Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Far from our glorious Blue and Gold, and into history in the making. Or rather, the continuum of history, perhaps?

Jeff Daum

Thanks Judy.  Henry Abramson presentation was very informative.  

Paul Simons

Thanks for the link Judy. It's good to know that there are people in this country like Professor Abramson. He is fluent in at least the several languages that supplied the names of places and events in his talk, and he is a man who knows the history and can deal with the complexities of it fairly. Don't I wish everyone with access to media was as informed and honest as Henry Abramson. 

It appears that there are two concerns that we have to deal with. The first is how do we stop Putin's savagery without giving him an excuse to launch a nuclear strike. The second is how do we combat the abject lies that media empires such as the one that pumps propaganda, total lies, into the heads of the Russian populace, one of which also exists here, like the one in Russia controlled by an extremely rich oligarch or gang of oligarchs.

There's no question that the world is in trouble. Right after Abramson's talk Youtube took me to an interview with Russian chess master Gary Kasparov, who presents a way out of the catastrophic condition of Ukraine and the whole world today. Here is that link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYhsloRid_c

In addition here is a deep understanding of Putin from someone who lived in Moscow for a large part of her life, journalist and writer Masha Gessen:

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/10/1085699224/thousands-of-russians-have-fled-afraid-a-new-iron-curtain-will-fall

It's a coincidence that the colors associated with WHHS, blue and gold, are close to the colors of the Ukrainian flag. It's not a coincidence to note the agreement between the values we learned at the school and the values of the Zelensky government in Ukraine and to feel that in a sense we are also being attacked although obviously in no way like the way he and his family and country are being attacked. 

Philip Spiess

Folks, our secret wars have gone way back.  Herewith is one such saga.

HOW CHIQUITA CAME TO CINCINNATI:  A Story with A Peel

Prologue:  If you’re of an age like me (and who isn’t, in our Walnut Hills class?), you’re more than likely to remember one of the most popular advertising jingles of the 1940s (introduced in 1944 in movie theaters, then moved onto radio) and of the 1950s (on television).  It went like this (original lyrics; others were added later):

                        “I’m Chiquita Banana, and I’ve come to say

                        Bananas have to ripen in a certain way:

                        When they are fleck’d with brown and have a golden hue,

                        Bananas taste the best and are the best for you.

                        You can put them in a salad;

                        You can put them in a pie – ai!

                        Any way you want to eat them,

                        It’s impossible to beat them!

                        But bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator –

                        So you should never put bananas in the re-frig-er-ator!

                        (Si, si, si, si!)” [added in 1947]

[If you don’t remember the quasi-calypso tune, look up “Chiquita Banana:  The Original Commercial” on YouTube (Jersey Coaster, 2007) or elsewhere.]

The Chiquita Banana cartoon character, an animated banana with a woman’s dress and legs, was created in 1944 by the cartoonist Dik Browne, best known for his comic strips “Hi and Lois” and “Hagar the Horrible.”  It was loosely based, no doubt, on the then popular Hollywood singer and actress Carmen Miranda [Maria de Carmo Miranda de Cunha] (1914-1955), the “Brazilian Bombshell,” always fantastically over-dressed (except, I have learned, for her panties) and wearing way too much make-up, but most famous of all for her fruit-adorned hats (yes, including bananas, unlike the African-American expatriate singer and dancer, Josephine Baker [1906-1975], the “Black Venus,” who entranced Paris from the 1920s through the 1950s wearing pretty much only bananas on her famous “banana skirt” – and a beaded headband).

The first singing voice of “Chiquita Banana” was that of vocalist Patti Clayton, followed by Elsa Miranda, June Valli, and finally Hollywood actress and singer Monica Lewis, who performed in Hollywood movies and sang with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, and who died in 2015 at the age of 93.  She always kept a little Chiquita Banana doll on her bed.

Some History I:  So how is the “Chiquita Banana” story connected with Cincinnati?  Let us start with the Lindner family, currently ranked by Forbes (2015) as the 129^th richest family in the United States.  The family’s rise to prominence began when Carl Lindner, Sr., opened a dairy processing plant in Norwood, Ohio, in 1938.  Lindner believed that if he could sell enough milk through his own company, he would not have to deal with delivery middlemen, and he could then pass the savings on to customers.  His first United Dairy Farmers store was at 3955 Main Avenue (now Montgomery Road) in Norwood; it opened in 1940.

By 1960, United Dairy Farmers had expanded to thirty stores.  [I still remember vividly that on particularly hot nights we would run from Clifton up Vine Street to the United Dairy Farmers store in St. Bernard, Ohio, for ice cream, or, if we were staying our usual couple of summer weeks at my grandparents’ home in Finneytown, we would go down North Bend Road to go swimming at the pool in College Hill, and buy our ice cream at the United Dairy Farmers store near there.  My favorite was a banana-split dish of peach ice cream with fresh peaches on top, covered with caramel sauce.  But they discontinued the fresh peaches because the peaches turned brown too quickly, so I had to fall back on crushed pineapple with my banana-split ice cream, with the caramel on top of that.]

The Lindners’ United Dairy Farmers company did so well that by 1960 the family bought the American Fimancial Group of investments, son Carl Lindner, Jr., running the American Financial Group and son Richard Lindner running United Dairy Farmers.  (More about them later.)  Sometime after 1975, Carl Lindner, Jr.’s American Financial Group bought into the United Brands Company [see below], taking control of it in 1984 and transforming it into Chiquita Brands International, moving the company to Cincinnati in 1985.

Some Other History II:  So how did Chiquita come into the picture?  We now must take the story back to 1870, when ship’s captain Lorenzo Dow Baker of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, purchased 160 bunches of bananas in Jamaica and resold them in Jersey City eleven days later, thereby unconsciously launching the banana production industry.  In 1873 Central American railway developer Minor C. Keith began to experiment with banana production in Costa Rica, later planting bananas alongside his railway track.  Eventually he formed the Tropical Trading and Transport Company, exporting bananas and other tropical fruit to the United States.  Meanwhile, in 1878, Baker joined forces with Andrew W. Preston to form the Boston Fruit Company.

In 1899 the Boston Fruit Company and eight other fruit-exporting businesses controlled by Minor Keith merged to found the United Fruit Company; it became the first company to use refrigeration during open sea transport.  [Uh, don’t look behind the green banana curtain just yet to see the bananas in the refrigerator (ai)!]  However, United Fruit also came to be of notorious fame; it was controlled for years by its lawyer, Bradley Palmer, who proceeded to buy out fourteen competitors; he was later a much-sought-after expert on business law, advising presidents and Congress.  The company traded in tropical fruit, primarily bananas (always a slippery business), grown on plantations in Central America and the West Indies and sold in the United States and Europe.

By 1930 United Fruit’s banana fleet had grown to ninety-five ships, and it had become the largest employer in Central America and the single largest land owner in Guatemala.  Thereby it came to control vast territories and transportation networks in the areas of its plantations, maintaining a virtual monopoly in countries, which, because of its economic and political reach, came to be known as “banana republics” [see Phil Ochs’ 1965 protest song, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” which mentions the United Fruit Company].  Indeed, in 1928 workers in the company’s Colombia banana plantations went on strike in protest against poor pay and working conditions; the repression of the revolt by the Colombian government (under the political pressure of United Fruit) resulted in the deaths of scores of plantation workers and their families.  (This episode is known in the history of Colombia as the Massacre de las Bananeras – “the Banana Massacre” – and is referred to in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.)

Thus United Fruit was widely accused of “exploitative neocolonialism” as a multinational corporation influencing the internal politics of such countries as Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala.  Its major competitor was the Standard Fruit Company, which later became the Dole Food Company (once controlling Hawaii through pineapple production in a manner much like United Fruit in Central America).  But it was the United Fruit Company which introduced the “Chiquita Banana” ads in the 1940s.

However, in the late 1960s United Fruit went through a major decline [slipped on its own banana peels, perhaps?] and it merged in 1970 with corporate raider Eli M. Black’s AMK company to become the United Brands Company.  Black mismanaged this company, and in 1974 Hurricane Fifi destroyed many banana plantations in Honduras, affecting the company’s finances.  Further, a scheme to bribe the Honduran president was plotted by United Brands; it was later uncovered by the Securities and Exchange Commission and dubbed “Bananagate.”  Black committed suicide by jumping from his office window on the 44^th floor of the Pan Am building in New York City in 1975, and Lindner’s American Financial Group promptly bought into United Brands, acquiring control of the company in 1984, and renaming it Chiquita Brands International (1990) after the still remembered popular ads [see above].

A  Bit of Modern History:  Thus Chiquita came to Cincinnati from New York City in 1985, moving into the 29-story Columbia Plaza building (250 East Fifth Street, built in 1984 at the corner of 5^th and Sycamore Streets); it was thereby renamed the Chiquita Center.  Initially, there was a sculpture by George Sugarman at the entrance to the building called “Cincinnati Story,” depicting the rise of the city from the banks of the Ohio River, but for some reason it was moved to Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in Hamilton, Ohio.  Likewise, at first the building served as a weather beacon, the top story of the building lighting up with a different color, depending on the weather forecast; this was discontinued at some point also.

But all was not smooth sailing.  Although the company rebranded itself Chiquita Brands Inter-national in 1990, and undertook major investments in Costa Rica, the company began to see a decline in Honduras banana production that same year, possibly (as was learned much later) because of the blight (“Panama Disease”) that was wiping out the “Cavendish” strain of banana, the kind that we all grew up with (though the original most successfully-selling strain, the “Gros Michel,” had been dying out much earlier), through much of Central America.  As a result, Chiquita initiated the “Banana Wars” with its European rival Fyffes (based in Ireland) because of the limited banana supply:  it began illegally seizing and destroying Fyffes’ shipments on the high seas, as well as bribing judges to validate detention orders on Fyffes’ ships, thus destroying ten million dollars worth of produce.  Despite all this, Chiquita opened the world’s largest banana processing facility in Costa Rica in 1998.

But things went from bad to worse.  In November, 2001, Chiquita filed for bankruptcy protection in order to restructure the company; its emergence from bankruptcy in March, 2002, ended Cincinnati businessman Carl Lindner, Jr.’s control of the company.  Thereupon Chiquita Brands International announced it would leave Cincinnati in 2011, moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2012, to eventually merge with Fyffes – but instead merging with Cutrale-Safra in 2014 and becoming Chiquita Brands International Sarl, headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Thereupon in 2014 the Chiquita Center in downtown Cincinnati had its name changed to 250 East Fifth Street, the name with which it had started out!

As to Chiquita Banana herself?  Peel-off stickers with the Chiquita logo on them started being placed on bananas in 1963.  They are still placed by hand today to avoid bruising the fruit.  The Chiquita female banana character was changed into an actual woman(still looking much like Chiquita Banana) in 1987.  Later, a new Miss Chiquita (her new name) came into being in 1998.

Epilogue:  Oh, and yes, you can store bananas in the refrigerator – if they are ripe!  The cold will inhibit any more ripening; if they are stored in the refrigerator and are unripe, they will cease to get ripe and will probably turn black – hence the Chiquita jingle’s warning!  (Si, si, si, si!)

Ira Goldberg

Phil, I don't know why, but your banana history had great a'peel to me. Thank you!

Dale Siemer

As some of you know, I live in North Carolina. I recently bought a "For Sale" sign. It was made by The Hillman Group!!

Jon Singer

Back in '63 my father had congestive heart failure as a result of rheumatic fever damaged mitral valve.  He took an electrolyte wasting diuretic and at his doctor's recommendation, he ate a banana daily in order to maintain his blood potassium.   ( I don't know that the daily shot of Murphy's Irish whiskey had been prescribed, but father stuck to both arrangements).  With mother's constant supply bowl of Chiquita, he reclined, left the hand-attached sticker on and shared the interior stringy peel wall with our parakeet who expectantly nibbled from the perch of father's chest. 

Out of the blue, mother wrote Chiquita in order to tell them with significant banana confidence, they sold a superior product.  They promptly returned a thank you note and enclosed a coupon for 40 pounds of Chiquita bananas.  The IGA man on the 1200 block of California Ave honored this currency, but only as a one time exchange. No historian took notes, but my folks broadcasted and subsequently hosted a hell of an adult banana block party.  

Ira Goldberg

Jon, I had a banana (or two) each day, as well. I lived on the next block - 1312 Carolina - and would've been happy to help devour a few . . . for your family's sake, of course! Hmmm. I need to find Chiquita's address!

Philip Spiess

SHULLER’S “WIGWAM,” COLLEGE HILL

Inquiring of our College Hill companion, Bruce Fette, if he recalled College Hill’s United Dairy Farmers ice cream parlor, he replied that he and his family had not patronized that particular emporium – but he brought up Shuller’s “Wigwam,” a restaurant which stood at the northeast corner of Hamilton Avenue and North Bend Roads (official address:  6210 Hamilton Avenue), and which, for many years, had a neon sign on Hamilton Avenue which had an Indian figure shooting moving arrows into said wigwam.  Do any of the rest of you remember it?

Founded in 1922 by Russian immigrants Max and Anna Shuller, it started as a six-stool hamburger stand next to a Paragon gas station, expanded in 1934 to a glass-enclosed beer garden, and then in 1941 took on the form I first remember – a round teepee-shaped building (with aquariums inside) which gave it the “wigwam” name and introduced the neon Indian sign.  My sources state that the teepee was demolished and replaced in 1954 with a modern and enlarged restaurant, but this seems early to me – my grandparents had just moved to Finneytown in 1954, and I do think that we ate in the “Wigwam” a couple of times before it was renovated.  Its renovation, however, turned it into one of the largest restaurants in Cincinnati, as it was able to seat 1,000 people, making it a popular venue for reunions and sports banquets alike.  By this time sons Leo and Saul Shuller were running the business.

The “Wigwam” had a menu with an American Indian theme:  a “Mohican French-Fried Seafood Platter Deluxe” and a “Squaw Steak Special” for the ladies, for example, names for dishes which would probably be considered racial and/or condescending in the extreme today.  Shuller’s was also the site of another historical quirk:  beginning in 1980, certain patrons of Shuller’s came every January to celebrate the “mediocrity” of Millard Fillmore, 13^th (and decidedly mediocre) President of the United States.   The group, called the “Fillmorons,” numbered over one hundred members, and their first annual event was emceed by Jerry Springer (gawd! – talk about mediocre!).

Over the years, famous patrons of the “Wigwam” included Doris Day (a native Cincinnatian), Woody Hayes, Perry Como, and Ronald Reagan.  A declining and aging population became the “Wigwam”’s steadfast patrons; the younger set went elsewhere.  And so, in 1997, when Leo’s son and nephew declined to take on the business, Leo Shuller made the decision to close in 2000, and so he did.  The building itself was demolished in 2006, that which had been one of Cincinnati’s longest-run family restaurants.

Bruce Fette

Yes I walked past the Wigwam every day after stepping off the 17 bus to College Hill. 

Krisi Ottesen got off the bus at the prior stop. William Moore and Clark Ross also stepped off the buss at the same stop, while Judy Bosken stepped off the bus at the next stop and Harold Merse at the next stop, and Jim Martin at the next, and then Churchill McKinney at the next.  I guess some of those folks transfered before the senior year, since they dont show on the classmate profiles.For some, the 17 bus stop was a transfer to yet another bus headed east.

Phil, Perhaps you could recount the reason it was called "College Hill".  :) And just a little farther north on Hamilton Avenue, was Mount Healthy. There is another interesting story of how it got that name.:)

Back to the subject of Wigwam,  When I graduated from UC and started work at Motorola in Phoenix, I took route 66 all the way from St. Louis to Flagstaff. It was a 3 day drive in my Road Runner. And back then there was actually a motel on the side of the road  where the rooms  were actually Teepees.  Sometimes you see a travelog about route 66  with photos of the teepees. I dont know exactly when those disappeared from Route 66. I could do a lot of stories about route 66 and 3 days of driving, and what I saw along the way. Some other time.

Speaking of Motorola, how many of you had flip phones? There is another story for another time.

Philip Spiess

Bruce:  Quick answer:  College Hill was named after the Ohio Military Institute, located there, but I'll be glad to write up its history at a later date.  Mount Healthy, located well above and away from the miasmas rising from the industrial and slaughter-house basin of downtown Cncinnati, was settled amid the fresh air of the northern countryside of Hamilton County.

Route 66 is a whole other ball game, peppered throughout its length with what we called in the historic preservation business (i.e., my business) "commercial archeology."  This included more than one cabin court or motor court (terms for a proto-motel) designed as teepees (these increased the further into the Southwest you got) -- but there were also gas stations and restaurants in the teepee form -- all designed to attract clientle as folks traveled by automobile down the new national roads (post 1920) -- and to the new western national parks --  into the American hinterlands.

Dale Gieringer

 Yes, the Wigwam brings back fond memories.  My father liked to take us there on special occasions.  I have no recollection of their faux-Indian menu though.   Another place he liked to take us was Capt. Al's Trolley Tavern down on River Road near Anderson Ferry.   I don't know what became of it.   It was halfway colorful, but the food was nothing to go out of the way for.

Bruce Bittmann

Gotta add a restaurant to the east side of town, also known as Silverton, although I don't know why.  No mines there to my recollection.  And, I grew up in Kenwood.  Remote.  Back to one of my favs, The Marathon on Montgomery Rd in Silverton.  BEST triple decked sandwiches I have ever had.  And, the variety.  Long gone now but what a place.  Phil, I know you weren't from this part of town, but I'd been interested in how it came about.  I think it was open by a Greek family.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

I haven't thought of Shuller's Wigwam in years but my family did go there. We had Thanksgiving dinner there are couple of times after my Mom was sick and could no longer host it.  I think they had a nice buffet meal.  They had a restroom that was down a flight of stairs so we stopped going there because she couldn't walk them anymore. We did enjoy that restaurant though. 

Paul Simons

Shuller's Wigwam had party rooms in addition to the restaurant. My folks had their 50th Anniversary celebration dinner there. Very nice place.

The Marathon - I'd go there when I lived in Cincinnati for their roast beef sandwich. Excellent. Last time I was on Montgomery Rd I drove out looking for it, yes it's gone, but now you have City Barbeque, pretty good substitute.
 

Philip Spiess

Bruce:  I can't track down The Marathon restaurant at the moment, but I'll keep trying.

About the name origins of two Cincinnati area cities:  Bruce Fette inquires about the origins of Mount Healthy.  I posited that it was well away from the slaughter-house stink and industrial smog of the diwntown basin.  I was close:  Mt. Healthy was founded in 1817 as a settlement named "Mount Pleasant."  Following floods in the Ohio River, Cincinnati suffered a cholera epidemic in 1849 and many people fled downtown to the farmland on the hilltops.  Many went to Mt. Pleasant to seek healthier climes; it was already known as a hotbed of abolitionists and a locus of sites on the "Underground Railroad."  As there was already another Mt. Pleasant elsewhere in Ohio, in 1850 Mount Pleasant changed its name to "Mount Healthy"; when it was incorporated as a village in 1893, the name "Mount Healthy" became official.  Mount Healthy became a city in 1951.

As to Silverton, Bruce Bittmann, this community first gathered around a crossroads store established by David Mosner, and as the community grew it came to be referred to as "Mosner" (or sometimes "Enterprise"), formally becoming "Mosner" in 1861.  In 1883, the Cincinnati, Lebanon, and Northern Railway came to town, thereby allowing residents to commute to businesses in Cincinnati.  The town, incorporated in 1884, grew accordingly, and Seth Haines and Robert Cresap plotted its first subdivision, reputedly naming it "Silverton" after Haines's wife, Elizabeth Silver Haines.  By the turn of the century, the community was also served by an interurban trolley line, and in 1904 Silverton was incorporated as a village.  Around this time the John C. Meier Grape Juice Company established its business there (it is now "Meier's Wine Cellars, Inc.").  Silverton was incorporated as a city in 1961.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

City Barbecue looks good. It's possible that my sister has picked up food from there. She lives in Waynesville.  

Paul Simons

You're right Barbara. It's great and the aroma of hickory burning in the smoker is in the air for miles around. It's irresistable.

Bruce Fette

I guess I will jump in here regarding Meiers.

We discovered Meiers in Arizona before we moved to Virginia. It used to be available in Safewayin Az, but then disappeared. Then it disappeared from Safeway here in Va. We order the Cold Duck for holidays and celebrations. And they ship it direct from Silverton.  :)

And Paul, that brisket looks awful GOOD.  The brisket source here is called "Sloppy Moma's.  In Durango it called Texas Barbeque.

Larry Klein

On this 27th day of March in the year 2022, we all owe a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our resident historian and reporter PHIL SPIESS. 

I'm sure the wine will be flowing at the Spiess household today.  And there will be cake!  CHEERS!!

Philip Spiess

Thanks so much, Larry!  It's also my son's birthday (he's 31)!  Yes, there was cake and champagne, after the celebratory dinner of oysters and seafood and filet mignon at a fine old restaurant in Olde Town, Alexandria, Virginia.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Hey Phil!

Mazal tov to you and your son on your birthdays yesterday. Wow, you guys certainly know how to celebrate!

Judy

Jeff Daum

Happy natal day Phil!  We will have a drink in your honor in Rick's bar in Casablanca (we are there now).  Cheers my friend!

Philip Spiess

Jeff:  Will they play "As Time Goes By" for me?

Jeff Daum

Phil: Well first time I asked 'Sam' he said he did not remember the words , but after I slipped him some dirhans he did play it for you.

By the way, apparently you did not see my earlier post #5823...