Places – Page 3 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

Digging in the Dirt

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.

Miami, Oklahoma had some natural prairie within its city limits. That meant that over the course of thousands of years, buffalo and other large plain-dwelling herbivores had managed to keep tree growth at bay by constant grazing. As each winter would cause grass to die back, the decaying vegetative matter would add to the ever-deepening soil. The end result for me, circa 1967, was that I had some seriously great rock-free dirt in which to dig in my front yard.

I took advantage of my rich windfall by spending untold hours on my knees, patches applied to my jeans where I had worn holes, creating massive construction projects.

Dad was way too busy making a living to mess with something as trivial as keeping the lawn perfectly landscaped. That meant that the ever-shady area under the tree was largely free of grass growth, another element in the perfect dirt-digging location.

So a typical summer morning would ensue with me digging my Tonkas, Tootsietoys, green army men, and possibly G.I. Joe out of my toybox and heading out to the jobsite. That’s assuming that I had put them up from the previous session, a more likely scenario is that they had been left out there from yesterday.

With that, it was time to get to work. The bulldozer, road grader, and dumptruck were employed to make the most essential components, the roads. Their activity was accompanied by engine noises, shouted directions, and other sound effects provided by yours truly.

Once the roads were in place, then the jeeps, pickups, and perhaps even the semis could begin motoring their way around. The Tootsietoys were too small, but a kid’s short attention span might well be redirected to creating smaller pathways that would traverse root systems and such, perfectly sized for the little vehicles.

Keep in mind that there were no Hot Wheels in this picture, they had not yet been released to the ravenous Boomer youth.

By now, I had probably been joined by other neighborhood friends. Together, we accomplished some amazing engineering feats.

If the dirt had just enough moisture in it, it was possible to build huge tunnels, large enough to put Tonka vehicles into. Generally, we kids, who were heavily into shows like Rat Patrol and Garrison’s Guerrillas, would immediately assign a military use to the structure.

Of course, you know what that meant. The green army men would surreptitiously attack despite G.I Joe’s valiant efforts to keep them at bay, causing catastrophic cave-ins.

But it was okay. Digging for survivors was fun, too.

Despite the fact that I have a couple of massive sweetgum trees with lots of exposed roots in the front yard where my kids grew up, they never got into the dirt-digging thing like their old man did. I think the reason was that their grandparents provided them with enough toys and such that didn’t lend themselves to dirtwork that they never got hooked.

Too bad for me. I would have been more than happy to lend a hand constructing tunnels.

A Sleepy Ozark Fishing Village

Postcard from the Anchor Inn, Branson, Missouri, late 50’s

I wasn’t shortchanged for vacations when I was a kid. I lived in a dual-income household long before it was necessary for economic survival. So when my mom, the schoolteacher, got three months off during summer, we were assured of traveling SOMEWHERE.

A sleepy little fishing village in southern Missouri was a couple hours’ drive from my Miami, Oklahoma hometown. It was a fun, homey, funky place to get away for a couple of days. And the trout fishing was good on Lake Taneycomo, a dammed-up portion of the White River that was more of a swollen watercourse than a lake. But the ice-cold water teemed with rainbow trout.

As a result, I have fond memories of many trips to Branson. And the majority of them involve staying at the same place: the Anchor Inn, right next to the old bridge that crosses Taneycomo.

The Anchor Inn was a cottage rental outfit. The individual cottages sat among the oak trees on the top of the cliff that overlooked Taneycomo below. It had a pool that I remember as being as big as the municipal pool that still exists in Miami, but which was no doubt quite a bit smaller.

It was quite reasonable, or dad would not have been a return customer. We must have stayed at the Anchor Inn at least ten times during my childhood.

Once, though, we stayed in a different spot that had a cabin right on the lake. The rental included a boat, which I went out on with my father and older brothers many times. I was too young to fish, so my job was to keep pulling the stringer out of the water and admire the catch.

The point of this reminiscence is that Branson, Missouri was once known as a quiet little Ozark getaway, not a place where musical performers go to end their careers. 😉

In the 60’s, the musical acts consisted of the Presley Family and the Baldknobbbers. It was down home, yee-haw stuff, complete with matching buffoons in straw hats and overalls. Dad would never consider spending his hard-earned money on such nonsense. It was better destined for salmon eggs and fishing gear.

But the musical acts caught on, and today, that sleepy fishing village has turned into one of the top vacation spots in the US. Perhaps you have visited there yourself. But you probably weren’t there when you were a kid, unless you grew up in the south-central United States.

But odds are a Boomer kid has fond recollections of a similar situation where a quiet spot turned into a massive tourist attraction. If so, take today’s account of sleepy Branson, Missouri, and change the names as needed.

A Little Town Called Mayberry

Some of our memories as Boomers are so universal that we take them for granted. Practically all of us had TV’s in our households, or if not, we still had regular access to them. And the odds are overwhelming that 99.99% of us are familiar with a little town in North Carolina called Mayberry.

The Andy Griffith Show was a spinoff of The Danny Thomas Show. On February 15, 1960, an episode aired where Danny was detained by a small-town sheriff for running a stop sign. Outraged at the size of the fine, Thomas elected to sit in jail rather than pay. While in the hoosegow, he observed Sheriff Taylor’s kindly ways in dealing with Opie, his son, Otis, the town drunk (played by Frank Cady, who would go on to star as Mr. Drucker in multiple TV series), and Henrietta Perkins, played by Francis Bavier. Yes, the character names and actors were familiar, but their roles were not yet established as we know them.

The episode was a hit, and plans were made to launch a series that fall based on Mayberry’s day-to-day small-town activities. Andy Griffith was a hit from the word go, and never fell below #7 on the Nielsen ratings for its entire eight-year run.

An actor named Don Knotts watched the Danny Thomas episode and called his friend Andy Griffith when he got word that a new series was in the works. He suggested that Sheriff Taylor would need a deputy, and Griffith agreed.

Good call.

Thus, the opening episode featured Deputy Barney Fife, cousin to Andy. The family relationship was mentioned again in the second episode, then never brought up again.

The show featured a host of unforgettable characters, each with their own idiosyncrasies. Francis Bavier ended up cast as Aunt Bee, of course. There was Gomer Pyle, the simple-minded but lovable gas station attendant. Floyd the barber had many a good story, but would frequently get mixed up in the midst of telling them. Otis the town drunk knew where the keys to his cell were hanging, so he could let himself in and out as needed. Ernest T. Bass was an antisocial who delighted in throwing rocks. The Darling clan was always in trouble for moonshine, but they played some soulful bluegrass during their periods of detainment.

The public fell in love with the show at first site, but the critics? Not so much. It was ridiculed as “corn-pone humor,” an initial source of discouragement to Griffith. The reviews were soon forgotten as the show streaked towards the top in popularity, finishing its first season at #4.

The writers focused on milking the eccentricities of the characters, and the result was brilliant episode after brilliant episode. Barney became well identified as being gung-ho, courageous to a fault, and too quick on the trigger, both figuratively and literally. His idea of stopping crime?Nip it in the bud! It was great stuff when he would emerge from romantic encounters with Thelma Lou with his hair pointing every which way. Indeed, there was enough potential with Deputy Fife that he might have spawned his own spinoff.

Fortunately, that never happened. The chemistry between Taylor and Fife was simply perfect, and many have sought to duplicate it in subsequent sitcoms with little success.

Season six saw some dramatic changes. First off, the show went from black and white to color. Second, Don Knotts left the series, replaced by comedian Jack Burns as Warren Ferguson. Third, many of the initial writers left, and were replaced by a crew who took the show in a different direction.

While the ratings remained sky-high, in retrospect, most agree that it all amounted to an overall downhill turn for the series.

While slapstick was the rule in the B&W days, now, the jokes became fewer and farther between. As I recall, most episodes involved someone getting their feelings hurt. Sheriff Taylor became more of an urbane, sophisticated individual who would wisely direct who should apologize to whom. It wasn’t as much fun.

Thus, the majority agreed at jumptheshark.com that going from black and white to color was the moment that The Andy Griffith Show ceased to matter.

On a sad side note, isn’t it a shame that the great site that was Jump the Shark so horribly jumped its own shark when bought out by TV Guide?

However, Andy Griffith aired its final 1968 episode while sitting alone atop the Nielsen heap.

Many cast members went on to appear in Mayberry RFD, a regrettable follow-up which nonetheless survived until CBS’s 1971 Great Rural Purge.

It’s interesting to me that sitcoms continue to push the envelope of what’s allowed for broadcast television, daring more and more with suggestiveness, language, and controversy in an effort to capture the attention of audiences. Perhaps creative minds should look at the timeless success of the first five seasons of The Andy Griffith Show, now more popular than ever. The newest generations relate just as well to the little town of Mayberry as we Boomers do.

Food for thought?

When Everybody Smoked

If a TV show or movie about the 50’s or 60’s is REALLY authentic, it shows nearly everyone above the age of 21 having a smoke.

Our generation was perhaps the smokingest one in history, at least during those two decades. And no wonder! We were bombarded with ads on TV, radio, in newspapers, magazines, and billboards. And we had a pretty good idea that it was bad for us, but we weren’t 100% sure.

In 1947, Merle Travis’s Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette painted a dark picture of tobacco addiction and its ultimate effect: death. But it was not until 1966 that the US government finally required labeling on cigarette packs stating that “Smoking may be hazardous to your health.”

In my house, the warning had an immediate effect. Mom was a Salem chain smoker, and as soon as I was old enough to read that warning, I began hounding her to stop. She finally did, a few years later.

Smoking began declining late in the 60’s, but it was still extremely commonplace. The idea of a smoke-free restaurant, or even a smoke-free SECTION of a restaurant, was inconceivable. If you went out to eat, you smelled cigarette smoke. It was a given.

All cars had ash trays. So did the vast majority of homes. Movie stars like John Wayne hawked cigarettes, though he filmed many anti-smoking ads late in life as he fought cancer.

Speaking of the ads! TV advertising was banned in 1970. Yet, even though I was only ten when I heard my last cigarette commercial, I can easily recite at least twenty jingles and slogans that I heard over and over.

Smoking was simply cool. That’s why so many teenagers did it. There was a stern warning on cigarette machines warning minors not to operate them, but it was never enforced. Therefore, many eighteen-year-olds already had two-pack habits.

A commercial aired the same year that the warning appeared on cigarette packs that was replayed for at least twenty years afterwards. It was a kid imitating his father’s every move, including picking up a pack of cigarettes and having a look at them immediately after his father had lit up.

Smoking has a negative reputation these days. Smoking is no longer allowed in many establishments any more. You can’t smoke on US domestic air flights. But in the 50’s and 60’s, it was everywhere. We grew up smelling it, and got to where we didn’t even notice it anymore.

Shrinkage

Seinfeld added a large number of terms to the English language. One of these is “shrinkage,” but the shrinkage that is the subject of today’s piece has nothing to do with cold water in swimming pools.

If you’re like most Boomers, you don’t live in the same house in which you grew up. You probably don’t even live in the same town. In my case, I left Miami, Oklahoma at the age of eight. Though we made return trips there more or less regularly until I was sixteen or so, when I revisited the place in 1994, it was for the first time since I was a kid.

My, how the place had shrunk!

When you’re a kid, the world is a big place. You’re used to looking up at mom and dad. You’re used to standing on stools, chairs, and other makeshift ladders in order to reach things that adults can grab with ease. The concept of having things naturally fit your form is a foreign one. One of the few exceptions was the desks we sat in at grade school. They were perfect.

Growing up is a gradual process, to be sure. We don’t notice that we can now reach things we used to have to improvise on-the-fly-solutions in order to accomplish the same thing. The teenaged growth spurts that many of us males experienced might be the exception to that, I knew kids that grew three inches in a single summer. But for the most part, we just don’t notice that the world is, in fact, shrinking.

However, if we take a trip back to our hometown, it hits us. Hard.

I currently live in Bentonville, Arkansas, a town that has been experiencing growth for forty years. I imagine a kid returning here would have a hard time picking out anything he or she would recognize from their youth. The city pool is now a parking lot. The library is gone, replaced by an office building. The apple orchards that were everywhere in the 70’s are now subdivisions.

You get used to growth after a while, but the fact is that many places have stagnated, making revisits less alien to the former child.

Such is the case with Miami, Oklahoma.

On my 1994 trip, I began looking for landmarks. The drive-in theatre was gone, not even an abandoned screen left standing. But the Ku-Ku diner was still there, its giant cuckoo clock look still intact. Somehow it seemed a bit smaller, though.

I made a left turn at BJ Tunnell Blvd., which was called something else in the 60’s. I drove down the road to my dad’s old truck garage, housed in a WWII-era Quonset hut. It was tiny. When I was a kid, that place was big enough to park a B-52 in. Now, I fail to see how a semi tractor could ever squeeze in, although I remember there being two at a time in there.

It was time to turn around and seek out the house at 826 K NW. I headed back up the boulevard and turned left on K St. I parked my vehicle and tried to make sense of what I saw.

The lot on which sat my childhood home had somehow been transformed from a vast estate to a postage stamp. How could that happen? That side yard had been long enough to host a 100 yard football field, now it appeared to be perhaps 200 feet in total length.

Then, there was the house itself. It had been added onto, perhaps a third bigger than it used to be. I had a hard time recalling its appearance when LBJ was the President. But eventually, it all came together.

That driveway, once big enough to hold an entire platoon of GI Joe’s troops, was now a tiny patch of cracked concrete barely big enough for my little Toyota pickup. How did dad ever park a spacious Plymouth Fury III there?

The front yard was a tiny patch as well. That thing was once big enough to hold an army of kids playing, well, army. Now, it looked like you could cover it with four bedspreads.

That front porch had shrunken to a piece of concrete barely big enough to stand on. The front door didn’t look big enough to carry an easy chair through.

I’d had enough. I got back in the truck and drove uptown. Yep, just like I thought, Farrier’s IGA (now named something else) had gone from a vast expanse of retail squalor to a market 1/4 the size of a typical Wal-Mart. Riverview Park, formerly at least a thousand acres of vast greenery, was now a modest-sized collection of picnic tables, playground equipment, and parking places.

My stay lasted a few more hours, but I think you get the point. Can someone explain to me the physics behind the entire world of the 1960’s being about twice the size of the one we now inhabit?

Oh, I see I have a Facebook chat request from my fellow fossil-collecting buddy in Spain. Excuse me…

Going to the Doctor

I had all of the childhood ailments common to Boomer kids. Fortunately, by the time I was born in 1959, serious diseases like whooping cough, polio, and smallpox had been largely eradicated by vaccinations. But there were less dangerous but unpleasant illnesses like chicken pox, the mumps, and the flu that would require those dreaded trips to the doctor.

It seemed like I caught everything that came through town. So I was a regular customer of Dr. Wendlekin.

So, if I had to go to the doctor, I would try to concentrate on the positives.

The biggest plus, of course, was getting the sucker after all of the unpleasantness was behind you. Dr. Wendlekin had safety suckers, with a thick string for a handle. I don’t know how many kids had unfortunate experiences with cardboard sticks, but you were safe running with a safety sucker!

Another positive was Children’s Highlights magazine. Man, that Goofus was always getting into trouble, but he sure had a lot of fun! I guess he might have been one of my early role models. I enjoyed reading the magazines in their thick bolt-down plastic covers.

Then, that nurse would step out and call your name. With reluctance, you dragged yourself out of the chair and headed back to the torture chamber.

But the doctor’s office was a fascinating place in itself. All of those metal instruments were just begging to be handled out by a curious child, but I always refrained. I knew the pain that their owner could inflict, and didn’t want to give him any excuses to add to it.

Finally, Dr. Wendlekin would wander in. He was a pleasant sort who would seem genuinely pained to inform me that I needed a shot. At least he wasn’t sadistic about it. No, he was kind and patient. In those days, pediatricians weren’t so common in small towns. He was a G.P. who also delivered me at Miami Baptist Hospital, so he truly remembered me from my earliest times.

So, I would go through the exam, feeling that cold stethoscope on my chest, keeping that blasted thermometer in my mouth for an eternity, then getting jabbed in the wazoo with that hated needle.

On the way out, I would collect my reward of a safety sucker, then off to home.

At least I got a day or two off school out of the deal.

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 Kennedy era dawned, your choices to get from one coast to the other, or anywhere in the heartland, were basically three: cars, buses or airlines.

Let’s face it. Nobody traveled on the bus unless they simply had to.

That meant that you either drove the slick new Interstate Highway System, or you flew.

In my case, it mean car travel. It was 1982 before I took my first flight.

But many of us have fond 1960’s-era-memories of getting a ticket at the counter, heading directly to the departure gate, and enjoying a few hours of absolute luxury in the air.

A now-defunct website was a very valuable source of information in researching this column. For example, note these two observations by the author, who was a teenager during the 60’s:

# Flying was expensive. For example: A round trip ticket between Cleveland and Washington D.C. was about $75. This doesn’t sound like a bad deal, until you adjust the fare for inflation: That’s over $400 in today’s dollars! By contrast, I recently paid less than $100 for a round trip between Cleveland and Washington on one of today’s low-cost deregulated carriers. # There was no point in shopping around for the best deal, because all airfares were controlled by regulation. If a roundtrip ticket between Cleveland and Washington was $75 on one airline, it was $75 on all the airlines.

Lockheed Constellation at JFK’s TWA Terminal

That explains why my thrifty parents always drove, even up to Montreal for Expo 67 and Miami, Florida, both locations a long way from NE Oklahoma.

But many of us were fortunate enough to have flown, and were quite vocal about it afterwards. After all, we had just experienced the best treatment that a traveler could get. As the quote above asserts, it had to be that way, else how would we know whether Pan-Am was a better way to fly than Eastern?

The kids who had experienced air travel could hold the rest of us spellbound at recess, telling tales of seeing the earth below, the people and cars looking like ants, having stewardesses bring you food and drink until you couldn’t hold any more, and getting to places two long days in the car away in three or four hours.

Deregulation occurred in 1978, and, as mentioned before, I took my first flight four years later. Southwest Airlines sent shockwaves through the industry by offering fares for as much as half off the big boys. One of the ways that they did it was by squeezing more passengers onto a plane. They made up for it back then by offering free cocktails, but less room and less freebies would be the future of air travel, albeit with much more affordable fares.

Indeed, the glamor of air travel would be a thing of the past. In the 60’s, you wore a suit and tie or nice dress to fly. Nowadays, you wear sandals so that your footwear can be more easily scanned for incendiary devices. We are used to being crammed into seats barely wide enough for skinny wazoos. I don’t know how the more portly passengers manage. And if you want anything from the flight attendant, you’d better have your wallet ready.

But you have to admit that getting somewhere far away in a couple of hours at a bargain price is pretty nice.

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. Click on the video to see for yourself how close they came.

Naturally, we’ll all have flying cars in the future.

By the way, that guy who cringes when he pays his wife’s bill electronically is actually future game show host Wink Martindale.

All in all, this was a pretty impressive stab at how the computerized home of the future would be run. We probably would have been on Mars by now if we hadn’t decided that wasting money on space flight wasn’t less important than solving our problems on Earth.

BTW, how did that work out?

It has long been a human impulse to predict the future. George Orwell (who might have needed Lexapro 😉 predicted a cold, repressive society where your every move was watched by the governmental authorities. While some might argue that he wasn’t far off, the argument could also be made that he missed it by a mile.

Jules Verne penned Paris in the Twentieth Century in 1863, about life a hundred years hence. It too predicted a dominating government which subsidized the arts, demanding that they be simple enough for the most uneducated to understand. He also mentioned gasoline-powered automobiles, calculators, society’s strong dependence on electricity, high speed trains, and “a worldwide “telegraphic” communications network” that sounded very much like our beloved internet.

But back in the sixties, many of humankind saw themselves surviving into the next century. I was born in 1959, and I can remember looking at my father and realizing that when I was his age, it would be 2000. Profound stuff for a kid to ponder, to be sure.

What would the world be like then? Well, we would certainly be on our way to visit Jupiter with the aid of cold-storage hibernation and a sophisticated computer running the spaceship. 2001, a Space Odyssey was simply too realistic to be be inaccurate. So I took that for granted, along with future commercial travel to and from the moon. Actually, that plan is in the works, albeit in its infancy.

Another source of future speculation, at least for us youngsters, was the Jetsons. We looked forward to zipping around in our own rocket cars and having the robot maid cleaning up the various messes we would make. Indeed, many predictions about life in the 21st century revolved around, not whether we would fly to local destinations, but HOW. Would it be flying cars? Personal helicopters? Jet packs strapped to our backs?

Actually, the jet pack was around in the 1960’s. The Bell Rocket Pack was seen in James Bond movies, Lost in Space, and at live demonstrations at Disneyland. But I wouldn’t call it a common form of transportation today, even though a few private individuals own their own rocket packs.

So here we are. Some of the things we do would be viewed in amazement by our youthful selves 30-40 years ago. Yet, all in all, life in the 21st century really doesn’t look a whole lot different from life in 1967.

Florida of the 1960’s

I was very fortunate to be a change-of-life child. My older brothers weathered lean financial years growing up, typical of young families. But by the time I came along (mom’s surprise at the age of 37!), the household I was born into was a comfortable middle-class situation with dual incomes. Ergo, we enjoyed a new car every other year, Saturday night dinners out, and a couple of amazing vacations.

In 1967, we went to the World’s Fair in Montreal. That will be a future remembrance in itself.

In 1968, after much Flipper-fed begging on my part, we drove to Florida.

That two weeks make for some of my most precious memories. And it’s a pleasure to dust a few of them off and share them with you.

One June morning, we piled into the Plymouth and headed for the Sunshine State. I was in eager expectation as we headed for something I’d never seen, but always dreamed about visiting: the ocean.

My first glance of the ocean was in Biloxi, MS. I made a beeline for the shallow Gulf surf and tasted a drop of water to make certain that it really was salty, a ritual I still find myself performing when visiting either coast.

Soon, we were heading straight east along the coast for Florida. The ocean was a constant companion along the right side, and I bugged dad to death wanting to stop and jump in.

But dad had other ideas. He drove across Florida’s panhandle in a beeline for the Atlantic. Eventually, we popped out of landlocked driving at St. Augustine.

Florida of those days had less ostentatious tourist attractions. Orlando was simply a sleepy, unremarkable little inland town known for its orange production. The destinations sought out by 1960’s Florida tourists were by and large historical, natural, or kitsch, sometimes a combination of the three.

History-wise, we spent a morning at Castillo de San Marcos, a fort built at St. Augustine by Spaniards eager to defend their territory from those blasted Brits. The 17th century fortress is no worse for wear today, unlike many other 1960’s coastal attractions.

Dad knew how to take a vacation. Take two weeks and do whatever. No hurries, stop and spend time at interesting places. Thus, we stayed a night or two at a series of small motels along Route 19.

One I recall with particular pleasure was in Daytona Beach. It faced a quiet backwater beach that allowed for some bodacious sand castle building. Low tide would also reveal a wealth of undisturbed shells. The lonely beach had few people walking up and down its stretch. The gentle water would wash up sea urchin shells intact, the eggshell-thin structures handled with care by the mighty ocean.

But mom wanted to see Miami Beach, so we moved on. We passed countless mom-and-pop alligator farms and parrot shows, most of them long gone. Once in a while we would stop, thus was I able to touch an endangered indigo snake, watch parrots ride little tricycles, and take home a genuine stuffed foot-long alligator. Once we arrived at Miami, we also visited the Seaquarium. I recall disappointment that the “real” Flipper (no doubt one of her stand-ins) didn’t chatter endlessly like on television.

Reality sucks.

Mom finally saw Miami Beach, and the future of Florida. It was all huge hotels, condos, and other developments. Unimpressed, we got back on the road.

Their hundreds of billboards worked their magic on us, and we made a stop at Cypress Gardens. The water skiing exhibitions were pretty cool, but the glass-bottomed boats were what really lit my fuse. To this day, I still spend a lot of my beach time snorkeling like the eight-year-old kid I was then, utterly fascinated by the underwater world.

That was the last two-week vacation we would take. Sadly, our family just got too busy with other things to enjoy more than a week or less at locations that needed to be arrived at quickly.

I still have a deep passion for all things Florida. I once took the kids to Disney World, but now that they are grown, have no desire to return. Instead, my wife and I share a love of the simpler Florida of the 60’s. Thus, our present-day vacations involve lots of beach time, quiet boat rides to see wildlife, and an occasional indulgence into a kitschy tourist trap (just as long as it looks like it’s been around since the 60’s).

The 1960’s Arcade

A kid with a dime had many diversions to choose from when LBJ was President.

You could trek down to the corner grocery and buy yourself a couple of candy bars. You could feed a plastic capsule machine and maybe get yourself a prize worth twice that much. Or, you could slide that dime into the slot of a loud, mechanical, wonderful arcade game.

Arcades have been around since the 19th century. But it was the prosperous Boomer generation, with pockets full of change that were unprecedented in history, that caused arcades to explode in popularity.

I don’t recall any self-sufficient arcades in 1960’s Miami, Oklahoma, but they could be found in larger nearby towns like Joplin and Tulsa. We did have arcade games in the local bowling alley, as well as certain restaurants and businesses that might attract teenaged crowds.

The games were a magnet to anyone between the ages of six and sixteen. If you were old enough to see over the top (perhaps with the aid of standing on a metal chair), then you could feel the draw of the machine.

We are talking about real machines here, with moving parts. Electrical solenoids would operate with a subtle “ka-chunk!” as points were tallied, runs were scored, or moving targets were shot.

You could actually feel the gears and such operating through your interaction with the periscope handles, the lever that operated the baseball bat, or the button that shot the basketball.

Sea Devil was one of the first that used any sort of electronic graphics. You would launch your torpedo, leading the ship just enough, and would hear a “whoosh” as it sped towards its goal. A hit would be accompanied by a deep “boom!” and flashing lights viewed through the periscope.

Then there were the driving games. No, I’m not talking about moving video displays of indy cars screeching by, I’m talking about cars mounted on a wire, which was actually moved back and forth by the motion of the steering wheel! One model in particular that I played at the swimming pool clubhouse at Bella Vista, Arkansas in the early 70’s had a landscape on an endless belt that featured a road with twists, turns, and hazards. If you hit something, the game would make horrifying crash noises. Maneuvering through the rolling display with your wire-mounted car would result in a score to be boasted about to your cronies.

I was impressed with a 1950’s vintage driving game called Motorama. I found it at a terrific website called Skooldays. Boomers, not all of the nostalgia there is from our generation, but much of it is. Go have a look.

My personal favorite arcade game was baseball. While individual designs varied, they were all pretty much the same. The pitched ball would pop up out of the floor of the game, and you would operate a lever to swing the bat. Various doors in the outfield were marked with single, double, out, etc. There was a ramp in the middle which, if the ball hit it with enough speed, would be launched into the stands for a home run! The momentous event would be accompanied by cheering noises and flashing lights, as well as a feeling of well-being that only a carefree kid growing up in a great era could experience.

Our grandkids are used to games with realistic HD graphics, surround sound, and everything else that state-of-the-art electronics can offer.

But our games had one big advantage. You could play them for a dime.