This Month’s October Meeting
NEW CLUB BY-LAWS DISCUSSION
MEETING 10-14-25

LAST MONTH
         If  for some reason,  you missed the last meeting . . . it was delicious!
Well, if you ask me it has been far too long since we had Bimbo’s Pizza! 
                                                                                                                         
        My wife grew up in the western Upper Peninsula, in a tiny little village called, Amasa. Last I knew; they had three bars, three churches and one gas station. The gas station is also a convenience store and hotel called
The Tall Pines.
         From Amasa it was about a half hour drive to Iron River, where they would go to get Pizza at the Iron River Bar. Also knows as, Riverside Pizzeria.
          My wife and my In-laws  kept raving about that pizza! Sure, they loved it, but in no-man’s land, what do you have to compare with?

          Generally, any food is best when placed on your plate hot- from- the-oven, but in this case we phoned in the order, and my father-in-law, Bob, and I would drive over and get it. So, at best, by the time we got back, it was 30 minutes of travel time back to Amasa, before we had a bite.

 Man-oh-man, I couldn’t believe it! This was truly amazing pizza!

          I remember talking to the owner at the Iron River Bar about his great pizza. He told me the recipe was from an Italian pizza chef now living in Wisconsin.

         Now, back to Bimbo’s in Kalamazoo;

         I believe it was Ron, or my friend, Matt Smilanich, the owners of Bimbo’s, to whom I was telling about the Iron River pizza and how it was so similar. They were aware of the Iron River Pizza! It seems their recipe had the same Wisconsin ancestry!

         The media group M-Live does a state wide survey in regards to ‘Michigan’s Best’ and for Pizza, Bimbo’s and Iron River "Riverside Pizzeria"  are always in the top two every year! Small world!

        So yes, at the last meeting we chowed-down! We usually turn in half a dozen orders for large pizzas, and, in memory of Chuck we order his favorite, a couple “Heart Stoppers” (a.k.a. Meat Lovers)!

        My choice of toppings is sausage, mushrooms and black or green olives . . . which has become so popular I am lucky to even get some!

        Vincent kept track of the pizza party attendance! Here is the list he passed along to me.
 Linda Hamilton, (Mary wasn’t able to make it, (we miss you Mary!) but we sent some pizza home with Linda.
Vincent Grossi, Kevin Siegfried, Lynn Kozik, Al Holden, Scott Hendrichson, Eddie Nickerson, Mary Gale,
Gary Dean, Katie Wages, Brian Wages, Ron Smith, Judy Hayes, Tim Hayes, Libby Hill, Dan Hill.
 We just had a wonderful time of food and fellowship!


  When It Rains it Pours!   
          I was told to upgrade to Windows version 11, so I did, at a cost of $800.00. So, this isn’t my first rodeo.
Sure it is a pain transferring files and assorted programs, and I waited until the pressure was great before finally updating.
       With my office system, my credit card processing is all tied in with my computer network. This means I had no option. The downside was that most of my software was not compatible with Windows 11! You tell me it isn’t all rigged?

    The problem now is, all about this newsletter, which for 25 years I have crafted 6 generations of Corel Word Perfect. On the new computer, that program has crashed 5 times! It has been freezing-up before I could save my work! All the work lost!!! The next newsletter may be hand-written in cursive.

BOTTLES

I have to admit my heart hasn’t been into my work lately. I showed up at Bimbo’s with one thing in mind . . . eating! I had brought nothing but a camera.

    However, I only saw a couple bottles, but sadly I only remember one owner. Please let me know who brought in the:
 Dʀ Bennett’s Golden Liniment
What a neat little bottle! It has a smooth base, light aqua-color with strong embossing, and a heavy, tapered applied-top. 
    These Liniment bottles can be found going back to the early 1840's with open pontils and 1870's with iron pontils. My best guess this beauty was from 1880's. 
    This was a product made for that man, or woman, who really worked hard everyday sweating out a livelihood. Life didn’t come easy back then . . . today, we really have no clue.
    My father-in-law was a retired lumberjack. Together we dug little camp-dump-pits at long-gone ghost lumber camps and railroad camps in Iron County. The only bottles to outnumber liniment bottles were Ketchup bottles!
    Up there, in those 1800's camps, the most common liniment bottle was Mustang Liniment. That liniment’s  advertising, boasted relief for both a man and his horse!
    Tim Hayes has a sweet attic-mint Michigan Cure bottle! It is a sparkling mint “Dillon’s Pain Cure, Ypsilanti, Mich.” 

Our new Associate Pastor at First Baptist Church Otsego, is named Pastor Dillon! I have to find him one of these!
   
      When I was a kid, growing up in the 50's, all the craze was TV Westerns,  cowboys shows and movies.
     One memory I have is;  One of the bad guys riding into a dusty desert town, one that was almost abandoned. I think the local silver mine had played-out and only a few folks remained behind.

    The cowboy tied up his horse, tossed a saddlebag over his shoulder, and pushed his way through the swinging saloon doors.

    As he entered he caught the attention of eight or ten men seated at tables playing cards and killing time. He approached the bar as he put his bags on a stool. Then he pulled his six shooter from its holster  and laid it in full  view on the bar.     
    “Give me a bottle,” he told the bar-keep.

    The bar tender wiped off the bar and placed a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey in front of the cowboy.

    In the blink of an eye the cowboy picked up his pistol and back-handed the bottle with the pistol barrel sending broken glass everywhere!

    “I don’t want this watered down rot-gut! Get me a bottle of that good stuff that you are hiding!”
    That was a concept that I hadn’t considered before!
    So, as I wandered out to my car, Kevin called me over to take a look at the good stuff!
    Not that the other bottles were not special, but one he unwrapped an electric green bottle that about knocked my eyes out! It was the most beautiful bright-and-sparkling emerald green glass I have ever seen. 
    This beautiful emerald Green bottle is for “Reese’s Prescription 1000," which contained a medicine for VENEREAL DISEASE, from Cleveland Ohio.
    Research, what little I was able to do, shows this company as still in business, but, this bottled product dates back to World War I.
    Today Reese makes pills for the eradication of pin worms. Boxes of that product is still sold on e-Bay. Several of the ads in Spanish are very graphic showing a cut-a-way bowel- section teaming with lively pin-worms!
    Kevin also showed me the best full-label, 1906 Sloan’s Nerve and Bone Liniment that I have ever seen!  I have always thought of liniment as a topical ointment you rub on those tired aching muscles. Rubbing on nerves and bones takes it to whole new level.
    Here is a sharp trade card if ever I saw one! How many of you auto lovers ever heard of the Pope-Toledo automobiles?
  The Pope-Toledo was the muscle car of 1904 & 1905. The Pope-Toledo began life in 1904, emerging from Pope’s earlier bicycle business. The company briefly built steam cars before embracing gasoline, and it didn’t take long for the new machines to make a name for themselves. A Pope-Toledo finished 3rd in the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup, one of America’s most prestigious races, and in 1905 it won the nation’s first 24-hour endurance contest. The Pope -Toledo pictured on the trade card was known as the mile-a-minute car. For those of you like me, went to Otsego School . . . that’s 60 miles per hour!  That, back-in-the-day? Well, was hauling the mail!
    The only way a Ford Model T could go 30 miles per hour, was tied to a rock going over a cliff!
    Just before Pope went out of business in 1907 they built a   a gas engine putting out 50 horse power! It was in a limousine that sold for $6,000 making it the most powerful and most expensive car in America.
    Back in the early 80's I had some engineering friends, working for White’s metal detectors, who decided they could make the finest most advanced metal detectors in the world if they quit and went off on their own . . they could, and they did! I was their first dealer and I sold the dickens out of them.
    But, like the people behind Pope Motors they were genius engineers and designers but they were not good business men. Pope had 5 factories but they grew too fast . . . just like my friends at the original Teknetics Metal Detectors, as
 Elton John put it, “Their candle burned out long before the legend of it did.”   However,  the Teknetics name is still in use today . . . they were that good!