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

We Baby Boomer kids were fascinated with bubbles. I don't know, maybe all kids share that love, but I personally have lots of fond memories of childhood that involve bubbles of all sorts.

For instance, take Mr. Bubble. In the 60's, no bath was complete without a heaping mass of white bubbles caused by a capful of Mr. Bubble tossed into the running water. What made it so essential to bath time? That endless string of commercials, that's what! Here's a sound file from one I remember well.

There's probably not a single American kid from the 60's that didn't grow a Mr. Bubble beard.

Our parents loved it when we asked for inexpensive toys. I guess that's because we so seldom did so. While TV commercials hawked expensive games and toys, the subject of today's piece was, and continues to be, a huge seller with no advertising whatsoever.

Plastic green army men were in residence by the dozens in practically every toybox in America in the 1960's. After all, they were available at the dime store, individually for a nickel, or in a bag of 50 or so for 99 cents. And while it took some serious cajoling to get mom to spring for a toy like the James Bond attache case, she could sometimes be convinced to throw a bag of army men into the basket, or at the very least allow me a dime to get a couple more of the guys shooting the rifle while laying prone on the ground (I loved those!).

The Xerox copier made its debut in 1959, with the 914 model. It was a technological marvel that would scan a document, then spit out a nearly flawless copy.

It was also very expensive, and school budgets being what they were (and still are), that meant that teachers who wanted duplicate test papers or any other types of duplicated handouts needed to be adept at running something called a mimeograph machine. Generally, there would be one to share among several teachers.

I make lots of typos as I write these columns. I recognize most of them because Firefox underlines suspected goofs in red. All I have to do is right-click on the questioned word and I am offered suggested fixes, one of which is usually correct.

But teachers in the 60's had to be PERFECT typists. That's because the first step in creating a mimeograph was to insert a waxed stencil into the typewriter, set it to punch letters directly onto the stencil, bypassing the ribbon, and DON'T make a mistake! There was no correcting a stencil, and you had to use the expensive sheets very carefully.

I just barely got in on this memory. We had a Meadow Gold milkman who would come by twice a week, delivering two-quart bottles of milk with a cardboard stopper. There would be a knock at the door, followed by a call of "Meadow Gold!" Mom would have left the empty bottle on the porch, and the milkman would replace it with a fully topped-off complement.

Milkmen originally delivered their product in pint or quart bottles daily. The reason was that homeowners had iceboxes before WWII. They kept food cool, but opening the door more than a few times a day meant the coolness would be more like lukewarmness.

That leads to another memory. Did anyone else out there grow up referring to their refrigerator as an icebox, courtesy of your parents' lingo?

Sure, I was fortunate to be born in 1959, missing out on that Vietnam mess. But, on the other hand, I also missed out on Howdy Doody. But I did grow up absorbing lots of wonderful knowledge from a series of books written during the Eisenhower era, their printed form assuring that they would last long enough to entertain millions of kids born after that decade.

The books were called Real Books. They were published by the Garden City Publishing Company. There was a Garden City, Kansas located not too far from where I lived, and I always assumed that Real Books came from there. Not true. Here's Wikipedia's info on the firm: "Garden City's books were primarily reprints of books first offered by Doubleday, printed from the original plates but on less expensive paper. It was named for the village on New York's Long Island in which Doubleday was long headquartered (until 1986)."

I guess that's why so many homes in the 60's had Real Books: our thrifty parents knew a good deal when they saw one.

The carbonated soft drink industry has been largely consolidated into two big players: Coca-Cola and Pepsi. These two brands have absorbed most of the competition, either continuing to market brands like Dr. Pepper and 7Up, or merely letting other brands disappear. Royal Crown continues to battle gamely, a distant third place contender.

But when we grew up, there was a veritable cornucopia of brands of soda. I would stand in front of Moonwink Grocery's chest-type pop machine for several minutes trying to make up my mind as to which beverage to spend my dime on.

My favorite back in the 60's was Grapette. "Thirsty or not!" Grapette was started in Camden, Arkansas in 1939. It became a national seller by the 1950's. I remember it had a really cool bottle with a recessed band around the middle. Grapette was absorbed by rival Nu-Grape in the 70's and disappeared. It's back now as Sam's Grapette in Wal-Mart stores. The flavor is supoosed to be the same, but I guarantee you it's not in those cool bottles any more.

Note: there were two Youtube links in the original article. They are now dead, thanks to copyright madness. Please, support fair use of copyrighted material. It makes blogs like this one more entertaining.

There probably aren't very many Boomer males who haven't been in love with the beautiful Mary Tyler Moore. My older brothers fell for her as Laura Petrie. I was just a kid then, so I fell for Mary Richards when I was a teenager. And even today, she has aged gracefully, maintaining a timeless beauty that refuses to go away.

Mary herself is not a Boomer. She was born in 1936. But her beautiful smile and the popularity of her TV shows makes her a Boomer memory for sure.

There are many things I love about this talented actress. First of all, when she was born, she was named Mary Tyler Moore. I have always appreciated artists, especially actors and actresses, who felt comfortable keeping their own name. However, I DO understand why John Wayne decided not to go with Marion Morrison. ;-)

In the 60's and 70's, if you weren't old enough to drive, or if you were, but didn't have a car, odds are you got around on a bike. And if you had a bike, the odds were also great that you had customized it in some fashion.

The coolest bike I ever had was a Stingray knockoff (I think mom got it at Sears) in 1971, when I was 11 years old. This bad boy was green, my favorite color. It had a 36" sissy bar with a top cover, high-rise handlebars, and a cheater slick. I could do some monumental jumps on that bike. But that long sissy bar discouraged riding wheelies.

I remember my earliest bike customizations. They involved clothespins and baseball cards, some of which could have been very valuable had I squirreled them away somewhere. Clipping the card with the clothespin to the frame so the spokes would whack against it made your bike sound like a motorcycle.

One of the most familiar suburban sights used to be television antennae on the rooftops. You saw so many of them that they became invisible. In the town where I grew up, we had TV stations from 30 to 60 miles away that we watched. Two (later three, when a UHF station went on line in 1968) were north of us, about twenty degrees apart. The other three were in Tulsa, about 150 degrees to the left.

That meant our antenna had to be turned to get the best pictures. Those rooftop antennas were quite directional. They needed to be pointed directly at the transmission tower to get an optimal signal.

Channel seven in Pittsburg, Kansas, and channel twelve in Joplin, Missouri were close enough aligned that splitiing the difference between them gave an acceptably sharp picture.

As I've mentioned frequently, my father was tight with a buck. I found that irritating, until I grew up and realized the value of doing so for myself. Heck, the man was a financial genius.

However, as a child, it meant that I had to do without many of the toys my friends enjoyed. It wasn't that I was deprived in any manner, it was just that while many of my friends had brand-spanking new Tonkas, I had mostly hand-me-downs.

But thanks to a fortuitous bout of the mumps, and my dad in an unusually generous mood, I was able to procure the FIRST GI Joe in my neighborhood, way back in 1965!

No doubt, some psychologist has taken notice of the fact that we need a place to hide away, sometimes with our friends, and has declared it to be a fundamental human need worthy of extensive scientific study. And that may be true. But all I know is one of the common bonds I had with my childhood friends was the desire to build various forts.

The fort could take many forms. The simplest was perhaps the depicted indoor model, consisting of chairs, couch cushions, blankets, and any other raw materials which could be corralled within the confines of your home.

Winter time brought on the opportunity to create a splendid, but temporary structure: the snow fort.

In the tradition of coonskin caps, today's memory is one that was before my time. However, due to popular demand, I present it anyhow.

They were called baking powder submarines, as well as baking soda submarines. However, loading baking soda into one of them would cause it to sink straight to the bottom and await rescue. No, it was baking POWDER that the minuscule watercraft required for propulsion.

Baking powder, you see, is a combination of sodium bicarbonate (a base, chemistry fans) and cream of tartar (an acid). You kids who had a Gilbert chemistry set (which will be my next article) know what happens when you mix an acid and a base. Fizz!

Man, the things our parents let us play with in the 60's and 70's. I haven't looked at modern-day chemistry sets, but in a land where you can't get authentic Kinder Eggs because of the fear that you may be stupid enough to give the hidden toys inside to a child of less than three years of age, I can't imagine either of the two chemistry sets I once owned being offered for sale today.

More's the pity, because a chemistry set, circa 1970, made you more mature. Read on for more details.

My first set was a Skilcraft my parents bought me in 1970. I was ten years old. The manual that came with it was divided into two sections: lightweight magic you could perform with chemicals, and more serious experiments that would teach you about chemistry.

Man has long had rites of spring. Once upon a time, it was the pagan festival of Astarte (from which we derived the term Easter). The Druids would celebrate the equinox at Stonehenge. But in the 1960's, it was the annual purchase of a cheap flat barbecue grill.

These grills could be obtained at places like Western Auto, Otasco (a local home/auto chain store based in Oklahoma), Sears, Montgomery Wards, and other pre-Wal Mart establishments. They ran about ten bucks or so in their most basic form.

They consisted of thin steel painted blue or red. The cheapest ones were simply flat cylinders about three feet in diameter and four to six inches in depth, with two brackets diametrically opposed allowing you to move the grill itself up and down over a range of six inches. They sat upon tubular legs which placed them about 36" high.

They were magic, indeed. Place some colored rocks in a clear glass container. Mix up some solution and pour it over them. Let the magic begin.

Boomer kids were all about stuff like mixing up chemicals. And we REALLY liked stuff like growing rocks. That's why two brothers, James and Arthur Ingoldbsy, made a peck of money with their 1940 invention: Magic Rocks.

I remember these bad boys being advertised in comic books. The thing is, I don't remember seeing them for sale anywhere in my hometown of Miami, Oklahoma. I got my paws on Magic Rocks for the first time while on vacation in 1967. We traveled up to Montreal that year for the world's fair which was called Expo 67.

In May, 1939, DC Comics introduced an unusual super hero with that month's issue of Detective Comics. This dude had no super powers. He relied on his wits, his physical fitness, and a belt full of cool gadgets. He also had a cave full of nifty stuff like the Batmobile, the Batplane, the Batcycle, and other bonzer crimefighting contrivances.

Batman was a comic book character, sure, but kids (and many adult fans) took him pretty seriously. These hardcore fans must have been taken a bit aback when ABC debuted Batman in January, 1966.

ABC was the perennial loser back then in the ratings race. The loser is the one most likely to take a chance on an outrageous new series to shake things up. In fact, they might try something REALLY crazy, like show two different episodes two nights in a row!

Today's memory will be viewed through my eyes as an observer, not a participant. I don't recall ever making an Aurora monster model, but I played in the bedrooms of many of my friends that had shelves with the likes of Frankenstein, the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon staring menacingly at us while we played with our Tonkas, green army men, or whatever else was on hand.

These things were creepy looking indeed. The plastic was molded into detail that revealed every fang, bloody gash, or severed limb.

As you motor down the interstate highway these days, you are presented with a plethora of options as to what you will eat. The fast food joints have spread nationwide, and have located themselves in the middle of nowhere so that you are never more than a few miles away from a McDonalds, Burger King, or Taco Bell. There are also dozens of higher-end chains like Applebee's, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, etc. which have located themselves in smaller towns with interstate highways passing through them.

What it amounts to is that you can get pretty much anything you want to eat, from bar-b-que to Mexican to Italian to Seafood to vegetarian, as you traverse I-40 or I-90 from the east coast to the west, and all points in between.

But jump back to the 60's, and your choices weren't nearly so plentiful.

Burt Reynolds and Richard Nixon might seem like unlikely partners, but together they teamed up to start a craze. An unknown songwriter named Bill Fries was also a major contributor, as were a couple of country boys named Bo and Luke.

Nixon did his part by enacting into law the nationwide 55 MPH speed limit, putting the federal government in the business of determining how fast you could drive on highways, a job that belonged to individual states before Tricky Dick signed the papers. His other bone-headed proclamation, year-round DST, was mercifully gone within a year.

Arguably, driving 55 saved gasoline. It also wasted our lifetimes, turning eight hour trips into ten hours. Many say it saved lives. That is a dubious argument at best, as the evidence points as much to improved safety features in cars as much as the reduced speed limits.

The year was 1967. I was in the second grade. I was in class wearing my spiffy Cub Scout uniform, along with the other classmates who were members of the local pack. We had a den meeting after school that day, and we wore our uniforms to school.

But this afternoon's meeting was a special one. We were to receive our Pinewood Derby kits!

The denmaster had been talking about the Pinewood Derby for weeks, building up our anticipation to nearly the breaking point in the process. I mean, what could be cooler than cars screaming down a track, with the winning entry getting a real trophy?

If you were looking for the 7-14 year old demographic for advertising purposes in the 1960's, all you needed to do was place an ad in a DC comic book.

The items I saw advertised there were bewildering in their numbers. And they are also firmly lodged in my now forty-seven year old memory banks. Today's piece is about a place that was too magical for me to imagine as a child (and, sadly, a place I never actually visited): Palisades Park in New Jersey.

Our kids are starting out, for the most part, like we did, with their first cars being older and cheap. It's a rite of passage. When you start out with an old piece of junk, you learn to appreciate a nicer car when you can afford it.

However, a key difference between our kids' first cars and ours is basic and fundamental: We likely had an AM radio with a single front dash speaker in ours. The old Toyotas and Hondas MY kids started out with had decent FM stereos that also played cassettes.

That would have been a dream to many of us, to get that first car already equipped with stereo. No, we had to install that first one ourselves. And we had to do it on a budget

Saturday nights were a good TV night when I was a kid. Flipper was on, as was Pistols 'n' Petticoats, a show I loved that was only on for a year. But another show I loved, which lasted a lot longer, was Get Smart!

The show was pretty wacky, but with a deadpan approach. Think of Dragnet, with Joe Friday replaced by a bumbling secret agent. Here's a typical exchange, delivered in deadpan:

Senator: Mr. Smart, how many arrests did Control make last year?

Maxwell Smart: I don't know.

Senator: Who's the number one man in your organization?

Maxwell Smart: I don't know.

Senator: How many cases were assigned to Control last year?

Maxwell Smart: I don't know.

Senator: What would you do if you were fired, Mr. Smart?

Maxwell Smart: They can't fire me. I know too much.

Golf, the TV sport, has lived and died by the charisma of its dominant players. When Tiger wins, everybody watches. When Billy Mayfair wins, not so much.

Golf has enjoyed recent good years, TV-viewership-wise. It can be summed up in one word: TIGER. But other charismatic players have caught the public's attention, as well. Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, and many others are recognizable by the average person, the demographic required for the success of broadcasts.

TV golf wasn't doing so well in the 1950's. It was new, and boring. Ben Hogan was the sport's big name, but he was already in decline when broadcasts began being aired. And the public wasn't hooked by names like Doug Ford and Dow Finsterwald. That all began to be changed when a Pennsylvanian by the name of Arnold Palmer won his first tournament, the Canadian Open, in front of a TV audience watching the first airing of this particular tournament (in Canada). Who WAS this guy? He would take a drag on his cigarette, toss it to the ground, and determinedly step up to the tee and take a mighty rip, his style looking more like a Sunday hacker than a pro golfer.

As I recall my childhood, I can remember that there were some toys that were owned by just a few of us. These were generally at the higher end of the price scale. For instance, I was the only one in the neighborhood to be the extremely proud owner of the James Bond Attache Case. My best friend had the only G.I. Joe Space Capsule. But some toys were universal. Take green army men, for instance. Or Hot Wheels cars. And, of course, the subject of today's article: Tinkertoys!

One of the most familiar and delightful sounds we were all familiar with was the sound of those Tinkertoys hitting the metallic bottom of that cylindrical cardboard container when we were finished building whatever construction projects were slated for that after-school session with our friends. It's a sound I haven't actually heard since childhood, yet it's still fresh in my memory banks.

It is difficult to escape from AOL these days. If you call them and tell them you want to drop their services, you will be presented to a person whose job it is to offer you concession after concession to make you stay. If you ever joined a record club in the 70's, you are already familiar with how difficult it can be to escape from a corporation that wants to keep you as a customer.

I joined the Columbia Record Club in 1977. I was able to obtain twelve cassettes for a dime, if I recall. After that, I needed to buy eight more at regular club prices. Cassette tapes ran about six-eight bucks at the discount store. That's about what Columbia charged, plus shipping and handling. You spent around 80 bucks to get 20 tapes. Overall, not a bad deal.

But THEN, you had to quit. And that wasn't so easy.

Ah, the late 60's and 70's. A time of experimentation, whether with recreational drugs, or with extreme decorating ideas. Such a bold stab at style (its creators might have tried some of those drugs, too) was the shag carpet.

Shag carpets came in a variety of colors, some of which were as extreme as the two-inch-long polyester monstrosity itself. Bright reds, blues, greens, and jet blacks were not unheard of. But earth tones were also big, to match those avocado green and harvest gold kitchen appliances.

My parents never went for shag carpet. They were in their forties and fifties when it came out, and it was more of a hit with the younger demographic. But I knew plenty of friends whose more youthful parents installed vast yards of the dirt-absorbing carpet.

Along with shag carpets, many homes of the 60's and 70's featured 1/8" thick 4'x8' wide sheets of laminated wood nailed to the wall. This was the paneling that we grew up with.

Paneling can be found today in forms like nice wainscoting, thick solid wood wall covering that can rise twelve feet or more, and 3/4" thick sheets with two to four inch wide segments of polished hardwoods. But step back to a middle-class home circa 1970, and the walls are covered with the above-mentioned processed product composed of the thinnest shaved slices of grained wood you could imagine. And this was frequently the ONLY wall covering, with nothing but bare wood studs underneath.

But it was found in practically every home in the 60's that was either (a) new, or (b) recently remodeled.

I was born in 1959, when fins were at their peak. From the massive vertical fins of the 59 Plymouth to the low sleek ones on the 59 Chevy, fins were everywhere in this era.

The thing about fins was that they were actually more common in my childhood years of the mid to late 60's than the late 50's. That's because there were lots of late 40's-early 50's vintage cars on the road in 1959 whose rounded shapes were in direct contrast to the knife-edged fins that ran on either side of the trunk.

The 1960's models saw fins shrink, but they were still there. So fins could be seen all over the highways when my mind started permanently filing things away in my memory banks about the time the Beatles stopped touring.

Our living rooms in the 1960's were comfortable places, indeed. Ours had a homey ambiance that made for a wonderful place to spawn memories. I can clearly recall the paneled walls, the sunken floor furnace, the area rug with rectangular shapes with 1 1/2" wide borders that were PERFECT for driving your Hot Wheels cars on, and a familiar means of illumination of the era: a three-light floor lamp.

I recall the lamps being in all sorts of homes I visited. Ours had metallic shades that directed the light at whatever you wanted to be lit up. It sat by the easy chair, so dad could point the glaring 60-watt bulb directly at his copy of the Tulsa World.

My grandmother in Mason, Texas had one with glass shades that were bright blue and orange. It was something to see, especially when she would festoon it with tinsel, ornaments, and strings of popcorn each year at Christmas time.