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

As the previous article on Legos mentioned, it's special indeed when a toy that we Boomers enjoyed as children survives the economic upheavals and the buying/selling/absorptions of the companies that originally produced them. Such is the case with the subject of today's I Remember JFK memory: Mr. Potato Head.

Mr. Potato Head first appeared in 1949. An inventor named George Lerner enjoyed playing with fruits and vegetables as a child. He would attach other fruits and vegetables to, say, a potato so that he would end up with a creation that had a carrot nose and grape eyes, which he would then present to his younger sisters. They would delight in playing with the "dolls" until they would literally deteriorate. As an adult, he recalled with fondness how much fun it was, and decided to create something a bit more durable.

In 1949, he designed arms, legs, and facial features to be stuck into fruits and vegetables. The idea was a bit distasteful to Americans who still had wartime rationing fresh in their minds, as well as earlier memories of nearly starving in the Great Depression.

Lerner tried unsuccessfully to market his toy for a couple of years. Finally, in 1952, he showed it to a pair of brothers who had been specializing in the textile industry, but who had developed a small business on the side that was selling toys and school supplies. It was unlike anything they, or the world, had ever seen, They bought the rights for $5,000. That would turn out to be one world-changing investment.

Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, just passed at age 89. Enjoy this presentation of Gumby on the Moon, courtesy of a brilliantly imaginative mind that will be missed by Boomers and others alike.

The date he was born was April 12, 1932. His parents were a Lebanese man and a Jewish woman. When he was five years old, his father brought home an old wind-up gramophone and a record of Henry Burr singing "Beautiful Ohio." Later, more old records were obtained. Young Herbert Khaury fell in love with the old songs, stretching back to the early 20th century. He soon became an authority on early popular music that made it onto 78's.

Herbert obtained a ukulele and learned to play it. He would spend hours singing the old refrains in his natural mid-baritone voice. By the mid 1950's, he was playing in small clubs throughout New York. Sometimes the crowds would laugh at him. Sometimes they would laugh WITH him. And sometimes, he would simply bowl them over with his unconventional appearance and his ukulele.

In 1968, a rather strange film was released called You Are What You Eat. The movie was a celebration of the Flower Power generation and their music, and featured performances by the likes of David Crosby, Frank Zappa, Barry McGuire, and a narrator/performer who had, in 1962, begun calling himself Tiny Tim. One particularly memorable performance involved Tiny Tim and a female singer performing "I Got You Babe," with Tim singing Cher's lines in falsetto, Eleanor Barooshian singing Sonny's lines in baritone.

The film was spotted by the producers of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, who booked Tiny Tim for an appearance.

Well, after the commentary on the previous installment of I Remember JFK, the subject of this week's column was pretty obvious. The public wants Herb Alpert! And what the public wants, it gets, at least this time. :-)

Herb Alpert was born on March 31, 1935. That makes him a bit too senior to be a Boomer, but he was a strong source of memories for the Boomer generation.

His father was a tailor who emigrated from Russia. His family loved music, and he grew up listening to his father play mandolin, his California-born mother play violin, his sister the piano, and his brother the drums. When Herb was eight, he decided that he wanted to learn the trumpet.

A prodigy he was not. It took Herb years to make the trumpet sound the way he wanted. But he patiently stuck with it, and by the time he was sixteen, he had formed a small band that played weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the like in his L.A. neighborhood.

Not yet convinced that music was his future, he enrolled at USC after high school and joined the gymnastics team. However, he also played with the Trojans' marching band. In 1955, he was drafted into the army. He was able to grab local musical gigs during evenings to help support his new wife and family.

Today's I remember JFK remembrance is the result of a conversation which took place between a coworker and myself earlier this week.

My buddy John Sorrells walked in, threw an object on my desk, and said "okay, nostalgia expert, what's this?"

Without hesitation I said "Why, that's a curb feeler." John was impressed, but hey, I AM the nostalgia expert.

Curb feelers made their debut sometime in the early 50's as an accessory added to luxury cars by Detroit. However, they were inexpensive add-ons for anyone who wanted to protect their tires from the unforgiving concrete that made up street curbs. This was particularly the case if one had big whitewalls on their sweet ride.

Whitewall tires weren't really invented in as much as they were simply the original tires. In the automobile's heyday of the Model T, tires were made of light-colored rubber. The rubber didn't wear so well, so eventually, more carbon black was added to the tread area. This made for tires which were black around the circumference, but white on the sidewalls. As the entire tire began to be manufactured out of higher carbon-black rubber, consumers clamored for the look of their father's tires. Thus, sidewalls were pigmented with a wide white stripe.

You know the standard joke: if you can remember the 60's, you weren't really there. Well, that's not necessarily the case. Many of us Boomers were kids during the psychedelic era, and the most substance abuse we might have done was sneaking a cigarette or two out of our parents' packs and smoking it in an overgrown field. At least that was the case with me.

Indeed, some of the sweetest remembrances of the decade come from us kids, as can be evidenced by the wonderful popularity of I Remember JFK.

Today, we feature a review of a novel by a kid of the 60's, one Jim Potter. The name of the book is East Bench: a Novel. If you're familiar with Salt Lake City (I wasn't), the name should be very familiar. If not, read on. It soon will.

The book is called a novel, but it reads like a true-to-life remembrance by the author. The tale is that of a Catholic kid growing up in Mormon territory in a lower middle-class family. The Beatles have just appeared on Sullivan, and garage bands are springing up all over town. These impromptu groups frequently featured preteens playing with homemade instruments. It was a great time to be alive.

We Boomers grew up with the greatest toys ever made. Indeed, the 1950's-1970's has been hailed as the Golden Age of toy manufacturing by more than one authority. And those toys were brought to us by a number of manufacturers who, sadly, have disappeared from sight.

I've already written about Kenner. Today, we cover three more beloved toy makers who have regrettably slipped below the waves of history and live on only in the memory banks of Boomer children.

The first is Marx. "By Marx!" used to sign off all of their commercials, eagerly absorbed by many a 1960's-era kid on a Saturday morning, the prime time for TV to show such ads in order to reach their maximum demographic. This Big Rail Work Train ad is one I remember well. It seemed that Marx's specialty was BIG toys. That meant that it would take a special occasion to talk mom and dad into springing for one.

Marx was founded in 1919 in New York City by Louis Marx and his brother David. The brothers looked for innovative toy designs produced by others, bought the rights, and improved upon them. The strategy worked well. By 1922, both had become millionaires. Their business actually thrived during the Depression, and by 1955 Time magazine had declared Louis Marx the Toy King.

In 1972, the now 76-year-old Marx sold the company to Quaker Oats. In 1975, they in turn sold it to Dunbee-Combex-Marx, a British company. In 1978, that company went under, and so did the Marx name.