HILLBILLY BREAD "FER SUPER SANDWICHES"

Mmm...mmm...mmm...mmm! Oh how I remember that Hillbilly Old Fashion Bread!


How’s all the Neato Readers gettin‘ along today? I can rightly say I’m pleased as PB&J, ‘cause I get to talk about a beloved bread from my childhood.

For years I’ve been searching for a vintage Hillbilly Bread bag, but for some reason it kept evading me. Finally, just the other day (thanks to my pal Waffle Whiffer for the heads-up), one showed up on ebay and I won the auction! So here’s an item that’s been high on my vintage packaging want list for a long time.


Back when I was a kid, you could probably find a loaf of one of these four brands in our kitchen pantry - Roman Meal, Wonder Bread, Ozark Mill or Hillbilly Bread. For a kid (that’s me) growing up in an Ozark tourist town with every sign sporting a hillbilly, Hillbilly Bread was a perfect fit for our local grocery store. The bag has always had that happy image of a hillbilly enjoying a sandwich. I wonder if the carefree hillbilly has a name? Also, I would love to know who the artist was who designed the hillbilly. Hillbilly Bread is still available, but is regional and I haven't found any yet.

I’ve been trying to do some fast research on the origins of Hillbilly Bread, but there doesn’t seem to be much online. For now we'll just enjoy some Hillbilly Bread artifacts starting with these nifty commercials from the 1950's. (Video uploaded to YouTube by jacky9br.)

The next item is a fun 1960's(?) photograph from The Rozell Show hosted by Rozell Fabiani on WRBL in Columbus, Georgia. Two unidentified hillbillies and Rozell are doing their best to promote Hillbilly Bread.


Click on the photo and you'll notice the hillbillies are wearing oversized buttons that says, “It’s Colossal." I have on of those buttons, but I can't find it. I do have one of the felt blocks that’s sewed to the guys overalls. It's hard to see in the photograph since they're covering it with the bread loaves.


According to this website, an innovative man by the name of William Busse, the owner of Kreamo Bread, had a brilliant promotional idea during a Notre Dame football game. He parachuted miniature loaves of bread from an airplane. Here’s the blurb from the website where Hillbilly Bread is mentioned - “During the depression he ran continuous ads announcing a Hobo Convention was coming to town soon. It caused quite a stir. When the appointed day arrived all his Kreamo drivers appeared at grocery stores dressed like Hobos. Their trucks had banners announcing “Hillbilly Bread” a new bread Kreamo was introducing.” Apparently he continued this advertising practice for many years after. I wonder if this is the same Hillbilly Bread as the one we’re talking about today. If so, here’s a miniature bread bag of Hillbilly Bread.


This bag is probably from the 1960’s and who knows, maybe it was parachuted from a plane.

Next up is this stylish Hillbilly Bread vest.


My guess it was worn by a grocery store clerk or bag boy. For some odd reason, the first lady won’t let me wear this around town. Hmm... I wonder why?


Here’s two print ads. The first one is from 1978 and the second one is from 1983.



I don't remember ever seeing Hillbilly Tater Bread. But here's an old unused bag. We finally get to see Granny! Her old fashion bread mix is what Hillbilly Bread is made from.


Ok, now that I'm done with my Hillbilly Bread blog post, I'm off to frame my bread bag and hang it over the the dinning room table. Shh... don't tell the first lady.

THE VINCENTACULAR VINCENTENNIAL

Today marks the 100th anniversary of Vincent Price’s birth! May has been Vincent Price month in St. Louis, Missouri, the birth place of the master of macabre. I was fortunate to attend a few events of the aptly named Vincentennial.

But first, I want to ramble about why I’m a Vincent Price fan.

I’m not sure when or how I discovered Vincent Price, but it was most certainly from television in the 1970’s. Vincent seemed to show up everywhere on the tube and I quickly fell under his spell of funnies and frights. I’ve always liked my horror mixed with humor and he was tops in that department. From his appearances on Hollywood Squares, surprise cameos on variety shows, the creepy guy on Brady Bunch, to one of my favorite guests on The Muppet Show. I didn’t see too many of his films until the late 70’s or early 80’s when we got cable TV. That’s when my appreciation really kicked into high gear. He was such an amazing actor and it’s hard to pick a favorite VP film. For me, it’s probably House on Haunted Hill. It was a sad day when the world lost Vincent in 1993 just a few days before Halloween. He continues to live on through his films, his art books, cookbooks and especially through events like Vincentennial.

Even though, I only had a small sampling of Vincentennial in St. Louis this past weekend. I can say the first lady and I had a most excellent time!

The Vincentennial is the brainchild of St. Louis native Tom Stockman and big props to Tom and his crew for putting on such a memorable event. The Vincentennial is one part film festival, one part art gallery, one part museum and one part horror convention. We jumped in with a showing of the classic William Castle flick, The Tingler, at the historic Hi-Pointe Theatre.

It was fun seeing this movie with an audience complete with “scare the audience” gimmicks that tried to recapture Castle’s Percepto. Yes, for a moment the Tingler was loose in the theater!

The next day we visited Star Clipper Comics to view Vincent Price Presents, an art gallery featuring many talented artists from St. Louis paying tribute to Vincent. I neglected to take photos, but you can see a sampling at We Are Movie Geeks.

Afterwards, we spent some time at the Sheldon Art Galleries to view an amazing collection of Vincent Price artifacts and memorabilia. On display is his baby book, personal letters (one to Evie Karloff in condolences to the passing of Boris on Holiday Inn stationary), photographs, toys & models, movie posters and even two life-size Price characters. Check out The Sounds of Vincent Price Blog for an excellent tour video of this museum display.


Dr. Phibes looks too life like and kinda gave me the heebie-jeebies. The Prof. Jarrod figure from House of Wax is wearing the original screen used costume from the 1953 film!

Later that night we returned to the Hi-Pointe for a viewing of The Tomb of Ligeia.


This was Roger Corman’s last Edgar Allen Poe film with Vincent Price and it was really a treat to see. Especially since I had never seen the whole film. Back when I was a kid, I could never sit through it. The gothic romance thing just wasn’t exciting to a ten year old. Before the film, Roger Corman showed up in-person and talked about his films with Vincent Price.


It was an excellent interview by Rondo award winning Tim Lucas, editor of Video Watchdog. DownRightCreepy.com posted the entire interview in eight parts. Watch the first part here and follow the links on YouTube for the rest of the interview. I now have a new fondness for The Tomb of Ligeia and now I want a pair of those cool sun glasses Vincent wears. Did he steal those from the Invisible Man?

(Oops, sorry to interrupt this post, but I just took a break and walked outside. The neighbors cat was staring at me and showing his best impression of the movie poster.)

After the movie, there was a nice video greeting from Elizabeth Shepherd who plays Lady Rowena. She was scheduled to be at the showing, but had a conflict with a stage play she is starring in. It was a perfect ending to the evening.

Today, I scribbled Vincent as Vernon Fell for a simple tribute.

He kinda looks more like Willy Wonka, but I wanted to draw something for today's festivities.

Here’s some more photos of the Hi-Pointe.






We had a neato cool weekend celebrating Vincent’s 100th. Hey, I even caught up with some blogger pals like Karswell, and Max the Drunken Severed Head.

If you’re in St. Louis today, be sure to catch The Vincent Price Legacy: Reflections From a Daughter with Victoria Price tonight at 7:00. Tomorrow night at 8:30 is an outdoor screening of Edward Scissorhands. The display at the Sheldon Art Galleries goes on until Aug. 6.

One last thing. I found this 1954 St. Louis Studio ad from an old St. Louis Magazine called Prom. It advertises Portraits by Vincent Price. Maybe some of the VP experts will know about this. Did this studio have a gallery of some of VP's photographs?


Now I'm off to watch some Vincent Price movies. See you at the next Vincentennial in a hundred years!

JOPLIN MISSOURI NEEDS YOUR HELP

My heart goes out to the folks of Joplin in my home state of Missouri. If you can, please donate to the Red Cross or other helping organizations. Visit the Red Cross Greater Ozarks Regional Chapter or visit KY3, a local TV station for more info on how to help.

CHRYSLER'S MR. TECH

FLEA MARKET FRIDAYS #55

A few days ago I found these swell trouble shooting questionnaires put out by Chrysler in 1948. They feature Chrysler's classic ad character Mr. Tech.

HAPPY NATIONAL MINIATURE GOLF DAY!

Today is National Miniature Golf Day! Forget regular golf, the miniature version is always a much better choice and the goofier the better. The best way to celebrate today's festivities, is to get out there and play a couple of fun filled rounds.

FLOOD & TORNADO VICTIMS

Just a friendly reminder.

You can simply Text "REDCROSS" to 90999 to make a $10 donation or visit the Red Cross website here. Also, you can text "GIVE" to 80888 to make a $10 donation to the Salvation Army. Visit their website here. For a larger list of places to donate you can visit CNN's page, How to help storm and flood victims here.

I noticed that there's a facebook page set up for recent found photographs that were rescued after the tornados. Photographs are so important and it's really nice that so many people are trying to get these found photos to the original owners. Apparently photographs have been found five states away.

WILLIAM SHATNER'S HOW INSENSITIVE: A STAR TREK REMIX

One of my guilty pleasures is listening to William Shatner's The Transformed Man album from 1968. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Mr. Tambourine Man are the two tunes that get the most play, but Shatner's take on How Insensitive has always made me smile. Probably because I always picture Shatner singing this song as his alter ego James T. Kirk. So much in fact, that I just had to add some classic Star Trek sound effects to the song. Originally I was just going to share the song with a few friends, but hey, I consider all you Neato Readers as friends, so I hope you enjoy this Trek tribute video.

Most of the photos came from the fantastic Star Trek fan site, Trek Core.

Be sure to visit William Shanter's website for info about his new upcoming album, Searching For Major Tom.