The Queens 2008-2009 Queens County edition of the Yellow Book recently arrived at my front door. Whatever its relevance in the information age I find that the Yellow Book is still a great read, though if I still prefer the Yellow Pages.
The Yellow Pages editors list at the top of each page the category that starts the page followed by the category that ends the page. This confluence of categories sometimes produced juxtapositions which could, at the very least, make you go huh:
ESCORT EXECUTIVE
UNPAINTED UPHOLSTERERS
IMMIGRATION IMPORTERS
SHOES SHREDDED
These are thought-provoking headers I spotted at the tops of some of the 2001 Yellow Pages.
Alas, this convention is not used in the Yellow Book, depriving its readers of a unique, whimsical joy offered by large reference volumes. With the Yellow Book we can not surmise what might be meant by
GLASS HAIR
PAWNBROKERS PEST
PIZZA PLATING
or
OFFICE OILS
(these headers taken from the March, 2006 Astoria/Long Island City local Yellow Pages).
At any rate, while leafing through the Yellow Book I spotted an interesting category for the borough of Queens: FARMS. A fruit stand on Broadway (a street with minimal farmland) has categorized itself as a farm. A farm, the last time I visited one, is a place for growing foodstuffs and raising animals. These animals might include cows, horses, roosters, and hogs — animals which happen to be extremely rare if not extinct on Broadway.
I assume the place calls itself a farm by virtue of certain farm fresh products it sells. Nevertheless, the FARMS header is confusing, as I would not expect a fruit stand on Broadway to have enough acreage for growing corn or tobacco and raising cattle or even roosters.
Look at all the garage door companies! I do not own or have responsibility for a garage in this area, but for as many garage doors as I do see I guess a robust business would evolve around the unique requirements of these things. The mechanism for each door must have characteristics unique to the garage in which it was installed, necessitating a specialized skill set in garage door troubleshooting that must be on call 24 hours a day.
The house next door to this apartment building has a couple of garage doors, and a couple of months ago, for a period of about a month, construction contractors tore up the place, replacing the rotted out ceiling structure with fresh wood and brick.
Until the construction started I only remember seeing one of those garage doors opened. During this construction project, however, the second door was open most of the time, exposing a lifetime of junk. There was a dust-caked motorcycle and several nondescript baskets filled with who knows what and covered with filthy blankets. Tools dangled precariously from the ceiling and walls, 1960s vintage electronic devices (tape recorders, a turntable, a reel-to-reel player) cluttered the top of a steel workbench, and a stack of about 30 old phone books sat near the opened door.
I never had any curiosity or particular interest in what objects sat in that unopened garage. In eleven years of living next door and walking past it the idea of what might lie behind Garage Door #2 never even touched my mind. Nevertheless I was somewhat intrigued by this sudden exposure to the unwashed, unpolished, naked mass of objects from my neighbor’s past. The owner of that house is a few years older than me, and he was born in that house. I do not know if the work done on the structure is in advance of the place going up for sale, but I am glad the work is over because the jackhammers and other pounding noises were not good neighbors for those weeks.
The garage’s new brick façade, by the way, resembles that of my grade school in Tampa. I like that style of brick.
I do not know when electronic garage door openers with remote controls first became common in America, but our family got ours in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Television commercials at the time advertised this new (to me, at least) technology. The commercial I remember best showed a cranky, over-wrought man driving home in the pouring rain and stepping out of the car to open the garage door. The video froze in mid-motion as the man opened the garage door. The screen turned from color to black and white as a voice somewhat ominously suggested that this indignity was now a ritual of the past. The black and white/freeze frame video effects actually had the effect of making the man look like he had been caught in the act of doing something awful.
Seconds later the same driver is seen driving toward his house again, still in the pouring rain. This time he is smiling and calmly opening the garage door from inside the car. Amazing!
Nothing is said to imply that the dude could just get an umbrella, but nevertheless the electric garage door opener quickly became common throughout the suburban U.S.A.
