Cold Season

A Pinex ad from Nov. 1960, a few weeks before I was born


Oh, lucky me, it was my turn to catch the bugaboo that has been going around. I guess I should complain as I can't even remember the last time I was sick, but this lousy head cold hit me hard, I've certainly been coughing my head off. So what to do for a cold? I hate cold medicine, it makes me feel lousy, so I only use it when I'm desperate, as I was this week. I've been putting myself to sleep with Nyquil, then suffering the Nyquil fog for half of the next day.

All this coughing and hacking got me thinking about a better cure, and I decided to see if you could still get the cough medicine of my childhood - Pinex. Pinex was an old fashioned medicine, a concentrate that mom mixed with a bottle of Karo Syrup. A spoonful of Pinex was sure stop your cough and tasted yummy too, kind of fresh and, well, piney. I remember it being a bit of a treat to get a dose of Pinex.

So I googled for Pinex and found it has long been unavailable, and I'm apparently not the only who misses it. I did find lots of old advertisements and some auctions, like this auction for an unopened antique bottle.(I hope they don't mind my stealing their picture for my blog - thanks!)

I also found the ingredients list: Alcohol, Chloroform, Oil of Pine Tar, Potassium Guaiacol Sulphonate, Oil of Eucalyptus, Extract Grindelia and Glycerine - Not sure what ingredients do what, and wonder if it would still be considered safe and effective but my childhood memory is that it really worked.

I also found another interesting bit of interesting to me history. The Pinex Co. was started in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in 1905 by William Noll, to sell through his families drug store. My birth name was Noll. I have no reason to think we are related, as I am a New York Noll, my great-grand father Henry having immigrated from Germany to New York City in the late 1800's, but I think it is a fun coincidence that my favorite childhood medicine came from a namesake.


Click on the picture to see a bigger, readable version!

Tales from chairlift II

My little bit of leopard love!

Ok, I'm lying, not really tales from the chairlift, but from lodge this time. It has been a bleak winter snow-wise, not the year for powderhounds, especially weekend powder hounds like me. But finally, we had a big storm this weekend, and lucky for me a skier friend was in town and we had plans to ski Snowbird. 15 inches of glorious fresh powder, my first real powder of the season, probably the last. It was snowing and overcast, the light was flat so the terrain was difficult to see and assess. "Sking by braille" is quite a good workout. After many runs from Gadzoom and a long run down from the top of Peruvian, we decided our hammered legs needed a break and we headed to Snowbird Center cafeteria.

As I sat down with my cocoa (my tired legs were sceaming for sugar!) I looked around at the handful f patrons in the cafeteria, most interstingly the leopard man, who was sitting with the zebra woman. His ski suit was yellow and covered with leopard spots, her ski suit in zebra stipes. Their matching helmets sat on the table. I think we'd stumbled across some real ski animals! I love people with a sense of style, ok, humor, so I had to go say hello.

I asked them if they were a pair, and of course they were. Judging by their accents, a pair of New Yorkers, somehow I was not surprised they weren't Utahns. Utahns are, on average, kinda conservative, this couple obviously was not. I told the leopard man that I really liked his leopard suit. He reached in to his pocket and then handed me a little swatch of leopard print fabric, and told me that he had to "share the leopard love". What more could a gal want from a ski day? Fresh powder, happy legs, not cocoa, and leopard love. My day was pretty great.

At the end of the day as we skied up the parking lot, guess who skied up behind us? Yup, leopard man and zebra woman, and it turns out they have hand painted animal print skis too! And capes! What a hoot! I love meeting random interesting people!

End of an Era...

Ok I admit it, I am not exactly heartbroken about this, but it's a little neighborhood trivia my faraway kids might find interesting. They are demolishing and rebuilding the McDonalds 2 blocks from my house. I'm not a big Mcdonalds fan, or fast food fan in general, but regardless, I have been in the local McD's on more than one occasion. What parent didn't induldge their kids desire for a "Happy Meal" and toy now and then?

If kids desire for McNuggets and toys was not enough, when my kids were preschoolers they added one of those huge playplaces to "our" McDonalds. Talk about having an attractive nuisance in the neighborhood. Our first trip there, for the grand opening, was a disaster. One of the playthings was a computer game. A CRT and computer equipment in a box, kids excitedly hovering around, checking out the game. 18 or so years ago computer games were still pretty new and excinting. Next thing you know my son is crying. The door hiding the computer equipment was not locked, and some kid fidgiting with the door slammed Matts finger in it. Bad enough that I had to take him to the doctor, because I thought he needed stitches. Which he did, but they didn't do because it would have required them pulling off his fingernail. Eek. Of course I was livid, and from the doctors office went straight back to McDonalds, toting my boy with hugely bandaged mitten of hand, so I could speak the manager. I demanded that they lock up that box, as I did not any other child to get hurt. The box was locked, and Matt got an ice cream cone. I suppose most people would have sued McDonalds, or at least gotten the doctor bill paid for, but I'm not that kind of person, and all these year later I still joke about how I'd be rich if I'd only sued McDonalds when I had the chance.

Unfortunately, that small misfortune did not deter my kids desire to visit the McDonalds playplace. Judging from the size of the box of Happy Meal toys that still takes up space in my storage room, my kids may have been overindulged. This all ended with an incident a few years later. Matt came out of the ball pit with a question - "Mommy, what is this brown stuff on my leg?" Well, it didn't take rocket science to figure out what that brown stuff was... and he, as well as the rest of the family, was pretty disgusted. In some ways that was the best day of my life, because after that the kids never asked to go back the play place again.

I wish that totally ended my McDonald patronage, but I have to admit that there were quite a few "bad mother moments" where a schoolday breakfast for the kids was quick trip thought the drive through for a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. That was also forever ago, as I don't think I've set foot in McDonalds in 8 or 10 years. I doubt the kids have either, because despite the fast food indulgences of their childhood, both became young adults who only want healthy, organic, and in Sarah's case, vegetarian food. I do wonder though if they will be a bit nostalgic about the destruction of the McDonalds of their childhood.

And so it begins....

Yesterday, the first of my children got married. OK, not one of my biological kids, but my son Matt's good friend Kory, one of my "kids" for sure. I feel blessed, that as my kids were growing up, we were one of the "hang out" houses. I always joked about running the "Morrison Home for Wayward Children" as we always seemed to have a full house. I even hung a Beware of the Children sign on my door. Kory was one of those boys that was always here, watching skateboard videos, doing rails and jumps out on the street, staying for dinner and now he is the first of the gang to get married. It's hard to believe my little skateboarder dude kids are all growing up.

Andrea, his new bride, is a sweet girl, who seems to have a lot of personal style. They were married in the mormon temple so we could not attend the ceremony, but they had a reception at the ward house that evening. They picked a "vintage theme" and had the room decorated with antique treasures collected from family and friends. The guest book was an old book we were invited to write in, antique trunks contained photos of the wedding couple, it was all rather sweet. And yeah I admit it, I cried.


The gang! It was not long ago the were all in front of the house skateboarding!





My baby Matt, I'm glad the wedding gave him an excuse to come home for a weekend. Don't you love his smile?