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

We're all about nostalgia here at I Remember JFK. And if your idea of nostalgia includes viewing classic pictures of everyday streets in small-town America (or anywhere), then you'll want to take a look at this Flicker photo collection. Prepare to be very pleasantly surprised!

Click here for the website.

Sometimes, the things we enjoyed as kids are shrouded in obscurity. That was the case of today's subject of Daisys, Bugles, Whistles, Buttons, and Bows.

These are shaped salty snack foods I'm talking about. And I know Daisys is misspelled, but notice that it is in the pictured ad, too.

According to the scant information I could find, Daisys, Bugles, and Whistles first appeared on the general market in 1966. They were produced by General Mills. And Bugles still survives today, but not the others.

It appears that Daisys and Bugles were similarly flavored. The plain-Jane Bugles you can buy today were the original flavor of 1966, salty corn. Daisys were shaped like, well, flowers, duh!, and seemed to be strategically aimed at dippers. Whistles were cheese-flavored. They were just the right size to fit on the ends of a kid's fingers.

The year was 1970. The place was sleepy Bentonville, Arkansas, population 5,000 or so. I must have been sitting in our 1965 Chevy pickup which my father had purchased shortly after moving us from our house on a city block in Miami, Oklahoma to a 250-acre farm located 15 miles from Bentonville.

Ten years old, I had recently started paying attention to fast cars, thanks to getting into the brand-new phenomenon known as Mattel Hot Wheels. Thus, I was able to spot and differentiate the subtle differences between a Camaro and a Firebird, or the more obvious ones between a Barracuda and a Cougar.

But that day, so long ago, my ten-year-old jaw dropped. There, cruising up highway 71 in front of a big empty field that would one day hold a Wal-Mart Supercenter, was an unearthly-looking wonderful lime-green Plymouth Superbird.

There were a plethora of fast cars produced during Detroit's muscle car era. Many of them concealed their horsepower under the ruse of a standard-looking vehicle, the better to avoid frequent stops by the law. But then there was the Superbird: a hedonistic thumb to the nose at conventionality. What an amazing machine for a ten-year-old kid to see tooling through the streets of a small town.

Another sad departure from our memory banks: Ronald Howes, inventor of the Easy-Bake Oven.

Rest in peace, old friend.

When we were kids, our options at the local neighborhood grocery or the dime store were manifold. Most of the time, we walked out with candy. But sometimes, we would invest our hard-earned (or begged) coins on magical little flying machines made of balsa wood.

They came in little clear plastic packages with cardboard at the top. The hole in the cardboard allowed them to be hung on a rack, frequently at the top of the candy display, as I recall. The plain ones cost a dime, the fancier rubber-band driven models were 29 cents, as best I can remember.

Since I usually was given two nickels a day, buying a glider meant making a tough decision. I had to forego my morning candy fix and come back later in the afternoon in order to have ten cents to purchase my flying machine.

But as much as I loved the elegant little airplanes, I made the tough call many times, and walked home proudly carrying my plastic-wrapped wooden prize.