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

As I have repeatedly stated, I feel like 1959 was the best possible year in which to be born. However, I was born too late to enjoy a television show that had a truly rabid following among Boomer kids who were around to watch it from 1951-1959.

The show was Sky King, and it inspired a significant percentage of its viewers to pursue careers in aviation, or at least to obtain the status of private pilots.

The show starred Kirby Grant as the star character, Sky King. Gloria Winters played his beautiful niece, Penny King, no slouch as a pilot herself.

The show's premise was simple, as were all of those of the era: Sky King would save lives, track down criminals, or help out the downtrodden of various flavors within a thirty minute slot every Saturday morning.

Hula hoops were a two-time fad. The first was before my birth. The second was when I was seven years old. Needless to say, I only recall the second explosion. But you earlier Boomers will, I hope, feel familiar with today's column, provided with lots of research.

It began, as did a number of Boomer crazes, with the minds at the Wham-O company.

In 1957, an Australian visiting California told founders Richard Knerr and Arthur "Spud" Melin that in his home country, children twirled bamboo hoops around their waists in gym class.

At least one light bulb appeared over a head, possibly two.

Wham-O began manufacturing hoops out of Marlex, a cheap, durable plastic that had been recently invented.

Within two years 100 million hula hoops had been sold.

The fad was the hottest thing around during that time, and beach movies showed California teens enjoying hula hooping on the big screen. But, like all fads, hula hoops became passe.

When our fathers got back from WWII, they were in the mood to get out of living in barracks and tents. They wanted new homes! So many of them purchased brand new tract homes, which were being built by the hundreds of thousands all over the US.

My father purchased our tract home in the early 50's. It was probably built right after the war was over. It sat on a nice-sized corner lot, had a one-car garage, three bedrooms, one bathroom, and was probably about 1100 square feet in size. It was heated by a floor furnace, and cooled with a swamp cooler.

A new home would not be built with those dimensions today. In my area, even the most modest new home has two bathrooms. And the days of the big lot are gone. Lots are postage-stamp-sized in lower-priced subdivisions.

His name was Iron Eyes Cody. He appeared in over 200 films, alongside Roy Rogers, Richard Harris, and Clint Eastwood, among others. But perhaps his most familiar role is that of an Indian who is appalled by how polluted his nation has become, and who is seen shedding a single, but powerful, tear.

The commercial turned Baby Boomer kids into ecologists. We were deeply moved by Cody's performance. But we didn't know the half of his acting abilities.

The commercial has been rated as one of the greatest ever, by the folks who keep track of such things. Its message is clear as a bell, as Cody's Indian paddles his canoe through a river with floating trash visible while factories in the background belch forth plumes of smoke. Then, pulling his canoe ashore, he walks over to a highway, where a passing motorist flings a bag of trash that explodes at his feet. Finally, as the camera pans up to his face, we see the tear.

Our local TV stations had lots of time to fill when the networks weren't broadcasting. There were blocks for the station's choice of what to show that would run from 12:00 noon and 1:00 PM (central time). Another break came between 3:00 PM and 5:30 PM each day. There was also an hour available between 6:00 and 7:00 PM each weeknight. Saturday nights, when network news was not broadcast, the time would stretch between the end of whatever sporting event was shown (about 5:00 PM or so) and 7:00, when the evening's network shows began.

The stations I grew up with, KODE channel 12 out of Joplin, and KOAM channel 7 out of Pittsburg, Kansas, filled much of the free time with local music shows.

Well, I saw it coming. Many of I Remember JFK's fans are of the female persuasion, and there has been enough clamor for memories that THEY had that boys didn't, that, well, in the spirit of Sky King, baking powder submarines, and coonskin caps (i.e. I didn't personally experience them), I hereby present my first "girlie" nostalgic memory: Kenner's Easy Bake Oven.

My first discovery, which surprised me greatly, was that many BOYS had Easy Bake Ovens. In fact, many great chefs say they developed a love for cooking by playing with them in their childhoods.

Even though an old commercial at YouTube shows a girl AND a boy cooking with one, there's no doubt that my crowd considered them for girls ONLY. ed. note: removed for some inexplicable copyright violation (insert eyeroll here) So it's natural that any of my friends who had one would probably have kept it hidden away.

Once upon a time, a time our parents recalled well, a family would enjoy a nice dinner that mom had spent hours preparing, then afterwards gather around the radio for Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy, or the like.

The television changed all of that. The faster-moving jet age of the 50's demanded more of everyone's time just to keep up. Mom started working at her own job, in many cases, or she was involved with the PTA, the garden club, or other diversions. Dinner needed to be prepared more quickly. And that TV needed to be on by 5:00 to watch the evening news!

With that, in 1953 or 1954 (sources disagree), Swanson introduced us to the TV dinner, which could be heated in an oven, enjoyed in front of the idiot box, and tossed into the trash afterwards!

The ironic part about all of this was that families would eat their TV dinners and watch shows about the Cleavers, the Nelsons, and the Stones who would always enjoy dinner as a family around a regular table. Strange . . .

"Effective January 31, 2006, Western Union discontinued all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage."

Those words can be found at Western Union's telegram section of their website. After being one of the most reliable communication means for well over a hundred years, its time has passed.

We Boomer kids have a few memories of telegrams, even though their decline was already quite evident when we were growing up. The telegram was viewed as a way to convey urgent news. And, as often as not, the ringing of the doorbell and the appearance of a Western Union employee with a telegram meant BAD news.

The telegraph was invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, as any kid who paid attention in school knows well. The Western Union company sprang into existence in 1851, using the exciting new technology to send messages all the way across the USA in less than a day. That was a quantum leap in an era when mail was the primary form of communication, and mailed letters would frequently disappear.

"Jiffy Pop, Jiffy Pop, the magic treat! As much fun to make as it is to eat!"

We kids of the 60's were serenaded by that chorus several times each Saturday morning as we watched our favorite cartoon shows. We were shown images of happy kids popping Jiffy Pop on a stove with that amazing bubble of aluminum foil rising expectantly until, finally, it was torn open and the most delicious looking popcorn the world has ever seen was revealed.

The next time we would accompany our mothers to the grocery store, we would beg for Jiffy Pop.

My frugal, practical father wouldn't allow it. He would point out that you could get a whole bag of popcorn for less than one single Jiffy Pop. But, mom would relent occasionally, and I would be allowed to create my own magical aluminum bubble full of popcorn.

As we drive past gas station signs that advertise prices per gallon that far exceed the hourly rates of our first jobs, we Boomers find ourselves looking longingly into our memory banks for the regular phenomenon that was experienced in the mid 1960's: the gas war.

Gas station owners hate high gas prices as much as the rest of us. The only sure winners when prices achieve record highs are the owners of the basic asset: crude oil.

We get angry when Exxon posts high profits, but if they were posting losses, then it would have a deleterious effect on the economy and anyone who owns mutual fund shares.

At this point, I would like to state that I am no fan of Exxon, or any other gasoline producer. I suspect corruption is rampant at high levels within each corporation, and millions or billions of dollars of funds are finding their way into rich people's pockets illicitly. But I digress. This is supposed to be about nostalgia.

The fact is that with the much more stable prices of crude oil and gasoline in the 1960's, gas station owners were able to have gas wars amongst each other that would bring huge grins to the faces of our fathers, as they filled their big cars with gas that might be as much as 20% cheaper than it was the day before.

All right, ladies, another one for you.

Barbie and I have a lot in common. We're both (at presstime) 47 years old. But I fear that I haven't held on to my youth quite as well as she has held on to hers.

Barbie was born in 1959. But her story begins the previous decade.

A married couple named Ruth and Elliot Handler had a successful picture frame business. Elliot began taking scraps of frame wood and making doll furniture out of them. The toys were a hit, and in 1945, they decided to go into toymaking full time.

That year, they entered into a business partnership with friend Harold Mattson. The business that they formed was called Mattel, a combination of their names.

The Wet Head is dead. Long live the Dry Look. Even though I now comb my hair with a washrag, circa 1976, I must have bought a can of The Dry Look at least once a month. It took a lot of hairspray to hold my baby-fine blond hair in place.

The term "d'oh!" originated with Homer Simpson about 1990. But odds are that when Rosie Ruiz rounded that last corner at the 1980 Boston Marathon and saw a pristine tape across the finish line, she probably uttered the Spanish equivalent.

Ruiz, born in Havana in 1954, wanted to gain a little fame. Unfortunately, she miscalculated a bit, and instead gained a tremendous amount of fame's dark cousin, infamy.

There are a variety of theories as to why this rookie runner, who had just taken up the sport a year and a half earlier, would take such a ridiculous chance and try to convince the world that she had broken the Boston Marathon record by three minutes. I'm going with the conjecture that she only meant to cheat a LITTLE bit.

A cable TV network assembled a panel of running experts and marathon officials to discuss what happened and why. Their mutually-agreed-upon theory holds a lot of water, IMHO, but first, what happened.

Many a kid was seen walking down the street playing with a yo-yo when we were kids. They were also played with by our parents, and probably our grandparents, too.

The yo-yo is a toy that has had many waves of popularity since its introduction early in the 20th century. One of those waves coincided with my childhood, another one hit in the early 70's, when I was in junior high. During the latter craze, yo-yos and clackers were banned at schools all over the country, as kids played with the toys instead of doing their lessons. At Bentonville Middle School, the principal kept a box in his office that was full of confiscated yo-yos, popperknockers, and squirt guns.

The yo-yo can be traced back to Greece about 500 B.C. It is believed to have been used in China long before that date, but actual specimens from Greece have been unearthed. Artwork from the period also shows people playing with them.

Recording tape is barely older than the senior members of the Boomer generation. It was introduced in the 1940's as an alternative to direct-to-disc recording, which was how records were being produced prior to then.

The idea of putting music (or whatever) on a strip of magnetic tape was quite revolutionary. Recording studios embraced it at once. But tape for the home consumer was a different matter. It had some growing up to do before it would be widely embraced.

Tape came on big reels. It took a long time to rewind or fast-forward, as opposed to quickly moving a tonearm to different tracks on a record.

But the concept of recording tape for the consumer was too good to be ignored. As the 60's debuted, several tape cartridge systems were under development, including a four-track, continuous-loop cartridge devised by the Lear Company, the Fidelipac system used by radio broadcasters, and the "Casino" cartridge introduced by the RCA company for use in its home audio units.

At presstime, a longstanding major league baseball record stands poised to be broken. It is surrounded by dark clouds of controversy, as a player with direct ties to the abuse of steroids and other banned substances (whose name I refuse to mention), revered by some, despised by a majority, will soon be loudly celebrated by his ESPN shills and apologists (as well as a limited number of fans in the San Francisco area) for becoming the all-time home run champion.

But the man who hit 755 has gained new respect and reverence by a public who appreciates sportsmanship and simply being a gentleman over boorish behavior by physically talented but morally bankrupt egomaniacs who unfortunately are prominent in modern-day athletics.

We Baby Boomers who were baseball fans will never forget the night Hank hit number 715 in Atlanta. Most of the rest of us remember it, too, as the event transcended sport. Nobody ever thought Babe Ruth's record would be broken, particularly by a humble, unassuming man who hit line drives that would frequently barely clear the wall, and whose highest single year home run total was a mere 47.

We traveled a lot when I was a kid. We took all-day trips to Iowa and central Texas from northeast Oklahoma every year to visit my two sets of grandparents. Those trips didn't involve motel stays, but we stayed in a myriad of them on other, less time-intensive treks.

My dad was old-school Norwegian stock from Minnesota. That meant dollars didn't fly out of his wallet. He looked for the best value for the buck. And, quite often, that meant staying in a clean motel with no place for a kid to swim.

But, not too rarely, he would splurge an extra five bucks a night and give me the ultimate thrill: staying in a motel that HAD A POOL!

I have been able to relate very closely to my father's quandaries as I have reached middle age. For instance, the idea of getting a good cheap motel that looked squeaky clean as opposed to a more expensive chain franchise that came complete with a pool for the kids was always very tempting. But then I would remember the unbridled joy that I would exude when dad would pull into a motel parking lot that had within its expanse a gorgeous, blue, sparkling-in-the-sunlight swimming pool.

I wasn't shortchanged for vacations when I was a kid. I lived in a dual-income household long before it was necessary for economic survival. So when my mom, the schoolteacher, got three months off during summer, we were assured of traveling SOMEWHERE.

A sleepy little fishing village in southern Missouri was a couple hours' drive from my Miami, Oklahoma hometown. It was a fun, homey, funky place to get away for a couple of days. And the trout fishing was good on Lake Taneycomo, a dammed-up portion of the White River that was more of a swollen watercourse than a lake. But the ice-cold water teemed with rainbow trout.

As a result, I have fond memories of many trips to Branson. And the majority of them involve staying at the same place: the Anchor Inn, right next to the old bridge that crosses Taneycomo.

Howdy Doody broadcast its final episode on September 24, 1960. That means I have absolutely no recollection of ever seeing it. But there are a bunch of you Boomers out there who outrank me, age-wise, including my oldest brother. And you have spoken. And I have responded with today's article about the original king of kid shows: Howdy Doody.

One of television's first original shows, i.e. not a converted radio program (it barely qualifies. Read on), Howdy Doody first appeared in 1947. That means its original viewers were too old to be classified Baby Boomers! Oh well, so were the first users of yo-yos, Lincoln Logs, and erector sets.

But Howdy Doody is a very precious part of the memories of the more senior members of the Boomer generation. So, big kids, as I used to call you many years ago, today's piece is for you.

If you watched daytime television in the early 70's, odds are you you heard commercials featuring snippets of songs fired at you in rapid order, with the added admonition "Not sold in stores!" You would then be presented with an address where you could mail a check for a very reasonable sum in order to receive a record album or eight-track tape in the mail.

Except for the anxious waiting, it was win-win.

K-tel hawked kitchen gadgets, Miracle Brushes, and records on television in the 60's and 70's. They became a familiar part of our living room ambiance, as we would step out to the kitchen or bathroom in the middle of a Roy Rogers movie to the voice of a fast-talking K-tel pitchman. The salesmen were frequently imitated by comedians. Who can forget Dan Aykroyd's Bass-O-Matic blender on SNL?

Philip Kives, K-tel's founder, was a Saskatchewan farmer before becoming a door-to-door appliance salesman. Not satisfied with trudging suburban sidewalks, Kives began presenting his vacuum cleaners and other home appliances in public areas such as fairs or the boardwalk in Atlantic City. In 1962 Philip and his brother Ted launched Syndicate Products Ltd. in the basement of his parents' Winnipeg home. One of the company's early endeavors was a five-minute television commercial for Teflon-coated cookware. The amazing sight of an egg not sticking to a pan (Teflon was brand new, remember) sold a whole slew of frying pans.

Going to a drive-in for a meal of burgers and fries was fun for a Boomer kid in a whole lot of ways. First of all, a hamburger, fries, and a shake tasted like heaven. Second, eating in the car was a blast. And thirdly, your food was deliverd by a cute teenaged girl on roller skates.

How much better could life get?

It all started back in 1921. Automobiles were beginning to be a ubiquitous sight in Dallas, Texas. A businessman named J.G. Kirby and a physician by the name of R.W. Jackson decided to take advantage of the fact that many people owned cars, and that many of them were also lazy, too lazy to get out of their cars to eat. They opened a restaurant called the Pig Stand.

Do you get the idea that these guys didn't think a lot of their customers?

Okay, this is a no-brainer. If you can read this, it means you have mastered a few things. One, you know how to use a computer. Two, you have figured out how to connect to the internet. And three, you have figured out how to go to a certain website, or at least read your email.

Congratulations. Had the you of twenty years ago seen you now, he or she would be quite proud.

Computers have been quite a leap in technology for Baby Boomers who grew up with black and white televisions. Indeed, some of us (myself included) have lived in areas that didn't have telephone service. And just look at us now! Interacting instantly with people on all sides of the globe.

But with each of us, it all started with nervously typing on a keyboard for the first time somewhere.

We Boomer kids watched a bunch of television. Familiar faces soon placed themselves permanently in our memory banks, requiring only a slight nudge to be brought back to life in our imaginations. Today, we nudge back into existence a cute, perky, helpful female plumber named Josephine.

Josephine the plumber was portrayed by actress Jane Withers. She was born in 1926 in Atlanta. The daughter of an actress, she was a precocious talent who made it onto a local Atlanta radio show as "Dixie's Dainty Dewdrop." She would sing and do impressions of adult celebrities. Her parents soon moved to Hollywood, and she was able to get work as a child actress doing bit parts.

In 1934, she played obnoxious Joy Smythe in Shirley Temple's film Bright Eyes. It was the break she needed to showcase her talent. Fox signed her to a long-term contract.

A long string of films followed, and Jane was generally cast as a more mischievous version of Shirley Temple, with the sugary sweetness cut in half. It worked, and she was a Top 10 box office draw for three straight years, 1937-39. She ranked her own "name" costars, like Gene Autry and the Ritz Brothers.

Ever heard of Tomohiro Nishikado? He was probably a significant influence on your life, especially if you are a younger Baby Boomer.

In 1978, when I was eighteen years old, Nishikado created Space Invaders for the Taito Corporation. The game was released in Japan, and proved to be such a hit that it made it over to the US in short order. The lives of teens and younger would never be the same.

Pong was the first video game to see wide release in this country, back in 1974. It was a hit, but graphics technology was improving rapidly. It was time to take electronic gaming up a couple of notches.

Atari's Tank, released that same year, was the first to show objects that looked "sort of" like what they represented. The next year, Taito released Gunfight, which pitted two cowboys that looked a little more like cowboys than Atari's tanks looked like, well, you know.