Sometimes, the things we enjoyed as kids are shrouded in obscurity. That was the case of today's subject of Daisys, Bugles, Whistles, Buttons, and Bows.

These are shaped salty snack foods I'm talking about. And I know Daisys is misspelled, but notice that it is in the pictured ad, too.

According to the scant information I could find, Daisys, Bugles, and Whistles first appeared on the general market in 1966. They were produced by General Mills. And Bugles still survives today, but not the others.

It appears that Daisys and Bugles were similarly flavored. The plain-Jane Bugles you can buy today were the original flavor of 1966, salty corn. Daisys were shaped like, well, flowers, duh!, and seemed to be strategically aimed at dippers. Whistles were cheese-flavored. They were just the right size to fit on the ends of a kid's fingers.

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We're all about nostalgia here at I Remember JFK. And if your idea of nostalgia includes viewing classic pictures of everyday streets in small-town America (or anywhere), then you'll want to take a look at this Flicker photo collection. Prepare to be very pleasantly surprised!

Click here for the website.

We Boomers grew up with the greatest toys ever made. Indeed, the 1950's-1970's has been hailed as the Golden Age of toy manufacturing by more than one authority. And those toys were brought to us by a number of manufacturers who, sadly, have disappeared from sight.

I've already written about Kenner. Today, we cover three more beloved toy makers who have regrettably slipped below the waves of history and live on only in the memory banks of Boomer children.

The first is Marx. "By Marx!" used to sign off all of their commercials, eagerly absorbed by many a 1960's-era kid on a Saturday morning, the prime time for TV to show such ads in order to reach their maximum demographic. This Big Rail Work Train ad is one I remember well. It seemed that Marx's specialty was BIG toys. That meant that it would take a special occasion to talk mom and dad into springing for one.

Marx was founded in 1919 in New York City by Louis Marx and his brother David. The brothers looked for innovative toy designs produced by others, bought the rights, and improved upon them. The strategy worked well. By 1922, both had become millionaires. Their business actually thrived during the Depression, and by 1955 Time magazine had declared Louis Marx the Toy King.

In 1972, the now 76-year-old Marx sold the company to Quaker Oats. In 1975, they in turn sold it to Dunbee-Combex-Marx, a British company. In 1978, that company went under, and so did the Marx name.

Continue reading "Vanished Toy Companies" »

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You know the standard joke: if you can remember the 60's, you weren't really there. Well, that's not necessarily the case. Many of us Boomers were kids during the psychedelic era, and the most substance abuse we might have done was sneaking a cigarette or two out of our parents' packs and smoking it in an overgrown field. At least that was the case with me.

Indeed, some of the sweetest remembrances of the decade come from us kids, as can be evidenced by the wonderful popularity of I Remember JFK.

Today, we feature a review of a novel by a kid of the 60's, one Jim Potter. The name of the book is East Bench: a Novel. If you're familiar with Salt Lake City (I wasn't), the name should be very familiar. If not, read on. It soon will.

The book is called a novel, but it reads like a true-to-life remembrance by the author. The tale is that of a Catholic kid growing up in Mormon territory in a lower middle-class family. The Beatles have just appeared on Sullivan, and garage bands are springing up all over town. These impromptu groups frequently featured preteens playing with homemade instruments. It was a great time to be alive.

Continue reading "Boomer Reviews: East Bench: a Novel" »

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Announcing a new website: I Hate the Home Team! The site is a forum discussion for those of us who have relocated to an area where our favorite team is ignored by the local media, HOWEVER, the local team is worshiped, idolized, and adored. The newspapers, TV, and radio are filled with local morons singing the praises of a team that we couldn't care less about, or perhaps we even despise. Share your pain at I Hate the Home Team!

Click here to visit ihatethehometeam.com

Today's I remember JFK remembrance is the result of a conversation which took place between a coworker and myself earlier this week.

My buddy John Sorrells walked in, threw an object on my desk, and said "okay, nostalgia expert, what's this?"

Without hesitation I said "Why, that's a curb feeler." John was impressed, but hey, I AM the nostalgia expert.

Curb feelers made their debut sometime in the early 50's as an accessory added to luxury cars by Detroit. However, they were inexpensive add-ons for anyone who wanted to protect their tires from the unforgiving concrete that made up street curbs. This was particularly the case if one had big whitewalls on their sweet ride.

Whitewall tires weren't really invented in as much as they were simply the original tires. In the automobile's heyday of the Model T, tires were made of light-colored rubber. The rubber didn't wear so well, so eventually, more carbon black was added to the tread area. This made for tires which were black around the circumference, but white on the sidewalls. As the entire tire began to be manufactured out of higher carbon-black rubber, consumers clamored for the look of their father's tires. Thus, sidewalls were pigmented with a wide white stripe.

Continue reading "Dad's Auto Accessories" »

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Well, after the commentary on the previous installment of I Remember JFK, the subject of this week's column was pretty obvious. The public wants Herb Alpert! And what the public wants, it gets, at least this time. :-)

Herb Alpert was born on March 31, 1935. That makes him a bit too senior to be a Boomer, but he was a strong source of memories for the Boomer generation.

His father was a tailor who emigrated from Russia. His family loved music, and he grew up listening to his father play mandolin, his California-born mother play violin, his sister the piano, and his brother the drums. When Herb was eight, he decided that he wanted to learn the trumpet.

A prodigy he was not. It took Herb years to make the trumpet sound the way he wanted. But he patiently stuck with it, and by the time he was sixteen, he had formed a small band that played weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the like in his L.A. neighborhood.

Not yet convinced that music was his future, he enrolled at USC after high school and joined the gymnastics team. However, he also played with the Trojans' marching band. In 1955, he was drafted into the army. He was able to grab local musical gigs during evenings to help support his new wife and family.

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The date he was born was April 12, 1932. His parents were a Lebanese man and a Jewish woman. When he was five years old, his father brought home an old wind-up gramophone and a record of Henry Burr singing "Beautiful Ohio." Later, more old records were obtained. Young Herbert Khaury fell in love with the old songs, stretching back to the early 20th century. He soon became an authority on early popular music that made it onto 78's.

Herbert obtained a ukulele and learned to play it. He would spend hours singing the old refrains in his natural mid-baritone voice. By the mid 1950's, he was playing in small clubs throughout New York. Sometimes the crowds would laugh at him. Sometimes they would laugh WITH him. And sometimes, he would simply bowl them over with his unconventional appearance and his ukulele.

In 1968, a rather strange film was released called You Are What You Eat. The movie was a celebration of the Flower Power generation and their music, and featured performances by the likes of David Crosby, Frank Zappa, Barry McGuire, and a narrator/performer who had, in 1962, begun calling himself Tiny Tim. One particularly memorable performance involved Tiny Tim and a female singer performing "I Got You Babe," with Tim singing Cher's lines in falsetto, Eleanor Barooshian singing Sonny's lines in baritone.

The film was spotted by the producers of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, who booked Tiny Tim for an appearance.

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Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, just passed at age 89. Enjoy this presentation of Gumby on the Moon, courtesy of a brilliantly imaginative mind that will be missed by Boomers and others alike.

As the previous article on Legos mentioned, it's special indeed when a toy that we Boomers enjoyed as children survives the economic upheavals and the buying/selling/absorptions of the companies that originally produced them. Such is the case with the subject of today's I Remember JFK memory: Mr. Potato Head.

Mr. Potato Head first appeared in 1949. An inventor named George Lerner enjoyed playing with fruits and vegetables as a child. He would attach other fruits and vegetables to, say, a potato so that he would end up with a creation that had a carrot nose and grape eyes, which he would then present to his younger sisters. They would delight in playing with the "dolls" until they would literally deteriorate. As an adult, he recalled with fondness how much fun it was, and decided to create something a bit more durable.

In 1949, he designed arms, legs, and facial features to be stuck into fruits and vegetables. The idea was a bit distasteful to Americans who still had wartime rationing fresh in their minds, as well as earlier memories of nearly starving in the Great Depression.

Lerner tried unsuccessfully to market his toy for a couple of years. Finally, in 1952, he showed it to a pair of brothers who had been specializing in the textile industry, but who had developed a small business on the side that was selling toys and school supplies. It was unlike anything they, or the world, had ever seen, They bought the rights for $5,000. That would turn out to be one world-changing investment.

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In a day and age when many of our favorite childhood toys have ridden off into the sunset, either victims of hard financial times, or perhaps, like Kenner, were bought and sold into total obscurity, it's refreshing to see a treasured childhood memory doing very well, thank you.

Such is the case with today's subject, Lego.

I remember Legos being a hot new item in the 60's. But in researching this piece, I was quite surprised to learn that its history is as venerable as that of Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys, going all the way back to early in the 20th century.

It all started with a Danish gentleman by the name of Ole Kirk Christiansen. He was in the business of producing buildings and furniture for the locals when, in 1924, his two young sons set a fire while playing with some wood shavings which destroyed Ole's workshop.

Ole took it in stride, and looked at the disaster as an opportunity to build a new workshop with greater capabilities. Thus, he began producing miniaturized versions of his furniture and buildings to be used as aids in designing.

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Well, at presstime the shortest day of the year is two days away. It's 30 degrees outside, spitting snow. So what better course to take than to reminisce on those happy, carefree days we Boomers used to spend in our summertime back yards? THAT will cure the winter blues!

The beauty of backyard play was that it was, for all practical purposes, free. The playthings might have been toys, or perhaps not. For example, one of my favorite pastimes was to spin around and around until I was terribly dizzy, then laugh hysterically as I tried to walk around without falling. It was just as much fun to watch my friends do the same thing. We would spend HOURS just spinning around and laughing.

I hope that today's youngsters aren't so hooked on computer games that they miss out on the simple pleasure of spinning around until you're too dizzy to stand.

And what greater joy was there than hooking up the sprinkler, putting on a bathing suit, and just running through it, over and over? An additional benefit was that the thirsty lawn would receive a drink in the process. That's what you call a win-win.

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Television of the 50's tried to shield us from many ugly facts. For example, the very idea that married couples would sleep in the same bed! The horror! And we never, ever saw the Beave or Wally heading for the can.

But thanks to a man named Abraham Katz, the female members of the Boomer generation were a bit more informed. The reason was that way back in 1934, he released to the world the Betsy-Wetsy doll.

Betsy-Wetsy, named after Mr. Katz's daughter, would take water into her mouth from the included baby bottle. And physics being what it is, as well as biology, the water would eventually be expelled from the southern end of said doll.

Thus were our female brethren more educated about the facts of life than we males who watched hour after hour of 50's era sitcoms which carefully hid the fact that people have to occasionally relieve themselves.

Continue reading "Betsy Wetsy" »

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The year was 1971. The typical American family was the Brady Bunch. So said one side of Hollywood. I beg to differ, said the other side. The typical American family is going through a divorce, and has a flamboyantly gay son who likes to go drag racing every now and then.

Thus were the American public presented with An American Family, And they were also presented with the birth of reality TV, for better or worse.

I'm not here to sit in judgment of reality TV. An argument could be made that Candid Camera was a prehistoric form of the genre. And I 'm heavily into The Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers, two shows which seem to fit into the mold.

However, much of what constitutes reality TV homes in on the baser segments of human nature, and there are certainly some seriously low spots that can be tapped. An argument could be made that they are simply following the lead provided many years ago by PBS and the Louds.

Continue reading "An American Family: the Birth of Reality TV" »

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If you were to time-travel back to the mid 60's, you would find that photography was a pretty technically challenging affair. I mean, nowadays, we shoot auto-focused, auto-exposed, auto-flashed shots with our $100 digital cameras and see the results as soon as we plug the memory chip into our computers.

But our fathers went through a more arduous experience. Open the camera, wind in the film, then, if the pictures were indoors, insert a flash bulb and instruct the camera to take a flash exposure. Then, of course, the exposed film had to be removed and sent in for processing.

It's the flash bulbs that we'll be concentrating on today.

Perhaps our fathers felt like they had it easy. They might have been old enough to remember when using flash involved igniting a pile of magnesium powder on a tray! But sometime in the thirties, the magnesium powder was changed to thin pieces of foil, and was contained within a glass bulb that was ignited electrically. It was truly a quantum leap in photography.

By the time we Boomers came along, the bulbs had been coated with blue plastic which provided the perfect color balance for use with outdoor color film. Thus, the same color pictures looked right whether shot inside or out. That plastic coating also kept the bulb from shattering from the sudden influx of heat, a common occurrence with earlier models. The foil had also been replaced with very thin wire strands.

Continue reading "Flash Bulbs" »

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I Remember JFK has been honored to receive attention from the media in the past, and I'm quite pleased and excited to announce that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has invited Yours Truly to jump on a plane and fly to New York to be interviewed!

The interview will be filmed in a couple of weeks. This is exciting, as you can imagine. Stay tuned for more details. I don't want to give away too much and make someone in New York mad ;-).

Well, now I know why I never got into show business. I was told positively that the above would take place, but a last-minute budget cut caused them to rethink flying in an interviewee. They decided to stick with locals.

Too bad for them. I woulda knocked their socks off!

The date was November 24, 1971. A man on a Boeing 727 flying from Portland, Oregon to Seattle passed a note to a stewardess. The note said "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."

Thus began the only unsolved airplane hijacking in US history. The man called himself Dan Cooper. He had done his homework, and had a plan to escape from the plane without getting caught. In fact, some speculate that he did just that, although the prevailing thought seems to be that he failed to survive his 10,000 foot parachute jump into a driving rainstorm.

The note demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. Once the actual existence of a bomb-looking device in a briefcase was established, the money and the parachutes were gotten together. The money, $200,000 in twenties, had all serial numbers recorded. Once the goods had been sent to the Seattle airport, Cooper gave the pilots permission to land.

Cooper had them dim the inside lights to deter a possible sniping. The plane taxied to a remote end of the runway and one person was instructed to deliver the ransom.

Continue reading "Dan Cooper Jumps Out of an Airplane" »

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The year 2000 was a big one. We used to dream about someday seeing the year 2000 when we were kids. Arthur C. Clarke figured that by that year, commercial spaceflight would be commonplace (in fact, there is a bit of commercial space flying, if you want to buy a spot on a Soyuz rocket for 20 million bucks). We sweated 1999, figuring that computer systems worldwide would lock up when the clock ticked 12:00 the last night of the year. And, in 2000, one of the most beloved companies in history was officially dissolved.

I aim I Remember JFK at an American audience, because, duh, that's where my memories come from. It's nothing personal, and I'm delighted when I get comments from other countries. I don't know how many Boomer kids all over the world grew up with Kenner toys. I know that they had a British presence. But the fact is that probably 99% of American Boomers had them. That's because of a very simple fact: Kenner knew what kids liked, and they provided it. Their best salesmen were us, hounding our parents into submission to get us the likes of Easy Bake ovens, Spirographs, SSP Racers, and Star Wars toys. Yep, Kenner had the foresight to lock up the Star Wars franchise in the 70's, and the result is that some of the most valuable toys cherished by collectors today bear the Kenner name.

Continue reading "Kenner, We Hardly Knew Ye" »

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There has always been a group of musicians who were just a bit off-center. When my mom was waiting for my dad to get back from the war, it was Spike Jones. Jones, a gifted musician and bandleader, used guns, whistles, pots, pans, cowbells, hammers, bird calls, klaxon horns, bricks, gargling, breaking glass, and God knows what else to make some truly wonderful and unforgettable music.

Jones was quite the celebrity in his day. But when the Big Band sound died, his music slipped into obscurity. Sure, Big Band stations can still be found, but what are the odds that a serious deejay would dare play the William Tell Overture that segued into a truly bizarre horse race (...and Beetlebaum...)?

Well, Mr. Jones, who died too young at the age of 53 in 1965, would have been quite pleased with the emergence of a 1970 jock at KPPC in Los Angeles. His name was Barry Hansen, but the persona he created that year was Dr. Demento.

It all started when Hansen got a deejay gig while still in high school. He was in charge of serving up sock hop music at local dances. The young jock had discovered, in his childhood, a store that sold 78's for a nickel apiece. The music was quite hit and miss, but some of the misses were hysterical.

Continue reading "Dr. Demento" »

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All Baby Boomers are familiar with Don McLean's 1971 hit American Pie. But did you ever totally figure out its meaning?

The following is trimmed from writer Jim Quinn's website, The Burning Platform. I strongly suggest you browse over and read the full version. It's an eye-opener.

In the meantime, here's the short take:

American Pie is the national anthem of the Baby Boom generation. McLean documents the progression of music and national mood with his haunting lyrics. Don McLean was 14 years old in 1959 when he read the bad news on the doorstep. (the deaths of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper J.P. Richardson, and Richie Valens in a plane crash.) His idyllic life changed on the morning of February 3, 1959 when he read the headline in the newspaper he was about to deliver.

A long long time ago
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died

So bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singing this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

McLean's lyrics in this next verse reflect the music of the 1950s with sock hops, slow dancing with girls and making out in pickup trucks. Then it all ended on the day Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson died. In the chorus, American Pie represents rock and roll music. His Chevy represents America. McLean and his friends used to drink at a bar called the Levee in New Rochelle, NY. When it closed, McLean and his friends moved on to Rye, New York drinking away their sadness at the loss of Buddy Holly. The final reference is to Holly's That'll Be the Day lyric, that'll be the day that I die.

Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
Well, I know that you're in love with him
'cause I saw you dancing in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues
I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died
I started singing

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singing this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Continue reading "Boomers, Check This Out" »

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For some reason, the males of society have, by and large, long prevented women from enjoying the same freedoms that they have had. In western society, however, women have declared that they're not going to take it. They have done so in three waves, the last one having been evident since the 1990's. The first wave was in the suffrage movement of the late 19th-early 20th century, which resulted in women being given the right to vote. However, the second movement is the one that is of particular interest to Baby Boomers.

Women's Lib, as the movement came to be called, began in the early 60's. The show Mad Men makes this evident, as can be seen from the character Peggy Olson climbing from a secretarial job to that of an advertising executive, thanks to a forward-thinking boss. I'll bet she's not making the same money as her male cohorts, though.

Women's Lib gained a big jolt in popularity with the 1963 release of Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique. The book was written from the perspective of a housewife and mother, and it focused on what it was about society that was keeping her and her type from excelling. It made a lot of women mad, and made Friedan a leader in the movement.

As the 60's progressed, Women's lib became a familiar catchphrase. Truth be told, the Libbers were a minority, but there's no denying that their loud voice caused western society to make changes for the better.

Continue reading "The Women's Lib Movement" »

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What a wild, strange trip was music of the 60's. On the one hand, we had Jim Morrison disrobing on a Florida stage in a drug-induced mania. On the other, we had a squeaky-clean family, complete with mom singing harmony, appearing on Sullivan and charting a couple of #2 hits.

The Cowsills started off with brothers Bill and Bob singing at local school and church dances in the 50's, at ages seven and eight. As other family members got old enough, they joined in on the fun. By 1965, they were a quartet, and had a permanent gig at Bannisters Wharf in Newport, Rhode Island, belting out Beatles tunes. They had a record contract with a small company, but in 1967 they signed with MGM. By now, mom Barbara was singing harmony, and the group was up to seven (originals Bob and Bill, brothers John, Barry, and Paul, and sister Susan). Additionally, father Bud, retired from the navy, managed the group. The Rain, the Park, and Other Things was released that year and hit #2. Add in appearances on Today, Sullivan, and other national shows, and the world was going Cowsills crazy circa 1968.

The American Dairy Association took notice of the hit family's name, and they were hired to pitch the goodness of milk on TV, radio, and print ads. And another hit single climbed the charts in 1968, Indian Lake. Two years later, the group shocked the world by releasing their version of Hair, which was their second #2 hit. But we all knew that the Cowsills hadn't crossed over to the dark side, they were just having some innocent fun. Indeed, in 1969 brother Bill had been axed from the group for smoking pot with the Beach Boys. Working for your father can be tough!

As the 70's drew on, the Cowsills began fragmenting. One by one, members left for solo careers. By 1972, they closed up shop and went bankrupt. However, Bob, Paul, and Susan eventually reunited and are in fact performing as the Cowsills today.

Continue reading "Family Bands, Real and Fictional" »

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...And eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus...

When Convoy came out in 1975, the world knew exactly what C.W. McCall was singing about. An offshoot of the hippy generation, Jesus Freaks tended to grow their hair long, just like their hippy brethren, but overall lived lives that were a bit less, shall we say, "free?" Many of them viewed Jesus as the ultimate radical, and they shared the same pacifistic view of war as did the hippies. They were also quite at home with the commune lifestyle, frequently selling handicrafts and the like on street corners and sharing any profits. In fact, it wasn't out of the question to stumble upon a Jesus Freak commune that was identical to the back-to-the-earth movement version.

But of course, Jesus Freaks had a message to go with their lifestyle. They would grab whatever pulpit was handy and let loose. Thus, they were found on street corners, in their own hand-pitched tents, and sometimes in the jailhouse, having been run in for creating a public nuisance.

Continue reading "Jesus Freaks" »

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Boomers, you can now browse through every single issue of LIFE magazine, thanks to Google Books. I've spent an hour this morning re-reading the amazing article they did about Woodstock. And I was amazed to see some homey articles written about Nazis in the days before WWII had begun.

Need a starting point? Check out this issue, which has an article on the various Paul Is Dead rumors.

First of all, I'm taking a two-week break. We're off to Sunny St. Pete Beach for a vacation. See you when we get back.

The sounds that we grew up with were things we took for granted. I always assumed that I would hear the five-days-weekly noon whistle at the B.F. Goodrich plant in Miami, Oklahoma. The sound that accompanied making a phone call would always be a spring-wound noise that accompanied the rotary dial. And purchasing something at most stores would involve hearing keys pushed and a ringing bell.

My first real job was sacking groceries at Phillip's Food Center in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. I watched in amazement as the ladies would punch those keys at lightning speed, calling out each price so that the customer would hear them. And when it was all over, the drawer would open with that classic "ka-ching!"

My grocery sacking job has, for the most part, disappeared, along with those manual registers. Nowadays, most checkers scan items over a laser, and also bag the customer's groceries (unless the customer must do so himself). But today, the past comes alive once again for just a bit, as we experience the comforting mechanical sounds that accompany a 1960's supermarket buy.

Continue reading "Vanished Sound Alert: the Ka-Ching of the Cash Register" »

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Among the culinary delights that we loved when we were kids was a treat that our parents craved when they were our age, and possibly that our grandparents did also. They are commonly known as animal crackers, although cookies is a much more accurate moniker. And despite the ravages of new-age political correctness, they are still around for our own grandchildren to beg for at the grocery store.

It all began back in the late 19th century. Animal-shaped cookies were a hit over in Britain, and they began to be imported to the US. They were a hit over here, too, and US bakeries took note. Stauffer's Biscuit Company began producing them on this side of the pond in 1871 in York, Pennsylvania. Several other bakeries jumped on the bandwagon as well, and some of these later merged to become the National Biscuit Company, aka Nabisco.

In 1902, Nabisco gave the diminutive cookies the name "Barnum's Animals," and began marketing them in a wagon-shaped box with a string attached. The boxes I remember had perforations on the bottom, which allowed the wheels to be extruded from the package, allowing the whole thing to sit up like a real wagon. Some kid probably got a paper cut, and the likely ensuing lawsuit likely made them vanish. (sigh)

Continue reading "Barnum's Animal Cookies" »

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