I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

My subjects for columns are frequently decided upon by pure gut feeling. If it feels right, write about it!

I'm a subscriber to Charles Phoenix's Slide of the Week, and I recommend you do so too. Last week, I received a slide that featured a TV that I'd known about, but didn't know too much about. It's called the Philco Predicta, and it had the picture tube on a yoke in a wonderful expression of modern design. Charles had located a slide that featured a Predicta "in real life," as he excitedly put it.

The next thing you know, I'm watching Revenge of the Nerds on TNT, and lo and behold: a Predicta! It was being used to play 80's Atari games.

OK, two Predicta sightings in one week. Time to write a column!

Philco began in in 1892 as the Helios Electric Company. They manufactured batteries at first, but as electricity caught on, they diversified. In 1927, they began manufacturing radios, and soon became one of the Big Three in the business, along with RCA and Zenith. When televisions began appearing after WWII, Philco jumped on board.

Continue reading "The Most Stunning TV Ever Made: the Philco Predicta" »

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I sure did, back in November of 2007, when I first envisioned I Remember JFK.

Fourteen hours of work recently begs to disagree.

Issue number one: Upon moving from one dedicated server to a more powerful one at half the price two years ago, a large number of graphics were lost. I went into the articles in question, beginning in May 2007, and deleted the references to the now missing graphical files.

The result was over a hundred articles from may to August of that year which became text-only, no pretty pictures.

That has long bothered me. So last week, I decided to take a couple of hours, go find new graphics, and re-illustrate the articles.

After six hours last Wednesday, I had not succeeded in fixing half of them.

So, yesterday, I woke up bright and early and put in another eight hours. There are still a couple of articles left, which I will get to today.

Issue number two: Youtube, and it's yank-first-ask-questions-later policy.

I had posted a dozen or so links to Youtube-posted commercials of the past, and most of them were removed due to copyright concerns.

Now, the way this works is that if you feel you hold copyright on anything that Youtube hosts, let them know. They will instantly take it down, and the person who posted it has to now prove that there was no copyright violation.

Of course, if someone has simply posted an old commercial, they blow off Youtube's request for confirmation.

Who wins? Some slimy outfit that has collected old commercials on DVD, wanting you to buy them. They hold NO copyright claim, but Youtube follows its paranoid policy. So getting them out of the public view, and forcing you to pay to see them, is a no-brainer for DVD manufacturers.

Who loses? We do.

Ergo, I have re-located many lost commercials, or else found replacements, and reposted Youtube panels.

However, I have ALSO downloaded my own copies and posted and linked to them here, on my server.

If I have anything that anyone feels is a copyright violation, let me know and I'll investigate.

But what I WON'T do is take anything down for trivial reasons.

All that being said, I'll be back next Sunday with a new Boomer reminiscence. In the meantime, why not revisit the May-August 2007 archives, and see the results of all my hard work?

1972 was a banner year for inventiveness, consumer-product-wise. That year, Mr. Coffee was born. The coffeemaker, which forever changed the way the morning brew was prepared, will no doubt rate its own future mention here.

The other big release that year was the Polaroid SX-70.

Polaroid had long ago made its name with instant photography. They released their first peel-and-see camera in 1948, just in time for our fathers, getting more prosperous by the day, to preserve images of their lovely kids (that would be US!). By 1965, they released the affordable Swinger, which many Boomers made their first camera purchase.

But let's face it: peeling off the top layer after exactly the right number of seconds was, well, a pain. While still preferable to waiting days for pictures to get developed, we tired of having to carry waste disposal means with us wherever we went. And that emulsion was seriously nasty, sticky stuff if you happened to touch it.

Thus, the world was overjoyed when the SX-70 was released, a camera that spit out a picture that would magically develop right before your very eyes! And no nasty paper to throw away!

Continue reading "The Polaroid SX-70" »

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I am so stuck in the past, music-wise.

It's a tradition with me. While my high school buddies were getting into formulaic crap like Styx, Foreigner, and REO Speedwagon, I was jamming to the Beatles and Stones of the 60's. I am just now discovering that there was some pretty darned good stuff recorded in the 90's. My daughter was pleasantly shocked to hear that I got a kick out of Radiohead's OK Computer.

So prepare to be amazed, Boomer friends. I'm about to heartily endorse an album populated by lots of twenty-somethings!

There's a Boomer connection, of course: the songs all belong to the Grandfather of Grunge, Mr. Neil Young. I've been a passionate NY fan since I first listened to Comes a Time, way back when I used to style my hair.

Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young is a two-CD collection of songs by independent artists who all have two things in common: they hold the Canadian genius in high regard, and they all sound amazing.

Continue reading "Boomer Review: Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young" »

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When I was a kid, I noticed something about TV very early in the game: my mom's "stories," as she called the soap operas she watched on weekday afternoons, had a different look to them than other shows like Leave It to Beaver or Bonanza.

The look is hard to describe. But there are unmistakable differences.

Later in life, I learned that the soaps were filmed on videotape. The other TV shows were captured on cameras that utilized conventional film.

Go back to the early 50's, and all shows were caught on film. However, most were captured as kinescopes. The cameras capturing the action were piping their feeds straight to broadcast. The only way to record what they were filming was to point a film camera at a monitor screen. Thus, the quality of the captured show was only as good as the sharpness of the monitor and the focus of the camera. In other words, lousy most of the time.

During that decade, AMPEX, makers of sound tape recorders, was experimenting with putting video on tape. By 1957, they had perfected the process enough that a TV episode was shot for the first time entirely by videotape cameras. This was The Edsel Show, a Bing Crosby-hosted special that was considerably better than its namesake. Rumor has it that a door handle fell off of a car shortly after it was featured on the show.

Continue reading "Why Does This TV Show Look...Different?" »

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I have a soft spot in my heart for comfortable, feel-good movies. Sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to be blown away by special effects, or to be emotionally drug all over the theater, or to laugh myself silly.

When I'm in that sort of mood, a film like Calling It Quits is just what the doctor ordered.

It's one of those little indy films that went straight to DVD. Often, you never know what you're going to get with those bad boys, but rest assured: this is a wonderful movie.

It stars easy-going Dennis Boutsikaris as Dante Milestone. Dante is a successful businessman who is undergoing a mid-life crisis. The rat-race is too much for the fifty-something, and he decides to retire early and try to find the passion for life that he once had.

He is accompanied in his search by best buddy Jake (Robert Clohessy), who encourages him to find something, ANYTHING to get his head back in the game.

Early retirement gives Dante a bad case of too much time with himself, and he is soon out of the house seeking...

Continue reading "Boomer Review: Calling It Quits" »

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Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His uncle, possibly in an act of prescience, gave him the nickname "Sparky," after Barney Google's Horse Spark Plug.

Charles grew up loving to draw. Once, he drew a picture of his dog Spike, who relished eating nails and tacks, and sent it in to Ripley's Believe It or Not. They published the prodigy's cartoon verbatim!

As a teenager, he offered drawings to the high school yearbook staff. They turned him down.

After a stint on the military, Schulz took a job as an art instructor at Art Instruction Schools, headquartered in his home town. Never heard of them? Picture a magazine ad of a cute figure with the exhortation "Draw me!" He also took on a side job doing lettering for a Catholic periodical.

But in 1947, he persuaded The St. Paul Pioneer Press to carry a comic called Lil' Folks. The strip included a kid named Charlie brown and an unnamed, but quite intelligent, dog. The next year, he sold some single-panel toons to The Saturday Evening Post. In 1950, he approached United Features with his best Lil' Folks strips. With considerably more savvy than his school's yearbook staff, they agreed to syndicate them under the name Peanuts. The rest was history.

Continue reading "Peanuts" »

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There are only a few memories that are common to practically every Boomer kid. Examples: we all got the smallpox vaccination. We all were blown away by man's first moonwalk. And I'm pretty sure that we have all watched The Beverly Hillbillies.

The show actually spawned a genre that I was not familiar with: fish-out-of-water. In 1962, it was the first television program to take a group of individuals from one world and plant them in another, a trend continued by the likes of Green Acres, Mork and Mindy, and even The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

But, IMHO, nobody ever did it like Paul Henning and his wonderful creation.

As everybody on the planet knows, one day Jed Clampett was out hunting with his faithful bloodhound Duke, when he shot into the ground and spawned a miniature gusher.

The next thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire. Banker Milburn Drysdale convinces him that he needs to move into a nice mansion in Beverly Hills, right next to him. And thus began TV history.

Continue reading "The Beverly Hillbillies" »

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At presstime, the largest oil spill in history is being battled in the Gulf of Mexico. My wife and I have fears about what St. Pete Beach will be like in September, when we make our annual pilgrimage. The public is angry, the oil company is spinning the facts with all its might, and the wildlife is suffering more than anyone else.

Thus, the environment is on my mind.

I try really hard to stay apolitical. Truth be told, I probably lean a bit right. But I am also supportive of movements that are decidedly leftist in nature.

An example of this is the environment.

Even as a child, I felt a strong desire to protect our ecology. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring didn't affect me like it did my elders, but the crying Indian certainly did.

Therefore, my parents never had to chide me for throwing trash out the window. Would I do that to that poor Indian?

While I was making my own personal dedication to being as nice as possible to our planet and ecology, a movement of concerned young adults was doing the same thing.

Continue reading "The Environmentalist Movement Is "Born"" »

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If you youngsters out there think that North Korea's current ruler is a nutcase, you would be right. But if you think he's the first, well, then you don't remember the news headlines of 1968.

In January of that year, the USS Pueblo was on patrol in international waters in the Sea of Japan. Her mission was to monitor communications from North Korea. On the 22nd, two DPRK fishing trawlers approached the ship and circled her for a while. Captain Lloyd Bucher radioed the incident in, but such actions weren't uncommon, and he wasn't unduly alarmed.

What he was NOT aware of were the events that had recently taken place on the mainland. The night before, 31 North Korean soldiers had crossed the ironically named DMZ and headed for the Presidential Palace. Their mission: assassinate the President of South Korea.

They were apprehended within a block of their goal, and thirty of them ended up losing their lives in the ensuing battle. The lone survivor revealed the nature of their mission.

Thus, tension was quite high on both sides of the border when the Pueblo was spotted. Within hours of their encounter with the fishing boats, they were approached at high speed by a warship at full battle stations.

Continue reading "The Pueblo Is Captured" »

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My kind of book is the type that grabs you and forces you to read it when you should really be doing other tasks.

I would say that perhaps one out of five books I read affects me this way. The ratio is that high because I stick with the tried-and-true: Grisham, Clancy, Clarke, Heinlein, and a handful of other authors who hit a lot more home runs than ground into double plays.

However, as the purveyor of this humble website, I am often approached by publishers and authors with works that they would like me to review.

Most of the time, if I don't like the book, I'll ignore it. It's not in my nature to trash the work of others, even if it's deserved. Ergo, if I review it, it's because I am favorably impressed.

This review is about Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey, a Boomer writer's account of dealing with a health crisis, and various idiots whose job it is is to help, but instead make the misery much greater. However, please note: there is not a trace of self-pity to be found here. Instead, the author, Sally Franz, chooses to poke sarcastic fun at the incompetence, the arrogance, and the overall ignorance of basic patient needs that she encountered.

The result is this magnificent book, which will alternately make you laugh and wish evil on self-absorbed medical staff who don't see humans, they see cases.

Continue reading "Boomer Review: Scrambled Leggs" »

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I've spent my entire adult life working for The Man, but always having something going on the side.

Go back to fresh out of high school, I started out as an electrician. Within six months, I had people paying me to do wiring jobs on weekends. They avoided contractor rates, I made great hourly money. Win-win, as Steve Covey would say.

When I got my first computer in 1993, I engaged in a long-suppressed passion: writing. I discovered that a word processor program would do some seriously cool stuff, like catch typos, check your grammar, and allow multiple versions of the same document. When I joined AOL the next year, I was astounded and delighted to discover that there was an actual (modest) paying market for my scribblings!

Nowadays, I lease a dedicated server and host/develop websites. I also spend an hour or two per week blogging. All the while, Little Debbie pays most of the bills. I'm just busy enough, and get some great tax breaks, thanks to my S corporation.

In my case, and, I suspect, in the case of many of you, my willingness to work evenings and weekends on my own ventures was spawned by selling Kool-Aid in my neighborhood from a stand constructed out of cardboard boxes scrounged from behind Moonwink Grocery.

Continue reading "Boomer Entrepreneurism: The Lemonade Stand" »

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I hate to stamp columns with a date-sensitive comment, but watching History Channel's America: The Story of Us last night spurred a deeply-buried memory in my brain.

The show was documenting how Pearl Harbor instantly ended the Great Depression, with the mobilizing of the American economy to create a massive war machine.

And one of the developments that was soon churned out by the thousands was the classic Willys Jeep.

The Jeep helped win the war, of course, but afterwards, many of them showed up in private ownership. That's what today's I Remember JFK piece is about.

In my case, it was my grandfather Oran Tinsley who sprang for one and turned it into a hunting machine extraordinaire, its small size, low gearing, and four-wheel-drive being perfect for rainy fall days in Texas' Hill Country.

The non-nonsense Jeep was quite short on creature comforts, but was built tough. Did you ever notice the handles at the four corners that many sported? That was so you could pick it up and turn it over if it ever ended up upside down.

Continue reading "A WWII Surplus Jeep in the Garage" »

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Caught in the middle
Carol, we're middle class
We're middle aged
We were wild in the old days
Birth of rock 'n roll days

Joni Mitchell's Chinese Cafe caught the early Boomer generation just as they were entering middle age back in 1983. And it reminded them that they were the ones who spawned Rock and Roll. Nowadays, her generation is blazing the trail to retired life, and it's we younger Boomers entering middle age and reminiscing about our wild youth.

But all Boomers have Rock and Roll in common. True, many of us have expanded our musical tastes. I like the gentle Celtic sound of Loreena McKennitt. I also enjoy Tchaikovsky. But odds are that when I'm in the mood to listen to music, it's liable to be Led Zeppelin, The Boss, or Neil Young blasting out the speakers.

So when did Rock and Roll get its start, anyhow?

Many sources cite 1948. A few events came together that year to put a new musical style on the map, in the opinion of many.

Mississippi Delta Blues had long proven irresistible to open-minded white audiences, who felt soul in the raw sound that Caucasians like Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and even the great Sinatra just couldn't duplicate. Thus, whites would tune into the underpowered AM stations across the south broadcasting the songs of Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Bessie Smith. Up in Detroit, R&B music was being produced that drew on the great blues artists of history, repackaging their sounds by contemporary artists like Louis Jordan, Paul Williams, and Big Joe Turner.

Oh, and 1948 was the year that a man named Joe Leo Fender began selling a new instrument called the electric guitar. Coincidentally, that was also the year that the 12" LP record was developed, and an electronic wonder known as the transistor was invented. The three inventions would help to cement Rock and Roll permanently in the public psyche.

Continue reading "The Birth of Rock and Roll" »

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True, we Boomer kids did spend most of our lives outdoors. However, there were many sweet rainy afternoons when we passed the time by playing board games inside.

Of course, every Boomer household had Monopoly. But many other familiar board games could be found on the shelves in our bedrooms.

One game that sadly was NOT in my own bedroom was Mouse Trap. Introduced in 1963 by Ideal Toys, I remember drooling over the TV commercials that showed the bizarre mechanism that you would build which would then be powered by a steel ball, enabling you to capture an opponent's mouse.

I never got the game, despite much begging on my part. Oh well, it's good to have some tantalizing things just out of reach. It prepares you to face real life.

Continue reading "Board Games" »

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When I was growing up, my mom and dad would periodically get into a squabble. Like all husbands, each incident was 100% his fault. He was smart enough to recognize this, thus he would frequently negotiate a make-up session by driving to the local Rexall's and purchasing a very powerful female sedative: the Whitman's Sampler.

The venerable Sampler got its start in 1912. Whitman's Confectionery was founded in Philadelphia in 1842. Stephen Whitman knew his craft well, and his candy was a success. Sometime in the early 1900's, Walter Sharp was hired as sales manager. The aptly-named Sharp took Whitman's candy to a higher level, aggressively pushing the products to drug stores, where it is still found over a hundred years later. In researching this piece, I was reminded that it was always the drug store where dad would buy them.

Anyhoo, in 1912, Sharp put a variety of chocolates in a divided box and called it the Sampler. The distinctive box design was based on a hand-made cross-stitch by his grandmother. Printed on the inside of the lid was a guide showing what each candy was.

It was a good design. That is testified to by the fact that 98 years later, it is still manufactured in its original form, or close enough that Mr. Sharp would instantly recognize it as familiar.

Continue reading "The Whitman's Sampler" »

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Every generation has its sex symbols. Our grandfathers swooned over Clara Bow. Our fathers were gaga about Betty Grable. Our big brothers got saucer-eyed over Marilyn Monroe. And we Boomer kids felt the first stirring of our hormones over Raquel Welch.

Raquel (that is her real name, BTW) was born in Chicago in 1940. Fresh out of high school in the late 50's, she was living in San Diego and had landed a gig on the local television station as a weather girl. She was using her maiden name of Tejada back then.

In 1959, she married James Welch. They had two Boomer kids of their own, Damon and Tahnee. Tahnee, BTW, is an actress, and a lookalike of her mom. You may remember her as the beautiful Kitty in Cocoon.

The marriage was pretty much over by 1961, and in 1964 or 65 (sources vary), they were divorced.

In the meantime, she was pursuing an acting career. She landed guest starring roles on Bewitched, McHale's Navy, and The Virginian.

Continue reading "Raquel Welch" »

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Many a Boomer kid has recollections of at least one summer spent at some remote location, either on a river or a lake, likely surrounded with lots of woods, getting away from city life and experiencing the mixed joy of summer camp.

I say "mixed," for, just as in Allen Sherman's classic song "Camp Granada," kids often had to be drug there kicking and screaming before the fun factor kicked in.

Interestingly, the thoroughly American tradition of summer camp as a getaway for kids seems to have originated in Switzerland. In 1876, Pastor Bion, of Zurich, set up summer holidays for kids in Appenzell, in the Alps, where youngsters would build tree houses, fly kites, sing around the campfire, and engage in other typical summer camp fun.

However, by the 1950's, summer camp was deeply entrenched over here as a rite of passage every year for many of us. Our parents, who likely were denied the luxury of a summer getaway during the dark economic years of the 30's, delighted in giving us what they would have loved to have. The fact that the kids were out of the house for a week or two was an added bonus to them.

Continue reading "Summer Camp" »

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As a kid hanging around Moonwink Grocery, one of my favorite activities (and one of Mark, the owner's, LEAST favorite activities) was reading comic books. Sometimes, these would be Archie, Batman, or Superman. But sometimes, it would be an issue of CARtoons.

CARtoons was a mixture of comics and captioned photography. The comics included cars with outrageous hood scoops, massive engines, and gargantuan tires. The photos often featured clueless cops. It was all irresistible to a seven-year-old kid.

CARtoons got its start the same year that Barbie and I did, 1959. It was the creation of Pete Millar and Carl Kohler. Millar was an artist and a drag racer. Together, the duo produced what became a memory for Boomer youths of the 60's.

The magazine came out every other month. Sometimes, it would come out eight times a year. It was sort of an informal situation. But its fans were many, and, well, fanatical.

Continue reading "CARtoons Magazine" »

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At presstime, we're experiencing one of those sopping-wet March snow dumps we get in my area every couple of years. Two days ago, my wife and I were walking the dogs in 70 degree sunshine, today, I'm looking out at eight inches of white stuff.

No matter. The previous warm weather put me in mind of a wonderful ritual that would take place every couple of weeks during summertime in Miami, Oklahoma in the 60's: the backyard cookout.

The ritual was simple, but profound: dinner, normally prepared on the stove, would be provided via dad's flat barbecue grill. That, to a kid, made ALL the difference.

We had the luxury of a screened-in porch. That meant no flies, no mosquitoes, and less wind blowing the red checkered tablecloth around. But I also experienced many a backyard cookout in the real elements. My grandparents' homes in Texas and Iowa were frequent sites, and the back yards were utilized as grand dining rooms in the highest sense of tradition. I would give anything to spend a 1967 summer day savoring the sights, smells, and tastes of a summer cookout. But memories are all we have. So let's share a few.

Continue reading "The 1960's Backyard Cookout" »

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The 60's was a decade of change for the movie industry. Films had been getting progressively more "mature" in their content since the mid 50's. This trend accelerated throughout the decade in which I first became aware of my surroundings and my place in the world. By 1968, the MPAA had instituted a ratings system, intended in large part to allow parents to control what sort of films their children would be allowed to watch.

One of the genres which accelerated the process was that of the low-budget Italian western, aka the Spaghetti Western.

I capitalize the term out of respect. That's a lot more respect than Hollywood critics gave it back in the day.

The classic Spaghetti Western is nowadays linked to the Man with No Name trilogy: Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But as I learned in penning this piece, there were, in fact, many, many more low budget films cranked out of Italian studios during the Decade of Change.

Continue reading "Spaghetti Westerns" »

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I Remember JFK's forum has been up and running now for a couple of weeks, and the discussions have been lively. But we need YOU to join in!

You have my personal guarantee that your personal information, what little is necessary to gather for registration purposes, will NOT be used for anything other than signing you up for the forum. You can then opt in or out for as much or as little notification of new postings as you like.

By default, you receive NO notifications. So your emailbox won't notice the difference.

For the present, any new members have to be hand-approved by me. That keeps the spammers out. But I generally approve "real humans" within hours, a day at most.

So head over to the forum and join the fun!

Regular readers of I Remember JFK know where I stand on the subject of Elvis. He had as much performing talent as any one individual who was ever born, but unfortunately, he also had the naiveté to put his trust in a manipulative individual who saw nothing but dollar signs as far as his client was concerned. The result was that Colonel Tom Parker stifled the man's talent to an extent that we may never know. During most of the 60's, instead of recording more and more great rock and roll like he cranked out during the 50's, he was in movie studios. Disposable, forgettable dreck was the overwhelming result. Each bad movie came out with a bad soundtrack. Lots of money was made, but untold quantities of God-given talent was tragically, permanently wasted.

But in late 1968, Elvis, backed by TV producer Steve Binder, dug in his heels against Parker and starred in a December NBC special that reminded the world of what all of the excitement was about ten years earlier.

Parker wanted Elvis singing Christmas tunes. Binder, who had previously stood up to Chrysler over Petula Clark touching Harry Belafonte's arm during a duet on her own 1968 special (Chrysler didn't feel the world was ready for a white woman to touch a black man on broadcast TV), was not intimidated by Elvis's doltish manager. The result was one of television's greatest moments, and a revitalization of the King's career.

Continue reading "Elvis Makes a Triumphant Comeback" »

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Set your DVR's for this one, Boomers! Tom Brokaw hosts BOOMER$! tonight on CNBC. The show begins at 9:00 PST, 12:00 midnight EST tonight.

Tom Brokaw did an amazing piece on the Summer of Love a couple of years ago, this should be a dandy show as well.

Who knows, perhaps he might even mention your favorite Boomer nostalgia website! Hey, it could happen...

When we were kids, our options at the local neighborhood grocery or the dime store were manifold. Most of the time, we walked out with candy. But sometimes, we would invest our hard-earned (or begged) coins on magical little flying machines made of balsa wood.

They came in little clear plastic packages with cardboard at the top. The hole in the cardboard allowed them to be hung on a rack, frequently at the top of the candy display, as I recall. The plain ones cost a dime, the fancier rubber-band driven models were 29 cents, as best I can remember.

Since I usually was given two nickels a day, buying a glider meant making a tough decision. I had to forego my morning candy fix and come back later in the afternoon in order to have ten cents to purchase my flying machine.

But as much as I loved the elegant little airplanes, I made the tough call many times, and walked home proudly carrying my plastic-wrapped wooden prize.

Continue reading "Dime Store Gliders" »

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Another sad departure from our memory banks: Ronald Howes, inventor of the Easy-Bake Oven.

Rest in peace, old friend.