Saturday, September 15, 2012

Overheard, Over Water

Tam and I were in the office; I had just located a photo of the Wizard Oil Bridge and was telling her that, despite the web-page report that "...no one has ever been able to tell me it's name origin," artist/historian Eric Sloane* wrote that the current bridge is named after a patent medicine advertisement painted all across the outside of the covered bridge it replaced: WIZARD OIL.

Tam, faux-impressed: "Do you know how many wizards you'd have to press...?"

She should know. Oh, my. --Back on this earth, Hamlin's Wizard Oil didn't just paint signs on bridges, they promoted their nostrum with medicine shows and printed songbooks.
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* Eric Sloane's America, pp. 87-88. (Promotory Press, 1994, reprinting Barns and Covered Bridges [1954], Our Vanishing Landscape [1955] and American Yesterday [1956]). --If you see a book with his name on the cover, buy it if you're at all interested in hands-on history.

2 comments:

  1. Which brings up my favorite old question, "If you make peanut oil by crushing peanuts, How do you make Baby Oil?"

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  2. "Hamlin's Wizard Oil" to be exact. Early "Oil" was 140 proof but the post Prohibiton product was 40% McKesson's finest CP grain alcohol, and a secret mix of herbs and spices. Mostly anise and caramel with a bit of sulfuric acid and camphor.

    They Hamlin brothers sponsored Carson Robison on the AM radio, circa 1938. Try youtube for Carson's "Life Gets Tee-Jus, Don't It."

    Stranger

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