I am old school

 I remember 78 RPM records. We had an "ice box" and at my grandfather house in Dundee, Michigan you could get a bottle of Coca-cola for a nickel at the granary. I remember walking to the dairy in Morgan, Utah and the man asking me if I wanted "Butta, Chackalate, or sweet milk. I wore Redball jets over PF Flyers and they were black high-tops that stunk like a pig sty.

Gina Lollobrigida was the most beautiful woman I had ever imagined and a new sling shot was the closest thing to heaven I had ever experienced. My 3 brothers and I skinny-dipped in what would now be considered lewd behavior. Geewillikers, we were just having fun. I shot marbles in what was considered MMA fighting back in the day. I snuck a cig from my parents pack! Maybe I snuck one more times than once?

I thought Roy Orbison, Lou Christie, and Jimmy Dean were incredibly talented. I collected baseball cards and listened to games on a tiny transistor radio. I discovered the fairer sex at 13 and it opened up a mystical and magical world that sill confuses, pleases, and amuses me. I learned to pop a wheelie. I mowed a lot of grass with a push mower. I went to church camp and swam in the lake trying to impress the girls.

I got my arm caught in a washing machine roller. I ate a lot of fruit cake the rest of the family disliked. I played Army in post-WWII and Korea with my 3 brothers. We showed the Huns no mercy. I played baseball like they did in the movie "Sand lot". I hate hotdogs, not hamburgers. I drank soft drinks with "cyclamates" and drank water off of water hoses.

I witnessed women becoming blonds over night and the introduction of the Corvair, Pinto, and Vega. I watched the muscle cars of the 1960's pop wheelies and do massive burn-outs. Twiggy, the Vietnam war, civil rights, assassinations, Laugh-in, the beginning of the drug revolution, protests, and the Planned parenthood movement of eliminating us as a species evolve.

Christmas evolved into opening presents day early because no one had the patience to wait. We raked and burned leaves. Everyone did. I cuffed my blue jeans, but wasn't allowed to wear them to school.  Tennis shoes were for gym class only. Teachers paddled us when they decided we needed correction... and our parents backed them up. Playing outdoors was serious business and we always felt deprived when we had to come inside.

Mom cooked and we ate it. We got paddled and more times than not it was mom who administered it, because dad was at work. We had chores and got allowances. We got grounded. We fought sleep and had trouble waking. We did bicycle maintenance and learned about over population. We practiced against nuclear fall-out. We have the scar from the measles inoculation.

We've lived and witnessed many outhouses, rotary phones, hand pump wells, houses without electricity, no A/C, taking my 12 gauge shotgun on my first squirrel hunt by myself and I was 14.  Rampaging everywhere we went as 4 brothers and no one thinking we needed to be on corrective drugs.

Knowing all our neighbors by first names, recognizing every make, model, and year of all the cars on the road, The Twist and Limbo. Maynard G. Krebs and Dobie. "Work!" Sputnik. Bay of Pigs and much later, Baby Jessica. The JFK Assassination. Desoto and Packard. Melmac. Plastic-wrapped furniture.

Climbing huge trees, eating sardines and thinking it was camping out, Hollywood candy bars, blowing in a Milk Dud box at the theater to make noise, banana bike seats and high handle bars, Chef Boyardee pizzas, 3 on the tree, fist fights, Hai Karate cologne, Beatle Mania, and saying the pledge of allegiance in school before class started.

Yea, I am old school and I do not apologize.

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