Good Food, Good Life

As you might expect from a food company, Nestle has a pretty incredible cafeteria in the lunchroom.  There are lots of different kinds of fresh fruit and veggies and meats to choose from.  Much of what they have followed the recipes for Stouffer's and Lean Cuisine, but these aren't frozen and reheated.  They're made from fresh ingredients by chefs here at the Solon campus.  Everything is absolutely delicious, and it was all comped by our partners.

Pizza And A Ballgame

While I'm in Ohio, I'm staying at the SpringHill Suites in Solon.  It's a pretty nice place.  They had fresh fruit and lots of other good things to eat this morning  It's not far from the Nestle offices where we'll be working on the new Salesforce Engage program that is planned to roll out next year.

Originally, I had planned on seeing what restaurants are in the area, but I'm having a nice, relaxing night in my room instead.  Antonio's Pizza came highly recommended, so I ordered a pie with the works.  It definitely lived up to the hype.

So, it's pizza and the ballgame on tv for me tonight, but if the Yankees manage to hold on and beat the Indians, I'm going to see if I can find a cheap ticket to Game 5 of the ALDS in Cleveland.  They're playing Game 4 is in New York now, and the Indians are up in the series 2-1.  The Yanks have the lead now, but if the Indians come from behind to win, scoring tickets will be a moot point.  The Yankees will be eliminated and Game 5 won't happen.  It's not often that I hope the Yankees win, but I've never seen Progressive Field and I've never been to a post-season game before, so I'm kind of pulling for the Evil Empire tonight for completely selfish reasons.

Business In The Buckeye State

I'll be in Ohio for the next few days working on the rollout for a new piece of customer service software.

The Birthplace Of Superman

The Birthplace of Superman
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport
I'm on the first day of a business trip to Solon, Ohio, and I found this awesome Superman display at the baggage claim in the airport.  In 1932, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster met and became friends as high school students in Cleveland.  Soon afterward, the two would go on to create one of the most iconic superheros of all time.

Remembering Angela Park

Angela Park: The Documentary
Cinema & Drafthouse - West Hazleton, PA (2017)

One of my earliest childhood memories was going to Angela Park with my dad and my grandparents.  It was a small, but beautiful little park just outside of Hazleton on Rt. 309.  The park opened on Mothers Day 1957 and remained in business for just over 30 years.  It had a roller coaster, an olympic-sized swimming pool, bumper cars, a train, a Tilt-A-Whirl, and lots of other rides; particularly ones for young children, including tanks and classic cars.

My favorite was a ride where you would climb to the top of a wooden tower and ride on a carpet down a spiral slide.  They're apparently known as a Helter Skelter in the UK.  I don't remember them ever calling it that here.  In fact, I only heard that term associated with this kind of amusement park ride while I was looking for a photo for this post.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a picture, but I'll never forget how much fun it was.

The documentary did a fantastic job of showing the history of the park and the many things that made it special to the people of Northeast Pennsylvania.  There was a special section dedicated to Porky The Paper Eater.  This was a small wooden shack that looked like a miniature barn and had a statue of a pig's head coming out of the front.  There was a vacuum hooked up to the pigs mouth that would gently take garbage out of your hands and deposit it into a trash barrel inside.  It also had a speaker that would play a message to children who fed their garbage to Porky.  It sounds simple by today's standards, but there wasn't a scrap of litter to be found on the grounds of Angela Park because children would pick it up and give it to Porky The Paper Eater.  It became so popular that when kids couldn't find garbage, they'd take brand new napkins from the dispenser at the snack stands just to have something to throw away.  Porky has had a new home at Knoebels, but it's now just a regular trash barrel without the speakers and vacuum.

For 28 of its 31 years, Angela Park was owned and operated by the Barletta family.  Congressman Lou Barletta stopped by the Cinema & Drafthouse for the screening of the documentary to speak to the crowd about his memories of the park.  Lou was born the year before Angela Park opened, and he gave a nice talk that was absent of politics of any kind to share his memories of growing up with his father, grandfather and uncles owning an amusement park.  The Congressman and I may not agree on too many things, but where Angela Park is concerned, we most certainly see eye to eye.  It was a treasure of Northeast PA, and I'll never forget it.

An Unbelievably Big Crunch Bar

I'm all set up to train a class of Nestle customer service representatives.  This 9.25 lb. Nestle Crunch bar has been in every new hire training room since I started here in 2011.  It's over ten years old at this point and well past its recommended shelf life, but it still makes a nice prop.

Nailed It

I'm training a group of new Brand Ambassadors to respond to consumers who contact us via email.  One of the goals we've been given is to build rapport with the consumer so that they know that a real human being is reading their question, comment and/or concern.  We want them to know that their response isn't a form letter or a pre-written, auto-generated email response, but a thoughtful response from someone who wants the consumer to be happy with our products.

I made the mistake of explaining this to the class by saying "we want the consumer to know that we're not robots", and I stressed the importance of starting off strong with your response without fully appreciating the sarcasm that runs deep on our team.

Pretty tough to argue against that opening, eh Rachel?

Doc Hudson At Turkey Hill

Fabulous Hudson Hornet
Turkey Hill - Rt. 924 - Hazleton, PA

I saw this awesome car when I stopped for gas last week.  There were actual race cars that went by the Fabulous Hudson Hornet name in the 1950's, but this one was built to look like Paul Newman's character in the 2006 Pixar animated film, Cars.

Saving Cardboard For Mr. Sakes

I can't say that I've had the pleasure of meeting old Pete, but he must be moving.  Why else would we be saving cardboard boxes just for him?

Atari Prices Zapped

Atari Prices Zapped
May 1983 newspaper ad
Retro gamer Donny Shot discovered this newspaper ad while going through old boxes and shared it on the Old Made New Facebook group.  This was the very early stages of the video game crash.  Prices would drop to as low as .99 cents for these titles a year after this ad was published.

The Waste Land

...And I will show you something different from either
your shadow at morning striding behind you
or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

- The Waste Lands

T.S. Eliot

One of the most powerful uses of the written word was first published 95 years ago today.  Click here to read the full poem at Project Gutenberg

The Grocery Arcade

Atari Games arcade advertisement
Grocery Trade publications (1982)
The Arcade Blogger recently shared a full page ad from 1982 that Atari used to entice the owners of grocery stores to put arcade games on their property.  This may seem strange to folks today, but it wasn't at all unusual to see video games all over town back in the late 70's and throughout the 80's.  When I was a kid, I played Ms. Pac Man at the Blue Comet Diner every Saturday when I went out to eat with my grandparents.  Arcade games were as common as soda machines and those quarter machines that gave you a handful of candy or a small toy in a little egg.  They could be found at pizza parlors, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, hotels, rest stops, and just about anywhere else you could think of.

Throughout the 90's and 2000's, the began to fade from the landscape.  In 2002, on a trip from Northeast PA to Omaha, I found an Arknoid machine at a gas station.  By this time, arcade games at gas stations had become a rarity, so I spent about 45 minutes taking a break from the road while breaking some bricks on the Taito classic.

This photo was obviously staged, but I absolutely love the way that it captures the arcade gaming phenomenon of the time.  It features a young girl playing Centipede with a Red Baron cabinet in the background.  Her big brother is looking on, with the mother over his shoulder brandishing a box of Tide detergent.  Even her baby brother is looking on from his shopping cart perch, with dad equally fixated by the game.

The 2017 Bloomsburg Fair

The 162nd Bloomsburg Fair
Bloomsburg, PA

I have looked forward to the Bloomsburg Fair every year with the same level of excitement that a toddler has when they count down to Christmas morning.  It's one of my favorite places in the world to relax and forget that the outside world exists.  Yesterday was my last trip to the Fair for the year, so I thought I'd share a mini walkthrough of the places and things that didn't get covered in any other post.  The fairgrounds are huge, and these photos don't even scratch the surface of all of the things that there are to see and do at the Bloomsburg Fair, but it will give you a good idea of what it's like if you've never been there.

The Grandstand

Toyota Grandstand Building
Bloomsburg Fair - Bloomsburg, PA

The grandstand seating for concerts is built into a large building with two long hallways where vendors have shops set up.  It's about the size of a small strip mall, and they sell all kinds of different oddities.  These days, I mostly limit myself to some candy and beef jerky, but I found lots of trading cards, t-shirts and things over the years when I was a kid.  I even got a Venus flytrap one year.

The shop in the last photo has been there every year since I started coming to the Fair.  They sell bootleg copies of shows on VHS and DVD that I'm assuming have gone into public domain.  The prices are pretty outrageous, but in the days before e-commerce in the 80's and 90's, you really couldn't find this stuff for sale in too many places.  I remember that my grandparents bought a Ma & Pa Kettle tape here when I was a kid.

Jackpot At Uncle Nick's

Uncle Nick's Candy Game
Bloomsburg Fair - Bloomsburg, PA
I know it's the last thing I need, but I made a killing at Uncle Nick's this year.  I won a full box and four bars of candy.

Harvey's Spot

This is Harvey's favorite place to lay down, with his chin resting on the cool tile and his belly warm on the carpet.

It Turns On A Dime

Debbie's Dime Pitch
Bloomsburg Fair - Bloomsburg, PA

I shared some pictures of this game a few years ago, but I didn't do a great job of explaining it.  These guys have a really good racket.  I've been coming to the Fair since the mid 80's.  This game has been there every year, and it's always super crowded.

The rules are simple.  You can either bring your own dimes or cash in a couple of bucks for a handful.  You then take the dimes, one at a time, and toss them underhand toward the prizes (the round platforms you see with the glasses stacked on them are rotating).  If your dime lands in one of red shotglasses or on a plate, you win the prize associated with it.  The prizes aren't super special or anything.  Most of them are inexpensive coffee mugs and drinking glasses.

I called this game a really good racket with the utmost of respect and admiration.  Unlike a lot of carnival games, this one is not impossible, but it is more difficult than you're probably thinking.  This game hits the sweet spot of being easy enough to draw you in, difficult enough to keep you playing for a little bit until you win, and inexpensive enough to make you forget that you're literally throwing money away for the chance of winning something that you could probably just buy at the dollar store.  It's actually pretty brilliant.

My grandparents and my dad stopped every year to play.  They probably spent about five or six dollars total and usually won a small prize.  I've stopped every year too in my adult life.  Sometimes I win something.  Sometimes I don't.  And even though I fully recognize that I'm spending about three times the value of the prize, I don't feel ripped off in the slightest.  It's fun to play, and whether I win or lose, I feel like I got my money's worth.

You might think that this devolves into total chaos with people whipping dimes at each other and knocking the prizes over, but I've never seen anything like that happen even once in roughly 30 years of coming to the Fair.

That might have something to do with the rules that are clearly posted.  Most of them are pretty easy to understand: no leaning over the counter, no throwing the dime overhand, no hard throwing, you get the idea.  There are also two mystery signs which simply say "you can't do that here".  I'm not sure what, exactly, but whatever it is, people must have been doing it because no one was getting yelled at.