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MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS December 28, 2000 Well, who knows when this is going to get uploaded. My ISP is being flaky and I haven’t been able to log on, so I’m just writing something that can get put up whenever the ISP is back again. These are the lazy post-Christmas days. Tom has left and is now up at Lake Tahoe. Jeri is still here, catching up on old friends, but about to leave today to spend her last few days of vacation visiting her friends in the Bay Area. It’s been wonderful having the kids around. It seems that we don’t see much of them any more. A natural consequence of growing up, I know. When we had five kids, we didn’t notice the empty nest so much because there was always one or the other of them here, usually Paul, who would turn up at the oddest hours (like 3 a.m.) I once told him that anybody trying to case this joint for a burglary would have a very difficult time finding any hour in a 24 hour period of time when there wasn’t somebody up and moving about the house. That’s still kind of true, since I get so little sleep (3-4 hours at night), but we don’t have kids wandering in at all hours any more. I spent yesterday seated at the computer (like every other day), trying to get back into the groove of transcription again. The tapes just keep on comin’ without end. I should be grateful to have the work, but it gets very old very fast. But one of the e-mails I received yesterday was another of those “pass to all of your friends” things which talked about memories that folks my age have that kids today can’t relate to. I didn’t read it right away, because I get so many mass-mailed things that they get overwhelming after awhile, but I did go through it this morning and it brought back lots of memories for me. ...hide and go seek, Simon Says, Red light-Greenlight. Lunch boxes with a thermos . .chocolate milk, penny candy from the store, hopscotch, butterscotch, skates with keys, Jacks, Hula Hoops, wax lips and mustaches, Mary Janes, saddleshoes. Do kids play hide and go seek any more. Does anyone remember what Simon Says is? I think I remember playing it with the kids. It was a challenge to remember not to move if the person who was “it” didn’t say “Simon Says.” But there was another game we used to play in grammer school called “Mother May I?” where “IT” stood with her back to the other players and someone would call out “Mother may I take a giant step?” “Mother” would say yes or no or would amend to taking two baby stes instead, or something like that. The one who reached “Mother” first was the winner. I’m sure that’s very tame by today’s standards. I also remember having chocolate milk in a thermos bottle. And those were glass thermos bottles, which broke if you breathed on them. Skates with keys! Oh my word. Haven’t thought of those in years. Clamps which fit on the side of your shoes and you used the key to tighten them up--one size really did fit all, since you could lengthen or widen the skates to fit any foot. And no in-line skates either. These were four-wheel babies. I spent a lot of years on skates in my childhood. Mickey Mouse Club, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Kukla, Fran &Ollie, Spin & Marty . . . all in black & white. With Nickelodean, I’m sure a lot of kids are still familiar with the old Mickey Mouse Club; you can still watch Rock & Bullwinkle today (we once met the voice of Bullwinkle, you know--our claim to fame. He was playing Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a community theatre production of Ruddygore in Pasadena. How weird is that??). Kukla, Fran & Ollie are a bit tame by today’s Sesame Street standards. Sock puppets talking with Fran. Pretty low key. And yes, it was all black and white. In fact, we didn’t get our first TV until I was 10 years old. Most of the early shows I saw at the home of friends. By the time we had our own, I was too old for the likes of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, but I sure did get in to Spin & Marty, which was part of the Mickey Mouse Club broadcast. I can’t remember who I had the crush on, Spin or Marty, but my friend and I spent a lot of time drooling over them. ...When it took five minutes for the TV to warm up. When nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school. When nobody owned a purebred dog. When a quarter was a decent allowance, When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. I’d forgotten about waiting for the TV to warm up. And TV tubes. Who remembers TV tubes. When something went wrong, you rooted around in the back of the set, found a tube that was cold, took it to the corner drug store, bought a new tube, plugged it back in and the set would work again. Nowadays if something goes wrong, you just toss the whole set and buy a new one. I suppose this is progress, of a certain sort. And yes, my mother was home when I got home from school, at least until I was in high school. There were often fresh baked cookies in the cookie jar. I tried doing that when our kids started off to school. I’d have a treat for us to sit down and have as we talked over the events of the day. Unfortunately, it was a practice that I seemed to be more interested in than the kids and it never really caught on. When your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces. I had to think about this for a minute, and then I remembered that we used to buy individual nylons that we held up with a girdle or garter belt. And the stockings had seams in them that were never quite straight. When you got your windshield cleaned,oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time. And, you didn't pay for air. And, you got trading stamps to boot! They used to call gas stations “service stations” for a reason...you actually got service. You might even have more than one guy (never a girl) working on your car--washing the windows (all of them), pumping air in the tires, checking the oil level, filling the gas, and then giving you trading stamps (fill enough books and you can get good prizes), or a drinking glass or some other gimmick. Now you’re lucky if they even get out from behind the counter. When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed . . and did! When the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test or chew gum. And the prom was in the auditorium and you danced to an orchestra. Boy, I remember when there was a real threat to being kept behind a grade. I knew kids who were held back. And flunking a test was unheard of, as was chewing gum in school Of course I went to catholic school and we probably were a lot more subdued than most. We would have been killed if we smoked in the bathrooms (heck, Sister would probably have been in there making sure we didn’t). And yes, I’d forgotten real orchestras a dances. Not only proms. Every school dance had a real orchestra that played. We didn’t hear of DJs until quite late. And you’d dress up for a dance, with the aforementioned girdle, stockings (not panty hose), heels (oh those aching feet!) and a good dress (for the girls) or suit. Also, for a catholic school, you had to be careful and not dance too close or the chaperons would separate you. No tight clinches. ...Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk .... as well as the sound of a reel mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides,baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool ....and eating Kool-Aid powder. So how many didja get? I read all of the Nancy Drew mysteries and regularly visited the book section of Macy*s, waiting for new books. I loved listening to The Shadow on the radio. Nellie Belle was the name of a jeep (as I recall)...driven by Pat Butram, I believe. Roy and Dale rode Trigger and Buttermilk.....and I’m sure I licked more KoolAid powder off my hand than ever made it to water. There were a whole bunch more of these trips down memory lane, and it was fun to look back and remember. Especially on a day when connection to the Internet is out and the only other thing I have to do is to work.
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| created 12/26/00 by Bev Sykes |
