You sure? I think we got two white handkerchiefs to use as boot polish rags in our initial issue as well.
After my time, I'm sure. We got a bar of gold Dial soap and the boot polish cloths were like soft, gun cleaning type of things. May have been double duty, come to think of it.
The USMC issued you with cologne ? Back when i was at depot as a PoC I rocked up on the square one morning still smelling of Brut 37. I can still remember the DS telling me "Only girls and nancy boys wear perfume, Poc" I got the treat of running three times round the perimeter... (that's Potential Officer Candidate, but the DS who were all noncoms used to say it 'Pock' like it was the worst insult in the world)
You're so young! When I was a child/teenager, jello (including unflavoured) was the go-to ingredient for 'fancy' dinner parties, potlucks, you-name-it. And for home cooking as well. My mother (otherwise an excellent cook) used to routinely serve us: Jello salad, consisting of canned fruit cocktail encased in some kind of fruit-flavoured jello Jello salad, consisting of canned pineapple and cottage cheese, encased in lime-flavoured jello And the real cacker. Jello salad consisting of grated cabbage and carrot, encased in lime-flavoured jello I got used to these, but made a vow to myself that I would NEVER make them when I 'grew up.' To date, I never have. HOWEVER ...I do still, on special occasions, make a mean tomato aspic salad. Kind of like a Bloody Mary with more salad ingredients and no alcohol. It's pretty darn good, if I may say so myself. It was my first encounter with Worchestershire sauce, and I've never looked back.
Before final inspection, we did assembly-line style showering, on the way out you'd walk with your hands held up and your mouth open, one recruit would hit you with deodorant, the next one with a spray bottle of Listerine mouthwash, and the third with a spritz of Wind Drift under the chin. If your mouth was still open, you'd end up with a mouthful of aftershave. Yes.
Things like aspic remind me of how large and often strange America is. Here's a thing, that at one time was a thing, and no longer is. It's a little like when my high school girlfriend got into clogging. She was a very driven person and the clogging was meant to help fill out her college applications with impressive extracurriculars. I had never even heard of clogging until then and she introduced me to this strange little insular world of people who clog. Strange, only insomuch as, had I not come into contact with clogging via Melanie, I would likely never have heard of it at all. An unknown unknown, so to speak. So too with aspic. It's not something I was ever likely to run into in real life since Hispanic grandmothers do not engage in aspic duels*. They certainly duel, like any and all grannies, just not with aspic. *It was in a funny aspic article I came across. The writer was describing her family get-togethers and the dueling grannies showing up with high caliber, fully automatic aspic molds.
is that clog dancing , or is it some weird perversion best not discussed (also your high school girlfriend ... is this the strange American habit of referring to all girls who are friends as girlfriends?) in regard of weird food choices, have you come across blushing bunny ? ( I hadn't until i went to see a freind in wisconsin and he took me to a community dinner)
Defo dancing. It's a teensy bit like if Michael Flatley and Mikhail Baryshnikov had a love child and they only ever let little Sasha where wooden shoes. Nope. This is the girl I actually almost married. Strange days.... Nope, but a quick google just now evinced something rather more innocent than I expected. The name sounded too innocent, so I expected something dire. Wisconson is part of an America I have never been to. Great Lakes America is as different from Floridian America as Kent is from the Congo.
Aspic doesn't hold up well in hot climates! It's a cold-weather thing, in the Great Lakes states, where I'm from. In fact, tomato aspic was a classic Thanksgiving salad.
its basically tomato soup mixed with cheese sauce, served with triangles of fried bread... they also had nuts and bolts, which was wheatos and other such cereal deep fried then sprinkled with salt
I've only been to the south once , when i went to Atlanta -(actually that's not quite true when i was in the army we went to visit and exercise with a US regiment which may have been in Alabama, or possibly Arizona, it was a long time ago and all i remember is it being flat and hot as hell)
Nuts and bolts? We used to call that Chex Party Mix, and we made it at home for EVERY party. Wheat Chex, Rice Chex, Corn Chex and mixed nuts tossed in butter and lightly fried in a pan and seasoned with garlic salt and whatever other seasoning sprang to mind. It was very more-ish. This really IS confessional, isn't it? I haven't had any of that in, oh, about 50 years.
Maybe you can order a bag online? (I think it can come in a large plastic jar too.) https://www.amazon.com/Chex-Mix-Traditional-Snack-15/dp/B000SSX2YK/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Chex+mix&qid=1557586944&s=pantry&sr=8-3
Chex party mix is my memory of being allowed to hang with the adults during a dinner party, rather than being relegated to the "Lego Room".
I once thought that the word fidelity was pronounced as fiddle-ity, with all vowels short, no pauses, and a strong accent on the "y". That is pronouncing the fiddle part as if it were the word for a musical intrument, as in: "Do you play the fiddle?" and adding the "ity"part in quick successuion. I went around asking people if they knew where the Fidelity Bank was in downtown Phily while confidently using that pronunciation and all I got were blank stares.
