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

The ultimate shoe for a second-grader to have on his feet in 1967 was the PF Flyer. It was a known scientific fact that we learned from its endless TV ads that you could simply run faster and jump higher with a pair of these beauties on than with a pair of a competitor's vastly inferior product.

I never had any high-tops like are illustrated here. I preferred the low cut "track shoe."

The shoe has a venerable history. It all started when B.F. Goodrich patented the Posture Foundation Insole in 1933. That's where the "PF" comes from, get it? It made for the most comfortable basketball shoe that could be found, now that your poor arches finally had some support. By the 40's, they were occasionally spotted on the feet of bobbysoxers sitting on drug store soda bar stools. Their popularity grew through the 50's, and by the time I was a kid in the mid 60's it was at its peak.

One of the things that made them irresistible to kids was the old trick used by Cracker Jack and sugary cereals: throw a prize in the box!

An innovation that first appeared in 1956, and lasted until 1966, was the push-button transmission. I remember my oldest brother had a Plymouth from the early 60's that had it.

The pushbutton transmission was available in two incarnations: mechanical (pretty darned reliable) and electrical (extremely unreliable).

Packard introduced it with their 1956 Caribbean. It was the electrical one, and it had problems. If you parked on a steep hill, the shifting motor would lock up trying to get the car out of Park. It would trip a breaker, and you would be stuck. To make matters worse, when Packard's production ceased that year, the manufacturers of the shifting mechanism destroyed the tooling. Replacement parts became impossible to obtain.

The king of the boneheaded electrical shifters was the Edsel. Not only did the shifter have lots of problems, they mounted the buttons in the middle of the steering wheel! Guess what would would happen when drivers made an emergency move for the horn.

"Aye, yai yai yai, I am the Frito Bandito!"

For many of us, when we hear the familiar verse to Cielito Lindo, those words pop into our heads. From 1967 until 1971, when he was done away with under pressure from a Mexican-American anti-defamation group, the Frito Bandito ruled the airwaves. He also sold a very large bunch of snack food.

I remember constantly hearing that song, and memorizing the lyrics.

His voice was that of the master of making cartoons talk, Mel Blanc. Mel, the man who provided voices for dozens of characters for Warner Bros.and Hanna-Barbera, was a natural for this gig.

There are a lot of young folks out there who have never seen a rotary-dial phone. In fact, some have never heard a dial tone! That is a pretty amazing fact for those of us who can remember when touchtone phones, or push-button phones as we knew them, were a rare sight.

Rotary phones were the standard, and some of our homes had phones that dated back to the forties or fifties. After all, the phone belonged to the phone company, not us. We had them replaced if they broke. And they were amazingly reliable pieces of technology that simply didn't break.

But seeing how the times were a-changing, the telephone technology itself was modernizing. In fact, entire generations can see quantum leaps of how we communicate by voice over wires. Our grandparents didn't have phones. Our parents had to crank a handle to reach an operator, who would then connect them to the party they sought. We were spoiled, indeed, to merely dial a number.

I doubt that there is a rock and roll loving Boomer within 1000 miles of Chicago who doesn't have fond memories of a bedroom AM radio with the dial set to 890. The first pushbutton on the car radio was likely also set to this position.

If you wanted to hear rock and roll on the radio, your options were limited circa 1972. In my location, FM was hard to come by. Besides, it was Country Music Central. The two stations that DID play rock and roll left something to be desired. One was strictly Top 40, with the harder stuff filtered out, so it was more like Top 27. And those songs were endlessly repeated until you hated them. I still can't listen to "Let Em In."

The other station required you to be within about 500 yards of the tower to pick it up in stereo (only slightly exaggerated).

Thank heavens for sundown. That meant that WLS was cranking up their power, and we finally had state-of-the-art R&R.

"What kind of watch does Mickey Mouse wear?"

"A Spiro Agnew watch!"

I guess it was funny at the time. You had to be there. Of course, if you're reading this, you probably were.

Spiro Agnew was definitely not a soft-spoken individual. An avowed Hawk, he was constantly criticizing those who questioned the Vietnam War. Remember his calling the media "nattering nabobs of negativism?" He was a dream come true for Johnny Carson, who was provided with plenty of material for opening-show-monologues every time Agnew would hold forth.

The watches came out in 1970. They sold like hotcakes for a time.

What a concept. Let's cash in on the Beatles by creating our own group. We'll run an ad in Daily Variety saying we're looking for four guys in a struggling pop band. We'll piece together a group, with a strong emphasis on their acting ability. It'll make for a hit show and hit records!

Yeah, THAT will work.

Incredibly enough, it did.

The Monkees were born in 1966. Two were musicians (Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork) and two were actors (Mickey Dolenz and Davey Jones).

The show went on the air in September 1966. Within months, they had two number one singles. Or did they?

"Last Train to Clarksville" was revealed to be recorded by a group called Boyce and Hart and the Candystore Prophets. The Monkees' contribution was overdubbed vocals.

However, the group didn't wither a la Milli Vanilli. Instead, they rebelled.

In the 1960's, there was no such thing as Nickleodeon. There wasn't even a Children's Television Workshop. Bert and Ernie were off into the future. Kids needed entertainment! What would be done?

Well, you select a personable member of the local TV station staff who gets along well with children, you scarf up some cheap Loony Tunes shorts, set up some benches and a painted plywood backdrop, and make a kid's show.

In my area, there was KOAM's Fun Club. It was the ultimate. One child in my neighborhood made it on, and we all viewed him with new respect after having gotten the privilege of being driven 30 miles to Pittsburg, Kansas by his parents and appearing on REAL TELEVISION!

In 1955, a TV show debuted on CBS. It was a morning show aimed at children. The show's creator, Bob Keeshan, was a talented individual with a love for kids. He was low-key, patient, and appealing to young ones.

The show would last an incredible 29 years, providing loving memories for many generations of Boomers.

The Captain had familiar guest stars, including Mr. Green Jeans, the New Old Folk Singer, and Mr. Bainter, the Painter. These were all played by veteran character actor Hugh "Lumpy" Brannum.

The Captain himself played the Town Clown who had the most enormous shoes I have ever seen.

Another funky visitor was the Banana Man. Here's his act in a nutshell, from original Banana Man A. Robins' brochure:

You can do the tricks the surfers do,
just try a "Quasimodo" or "The Coffin" too
(why don't you) Grab your board and go sidewalk surfin' with me...

Jan and Dean summed up a late 50's-mid 60's craze with their 1964 classic Sidewalk Surfin'. Skateboards were big in those times, even though wipeouts were a frequent occurrence. Those steel wheels just didn't have a whole lot of grab. Later boards in the 60's featured clay wheels, which gripped the concrete just a bit better.

Skateboards have had an up, a down, and another long lasting up. They first started showing up in large numbers in the late 50's. There had been some sorts of boards on wheels since the early part of the century, but trucks which allowed maneuvering were invented which caused their sales to soar.

Alas, another entry without an illustration. If I could have found ANYTHING about gas station freebies, I would have posted it (with the owner's permission, of course), but this one is really obscure, it seems.

In the 60's and 70's before the Oil Crisis, gas stations would offer you cool stuff free for filling 'er up at their places of business.

That seems strange today. Most of the time, you pay at the pump with a credit card and never see a human. Or perhaps you walk up and pay (in advance) some surly guy behind bulletproof glass.

There's not a whole lot of hope that he's going to give you a free dinner plate for filling up.

But go back to the 1960's and earlier, and service stations (as they were known) tried hard to get your business. In fact, they bent over backwards.

In the late 1950's, a duo of brothers were making the scene in bohemian clubs and coffee houses in New York with a funny musical act. Eventually, they attracted the attention of TV talent scouts. Appearances on Hootenanny, as well as variety shows presented by Sullivan, Bing Crosby, Steve Allen, and Andy Williams made them household names.

Dick was the "serious" one, and Tom was the dork. That was their act, one that played the same through a sitcom (Tom was a dorky angel) and a series of variety shows.

In 1967, CBS launched The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It wasn't long before they wished they hadn't.

What was lacking in their sitcom was any political views. These two folk musicians had plenty to say once they were thrust into a comedy-variety show format. And say it they did. And a half.

Ah, the 70's. It was a decade following the most tumultuous social uprisings in the 20th century. There was a real fear of anarchy breaking out from the protests, as well as the continued fear caused by the Cold War.

By the middle of the decade, though, things had settled down to a nice, mellow hum. It was time to boogie!

Polyester clothing was a smash hit in the 70's, and it identified that particular ten-year span as when EVERYONE wore the inexpensive substitute for silk that you could just throw in the washer.

And nothing made the ultimate in a polyester statement like the leisure suit.

Those two nickels I used to get every day as an allowance were sufficient for most of my needs as a child. After all, it would provide two candy bars, two Popsicles, or could be combined to buy a can of Shasta.

But occasionally, a young man might need a bit more cash in hand. You could go ask mom or dad for more nickels. Yeah, right. THAT would work.

No, if you needed more moolah, you had to earn it. And there just weren't that many job opportunities for a seven-year-old kid.

But there was always a source of income for the industrious: picking up pop bottles.

We youngsters certainly paid close attention to commercials in the 60's. One I'll never forget involved a guy climbing into a Beetle, driving it into a pond, and explaining to the audience as he bobbed up and down in the water that Volkswagen engineered their cars to be watertight, or something to that effect.

And the commercial had an effect on me. I spent thew rest of my childhood feeling like if a car DIDN'T float, it was inferior.

Strangely enough, I haven't owned a VW Bug. Both of my older brothers have, as have a large percentage of the earth's driving population. I DID own a 1974 bus.

But still, the commercial filled me with a high regard for the ubiquitous little car.

The 1960's started off with school segregation still widespread, separate restrooms and water fountains for "whites" and "coloreds" all across the deep south, and much struggling to come to put all of this to a stop.

Such a process would have to be painful, and indeed it was. Martin Luther King was advising peaceful resistance to racism, while Malcolm X advocated killing the white devils. Fortunately, King proved to be a more effective leader.

By 1968, things had improved. Segregated schools were much rarer, but the solution of busing students long distances to integrate was not a good idea, and it was causing much anger and strife.

The Summer Olympics at Mexico City would prove to be a platform to make a statement.

Once upon a time, your mom made the decision about which grocery store to shop at based on a simple factor: what brand of trading stamps did they offer?

Mom was a Top Value fan, hence my using them for the illustration rather than the much more popular S&H Green Stamp. The IGA in my hometown gave away Top Value, hence the reason mom never, ever shopped at the Safeway right across the street.

I grew up licking those stamps and pasting them in books. I loved it. That was big stuff to a six-year-old. And our modest house would periodically be enhanced by the purchase of a lamp, toaster, or the like gained in exchange for those books full of pasted legal tender. We had a Top Value store in town, no waiting for a package in the mail!

What a bargain. Plop down five cents on the counter, walk out of the store with not one, but TWO prizes. A delicious ooey-gooey chocolate caramel treat, and a whistle for after you were finished eating the sticky globules of delight!

Of course, I'm speaking about Milk Duds, and the slick little whistle the box made when you tore the tabs off of one end.

Milk Duds were a classic candy that closely resembled what you find in the bottom of a rabbit cage. Despite that rather unseemly resemblance, the confection has been a hit since the 1920's.

When we decided we liked TV series during our childhoods, we REALLY liked them. Hence the longevity of shows like Art Linkletter's House Party, which started on radio in 1945 and lasted 25 years.

One of the most delightful aspects of being out of school in the summer was being able to watch TV shows that you could otherwise not see, the VCR being many years into the future. One of my most eagerly anticipated daily viewings was Art Linkletter's House Party.

I can't remember exactly what time it aired, but I believe it was about 1:00 in the afternoon. The show would start with Art's monologue, then progress to guest interviews, performing acts, quizzes where audience members could win prizes, and then the grand climax: interviews with kids.

For us Baby Boomers, the appearance of HDTV a few years ago brought back memories of the last big jump in TV technology.

When homes first started sprouting TV antennas in the 50's, black and white sets were the norm. They weren't cheap, either. A new one was an investment of hundreds of dollars. Most stations outside of big cities didn't broadcast in color at first when it became possible in 1954. So spending over $1000 for the pictured 1954 CBS-Columbia color TV was simply out of the question.

But color was catching on fast. By 1965, most US TV stations were broadcasting in color, even though many network shows were still black and white. In fact, it was interesting that some TV shows "jumped the shark" when they went color, the Andy Griffith Show being the prime example.

The year was 1964. I was five years old, and already terrified of fantasy movies. After all, those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz were giving me nightmares on a weekly basis.

But a movie came out that year that mom forced my fifteen-year-old brother take me to see. His eyes nearly rolled around 360 degrees as he paid our admission into the Coleman Theater in Miami, Oklahoma that year. But I suspect he might have secretly enjoyed watching Julie Andrews, beautiful even in her veddy Victorian getup.

The flick was the immortal Mary Poppins, a marvelous mix of animation, live action, and the most dazzling special effects that were available in 1964.

In 1965, a British guitarist named Syd Barrett formed a little band that eventually came to be called Pink Floyd. Barrett, who would become a poster child for the bad effects of LSD, eventually lost touch with reality itself and was dismissed from the group.

The remaining members used ponderous walls of sound and massive amounts of production to produce albums that nearly collapsed under the weight of their own self-importance. But the albums were great despite themselves. Animals, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and The Final Cut are all four- or five-star Rolling Stone rated, the only critical ratings I pay any attention to.

But it was their 1973 release of their magnum opus that put Pink Floyd on the map as THE progressive rock group.

Dark Side of the Moon, commonly referred to as DSOTM, was an amazing release that set a new standard for what would afterward define a concept album.

What a thrilling ride the space program was in the 50's and 60's. Russia whizzed off Uncle Sam with a little metallic sphere called Sputnik, and the race was on.

John Kennedy, still stinging from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, made a speech in 1961 in which he set the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. It made the public go "hmm . . ."

And, though it seemed like a very difficult goal to reach, on July 20, 1969, it was accomplished. And if you remember JFK, you also remember that moment when an announcement was made: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." And a few hours later, Armstrong's immortal line was spoken as he casually stepped out onto the moon, for the first time in human history.

Nowadays, you can't throw a rock without hitting a McDonald's. There's probably not a town in America with 5000 or more residents that doesn't have one.

But they were much less commonplace when we grew up. You might have had to drive a hundred miles to find one.

The original McDonald's drive-ins were easy to recognize. They had those amazing Golden Arches that you could spot a mile away. And they also proudly proclaimed how many hamburgers they had foisted upon the hungry public to that point.

Maybe you remember the scene from Woody Allen's classic flick Sleeper, when he awoke in the future and saw a McDonald's that stated that it had sold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hamburgers.

It's amazing the changes in the comics pages over the years. The hottest comics out there didn't exist in our childhood. And, as cartoonists inevitably age, strips either continue with new authorship, or die with the creator.

Peanuts had such a wealth of material, and it was material that had no connection with the world's events when it was new, that it continues to run as a very successful daily despite the death of Charles Schulz. On the other hand, strips like the depicted Lil Abner were very in tune politically, so even though it is available today as repeats, it's not a big hit.

I was always a huge fan of the comics. Even today, it's the first part of the Sunday Paper that I read.

I will now try to recreate the Sunday funnies that I read circa 1968.

Big Little Books go back way before Boomer years, yet they were a part of our culture, too.

In the sparse economic atmosphere of the Depression, in 1932, Whitman Publishing sought to find a use for paper scraps that were too small to use in magazines or standard books. Thus, the birth of the Big Little Book, 3 5/8" wide and 4 1/2" high, with 432 pages, making it about 1 1/2 inches thick. Truly, a big little book.

The books had lots of illustrations and big type, easy for a child to read. And a child could complete a Big Little Book in a day's time, proudly announcing the fact to his parents or schoolteacher.

We enjoy a love-hate relationship with our computers. When they work well, they're our pets. But when the act up (generally because most of us are stuck running Windows), we fantasize about throwing them in the nearest body of salt water.

But by and large, we were exposed to computers in some form or another at an early age. And we accepted their usefulness, and ran out and got our own as soon as they got cheap enough. Now our Depression-surviving parents were another matter. For the most part, they had a deep-seated distrust of thinking machines that came along well after they had learned how to get along, and especially pay bills, without them.

In fact, if there was any sort of technological glitch, they were quick to blame those blasted computers.

So when many of their bills started showing up in the mail during the 60's as punch card bills, they were quick to scorn the newfangled things.

The incredible animation/musical extravaganza Fantasia was released in 1940. Among the classical songs performed was Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours. The dancing ostriches, hippos, and other cartoon fauna to the catchy tune made many a youngster a fan of the song.

One grownup noticed the potential of the timeless tune for possibly the greatest gag song ever written.

Allan Sherman was a familiar figure behind the scenes in Hollywood. He created and produced I've Got a Secret, a familiar show to us Boomers. At least he did until 1958, when he was unceremoniously dumped from the series.

Sherman didn't let it get him down, though. Instead, he started freelancing in a completely different direction.

On September 9, 1967, a one-time special was aired. It received great ratings, so NBC decided to make it a regular series. It debuted on January 22, 1968, and was a Monday night staple for five years.

It was a perfect example of the right thing at the right time. There was a tremendous amount of tension during those days, with more to come. 1968 would prove to be a year marked by assassination. Vietnam was requiring the lives of more and more young men. The Civil Rights movement was still being met with violent resistance. Mandatory busing of students to force integration was as welcome as a fart in an elevator.

America needed to laugh! And Laugh-In proved to be the ideal solution. It was #1 on the Nielsens for its first two years.

Our generation saw a lot of walls crumble down, for better or worse. We grew up with sweet, sugary shows like Leave It to Beaver, Andy Griffith, and Dick Van Dyke. Make no mistake, these were classic shows in their own right, but it's impossible to picture Ward Cleaver using derogatory ethnic remarks.

However, when we think of Archie Bunker, the terms Polack, Spic, and Chink immediately pop into our minds.

Norman Lear foisted the Bunker family upon the public on January 12, 1971. It was an immediate hit, as well as an outrage to folks used to watching schmaltz like Mayberry RFD (which was NOT a classic show in its own right).

Lear chose to tackle racism the same way Mel Brooks did in his utterly brilliant Blazing Saddles. I.e., laugh at it, because the very concept is so stupid that it lacks any credibility at all.

"The Jets will win on Sunday, I guarantee it."

Those words by Joe Willy Namath now ring in infamy. However, they are given just a tad too much emphasis.

You see, the words weren't spoken at a press conference. They were an off-the-cuff response to a Colts fan's heckling. And while they were recorded by a reporter, they weren't widely publicized until after Super Bowl III, when the Jets saved the concept of the Super Bowl by whipping the Colts. BTW, as I write this column, I offer a hearty congrats to the Colts, who are about to appear in their first Big Dance since 1971.

The AFL had been formed in 1959, the same year as Yours Truly ;-). The NFL didn't pay it a lot of mind. After all, it had managed to outlast feeble attempts to upset its monopoly on the gridiron three previous times, each time by American Football Leagues.