Gadgets – Page 13 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

3D of the 50’s

The neighborhood movie theater was a welcome spot for rainy and/or swelteringly hot summer afternoons in the 50’s. The drive-in theater was likewise a fond destination that many of us remember. One of the most amazing innovations that were enjoyed by the older members of the Boomer generation were 3D movies and comic books.

Man has always sought greater realism in the representations of the world which he has generated. It goes back to the day when a caveman would blow pigment over his hand placed on a rock wall in order to add a realistic, human touch to the mastodons and mammoths that he had drawn. By 1838, stereoscopic photography had been invented, bringing astonishing realism to tiny images viewed through a special device.

L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, filmed in 1895 by the Lumière brothers, is credited as being the first 3D film. Audiences would scream in terror as a speeding train appeared to head straight for them.

Except that the film wasn’t really 3D. it shocked the world with its realism, but it was just a simple two-dimensional film.

In 1915, three short films were shown in New York that were filmed using the anaglyphic process. Two camera lenses filmed two separate scenes from 2 1/2″ apart. When developed, the films were given treatment which overemphasized the colors so that viewing the finished film through red and green glasses would create a seamless three-dimensional image.

That same technology was called upon 37 years later by nervous Hollywood producers who saw the future of motion pictures seriously threatened by television. Thus, in 1952, Bwana Devil was released in 3D. The low-budget film created a sensation, and soon theaters all over the US were scrambling to add the ability to show three-dimensional films.

The next year, 27 more 3D films were released, including Vincent Price’s chilling House of Wax, considered one of Hollywood’s greatest horror films. 1954 saw the release of the 3D Creature from the Black Lagoon, another great scary flick.

The 3D movie craze came and went in a flurry. By 1955, only a solitary 3D movie was released. Thereafter, films would come out in 3D on an occasional basis. One of them was Ghosts of the Abyss, which my wife and I watched on a rainy Florida afternoon in 2003. I liked it, she didn’t.

Movies weren’t the only source of 1950’s 3D entertainment. Three Dimension Comics made its debut in 1953. The single issue, documenting the adventures of Mighty Mouse, sold over a million copies. Soon, 3D comic books were all over the newsstands, with the obligatory red/green glasses included as part of the package. Harvey, Archie, EC, DC, and practically all of the other major comic book publishers released three-dimensional versions of their familiar lines.

3D comics died out even sooner than films, the last one being published in 1954. Again, they have appeared off and on since then, but never in the 1950’s quantities.

Nowadays, we have, for the most part, given up on the idea of ubiquitous three-dimensional media. Instead, many of us have opted for HDTV’s. Perhaps not as exciting as seeing bright red blood fly three-dimensionally as many of us witnessed way back in 1953, but hey, it’s nice not messing with those darned glasses!

Things Go Better with Coke

We Boomers bought a lot of Coke when we were kids. We still do, for that matter. So did our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. In fact, so have our kids and even grandkids. I didn’t research any figures, but I’m guessing that Coca-Cola is the largest selling product in the history of the US, possibly the world.

I bought a slew of Cokes from the old machine at my father’s truck garage in Miami, Oklahoma. It looked just like the one to the right. You dropped a dime in, and pushed that big lever to move an endless belt of cokes inside one step along. Then, you opened that little door and grabbed six ounces of frosty refreshment. You ended the ritual by popping the lid off in that opener, hearing a reassuring clink as it fell among its brothers in the bin.

That bin full of lids would prove to be very lucrative to me about 1966. Coke had a Things Go Better contest, where you scraped the cork off of the inside of those lids to reveal letters that would eventually spell “Things” and “Better.” Then it was a matter of finding the Holy Grail: the word “Go” surrounded by stars.

You glued all of the caps to a piece of paper. And what would happen is that you would quickly spell the words, then look in vain for that elusive “Go.” That’s where the bin full of lids paid off for me.

Over a period of a couple of weeks, I would sit in the floor in front of that Coke machine and dutifully scrape cork from dozens of lids. Then it happened: I scraped off cork and revealed a Go!

I was ecstatic. The color of the magic token revealed your prize. I had a black one, the lowliest, but it didn’t dispel my joy at all. Dad drove me to the local bottling plant (many small towns had them) and, beaming with pride, I turned in my completely filled out set of caps and received a case of 16 oz. Cokes.

I was so excited that I drank one of them hot as soon as I got home.

I also bought a lot of Cokes from Moonwink Grocery. They were contained in a slider machine, like the one to the left. You dropped in a dime, then maneuvered your desired pop through a maze of sliders until it finally rested under the locking mechanism which kept you from stealing them. Your coin unlocked it long enough to pull your Coke up and out of the chest.

Indeed, Coke can do no wrong. Even the seemingly disastrous 1984 flavor change worked out in their favor in the long run, with a stronger fan base than ever after the return of the original formula.

Someday, our grandkids will be reminiscing about drinking Cokes as a child, as our grandparents and ourselves also have.

When Vending Machines Required Muscles

Ah, the love/hate relationship that we have with vending machines. on the one hand, it’s pleasant not to deal with a surly convenience store clerk behind bulletproof glass, on the other, getting ripped off involves taking on a machine weighing much more than one’s self, with possibly disastrous results.

But by and large, with the exception of manhandling larcenous machines, the experience of popping in currency and retrieving merchandise has gotten much more mechanized than when we Boomer kids were, well, kids.

For instance, a vending machine typically has rows of chips, candy bars, etc. behind glass with corkscrew mechanisms that operate when you push buttons. You hear a little whir, your prize drops, you walk away.

But flash back to 1964, and vending machines involved muscle power. One of the experiences that I recall the most clearly was getting cigarettes for dad. I would drop two quarters into the machine, locate Philip Morris Filters, and pull the knob underneath them with a mighty jerk. One pack of coffin nails would obediently drop into the tray below for retrieval.

There was a yellow warning sign on the front that announced the illegalities of minors operating the machinery. That didn’t concern me a bit. Though we had lead and zinc mines in the area, I most assuredly didn’t work at them.

I was a bit confused as to why those who dug up minerals and metals for a living should be forbidden from buying cigarettes from a machine. Probably something to do with their lungs being exposed to dust, my seven-year-old mind reasoned.

Candy machines required a similar hard tug to get to the sugar-sweetened delights within, to be retrieved at the cost of a dime. I know that I paid a nickel for a Pay-Day at the corner grocery, I don’t recall ever seeing a vended candy bar for less than ten cents. In fact, one of the first lessons that a kid learned about life was that you only had one shot at your favorite treat once that dime went in the slot, and you’d better give the handle a hefty tug. It was tragically possible to pull a handle out only part way, so that you lost your ten-cent credit AND walked away empty-handed.

However, school troublemakers also delighted in spreading accounts of how you could pull TWO handles at precisely the same time and get two candy bars for the price! I actually saw it happen, and even did it myself a time or two. However, you would walk away empty-handed enough to where I believe the odds were, just like at Vegas, in the house’s favor.

The illustrated Coke machine shows that once you bought your can of pop, you still had work to do. You had to place the steel container underneath that opener and shove down with all of your might to place a triangular hole at the edge of the can, then rotate it 180 degrees and do it again.

I wonder how often that cutting blade was washed?

Dad’s old nickel Coke machine required work, as well. It had a big handle that turned the internal mechanism to align a Coke bottle up with the opening so that it could be removed by an eager kid.

So the next time you put a ten-dollar-bill in a vending machine and get your sandwich accompanied by a rain of dollar coins in the change tray, think back to when you were a kid, and recall when vending machines required strength and dexterity to operate. And maybe, just MAYBE, you could get two items for the price of one!

When Microwave Ovens Were New

It would be difficult for me to imagine life without a microwave oven. I probably use one twice a day minimum. Yet, I grew up without one of the expensive, newfangled, radiation-emitting appliances. We didn’t get a microwave oven until the mid 70’s.

But many of us Boomer kids recall having them as far back as 1967, when Amana introduced the Radarange home model.

The heating power of microwaves was discovered by accident by Percy Spencer, a self-taught engineer with the Raytheon Corporation. In 1945 or 1946 (accounts vary), he was testing a magnetron, a vacuum tube that emitted microwaves, when he noticed the candy bar in his pants pocket had inexplicably melted.

Intrigued, Spencer placed a pile of popcorn kernels next to the tube and fired it up again (this time standing back a ways!). Sure enough, the kernels soon began popping. His next experiment involved an egg, which blew hot yolk all over him when it exploded.

Spencer immediately saw the potential for microwaves as a means to cook food. First of all, the waves would need to be contained. The nature of microwaves is such that their 12.24 cm length can be contained by metal or metallic mesh. So Spencer devised a box with a tube through which the microwaves would be fed in. The contained energy cooked any food placed in the box very rapidly.

The first mocrowave oven a Raytheon Radarange from 1947. (Courtesy: Raytheon)

The first Raytheon Radarange (the name was a winning entry in an employee contest) was built in 1947. It was 6 feet tall and weighed 750 pounds. It was also water-cooled and consumed 3000 watts of power. But research continued, along with gradual miniaturization, and by the mid 50’s, free-standing microwave ovens were using half as much power and cost less than $3000. That made them affordable investment by eateries and bakeries, whose operations were revolutionized by the ability to cook much faster.

As the technology got smaller and cheaper, Raytheon saw the potential for selling home-sized microwave ovens. So in 1967, Amana, a Raytheon division, began marketing the Radarange for $495.

That was a lot of money back then, and sales began slowly. But that wasn’t the only factor. Urban legends have exploded with the growth of the internet, but they were around back in our childhoods, too. And many myths surrounded cooking your food with microwave radiation. Tales of sterility, impotence, and radiation poisoning hindered sales of microwave ovens.

But the numbers steadily increased as the truth showed fears of such incidents to be unfounded. By 1970, 40,000 were sold. In 1975, more microwave ovens were sold than gas ranges. The next year, 60% of US households had one. I think that’s when my thrifty father finally sprang for one, and the Enderland household began experiencing the miracle of microwave cooking.

One tale about the ovens did turn out to be true: metal and microwaves don’t mix. Many a 1970’s homeowner was horrified by miniature electrical storms when they put aluminum foil or metallic utensils in their microwave ovens. It was a mistake that was generally only made once.

Today, of course, there’s nothing cooler than frying a CD in an old microwave. And you can get a basic oven for less than fifty bucks. If you don’t have a microwave oven in your house, it’s for personal reasons rather than economic. But if you remember JFK, you can also recall a time when warming food required heating a big oven or firing up a cooktop, no exceptions.

Tupperware

We Boomers are proud of the fact that we came into existence within a few years of the end of WWII. And as the nation put all of the creative efforts that were once channeled into making the world safe for democracy into business ventures, many familiar household names sprung up during this time as well.

One of the most familiar monikers is that of one Earl Tupper. It was he who devised plastic containers for food storage that featured a delightful operation known as “burping.”

Tupper started out in the landscaping/nursery business. He did well for a while, until the Great Depression came along. Like millions of other Americans, he was forced into unemployment by the harsh economic times, and was fortunate to find a job with the DuPont Corporation.

He was given an assignment: find a use for worthless chunks of plastic slag that were left over from other the production of other products. He purified the slag and was then able to use it to form lightweight, durable implements for servicemen including bowls, glasses, plates, and even gas masks. Later, he developed sealable tops for containers by studying the lids of paint cans.

Tupper bailed from DuPont in 1938 and started his own company. He did okay while the war raged, but in 1946, the future of home food storage crossed paths with Tupper plasticware.

Tupper’s plastic containers with their distinctive resealable lids went on the market in 1946. He called on local hardware and department stores in an effort to convince them to begin carrying his products. A few years later, however, a monumental decision would be made that would put Tupperware into the lexicon of the English language, and also into 20th century culture.

A sales representative for Stanly Home Products by the name of Brownie Wise called Tupper up one day and gave an impassioned plea on the benefits of directly marketing his wares by means of home parties thrown by millions of housewives who would delight at the chance to make some income in those stay-at-home days.

Earl Silas Tupper, inventor of Tupperware, holds one of his original designs.

Tupper was impressed with the contagious enthusiasm of West, and hired her on the spot as vice-president. The first thing she did was remove Tupperware from stores altogether.

Wise believed fervently in the spirit of homemakers, and put them to work putting on Tupperware parties. She sweetened the pot by creating annual jubilees in sunny Florida where Tupperware representatives would gather for a week’s worth of socializing, fellowship with other home representatives, and motivational speeches. There were also prizes galore given out.

The combination of an excellent product and the fun and profitability of the parties and the perks made Tupperware a household name during the 1950’s.

Brownie Wise made the cover of Business Week magazine in 1954, the first woman to do so. However, her growing celebrity status was a source of irritation to Tupper, who preferred quietly becoming wealthy to the spotlight, both for himself as well as his company.

In 1958, tensions between Tupper and Wise came to a head over the high cost of the jubilees, and she was fired. Soon afterwards, Tupper sold the company lock, stock, and barrel to Rexall Drugs for a cool sixteen million 1958 bucks. Tupper then renounced his US citizenship and moved to his own island in Costa Rica in order to avoid a crippling tax burden.

Tupperware proved to be an excellent investment for Rexall. They continued the home-sales-only approach, and thus many of us Boomer kids have fond memories of our mothers either attending or throwing Tupperware parties. The hosts were rewarded with Tupperware goodies of their own, and they could climb the ranks and take on managerial roles that would pay out real cash if they were so inclined.

Here in the 21st century, Tupperware is still around, but is at sort of a crossroads. Its product name is still highly respected, but it’s getting harder and harder to find Tupperware parties.

The company tried selling directly to Target stores, but this only resulted in angering representatives who now had to compete with a huge national chain. Additionally, sales were disappointing, causing much harm to the business model and the goodwill of its home-grown representative base. Additionally, cheap clones of genuine Tupperware abound, and the name isn’t as strong as it was when our mothers were aggressively marketing it at a time when you had to go to a party just to buy it.

So why not put out feelers of just who in your local community might be holding a Tupperware party and go check it out? It’s a part of our Boomer heritage that is in danger of disappearing altogether.

It would be sad if something as nice as a gathering of family, friends, and neighbors to obtain high-quality kitchen items was to vanish.

Those Old Flat Barbecue Grills

Man has long had rites of spring. Once upon a time, it was the pagan festival of Astarte (from which we derived the term Easter). The Druids would celebrate the equinox at Stonehenge. But in the 1960’s, it was the annual purchase of a cheap flat barbecue grill.

These grills could be obtained at places like Western Auto, Otasco (a local home/auto chain store based in Oklahoma), Sears, Montgomery Wards, and other pre-Wal Mart establishments. They ran about ten bucks or so in their most basic form.

They consisted of thin steel painted blue or red. The cheapest ones were simply flat cylinders about three feet in diameter and four to six inches in depth, with two brackets diametrically opposed allowing you to move the grill itself up and down over a range of six inches. They sat upon tubular legs which placed them about 36″ high.

However, if you were willing to spring for a few extra bucks, you could get yourself a deluxe model with a windscreen.

As tight with a buck as dad was, I remember we always had barbecue grills with the wind screen. As a matter of fact, circa 1971, we had one with a motorized spit, which would slowly turn a whole chicken or roast while you went inside and watched the baseball game.

The thin metal which comprised the grills meant that you bought a new one every year. That paint would soon begin flaking off, and the grill would begin to rust. By fall, it was looking pretty sad. When it got too cold to cook outdoors, it would simply sit in the weather and continue to deteriorate, until it would be disassembled and consigned to the trash.

It was possible to get a second year out of it if you kept it out of the weather. But the heat from cooking would still get to the paint and make them ugly.

Of course, along with the grill was kept the supply of charcoal briquets and starter fluid. The briquets needed to be kept dry, else they would swell up and become nonburnable. Starter fluid came in a tin vessel that was about eight inches tall, four inches wide, and two inches thick. It had a popup plastic spout, so you could turn it upside down and liberally douse the charcoal (piled into a heap in the middle of the grill) in the hope that you would have a beautiful bed of glowing embers upon which you could cook your burgers.

However, what was more likely to happen was that you would fail to let the fluid soak in thoroughly enough. A match would cause the pile to flame brightly, but it would soon go out, with the bare edges of the charcoal lightly glowing, giving you a vague hope that cooking would be taking place within the next thirty minutes.

That necessitated spraying more fluid on, which would quickly burn off, but creating slightly more glowing edges to the briquets. And you needed to let EVERY TRACE of that fluid burn off, else your food would have a distinctive petroleum distillate tang to it.

Time to go get a beer and let it set.

Finally, with the wind building up and blowing ashes and such all over the yard, your pile of briquets was ready to be spread out and the grate placed over it, so those burgers could begin their transformation into delightfully delicious treats to be eaten off of paper plates.

There were better grills like Weber Kettles back then, but most suburbanites and small-town dwellers simply purchased the inexpensive flat grills year after year.

Nowadays, I cook on a gas grill (with a spare bottle ready to spring into action) that has a vinyl cover to keep it dry from the elements. I take advantage of the heat that gathers in the upper confines of the enclosure to slowly bake thick steaks, making them delectably perfect, slightly pink in the middle. And my top secret marinade in the fridge makes them taste like heaven on earth.

But while I tend my grill, which is durable enough to last for years, I sometimes let my mind wander back to dad making some pretty darned good tasting meals on inexpensive sheet-metal contrivances that were purchased every spring.

Mr. Coffee

We grew up listening to the early morning gurgling sounds of the percolator. Even though we were probably too young to enjoy its taste, the coffee smell and the calming sound made for great kitchen ambiance.

But all of that changed in 1972.

That year, Vincent Marotta released his invention for sale to the general public: Mr. Coffee.

With the help of one of baseball’s greatest players, it revolutionized the way we prepared the essential get-going beverage. Within a few short years, the percolator was nearly extinct.

Our parents drank percolated coffee and were used to it, but the percolation process has issues.

The same water is continuously pumped over the grounds over and over. This is simply not good coffee making form. Plus, the brewed coffee is subjected to 212 degree heat, and that’s bad for flavor. However, it did make for one catchy TV commercial!

Marotta knew that Joe DiMaggio was a noted coffee drinker. But he was also pretty reclusive. Joltin’ Joe had gotten all of the fame that he wanted playing baseball and from his short marriage to Marilyn Monroe. In 1972, he was enjoying retired life in San Francisco.

This NPR interview gives the details on how Joe was convinced to become the spokesman for Mr. Coffee. Basically, it took Marotta tracking down his phone number, then flying from Cleveland to the west coast the next day. The relationship between DiMaggio and Mr. Coffee lasted nearly 15 years.

In researching this piece, I was surprised to learn that coffee filters were not sold until 1975. I assume that a perforated basket was used on models prior to then. Personally, I prefer a mesh basket anyway. It lets just a bit of sediment through, a delicious enhancement to taste.

By the end of the decade, practically every kitchen in America had a Mr. Coffee or one of its imitators. The percolator was hopelessly old-fashioned. Vince Marotta and Joe Dimaggio had managed to change the way we drank coffee.

Nowadays, the percolator is enjoying a bit of a nostalgic comeback. Of course, it never fell out of favor with sportsmen and campers, as you could make coffee on a campfire, no electricity required. The classic percolator requires a coarser size grind, not so easy to find any more.

But give me my Mr. Coffee-brewed morning start to my day. I can’t imagine penning a column without it.

Lunchboxes

Man has been eating lunch since time immemorial. And you might think that the portable lunchbox like you carried to school in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s would have been just as ancient. But you would be wrong.

In 1950, Nashville, TN-based Alladin came up with a concept that they felt just might have potential, especially in light of the fact that the largest generation of six-year-olds in history were about to enter school for the first time: a metal box/vacuum bottle combination just the right size for a kid to carry his/her lunch to school in. And seeing how metal lasted forever, and a steady supply of new customers was needed in order to do future business, what if they put a TV character’s image on the box and bottle? That way, new TV shows would create demand for new lunch boxes!

I couldn’t find any names connected with that idea, but rest assured, even Don Draper has never possessed that kind of genius.

Those original Hopalong Cassidy lunchboxes were an immediate smash success, and a tradition was born for not just Boomers, but all kids of the 20th century: a perfect-sized case that a kid would proudly lug to school and back, festooned with colorful pictures.

The metal lunch box for kids was actually born in 1935, a company called Geuder, Paeschke and Frey creating a lithographed box with Mickey mouse’s image on it. But it took postwar prosperity, TV, and the addition of a Thermos bottle for the concept to become a craze.

OK, not an actual “Thermos” bottle, but that’s what the ubiquitous containers have come to be generically called. In fact, it was Thermos who decided to jump into the lunchbox fray in 1953 with their own Roy Rogers version. And it, too, was a staggering success, the kid-sized lunchbox kit increasing the company’s overall sales revenue by 20% that year.

The companies didn’t waste any time getting more TV and movie characters onto the store shelves. And more manufacturers jumped into the lucrative market. By the late 50’s, there were ten or so different brands of lunch boxes. One of these was Ohio Art, who used lunchbox profits to develop a new toy: the Etch-a-Sketch. I am astounded to realize that I have not yet written a piece on the artistic toy, stand by for that one.

It was brilliance beyond brilliance. Besides filling a utilititarian need, new TV shows came out every fall, so there would be a continuing demand for more and more lunchboxes. Life was good.

The thing is that they were built to last forever. The quality of the metal kept getting better and better. By 1962, designs were embossed onto the boxes, replacing the flat graphics. The Thermos bottles didn’t fare so well, though. The first thing to go was the plastic cap, frequently left on the table in the cafeteria. Next, the bottle itself would fall victim to gravity, and dropping a loaded box might cause the bottle’s glass liner to shatter. However, the box itself would soldier on, eventually being sold at a yard sale, or perhaps being tossed into an attic, to be rediscovered and put on eBay in the next century

An alternative to the rectangular models came along a bit later. It mimicked the classic lunchboxes that our fathers lugged to work twenty years earlier. The kid’s model originated, once again, with Aladdin, in 1957. It was expensive paying for the rights to use TV and movie characters, so Alladin decided to make miniature versions of the blue-collar’s model, decorated with more generic (and cheaper) graphics. A Disney schoolbus model was the single largest-selling lunchbox of all time, some nine million units! Other dome-tops bore the likenesses of VW buses. Additionally, many were decorated with pirates, spaceships, cowboys, and other inexpensive kid magnets.

Lunchboxes reigned supreme throughout the 60’s. The glass vacuum bottle was replaced during that decade with a plastic foam-insulated version that was more durable. But that was the last plastic improvement.

As the 70’s started rolling along, overprotective mothers became concerned that their kids were carrying potential weapons to school. Lawsuits began to be filed, wussy legislators jumped on the bandwagon of the dangers of evil metal, and the manufacturers began feeling the heat. Starting in 1972, plastic and vinyl lunchboxes became the norm, and they were, in a word, crap.

The plastic would fade and crack, the vinyl would tear, but oh, how lucky we were to be protected from that vile steel. The popularity of the school lunchbox began to fade.

Alladin continued to make a limited amount of metal boxes, the last one celebrating Rambo in 1985. In 1998, they got out of the lunchbox business altogether. Thermos continues to make them, though, even metal ones! However, they must be careful marketing them, because obviously, one of the most horrible hazards a kid can face is being plunked in the head by a fellow student possessing that most heinous weapon of mass destruction, the metal lunch box.

Timex Watches

Ah the simple, carefree days we enjoyed as kids, when we used the sun, our mom’s yelling out the front door that lunch was ready, or the school bells to tell time.

Our lives were unencumbered by small wrist-worn machines that constantly reminded us that we were late, or that we had something important (and not fun) coming up soon, or that whatever enjoyable activity we were engaged in at the moment was temporary, and sooner of later it would be time to move on to something less enjoyable.

Ergo, many of us received wristwatches while we were kids. And for many of us, that first wristwatch was a wind-up Timex.

For me, it was 1971, when I was eleven years old. I don’t recall exactly when I was able to use the positions of the big hand and the little hand to deduce the time, but I know that I was darned good at it by that age.

My dad handed me a Timex wind-up watch. I was spellbound. Suddenly, I was a man. I now had the ability to know, within a minute or so, what time it was, even if I was in the far reaches of our forty-acre place we lived on at the time.

Sadly, my life would never be the same. That’s because I was also suddenly aware of the need to be somewhere on time.

Why a Timex watch? Several reasons. For one, they were quite affordable. Low price was one of their strong selling points. They were also durable. The watches my dad handed me were always second-hand, generally discovered in a box full of stuff purchased at a farm auction. It was a rare Timex, indeed, that failed to start ticking once it received a fresh windup.

There was another good reason our thrifty Depression-surviving parents and grandparents appreciated the Timex watch.It helped us lick the Kaiser in WWI.

The Waterbury Clock Company had been producing a “Yankee” pocket watch since the turn of the century, but when our boys were sent overseas beginning in 1917, the government commissioned them to produce a miniaturized timepiece that would fit on the wrist of a busy soldier. Once the war was over, the doughboys brought the amazing new devices home, and everybody wanted one.

By the time the Depression hit, Waterbury wristwatches were a very common sight. As the dark economic times wore on, Waterbury introduced a line of watches and clocks bearing a brand-new cartoon character which had caught on in the movie houses: Mickey Mouse. Despite the tight purse strings imposed upon them, a generation of adults managed to purchase over two million Mickey Mouse watches and clocks for their children during the 30’s.

WWII saw the government once again calling upon the corporation to help. Now called the US Time Company, they manufactured watches, of course, but more importantly, thousands of fuses for artillery and bombs which would reliably detonate them at just the right instant for maximum effectiveness.

In 1950, US Time began producing a war-proven wristwatch with serious durability. They called the line Timex. According to the Timex Museum:

Print advertisements featured the new watch strapped to Mickey Mantle’s bat, frozen in an ice cube tray, spun for seven days in a vacuum cleaner, taped to a giant lobster’s claw, or wrapped around a turtle in a tank. Despite these and other extensive live torture tests, the Timex kept ticking. When John Cameron Swayze, the most authoritative newsman of his time, began extolling the Timex watch in live “torture test” commercials of the late 1950s, sales took off. Taped to the propeller of an outboard motor,tumbling over the Grand Coulee Dam, or held fist first by a diver leaping eighty-seven feet from the Acapulco cliffs, the plucky watch that “takes a licking and keeps on ticking®” quickly caught the American imagination. Viewers by the thousands wrote in with their suggestions for future torture tests, like the Air Force sergeant who offered to crash a plane while wearing a Timex. By the end of the 1950s, one out of every three watches bought in the U.S. was a Timex.

Thus, many a Timex was spotted on adult wrists. And as those adults upgraded to nicer Rolexes and such, the previously-owned Timexes would frequently be presented to juveniles who had recently mastered the art of timekeeping.

Timex is still ticking. As a matter of fact, they have plants in the US operating, producing timepieces. That’s a rarity nowadays.

They are also highly prized among collectors. One of the coolest features of a Timex watch is that you can tell the year of manufacturing. It’s right there, on the bottom of the dial, in tiny numbers.

Thus, many of us Boomers proudly sport Timexes by choice, not by economic necessity. Digital LCD watches can be had for pennies nowadays, keeping time within seconds a day. Yet, many of us choose to sport wind-up or auto-wind Timexes that date from previous decades which require weekly or even daily adjustments in order to stay accurate.

Hey, perhaps we’re slaves to time. But we can choose our master, and some of us prefer an old, familiar, durable, friendly face.

The Decade of the Blow Dryer

Ah, the 70’s. The Me Decade. The Polyester Era. The Disco Era. I think one more moniker should be added to the list. The Decade of the Blow Dryer.

During the 1970’s, sales of hair dryers shot upwards, perhaps doubling. Why? Because MEN needed them now.

I mean think about it. Women have always had a need for hair dryers, but prior to the 70’s, what the heck would a guy use one for? Yeesh, imagine a guy putting one of those plastic bubble dryers on his head like my mom used.

But then, along came The Dry Look. Suddenly, men who had dried their hair with a bath towel were sheepishly purchasing hair dryers. Only they weren’t hair dryers. They were, you know, hot combs!

Soon, guys were spending as long as an hour on their hair. And they learned the most effective ways to run a blow dryer.

You could really screw up your locks if you dried them the wrong way. That would mean rewetting your hair and doing it again.

So, all guys soon had blow dryers in their bathrooms. And sometimes guy talk would even consist of discussing what brand of blow dryer was the best for the price, and what brand of hair spray was most effective.

What had the world come to?

As hair got big and Charlie’s-Angelish, blow dryer sales continued to skyrocket. Untold millions of hours were spent by Boomers all over the country in front of mirrors accompanied by a noisy blow dryer.

The average life of a 70’s era blow dryer was perhaps six months. Then it would either stop working cold, or would fry itself in a rank-smelling cloud of internally burning plastic. I’m not sure how long they last today, seeing how my hair care implements currently consist of Edge shaving gel and a Gillette Mach 3 razor.

Off topic, but I will share this money-saving tidbit with you. I get six months of twice-weekly shaves from the expensive Mach 3 blades by rinsing them in cold water when I’m finished, then dipping them in rubbing alcohol. Believe it or not, it works.

So, male or female, when you look at pictures of yourself circa 1976 with mounds of immaculately styled hair, think back longingly to the Decade of the Blow Dryer.

I think that might just catch on. You heard it here first!