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

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Wacky Packages Many of the memories that are dredged up here span multiple generations. For example, Leave It to Beaver first rang with the elder Boomers as a Saturday night prime time show. Every single generation that has come since then has watched it as daily reruns. Today's reminiscence will hit home...

When Cursing Got Your Mouth Washed Out With Soap One of the most obvious differences between the present day and the world we Boomer kids grew up in is the amount of naughty words flying through the air. What would our grandparents think if they heard modern-day conversations at the shopping mall? Anyone who watches network television is now...

The Environmentalist Movement Is "Born" At presstime, the largest oil spill in history is being battled in the Gulf of Mexico. My wife and I have fears about what St. Pete Beach will be like in September, when we make our annual pilgrimage. The public is angry, the oil company is spinning the facts with...

Boomer Entrepreneurism: The Lemonade Stand I've spent my entire adult life working for The Man, but always having something going on the side. Go back to fresh out of high school, I started out as an electrician. Within six months, I had people paying me to do wiring jobs on weekends. They avoided contractor rates,...

If You Love Old Street Scene Photos, Read On... 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....

Summertime Backyard Fun Well, at presstime the shortest day of the year is two days away. It's 30 degrees outside, spitting snow. So what better course to take than to reminisce on those happy, carefree days we Boomers used to spend in our summertime back yards? THAT will cure the winter blues! The...

Breaking News: R.I.P. Billy Mays I hate it when someone just a tad older than me drops dead. This has been a bad week for that, but I'd like to say a word or two about the most recent as of presstime, Billy Mays. Billy was a Boomer, born just a bit before yours truly....

Sad-Eyed Kid Paintings Today's I Remember JFK is the result of an anonymous idea from one of our readers. Please keep them coming! One of the familiar sights that we Boomer kids grew up was an image of a sad-eyed child. The child might be accompanied by an equally sad-eyed kitten or puppy....

When We Converted to the Metric System - NOT! The things we Baby Boomers were destined to accomplish! We would be the generation that would usher in cheap, clean nuclear power! We would be driving flying cars by 2000! And we would take the lead in adopting the efficient, easy-to-use metric system! OK, enough with the exclamation points already....

The Smiley Face Inspiration for I Remember JFK comes from a variety of sources. One more or less constant provider of ideas is The History Channel. I was watching a show on the 70's the other night and was intrigued by the origin and history of that enigmatic symbol of optimism: the smiley...

Finding a Buffalo Nickel in Your Pocket It wasn't often that a kid of the 60's had change in his pocket. At least it wasn't often that I did. Come to think of it, I'm short of cash right now. Some things never change. But go back to 1967, and if a fortunate youngster found himself with...

Childhood Ailments First of all, my DSL internet connection is dying fast. Next Friday, I get on cable, along with screaming 15 MB speed. but in the meantime, since working on the web under present conditions is pure torture, today's column will be it for Boomer memories this week. Things should be...

Flying in the 1960's Traveling long distances commercially took an awkward twist during the 1960's. Our parents (and we older Boomers) rode the rails during the 50's. But passenger service was being phased out by the railroads. The government bailout known as Amtrak was far off in the future. So by the time the...

Playing Indoors (Temporarily!) One of the crazes that came after my childhood that never caught my attention was the video game in its various incarnations. Pong showed up when I was fifteen, followed closely by Space Invaders when I was eighteen. If I was going to get hooked, those were the primo ages...

Catching Bugs My wife and I love walking our pair of miniature schnauzers on warm evenings. Lately, we've been walking by yards well-populated with clover, complete with honeybees. That caused a memory to jump into the forefront: catching bugs and putting them in jars with holes punched in the lid. I'm happy...

When Litigation Wasn't So Blasted Commonplace Oh, lord. I'm opening myself up to cease-and-desist orders and libel lawsuits here. Well, I have freedom of speech. So here goes... According to the Georgetown Journal of Legal ethics, Summer 2005 issue, in an article by Emily Olsen, this summed up the stance of the American Bar Association once...

Saying "It's Good" in Many Generational Languages An interesting thing about the generations that come and go is the way each one adopts a word that means "good." That word positively identifies the user of said adjective as a member of a certain social and/or historical group. Either that, or it makes them look foolish. You see,...

1960's Predictions about Today We grew up in the Jet Age. The Computer Age. The Space Age. Cars were getting longer, sleeker, and faster. The world, too, was moving more and more rapidly. What on earth would the future be like over thirty long years distant? One prediction was made by Philco-Ford in 1967....

What We Did Before Computers, Part 2 Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far, far away, we didn't have computers at home. How did we cope? If a Butlerian Jihad should occur (if you don't grasp that term, either read Frank Herbert's Dune or simply look it up in Google), we would be lost, at least...

What We Did Before Computers, Part 1 We Boomers have proven to one of the most adaptive of generations, haven't we? For instance, my eldest brother, who can remember baking powder submarines and Howdy Doody, just succeeded in installing Ubuntu on two different laptop computers. And he's not NEARLY as geeky as I am. Even though the...

The Circus Comes to Town Miami, Oklahoma was definitive Small Town America. Population about 10,000, the only traffic lights were on main Street, everybody in town knew who you were. Yet we were treated to circuses that would pass through town every year, as far as I can recall. They were HUGE, at least in...

Note to those who would use my images
You may use any images you find on my site on your own personal site. COPY the images to your own server, PLEASE. If you link directly, you will likely get a logo encouraging others to visit I Remember JFK instead of the graphic that you expected. In return, I request that you include a link back to I Remember JFK. Fair enough?

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The Automotive Store:
Time was, usually located on Main Street within walking distance of the Dime Store, there was an establishment that carried generic automotive supplies like oil, gas treatment, tires, freon, anti-freeze, windshield wiper blades, and wheel covers. Additionally, they offered diverse non-automotive items like lawn mowers, gardening equipment, higher-end toys (e.g....

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