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

It was great growing up in the Jet Age, which melded seamlessly into the Space Age.

We took the Art Deco dream and turned it into real life. The ultra-modern, automated society that was envisioned by the generation that endured the Great Depression was becoming real for us, the Baby Boomers.

What better way to turn the old into new than to remove that messy firetrap known as the Christmas tree and replace it with a beautiful, shimmering aluminum model, complete with bright blue globes and a light wheel that would magically transform it into a rainbow of colors in a darkened room?

Thus did many of us grow up with memories of, not coniferous smells, strings of lights, or mom sweeping up dead needles on a daily basis, but instead, past visions of conical-shaped metallic tannenbaume that lived in boxes in the attics eleven months per year.

"Made in Japan." Our fathers, who may well have fought in the Pacific theater in WWII, would derisively roll their eyes when reading this out loud from a label on a cheap piece of junk. "Serves them right" they might have mused, recalling fallen comrades in arms, "to be the lowly producers of the world's cheap junk."

When we grew up, probably 90% of our toys bore the label claiming Japan as their place of origin. Long before we became so dependent on foreign oil, our first serious trade deficit arose thanks to huge ships loaded with every sort of plastic or tin gewgaw which was assembled in that Asian island nation half a world away.

And that label implied cheapness, shoddiness, disposability, lack of quality. One would NEVER give someone else a meaningful gift that was made in Japan.

How times have changed.

In the TV theme song hall of fame, if such a thing exists, surely the Most Hallowed section contains the tune that tells the tale of how first mate Gilligan and his skipper (named, as every trivia fan knows, Jonas Grumby) and the rest of the gang found themselves stranded on a desert island.

I seriously doubt that there is a Baby Boomer alive who isn't familiar with the ditty (which, horrors, could have been this). Even the hearing-impaired know about it, as I found the link to the unused theme song at this forum..

But what you may not have realized about Gilligan's Island is that it had something in common with Star Trek. Both shows' popularity didn't REALLY take off until after they were cancelled after a relatively short first run.

An adoring horde can be a very fickle thing.

Witness the crowds at press time clamoring for the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series. They're cheering loudly now, but Philly fans are notorious for turning on their beloved team very quickly when mistakes are made.

Or witness Jesus of Nazareth, who was welcomed by a Jerusalem crowd shouting praise and lining his path with palm leaves, only to have the same group screaming for his head a few days later.

And look at the example of John Lennon, who was a member of the most popular musical group in history, who made a statement about that very popularity that turned public opinion against him and the rest of the Fab Four very quickly.

Elvis never had such issues. Colonel Parker would only allow him to make statements like "yes, sir" and "no, maam" at interviews. But John Lennon was very plain-spoken, so it was inevitable that he would say something that the rest of the world wouldn't like. And the original publication of the interview wasn't the spark that set of the blaze of public opinion against Lennon, it was an otherwise obscure fan magazine that grabbed the statement out of context.

Technology was a fast-moving thing for us Boomers.

True, the quantum leaps in miniaturized electronics that take place every other day today are far greater than innovations were for us, but still, many completely new concepts were hatched during our heyday.

For example, during the late 1960's, thermotropic thermometers became popular as hassle-free instruments to take nervous kids' temperatures.

All you did was lay the little plastic strip on the sick child's forehead, and the temperature would be magically displayed by a number that would show up against a dark background.

The technology used liquid crystals, which would align their molecules at various temperature ranges, thereby changing their colors.

A jewelry designer named Marvin Wernick observed a doctor using one of the magic thermometers in the late 60's and envisioned a gold mine.

One of the great societal changes that took place during the 60's was the banding together of the nation's youth under a common shared cause.

That cause was protesting the war in Vietnam. The war itself was a drawn-out affair that was mired in red tape and bureaucratic rules of engagement, and the only sure thing that was coming out of it was lots of young men in the primes of their lives being sent home in bodybags.

By the end of the decade, protesting had reached its acme, as students at universities all over the nation staged protests, some peaceful, some, like that at Kent State University in 1970, tragically violent.

Four students gave their lives on may 4, 1970. Another suffered permanent paralysis. But one can't simply point a finger at the Ohio National Guard and cry villainy. There is more to the story than that.

As I have stated repeatedly here, my first coherent memory was the death of JFK. However, many slightly older Boomers have have a similar photographic recollection of the death of renowned tortured soul Marilyn Monroe.

Starlets have handled their fame with various degrees of aptitude. Some, like Mae West, reveled in the attention, and couldn't get enough of it. Others, like Greta Garbo, felt the need to withdraw completely from public life. Then there are the tortured souls, who simply can't find a way to cope with stardom's steep cost.

Norma Jeane Mortensen never knew her father. She barely knew her mother, who spent her own tortured life in mental institutions. Her childhood homes consisted of California foster care facilities. And, sadly typical of foster homes, her young life was scarred by episodes of abuse.

In 1942, at the age of sixteen, she entered into an arranged marriage with James Dougherty. The plan was cooked up by her then-current foster mother, Grace Goddard, in order to keep Norma Jeane from yet another foster move, as Grace was about to move out of the state.

I Remember JFK proudly presents a new feature: Boomer Reviews! The purpose is to present my own opinions on releases (TV, movies, music) that will be of interest to Boomers who like to wax nostalgic. And of course, your own opinions are strongly encouraged as well!

We'll start off with ABC TV's Life on Mars. It airs on Thursday nights at 9:00 Central time. Its competition is NBC's ER, which I stopped watching after its transition from medical drama to soap opera about 2003. If LOM can survive the season, its future looks bright, with NBC's ratings horse stumbling to a series finale this year.

On to the show itself. Its premise is that detective Sam Tyler, a modern-day cop (played by Jason O'Mara), gets hit by a car, waking up to find himself in 1973. He wanders around in a daze until he stumbles into a New York precinct police station, where, presumably, he is given a job.

Okay, all a bit unbelievable, but it's just entertainment, right? Besides, what comes next makes it a worthwhile viewing for the nostalgic amongst us of the Boomer generation.

Perhaps the name of the gadget featured in today's I Remember JFK memory will ring a bell, perhaps not. But I'll bet that one glance at the graphic will make you go "Oh, yeah!"

I wish I had my usual researched piece to offer you as far as where the Magic Brain Calculator came from, and its manufacturer, Chadwick. But there just wasn't a whole lot I could find out. But what little I did glean, I hereby share with you.

A Boomer kid's options for help in making mathematical calculations on the go in the 50's and 60's were pretty few. There were slide rules, which were only for the geeky. My oldest brother, who was in college, had one, but I had no idea how it operated.

Then there was the Addiator, manufactured by Addiator Gesellschaft in Berlin, beginning in 1920. They were sophisticated little hand-held mechanical calculators, but not terribly cheap, and once that nasty Nazi uprising took place, not freely available. But by the time WWII was over, they were back on the market, but still not real cheap.

The communities that we live in have been evolving since time immemorial. No facet of American culture has undergone more transformations than the downtown business district.

Every town with more than a couple hundred residents has one. And the odds are that it has seen its share of ups and downs over the years. And I'm not just talking Boomer years, either.

In the area where I grew up, there was a boom in the formation and growth of communities about the turn of the 20th century. In Oklahoma, many of these were given the names of Indian tribes that had been forcefully relocated there during the Trail of Tears era. In Arkansas, where I currently reside, communities are often named after railroad executives, who were often responsible for their formation at key points along the routes.

Stroll along the downtown sidewalks of these communities, and you will likely see durable old buildings dating from this era, from the late 1800's to the early 1900's.

Those buildings have probably seen much in the way of both glory and ignominy.