Saturday 10th October 2009 - Something for the Weekend, Sir?

I got my hair cut. I was cutting through an alley at the back of the courthouse, and there it was: a proper barber's shop; walk-in only, no appointments; with a proper barber and a proper chair. There was a young man in the chair. He looked as though wouldn't need a haircut till next summer, but he was having one now. He was in the military, home on leave. He was in the Air Force, based in California. He was quite apologetic about not having been you-know-where.
Everyone in the shop had a Scottish relative. But I think it's a comment on the proclivities of the Scots that everyone in the USA does actually have a Scottish relative. And while we're on that subject, I'm thinking of reporting Castol Oil for racialist advertising. They are currently running an advert with a 'Dick vanDyke' Scotsman smacking people for "Thinking with yer dipstick". I regret to inform you that he does actually finish the sentence with the word "Jimmie" (or should I just say "the j-word").

After the cameraderie of the barber's chair, I went looking for a book. New Philly has a splendid secondhand bookshop. I was going to get a page-turner detective story, but it was too good a shop for that. I found the Oxford book of American Short Stories. I also found a paperback copy of Tom Wolfe's "Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test", a book I spared myself forty years ago, but thought might be of socialogical interest now. I've recently read Ginsberg's "On the Road", so I might as well do the next generation. This copy of the book is almost exactly forty years old. It has a name written down the page edge side. But it looks as though it has never been opened. You know the state paperbacks get into when you hold them open, especially those of forty years ago. So I seem to have inherited it from someone (whose name I know) who also spared himself, although he put it on his shelf, or carried it about with him, probably to impress. I'm trying to recall the books I carried about to impress forty years ago. I remember on was vonNeumann's "Theory of Games". I also had Plato's "Republic", "Das Capital", and "Mein Kampf" (probably in german!) at one time or another. There was also, in the context of "Cool-aid Acid", Aldous Huxley's mescalin thing: was it "Eyeless in Gaza"?
Anyway, concealed beneath these worthy tombs, was a book, older than me, of Ellery Queen adventures. You always get you money's worth from Ellery Queen. If you pay proper attention, they signal you with a big clue when it's time to stop and put your money on who-you-think-done-it.
And well into the adventures, I found a book mark:

[N0261]

Now there's a real puzzle. What do you make of that? It's clearly written by someone who was either an artist or a draftsman. I'm for draftsman, myself, although, back then, almost any engineering tradesman would have had draftsman training. And are the "bulbs" garden or flash? Given the 'f' numbers, I'm inclined to flash. But I can't make much more of it than that. It could be shutter speeds, distances, and apertures, although they're not the regular set of apertures we see now. Anybody do any better?

A pity the two cousins who wrote Ellery Queen are no longer with us.