This is a current shot of my old bedroom on Edgehill Ave. in Ashland.   We lived here from 1953-1956 so the house has always been the earliest one I can remember and I have not seen the interior since a few days after I finished kindergarten in 1956.   It is currently listed as a HUD property for $24K,  and was last sold in 2000 for $87K.  So apparently as Ashland home prices began crashing six years ago the owners defaulted on their underwater loan and stripped easily sold stuff from the home.  Note that both my closet doors are missing.   This is a perverse form of shoplifting that devalues the property far more than any scrap value.

By way of REALLY CREEPY childhood Christmas images,  I leave you at year-end with the single strangest character populating the NE Ohio airwaves during my youth. 

Mr. Jingeling was the "Keeper of the Keys" to Santa's workshop - a holiday tradition in the Cleveland area.  Mr. Jingeling was sponsored by Halle's, a local department store. He served as the store's holiday season spokesman on television and also acted as Santa's representative in the store.

Mr. Jingeling became the "Keeper of the Keys" as a reward for saving Christmas when Santa lost the key to his Treasure House of Toys. Jingeling saved the day by making a new key.

Mr. Jingeling's theme song:

Mister Jingeling/How You Tingeling/Keeper of the Keys

On Halle's Seventh Floor/We'll be Looking for/You to Turn the Keys

He Keeps Track/Of Santa's Sack/And Treasure House of Toys

With Wind Up Things/That Santa Brings/To All Good Girls and Boys

Variation:

"Mr. Jingeling/How you tingeling/Keeper of the Keys"

"Don't you dare be late/For you have a date/On Halles' Seventh Floor"

24 November 2013:  The Wrecking Crew....

TCM showed this 1968-69 Matt Helm movie yesterday with an introduction by Ben Mankiewicz (try spelling his name without looking it up).   It was (and is) the all-time ultimate eye-candy film.  At the time the draw for me was Elke (reprising her "Deadlier Than The Male" bad girl role) but I left more impressed with the other two actresses.   Tate really nailed this role (her best performance) and Kwan was simply dazzling.

Somewhere I still have the lobby cards I was able to talk the manager of the theater in Gettysburg into giving me after it finished playing there.   They went up on the cinder block walls of my freshman dorm room wall with the poster of Bridget Bardot on a motorcycle.

  A couple years later I dragged a bunch of guys from my barracks in San Angelo, Texas to the drive-in to see the film.   All were entertained and  were especially attentive to the extended martial arts fight between Sharon Tate and Nancy Kwan,  what they say about men and catfights is not an exaggeration.

As an unneeded but much appreciated bonus,  the film opened with this sequence featuring "Hazel's" Lynn Borden,  as Matt's phone girl "Miss Long Distance".  She is wearing a white phone on her chest and a particularly hot outfit.   Mrs. Baxter always looked good but she never had this much sizzle.  Four years later Lynn would do the low budget shocker "Frogs" with an aging Ray Milland and a young Sam Elliott. 

Bruce Lee was used to coach the actresses and choreograph their extended fight sequence. 

11 October 2013: 

 They're Coming To Take Me Away

The sounds of the approaching garbage truck early Wednesday morning for some reason set this song playing in my head, particularly the verse about "the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds".

This was a 1966 novelty record by Jerry Samuels, recorded under the name Napoleon XIV.  The song became an instant success in the United States, peaking at #3 that summer.  In some areas radio programmers removed the song from their playlists, fearing an adverse reaction from people who might consider the song as ridiculing the mentally ill.

I did not buy the 45 or this later album (the song got on your nerves after a few plays like "itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie, yellow polka-dot bikini"), but it was a big hit the summer we left Ashland for Strongsville.   And it resurfaced in 1975 on the Dr. Demento's Delights album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzHtm1jhL4

And they're coming to take me away ha haaa

They're coming to take me away ho ho hee hee ha haaa

To the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds

And basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes

And they're coming to take me away ha haaa

The lyrics describe the effect on the mental health of an individual after a break-up. The main character is seemingly addressing an ex-girlfriend, and describes his descent into madness after she has left him. He believes he is being pursued by "men in white coats" (i.e., psychiatric attendants) who are coming to transport him to the mental hospital and welcomes them as an end to his misery. At the end of the song however, it appears that instead of talking about an ex-girlfriend, it is really about his dog ("Well you just wait, they'll find you yet, and when they do, they'll put you in the ASPCA you mangy mutt").

This is the flip side of the 45, which was simply the A-side played in reverse, and given the title "!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT".   The label affixed to the B-side was a mirror image of the front label (as opposed to simply being spelled backward).

In his Book of Rock Lists, rock music critic Dave Marsh calls "!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT" the "most obnoxious song ever to appear in a jukebox ", saying the recording once "cleared out a diner of forty patrons in three minutes flat."  I suspect that all this inspired those later claims of songs having satanic messages when played backwards, which became so numerous that they were even parodied in the mockumentary about "The Rutles".

Stig, meanwhile, had hidden in the background so much that in 1969, a rumor went around that he was dead. He was supposed to have been killed in a flash fire at a waterbed shop and replaced by a plastic and wax replica from Madame Tusseaud's. Several so-called "facts" helped the emergence of this rumor. One: he never said anything publicly. Even as the "quiet one," he'd not said a word since 1966. Two: on the cover of their latest album, "Shabby Road," he is wearing no trousers, an Italian way of indicating death. Three: Nasty supposedly sings "I buried Stig" on "I Am The Waitress." In fact, he sings, "E burres stigano," which is very bad Spanish for "Have you a water buffalo?" Four: On the cover of the "Sergeant Rutter" album, Stig is leaning in the exact position of a dying Yeti, from the Rutland Book of the Dead. Five: If you sing the title of "Sergeant Rutter's Only Darts Club Band" backwards, it's supposed to sound very like "Stig has been dead for ages, honestly." In fact, it sounds uncannily like "Dnab Bulc Ylno S'rettur Tnaegres."

 The Monkees' song "Gonna Buy Me a Dog", features Davy teasing Micky toward the fade of the song with the words "they're coming to take it away, ha ha" taken from Napoleon XIV's song.  This was their worse popular single but one of their better video sequences. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSJC-YDcS80

9 October 2013:  

Edie Adams

Also deserving of mention is this smoking hot comedian,  probably no woman in her mid-to-late 30's has ever been the object of so many adolescent fantasies as Edie, thanks to her "Hey Big Spender" Muriel Cigar commercials.  After all, she was only a couple years younger than most of our mothers.   It didn't hurt that her curvy figure was poured into those sequined dresses and I like to think that the parody element of the whole thing added to her appeal.  Her "titillation in a classy package" marketing approach would soon be copied by the marketers of other consumer products.

Noxzema Shaving Cream paid homage to Edie with several "Take It Off" girls,  the best of which would come in the late 70's with "Auntie Friction";  she appeared in a 19th century dress and would take off her glasses and hat, let down her hair, and morph into a show girl.  

ClickForMoreAuntie-Friction

It turns out that Caroline Munro was the actress playing Auntie Friction.   Caroline appeared in two Noxzema Shaving Cream commercials. “Great Balls of Comfort” and “Auntie Friction” were banned in the South because Caroline did naughty things with her eyes.

https://sites.google.com/site/baby1950boomer/jeffs-baby-boomer-blog/susan-dey/auntie-friction

We Baby Boomers got someone nearer our age in 1968-69 when Joan Parker (at age 23) became the Dodge Fever Girl.   In miniskirt and white go-go boots she was the perfect symbol of the 60's, and for my money the all-time hottest advertising babe.  For a great discussion of Dodge "Mopar" girls and their associated cars check out this article:

http://phscollectorcarworld.blogspot.com/2012/08/whatever-happened-to-dodge-fever-and.html

Joan Parker goes go to bigger things and passes the Dodge Girl white hat to Cheryl Miller, who we knew from "Daktari" and "The Monkey's Uncle".  I have zero recollection of Cheryl's Dodge commercials,  but she was known as "The Material Girl" (Madonna would steal the name 15 years later) because she asked television viewers if they were Dodge material.

3 October 2013:  

Daniel Boone

For those who missed it, Patricia Blair passed away last month and Fess Parker three years earlier.   I also discovered that Pernell Roberts passed a few months before Fess Parker. 

Roberts played Adam Cartwright for six seasons, leaving in general disgust after the 1964-65 season.   "Bonanza" was in many ways an extremely silly show although the producers of "The Big Valley" seemed to learn from it and not make it necessary for the adult children to ask their parent for permission before doing anything.   To me "Bonanza" crashed and burned with his departure, as the once diverting "Hoss and Little Joe" comedy pairing lost most of their appeal without his more serious counterpoint.  For his part Roberts soon lost his hair which was extremely disillusioning for all of us. 

"...the ruggedly handsome actor who shocked Hollywood by leaving TV's "Bonanza" at the height of its popularity, then found fame again years later on "Trapper John, M.D.," has died. He was 81".

You would think that stuff like these deaths would be bigger news,  I typically learn about them several years after the fact.   Perhaps we boomers receive enough reminders of getting old without this type of news.

OK, just an excuse for me to post another photo of Veronica Cartwright,  but at the time the show was being broadcast (about 1967) our Regional TV Guide published a memorable 4-panel photo of Patricia Blair doing a reverse striptease to show off the layers of lingerie she wore under her Becky Boone costume.   This was as risque as anything I recall finding in a mainstream publication in those days.  Tame by today's standards,  but I would  buy that photo for its nostalgia value if I ever found it for sale on Ebay.

24 September 2013 

Rip Kirby In the Plain Dealer

I recently and unexpectedly reconnected with someone from my Ashland days,  someone who had also been into comics and comic books and this has awakened some old memories.

My favorite newspaper comic strip was "Rip Kirby".  It ran daily in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (there was no Sunday strip) and was created by Alex Raymond in 1946, who by that time had "Flash Gordon" and "Jungle Jim" to his credit.  By the time I started reading the daily "Rip Kirby" strip it was being drawn by John Prentice.  I am still in awe of Prentice's work, especially his beautiful women.  As seen in these two examples,  Prentice's work with faces produced an almost photographic illusion, but upon close examination  the style is almost spartan.

This particular story concerned a devious secretary named Vicki, and was probably the story that first hooked me and turned me into an avid follower.  The image is from a Spanish reprint I recently discovered,  The original English language version ran in the Plain Dealer in 1964.

Described by Stephen Becker as "modern and almost too intellectual", the strip eschewed many of the pulp detective tropes (e.g. alcoholism, two-fisted assistants). Instead, "[Rip] did more cogitating than fisticuffing, and smoked a pipe while he did it;" "had a frail, balding assistant ... instead of a two-fisted sidekick;" "had a steady girlfriend... and if that wasn't enough, he even wore glasses!

8 September 2013:

 Paternal Grandparents

Well gosh, where do I go with this one and why am I going there?   I guess I am trying to illustrate the often discussed "Seven UP" concept that each of us has been fully formed by the age of seven.  With our subsequent lives taking place in the reactive stew of those early years,  our destiny already established and our free will largely an illusion.

"Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man."  Starting in 1964 with "Seven UP," The UP Series has explored this Jesuit maxim. The original concept was to interview 14 children from diverse backgrounds from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. Every seven years, renowned director Michael Apted, a researcher for Seven UP, has been back to talk to them, examining the progression of their lives.

And that doesn't even entirely factor in genetic heredity - in my case a linage of "mad as a hatter" traits on both sides.

My paternal grandfather died in February 1953, when I was two and a half years old.   My paternal grandmother died in June 1957, a few days after I finished first grade and less than two months before I turned seven.   There was nothing overtly traumatic to me about their deaths,   I was kept rather distanced and was too young to question the comforting stories about them looking down on us from heaven.  Although I have always had a lot of warm memories of them, it really wasn't until recently that I tried to examine how they and their deaths impacted my development.  Finding myself over 50 years later spending a rainy afternoon grieving outside the house they had lived in on Walnut Street.  A house that I had last been inside with my father during the summer of 1957,  helping him to sift through the modest contents of their estate.

As their first and for several years their only grandchild,  I was the center of their universe.  And as they lived much closer than my maternal grandmother (for whom I was the fifth of many grandchildren) they were my secondary caregivers.

My brother and only sibling was born two months after my fourth birthday.  Having your parents to yourself for over four years and then getting someone competing for their attention can be expected to cause resentment.  Our situation was further complicated by his being a colicy baby.  His colic started within weeks of my mother's return from the hospital and went on for many months.  Baby colic is defined as episodes of crying for more than three hours a day for more than three days a week for three weeks in an otherwise healthy child between the ages of two weeks and one year.  The cause of colic is generally unknown and rarely due to any organic disease.  I suspect that in my brother's case it was caused by my mother's chronic cigarette smoking.  With colic, periods of crying most commonly happen in the evening and for no obvious reason. Associated symptoms may include legs pulled up to the stomach, a flushed face, clenched hands, and a wrinkled brow. The cry is often high pitched (piercing).

Most evenings just as I was trying to get to sleep his crying would begin in the next room,  with my mother and father rushing to and from his room in a generally futile effort to get it to stop.  Babies with chronic colic are often abused by parents - shaken baby syndrome especially - not the case with my brother but I suspect that I would have been delighted at the time by news of his murder.  There is little doubt in my mind that my endless nights of sustained torture completely suppressed any desire I might have developed for conceiving my own children.  And it may have been at least one reason why my parents did not feel compelled to expand our little family group by adding a third child.

 My parent's intense focus on my brother that year began an unconscious estrangement process in me and I would grow increasingly self-sufficient from that point forward.  My anger and feeling of betrayal would displace much of my desire to please them,  and I consciously refused to lower myself by competing with him for their attention.  This was a permanent lifelong change,  and a kind of self-fulfilling action as they would come to naturally favor the attention and approval seeking child who aggressively curried their favor.   I suspect that this would have been more overt on their part  had not my brother's frequent histrionics  (his most salient character trait) wore them down,  and I often sensed their relief in having at least one low maintenance child - no matter how detached.   This is a fundamental birth order dynamic but it was more pronounced  with us than with most families.

But this is  not only a story of rejection and alienation, but one of security.   The years of having my parents to myself and the interactions with my father's parents had planted within me a strong sense of self.  I think this was cemented to my being,  I don't think any amount of subsequent trauma could have cracked it.  Despite this, their abandonment fundamentally rocked my sense of confidence and what had been a mild quality of shyness began to increasingly assert itself in my personality.  A child who could not help but feel he was now living precariously, having had his security and joy suddenly taken away --  angry but too self-possessed to do anything but blink away the tears and pretend it doesn't hurt. 

I now believe (from middle of the night moments of clarity - insert "Superego" here) that the death of my grandmother the summer after first grade impacted me much more than anyone (including myself) suspected at the time.  I think the loss generated a huge amount of suppressed anger and also that I would never again allow myself to feel the unconditional love that I had felt for her.   Perhaps most interesting in retrospect is that my relationship with them was so private,  even after their  deaths I felt that they were mine alone.  No one suspected the extent of my loss,  perhaps because sharing it would be like sharing them which would have somehow diminished our connection.  I still have his pocket watch and his fireman's cap and badge.  I have her cookie jar and photo albums.

Life would go on for me,  unconsciously a Nietzsche superman who masters himself and strikes off conventional “herd morality” to create his own values.  Perhaps the one quality most shared with my brother (yikes - my poor parents).   Consciously I was brutally perceptive,  but the one-dimensional self-loathing was tempered with a detached objectivity.  I marveled at rather than cursed the disconnect between my grandiose self-image and the resources at my disposal with which to interact with the world.  Sometimes horrified at my physical limitations but mostly amused at the sheer absurdity of the lowly situations I found myself in each day.   The game was never even close;  and while the anger of alienation was a constant presence, the sheer distance between what I had once expected and where I found myself acted as a moderating agent.  Otherwise I was defenseless.  

As the years go by I am frequently disappointed by the discovery of occasions where I  overestimated someone and attributed a temporal superiority to them.  Not a classic disillusionment so much as a lessening of the distance, calling into question the rationale for my refusing to fully get into the game. 

My grandfather at the wheel of an Ashland firetruck in the 1930's, the photo was taken in front of the old Lutheran Church where I was baptised.

Click her for a larger version

19 August 2013: 

 MiniTanks

"MiniTanks" ... If you don't know the word you have a lot of company.   They are HO (1:87) scale tanks and soldiers that began appearing in local hobby shops in 1963 and 1964, mostly from the WWII period.

But for me it all started with the Avalon Hill board game "Gettysburg".  My father got the first version (1958),  with the intention of developing something similar for other Civil War battles.  He had a partner (probably Bill McCoy) and they briefly worked on the idea and then lost interest.  I inherited the game in the early 1960's and from it learned the principles of war gaming.  At about the same time I stumbled on the MiniTanks display at Glasco's Drug Store and discovered that another guy in my class had a later version of the Gettysburg game.   I believe that he had done some preliminary work on a WWII version.  I don't recall the entire sequence of events but soon after this we began building MiniTank armies (he bought the American equipment and I bought the German) and experimenting with war game rules.  Lining the plywood sheets of our old train boards with movement squares and spending entire Saturdays in our basements in simulated tank battles - often with more than 100 vehicles per side.  Soon for us the MiniTank thing had completely supplanted the secret agent craze.   Two other guys joined up,  specializing on a lesser scale in Russian and British MiniTanks.  This all became quite sophisticated and continued until our family moved away during the summer of 1966. 

I'm sure that we were not alone in this activity but we were at the vanguard of what was to became a huge war gaming industry,  which would spin off a few years later into Dungeons & Dragons and eventually into the whole video gaming thing.   I am rather proud (even amazed - given our age and our limited financial resources) that we took this concept as far along as we did.  The "Gettysburg" game gave us the concept but the rest was original thinking on our part.

Gettysburg's 1958 version was basically a miniatures game on a map. You used range cards both to move your units and then to check their firing range. Units could rotate on their centers before checking with a range card, which was placed along the front side of the rectangular pieces. You got better odds hitting from a flank. Artillery had double range of infantry or cavalry.

The game also had optional rules for hidden movement. You left the room while your opponent put his pieces on the board and moved them, recorded their new positions and removed them again! If they came within sight of a unit (including an outpost unit), he had to tell you where they were seen, or leave them on the board if still in sight. Line of sight rules for all this.

My favorite MiniTanks battle was a version of the "Gettysburg" hidden movement concept.  Richard Hall had rigged up a movie screen in the exact middle of the game board in his basement, so that an opponent's set up of tanks and men was hidden from view.  I was just beginning to set up conventionally when it occurred to me that an effective strategy with the screen (I was to move first that day) would be to simply crowd all of the equipment up against the screen.  Then when the screen was lifted I could advance into his territory and fire at close range.  Hopefully enough of his equipment would be visible and I could put his stuff out of action before he had a chance to return fire.  That day the strategy proved so successful that our rules were modified to restrict its future use.

11 August 2013:  

Plastic Model Kits:

These, along with baseball cards, toy soldiers,  and comic books, were my childhood obsessions.   I had an aptitude for building them and had inherited enough of my father's graphic artist skills to properly paint them.   I even won a nice cash prize in a contest conducted by the S. S. Kresge dime store on Main Street.

We had taken a vacation to Niagara Falls in the summer of 1961 and aside from the chance to buy fireworks (illegal in Ohio and surrounding states)  Louis Tussaud's wax museum made the biggest impression.  It is noticeably similar to Madame Tussaud's (Madame Tussaud was the great-grandmother of Louis Tussaud) due to how the figures are placed in the reach of visitors.  Joan of Arc and Lord Nelson were my favorite exhibits.  I recall staring transfixed at both exhibits and peppering my father with questions. 

The Nelson figure showed him lying below decks on the "Victory" mortally wounded, the deck was painted red and the exhibit explained that this was done so that the blood was less visible, that in the surgeon's area during a battle the deck was literally awash in blood.  

In any case Kresge's promotional contest required you to buy one of their model kits, assemble it, and display it in their storefront at the conclusion of the contest entry period.   I chanced on the contest during one of my after school explorations of downtown.  I would walk down the length of Main Street pausing at various stores on my way home on afternoons when I elected to not take the school bus home.   Kresge had a model of Nelson's ship (H.M.S. Victory) for sale and what with my Nelson interest this seemed like a good choice for the contest.  It was relatively expensive and I had never built anything like it but the construction and the painting went well.  I even painted on a copper bottom.

Assembling plastic model kits taught me the importance of not rushing things to completion.  The temptation was to slap them together, stand back and admire your work, and then show them them to your parent's and friends.  After that you had to look at them for years and wish that you had done a better job.   But having inherited a fair amount of my father's depression-era thrift tendencies I eventually realized that I was short-changing myself on the value of the product.  That it made the most sense to assemble less kits,  but to assemble them flawlessly, even though it postponed gratification. 

Original price was 25 cents.  It had a built-in brush; attached to the cap.  This was my preferred model glue.  "Welds"  is exactly what it did, as it liquified the plastic edges on two pieces which then fused together when the cement evaporated.  Although less messy that tube glue it was not forgiving, if you melted an edge you could not simply scrape it off and start over.  

Testors is still in business selling this type of stuff.  This was their standard paint package in baby boomer days.  It was also possible to buy colors individually and some hobby stores had racks of these little bottles and many additional colors.  I fixated on silver and copper for a while as their reflective metallic qualities were almost magical.  When doing camouflage patterns on planes and tanks I would buy a spray can of dull coat (a clear finish that dried dull).  Sometimes it made sense to get spray cans of several colors and spray the plastic pieces before assembly. 

5 August 2013

Dick Dauch

 Just read about the passing of Dick Dauch, another figure from my Ashland boyhood. 

Dick was a star running back for Ashland High School (Class of 1960) who later played for Purdue.  But he was eight years older and slightly before my time,  although I did attend many high school football with my parents while in grade school during the late 50's and early 60's.  They built a new stadium in 1962 for both the high school and the college.  The old stadium (Redwood Field - I think the stands were made of redwood) was next to the college and we used it for 7th grade football before the college tore it down and built a dorm on the site.  Prior to 1962 we went to the occasional Friday night high school game at Redwood,  meeting at my Aunt and Uncle's house on Grant Street and walking over to the football field as a large mixed group of adults and children.   So I'm sure that I saw Dick play but have no specific memory of him from his high school days.

While at Purdue Dick married Sandy Rule, his high school sweetheart and the daughter of close friends of my parents.  The Rule's were on my Times-Gazette paper route and occasionally in Junior High I would mow their lawn.   I got to know them during this time independent of my parent's relationship with them,  this was a period of huge alienation for me from all adults and for me to have grown closer to someone during that period speaks volumes about what very special people they were.  I was always testing relationships and stubbornly refusing to please people, but deep down I sensed that they genuinely liked me and my behavior around them was markedly different.  When we moved away from Ashland in 1966 there was serious consideration given to my staying with them so that I could finish out high school there.  In retrospect it was probably not such a good idea,  our relationship might not have survived as my final two high school years would have been difficult ones even in Ashland.  On the other hand there was very little about the two years in Strongsville that I would not have been happy to have missed.  The best that could be said is that it made fraternity pledging and Air Force Basic Training comparatively pleasant experiences.

Sandy and Dick would frequently return to Ashland and stay with her parents.  And often Dick was in the driveway washing his car when I came by with the paper.  He was always nice to me and I just thought of him as Sandy's husband.  Then one day I came by with a guy I was training to be my substitute and to eventually take over the route.  Dick and I said hello to each other and as we walked away the guy with me said with a trace of awe: "that was Dick Dauch - you know Dick Dauch".  Turned out that his brother had been in Dick's class at AHS and he knew a lot more about Dick as a legendary athlete than I did.  

In 2003 they gave a considerable amount of money to Ashland University, and the Richard E. and Sandra J. Dauch College of Business and Economics is named after them.

21 July 2013:  

The Skotch Cooler:

Touring Antique Malls in Springfield Ohio over the 4th of July I found a few metal picnic coolers,  the most collectible being those with soft drink logos (red ones for Coca-Cola, blue ones for Pepsi, white ones for 7-Up).  If you have ever thought about it these are unique to Boomers as the concept did not start until after WWII.  They grew out of the portable mermite food insulators in widespread use by the army in the war.   A lot of these made it into surplus stores after the war and a few years later consumer versions were being produced. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZgpZmJH0N0

Metal Mermites (or military insulated food containers) were still in use when I left the active Army Reserve in the mid-1980's and I'm sure a more modern version (plastic) is still in use.   It was a great design,  particularly for taking hot food out into the field. 

In 1957 my parents purchased a Skotch Cooler for picnics.  It was not as complicated as a Mermite but it was almost as durable,  ours was still around and functional when I liquidated my parents estate in 1998.

The cooler came with these 8oz. cans of some unknown liquid.  You would freeze them the night before a picnic and then put them inside the cooler instead of ice cubes.  They could be reused and they did not get things soggy.

This is a later version, note the red plastic handle, the plaid lid,  and the stitching.  I include it to illustrate an interesting process that 1948-52 boomers still use to date things from our childhood.  The transition from metal to plastic occurred right before our eyes.  Our lunch boxes had metal handles, those of our younger siblings had plastic handles.  Same with the wheels on our toys and pretty much any durable consumer goods. 

10 July 2013:  

Is Wendy Getting Enough Sleep?

Baby Boomers were the "Duck & Cover" kids, the first generation that grew up with the constant danger of atomic war.  Truth be told though, we never held any duck & cover drills at Osborn Elementary, despite being next to the Ohio National Guard Armory - which we kids regarded as a ground zero priority target.  To varying degrees the threat of nuclear war gave us a fatalistic view of life on the planet.  But I'm not convinced that we did a lot of obsessive worrying about it.  Instead we worried about sundry other issues like whether Wendy "The Good Little Witch" was getting enough sleep.

Unlike Wendy, her aunts have green wartish skin of the type associated with Margaret Hamilton style witches; as do most of the adult witches seen in Wendy's stories.  To us this implied that it is a trait witches develop after reaching a certain age.  Then in one story it was disclosed that this occurs because witches don't get enough sleep.  So we began to worry about Wendy's sleep habits.

9 July 2013 

Notable Day

Big day today,  42 years after basic training I'm back to "no" hair.  I finally caved in for Stephanie (my barber) who has felt for a long time that it is the way I should go.  Long ago I surrendered to my hair and since then have pretty much let it do what it wants, which is all follicles forward.  So having a style that needs no tending makes sense.  And it is kind of fun just to change things around.  She kept me turned away from the mirror until she had finished to the maximize the shock value, which was considerable.  Yow!!

Last time I got clipped like this was almost exactly 42 years ago at Lackland Air Force Base, and unlike this morning I had the moral support of 59 other guys going through an identical trauma.  Getting my hair back after that shearing was a struggle because it is so fine and it stands up straight until it gets to be about two inches long (especially the crown).  Once it began to lie down by itself it was for the long haul because I had learned that reversing the process was not easy.

Of course I had some version of a butch haircut until I was 15 and probably would have continued but for it being as square as white socks in the late 1960's.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k__l8OwhIHs

Had to ease into it back on June 11th by getting it down to a half inch,  but went all the way today.  Did not think about Robin's haircut on "Empire Records" until I got home and looked in the mirror.  I could watch that film 50 times every year.   That got me to the soundtrack album on I-Tunes where I was reminded of this song (with which I have a heavy identification - if I needed to cry on camera I would simply use these lyrics) and one of my top 10 videos of all time:

"Bright as Yellow"  The Innocence Mission

And you live your life with your arms stretched out.

Eye to eye when speaking.

Enter rooms with great joy shouts,

happy to be meeting.

And I do not want to be a rose.

I do not wish to be pale pink,

but flower scarlet, flower gold.

And have no thorns to distance me,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3lBjVg2yrU

Even if I'm shouting, even if I'm shouting here inside.

Even if I'm shouting, do you see that I'm wanting,

that I want to be so

bright,

bright,

bright as yellow,

warm as yellow.

While with this stream of consciousness,  I watched part of "Back to the Future" yesterday on cable.  I saw it in a theater in 1985 and much of it takes place 30 years earlier in 1955.  At the end Doc Brown goes 30 years into the future which would have been 2015.  Scary part for me was the realization that in a couple years it will be a longer span of time since the film was released than it was for them to go back to 1955.  WOW!!

My favorite scene.

(postscript - note the similarity of Karen's & Lea's dresses - not intentional)

2 July 2013:  

150th Anniversary of The Battle of Gettysburg:

This ties into my boomer memories because our family first visited Gettysburg 50 years ago for the 100th anniversary.  Mom and Dad had been there before but not my brother and I.  I've always laughed about the National Museum with the Electric Map.  It's pack-rat owner piled up tons of exhibits and artifacts,  the Electric Map was his draw; it was featured on highway billboards and barns throughout central Pennsylvania.  Yet the item that most impressed me was tucked away on a bottom shelf of a dimly lit cabinet in the basement.  It was a 100 year-old jar of peaches canned from trees in the Peach Orchard.  It was a bit murky but you could still tell that they were peaches and something about that seemed more amazing to me than anything else we saw on the entire trip.

1963 was my first introduction to Larson's Motel on Seminary Ridge.  We would stay there again in 1967 when investigating Gettysburg College, and I would work there as night clerk during the summer of 1969.  The Larson Brothers opened their Dutch Pantry Restaurant sometime between our two visits.  As I recall we mostly ate at The Peace Light Inn and the Lamppost Restaurant.  The Lamppost was on Carlisle Street, beside the house in which I rented a room during the summer of 1969.  The room was not air-conditioned although I did have a fan in one of the windows and had fortunately selected a room on the eastern side of the house which was sheltered from the afternoon sun.

2017 Update:  The property has been demolished after its purchase by the Civil War Preservation Trust although the two historical buildings on the site remain.  There goes yet another connection to my misspent youth.  At this rate when I die I won't be leaving behind anything with which I was familiar.  Funny thing about these preservation groups is the original parts of the motel are as historically important to the site as what happened during July 1963,  yet they gave no thought to integrating them into their narrow vision for the property.   I won't be remembering them in my will.

What was unique about our 1963 visit was that tents had been set up by battlefield relic sellers just across the road from the motel.  The variety of stuff they had for sale and the low prices would boggle the mind of anyone visiting a Civil War Collectors Show today.  Reading about the 2014 sale to the Civil War Preservation Trust revealed that the Larson's owned the small parcel of land where these tents were in 1963 which explains why the activity was allowed to take place so near the battlefield.

23 June 2013: 

 Tree House of the August Moon (and clubhouses)

As we got older we graduated from foxholes to treehouses,  inspired by the "Swiss Family Robinson" movie which hit theaters when we were in 5th grade.  It could not have been released at a better time for having an inspirational impact and is another example of our tracking through childhood at the absolute perfect time. 

Using my baseball card dating method we began building tree houses this summer.

Since we lived in a new neighborhood,  trees were at a premium in most yards and we had to look elsewhere for suitable construction sites.  Our favorite was the old Duff Farm tree line in back of the Kroger and Firestone stores,  a 20 yard wide line of trees dividing a large field.  It had  been planted by the first farmer on the land because he wanted it to serve as a windbreak, this was a common practice in the flat Midwest.   The tree line did not contain any huge Swiss Family Robinson trees, but it did have clumps of medium size trees close enough together that you could use four of them as your main supports.  Unfortunately our constructive tendencies were equaled and often exceeded by our destructive ones.  As much fun as it was to gather scrap wood from construction sites and slap it together for your own tree house, it was more fun to destroy someone else's project.  So while it might have been enjoyable to play in a finished tree house, they rarely got put up fast enough for a finished product and the finished ones did not last very long.

They were crude affairs in any case, with two notable exceptions.  The first was constructed by Mike Brucato's father in just one week-end.  Mr. Brucato was a industrious guy who was always taking on some kind of project.  He found a bunch of  scrapped ceramic panels at work one week,  brought them home on a Friday afternoon, and the next thing we knew an enclosed tree house was up and ready for occupancy.  He used the panels for the roof and sides.  Unfortunately they were brittle and within a couple weeks had all be shattered by other kids.  The floor and frame stayed up there for a while but no one tried to fix it back up.

A few months later a group of older kids tried again.   Using the same four trees they built an enclosed tree house about ten feet above the remains of Sam Brucato's.  They padlocked it but there was little need for this because they had borrowed a technique from the telephone & electric poles in the neighborhood.  The steps did not start until 15 feet up the tree.  To get up there you needed to bring a long ladder or shinny up one of the supporting trees.  None of us elementary age boys could do that.  This tree house lasted a bit longer than usual but was finally destroyed by sawing through one of the supporting trees. 

My last tree house was a solo effort in a very large Sycamore tree sitting all alone in a field just off what is now Country Club Lane;  which was a couple years away from being graded and paved although I think the surveyor's stakes were in place.  The Hillcrest - Sloan intersection was then the SE edge of town. I think the spot is now part of the back nine of the Ashland Country Club,  about thirty yards from the creek.  This tree was Swiss Family Robinson big and had the great peeling bark of a mature Sycamore.  By this time I had wised up and selected a location further from the neighborhood.  And I only built a floor where I could sit and read in splendid isolation and shaded comfort.  It survived for several years and a trace of it probably remained when new development took the tree itself. 

I will throw in a brief discussion of playhouses as that seems a related topic.  The only good one in our neighborhood was the work of the same guy who build the tree house I mentioned.  He built this in his backyard and we slept out in it several times.  Debbie and Barbara had a nice one in their backyard down in Jeromesville,  which my parents inherited when they bought the house.  It is till standing, at least in part because my father lined the base with old printing plates from Garber's to keep out the groundhogs.  Most of the well-built playhouses became storage sheds once the kids in the family had outgrown them.  My father never built one for us but my brother got a plastic one for Christmas one year.  It was made of brown plastic panels molded like logs.  Once bolted together you could pretend to be a hardy pioneer in your log cabin.  My brother kept it on our patio for a couple summers until it began to fall apart and then it was trashed. 

John Mills and Dorothy McGuire climb up into the multi-tier "Swiss Family Robinson" tree house in the December 1960 Disney movie. 

Our tree houses were never this elaborate but were more in line with the one below, the the same method of access - boards nailed to the side of the tree leading to an opening in the floor of the tree house.

We had given up on tree houses by 8th grade.   But deep in the woods on the other side of the creek (the top of the hill of what is now the Hillcrest extension) I discovered an isolated spot just outside the fence of Jack's farm.  The farm was where a couple years earlier Craig and I learned how to milk cows and had actually helped Jack with the milking.  This was about 250 yards NE from my Sycamore tree.   I began building a large lean-to for camping in this spot and enlisted the sometimes help of Brian, Dick, and Doug.  We took steps to avoid leaving an obvious trail to this location and it escaped detection.  We covered the first layer of tree limbs with a plastic sheet and secured that by putting a few limbs on top of it.  What with the plastic and the overhang of live trees we could sleep out there and stay dry even in a fairly nasty rainstorm.  One of my last memories of Ashland was Doug and I camping out there the first night of summer vacation in 1966.  We would move to Strongsville a few weeks later.

Our nights in the lean-to were really continuations of the backyard tent sleepovers we had held throughout the neighborhood when we were younger.  If you didn't have a tent you put sheets over a picnic table and it worked fine for the illusion.  I made one of these especially memorable for a half dozen of my friends one summer night.  They were sleeping out in one of their backyards and earlier in the day had refused to let me join them (limited space but they had been particularly nasty about the refusal). Steve and I (who was also not invited) thought backyard camping out that night was a good idea and we set up our own makeshift tent in our backyard.   Something woke us a few hours from sunrise and we got up, filled buckets with water, and made our way to the rival campsite; where we gave the occupants an early bath.  I think a big part of the attraction of these backyard camp outs was that they were a free pass from direct parental control.

12 June 2013: 

 The Disneyfying of Lynx:

Believe it or not "Disneyfying" has become a word.  The meaning is obvious even if the objects of this verb are often obscure.   Here is one that took me back a few years.  I was watching Disney's cartoon "Phineas & Ferb" when I realized that the main villain  "Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz" and his goth daughter "Vanessa"  are simply toned-down "Disney" versions of Dr. Dome  and his daughter Lynx - from the 1960's "Plastic Man" comic.  Dr. Dome was Plastic Man's  arch-enemy, he billed himself "King of the Cruel" but like Doofenshmirtz was a master of comical ineptitude. 

Note that the drawing style for Vanessa is far more realistic than the exaggerated style in which the other characters are drawn.

The slinky whip-welding Lynx (also drawn more realistically than the other characters) was full of erotic sizzle, and there was an obvious incongruity with the venue.  But none of us were complaining and this cover most likely doubled  the sale of the issue.  I suspect that Vanessa serves the same purpose today.

10 June 2013:  

Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford:

Staying with the "whose death went unnoticed lately" theme,   Frank Bank passed away in April.

Nicknamed for his size and perhaps for his less-than-stellar intellect, Lumpy may have been larger than the other boys because he had repeated his sophomore year (at least once) or because his favorite hobby was eating. Constantly. Hapless and harmless, although in his first appearances he was a bully, he appeared in 50 episodes during the show’s seven seasons, occasionally as the center of attention. (Certainly that was the case in the episodes called “Lumpy’s Scholarship,” “Lumpy’s Car Trouble” and “Wally Stays at Lumpy’s.”)

My favorite moments on the show involved Lumpy's father (played by Richard Deacon), his interactions with Ward and especially his parenting skills. 

Fred Rutherford: "Have to keep a firm hand on boys nowadays, Ward. My Clarence answered me back the other day. I smacked him right in the mouth. None of this psychology for me. "

Our class connected to "Leave It to Beaver" much more than to any other 50's or 60's sit com.  Although Jerry Mathers was two years older than us he looked more our age, and during the first run of the show his "Beaver" character tracked through each grade with us  (he was in third grade during the second season of the show which aired during our third grade school year 58-59).

Fred Rutherford: [Wally and Eddie's prank on Lumpy has backfired] Clarence! Did you wrap this chain around the axle of your car and then try to drive off?

Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford: Gosh no, Daddy! Why would I do something like that?

Fred Rutherford:  It just seems like something you would do. 

7 June 2013:

  Iola Morton:

At the risk of this turning into a Mickey Mouse Club site,  I just discovered that Carole Ann Campbell passed away in 2010.   I watched the Disney DVD collection of the Hardy Boys "Applegate Treasure" serial several years ago and recalled as I watched how popular she had been with the boys in my first grade class (perhaps the first girl any of us admitted liking).  She (at least her character Iola Morton) seemed more accessible to us than any of the Mouseketeers,  and Iola (with a big crush on Joe Hardy) was also a favorite of the girls in class. 

http://www.originalmmc.com/carole.html

1954 was the first year our family had a television set.  It's arrival coincided with the first season of the MMC, and the fall of 1956 was my introduction to Disney's version of the Hardy Boys.

The three Cleveland stations signed off after the 11PM news and did not resume broadcasting until 5AM.  Television was such a novelty to me then that I would get up and watch the 5AM crop reports whose target audience was early rising Ohio farmers.  I learned a lot about soy beans during that first year of viewing.

Iola on the lookout for old man Applegate.

1 June 2013: 

 Secret Agents:

Our segment of baby boomers (those born from 1948 to 1952) were intimately tied to three defining mass cultural phenomenons;  the Mickey Mouse Club,  the Beatles, and James Bond.  We were the primary target audience of all three and it could be said that we made them what they were. 

Although Ian Fleming published his first Bond book in 1953,  Bond mania did not take off until after the first two movies; "Dr. No" in 1962 and "From Russia With Love" in 1963.  By  several odd coincidences I was at the absolute cutting edge of the Bond phenomenon.  In 1960 some guy my father worked with gave him the first six Signet paperbacks of the series, after reading them.  Dad rarely read fiction and just stuck them on our dining room bookshelf, where they sat unread for a couple years.  I had examined them but had not been intrigued enough  to read one. 

Then in the summer of 1962 "The Magic Sword" played at our local drive-in.  We rarely went to the drive-in,  but the commercials for the film (full of wizards and dragons) had caught my fancy and I pressed for us to attend.  I suspect that my parents agreed to take me because Basil Rathbone was the villain and family friends had long thought my father looked like him.  The second feature that night was "Dr. No",  an adult film (hey - this is 1962) which my parents considered safe because they figured I would fall asleep once it started.  But I was captivated by Sean Connery, who I had seen in "The Longest Day" and who did not look like my father, and I intently watched the entire film. 

Sometime over the next few days I made a connection between the movie and the title of one of those Signet paperbacks, they were one in the same.  That summer at age eleven I became one of the youngest hard-core Ian Fleming fans.  When junior high started that fall I was already looking to supplement my six volume James Bond library. 

Secret agents exploded during the 1963-67 period,  a man and a girl from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, Matt Helm, Our Man Flint, The Ipcress File, Patrick McGoohan's Danger Man became Johnny River's hit single,  and Mission Impossible. Much of this coincided with our Junior High years and a group of us embraced it.  It was an odd dichotomy,  as playing secret agent could be considered a kind of Peter Pan refusal to grow up and yet we were fascinated by the sundry seduction techniques being practiced by the secret agents in paperback novels and on movie & television screens. 

Not an exact double for my father but there was a resemblance. 

Last year I purchased the DVD set of all 4 seasons of the old “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” television show.  41 discs in a cute little attaché case.  The case brought back memories of those Junior High days when a group of us would roam the halls with attaché cases and toy pistols that fired erasers, pretending that we were secret agents (all we needed were Goth trench-coats to have been 30 years ahead of our time).  One guy set up our U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in the unused rooms over his garage.  Another modified his attaché case so that it had a fitted microphone on one outside panel and a tape recorder inside; he would place it under tables in the school lunchroom and record conversations.

The secret agent activity had largely died out by 9th grade for most of us and by 10th grade I was filling any free time at school with poker games, more about that later... 

A lingering Bond influence probably accounted for my ill-advised ownership of two Austin-Healey 3000's from 1970 to 1972.   Thankfully I could not afford an Aston Martin as the repair bills would have crushed me.

16 April 2013 

 Craig's Mom

Beulah L. Martin, age 92 of Ashland, OH., passed away Tuesday, April 09, 2013 at Crystal Care Center of Ashland.  On September 28, 1920 in Lakeville, OH., Mrs. Martin was born to the late Earl and Pansy (nee’Ewing) Kopp.  She had been a resident of Ashland Co. all of her life,  working as a seamstress at Cresco Mfg. and making everything from PJs to wedding dresses for family and friends.    Mrs. Martin graduated as Valedictorian from Jeromesville High School, loved the Cleveland Indians, and playing piano and cards.

  In April of 1938 Beulah married William L. Martin who preceded her in death in 1992.  She is survived by one daughter, Linda (Bob) Parker of Ashland, OH.; one son, Craig (Beverly) Martin of Casselberry,FL.; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.  Mrs. Martin was also preceded in death by her parents; one daughter, Janette Aten in 2003; and siblings: Opal Burgett, Esther Hetsler, Gail Kopp, Carl Kopp, and Dorothy Rouse.

  A graveside service will be held 12:00 noon Thursday, April 11, 2013 at Ashland Co. Memorial Park with Pastor Don Earlenbaugh officiating.

Linda and Craig:  Your mother was like a second mom to me during my elementary school years. I fondly recall winter days playing board games with Craig in her kitchen. And walking down to Kroger's with Craig to buy the ingredients for her to make us fudge or cookies; on some occasions wading through snow drifts between Duff Drive and the Luray Shopping Center."

This is the obit for my childhood friend's mother.  They lived across the street and two houses up the hill from us on Duff Drive.   I had forgotten the Jeromesville connection, my mother had been Valedictorian 3-4 years earlier.  I have some good memories of her and was well behaved around her but in retrospect I don't think she liked me. 

30 May 2013:  

Socioeconomic status in Boomer Days

I can't speak for the rest of America, but in our small Midwestern city economic status was a whole different ballgame back in the early 1960's than it is today.  Ashland definitely had a "wrong-side of the tracks",  literally,  as east-west railroad tracks (and an east-west Main Street) roughly divided the town in half. The north side was clearly the wrong one on a SES basis.  But I don't recall it being of much consequence to us youthful baby boomers. 

Osborn Elementary served neighborhoods from both sides of Main Street,  with a significant chunk of us coming from the new boomer subdivision I discussed weeks ago in this blog.  This subdivision had a greater density of children because it was mostly younger couples who had moved there to start their families while the older neighborhoods tended to be filled with the empty nest parents of these couples.   But income disparity was nothing like it is today and our neighborhood contained young doctors, a dentist, a veterinarian,  teachers (public school and college), small business owners,  managers, a state highway patrolman, and skilled blue collar workers.  

I don't recall any stratification on the playground or in the classroom, although this was something about which boys tended to be mostly unaware.  I went to the homes of friends on the other side of town and they come home with me after school. 

I read a recent comparison of the elementary schools in town and Osborn now has one of the highest proportions of students on the free lunch program.  I never had that perception of the relative status of the school during my time as a student,  it may have been significantly different back then as  some neighborhoods have declined and some subsidized public housing has been built in the district.

On the other hand I was clearly aware that a lot of the students in my class had fathers (like mine) who worked in the assorted manufacturing industries located just a few blocks north of the school; printing, rubber,  iron, and pumps.   Vocationally I aspired to be a bulldozer or steam shovel (excavator) operator although plasterer and bricklayer also had considerable appeal.

16 March 2013

Empty Lots

In a new subdivision there are many empty lots;  as houses replace them on one street, new streets are graded and new empty lots are created.  In our neighborhood there were a few lots that remained empty even after houses had been completed on all the surrounding lots.  Sometimes these lots had issues like natural gas seepage, other times they were privately purchased and the owner was not in a rush to construct his house.  The boys of our group of elementary school age boomers were empty lot rats.   The girls did not value the empty lots and the teenagers were oblivious to them.   Empty lots were better than backyards because they were not monitored by parents.  They were also better for setting up baseball diamonds and football fields because we could use the whole lot and not just a backyard.  Even more important, you could dig foxholes on these lots and use them in the endless series of mock battles we fought as we "played Army", our name for the daily reenactments of World War II we staged with toy guys and whatever pieces of army uniforms we were able to scrounge at local garage and rummage sales. 

The most memorable empty lot was beside my friend Craig's house.  It had been purchased by the owner of a local retail store, "Home Hardware",  who apparently was in no hurry to start construction.  It did not stay empty very long and for years afterward we wistfully reminisced about our great times playing on that lot.  Craig and I were six or seven at the time and the main attraction was a huge pile of trees that had been left when they cleared the lot with a bulldozer.   This brush pile was about the size of an Army tank and using hand saws we were able to hollow it out and construct compartments for the tank's crew;  driver, gunner, and commander.   We found a long cardboard carpet tube and stuck that into the side,  pretending it was a gun as we sighted it on assorted neighborhood targets.   Being hollow we could look into one end and change the direction and elevation of our gun barrel. 

Eventually the day came when they burned this huge brush pile.   Craig and I stood in his driveway and watched all our hard work go up in smoke.   I've always thought of that moment when I hear "Come Dancing" by "The Kinks".

Roger Ebert described much the same thing in his review of the French film "Forbidden Games",   Ebert related from his childhood:  "with a playmate we can construct a world so compelling that all our thoughts are given to its creation and maintenance. With Jackie, the girl next door, I spent days building a toy village on the dining room floor, around an electric train set. It was so elaborate, so invested with our stories of what each house meant, that when it had to be "cleaned up," we felt a hurt no adult could imagine".

Before that they

Put up a bowling alley

On the site that used

To be the local palais

That's where the big bands

Used to come and play

My sister went there

On a Saturday

Come dancing

That's how they did it

When I was just a kid

And when they

Said come dancing

My sister always did

The day they knocked down the palais

My sister stood and cried

The day they knocked down the palais

Part of my childhood died, just died

The Kinks - "Come Dancing"

(click for video)

10 March 2013  

"Fracking" Unnecessary

I suppose that Bank Street could have been named for an early Ashland financial institution but more likely it refers to the bank on its northern side which sloped down to the Town Creek.  The original Bank Street had its name changed long ago to College Ave.  The present Bank Street was just the eastern extension of the original whose link with that original section was later disrupted by a jog when Highland Blvd.  and Ferrell Ave. were developed.  An extension even further east continues the disruption by skipping a couple blocks to the south when the Luray area of the Duff Farm was developed in the 1950's.  These two extensions are appropriately named as they follow a ridge line about 25 feet high that ran through the town,  breaking the flatness of the terrain and providing sledding opportunities in the winter and (by the 1960's) skateboard opportunities the rest of the year. 

Oddly we had moved from the base of this ridge line in one neighborhood to the base of it in the new neighborhood.   The ridge resembles a glacial moraine but I think its origin is geological and related to the erosion that created the flood plain of an ancient version of the town creek .  It is dotted with natural gas vents and springs, which would support its being a zone of bent and fractured rock strata.  The gas from at least one of the natural gas vents is burned off with a perpetual flame. 

The school milk machine was stocked by a local dairy, the same one that delivered to our house.  Even though our house was built in 1956 it was constructed with a milk chute,  a little door which the milkman could open and set your bottles inside.  In our case the door opened into the garage but some houses had doors that opened into the house.  Housewives would leave a note for the milkman on delivery days specifying which and how much of the range of offered dairy products she wanted. 

On Saturday mornings in the 1950's WNCO would hold on-air auctions for toys,  a promotion sponsored by Ashland Sanitary Dairy.  The bidding was done in milk caps, which at that time were metal foil with the Dairy's logo.  It occurred to me as I listened to the auction one Saturday that there were plenty of caps for the taking at school, kids did not remove the caps - we just punched our straws through them. And from the numbers being bid for really good items it was obvious that none of the bidders had access to that many caps.

So for several weeks I stripped the caps off the empty bottles stacked on racks beside the school's milk vending machine, before the dairy came to take the empties away.  I had a large bag of rather bad smelling metal caps and a lot of tiny cuts on my fingers where the sharp edge of the crimped foil had cut me.  The next Saturday I stood by the phone listening to the radio auction.  My mother had refused to make a call for me and at age nine I was extremely nervous about going on the air.  I was also concerned because the printing on my caps was a different color than those on a quart bottle; with visions of an embarrassing on-the-air disqualification and my picture in the newspaper the next week captioned "delinquent kid".  I had enough to win some very good toys but I was too scared to do anything more than dial the phone and then hang-up after the first ring (much the feeling one has working up the nerve to call up and ask a girl out on a first date).

The closest I got to actually bidding was when they offered a 16" toy boat with an electric motor.   As Lucy Maud Montgomery would say, my failed nerve that morning has been "a lifelong sorrow".  To this day I don't know if the caps I had worked so hard to pry off those tiny milk bottles would have been valid, but I suspect that they would have been.

4 March 2013

 WNCO

A few months before I was born, Ashland got a radio station;  WATG,  changed to WNCO at the beginning of 1959.  It was an AM station (1340), with a relatively large brick building on the edge of town.  Until the mid-60's FM radio was not a part of our universe.  All basic radios were AM including car radios.  No doubt FM stations and FM radios existed,  but I did not know anyone who owned one and I probably did not hear an FM broadcast until about 1964. 

On display in my grandmothers house was an old Philco console radio with an elaborate dial that indicated its ability to receive shortwave signals from everywhere from Moscow to Honolulu.  In fact a host of exotic cities worldwide were listed across its band spectrum.  Unfortunately, while the radio would light up when turned on, it would only produce static on any frequency except 1340, and it did not bring in much of a signal even then.   But she kept it around as a large plant stand. 

My grandmother lived in Jeromesville,  a small town of 600 people near Ashland.  Jeromesville was built along the Jerome Fork,  a large stream; and was arguably the lowest point of land in the county.  The Philco sat in a microwave shadow zone, but I wonder if these expensive radio sets were ever much good.  I don't recall any tales from my mother's side of the family of them sitting around listening to the Nuremberg Rallies or the attempts to rescue Floyd Collins from a cave.  Apparently they did listen to FDR's fireside chats but they would have been broadcast locally.

My grandmother was probably the first one in Jeromesville to get a television. I think it was after she was hospitalized in Akron for a broken hip and got hooked on the television broadcasts in her room there, or maybe when she did her extended convalescence in our house.   She had them erect a tall antenna,  much like the free standing one to the right of the radio station image.  This allowed her to get a somewhat fuzzy image from the three Cleveland VHS stations (NBC-channel 3, ABC-channel 5, and CBS-channel 8).  Those were also the only three stations we got in Ashland, but our reception was much better than hers with only our rooftop antenna.

She also still had one of those wooden wall phones which you did not dial,  instead it connected you to a local telephone exchange where the operator dialed the number you wished to call.  Whenever I walked by the small telephone exchange building in Jeromesville I would stop and watch the operator working at the switchboard.   This system was replaced in the mid-50's with dial phones, also fascinating because everybody had a party line and you could listen in on other conversations.  In this regard there was even less privacy back then.  For more Jeromesville discussions here is something I compiled back in 2009.

In Ashland we had regular private line dial phones.  We had five digit numbers for local calls and no area code.  If you wanted to call outside the local area you had to dial the operator.

So we finally have enough for our first try at organizing of the blog, we have created an actual section for Jeromesville.   Click here Jeromesville or scroll to the bottom to access this section. WNCO continues:

The first ever field trip of my first grade class was to this WNCO building.  We got our first ride on a school bus and a tour of the station.  During our visit a live call-in show was being broadcast.  We watched through the glass as the DJ talked with his callers and a speaker on the wall provided the audio.   We stood there and listened to both the DJ and the callers. 

The station had a large studio which was not being used during our visit.  But it had a stage, a piano, and some music stands.   I came away from the visit with the impression that all radio was live.  For several years whenever the radio was on I assumed that any the music I heard was being performed at that very moment in the studio we had seen.

25 Feb. 2013: 

 The Family Doctor: 

One area of considerable change since our childhood days is medical science; both technically and in how it is practiced.  Growing up in a relatively small town may have been different from growing up in a city but I will detail what I experienced.  We had the same family doctor (M.D. Shilling) for the 15+ years I lived in Ashland.   He was in practice with his brother  and their office was a small mansion near the center of town.  They were G.P.'s but in the expanded sense of those days.  He delivered me and my brother at the local hospital, he took out my tonsils,  and he examined my eyes and proscribed my first pair of glasses.  They had a thriving practice with a waiting room full of patients, several nurses,  several lab techs, and a pharmacist.

The Shilling Brothers had their offices on the first floor of this Center Street mansion from WWII until the early 1970's.  The historic house has since been torn down by the Ashland County Historical (??) Society

Back in those days needles were much bigger and shots more painful,  they were literally a pain in the butt.  And kids lived in absolute dread of having to get a shot. 

And not surprisingly the medical profession was clueless about a lot more things than it is today.  I have my own horror story about this.  For several years during early adolescence I was plagued with severe skin reactions during the hot humid months.  A wide range of elaborate and completely ineffective treatments were proscribed.  And when one guy finally concluded that he couldn't cure it,  I would be sent to a specialist in a larger city, who would do tests and proscribe treatments and eventually give up and send me to a more specialized specialist in a larger more distant city.   Zero progress was made.  Eventually my parents gave up on this army of dermatologists and I just lived with the condition, which pretty much went away by high school.   Oddly I had more understanding of the cause than anybody, but I was largely ignored.  The doctors (without exception)  believed the source was external.  But it was just my immunological system reacting to an assortment of things in my own physiology (salty sweat mostly), and once triggered it would go into overdrive and react to its own reactions.

The cause was quickly recognized years later when it briefly flared up one summer, as there had been considerable progress made in understanding the immune system during the intervening decade.  I was mildly allergic to myself, a condition that could have easily been minimized with an occasional summer cortisone shot  (available since the early 1950's) to suppress my immune system.  But at the time the legion of specialists were entirely unaware of this dynamic.

The biggest difference from today is that he made house calls.  When people (especially children) were sick he would drive to their house with a huge black bag full of medical instruments and pills.  Typically house calls were at night or on the weekends;  and when one of the brothers was on vacation the other one would see all the patients and make all the house calls.  I never aspired to be a family doctor and it may have had something to do with my knowledge of the time demands of the profession.   He didn't even relax during his vacations but went deep-sea fishing and had several huge swordfish displayed on the walls of his office.

I think Granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies" would have proscribed more effective courses of treatment than the doctors who inflicted their skills on me during this time.

Among the assortment of quack remedies that were inflicted on me were ultraviolet light treatments in the doctors office and silver nitrate baths at home; which temporarily stained my skin dark purple (to this day I have not been comfortable wearing anything but long pants in public).  This was before the days of "Black Light Posters" or I might have been fine with doing ultraviolet treatments at home, perhaps my purple skin would have glowed under the black light. These were intended to kill the latest fungus or parasite they theorized was attacking me;  and of course they had absolutely zero impact on what my immune system was doing to my skin, although the treatments went on for weeks at a time.  This was done even though the lab results were always negative for any fungus or parasite.

Along the same lines was a strange device in the doctors office which I was forced to use during several visits,  after returning home from my first trip to summer camp with a strep throat infection.  It involved about 15 minutes of inhaling (through my nose) a foul tasting milky liquid.  The device that dispensed this stuff was inserted into my nose, I was left alone in a room, and could not leave until I had sucked it all down into my lungs.  Fortunately I was also given shots of antibiotics and recovered. 

Along more humorous lines was the first time our doctor dilated my pupils for a retina examination.  It was during summer vacation and my mother just dropped me off at the office late in the morning.  If I had been sick she would have stayed or would have returned to pick me up.  But given the nature of the visit I was fine with just walking the two miles home.

Of course I had no clue of the duration of pupil dilation or what it would mean to emerge from the dark waiting room into the midday summer sun.  Even then I expected the dilation to moderate after a few minutes.  Somehow I was able to stumble along the two miles with my eyes closed,  and my hands over them for good measure.   The first part of the trip was along sidewalks that were partially shaded, so that I could peek out on occasion.  But for the final mile there was minimal shade.   I must have been quite a "sight" - a real "spectacle".

Ouch!

24 Feb. 2013: 

 Summer Magic 

O.K., I know what you're thinking: "What is this stuff about Shelley Fabares?  You have long regaled anyone who would listen with your story of being dazzled by Deborah Walley".  

And all that is true,  at age twelve I experienced a slack-jawed infatuation with Deborah.  Nothing before or since has had quite the intensity of that experience.  And while the memory of that moment lives on,  the feeling was pretty much confined to her appearance in "Summer Magic".  Whereas with Shelley it was a decade long thing.

This is probably as good a time as any to discuss the point at which adolescence replaces childhood.  I mark mine (at least for public consumption) as the point that I stopped going to see live action Disney Films.   Making "Summer Magic" (released during the summer of 1963)  my last movie of childhood, and my shunning of "Mary Poppins" (released in August 1964)  the first time that I considered myself too old for the kind of stuff Disney was releasing.  We all were in a considerable rush to grow up,  yet I don't recall my transition as a conscious affectation so much as a realization that something had changed, making the 1964 film of no interest to me.  

I expressed my whole "Summer Magic" thing in this 2009 review of the film:

Good or bad, happy or sad, come what may this will always be the most magical of the movies I saw in a theater as a child. Already charmed by its Disney-Norman Rockwell-Hallmark look at the Ragtime Age; this 12 year old boy was simply bowled over 30 minutes into the film by his first glimpse of Deborah Walley. Walley was already a teen queen from her "Gidget" film but had escaped my too-young-to-notice teen actresses consciousness until that day at the theater.

In her period costume this vision was the original "Pretty in Pink" and the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. And might explain my lifelong preference for redheads.

At its core "Summer Magic" is a Disney fairy tale cloaked in a "too-good-to-be-true" production design. If the term expressionist nostalgia ever applied to a film it is this one. Disney simply took basic plot elements from the novel and film "Mother Carey's Chickens" (1938), threw in a bunch of "Cinderella" elements, and had Dorothy McGuire softly reprise her performance in "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn".

If you can't find something here with which to connect, whether it is wistful identification or distanced examination of the film language elements, then you are probably already pretty much used up. Liking this film now is just having the willingness to exercise a little self-knowing whimsy.

Cinderella-wise you have a prince charming, a glass slipper, a wicked step-sister, a wardrobe transformation scene, cute animals, a coach, songs, and a ball.

The songs are along the lines of those seen recently in "Enchanted" but without the elaborate special effects. A couple of these, "Pink of Perfection" and "Femininity", have been popping in and out of my head ever since 1963. Those two and "Ugly Bug Ball" have held up surprisingly well. "Flitterin" and "Beautiful Beulah" are decent if not especially memorable.

"On the Front Porch" was weak then and hasn't improved with age; it should have been trimmed from the film as that is the film's weakest (insert "boring" here) scene. The sequence should be of interest to film students as it is the only time the director has real difficulty keeping the cast focused; definitely a post-production challenge for the editor who did some damage control but could not salvage anything worth keeping.

Viewing the film today I found Wendy Turner (as Lallie Joy Popham-Virginia Weidler's role in the 1938 film) a revelation. Turner's is the most authentic performance; which is interesting because she was originally cast as the youngest of the three girls simply because she was slightly shorter than the 5' 2" Walley, not much was expected of this novice. Her ability to take acting for the camera direction must have been a pleasant surprise for James Neilson. She gets to do an ugly duckling wardrobe transformation sequence worthy of "Cinderella".

As often happened with Disney, elements were included to insure that it appealed to the widest demographic. So you have a shaggy sheep dog (where have I seen that before?), you have a couple of handsome young television actors (Peter Brown and James Stacy), you have a Moochie Corcoran hammy kid, you have the comedy relief of acting veterans Una Merkel and Burl Ives to appeal to parents, and you have liberal use of Disney's stock nature footage.

Although I was too dazzled by Walley to pay much attention to Hayley Mills, this was probably her best performance for Disney; it was certainly the most difficult part she was given. Her acting was more polished than it had been in "Pollyanna" and the out-of-place English accent taught us young Disney viewers all about the concept of suspension of disbelief. 

The first fast food available was at independent "Frozen Custard' stands which might and might not sell actual food; they tended to offer more and more options as they became more established.  Dairy Queen franchise opportunities were just becoming available.  In Ohio the expansion of these into regular food was in response to the need to stay open during the winter.   Our town had one of these (the Darie Dolly) within walking distance of our neighborhood.   I'm guessing that it opened about 1957.  By the time it closed 40 years later it had gone through a progression from walk-up stand, to car hop curb service (with huge illuminated menu boxes and speakers at each parking space), to a sit-down enclosed restaurant.   It was family owned and run the entire time and probably so successful because the founder followed trends and was quick to introduce them.  And while he regularly expanded the operation he was prudent enough to not overextend himself.

A Darie Dolly  innovation from the start was curly fries with the potato skin still on them.  Shortly after this the owner introduced homemade sherbet in little Dixie cups; a different flavor each week.  This was unique to the county and drew customers from miles away, even after the novelty wore off.

Our first franchise fast food came a couple years later with "The Red Barn", "A&W Root Beer", and "Burger Chef".   The "A&W" was and still is a car hop place, in operation on a seasonal basis.  It has the same menu but operates under a different name.  The other two are long gone  (our Burger Chef was not one of the ones that became a Hardee's) but they operated along the line of the early McDonalds with 15 cent hamburgers and a limited menu.  

My "go-to" Darie Dolly menu item was the Texas Monster Burger which is not yet on this early menu.

The big city of Cleveland had a "Mister Donut" (technically this was in the western suburb of Middleberg Heights) as early as 1962.  I know this because a friend's father drove us up to see a Space & Science Exhibition at the Cleveland Convention Center after Alan Shepard's 1961 space flight.  His Mercury capsule was on display and even at that age it seemed incredibly  tiny.  On the return trip we stopped at Mister Donut.  I was amazed that a business existed that sold only donuts.   Mister Donut was in a class by itself and the least plastic of any franchise chain.  It's failure to dominate the market is an excellent example of the misfires that can occur in the free market system; when quality and value become subordinated to finance and marketing.   And with the consumer coming out on the short end of the deal.

31 Jan 2013

Ohio - The Basement Capital of the World

Although this could refer to Cleveland's professional sports teams,  I am talking actual basements.  More Realtor.com browsing yielded these two photos.  This is the basement of my friend Mike's old house, or to be more precise:  when we were growing up this was his parent's house. .  NE Ohio is the basement capital of America; it has something to do with the soil conditions and all most basements needed was a good dehumidifier.  As a child I assumed that the rest of the country liked basements as well as we did.  They were great spaces for young families with children as on rainy days the kids could tear around the basement and not disturb the adults upstairs.  And since nobody had air conditioning back then,  basements were where you tended to live during the hottest days of summer.  These two photos are current ones although it is unchanged from 50+ years ago.  It is a ranch house  built in 1956 and the basement is huge.

Back in the day Mike's old man had one of those large wooden coin operated bowling machines by the stairs (note the plug on the wall).  I loved to play the thing and was quite envious of Mike for having daily access to it,  although after a couple of years it was no longer much of an attraction to him.   

29 Jan 2013

Hey Hey We're The Monkees

Chip Douglas: "7A." (referring to the take of the song)

Davy Jones: "What number is this, Chip?"

Chip Douglas and others in unison (slowly, annoyed): "7A!"

Davy Jones: "Okay. Know what I mean, like don't get excited, man. It's 'cause I'm short, I know."

28 Jan 2013

Our Kindergarten House

I was on the Realtor.com website this past weekend looking at the houses currently listed in my hometown of Ashland, Ohio; when I came across one for a house a block away from where I lived as a pre-schooler in the mid 1950's.  What made this especially relevant was that it was of an identical design to the one we lived in, a house that I have not been inside since early in the summer of 1956.  That house had lost much of its concreteness in my mind so this was a nice jog to the memory. 

Our kitchen obviously did not look like this back in 1956 although the basic layout is the same.  Note the passage on the far right,  it leads to the front of the house but to get there you have to go up four steps to a landing and then down some steps to the other side.  Going up from the landing are the steps to the upstairs.  You can just see a small portion or these at the top of the door with the children's safety gate.  If you go through that door you will find the staircase to the basement; which mirrors the staircase above it including the landing.  It is what is called a British basement with much of it above ground and a door to the outside on the landing (creating a kind of half-walkout basement). 

Jan 1, 2014

Growing up in L.A Jeff., I became accustomed to places of my childhood simply disappearing - "I used to play miniature golf where that industrial park is now" - and it gave a strange feeling to know that once-tangible pieces of your life could just be wiped away.

jr ewing

Jul 20, 2013

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Actually, Jeff, I wasn’t too interested at first-- not my usual thing --

but thought I’d give it a quick scan to be polite. Got drawn in. Will go

through it more slowly when I have time, but here are a few random

reactions (all good!) –

I wonder if I’m a few years older than you. We DID do duck ‘n cover

drills, in Lynbrook Elementary School, Bethesda, MD in the 50’s.

Familiar with Wendy, but rarely indulged.

Enjoyed Empire Records. Have the soundtrack CD.

My favorite scene in Back to the Future was the Johnny B. Goode performance.

I grew up in a small, shotgun apartment. I still remember the round top frig, as well as a

wringer washer and clothes lines out back.

I think my favorite show in the 50s (my elementary school years) was The

Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, although Walt Disney (particularly Davy

Crockett (Fess Parker), George Russell (Buddy Ebsen), Mike Fink (don’t

recall) and Elfego Baca (don’t recall him either)) fought for first place

hard enough.

Dr. No was an epiphany for me. Same impact as (in the 70s?) Star Wars.

Is that you, perchance, in the photo pointing to the milk delivery box?

Anyway, good blog!

P.S., Never realized Shelly Fabares was so…well, babelicious (if you’ll

permit a retro, sophomoric word).

15 July 2013

jr ewing

Feb 25, 2013

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Hi Jeff,

I enjoyed perusing your blog. I think you are a few years older than me, so some of the stuff is a little before what it was for me, but much of it parallels my own experiences. It sure was a different time, and of course to our parents, it was light years ahead of what things had been like when they were kids!! But it was definitely a much simpler time than it is now. Just FYI, kids still decorate old shoe boxes and hand out Valentine’s cards to everyone in class. And they still sell those boxes of tear off cards to use. Not so different from then!

Jean (24 Feb. 2013)

jr ewing

Feb 24, 2013

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Really good blog.

The A&W just opened for the year. The last owners of the Darie Dolly used to live out by where we live now but closer to the lakes out front. They used to run a nice bar where the grocery used to be on 58.

I remember that space show in Cleveland too! We brought home a whole bunch of neat stuff!

Another time we went to Cleveland for some reason and stopped for KFC at the restaurant up there. I think we still had our Packard. We got hit by a monster thunderstorm while we were in the parking lot waiting for our order. The storm knocked out their electricity so the ovens were offline and we had to wait extra long for our chicken dinners. Mother ate chicken dinner nearly once a week at Lynway. They still had carhops then and the chicken came in a cute little box with a roll and a couple vegetables and some fries.