Life is a magazine

We are all collectors. What we collect is meaningful to us, things that rekindle memories.

It is the nature of life that most of us, at some time, are going be required to sort the collections of another. I recently have and I concluded that I would go through my own collection myself. All my litter isn’t litter.

I discovered why discarding stuff you stuck back over the years is both difficult and time consuming. Each item in its own time had meaning to me. Now, I have to remember what it was. Now, I remember.

I was moving along pretty good and then I found a Life Magazine from July 16,1945. This piqued my interest. Summer 1945. The battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa were over. VE Day had passed. The bombs had not yet been dropped. The cover pictured Audie Murphy, our most decorated soldier.

I opened the magazine and started to thumb through it. Page 30 has a full-page photograph of Rita Hayworth that affirmed Steven Kings decision to hang her poster in Andy Dufresne cell.

Chevrolet and General Electric were advertising pickup trucks and dishwashers they didn’t have. Pontiac was saying it stood for good cars before Pearl Harbor and it will stand for good cars again. Ford proclaimed “There’s a Ford in your future.”

The Science page touted air conditioning, stating that after the war it will be cheap enough to put in private homes.

Five pages proclaim the University of Chicago as being the on cutting of edge of modern education.

Phillip Morris cigarettes. They stated they were scientifically proved to be less irritating to the nose and throat. Tlie ad doesn’t say less irritating than what. Contrary to what I would have expected, this was the only cigarette in the 100-page magazine. Well except for the entire back cover which was devoted to Lucky Strikes. “You said it! L.S./M.F.T.

The Miscellany section was devoted to French bathing suits. Three pages of two-piece swimwear. Sports was Hank Greenberg hitting his first homerun since being discharged from the Army The lead article was titled U.S. Army Justice Falls on Germans. I thought little of it until I opened to a full two pages of rather graphic photos sequencing the hanging of three individuals. I turned back and begin to read a detailed account of how the three civilians had brutally murdered an American paratrooper who was being held prisoner.

Not much stops me these days. The television news seems to always be warning “the following images may be disturbing” But I’m unsure. How much do I need to know? I think I’ll go sip a coke and watch the squirrels. They seem to get along.

In a magazine, one can get — from cover to cover — 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it. –Maya Angelou

Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.