Favorite things

“My Favorite Things” is a song from “The Sound of Music,” which was a play (1959) and then a movie (1965). I’ll confess I never saw either; I’m more of a “Smokey and the Bandit” kinda’ guy (1977). But “My Favorite Things” was so famous that everyone recognized it. Even Lady Gaga has covered it, thus taking the mantle from Julie Andrews, so if you’re looking for some commonality among contrasts, well, there you go.

My pals and I grew up hearing our moms singing along to Julie Andrews. As for the song at hand, it enumerates some items the singer likes to think about times aren’t so happy.

I never gave it any thought until I took an assignment in Pago Pago. I was hired to fly a helicopter from the deck of a merchant vessel. Upon arrival I found the ship. I found the chopper. And I also found my seabag; found it gone, that is, since the airline routed it to the wrong hemisphere.

So I set sail with little more than the clothes on my back. Taking the silver lining approach, this gave me a chance to list a few of my favorite things, things I never noticed when they were there to be noticed, but things that I did notice now that I couldn’t notice them.

Alas, my list varied a bit from the favorites enumerated by Andrews et al. They sang of, among other things, “Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, doorbells, and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles.” That’s quite a shopping list, you’ll agree. I think you’ll find the sleigh bells next to the pony aisle. As for the noodled schnitzel, well, you’re on your own.

As for my list, here are three highlights:

First of all: Q-tips. I tried making field expedient substitutes, but they never worked very well. Back ashore, I noticed that off-brands weren’t so great, either. And thus we see the subtle genius behind so many seemingly prosaic products from famous brands. They’ve endured for a reason.

Q-tips are made by Unilever, a consumer-products powerhouse that makes a lot of brands you’d recognize. As for Q-tips, Unilever’s website carries the history, starting with their invention in 1923: “Upon observing his wife applying wads of cotton to toothpicks, Leo Gerstenzang, the original founder of the Q-tips® Company, conceived the idea of manufacturing a ready-to-use cotton swab.”

Another item I’ll note from Unilever’s history is from 2007. That’s when the little 30-count “Purse Pack” hit the scene. Now that’s a handy-dandy little item right there. It works a lot better than putting them in a sandwich bag for travel.

Next on my list of favorite things isn’t a specific thing, but more of a category: books.

I don’t always have to have my nose poked into a book, but on a merchant vessel you can go a long time without hearing much, if any, English. Being able to spend even 10 minutes a day with something to read is refreshing in such circumstances. For aspiring seafarers, I’ll note that selecting sea-worthy reading material is a science of its own. My attention span at sea is short, so I like short stories and essays; O. Henry and Bertrand Russell have stood me well here.

As for the last item I’ll mention, well, this is the biggie, something that I’d hard time living without. I speak of Levi’s 501 jeans. During my Pago Pago foray I only had the one pair I was wearing, but if that pair went south, I would not have been a happy camper.

Since everything I favor gets discontinued, or, worse yet, “improved” into utter defilement, I’m just counting down the moments until I have to face life without 501’s, but, for now, at least, I think things are OK.

For such an important product, my grasp of its origins is hazy indeed. Levi Strauss (a German immigrant) was the man behind this legendary product, a legacy of outfitting miners in the Old West, and patented in 1873.

As for Saipan, I never had to do without any favorite things, thanks to a local retail industry that punches far above its weight.