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

One of the best things my parents ever did for me was to subscribe to Life, Look, and Post. The big, lavishly illustrated magazines gave me an appreciation for all sorts of things that I might have otherwise missed out on living in a small town.

For instance, Miami, Oklahoma didn't have an art gallery. But Life and their ilk allowed me to develop an appreciation for art nonetheless.

An artist whose work appealed to a child like me was Andy Warhol.

Warhol was one of the most famous "pop art" artists. Pop art got its start in the mid 50's. The unconventional style involved techniques like assembling collages of photographs, or painstakingly creating blown up reproductions of comic book scenes, accurate down to the individual color dots. Warhol's style, at least in the early part of his career, used silk screens, photograph-like paintings of everyday objects like Coke bottles, and bright, unnatural colors.

When you think about it, going to grade school during the 50's and 60's was downright hazardous! I mean back in those days, asbestos was a wonder substance for insulation that was used in our floor and ceiling tiles and insulation ubiquitously. Our schools were full of it!

Not only that, but there we were, innocent little kids, and they were sticking needles into us right and left! Needles full of nasty things!

You can quickly spot a Baby Boomer by the presence of a scar on a shoulder (mine is the left) from a smallpox vaccination.

But another procedure that I (and no doubt many of you) recall being performed upon me at least twice was the tuberculosis test.

Anybody up for a good conspiracy theory? The makers of automobile air conditioners have teamed up and made wing vent windows disappear!

Hey, it's a little plausible. After all, I remember a dramatic difference in the interior temperature of a big Plymouth when those vent windows were opened to blast wind into your surroundings at 60 MPH.

Wing vents had all sorts of uses. I really miss them.

I don't miss that whistling noise that would inevitably appear as your vehicle aged, though.

I had a close relationship with our phonograph records when I was a kid. Playing them on the portable player (it had a beautiful red plaid pattern on the outside) made me feel very grown up. It meant my parents and older brothers trusted me to listen to their records without damaging them. And as far as I know, I held up my end of the bargain.

There was a lot of fun to be had with records. Sure, you could listen to them at their intended speed. But things really rocked when you played them at different speeds.

Back in the 1200's, Arabian weavers began tying decorative knots into the threads of excess fringes on hand-loomed fabrics. 500 years later, about the same time that polyester, men's hair spray, and fondue pots were all the rage, it caught on big time.

Macrame was one of the fads that defined the 70's. Interestingly, the decade known for excesses shared the macrame craze with the much more restrained Victorian era. In fact, macrame was probably bigger then than when we were wearing Spiro Agnew watches. Hmm, I wonder what a tightly corseted Victorian lady would have thought of boogieing at Studio 54?

During the 70's, articles made of myriad tiny knots of rough fabric were seen everywhere: hanging from ceilings, being carried by fashionable ladies, being worn by many more, and even in front of our entrances to our homes.

I grew up in Miami, Oklahoma, classic small-town America. I had lots of freedom to go play all over town all day. But a special treat was getting to go play in the country.

My father owned a truck garage. One of his mechanics lived out of town a few miles on a farm. The mechanic was a good guy and his wife was sweet, too. Once in a while I would get to play all day long on their farm, loaded with woods, open pastures, hills, a little creek, cows, horses, and a big barn with a hayloft.

For a "city" kid to get to spend all day in such nirvana was a highlight of the summer.

A time traveler from 1960 would be bewildered by today's network television offerings. Obviously, the risque content would be shocking. But the dearth of Western dramas would be puzzling as well. For many years, television schedules were heavy with horse operas.

Two series that anchored the genre firmly to Saturday and Sunday nights for many years were Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

Gunsmoke will certainly rate its own future column. Today, we discuss the inhabitants of the Ponderosa.

A summer evening in my home would have a few constants. One, it would be around 80 degrees in the living room. Either the temperature would be obtained via open windows, or the swamp cooler would be turned on to get the temperature to the magical digit.

If the room was 80 degrees, it was perfectly comfortable. If you didn't think so, you were invited to step outside and experience the outside temperature, then come back inside. Now doesn't that feel better?

Another constant would be that a radio would be on somewhere in the house with the voices of Harry Caray and Jack Buck describing play-by-play action of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Some of my memories hit home with most Boomers. Some of them are only related to by a few. Today's recollection could go either way.

Growing up in the 60's we ate at cafeterias all over the country. When we traveled, dad would keep his eye out for a cafeteria in strange towns. When we went to Tulsa, it meant eating at a local cafeteria there called Borden's. I have countless memories of standing in a line very similar to the one in school and telling the lady on the other side what I wanted.

And the fact that I see cafeterias today loaded with folks in the same generation as that of our parents, I suspect that the orderly eateries were a big hit with many WWII veterans besides my father.

Sweet summertime was at its sweetest for a kid in the 60's. No school! Staying up late! Sleeping in! And, best of all, SWIMMING ALL DAY LONG!

Miami, Oklahoma had a huge public pool that was (and still is, I'm happy to say, even though it has inexplicably shrunk) gorgeous. I searched online in vain for photos of the actual facility. But on a hot summer day, it looked very much like the photo to the left.

Half of the pool was the kid's area. A rope separated it from the deeper end. I spent a couple of summers confined to the shallow depths. But if you could swim all the way across the pool, you were allowed access to the Most Holy: the DIVING BOARDS!

As I have mentioned in previous columns, TV reception in the 1960's was a hit-and-miss affair. There weren't nearly as many TV stations back then, and if you lived in small-town America, your signals might be coming from a hundred or more miles away.

An antenna rotor would be of great assistance in getting a good sharp picture to our brand new color TV's. But they were prone to freezing up, leaving you stuck watching one channel in perfect definition, with the others reduced to snowy, static-laden annoyances.

A strong storm wind could also cause your antenna to become a tangled mass in your back yard. How could a homeowner get all local channels clearly with no worries?

Beginning in 1966 or so in Miami, Oklahoma, the answer was Cablevision.

The elder statesmen of the Boomer generation have memories of watching some pretty scary flicks in theaters in the 50's. That decade is considered by many to be the penultimate era of the horror movie. This site lists 72 movies of the genre that were produced between 1950 and 1959.

So what happened to all of those flicks, many of which were shot on a shoestring budget? And, for that matter, what about all of those Lon Chaney (Jr. and Sr., Warren! R.I.P.), Bela Lugosi, and Boris Karloff classics from the 30's and beyond? Would they be doomed to disappearance, as has been the case of thousands of films whose very material existence disintegrated?

Not a chance. Local TV stations saved the horror movie.

You want to keep a kid absolutely entertained? Give him (or her) something they can make their OWN toys with.

That was the premise of the Mattel Vac-U-Form. It was a very sophisticated little manufacturing system which would allow kids of the 60's to create their own plastic molded toys, using the very same process that produces bathtubs, windshields, and countless other everyday items these days.

The Vac-U-Form used plastic sheets that were heated via the same mechanism that would later power the Fright Factory, i.e. a hot oven that would make modern-day ambulance chasing, mass-media advertising shysters drool with delight. The sheets would be drawn by manually creating a vacuum over molds that would allow kids to create some amazingly cool toys and gewgaws.

There may well be many of you Boomers (and others) out there who can't relate to today's memory. The Floridians and Los Angelenos will shake their heads quizzically, as will Minnesotans, but for different reasons. Bear with me.

Miami, Oklahoma (and my later homes in SW Missouri and NW Arkansas) had a temperate climate which allowed for hot summers and cold winters. The winters were quite mild compared to International Falls, Minnesota, but we got our share of frozen precipitation.

So a little bit of high pleasure I recall waking up to was discovering that the yard was white, so were the streets, and SCHOOL WAS CANCELED!

Today's reminiscence is one that is shared by all generations, but I'm going to wax poetic on my own particular experience.

Our little tract home in Miami, Oklahoma seems cramped by today's standards. It was three bedrooms and one bath. My eldest brother had his own room, while the middle and myself shared another.

It was a cozy, wonderful place to spend the first eight years of my life.

But one day, about 1965, a remarkable transformation took place overnight. My oldest brother headed off to college, and my other brother took over his room.

I had a room all to myself!

At the risk of inciting the wrath of the PC police, today's memory is about the paddle that hung by the chalkboard, and the discipline it inspired.

I was a class clown. No, let me rephrase that. I was THE class clown. Ergo, I was quite familiar with that wooden implement that usually had holes drilled in it "to lower wind resistance" one teacher told me. It would also be sinisterly marked with bold colors to get your attention while it hung from the wall right where you could see it.

Occasionally, the teacher would use it. More often, getting a student's attention and merely pointing to it would cause a potential disturbance-creator to settle down quickly.

"Leaf burning leads to air pollution and is a health and fire hazard. The smoke from burning leaves contains a number of toxic and/or irritating particles and gases. The tiny particles contained in smoke from burning leaves can accumulate in the lungs and stay there for years. These particles can increase the risk of respiratory infection, as well as reduce the amount of air reaching the lungs."

Thus spake B. Rosie Lerner, Purdue Extension Consumer Horticulture Specialist in a 1997 article entitled "Please Don't Burn Your Leaves."

Whatever.

The first arrival of a slightly cool snap this past week put me in mind of the sweetly perfumed skies of Miami, Oklahoma forty years ago, when neighbors would rake their leaves into neat piles and set fire to them, spreading a heavenly, autumn aroma all over the town.

I was an avid Rolling Stone reader in the late 70's. It was cool being nineteen years old and reading a hip publication that was considered to still be a bit "underground." After all, its back pages featured ads for NORML! How cutting edge was that?

But I remember when I decided that the music magazine, which introduced me to artists like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, whom I still greatly enjoy, lost me as a regular reader.

It was an issue that featured Bob Hope on the cover. The less-than-complimentary photo should have alerted me to the accompanying article's venomous contents. Bob was skewered as a right-wing fanatical Hawk.

How much more pleasant a place the world would be if the subject of politics could be avoided at all costs.