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.
.
