Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone out there! Here's hoping that it's happy and healthy for you and the people you care about.

It's hard to believe that it's actually 2023, which for years has been one of those far-off expiration dates listed on credit cards and batteries that went dead early anyway. Speaking of expiration dates, I'm just happy to still be around – so it's a good year already.

As usual, I'd like to wish my older brother Ken a Happy Birthday! I know he lives in a foreign country (Texas) now, but I hope they recognize his celebrity status down there as Lorain's First Baby of 1958. I've written about it many times, including the newspaper account of it here, his list of free goodies here, and the Journal's follow-up story on him a year later here.

Here's Ken at 4 months. I like the design of his bedding, which includes some kind of cowboy-hat-wearing, bewhiskered critter – which I guess pretty much describes Ken now.

I hope to get some more blog contributions from Ken this year, as his two-part reminisces about working at U. S. Steel are still a much-visited post.

I'll be turning my attention to other Lorain 'first babies' in the days ahead.

We'll also celebrate the New Year on this blog by posting one of those full-page ads that ran in the Journal. This one – with an astronaut theme – ran on Dec. 31, 1962 and welcomed 1963.

As usual, just about all of the companies from sixty years ago are gone, with the exception of Rebman's Recreation, still going strong in the 2000s.