The kids and their interwebs these days. They have no idea how the world worked before there was a worldwide web. Well, here’s how it was done. Say you wondered where to find a particular oven cleaner. You could just wander aimlessly from grocery store to grocery store, hoping to find what you needed. Or, you could write a letter to the Troy Record’s Hot Line. (Yes, a letter, to a Hot Line that lacked a phone number.) For just the cost of a stamp and the random chance that yours was the question they answered that week, that elusive oven cleaner information could be yours.
Seriously. This is how things worked. The other scintillating question on this day was from Mrs. Ruby Austin of Johnsonville, who wondered where she might find gloxinia bulbs. (Yonder Farms on North Greenbush Road. “Phone 283-4267 to find if they’ll mail them to you.”