There was a brief time in the 1980s in which some Chinese restaurants gave out fortune cookies that ended “in bed”. Since there was no World Wide Web or social media at the time I have no idea how I heard about it — perhaps socially, from real people; perhaps on the news…
Anyway I remember hoping that we’d get a fortune that ended ‘in bed”, but we didn’t go out to restaurants much when we were in our 20s. Fortunately for us, we hit the “in bed” jackpot at an inexpensive Chinese restaurant in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I don’t know if we both got one, or if it was just one of us, but here’s the one we got.
I tried to search the Web just now, but I cannot find a reference to this brief trend.
I hate going through memorabilia and making decisions on whether or not to keep something. Even when I’ve made the decision to get rid of something but don’t and then find it again I have trouble letting it go. For instance I had a box of things I was going to give to a used book store that also sells things like old photos, posters, and other paper memories. In that box was the box of book plates that I decided to get rid of in 2024. I no longer donate to that bookstore (bad owner) so I still have the box of bookplates among other things I’d decided to donate. Now they are on my maybe keep pile and the emotional turmoil I went through making the decisions has worn me out and I just want to lie in bed playing games on my phone.
This framed portrait of a man in old-fashioned clothes was in the china cabinet my parents inherited from my dad’s mother. I think, however, the small portrait was from my mom’s side of the family — I vaguely remember it being at my Grandma Green’s house somewhere.
It’s been sitting on an antique secretary in our guest room for years and for years I have wondered who he was. At some point I accidently scratched a small hole in the backing and numbers appeared which intrigued me even further — maybe someone had written information about the man on the back of the photo. I planned, some day, to remove the backing to see what was written there, but doing that involved pulling back dozens of sharp bits of metal so I put it off indefinitely.
The other day I decided to get to the bottom of the mystery of the man in the portrait so I disassembled the frame by prying back the metal bits holding the photo and backing in place. What I assumed was a date written on the back of the photo was instead a series of calculations on (both sides of) an oval piece of card behind the photo. There was also another piece of card before that. Only then did I get to the photo which turned out to not be a photo at all, but an intricate drawing.
Nowhere in the writing on the paper behind the photo indicated who the man was but based on what I know about my mother’s side of the family I was able to make an educated guess that the image is not of any of my grandmother’s family. My grandmother’s family were all from a poorer part of Germany (now Poland) and they became farmers and wood workers when they moved to Northern Wisconsin. My grandfather’s family, on the other hand, were mostly college educated and from Scotland and England. In addition, the man in the portrait has a nose that resembles my grandfather’s — long and narrow with a bit of a ball on the end.
The style of clothing in the portrait, according to Google AI, could be from the regency period — 1830s. The man in the portrait looks like he is maybe in his thirties or forties so based on my family trees it could be a Tyler or a McCornack.
One other clue that I had not noticed until this morning is the decoration on the frame hanger. It seems to be of a thistle, rose, and three leaf clover. Since the Tylers came from England, I’m going to make a guess that the portrait of of a Tyler (or DeWolf) but after that I have no idea. After all, it could have simply been something someone thought nice enough to hang on their wall.
Clutch Cargo Lips 