewhere over Canada, maybe 1,000 or so miles out of Fairbanks, Alaska, with his brother Ralph and sister Lisa. Even today, he says, the area is so remote that it took two days to find the crash site. After they did, they nearly got lost on foot in the forest.

The plane had plowed into two of them but, miraculously, hadn't burst into flames. And the site, Flores says, looked pretty much like it must have the day his father and Kahn left. "The cans of sardines that Helen ate were still there," he recalls. "The can of oil he opened to make an SOS in the snow was still there. All the things they had used to survive were still there."

So he packed up the pieces and brought them back. Some, including a seat and a door panel, he is keeping at his mother's house in this little town just northwest of Springfield. The rest he put in storage in North Dakota. Eventually, he'll have the engine overhauled, the wings rebuilt and the frame refurbished.

Helen Klaben Sums It All Up

From Helen Klaben's book Hey, I'm Alive! :

Finally, I want to say that I regard everything that has happened to me in life not as terrible, but as wonderful. Particularly my forty-nine days in the wilderness with Ralph. I owe my life to him, and I learned so much from him -- about faith and courage and strength and persistence and endurance. Ralph, for all his limitations as a talker, must surely be one of the most remarkable men in the world. I don't kid myself for a minute that I would have made it down off that mountain alive without him.

All my experiences in Alaska were wonderful. I say wonderful because those experiences enabled me to make a big discovery, an essential discovery. I discovered that God is Love. I discovered for the first time really how much I love my mother and my family. I discovered for the first time the emotional transformations and revelations of adult love. I discovered something else I never knew before: I love life. All of a sudden, I see I have a message for the world after all. The message is Love.

Helen Klaben on Why She Survived

From Helen Klaben's book Hey, I'm Alive! :

There is, of course, no single magic ingredient. I did not survive, as so many newspapers would have it, because of Ralph's strength and his Bible. They were part of it all right, but it wasn't as simple as all that. I'm beginning to think nothing in life is as simple as the newspapers would like us to make out. There were so many strands and elements that, all woven together, enabled me to survive. I now think everything that happened in my life before the crash, the sum total of all my experiences and relationships, added up to 49 days of survival. I believe every experience, every relationship has a meaning and a purpose, even if we cannot understand them, and they are all connected one to another, even if we cannot see the connection.

Helen Klaben on What She Learned in the Yukon Wilderness

From Helen Klaben's book Hey, I'm Alive! :

I learned a lot. I learned -- to my surprise -- that I did not fear death when it was close to me. That may be because I am young, for when you are young it is hard to imagine your own death, your own mortality. I learned I could control, if not conquer, my fears of darkness and wild animals. I learned that when I set my heart on it I can be as disciplined as anyone. I learned to control my natural impatience when to be patient was the only was to stay alive. I learned that I must stop trying to judge and change people and to accept them as human beings -- frail and fallible, like me.

Santa's Villages: The First Franchised Theme Parks in the World

Santa's Villages: The First Franchised Theme Parks in the World

The story:

Since 1959, Santa’s Village in Dundee, has entertained millions. The park was born of a man who as a child had no real Christmas. Glenn Holland grew up in California during the Great Depression. His parents died by the time he was 18 years old, leaving him to care for his younger sister. As a father, he tried to give his own children the type of Christmas that he only knew in his dreams. In the early 1950s, struck with inspiration, Holland sat at his kitchen table one day and started to sketch his idea for a Christmas fairyland where all the magic of the holiday would come to life: Santa’s Village. Holland and general contractor Putnam Henck built three Santa’s Villages, two in California and one in Dundee.

The last Santa's Village closed in 2006; click on the photo for more fine fotos of the abandoned amusement park. (via Look At This )