Post #259541 by khan_tiki_mon on Sat, Oct 7, 2006 6:43 AM

I recently made my first post to Tiki Central. That was my introduction. I mentioned early memories I had of Tiki and of a restaurant in Syracuse NY called Soo Lins. Sabu the Coconut Boy kindly responded, "You've already contributed to this site. I bet several Tiki menu and ephemera collectors have now added "Soo Lin" to their eBay search parameters". That got me thinking about a couple of things. Soo Lins has been gone for probably 20 years. If I could find a mug or a menu from the place it would probably be like the 'Tiki Grail' for me. But memory is a funny thing. I bet a lot of people have seen the movie "A Christmas Story" and probably fewer have read the book it's based on. Anyways, Ralphie, the main character, wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. He describes the item in detail and all of its' features. After the story became popular people started looking for the gun. Problem was it didn't exist. At least not the way the author remembered it. All the features he described were real but Daisy had never included all those features in one single BB gun. Of course the marketing people at Daisy were no dummies and so soon there was a production of Daisy Red Ryders that matched the author's recollections (we don't all have that kind of power). When I was a young boy I loved watching "The Rat Patrol" on TV, a black and white series about a Jeep based commando unit that operated in the desserts of North Africa during WWII. My friends and I had Rat Patrol models and we played Rat Patrol in the woods behind my house (back then a 10 or 12 year old boy could make the woods behind his house into the desserts of North Africa with no problem). Well the series came out on DVD and it was disappointing for me to see it. The characters were one-dimensional and I swear it must have been basically the same plot every week. I found it hard to believe I had enjoyed it so much. If you must watch a vintage TV series about WWII I would recommend "Combat", but of course that one did nothing for me at the time. The point I'm getting to is that I'm not going to stop looking for things like a menu from Soo Lins but I'm well aware of the danger that it may not measure up to what I remember. Any other collectors out there have similar thoughts? Also, I think I'm a pretty fun guy most of the time and I don't always get this philosophical (my daughter wouldn't say philosophical she'd say boring). And I'm a newbie here so I don't know what I'm doing. If I have posted this in the wrong place many sorrys.