Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

He sold slaves, yes. Indians to other Indians and Canadians, Africans mostly to well-to-do French-Canadians.

The Acadians of New Brunswick and environs apparently considered it a status symbol to own black slaves. Until 1834, it was entirely legal for them to do so, but after 1807, the transport of such slaves by sea (compexities regarding maritime law and sovereignity obviously apply) was illegal by British decree. Enter the enterprising Clay Allen, who never heard of regulatory restraints on any form of trade but he immediately tried to find a way to profit from them.

Family lore has it he was at various times an Indian fighter, a backwoods scout, a trapper, a miner, a farmer, a lumberjack, a pirate, a slaver, a dry goods merchant, a bandit, a distiller, an innkeeper and a hunter. Judging from the stories, he seems to have lived roughly from the English Civil War to the American one, killed around five counties worth of folk, not counting Indians, and been about twelve foot tall in boots and coon hat. He also seems to have taught Old Scratch all that worthy knew about artful and wicked, in between showing Davy Crockett how to shoot and Daniel Boone how to swear.

Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

Most common? Probably drinking beer in Germany.

He would have graduated high school and turned 18 in 1963. This was before major escalation in Vietnam and the draft would not have been as high as it was c.65 and later. There was still the need for NATO troops in Europe.

Not being able to afford college tuition in 63 is kind of iffy.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/...t13_330.10.asp

The left side of this is in 2012-13 dollars but scroll over and you'll get the numbers in period dollars. Choose a "public" institution if bargain shopping and the numbers would be quite modest.

Still, in 63 except for freefloating existential nuclear anxiety there would probably not have been that great a worry about military service.

Even for persons who did go to Vietnam later there were a lot of supply and personnel clerks there. I had a high school history teacher who pulled such service and the VC did shell the base he was stationed at multiple nights per week but it probably constituted psychological warfare more than serious combat. My teacher didn't take it personally and was rather blasé about it.

Anyone who was driven by patriotism to serve in possible danger could join the Marines. They were all volunteer.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Don't know this matters.

I read that when Korea happened the army had lots of new troops and all, the platoon (Lieutenant) and company(Captain) were from after WW II ended so had no combat experience. Since the Reserve has slower promotion rates the Lieutenants that went into the reserves after WW II were now Captains, So lots of them were called back up to command companies in Korea despite having been told that the Reserve would no get called up until after the Army was fully deployed. Good for the troops having experienced commanders, bad for the officers in terms of being shot at.

Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

Yes, he does sound like someone who could have taught the devil his trade.

Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

Others have covered these points, but for someone born between 1937 and 1942 you most likely got drafted after high school or college. That would be anywhere from 1955 (born 1937, went in after high school) to 1964 (born 1942, got a deferment for college.) Only at the end would you be likely to see much risk. Unless you had a lot of deferments things would be settled by your late 20s.

Note that it was common to enlist in anticipation of a draft, both to have some control over how and where you served and to avoid wasting time waiting for the draft board. My dad was born in 1941 and enlisted in the Army out of college in 1963 with hopes of becoming an Army journalist (he was a journalist by trade) but was in for a very short time before they checked his eyesight and politely informed him they wouldn't need his services unless World War III broke out. I would say at the time avoiding service would have been considered dishonorable by most people, but that changed in later years.

How difficult it would be to avoid the draft depended on the time and place. I would say it's safe to assume someone well connected who wanted an exemption could get one though perhaps at a later cost in reputation. Note avoidance during the Vietnam War could include service in the National Guard which generally meant you wouldn't go to Vietnam. For example, the Texas Air National Guard had the 147th Group, nicknamed the Champagne Unit for the sons of the well connected who served in it.

And as others noted it was fairly common to be drafted and have a dull and quiet term of service.

Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

Cool, thanks.

US Navy had a huge base in Okinawa, I know, with plenty of Marines stationed there. There were probably USAF facilities in Okinawa too and probably some small Army presence. Signals and so forth.

USAF was in Great Britain and Germany, that I recall. There was a Guam base, obviously, and they used Thailand for some missions connected with Vietnam.

The US base here in Iceland was small and had Marines and Navy SP personnel, mostly, apart from the USAF contigent that came with the F-15s. I think it was representive of a lot of small bases.

US Navy had a lot of bases in Italy. Naval bases in Philippines, South Korea, Japan proper, UK (I think, but mostly used RN facilities if they stopped by).

Where else than in Germany, CONUS and Vietnam were there large numbers of US Army soldiers stationed between 1955-1980? Did South Korea have a large US garrison between 1955 and Vietnam? Was it reduced dramatically during Vietnam?

Don't forget that to be able to afford college, someone has to be able to afford no wages (or at least only wages for a part-time job) for the duration. They also have to be able to afford to live where there is a university, which for someone from the Saint John Valley of Aroostook County in Maine between 1950 to ca 1960, means moving to Houlton, Bangor or another of the larger towns in Maine.

Fort Kent offered schooling for teachers, but the current University of Maine - Fort Kent wasn't a state college until around 1965 and wasn't really a university with many degrees on offer until 1970, when it became part of the University of Maine. Presque Isle had another teacher's school, but again, not a state college until 1965 and didn't offer a lot of options for degrees until it became part of the University of Maine system in 1968.

In 1963, my NPC could have continued living with his parents and commuted to the Fort Kent Normal School, but only for a two-year teaching degree. He also had the option of a two-year associate degree at Northern Maine Community College in Presque Isle or a two-year teaching degree at The Aroostook State Teachers College, but it would be too far to commute and he'd have to move there.

He could also move to Houlton, for Ricker College, but that was a fairly exclusive and expensive institution (for the time). Finding work in Houlton would also be harder than doing it in Presque Isle. Then there would be the University of Maine, at Orono, which would probably be his best bet, but Orono isn't a big city and would not necessarily have any more part-time work for him than Houlton.

It's far from implausible to imagine him attenting Fort Kent Normal School, but not finishing a degree (as he never wanted to be a teacher) and then ending up without any draft deferment as he looks for a job.

I can imagine a lot of reasons for not wanting to be forced to wear a uniform and obey orders for two years that do not have anything to do with danger.

Indeed.

First Nation or Native American NPC
 

I'm fairly used to stories featuring Native Americans in the American Colonies/United States between 1750 and 1890, with the setting moving progressively West during the first century and with most of the classic tales being set on the Great Plains, the Dakotas or on either side of the Mexican borderlands.

What I do not have is a good feel for 'civilised' Indians in the area of the original 13 colonies during the latter part of the 19th century. Nor do I know much about Native Americans or First Nation people for much of the 20th century.*

What I'm considering is the background of an NPC named Joseph Greybear. He was born in 1944, in Allagash, Aroostook County, Maine. At the time of play, he is therefore aged 44. He might not have an entirely commonplace background, in that he was born to a very old and eccentric Mi'kmaq, who avoided any settlement too large for him to be able to know everyone in it personally, and his eight or ninth wife, a pretty young Métis woman with Maliseet ancestry, from St. Francis, Aroostook County, Maine. I would like to avoid making his background farcical, rather than merely eccentric, however.

Greybear is also a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. His enlistment would have been for four years, he'd have enlisted fairly early in 1967 and been deployed 4-6 months later.

After his 6-month tour was done, he'd have offered to extend it to 13-months in exchange for the R&R benefits this brought. This means rotation back stateside in mid-1968 or so. While there, he and a corporal from his squad, who had both unofficially performed the role of sharpshooters and scouts for their company, were both offered a post in a Scout/Sniper platoon. Both of them volunteered to be deployed again despite the policy of a 2-year stateside post after a combat tour** and he was back in country in 1969, for another 13-month deployment.

I'm considering several questions:

a) How fluid was the border between the United States and Canada for Native Americans/First Nations people in the 19th century? Greybear's father was very old and lived between 1864-1958. Could the older Grey Bear have viewed the distinction between Canada and Maine as immaterial, having family on both sides? Or were there strict measures taken in the 19th century to prevent Mi'kmaq or Maliseet people from ignoring the border and being Canadian when it suited them and Mainians on other occasions?

b) I've read some stuff about the abuses of Canada in regard to the schooling of First Nations children. How plausible is it for someone who grew up in the 1870s and was an adult by 1882 to have escaped any form of formalised schooling in either Canada or Maine? If not very plausible, could he have learned to read and write from priests, but never actually attended one school for very long?

c) How plausible is it for Joseph Greybear to have been successfully kept from going to the Allagash Public School between 1950-1964? His father would have taught him to read and write, along with the necessaries of trapping, stalking and shooting, and only when his parent died did the local priest manage to have Joseph given some proper schooling, in a Catholic school in St. Francis.

d) How plausible is it for Greybear to have been able to extend his second tour even further than 13 months and/or to take a short R&R break and then immediately continue for another tour in 1971?***

e) What rank would be most likely hold after four years as a Marine? Exemplary soldier, highly valued observer in a Scout-Sniper Platoon, brilliant fieldcraft and good at teaching new Marines how to patrol, but in temperament always subservient to his older friend, also an enlisted Scout-Sniper, but most likely one rank higher.

*As regard modern Native Americans, in so far as they are distinct from other Americans, I've read books written by modern Native American historians and anthropologists, seen movies set on reservations and visited a reservation in Connecticut. Granted, said reservation was a giant casino and not very representative of anyone's culture, unless it represented our collective abnegation of culture.
**Which limited men with normal 3-4 year enlistments to only one combat tour unless they explicitly volunteered for more or were unlucky enough to belong to a unit with a messed-up deployment schedule or have an MOE which was deemed vital/scarce enough for this unofficial policy not to apply.
***He had originally enlisted because his best friend did. That best friend became transfered with him to the Scout-Sniper Platoon, became his Sergeant and usually worked with him as the bolt-action rifle sniper of their scout-sniper team. This best friend lost his brother in combat in 1968 and in 1969, he discovered that his other brother had gone AWOL in Thailand. Just before Christmas, 1970, the best friend's wife died of a stroke. At that time, the Sergeant should have gone home and taken care of his young son, but was psychologically unable to face going home after all these losses. Instead, he did all he could to remain in the combat zone, where he understood his duties, and left his son in the hands of his parents and in-laws. Greybear wouldn't want to leave his friend, even if he privately thought he was being stupid.

Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

The Iceland base was probably bigger in the 60s My Uncle pulled duty there and he was regular Navy (clerk mostly). Born and raised in Florida he was assigned to Iceland, Greenland and Alaska. At a guess they were supporting fleet supply and Naval aviation both for supply and ASW flights (P-3 Orion and similar) I think the DEW blimps flew untl 63.

A list of where the US did not have foreign bases in the 50s and 60s would be shorter and much simpler than a list of where they did.

Re: About draftees and other military veterans
 

Sure. I keep forgetting how big the base used to be. The base I knew was but a shadow of the 60s one.

And a list I can find online. I was looking for an impression of where people who grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s would have been sent, expected to be sent or ended up serving. Having a list of foreign bases doesn't really tell me how many draftees ended up serving in each, how long such service was, etc.

I get the impression tours of duty were reserved for combat zone assignments, but I don't know how long a typical posting for a 50s or early 60s draftee in Germany would be. I don't know if one foreign duty post was usually the limit. I also don't know if it was likely for a typical US Army draftee to serve in South Korea or Okinawa, rather than in Germany.

All these things are stuff many Americans would probably know off hand, for one because their fathers or uncles, grandfaters or great-uncles, might have served in these places.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Korea has had a significant garrison force since the Korean war. Between the cool to cold weather, the constant incursions across the DMZ by the North Koreans, as well as their boat landings around the South Korean and Japanese coasts, it is considered to be a hardship posting, at least until roughly 2000. North Korea has always been a saber rattler, and Seoul would likely turn into a charnel house from the many North Korean artillery emplacements, particularly if chemical rounds are used.

1985-1988 Forensics, Autopsies, Time of Death on Decomposed Floaters
 

I've got a technical question for the forumites.

1) How good was 1985-1988 forensics at determining time of death for decomposed bodies recovered from a river in spring?

Assume that the victim was thrown into the river at some time ranging from four weeks to six months before, imperfectly weighed down and came floating up with the spring. We'll say that a typical body would have been thrown there in January, recovered in April or May.

2) How large would the window for 'time of death' that a typical ME would leave himself in such a case be? Are we talking that he could determine death to within a certain three day range, a certain week or a certain month?

3) Would late 80s forensic science be able to tell from such a decomposed body if it had been stored in a freezer previously to being disposed of in the river?

For arguments sake, let's say that the bodies were stored in a freezer for anywhere from a week to six months.

--3a) Assuming they could not tell, how much would this skew the time of death estimate?

--3b) Assuming that they could tell, how much extra uncertainty regarding precise time of death does this introduce?

Greenwich Village, New York City
 

I actually have a question that is not about the ruralest of rural Maine!

Does anyone here live in New York City or know a lot about it?

I'm looking for a street somewhere in the Greenwich Village where it might be plausible that there could have been a small warehouse which was not in use for three years or so. There can have been a developer which owned it, with plans to turn it into condos or gallery space or whatever, but for some reason, the property simply sat idle for three years.

It would be best if the area around it could be dilapidated as well. Also ideal if this could be close to the Hudson River, but I realise that riverfront property is probably expensive enough so that it makes little sense for no one to make constructive use of it.

Cool if it is in an 'off the grid' area. Good if no one lives nearby, though in New York City, I realise that this is a pretty tall order. Make it 'no one important lives nearby', i.e. an area with artists, squatters, the homeless, etc.

I seem to recall the East Village being pretty run down in the 80s...

Re: First Nation or Native American NPC
 

The Civilized Tribes lived in a manner similar to white southerners. According to wikipedia they still were ruled politically by Indian-style chiefdoms rather then English, French, or Spanish style aristocracy or American style bourgious republicanism. Culturally they were indistinguishable from many whites and often intermarried. They were certainly Christianized and they had a plantation economy similar to that of the South complete with African slaves. During the Civil War they fought on both sides as fairly conventional looking soldiers and at least one was at Appomatox with the Union army.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

1) How porous the border was depended a lot on what people you belonged to. Maliseet and Mik'maq (usually rendered Micmac up to the late 1970s), existed on both sides of the border and readily travelled between Canada and the U.S. Treaties between Canada and the U.S. generally provided for free passage of First Nations peoples across the border without let or hindrance. While Passamaquoddy have put forward a land claim against St. Andrews, New Brunswick, there haven't been any Passamaquoddy residents in New Brunswick since at least the 1930s and they have never had a Canadian reserve. As a sidenote, status Indians in Canada, as opposed to non-status Indians, have never been regarded as legally Canadian citizens. Thus a Maliseet is a Maliseet resident in Canada rather than a Canadian Maliseet or Maliseet-Canadian.

As an example of the iffiness of travel, Canada didn't particularly want Sitting Bull on our side of the Medicine Line (border) but he was able to press his claim that he and his followers were Canadian Indians by showing possession of a Queen's Medal for Chiefs. He was admitted for indefinite residence on a promise to abide by the Grandmother (Queen)'s laws.

Another First Nation that might be encountered in Maine would be the Penobscot. All four First Nations speak languages belonging to the Algonquin family.

2) while I can't answer for Maine, the grandfather might have had formal schooling on the reserve in New Brunswick, assuming he's either Maliseet or Miq'Maq and a status Indian. The school would not have been a residential school but might have had white teachers (or not).

The only residential school in the Maritimes was at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, was run by the Sisters of Charity and operated from about 1920-1968. It was primarily for orphans, though its mandate was expanded early on. About 10% of the Miq'Maq population attended and by most accounts it was initially about as horrific as any other residential school.

A Maliseet (or Mik'Maq) Metis is unlikely as Maliseet and Miq'Maq didn't tend to marry foreigners.

A couple of points for colour. Mik'Maq were noted for their baskets and have treaty rights in New Brunswick to come onto any property and cut down a tree for the purpose of making a basket. (The any tree may be limited to any ash tree, the traditional tree for making the lathes that will be woven to make the basket, as I got this at second hand from my mother, whose father had it happen on his land.) Mik'Maq are sufficiently well known for their basketry that telling someone on the Six Nations reservation that someone is a Mik'Maq can elicit the insult, "damn basketmaker". In addition to waterproof baskets for fish, they sold baskets for potatoes to local farmers around harvest. Most potatoes were put in barrels but most farmers would buy a basket or two every harvest as well.

In fairness, the Maliseet and Mik'Maq have a long and hostile history with the Mohawks (who are part of the Six Nations). Every New Brunswick schoolchild knows the tale of brave Malabeam, a Mik'Maq woman captured by a Mohawk war party who were on their way to attack a larger Mik'Maq community and how she tricked them into tying their canoes together as she led them down the river and over Grand Falls (now Edmundston, New Bruswick), where she and they met their deaths.

From roughly 1950 through to the mid-1970s, most N.B. schoolchildren also had a Social Studies/History unit that taught them some of the Glooscap tales. (Algonquin myths, such as why Turtle's shell is black, or how Beaver dove and brought Glooscap land from the bottom of the water to make new land from when a flood destroyed the world.)

By the way, people from Maine don't refer to themselves as Mainians. Among New Englanders they're from Down East or Down Easters, a term also occasionally used by New Brunswickers to describe themselves. When New Brunswickers want to annoy their cousins from Down East, they're Maine-iacs.

Among Canadian Maritimers, New Brunswickers are Herring Chokers, Nova Scotians are Bluenosers (and the ship takes its name from the term, not the other way around) and people from Prince Edward Island, (P.E.I., pronounced as the individual letters, conversationally,) are Spud Islanders. None of the nicknames are considered perjorative but woe betide the "damned Ontarioite" [damned Ontarioites are any Canadian from west of Quebec who don't identify themselves, as well as actual damned Ontarioites] who uses the wrong nickname.

As for an earlier question regarding social conservatism. While people of Aroostock County would have laughed as hard as anyone else at the scene from 1981's Stripes:

Recruiter: Are you homosexual?
Harry Ramis's character: Do you mean like flaming?
Bill Murray's character: No, but we are willing to learn.

homosexuality wasn't well-accepted at this time. Even in Canada, businesses catering to homosexuals were occasionally being firebombed, sometimes by mistake as the bombers mistook the business for an abortion clinic. A gay couple from Boston wouldn't advertise their relationship. After five or ten years, they might come out to people in the area that were considered close friends and some others might guess that they were more than hunting buddies. On the other hand, no one would expect a howling mob to pull them out of their cabin and send them on their way, if only because there wasn't any group that well-organized with that kind of agenda.

White women being whistled at by groups of black teens wouldn't invite a lynching but it did make the women uncomfortable, even if they were comparatively liberal and enlightened about racial equality, many of them felt intimidated and tended to avoid travelling to Bangor alone for that reason.

As far as 10' satellite dishes and what programming was available, I'd assume that they were pretty much the same as the ones sold across the line in Canada. Aside from picking up both east and west coast network broadcasts (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CBC, Radio-Canada [French CBC], CTV, ATV [CTV's Atlantic affiliate network], Global and TV-Ontario [educational channel] and a few independents like CHCH-TV), the 10' dishes with their receivers brought in broadcasts from around the world. One of our neighbours in Ontario used to get a kick out of watching broadcasts from Saudi Arabia, as well as sports broadcasts from the UK and Australia with his 10' dish. It was that competi6tion that led both the FCC in the States and the CRTC in Canada to regulate the satellite industry by mandating the current 3' dishes that can only pick up local (North American) broadcasts.

One jaw-dropping,"what-the-blazes" moment for me was being told by my cousins in Maine that when they wanted to find out what was "really" happening in the U.S., they tuned into the CBC (and that turned out to be a thing, even among Down Easters without Canadian relatives). More conservative Down Easters would tune into the MacNeil-Lehner News Hour on PBS.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Supplemental to the whole former thirteen colonies thing, a look at U.S. maps of the eastern U.S. shows comparatively few reserves in the former thirteen colonies area and what reserves there are, are smaller in size than reservations further west. Most tribes in the area were removed to the Indian Nation [Oklahoma] in the 1800s. The Cherokee of Kentucky are the most widely known case of Indian removal but the policy covered pretty much all of the eastern U.S., with a few notable exceptions such as the Seminoles.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Grey Bear (1864-1958) was a Mi'kmaq, born on US soil (recently US soil, as per the Aroostook War) to two First Nation Mi'kmaq. His son, Joseph Greybear (1944-), was born in the US to old Grey Bear and Léane Helia Francis, a sixteen-year-old Acadian/Maliseet US citizen from St. Francis, Aroostook County, Maine.

Would anyone have made a particular attempt to catch a Mi'kmaq boy growing up in the 1860s and 1870s if he did not want to stay on any reservation, refused categorically to be subjected to formalised indoor schooling, ran away whenever disciplined and spent as much time in the woods as he could?

Well, someone was marrying all these French trappers. :)

Modern Maliseet seem to be as likely to have French or Anglo-Saxon names as they are to have even translated versions of Algonquin names and not a few whose picture I could find online had light (grey) eyes.

Is an Acadian French girl born in 1928 with Maliseet ancestry very implausible?

Her parents do not need to be married, necessarily. In fact, she was not on good terms with her family by age sixteen, so perhaps she never had much contact with them. She was Catholic, however, taught by the local priests.

Cool. I even have connections with Edmunston in my adventure. Two of the 'Fighting Hilton's have appeared and there are some suggestions that a few of the possible villains may have connections over the border from Fort Kent, Frenchville and a few of the other border towns.

Would people generally recognise the term 'chenu' or 'chenoo'?

Can you call someone who lives in Northwest Aroostook County a Downeaster? It seems off, as they are nowhere near the sea, not particularly east for anyone in New England and they live several hundred feet off the ground.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

"Among New Englanders" definitely includes Down Easters. While I've never been in the northwest portion of Aroostock county, the fact that people in the eastern part of the county refer to themselves as Down Easters, despite being nowhere near the sea and also living at comparable elevations suggests that not only could you call them Down Easters [with a space and the E capitalized], they would call themselves Down Easters. You may recall an episode of Murder, She Wrote where Jessica asks a suspect if he was from Down East and he replied that no, he was from Maine. That was as big a tip-off to my mother that he was lying like a trooper by not recognizing the native term as it was to Jessica.

Provided that he doesn't break any laws, particularly the laws restricting alcohol sales to Indians, no one outside his First Nation is going to be interested in catching a Miq'Maq boy. The behaviour you're describing wasn't particularly different from that of white New Brunswick schoolchildren in the 1930s and 1940s, other than they'd be working on the family farm rather than in the woods.

Schooling in New Brunswick wasn't compulsory until the mid-1930s and then only to age 14 at first. My mother went to school from 1938-1948 and each year the grade she advanced to switched to texts supplied free by the government from texts supplied by the student or their family at their own expense. High school ended with grade eleven and you sat your Junior matriculation exams at the end of grade eleven. If you planned to go to college or university, you sat your senior matriculation exams as well [which were also administered at the end of grade eleven]. Particularly good county school boards with money to burn saw that each school had a classroom library, consisting of dictionaries, atlases and encyclopedias. Poorer county school boards didn't.

Someone was marrying all those fur trappers but the fur trappers were far more likely to be Quebecers than Acadians, given that those Acadians who returned after the expulsion resettled along the North Shore of New Brunswick [draw a diagonal line from the northwest corner of New Brunswick to the southeast corner so it runs through Chatham, the part on the northeastern side of the line is roughly the North Shore] and were primarily fishermen along the coast and farmers inland.

An Acadian-Maliseet girl in 1928 isn't highly implausible but somewhat unlikely. A point to bear in mind is that she has several social stigmas: if she actually looks First Nations there are places that won't serve her (mostly restaurants and hotels) and people would tend to keep an eye on her; she's French-speaking, which will be the big deal source of prejudice in any part of English Canada at the time and in the U.S. as well, [she may very well have been told to "speak white", if she attempted to use French in a primarily English community]; and finally, in the U.S. she isn't a Metis, she's a half-breed which was generally more poorly regarded than a full-blooded Indian.

As for chenu or chenoo, maybe among the Acadians but it's not a term I've ever heard either of my parents or any of my family back East ever use.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Fair enough. 'Down Easters' they are. People in the Upper Saint John River Valley ('The Valley', locally) might call themselves Madawska Acadians or just Acadians (at least those who aren't Scots-Irish from Allagash), but I suppose they will be Acadian Down Easters by the 1980s. By all accounts, the Acadians in the Valley have resisted Anglophone assimilation pretty stoutly, but after a century and a half, they must still think of themselves as American.

I found records that indicated that in the 1970s and early 1980s, people who only spoke (very) broken English still lived in Fort Kent. An East European immigrant who lived in Fort Kent from the 20s until she died in the late 70s spoke better French than English, often finding it impossible (in the 1970s) to express an idea in English. Of course, she died still speaking her native Yiddish at home.* The smaller St. Francis and Saint John Plantation might well be the same, minus the Yiddish.

It seems that until the 50s, almost no one in Fort Kent, Frenchville, Madawska or the smaller townships down the Saint John River Valley read a newspaper or listened to the radio in English. They were forced to use it in school, but they spoke Acadian French at home. A majority of them still speak it in 2016, even though they have been forced to go to school in English since the 1920s.

Mind you, that means there could still be a really old person living at the time of my adventure, in 1988, who has never gone to school in English, who has lived all her life among French speakers and who has always consumed all her media in French. An American, with American-born parents and grand-parents, to whom English is a foreign language they hear a lot from visitors to their town.

Anyone wishing to go to college, do business outside of their small town, go into politics or just avoid being considered an insular potato farmer, however, would avoid speaking French, even if they grew up with it as a first language. I also found an interview with an Acadian who first sat in the Maine State Legislature in 1986 and she found that fellow Acadians there actually tried to hide the fact that English wasn't their first language.

She was shocked at the idea of 'staying in the closet' (her words) and the interview was about the giant strides in preservation of the culture and language since then, not to mention equal rights for Acadian French speakers, but it indicates that in the 80s, the power structure spoke English. Full stop.

*Yes, there was at least one family of Upper Saint John River Valley Jews. The old woman's sons mostly ran Chevy dealerships in the larger towns of northwestern Aroostook County.

How long did these laws endure in Canada?

What did people do after 14? Those who wanted an education, that is?

Were there any religiously-run schools for age 14+ people, that may have prepared them for a university education as a doctor, lawyer or priest?

Teacher's schools?

Fair enough.

Well, she didn't take up with a crazy old woodsman when she was fifteen because US society welcomed her, so that's okay. By the time she left the old man, I had imagined that she went to Canada and eventually drifted to Montréal, where her story had a depressing end in the 50s, the sort of depressing ending that all too often follows a young girl without friends or relatives to turn to running away from a bad relationship to a big city.

She's important to my story mostly because one or more of the priests who educated her felt a responsibility to ensure the education of her son, at least once the wily, stubborn, intransigent and frightening old man who kept him out of school had died.

That's fine. I had thoughtfully provided the NPC who used it to the PCs with enough knowledge of other Algonquin language to be able to tell the PCs that the Ojibwe call them wendigo.

Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Special Agent Frank Corelli (b. 5th of March, 1943, Camden, NJ) is an old-school agent. He's a veteran of Vietnam*, an outdoorsy sort who goes on hunting or hiking trips on his vacations and very self-reliant. He fixes his own car, does home repairs himself** and likes to be prepared for every contigency.

He's usually scornful of technological marvels from the Digital Age, distrusting their reliability under 'real-world' conditions. He prefers well-made mechanical things to high-tech gadgets. He much prefers heavy steel to plastics, wood to composites. He supports US manufacturing if he can.

In GURPS terms, the character has skill 10-12 in a lot of 'handy-man' skills and skill 12-14 in survival, orienteering, hiking and suchlike. He has also has Common Sense and a quirk relating to careful preparation. We have established in game-play that the character packed extensive cold-weather gear and safety equipment, and bought more once the storm warning came.

With this in mind, what are some items available in the 1980s that I should not forget to have the character pack in his Ford F-150 pick-up for a trip out of town in winter, when they might be caught in a storm?

Brand and model names if possible. Some details of weight and cost if not.

What an 1980s vintage rescue beacon be like?

What about a survival kit?

What kind of tools would he pack?

What kind of clothes?

Etc.

*Captain, USMC (Ret.).
**Though not on eletrical things. Not any more.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Sand bags (to weight down the back of the truck for better traction in snow), tire chains, rock salt, kitty litter (spread it under the tires to increase traction), windshield scrapers.

Several gallon jugs of water, beef jerky, granola bars, canned food (with can opener), compass, flashlight, first aid kit, small bottle of bleach with eye dropper (for purifying water), cord, rope, string, utility knife, swiss army knife, duct tape, basic tool kit (hammer, pliers, screwdrivers, etc.), lighter, hatchet, rags/bandannas, blanket (several, actually), signal mirror, whistle, flares.

A shovel, particularly a square-ended shovel optimized for snow rather than dirt. Broom (for sweeping away snow).

Long sleeved flannel shirt, long underwear, insulated pants, wool socks, work boots, jacket, parka, scarf, mittens, gloves, stocking cap, ski mask, ski goggles.

I'm probably forgetting some, but this is a good list to start from.

Luke

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

This guy sounds like a Real Man. So he's not going to worry about wussy stuff like brand names. He'll just go to the store and get it.

Luke

Re: Greenwich Village, New York City
 

In 1988, lots of NYC was pretty run down. I think someplace in the Meatpacking District might be a good choice for your empty warehouse. It was a very sketchy neighborhood at the time, had lost much of its industry, and is close to the Hudson.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

He will.

Us GM and players don't have the faintest idea of what hardware and outdoors stores in the US were selling to these red-blooded Real Men in the 80s, however. Brand names allow us to Google pics and specs.

What manufacturer names suggest true-blue American can-do attitude and a disdain for Yuppie marketing or cheap imports without the requisite Made in the USA patriotic values?

Is carrying a rescue beacon an effeminate Gen X arcade-playing thing to do or is it a sensible precaution? What are the capabilities available in the 1980s? Are there models or manufacturers of rescue beacons that are regarded as reliable and no frills?

What about warm weather clothing? Where do you buy it if you are buying for function and not fashion?

What are the 80s ski-wear brands that Agent Corelli condemns on his younger associates and what does he tell them to wear instead?

Is fleece a thing by then or does he make them buy a bunch of heavy wool underthings?

What kind of heavy-duty boots does he wear?

Re: Greenwich Village, New York City
 

It's been established that the press dubbed him 'The Werewolf of the Village'. So there have to be plenty of associations with neighbourhoods that are unambigiously 'Village' to New Yorkers in 1986-1988.

Would the press refer to crimes in the East Village/Alphabet City as 'Village' or do victims have to be found and/or be from the western part of Greeenwich Village for the appelation to make sense?

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

LL Bean would suggest that to me. However true that is.

Levis for pants, Winchester for firearms. The BSA has it's own brand of multitool which it lends it's brand to but I don't know which contractor makes it. Probably anything advertised in Field & Stream and Outdoor Life: even imports would have been cleansed of the defilement of production by foreign heathen just by being advertised here. More specialized stuff it is hard to say.

Re: Greenwich Village, New York City
 

According to this map, the Meatpacking District overlaps the West Village, so it could work.

Alphabet City is more residential, so there's less opportunity for an abandoned warehouse. I suspect that the NY Times would only use "The Village" to refer to Greenwich Village proper, not the East Village, but I'm not 100% sure. The Post on the other hand might use whatever fit in the headline.

Re: Greenwich Village, New York City
 

So it could. Thank you.

I was looking through old photos from 1980-1985 from that area and holy ****! It was just a post-apocalyptic ruin. There were parks overrun with homeless (Tompkins Square Park), entire alleyways that were just trash heaps large enough to have wrecked cars stacked on top of each other and, of course, the ca 30 famous squatters' communes that Rent so memorably* commemorates.

*If inaccurately, the movie being filmed mostly in San Francisco.

To be on the safe side, let's have a few victims hail from each. I've got one confirmed, one almost certain, five highly likely and twelve possibles to play with.

Granted, a few of these were found in Chicago and one in Boston and some of the possibles are almost certainly false positives, with investigators imagining that they see similarities in methods. Nevertheless, I've still got around ten bodies to place in NYC for which the killer is likely to have been responsible.

Most of my female victims are believed to have been prostitutes. Would there have been any particular part of the 1980s Village that these should have frequented? I don't imagine that he'd have been dubbed 'The Werewolf of the Village' if his victims came from the Tenderloin, so was there a particular area where the Bohemian semi-professionals picked up trade?

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

I thought LL Bean was 'Preppie Central' in the 80s?

Was the store that the former sniper character, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), in 'No Country for Old Men' bought some clothes and a shotgun he sawed off an LL Bean's?

Today, at least, Levi's are name-brand jeans which I think are acceptable to cool teenagers. Were they sufficiently no-nonsense, honest working pants in 1988?

Where does an FBI agent who wears suits as a work uniform stereotypically buy his?

Agent Corelli is indeed a Winchester man, at least if the guns are made before 1964. He uses his grandfather's Winchester 1894, .30-30, for most of his hunting, taking a Winchester 70, .30-06, that he bought in his youth if after larger game or if there's a chance of a shot at longer range.

Which BSA would that be? Boy Scouts? British-made firearms? Motorcycles?

Are Leatherman or Gerber viewed as 'serious' multitools? Which one better suits a man who knows how to fix stuff?

The Leatherman PST came out in 1983. Did Gerber make a multi tool before that or did they add a multi tool to their knife-line to compete with Leatherman?

Apart from looks and brand names, I'm also trying to figure out how much of the TL8 stuff from High-Tech that is useful for survival situations is available with unchanged stats in the 80s. A lot of the TL8 stuff we take for granted hadn't been invented, wasn't in common use or was available only in clunky, less capable versions.

What did a commercially available rescue beacon sold in the mid-80s look like and how did it's capabilities and stats compare to a modern one?

What about typical survival flashlights? How heavy was a typical one? And who made survival flashlights? Would he use a Maglite or other police flashlight brand or were there lighter survival models made by other companies that made more sense if you weren't looking for a dual-use club? Were there add-on filters or other devices for signalling? IR filter clip-ons?

What about car radios and handheld radios? What kind of radio did FBI agents have in their cars by 1988 and how did they work? What were the ranges like? High-Tech has a TL7 medium radio that appears to be outdated by the 70s and a TL8 one which seems to be at about 2000s level of weight and capability. Closer in performance to which of these would 1980s vintage radios be?

Was there any point to a car phone for survival purposes, like NMT phones were used here in northwestern Europe? Even if there was, would it be affordable to a regular joe?

Were there any useful and affordable devices like a portable electronic or fuel heater that would make sense to have in the car? Would these be pointless additions to a car heaters or useful supplements to it if they have to wait out a storm in the car? What about these hot water bottles that old people use on skiing trips? Would self-heating ones be worth carrying?

How would one make coffee in a survival situation? Assuming that Corelli wanted to be able to make enough for four, possibly over several days. What's the most practical, effective device for that in the 80s?

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Back in the '80's, Levi Strauss jeans were just normal blue jeans. Everybody wore them. There's also wrangler brand jeans which I think date to back then.

For other clothes, see if you can look up any on-line copies of the Sears Roebuck & Co catalog from the late 1980's. The clothing section can give you an idea of the brands that people wore (also, J.C. Penny's and Macy's (Nordstrom where I lived, but I think it was Macy's back east)). Frankly, the only memorable brands were the jeans. Everything else was just "a flannel shirt" or something (well, there was also Nike and Reebok and other footwear, but that's for athletic shoes, not manly man boots).

If your agent comes from Texas or the American Southwest, Stetson hats might still have been a thing. Being from the Northwest and California, myself, I don't really know as much about that culture.

Men's Wearhouse was founded in 1973. It is an accessible, affordable, no frill men's dress clothes retailer.

They are definitely serious multitools and quite suitable for macho types. I didn't hear about the Leatherman brand until the mid '90's however, so it might have taken a while to become a thing. Back in the '80's, people tended to use Swiss Army knives (see, for example, that '80's TV show MacGyver).

Maglite made flashlights in all sizes, from six D-cell beasts down to finger-length flashlights that could easily slip into a purse or a car's glovebox. All were waterproof and exceptionally durable. Of course, being the '80's, they used Edison bulbs and alkaline batteries rather than LEDs and Li-ion cells.

Are we talking two-way radios, here? Because receive-only radios were installed in just about all cars (with a tape deck), and you could get portable one-way radios about the size of a man's wallet.

For two way radios, you have walkie-talkies, which would have similar performance to modern walkie-talkies. Maybe ten miles range (less depending on terrain), about the size of a telephone hand/head set (you know, the part you talk into, that was connected to the main body of the phone by a curly cord. NOT the modern cell phones, which are much dinkier).

Can't help you much on the vehicle-based radios.

Get a propane tank, and various accessories: a camp stove, propane torch, propane lantern. Electronic heaters would have been crap, because the battery tech just wasn't there and it doesn't look like you are interested in situations where you have access to household current. Back in the '80's, I don't remember any of those modern mini propane tanks, you would get one of the big white tanks that was maybe 50 cm in diameter and tall.

I think those chemical hand warmers were a think back then. Definitely stock up on those.

And a map. Get a map of the area. And not just any map, a USGS survey map, with topographic elevation lines and all that. With a compass and manly man orienteering skills, getting lost just got a whole lot harder (unless you're in a blizzard, in which case getting lost is pretty much assured if you move around at all).

Luke

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

That may have been Abercrombie & Fitch.

If your middle-aged agent really shops off the rack for suits he can buy from Sears or J.C. Penney. That would be pretty much the bottom but he could go up a level or maybe even two without being narcissistic. Brooks Brothers might have ben too high end but there would be a number of options in between.

Clayton Allen might wear Brooks Brothers if he doesn't have a bespoke tailor. His son might have some Miami Vice-style Armani.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Yes. A bit expensive, but also a quality product.

No-nonsense people might just shop at Sears or JC Penney, both of which did a lot of mail-order business (useful in rural areas). They had their own house brands (Toughskins or Arizona jeans, respectively), as well as the national brands. "Wrangler" and "Lee" were other mid-to-downmarket brands.

Either would suit; both are popular brands. The US military issued a Gerber product (the MP600) for quite a while, though I'm not sure when they first started. (Also the Canadian forces, though the Brits went with Leatherman.)

The weight is in the case and batteries, so I wouldn't expect that to change significantly. Maglite was certainly the go-to brand, though if you wanted light, I'm sure you could get a waterproof, floating, plastic model.

Before cellular, they'd likely have had a Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) radio-telephone, probably made by Motorola or GE. This was a radio system tied into the regular phone network. VHF radio, with about 40 channels total, though many base stations and mobile units supported fewer channels, even as few as two -- which is a significant limitation, because one channel supports one phone call, and if the channels are busy, you just have to wait. About a 50-mile range. By the 1980s, you could direct dial with DTMF signalling. The car needs a 19" antenna mounted on it, so not quite as big as those giant CB whip antennas.

A Coleman camp heater? Certainly nice to have if you're stranded, but I wouldn't expect anyone to actually pack one unless they were planning on camping or had a pretty serious survival/prepardness bug.

Same with a radio beacon. It'd probably be military surplus (e.g. AN/PRC-90), or else an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), which was really designed for crashed aircraft. VHF at 121.5 or 243 MHz, so I think those are LOS, meant to talk to search aircraft and eventually detectable by satellites, but not something you can use to call for ground-based help.

Why, you put the coffee in your metal cup sitting on your Coleman camp stove; real men spit out the grounds or just eat them :) Failing the camp stove, a fire works fine. Probably pre-ground coffee, though the Civil War practice of issuing whole beans and just smashing them with a rifle butt would still work. Coffee wasn't a hipster foodie product yet, so the survival kit might well just have instant coffee powder (like Folgers); dissolve it in hot water, no filters, percolaters, etc.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

See, this is the value of asking the forumites. The characterisation-signals sent by various brands are very different in Iceland and Europe, not to mention that thirty years have made a lot of difference. Thanks.

Good suggestion. I'll check that out.

Judging from 'No Country for Old Men', Stetson hats were very much a thing in 1980.

Frank Corelli is from New Jersey, however. His duty posts have included Marquette, MI (2 years); New York City, NY (3 years); Philadephia, PA (6 years); and Boston, MA (4 years), before the current assignment to Maine.

Would you find one in Philly (where he was posted during the late 70s) or in Boston (his last duty post before Maine)?

The pliers that come on Gerber or Leatherman multi tools make me, at least, associate them more with practical, manly, handy types than Swiss Army knives, which look kind of sissy. And I say this having owned both since the early 90s. :)

And he'd have Maglites, rather than Streamlight, Pro-Light, Brinkmann, B-Lite or Bianchi?

I'm thinking about vehicle-based radios. Corelli's personal truck is his take-home car and he has a standard FBI radio for the period in it. I simply don't know how far that radio should be able to reach.

If it can reach 15 miles, that means he might be able to reach Lt. Dufresne or one of his part-time deputies in Allagash, though the odds are against it, as they won't be in their cars during a storm.

20 miles would give him enough reach to try for the station radio that the Aroostook County Sheriff's Office and State Police jointly maintain in St. Francis. It's possible that Lt. Dufresne would be manning that radio or have one of his six part-time deputies doing so, for public safety reasons. They could probably relay him on somewhere, but the facilities there are pretty small-time.

35 miles would get him Fort Kent PD and they could relay him almost anywhere, I figure. Including State Police headquarters in Houlton and the FBI resident agency in Bangor. Of course, Agent Corelli does not trust Sgt. Berube of the State Police, who called him from Fort Kent, as he felt that Sgt. Berube was far too anxious to see the FBI agents leave Allagash before the storm hit.* He might be hesitant to use any means of communication that might allow Sgt. Berube (who has an office in the Fort Kent PD building) to listen in, unless the alternative was worse.

*Of course, that may have been less interference in the investigation than an honest attempt to avoid having three federal agents and a civilian working for the FBI come to harm during what appeared to be turning into a terrible blizzard.

Sounds good.

Definitely. The current temperature is -13° F and the wind is approaching gale force. The storm warning did not, perhaps, indicate that it would get quite that cold, but it was pretty clear it wouldn't be nice out there.

Heh.

Corelli has a road map of the area and a compass in the car. If an USGS survey map that includes northwest Aroostook County was easily available in Bangor, Maine, then I imagine Corelli has one of those.

How much space would it take up if he had USGS survey maps of the entire area covered by his resident agency, i.e. Aroostock, Hancock, Penobscot, Pitcataquis, and Washington counties of northern Maine?

As it happens, however, Special Agent Rene Ledoux is an amateur cartographer and an honest-to-God map enthusiast. The player made a point of mentioning that immediately upon being informed that he was driving to Maine*, he stopped to find the best maps he could of the part of Maine to which he was going. So I imagine that he'll have USGS survey maps of the right area and probably some aerial photographs and survey records to boot.

*From Boston, as the New England Division is his duty new assignment and he had just landed there to speak with the SAC.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Sears and JC Penney sounds like it would suit.

Judging from this timeline, it seems that Leatherman is about the only option in the 80s.

Bah. He'll go with steel.

Thanks! That's really useful information.

Corelli cannot be called a crazy over-preparing survivalist nut, for one thing, because you don't want to call a stern and formiddable FBI agent that, especially not one who is (in)famous for the number of shooting incidents he has been in. But if you were sure he didn't hear you, it wouldn't be inaccurate to suggest that he might be in the habit of always preparing for the absolute worst case scenario and his ex-wife would be quick to tell you that his idea of a fun vacation was entirely too close to SERE training.*

*A criticism that would always puzzle Corelli, as he would always take care that his family was fully equipped and supplied for their arduous and lengthy survival hikes.

In High-Tech, TL7 beacons are described as requiring DF equipment in rescue vehicles to find them. Would that only work for aircraft or are there models that also reach ground vehicles?

Instant Folgers on a Coleman camp stove sounds good.

If you're trapped in your car by a blizzard, though, can you use a camp stove in there?

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Kerosine heaters were also pretty popular. But not for in a car, I don't think. In a house, camper, trailer, or tent, sure. In a car I think most would just run the car heater intermittently. People still kill themselves pretty regularly via CO poisoning using propane and kerosene heaters. For camping, a propane heater would probably be more likely.

PLBs are affordable nowadays, but I think you'd have to be truly wealthy to even consider getting one in the late 1980s. A CB radio might be more the ticket. They made handheld units.

Here's how to make cowboy coffee. You just let the grounds settle and pour the coffee off the top. But, yes, this was before the days of coffee snobbery and instant coffee was a big thing.

I remember seeing the early, simple Leatherman tools as a child in the 80s. They were around. Still, a lot of people had a Victorinox. They're more of a old man thing, though.

Regarding map sizes: a single standard USGS map sheet is about 56x69 cm including the marginalia, and weighs 34 grams. (I just measured one.) To see how many you need look here. If you want real verisimilitude you could download the actual maps for free, but beware, the interface is antediluvian. Elsewhere on the USGS site are historical maps. Anyone wanting reasonable detail (e.g. hunters or hikers) will use 7.5-minute quadrangle maps, which cover approximately 11.5x14.5 km, so an entire county would be one hell of a lot of map sheets. If you zoom in on that USGS site every rectangle is one 15-minute quad, so it's four 7.5-minute quads. There are also 30-minute quads commonly published, where each covers four 15-minute quads or sixteen 7.5-minute quads. There are ways to download all of them for free on that USGS website I linked.

By the way- do you ever set games in Iceland? :)

Re: Greenwich Village, New York City
 

New York was a lot grittier back in the day. It's been cleaned up quite a bit since then. Speaking of Tompkins Square Park, there was a riot there August of 1988, when police tried to crack down on the homeless and the drug dealing.

I used to take the train into Manhattan some weekends with my friends back in high school in the early 80's. We mostly hung out around Greenwich Village, but I don't have any personal knowledge about where hotspots for prostitution were. I wouldn't doubt it was there, though. I know from walking through Washington Square Park, you could get any drugs you wanted there.

In the 80's, Times Square was probably the easiest place in NYC to find streetwalkers. It looks like someone checked out Craig's List to see where illicit sex is going on in Manhattan today. They found some in Greenwich Village around Waverly Place and 6th Ave. If it's there now, it probably was even more in the 80's. Since there were gay and BDSM clubs in the Meatpacking District, there was probably prostitution going on there too.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

I'm from the Northwest and California, remember? Sorry, I didn't spend time in the East during the '80's, so I can't help you there.

I certainly find the Leatherman tools more useful that Swiss Army knives. A real manly man would only worry about the utility and not the sissy look - form follows function. Of course, manly man poseurs might have a different take on things.

All I can say is that in the '80's, I used Maglites and am not really familiar with the other brands. The others might be as good, or maybe better (although its hard to see how). What I can tell you is that Maglites were damn good flashlights for what they had at the time.

And don't forget a flint striker, like one of these
https://img1.fastenal.com/productimages/0865053.jpg
After all, you're going to need to get the torch lit somehow.

USGS definitely has a detailed topographic map of everywhere in the United States (they're the United States Geological Survey, in case that's not clear. They are a government agency, their mission is to map and survey everything, and they have). So yes, Aroostook County is quite thoroughly mapped and those maps are available to the public at low cost.

These maps are really nice, and are very detailed, showing minor changes of elevation, landscape features, watercourses, some measure of vegetation (forested vs. not forested), and even old dirt roads and trails.

Each map is roughly the size of an unfolded newspaper page. Folded up, you could probably keep all the maps for that area in a moderate sized cardboard box - a bit bigger than a shoe box, I'd guess, but not too much bigger.

Well there you go. They're set as far as maps go.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

As for jeans, designer jeans first became a thing in the 80's (Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and Guess). I don't think anyone who saw themselves as manly would be wearing them though. Levi's were the top brand of 'real' jeans. There were also Wrangler and Lee jeans.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Technically, yes, although it might kill you. These are supposed to be used in a well ventilated area, and CO poisoning is a real thing.

If you really need to cook something in a blizzard (as opposed to just eating your store of jerky and granola bars and tins of beans and tuna), get one of the tarps from your survival kit (yeah, that should include tarps, too) and rig up a quick shelter outside (perhaps in the bed of your truck, or beside it), and do your cooking there. But really, in a blizzard? Best to wait it out.

You can have a thermos with coffee in it, though. That'll keep warm for days.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

According to this timeline, Men's Warehouse started in Texas and moved to the west coast first. Didn't go national until the 90s.

Today's Man was on the east coast in that time period.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

That's why I asked.

In the 1990s, I used a small, modern paraffin stove to cook inside a small cabin without major problems and I think you could make coffee on one in a truck without succumbing to CO poisoning.

But I don't know how much more flame and CO is involved in the 80s.

Probably good advice.

Of course, if they're caught in a blizzard, their car might be well and truly stuck, with the roads impassable even if they dig it out, until the county finishes plowing roads where people live and gets to a back road where few people ever drive. Which might be days.

Warm, yes. Unconsumed, not necessarily. :)

I expect Corelli has at least two spare thermoses which he filled with coffee after the storm warning and the coining of his plan not to leave town, but rather drive to a cabin where they risk being caught in the weather before reaching it.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Well, after the blizzard blows by (but when you're still stuck and waiting for the roads to get plowed) is a great time to step out, set up an impromptu shelter over the bed of your truck with a tarp, a few poles, and some twine, break out the propane stove, and brew up some coffee while cooking a hearty breakfast on the griddle.

Luke

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The dangers of cooking in tents are vastly over-stated, usually by the tent and stove manufacturers at the behest of their lawyers. People have been having a quick brew-up in tents for, well, millennia. Just don't leave the stove on forever.

Of course, yes, as I mentioned a few posts ago it is very possible to kill yourself with CO in well-sealed modern tent. Usually it's due to a heater, though, or a stove that is left on for hours (usually as an improvised heater).

A blizzard is a very bad time to do this, however. Spindrift seals the tent even better so that the CO can build up, and there's also a worsened danger of setting the tent on fire if the stove is knocked over or if the tent wall is blown in by the wind. Or if the tent blows down- imagine being caught in a collapsed tent with a running stove...

EDIT- I was editing my last post as others posted. It includes a link to the USGS website for maps. By far the most common map are 7.5-minute USGS quads, which are 1:24,000. 15-minute quads are 1:62,500 and 30-minute quads are 1:125,000.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

USGS [National Topographic Series in Canada] are done in UTM [Universal Transverse Mercrator] grid projection. The key to UTM is that the map is distorted so as to allow the gridlines to match up with the gridlines of adjacent mapsheets. For that reason this is used by the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] as standard. One project undertaken by the ICAO, which was completed by 1978 was to map the world at 1:250,000 scale between 80°S latitude and 80°N latitude. So a USGS map at that scale is certainly available. Smaller scale maps may be available, but if USGS follows NTS priorities, 1:50,000 scale maps will only be available for well settled areas, so maybe for Allagash and probably for Fort Kent. The smaller 1:12,500 scale maps would be for cities that essentially appear as red blobs on the 1:50,000 maps.

A 1:50,000 mapsheet covers an area roughly five miles [8 km] by seven miles [11.2 km] and a 1:12,500 mapsheet about 1.25 miles [2 km] by 1.75 miles [2.8 km]. Mapsheets are usually folded in four, both from top to bottom and from right to left, and will fit into the cargo pocket of a pair of combat pants. As a rough guide, the cargo pocket covers the outside of the upper thigh from just above the knee to immediately below the pelvis without significantly overlapping the front or back of the leg, and a folded map will just fit into the pocket with perhaps a couple of mm left over. So, no he's unlikely to fit even all the 1:50,000 maps for Aroostock county in the glove compartment of his vehicle. It's probably doable if he has them all stuffed in a dedicated briefcase (i.e. one he uses to hold his maps and only his maps). However there's probably a complete set for his region back at the office.

Speaking of his office, those big wall maps of an area that you see in movies and TV shows of the period were made (in real offices) by cutting the outer margins off USGS maps and pinning the adjacent mapsheets together on a large corkboard.

Regarding how long the alcohol laws endured for First Nations in Canada, it's arguable that they still do. The Joseph Drybones case sort of quashed the laws for a time. Briefly, Joseph Drybones was arrested on 8 Apr, 1967 and charged with being drunk off a reserve contrary to section 94b of the Indian Act. He was convicted on 10 Apr, 1967 and sentenced to three months. On 27 Apr, 1967, his conviction was appealed and a new trial ordered. At that time, his lawyer (he didn't have a lawyer in his initial trial) argued that the Canadian Bill of Human Rights rendered section 94b invalid as it proposed to treat First Nations differently and more harshly than other people for the same offence. This was appealed from the trial court but the appeal was denied by the NWT Territorial Court on 5 Jun, 1967. The Court of Appeal, NWT denied a further appeal on 25 Aug, 1967. On 20 Nov, 1967 the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear an appeal. Wikipedia says section 94b was repealed sometime in 1971, however the Canadian Government website says that it was considered to be inoperative but wasn't stricken from the Indian Act until sometime around 1995. Since then, the bands have requested and been granted the authority to pass by-laws regarding alcohol on their reserves.

The Drybones case was prominent for two reasons at the time. The first was that it was the first and only time that it was successfully argued that the Canadian Bill of Human Rights wasn't simply an guide to interpreting existing law but a prescriptive law that could judicially strike down existing legislation. The second is that the notion that the case overturned the conviction because it discriminated against First Nations more harshly wasn't the popular narrative at the time. The popular narrative was that the conviction was overturned because Joseph Drybones couldn't have complied with the act by being drunk on his reserve because there were no reserves for him to be drunk on [which was also a fact but not the decisive one].

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Yep and the marketing for each brand differed, substantially. Levis tried to appeal to the younger, urban and suburban markets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_wdpoTtr0o

Wrangler tried for that market, but eventually gave up and went for the rural customers -- or the "urban cowboys," anyway. If you went into the Grizzly Rose in North Denver, when it opened in 1989 (yeah, it's been there for that long), you saw a lot more Wranglers on the floor than any other brand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jihpkvj7sI

Lee Jeans were a bit less expensive than Levis, and focused on comfort, rather than style. A blue-collar man or woman who couldn't afford Levis button-fly 501s, or whose waist-line or butt needed clothing a bit more forgiving, bought Lees. Eventually, they became the "mom jeans."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-ySKUsRBNA

Calvin Kleins and Jordache jeans were almost exclusively marketed to up-market girls and women -- or, girls and women who wanted to look up-market. The infamous commercials with Brooke Shields had taken place in the early '80s, but everybody would have seen them. Those brands had rather unforgiving cuts -- women really only looked good in them, if they were in shape, which meant women in their 40s who kept themselves in good shape bought them to show that off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_tom65LKiE

Teenage and younger adult girls who had money would have one or two pairs of each brand, in their closets, and older women might have one or two of one or the other, but boys and young men didn't wear them.

We sure liked the girls who could pull them off, though. :)

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

While the dangers of CO poisoning inside a tent or other enclosed area may be somewhat over-stated, there are very real, very probable, dangers that civilians may run into [the military generally has SOPs on these points].

First, the enclosed area needs to be well-ventilated while the stove (or lantern) is on and that doesn't mean rolling the window down a crack, it means rolling the window all the way down.

Second, while CO build-up is a potential problem if you keep the stove or lantern going, especially if you go to sleep, so is the flame going out, which will fill the area with fuel fumes. [Keep a stove/lantern watch and turn them off if there isn't anyone to watch them. You'll wake up if it gets really cold and can then relight the stove/lantern.]

Third, NEVER, NEVER, EVER light the stove/lantern inside. Do your lighting outside. If the stove flares up [lantern flares are less likely] and there's usually a better than 50% of an initial flare-up in cold weather, you can easily set fire to your area, starting with the roof. In a tent [the canvas, floorless type that the military used], the rule of thumb was that you had ten seconds to escape the tent from the time it caught fire before being burned to death was inevitable. Most soldiers slept with a sheath knife that was unsnapped, so they could grasp it, reach out of their sleeping bag, cut a slit in the tent wall and slide out against just that possibility.

Cooking inside a tent was normally restricted to floorless tents. People with any experience of winter camping usually carried a piece of plywood along as well, either one just an inch or two larger than the stove and a similar one for the lantern or sometimes a single board for both. It's secondary use was to provide a stable base when pressed down in the snow for the stove and lantern to rest on. Coleman stoves have a large (about an inch or 25mm) hole in the bottom for drainage and the primary use of the board is to keep meltwater from the snow under the stove from getting in.

Perhaps surprisingly, the recommended emergency heating system for cars stranded in a blizzard in Canada wasn't a stove at all but a dozen or two dozen candles, each about an inch in diameter and about six inches high with a 1" high metal candle cup. Each candle was expected to last about six hours before being consumed and two candles, one for the backseat and one up front were enough to keep the entire car at a cozy temperature, even with one or two leeside windows opened a crack.

80s Clothing for a rich Valley Girl
 

Special Agent Maria Lucia de Guerra Estevez would have Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt and Jordache jeans, I guess. Were there particular brands more associated with California/LA/Valley Girls?*

Maria Lucia is only 23-years-old; 5'4" and 107 lbs., a former child ballerina, teen gymnast and black-belt aikidoka. It's only been six or seven years since her gymnastics trainer was pushing her to pursue a professional career and was certain she could make the Olympics if she made gymnastics her priority. She went to Stanford instead, but still does daily akido practice and aerobics while wearing awful bright coloured sweatclothes, complete with that icon of the 80s, the sweatband. She's in absolutely ridiculous shape and there are probably no jeans anywhere in the world she couldn't wear the hell out of.**

Does anyone have any ideas for the impractical-as-actual-winter-wear, but stereotypically 80s Valley Girl clothing she might have brought along to Maine?

I'm looking for neon-coloured ski clothing that goes with Moon Boots and pink earwarmers, as well as whatever clothing she brought along to wear inside.

*She's actually from Beverly Hills and far too much of an overachieving nerd growing up to ever spend much time around real Valley girls or have time for such a lifestyle, but during college, she adopted Valley Girl mannerisms, mainly derived from MTV and other media, in the mistaken impression that it made her 'cool' and 'hip'.
**[GURPS terms; HT 13, Very Beautiful, Charisma 3, Honest Face Perk, Pitiable and Very Fit. Also Mind-Numbing Magnetism (Cheerful) and Stereotype (Valley Girl) Quirks.]

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The "flare up" problem is an issue for pressurized liquid-fuel stoves. And kind of classic actually- every old camper or soldier has a story about losing his eyebrows. It isn't for a propane or other gas-canister stove, though, unless the stove is malfunctioning magnificently. :)

Traditionally you cook in the tent vestibule, which is better ventilated and usually lacks a floor, rather than in the main compartment.
See the movie Better Off Dead for really ridiculous 80s ski attire. Hot Tub Time Machine isn't bad for this purpose either.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Any advice for heating coffee while confined to a truck cab during truly awful weather?

Assuming that Corelli owns a special small paraffin stove exclusively for making coffee under circumstances when a larger camp stove would be wasteful or riskier. Or if the other camp stove breaks. Whatever happens, he won't be caught uprepared.

I love Better Off Dead! 80s John Cusack was hilarious. I'll propose rewatching that classic with two of my players tonight, I think.

I haven't seen Hot Tub Time Machine*, but upon Googling and finding that it stars John Cusack, is it any good?

*I... uh, have rather low confidence that anything new in movies or music will turn out other than crap. I prefer to wait a decade or two (or more), so I can pick exclusively from stuff that stood the test of time in the public opinion.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

There's always the Army way- stick a canteen cup full of water on the engine manifold for a while while it''s running. That'll heat it. Then Folgers instant coffee.

You can cook fish that way, too, wrapped in aluminum foil.

How about an Esbit tab stove? When you're done you just blow them out like a candle. Use the cut-off bottom of a soda can as the stove, with a little wire stand to set the metal cup upon. Set the stove on a disposable aluminum pie plate so as not to set the car on fire. Maybe a bit of plywood would work better- better insulator?

Or a Sterno can?

Frankly, to just make a up of coffee a candle stub will work.

Meh. I didn't like it, but I tend not to like juvenile-humor movies anymore. It's been a long time since getting laid occupied that much of my bandwidth. I guess it was ok in a Dumb and Dumber kind of way.

Speaking of getting laid- I know that in Iceland there is little stigma to single motherhood. Keep in mind that it ain't like that in the US. In fact we tend to have many more unhealthy sexual hangups than the rest of the non-Muslim world. And it sounds like your setting is in the midst of the AIDS hysteria, so that will be a common item of discussion and scary HIV-related stories will dominate the evening news shows. And there will still be people who call it "the gay cancer." There will be a fair amount of teenage celibacy just because they can't get condoms, especially in small towns- it's hard to buy them when the lady on the other side of the counter goes to your church.

Re: 80s Clothing for a rich Valley Girl
 

I think you nailed it. Guess is another possibility, but I think they were more wanna-be. And Chic really weren't. (Their unfortunately-designed logo often caused them to be referred to as "hick" jeans, even in my rural hick hometown where plenty of people had them...)

LA basically doesn't have winter. Even her time at Stanford would rarely have seen a day reach freezing. She'd have the ski gear she got for trips to Lake Tahoe (a ~4 hour drive from Stanford), and probably very little else.

For 80s flavor, she'd have a few sweaters -- a fuzzy one "too magical to touch", as per the J. Geils Band; let's call upon Rebecca de Mornay here, because you can't get more iconic than "Risky Business". Also, a cardigan or two to go with the button-down Oxford prep shirts and Izod polos, even though wearing them actually for warmth wasn't the thing. Long-sleeved sweatshirts, though she might have left behind the one with the artfully-ripped neck a la Flashdance in favor of her Stanford sweats and/or hoodie.

Pink earwarmers? Well, look no further than Brooke Shields, also famously the model for Calvin Klein jeans as well as kindly appearing to model the cardigan in the link above. (Inspirational looks on that page with Brooke, but alas, few if any brand names. Piece-by-piece examples here.)

North Face seems a likely brand, having been founded in San Francisco. Patagonia was also around and doing neon colors in the 80s. Both of them had reputations as expensive yuppie stuff (not as junk, though, just that you're paying for the logo). Frank Corelli has stuff at least as good at half the price.

Re: 80s Clothing for a rich Valley Girl
 

She doesn't have her 'winter wear' for California. She bought it upon learning that her first duty assignment as a Special Agent of the FBI was in Maine. She bought some additional stuff in Bangor upon learning that Maine was even colder than she had assumed and yet more when her boss told her they were going to the northernmost part of Aroostook County and there was more than a foot of snow on the ground and no sign of it stopping soon.

Very nice. Thank you for all of these.

Well, naturally he does.

And when the storm warning came in, Corelli took his two fellow agents to a small camping store in town and made them buy some items of proper outdoors wear to add to their woefully inadequate wardropes.

Re: 80s Clothing for a rich Valley Girl
 

Oh, good. Val fashion is one thing, val ditzy another...

Re: 80s Clothing for a rich Valley Girl
 

Indeed.

Despite appearances, Agent Estevez is quite competent. It's true that her law enforcement skills are newly acquired and not tested in the field, but she was top of her class at Quantico, just as she has excelled at everything else. Well, everything but making friends and having fun, as being the best at, well, more or less everything, didn't leave her much time for a social life.

Ironically for a Very Beautiful character with Charisma 3, her weakness is social manipulation. It isn't that she's shy, but rather that her attempts at manipulation are laughably obvious (Easy to Read, Misfit Anti-Talent 2 and Oblivious). So far, everyone has liked her anyway, as she usually relies on Reaction Rolls.

I guess the PCs don't really have a Face character, but rather split the capabilities of that role between them. Agent Estevez relies on good Reaction Rolls. Agent Corelli relies on gravitas and forceful presence, usually eschewing falsehood in favour of inexorable reasonableness (Diplomacy), until it is clear that sweet reason is knocking at the wrong door, at which point he's merely inexorable (Intimidation).

Agent Ledoux is the most traditional Face character, he simply oozes charm and will lie without compunction, but his Reaction bonuses are lower than Estevez's and his Diplomacy and Intimidation inferior to Corelli's. And his Dishonest Face Quirk puts him at a disadvantage when he approaches law-abiding people in his offical capacity as FBI agent.

Some partial replies --
 

I was almost thirty in 1988; ended a government job that year & was living in the DC suburbs. Don't remember wonderfully, but will try.

Had a cousin who spent a lot of time in the Maine woods in that era. Hope some of it I can remember.SUVs have been around since the Jeep in 1952, but weren't called SUVs. That was a product of the early Reagan years. Congress had put in mileage requirements for the auto industry's car production in the late 1970s (Dem President Carter, Dem House & Senate) and these requirements kicked in the early 1980s. According to these requirements the car production per year of any particular manufacturer had to average 22 miles per gallon (for example), then two years later 24 miles per gallon, and so on. But "commercial" light trucks, pickups did not count against this average. The argument was that various small business men would suffer from having to use teeny-weeny commercial vehicles with low-powered, but gas-economical engines.

Only a DC bureaucrat would have been surprised at what happened next. Since lots of Americans loved big iron on the roads the auto companies "civilized" their commercial vehicles and cranked out the "sport-utility" vehicles to answer this need. So we got the "suburban" gas-hog 4WD vehicles that never went off pavement and got about 9 miles per gallon. Don't remember the exact models but all the major auto companies were doing the SUVs. GMC, Chevrolet Blazer (IIRC), Ford Bronco & Bronco II were all appropriate models. Rather than a totally different model of car rich people would buy high-end comfort & style option packages for standard vehicles. See also Toyota Land Cruiser J 60.

Friend of my mother's in western Minnesota in that era drove an American Motors Eagle. First front-wheel drive "street" car {vs. Jeeps or other SUVs}produced in the US. Not good on gas mileage but cheaper than a full-size SUV and good in bad weather/slippery roads.

Rest in next installment -- too long.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Continued:
Pre-64 Winchester Model 70 was a kind of "cachet" item. Remington 700 was sort of standard for bolt-action rifles. IIRC Winchester had been sold to some conglomerate in the mid-1960s and their products were then seen as not really wonderful. (Changed in late '80s/early 90s when re-sold.) Scopes: you just started getting into the big variable-power scope craze in the mid-1980s. However the shooters I talked to then saw these fancy new scopes as flimsy and liable to change their zero even without mistreatment. Lots favored old fixed-power scopes for durability & holding zero. Makes: you had the Japanese brands such as Tasco which were not then highly regarded but then inexpensive and apparently worked fine. US makes -- Bausch & Lomb, Redfield. Zeiss had high cool factor.Remember that much of New England is "shotgun-only" for hunting -- less long range so less chance to kill some kid in school with a wild shot. I'd say a Remington 1100 slug gun would be a "cool" item -- perhaps an Ithaca bolt-action 10 gauge. Thing looked like an anti-tank rifle without the bipod. Might also go for a lever-action Savage 99 for "cool" factor.

Weatherby's were excellent guns but they & their ammo very pricey -- corridor talk was "great weapons but no real improvement on a Remington for normal shooting in the US." If you were going on safari it might make sense but for most hunting . . . Not that I can remember -- IIRC such night gear was pretty much a military/police item until some years after the 1991 Gulf War. If you had a connection with such organizations you might be able to get some -- but I think that such was restricted. From the articles I've seen on this gunfight the FBI guys just didn't have time to reload slugs. Also inside a major urban area (Miami) there'd be overrange & overpenetration issues. Can't help here. Leatherman was available from early 1980s. For books on tape or entertainment various forms of Sony Walkman were common in mid-1980s.Can't help with these.Government files were computerized fast & early -- big mainframes in the 1960s, smaller nets of PC's probably by the early 1980s. There was then, and I think not now, a national central file of gun registrations in the US. Such records were kept at the individual gun stores. Only a few states, and those "anti-gun", such as California, kept a state central count of gun registrations. Criminal records were, of course, centralized by state & federal offenses in DC. IIRC it would be about a day, day and a half for such look-ups, depending less on electronic limits than on the demands on records' staff time. i.e., there would be no access to such records outside the state Dept./Justice records center, even in government offices (for security reasons). The use of computers in police cars for such look ups is a product of the mid-1990s.

So if a police officer wanted to look up someone's criminal record, they would send in a call to the police department with identifiers (name, possible aliases, SSN, state driver's license number, etc.) with a request to send that information request over to the records division. Then when the records clerks got to the computers they could look it up PDQ, but there might be a delay of hours or days before they got to any particular request.Very high. Remember that scanner technology was new & not too reliable then -- lots of poor and garbled scans.

So if you were going to turn your old paper files into electronic format someone would have to sit down & physically type the things into the machine. Expensive and not a lot of small departments could hire skilled data-entrists to do so. So an idiosyncratic records system for old files in Bug Tussle County was not at all unlikely.Pretty much either one -- you might have some Tab (former Coke corporation diet drink) or Mr. Pibb.Can't help.Bourbon that had some cachet (over the counter) might include Wild Turkey and Jack Daniel's (latter officially "sour-mash" whiskey as not made in Bourbon County.) There are fancier bourbons but those tend to be limited editions. Irish -- Bushmill's. Scotch -- Johnnie Walker Black & there's another that slips my mind.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Well to be honest I am not a fashion geek and even then did not care enough to commit it to memory.

Yes the BSA is the Boy Scouts of America. Sorry. They did have a multitool stamped with their brand in any case. And probably still do.

"Preppie central" is hardly how I would imagine LL Bean and none of the book copies I ever had looked like something a preppie would own. They were used copies so you maybe that was the problem but preppie central did not seem to be their market. If I was to be asked to give what I would imagine preppie central to look like, I would have thought more a James Bond sort of look. They seemed to give a "salty old man" air more to them.

There is no accounting for teenagers today-I rather think they are deliberately trying to look like orcs many times with all that weird stuff about deliberately ripping holes in their clothes. But Levis has long had an "honest working man" air to them and it may be that teenagers are simply trying to steel the show like the kind of people who wear Highland garb but haven't gone on a cattle raid in their entire lives. In any case the Levis I remember are tough, stand a lot of beating and are good for a fairly basic sort of work pants. Obviously they are not Hazmat wear but if you want something for chopping wood it'll do you well.

Plaid woolens are another possibility and will work well for Maine.

I haven't the slightest idea how all those Men In Black get their black suits. Clearly plain clothes G-men have no interest in standing out in real life.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The only beer I remember is Hamm's because it had that great ad. That was mostly the age of soft drink though. At least the standard I remember was coca-cola and pepsi fighting like Hector and Achiles. They had a number of variations and usually had a small soda fountain of about half a dozen or so types in every restaurant-this still is often done by the way. Coffee was fairly generic, and attempting to make what might be called "coffee cocktails" or Europeanized brands was just being introduced if it existed at all. In point of fact it was a rather boring era for American cuisine and a lot of the stuff that was available should be classed more as "people fuel" rather then as food or drink. It wasn't all that bad but not all that good either. There was also a lot less concern for health notions, though that did exist. Possibly your man's man FBI agent will dine at greasy spoons which I don't have much experience of. The only fare I remember that I would associate specifically with travel was quite a bit better then that. They would be from places that are better called tourist shacks then greasy spoons.

One thing that you might do is that almost every establishment worth going to except the generic stomach-fillers and even some of those had a self-serving salad bar of some kind at least in Oregon. That continues to this day. I certainly remember that.

Re: Some partial replies --
 

Everything you can remember is a help.

SUVs have been around since the Jeep in 1952, but weren't called SUVs. That was a product of the early Reagan years. [...] So we got the "suburban" gas-hog 4WD vehicles that never went off pavement and got about 9 miles per gallon. [/QUOTE]
Those are the ones I'm looking for, whether called 'SUV' or not.

I have little understanding of the various numbers that describe different car numbers, but is the Toyota Land Cruiser a lot more useful off-road than the various American Jeeps/SUVs? Or is it something about price and availability that makes Toyota vehicles prefered in places from Afghanistan through Africa to Australia, for driving off-road and on roads that might as well not be roads?

In 12" of snow, how would an AMC Eagle perform relative to a Chevrolet Grand Wagoneer?

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

It's amazing the sort of thing that will stick in one's memory.

Do you remember when you first saw the Boy Scout multi tool? From my quick Googling, it seems that Leatherman is the only real manufacturer out there making multitools in the 80s, with the first competitor emerging in 1988 and Gerber not beginning their line until the 90s.

I was thinking about the 1980 bestseller The Official Preppy Handbook, which describes L.L. Bean as 'nothing less than Prep mecca'. Apparently, when the word 'preppy' was coined (and still in my understanding of the term), the true preppy should appear as if they are setting out an outdoorsy excursion at all times, whether that be a cruise or a fox hunt.

That they do.

It has long been a fictional trope that anyone with real dress sense could spot a G-Man by their unsightly off-the-rack suits and out-of-style conservative haircuts. As with all fictional tropes, it might not actually be true, but if any FBI agent ever fit that stereotype, it probably should be Special Agent Frank Corelli. Not only does he have no interest in sartorial matters, but he is also as old-fashioned as it is possible to be without actually inhabiting a time capsule.

He has the Low TL disadvantage (he's not up on all the new TL8 technology just coming into use) and the Chauvinism and Nostalgic Quirks. He also has antiquated disadvantages like Code of Honour (Officer's), modified to suit an FBI job, Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) and a strong sense of patriotism manifested as Sense of Duty (America).

All that results in the Quirks Distinctive Features (Former Military, G-Man) and Epitome (Conservative Lawman). Agent Corelli makes for a very bad undercover man, because everyone who sees him immediately fingers him for a former military man who works for the Federal government.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Don't you have to be outside the cab of the truck to do this? Or is there a place in a Ford F-150 where you can reach something hot enough in the engine from the closed passanger cab?

That all sounds wonderful. Especially if Corelli has used his Machinist and Mechanic (Automobile) to rig up something inside the cab which allows the (relatively) safe use of a paraffin, Sterno or Esbit tablet stove inside the car for emergencies. Which would mean the least risk of CO poisoning, paraffin, Sterno or Esbit tablet?

American media has done, I believe, an excellent job educating the rest of the world about your national hang-ups with sex. :-)

Hmmm... it sounds as though I should incorporate AIDS hysteria into the media frenzy about the 'Werewolf of the Village', the NYC serial killer who appears to have cut off pieces of his victims like a butcher and even bit them. There certainly was enough blood involved.

The PCs immediately wondered whether the suspect in custody for the murders might be homosexual, as he had no visible means of support for at least two or three years of living in NYC and he is a young man of effeminate appearance. Add to that no confirmed girlfriends when he was growing up, apart from one short-term one while he briefly attended the University of Chicago.

The PCs believe that it is much more likely that he had a 'sugar daddy' or worked as a male prostitute than he was sponging of rich widows or married women.

Cars taken by the Allen hunting party up to the cabin
 

I've established in play who will be going to the Allen hunting cabin, despite the storm warning, and the PCs have met some of them as they set out, so they know who started from where and likely travelled together.

Based on this, I can probably answer them when they ask, during the beginning of next session, precisely what vehicles there are outside the 'cabin'.*

1st Car:
Dr. Harvey Allen (neurologist at Massachusetts General), Dr. William Pinault (neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins) and Ricky Sommiers, Esq. (local lawyer, office at Fort Kent) travelled there earlier than most of the others. They'll either have taken their own car (well, belonging to Dr. Harvey Allen), a 1985 Ford Econoline custom luxury conversion in 4WD, if that vehicle could handle bad roads and ca 12" of now on the ground, or they'd have borrowed one of the two vehicles that the North Woods Logging Company has to convey investors, government bureaucrats, politicians and other VIPs around to the logging sites.

These are whichever sounds best of the following, in 1985-1988 models: Ford Bronco (w/Centurion four-door conversion), Chevrolet K5 Blazer, GMC/Chevrolet Suburban, Jeep Cherokee, Jeep Grand Wagoneer or Dodge Ramcharger. Or other, if I forgot a good choice. Edit: I guess the 1987 AMC Grand Wagoneer is my choice, unless a forumite has an improvement.

2nd Car:
Phil Willette (businessman and Selectman of Allagash), George Bolton (bank manager and Selectman of St. Francis) and Alexander Cadieu (attorney and County Commissioner of Aroostook County) will share a car, probably one owned by Willette. I think this one will be a 1981 diesel FJ40 Toyota Land Cruiser, unless there is some pitfall that I am not aware of and that type would be less capable than an alternative available for the same price.

3rd Car:
Clayborn Allen's main vehicle will take him and his friends, Harold Martin (Canadian tobacco executive), Brian Corcoran (Canadian... businessman?) and Amos Burrell (Louisiana trucking company executive). It was meant to also fit his son, Courtney Allen, but the presence of Courtney's friends means it won't. I'm thinking that this will be the same type as the 1st Car, i.e. a North Woods Logging Company owned luxury vehicle meant for driving around on logging roads and capable enough to reach the Allen hunting cabin even in crazy snow. I'm thinking that a 1987 AMC Grand Wagoneer will do fine, unless there are some technical details which make it a bad choice.

4th Car:
Courtney Allen has somewhat unexpectedly turned up with some Canadian friends, a Jackie Lafleur Jr., and two brothers, the boxers Davey Hilton Jr. and the former IBF junior-middleweight champion Matt Hilton. If possible, they'd drive up to the cabin in Courtney's new 1988 US Range Rover, with four doors, electrically operated sunroof and leather seats.

If that car is not going to be able to reach the cabin in 12+" deep snow and over some harsh roads, however, Courtney will have to borrow some of the less-luxorious and more-capable trucks that North Woods Logging uses for actual work. Hmmm... he should have a personal work pickup truck, a 1988 Chevrolet K-1500 'Silverado' with the optional 5.7-liter V-8 engine and all the optional comfort trimmings (including a CD-player). Would the Chevy pickup truck be so much more capable than the Range Rover luxury SUV when driving in more than a foot of snow over rough roads that it would be worth two of the passengers having to sit on the narrow bench in the back?

Can anyone help me finalise the car choices here?

*It's really more like a luxury lodge, with room for a dozen people in exquisite comfort (and easily space for twenty people, if some of them share a room).

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

There was one OSS operative in Istanbul who actually did walk into bars dressed in a fedora and all the rest of it looking just like the boss of the Dead Letter Office(if you watch that show you will see what I mean). Even though you would swear no real World War 2 spy would wear that. He wasn't all that effective though and was mostly there to give the little boy a place to play in from high-level sentimental nepotism. But real G-men are professionals and probably know about blending in. Maybe that rumor came around because the only Feds Hollywooders usually saw would have been simply routinly checking up on everyone important enough for someone to take the bother to kill them and had little interest in not being seen by their actual charges. If a Hollywooder was interesting enough to the law to pay attention to for himself, his watchers probably would do a better job. But that's just a guess.

Question about young FBI agent --
 

IIRC FBI agents have to have a degree in law or accounting.

Not sure if your young, enthusiastic California lady tech-geek would have one of those.

Of course, as described she's bright enough . . .

Re: Question about young FBI agent --
 

Currently, languages and computer science are also acceptable, as well as an entry category called "Diversified", which I'd guess serves as a means to induct anyone they really want that's not qualified in the other categories.

http://www.fbiagentedu.org/fbi-requirements/

I don't know the when they first added the CS degrees, or have a list for 1988, but that's not too early for the FBI to be interested in CS graduates. Congress did start increasing the Federal jurisdiction over computer crimes at least by 1984 in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. The FBI had a formal computer forensics section("CART" (Computer Analysis and Response Team)) in 1991 -- which doesn't mean they didn't have any such capability earlier, just that that was when it was worth designating as its own branch.

Re: Question about young FBI agent --
 

At least fictionally that would be Seeley Booth. A formidable Army Ranger with sniper training but who never impressed me as being lawyerly or accountant-like. :)

Re: Question about young FBI agent --
 

Hoover famously set out to make all Special Agents of the FBI lawyers or accountants. He did succeed at raising the percentage of lawyers or accountants from 31% to 66%, but it was never impossible for others to become agents.

During the Hoover years, other paths to becoming a Special Agent included possessing desirable scientific or linguistic skills, possessing valuable firearms expertise, having law enforcement or military experience, having worked as support personnel in the Bureau and, amusingly, being a college athlete that could strengthen the Bureau's basketball or softball teams.

After 1962, the FBI actively sought minority recruits* and after 1972, that included female agents. By 1992**, Special Agents with degrees in the social sciences were more numerous than those with law degrees or accounting degrees. There were over a hundred agents with computer science degrees and those were actively recruited from the early 80s on.

A female Hispanic with a Computer Science degree from Stanford checks a number of highly desirable boxes in 1988, both public relations ones and desired skill set ones. The fact that she worked on programming the ViCAP as a Stanford student, FBI intern and later technical expert for the FBI means that she officially became a Special Agent only after three years of highly relevant work experience with the FBI.

Being a child prodigy, Agent Estevez attended Stanford from 1981-1985 (ages 16-20) and started work on what would become ViCAP as a summer intern with the Los Angeles field office of the FBI. She had begun graduate studies at Stanford, with some isolated technical aspect of the ViCAP project as her graduate research project, but eventually made up her mind to become an FBI agent and to that end entered the employment of the FBI as a technical expert.

As an aside, neither Agents Corelli nor Ledoux have law or accounting degrees. Corelli has a teaching degree with double major in chemistry and Agent Ledoux has a degree in musicology, with a minor in modern languages. Both of them qualify for the FBI under a 'Diversified' program, as both of them have military experience and a college degree. Corelli retired as a Captain of the USMC and Ledoux as a Specialist-Six (E-6) of the US Army.

*Albeit, at first, more for window dressing than actual authority.
**I couldn't find a figure for 1988.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

Actual Special Agents of the FBI appear to be a lot closer to the people who work for the prosecutor's offices here, many of whom are my colleagues or have degrees in finance, than they are to first responder cops. And as for surveillance, that's a specialist job carried out by surveillance teams, the members of which are not sworn agents.

I've only ever come in contact with the FBI through email, but from everything I can gather, any Special Agent of the FBI not among that miniscule fraction who do undercover work will usually be quite open about his status. They openly interact with local law enforcement, they openly interview witnesses and suspects and they boredly wade through reams of paper (or drives of it, nowadays). For an overwhelming majority of them, being identified on sight as a Federal Agent with a legal right to local cooperation is probably a lot more valuable than being able to impersonate criminals or fade into a crowd.

The people who don't look like Federal agents are mostly FBI surveillance techs.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

From that point of view a Man in Black has another reason not to look like a Man in Black doing that job; he people will be less nervous about him.

Re: Cold Weather Survival Gear for a Maine blizzard
 

As far as I know, the ideal look toward to which FBI agents aspire has changed little from the days of Hoover. They aim to appear like clean-cut, respectable college-educated professionals.

The stereotypes of homogenity and poorly-fitting suits probably have elements of truth to them if you compare FBI agents with average lawyers, stockbrokers or accountants. Especially before a payscale adjustment in 1990, FBI agents were underpaid for their education and experience, and in any case few Federal employee payscales will be able to compete with succesful law or financial firms. Many FBI agents are former military or other law enforcement and the Bureau appears to cultivate an institutional respectability, which often shades into uniformity.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that FBI agents wear suits because suits are the clothes which mark one as part of the power elite in the 20th century, but they also tend to wear suits that are less expensive than lawyers or financial professionals can afford, not to mention a tendency within the FBI toward treating the suit as a uniform of sorts, everyone copying, as best they can on their budgets, the conservative look of the senior agents (who in 1988 will date back to the Hoover years).

Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

I've got technical questions about harvesting pelts or fur at late TL7 and early TL8 (1978-1988):

1) What would you do with a fox, bobcat or coyote pelt/hide if you wanted to harvest it from the animal and preserve it in good conditions for a week or so, before it could conveniently be transported to a professional furrier?

-- 1a) Is it enough to skin the animal and scrape as much undesirable blood and meat off the hide as is practical and then store it in a cold place?

-- 1b) Would it instead be necessary to start a more technical process of preparing the hides/pelts, in order for them to be undamaged by any undesired organic decay when the furrier got them in a week or two?

-- 1c) What does any treatment of the hides or pelts entail at TL7/TL8? Is it the same as low-tech curing hides and eventually tanning them or has technology changed it?

2) What kind of space and equipment do you need for this kind of work?
Assume that there will rarely be more than one or two foxes at a time and that bobcats are not shot every year, but 20-30 coyotes could be killed in one trip and it would be nice to have facilities for even double that, if practical.

-- 2a) Could an old trapper's cabin be used for this purpose, assuming that any necessary TL6 to TL8 tools are brought in?

-- 2b) Can anyone give me a description of the outside and inside of such a cabin that had been used once a year for the past decade for the harvesting of skins, mostly from coyotes? What kind of equipment is there, how is it arranged, etc.?

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

It must be possible to do a fairly good job at fairly low TL as Indians and Frontiersmen have been doing so for hundreds of years. True many of the ones on the white man's side were part of fur cartels, as effectively even quite a few on the Indian side (for it was often a joint venture of a tribe affecting a tribe's lifestyle, foreign policy, etc). Such enterprises and chains of enterprises could afford a lot of specialization, a typical one being a mega corp maintaining a general store at one of it's outposts for hunters and trappers to sell their catch and buy stuff from back east at. New France was one big fur cartel and much of it remained so even after the British conquest put it under new masters.
Some trappers and traders were loners though and in any case it must be possible to keep the fur long enough to get it to a trading post. It did not even require a cabin but it is obvious that it could be done on the trail simply from the fact that people did so.

As a historian I only know that it is possible to do that-because it was done. According to my Dad who spent a few years in Maupin (now a fishing resort then a rancher's and lumberman's town and one of those legendary Arcadia USA places where respectable teenagers carry guns without being mistaken for gangsters) as a boy, you hang up a deer to hold it in place, cut a circle around the neck with the knife and put the knife between the meat and the skin and pull the one from the other being careful to save as much of both as possible. There is a little bit of lard between the muscle and the skin giving a nice marking place (the lard is also useful for it's own purposes). One important thing is to take care to have a sharp knife. All animals have to be gutted right away but the rest of the project can be done later. Larger animals often have to be tied down to the top of a vehicle , now a pickup but in the old days it must have been done by mules or even a porter team. If they are heavy enough deer, etc, may have to be pushed on the ground to the vehicle though I should think that causes damage that an old time fur hunter probably cannot tolerate if done to long. If they are light they can be carried out with a dead man's carry with the legs looped around the neck and the body on the back. Note that when you get home the actual skinning should be done outside the cabin, either outside proper or in a secondary shack lest it stink up the place (until it is treated it is after all a corpse like any other). This is a mundane detail that an urbanite may not think of because mundane details are to mundane to consider. On the trail deer probably were cut up into smaller packages for easier transport but small stuff like beaver could presumably be transported whole, probably in a bag or package.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

My bit of Googling suggested that there aren't even any real improvements at TL 7-8. Skin the animal with a knife, "flesh" it, and stretch it to air-dry, which is sufficient to sell it to a fur buyer. Salt cure if you intend to tan the hide. The only modern references I caught were for details like adjustable stretching racks (rather than retying the crossover points on four wood poles, or having several different sizes of wooden boards) or hanging the animal from nylon parachute cord while skinning it. And no doubt the knives are cheaper and better, relative to income. But no changes to the basic technique, or power tools for automatic flensing, or tech changes like that. Sounded like the ghosts of TL4 frontiersmen could just step right in and help out.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

The leatherworkers I know with expertise in curing hides, or just experience with some of the products of the more conservative tanneries in the EU, are horrified by what chains like Tandy Leather in the US carry today. Quality has gone down because a skin is not a precious treasure which needs to last under hard use but a decorative luxury. It can be very hard to obtain reasonable equivalents of respectable leathers before the 19th century introduction of chrome tanning.

I suspect that over the last hundred years there have been simplifications to help sport hunters preserve their trophies.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

Does anyone know if foxes, bobcats or coyotes have something similar or is this a herbivore thing?

How long can you let a gutted animal lie in temperatures below freezing without harming the hide or fur?

And does the natural process of decay ruin hide or pelts as fast as it ruins meat?

The rich hobbyists in my adventure have a poor relation who gets paid for coming round their calling places on a snowmobile with a sled to pick up the dead coyotes. If anyone bags a fox or a bobcat they'll more than likely carry it home themselves, however, as those are much more prestigious trophies.

About 300' or so from the TL8 luxury house that superficially resembles a cabin, there is a very old trapper's cabin. In the 19th century, it was a home, not just a working shed, but since no one lives there now, I expect it very well may have been converted to exclusive use as a pelt and hide harvesting station.

I'm very interested in how it would appear and what tools and machinery would be inside and outside it.

How much space does each drying hide need, stretched out on an TL7 adjustable stretching rack?

Do you keep those outside or inside, if no one lives in the shack?

The mundane details of how the NPCs in my adventure accoplish this in 1988 (and how they did it in the past decade, as that might affect how the set-up is) might turn out to be vital to the adventure. At any rate, a shed full of stretched hides, with skinned corpses stacked high outside, is a seriously cool place to encounter a suspect in a serial killer/kidnapping case.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

Does the fact that we just want to use the fur, and aren't looking for high-quality leather, have any impact on what needs to be done on-site to prepare the animal for harvesting the pelt?

The end use for this is using any fox or bobcats to make gloves, scarves, lining or other luxury goods, but a professional furrier would probably do most of the work. Even the more attractive coyotes would probably go to a professional furrier. The poor relation that picks up the animals just needs to do enough so that the fur doesn't spoil before he can take it to town.

He might well cure and/or tan some of the less attractive coyote hides himself, though, but I expect that most of these coyote hides make wall decorations, blankets or very rustic clothing.

There isn't actually any reason to assume that he has lower than skill 12 at Survival and Leatherworking*, which I imagine hande skinning and working the hides, respectively, but I imagine that TL8 professionals with proper machinery have effective skills 14+ at skills he doesn't have, like Professional Skill (Furrier) and Artist (Fashion Design).

*And he might well have much higher skill, as he was taught these skills in his youth and has used them for at the very least a hundred hours a year since then. He was born in 1918 and one of his grandfathers was an honest-to-God full-time actual trapper, with him and many of his relatives supplementing their income from time to time with trapping well into his adulthood.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

It must be remembered that my dad did not come from a furrier family. Grandpa was a poor pastor who sometimes had to moonlight as a timberman and their family caught animals on the side because everyone did in that area. Grandpa would in many ways qualify as an archetype of Manlyman USA and even when he was older and more prosperous he was kind of a heroic throwback. But what he wasn't was a professional furrier. Still that sort of thing was as I said done opportunistically in Maupin.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

I don't know. My interest is as a potential future buyer of hide products, not a hunter who cleans pelts. I have heard complaints about modern commercial hides not having been sufficiently defleshed, or having been cut by too-hasty scraping. It sounds like this guy would take the time to do it right.

Re: Skinning, curing hides and/or tanning, harvesting pelts
 

If he can, he might. It's certain that he won't do a slip-shod job with fox or bobcat fur, as those don't come in sled lots.

But if you've got 30-50 dead coyotes and no help at hand*, you presumably have to sleep one or more times until you finish the work. Or maybe you can do some sort of rush job that will keep things from spoiling until after you've rested. In freezing temperatures, that might be an option.

For a coyote-sized critter, how long does a hasty scraping take and how long is a proper defleshing? Ballpark?

*There is help theoretically available, but apart from very fine furs they shot themselves, which he'd have to do first anyway, none of the rich hobby hunters along care enough about a bunch of coyote hides to help with defleshing them. Two or three of them might help in gutting and bleeding the kills, but no more than that.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

Does anyone ever use coyote fur? I always thought that was mostly for bounty tags.

Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae
 

The winter fur of Maine coyote looks quite nice, actually. It's more a human prejudice than anything else to consider it so much inferior to wolf fur.

Certainly, in recent years, the prices for coyote furs have been going up.

You can make some quite cool things from it.

That's a sweet coyote fur hat, for example. So's this one.

These days, you can even get them in high fashion varieties.

If they're from the 70s, they look more dingy, but it's evidence that even before our crazy modern times, people were actually buying and wearing coyote fur.