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

One of my dad's spare time passions, and, by extension, one of mine, was golf.

His preferred course was the Miami Country Club (not a member, BTW). It was a nine hole layout that I never played. However, I did earn many a quarter (worth approximately $200 in kid bucks of the 60's) for dutifully pulling his clubs around and staying (mostly) quiet.

I was too short to effectively take a real swing. However, he did allow me to take putts when there was nobody behind us to get irritated at a kid messing around on the green ahead of them.

Dad had an Acushnet Bull's Eye putter, a classic design that is still manufactured and still popular. He also had a McGregor Tommy Armour Ironmaster, nowadays a valued collectible which I am proud to still own.

He was a bogey golfer who once shot a nine hole round at even par. What makes that feat all the more remarkable is that he did it with 60's vintage equipment.

If it was a warm, sunny day, a 60's kid would be expunged from the house by a mother who was tired of her child watching television. After all, she grew up without TV, and knew the value of playing in the great outdoors. She knew, way before it became fashionable, that kids needed to get away from the one-eyed monster. Had the personal computer invaded the home space back then, she likewise would have shooed me away from the keyboard and out into the yard to plant some indelible memories of playing in the dirt.

We had a big old tree in the front yard. I believe it was an elm. It must have been of the slippery variety, since Dutch Elm Disease would have wiped it out long ago had it been of the American species. A 1995 trip to Miami revealed the warm news that the old tree was still alive, albeit MUCH bigger than it used to be.

The tree's roots were exposed on the surface. That was a critical part of the equation for perfect dirt play. That allowed the digging of tunnels under the topmost radicels. it also allowed roads and bridges to be constructed on the larger, flatter-on-top versions.

As this column began to come together in my head, it was a result of the simultaneous collusion of the time of year (lots of Christmas commercials on the tube), my suspicious eying of low gas prices (I doubt that it will last), and a jingle that has been bouncing around in my cranium since 1965 or so ("You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big bright Texaco star!").

The end result is today's piece on the Holy Grail of childhood possessions, one that only a few of us were privileged to own (myself not among the elite): the Texaco Fire Truck.

Sadly, there is practically nothing on the web about the history of the greatest gas station promotion ever. But what I did find, I hereby share with you, along with my own personal remembrances of the amazingly wonderful Texaco fire truck.

The fire truck, to the best of my knowledge, could only be obtained at Texaco gas stations. I located an ad for the Texaco tanker, another wonderful promotional toy that I was too young to remember, which stated that you needed to buy eight gallons of gas and fork over $3.98 to get one. I assume that the fire truck, issued in 1964, had the same requirements.

Tonkas were the undisputed king of rough, tough outdoor play in the 1960's dirt. But there was another brand, nearly as popular, that Boomer kids played with by the millions: Structo.

I remember my mom making an offhand remark once about how Structo toys were of high quality. In researching this article, I learned that it may well have been that she had personal childhood recollections of Structo toys. They had been around that long.

Indeed, Tonka was the newcomer. Structo had been delighting kids with high-quality, built-to-last toys since before the US entered the Great War.

They managed to change with the times, so that by the Summer of Love, they could be found in nearly as many toyboxes as their better-selling cousins.

When we were kids, one of the greatest dangers that we faced was that of blasting caps. They were EVERYWHERE! Why, you couldn't sit in a back yard without some Eddie Haskell troublemaker type finding one in the grass and making plans to put it in your father's barbecue grill and blowing up your sister!

We must have seen hundreds of public service ads on TV warning us of the dangers of blasting caps. What was frustrating to us boys was that despite the fact that the filmed spots advised us that you couldn't walk across a vacant lot without stumbling across blasting caps of every conceivable type, we never found a one.

The message of the filmed spots was to make us afraid, VERY afraid. But unintentionally, they turned us into eager seekers of blasting caps. Imagine the sheer coolness of the lucky kid who actually located a genuine blasting cap. The leadership of the neighborhood gang would have been his!

But in my sleepy hometown of Miami, Oklahoma, the closest thing I ever found that resembled blasting caps were discarded electrical parts at my dad's truck garage. They were close enough to scare the girls at school, though, which was a pretty significant accomplishment in itself.

"Only you can prevent forest fires!" We must have heard those words a thousand times, as we sat in the floor after school watching Leave It to Beaver on our black-and-white TV's.

Forest fires were a non-issue for me. We had woods in Oklahoma's Green Country, but I can't ever recall a forest fire. Our summers typically were rainy, and the vegetation didn't dry up and turn to tinder the way it did in the western US, where the dry season ruled half the year.

Smokey Bear taught the Boomer generation about how dangerous forest fires were for everyone, especially cute cartoon animals, who would frequently be imperiled by a careless motorist who would toss his cigarette butt out the window.

It is with great trepidation that I present today's I Remember JFK memory to you.

You see, according to the legalese that I encountered in researching this particular piece of our pasts, I may be going away for a long, long time. Read on.

Woodsy Owl made his debut in 1970. That year was perhaps the pinnacle of the ecology awareness movement that had suddenly sprung up in response to the very dirty condition that the world, particularly the US, found itself in after all of that jet age progress. 1970 was the year that Iron Eyes Cody was featured in his unforgettable commercial decrying the effects of pollution.

Pollution was certainly on the minds of the nation's youthful movers and shakers, and Woodsy Owl was introduced to get involved. That would be you and me, Baby Boomers.

I was a funny kid. I didn't eat much.

Though I was ravenous about candy, it wasn't unusual for me to barely touch my breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

It was a constant worry for my mother, who was assured by wise Dr. Wendleton to not worry, he'll eat when he's hungry.

One of the treats that would wake up my taste buds was a steaming bowl of Malt-O-Meal, complete with milk and, of course, sugar. I also enjoyed Cream of Wheat, and honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two competitors.

Malt-O-Meal got its start in 1919. That year, the Campbell Cereal Company was founded by by John Campbell, a miller in Owatonna, Minnesota. He invented a hot breakfast cereal which consisted of a combination of malted and farina wheat. He called it Malt-O-Meal. Campbell intended to compete with Cream of Wheat, which had gotten its start in the 1890's.

I certainly didn't hurt for toys when I was a kid. However, I didn't have EVERY toy.

Witness the Texaco Fire Truck. Another cool toy that sadly never made it into my toybox was the water rocket.

I saw hundreds of ads for water rockets in various comic book ads.

One day at junior high school, for a science demonstration, I finally got to witness a water rocket in action.

Pretty cool stuff! So cool, that nowadays there is a passionate online following of homegrown water rockets. Read on.