Everything's Up To Date in Kansas City - They've gone about as far as they can go"

A song in the hit musical "Oklahoma" and extolls the modernization of Kansas City, Missouri.  I mention this because a friend who lives there sent me a compilation of how different today is from yesterday.

For example, Texaco sold six gallons of gas for 99 cents!

For kids - good manners on the rotary phone.  Always be polite, use Mr. and Mrs., ask if you may take a message.  Today's three year old's are installing apps on their cell phones.

Fashion - an ad for the ladies offered Professor Williams Fat-En-U Foods -" plump up and be rosy with honest fleshiness of form."  I don't know how "honest" flesh is if you have to eat God only knows what and, more to the point, how much of it.

 In 1965, a barbershop window admonished, "No Beatles hair cuts!"  Instead they listed the styles that they would do - the Peter Gunn, Ivy League Flat Top, or a Crew Cut.  Do we see a trend here?  Shampoo manufacturers loved the Beatles cut!

In 1898 Bayer began using and advertising HEROIN in their ads and medicines.  It was for colds and coughs.    And, presumably, a life-long drug dependency. Cocaine wasn't far behind to get up on a shelf for purchase.

In 1889 the Halcyon Matrimonial Company ran a price list on their virtual store with various shelves of goods.  East of the Mississippi - $50   Females who wanted to go West - $25 (the Old West needed women!)   Men from west of the Mississippi River - $95!

Requirements were a $10 deposit then and there and the remainder due after the nuptials.   In 1889 that was serious money.

Tobacco was not forgotten.  In the 1960s this product was on the market - Mister Merry's play lighter (looked like a Zippo)  and bubble gum cigarettes.

A 1915 Illinois billboard:  "The use of tobacco in any form is a dirty, filthy, disgusting, degrading habit.  No gentlemen will use tobacco in this city."   (Tell us how you feel about 'baccy, won't you?  Don't be shy.)

So we see, antiquities class, that some things remain the same.  Illinois' warning lives today. With quite a great deal more gusto than is needed.