The Good old days

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Wally Phillips

I received the following e-mail from my daughter Debbie. I changed a few of the things to fit my memories. I welcome additions from my brother and sisters.

Lightning Bugs / Older 'n Dirt!!

"Hey Dad," one of my kids asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?"

"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow."

"C'mon, seriously, Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called 'at home'," I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the kitchen table for "Supper", and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it." I used to hide my spinach under my mashed potatoes, hoping Mom would not notice until I was gone. (That never worked) The first time that I remember going out to dinner was for my parents' 25th anniversary. I was playing college baseball and I showed up in my CTC (Chicago Teachers College) baseball uniform. There was no Hooters restaurants and if there was, we never would have been able to get my Mom to go there, even if their wings were tasty. Dad might have gone, he liked wings. I marvel at how easy it is, for kids my grandson's age, to talk their parents into a trip to Hooters. The only time I get to go there is when my grandson has a hockey road trip.

This is what I looked like when I played 3rd base in college.

Humboldt Park Amvets 1955. (Not much protection for your important body parts.)

My Dad, Herb Lopatka was quite a player, according to acounts from my grandpa and Uncle George. They watched him play with Cub Great, Phil Cavarretta.

Click on the pictures to see the full image

My sister Pat reminded me of the time we were driving back from Terre Haute* and we stopped at a restaurant. We ordered chicken, and soon we heard chickens squawking. Then about an hour later they brought us the chickens, but they were not cooked through. They were still bloody, but fresh, really fresh. Mom tells me she took us to the doctor after that trip to get a cure for the infections that all of us got in our mouths from eating there. He gave her a purple liquid to paint on our sores.

Herb took the above picture at that Indiana Restaurant. (Left -Right) Mom, Dad's back, Me, Mary and Pat.

Our equivalent of fast food was fried shrimp that Dad used to pick up by the river, after bowling on a Friday night. That was good food! I wonder what they did to it. They probably used rancid oil for weeks.

Our grandma used to take us on a Milwaukee Ave. street car, all the way to the end of the line at Devon. We would bring sprinkling cans to the cemetery in Niles IL. After hauling water and pulling weeds from my Uncle John's grave all afternoon, we would head back to the street car, but we would stop at Prince Castle and have a burger and ice cream. We did that once or twice a year.

*For Vacation, we drove to Terre Haute Indiana to visit the nuns that taught us. I remember going to see the Terre Haute Phillies play a night game. I remember seeing "Pudin Head" Jones, who went on to star for the Philadelphia Phillies from 1947-1960.

When I was younger, my Mom would take one of my Dad's Birtman Electric uniforms and reduce it to fit me. My neighbor Bob Campbell (pictured below) got a generic uniform from his parents, but he wanted a Birtman uniform. His parents offered to pay my Mom to make him one. She did, but never took any money.

My Dad worked here. Birtman Electric still has the name on the building, even though they have been gone for years. They made Vacuum cleaners, mixers and blenders for Sears. They also made airplane parts during World War II.

That is my Dad on the far left, he was a supervisor at the Fullerton Ave. Plant during the War years when they shifted from making vacuum cleaners to airplane parts. When I was 16, Dad got me job at the Spaulding Ave. plant where we made Kenmore mixers and blenders. 10 weeks in a factory was the best education I ever received, because I went from a C student, who spend all of my spare time at Humboldt Park or Maplewood Playground playing any sport that was in season, to a B student that started reading required books and doing my assignments. I couldn't see myself working in a factory for 52 weeks, so when I graduated, I started thinking of a way I could play ball for 4 more years. The Chicago Teachers College had a basketball team and a baseball team, so I applied and took the test. The Guidance Counselor looked at my test results and suggested that I look for a job, because she gave me a 100 to 1 chance of graduating college with my English skills. My Math scores were good, but English would do me in. I thought about getting a job, but I had flash backs to my summer at Birtman Electric and said, "I'll take those odds, sign me up." I had one thing going for me, I was dating Carole, the women I married 3 years later, and She was an English wizard. Remember, there was no spell check in those days, and I was always the first guy out in the spelling bee. I misspelled the word even if I knew it, so I could go to my seat with the other goof balls and make funny sounds with my arm pit. When I was in College, I tried hard to get passing grades, so that I could play on the Basketball and Baseball teams. Carole was my savior, because I could hand her a sheet of scribbled misspelled notes and she would type a beautiful double spaced masterpiece.

My English education got off to a bad start in my first week of High School. I came back from the playground on a nice fall evening and remembered that I had a composition due for Brother John in the morning. My brother, who was a senior, asked me what I had to write about. When I told him my composition title was, "My First Impression of Holy Trinity", He said, "Give me a pen." He wrote the funniest story I ever heard, so I went with it. I copied it over of course in my own handwriting, because those Brothers of Holy Cross were sharp and always on the look out for cheats. I turned it in and forgot all about until the following day when Brother John stepped to the front of the class, with my paper in his hand and a disgusted look on his face and said, "This gentlemen, is an example of what not to do. It is written with a leaky speedball pen with barely litigable handwriting." He went on to read my paper, while everybody in the class, except for me and Brother John, was laughing hysterically at every sentence that my witty brother composed. Herb started the composition with, "When I went to my locker on the first day, I had to remove a moldy old jock strap with a pencil that I later washed." (We didn't throw anything away that was still usable) The composition went on to make fun of the teachers and principal. He talked about the disgusting food in the lunch room. I was finished in the first week of school, everything I did was unsatisfactory, so I flunked my first year of English and had to get up every morning at 5:30, catch a bus, then transfer to another bus, so that I could be in English Summer School at St Mel High School. 40 years later, I went to a golf outing and a guy that was called cream puff when he was a little underdeveloped, freshman. Spotted me in the parking lot, He came in from Colorado and I hadn't seen him since graduation in 1958. He was yelling, "Moldy old Jock strap" My brother's literary gem made a life time impression on him. In High school, average sized guys picked on him, because they could. I was one of the bigger freshmen, so I felt sorry for him and I was able to get those guy to leave him alone. That turned out to be a good thing in more than one way, because I stopped growing and Cream Puff graduated at 6 feet 3 inches and He was always nice to me, but he paid back some lumps to the guys that picked on him in his freshman year.

This is my Brother Herb, when he worked at the U.S. Postal Service in the 1960s, He also did some time "Dark Green" Marshal Fields, before getting his degree.

This is the way we got around town. El trains (elevated trains) like this shook our house every 20 minutes, because the Humboldt Park line was only a few houses away. It was noisy, but we got used to it. Sort of like that apartment in the movie The Blues Brothers, but not as bad. We could get to the "Loop" or Wrigley Field in 25 minutes.

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

My parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died. Dad never golfed until Birdman Electric had a golf outing, (My Dad bought a used set of golf clubs for $5.00 I still use those clubs once a year when Holy Trinity has a golf outing) Here is a picture of the McGregor 5 iron, Mashie, with 2 German symbols hammered into the club.

Here is my Dad's baseball swing with that club.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. Mom wouldn't let us have a bicycle, because it was too dangerous. My next door neighbor let me ride a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 7, It was, of course, black and white, but we bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. We also bought an enlarger (Big magnifying glass that made the 7 inch picture look like a 9 inch TV. The problem with that was everybody had to sit squarely in front of the TV. When Grandma and Grandpa came up to see Bishop Sheen, wrestling and Milton Berle, we had 4 rows of chairs (2 chairs in each row)

Television

This TV is, notice I didn't say was, because it still sits in my Uncle Frank's parlor today. (That is what we called the living room. Sometimes we called it the frontroom) This is a Stromberg Carlson TV, it quit working in the 60s, but Uncle Frank thought it was too pretty to trash.

This was our new 12.5 inch Sonora TV in 1954 it replaced our 7 inch Motorola.

We got a Zenith a few years later it was an inch or 2 bigger and we got rid of that indoor antenna when Dad put the antenna on the roof. My sisters Mary (Left) and Pat is in the chair. Dad is on the couch and my legs are showing on the right.

The B/W photo was taken by my brother Herb. He turned a closet into a photographic dark room and started developing there until my Mom found developer fluid on my Dad's dress shirts. Herb was not deterred, by the eviction from the closet, He just turned our whole bedroom into a Darkroom. I went to sleep on the top bunk bed many nights with a red light glowing. Herb's photography hobby came in handy when we wanted to hide our fire crackers from Mom. We hid them in empty Kodak photo paper boxes. My mom once opened a box of photo paper and she ruined the light sensitive paper and it cost her $3 or $4, so from that day on Our stash was safe from Mom. We started hiding fire crackers after Mom flushed all fire works down the toilet. Mom did that after my 4 year old sister Pat was hit by a roman candle that backfired into her face at Uncle Joe Wijas.

That is me in Herb's Dark room, taking a break on my Brothers bed, I had the top one at night. The only time I went to sleep in there was on December 31st, 1956. My Brother was out on a date with the brand new 1956 Buick Century. I was 2 blocks away at Chuck and Dolly Wolf's House, So I had special permission to be out to midnight to celebrate the New Year. Herb was given an hour or so more since he had the car. (Yes, we only had one car) At 12:30 A.M., I tipped toed up the side of the stairs, where they did not squeak, so that I would not wake my Grandma, who slept in the bedroom on the first floor, beneath the stairs. When I got in our house, I quickly got into Herb's bed, knowing Mom would be checking to see who came in. I few minutes later, Mom peaked in, I was facing the wall in Herb's bed, she assumed Herb was home and the car was safely in the Garage. I heard her go back to bed and tell my Dad, "You can go to sleep now, the car is home." Herb came in undetected much later and climbed into my bed. Mom was a little confused in the morning when I got up and Herb was still in bed.

The following summer, I finally got to take the 56 Buick out on a date. The car was so big, I asked 2 of my friends to make it a triple date! We had my date and me in the front and 2 couples in the back. We went dancing at the Melody Mill, where Resurrection Annie was seen many times. She was a ghost that would dance the night away with some poor sap, then jump out of his car on the way home and disappear into Resurrection Cemetery. We went to a Drive In restaurant after the dance and we had the Radio playing some WLS Top 40 hits with the head lights on and the engine off, to save gas and protect the environment from that giant V-8. We ate and sang until it was time to get home and avoid my Mom's wrath. You guessed it, I ran the battery down and the car would not start. It had a Dino Flow automatic transmission, so we would have had to push it (in our suits and ties) to about 30 MPH, that was not an option, so I made the dreaded call to my home, where my Mom picked it up on the first ring, She would have answered sooner, but her hands were wrapped in the Rosary Beads. She was probably expecting a call from the police with some tragic news, so when she heard my voice, she was relieved and reassured that the Rosary still works, but she was still mad at Dad for letting me take the car out of the garage that night, so She let him have it, She yelled to wake up my Dad, "Go get your car!" My dad figured that I must have wrapped it around a pole, so he was relieved when I told him it was only a dead battery. He got the keys to Uncle Frank's Nash Rambler (That is the one that was banned from Dive in Movies, because the seats folded down to make a bed) When My Dad arrived at the Drive in Restaurant with jumper cables, He was not in the bad mood that I expected, He was joking around with my friends and giving me a mild lesson about car battery care. I knew that day, what I always suspected that he was a saint!

Radios

My Dad won this Zenith TransOceanic radio at the St. Mark Carnival it was introduced in 1951, establishing a basic dial design that would last 11 years, until Zenith quit making tube-powered TransOceanics in 1962. It had a plastic Wavemagnet with suction cups that you could stick onto a window and pick up Short Wave signals from around the world. This "portable radio" with its 5 pound battery weighed over 10 pounds. Before my Dad bought our first TV, I "watched" all of the Cub games on the radio. There is a great song that goes, "I saw it all on the Radio". That was so true, our Saturday Morning Cartoons were on the radio. Wally Phillips came to Chicago when I was in high school and he had a big influence on me and many Chicagoans. Wally just past away on March 28, 2008 and triggered some of the memories that I recorded below".

My memories of Wally Phillips

Wally Phillips and Bob Bell were recruited by Ward L. Quaal to bring "Quality, Integrity and Responsibility to the WGN audience." WGN TV could use the services of Ward Quaal again to get rid some of their scum bag shows like the Maury Povich Show and Pusycat Dolls.

I was in high school when Wally Phillips first came to town. I first heard him on WGN when he had a late night (9:00 PM was late back then) radio show. He was very funny and his show was a favorite with teenagers. I got to meet him several times when he was the Host of Bandstand Matinee on WGN TV. This show was a Chicago Version of Philadelphia's American Bandstand. I was a member of the St. Mark Church teen club and our adult sponsor, Hank Janicki, got us a spot on the show one afternoon. We all showed up in our finest clothes. Suites and ties for the boys and Easter parade type outfits for the girls. We rode a charter bus to the WGN TV studio, where we danced and had a great time. The powers at WGN were impressed with our group, since we fit in with their push toward bringing "Quality, Integrity and Responsibility to the WGN audience." We even had boys that danced with the girls, thanks to our Friday night meetings, where we drank 6 ounce nickel Cokes and danced to the latest hit records. Hank used to drag reluctant boys out onto the dance floors to get them started. Our club, "The Lionites" must have been put on the WGN "A" list, because were called several times when they needed a last minute group for the show.

I got to do a live commercial with Wally one time.

He had me sit in front of a big bowl of chocolate ice cream with a spoon. I was told to sit there and look hungry until he read the commercial. Then I could take a spoonful and act delighted. I didn't have to act, I was a teenager who loved ice cream, so I started to dive into the Ice cream before Wally was through with his message, so he grabbed my arm and prevented the ice cream from reaching my lips. He gave me a friendly humorous reprimand, and continued on with his message. The temptation was way too much for me, so I tried again and Wally was right on top of my attempt and delivered another humorous rant. The kids were laughing hilariously, as was the cameraman. I tried one more time, producing more laughter. Wally finally finished his paid message and he let go of my arm and I devoured that ice cream like the hungry teenager that I was. During the next song, I was still eating the ice cream when Wally came over and told me what a great job that I did. He mentioned something about putting me in his future commercials, because it was much better than the lame banter that some ad man wrote up for him to read.

Wally Phillips helped me help my students

I started teaching at 47th and State in 1962 and most of my students from the Robert Taylor, had a had time finding clothes that were needed for the Chicago winters. I called Wally up one time to share a funny story with him. (It was the dog ate my homework story) I was a rookie teacher, so I had never heard it and Wally loved it. We started talking about the physical needs of my students and one of his listeners set up a "Drop Off Box" at a Jewel store in one of the northern suburbs and a week later, I had enough warm clothing for all of my students and many more. Coach John McClendon, who was working with Converse at that time, gave me hundreds of Converse Gym shoes shortly after that.

Wally Phillips got Ernie Banks off of the Bench

When Leo Durocher took over the Cubs in 1966, Leo was not happy with Ernie Banks' friendly demeanor. He tried to make him mean, by benching him for a while. I loved Ernie, so I called Wally an a Saturday morning and vented my feelings about Leo's actions. Wally got a flood of calls that lasted until he cut it off at 11:00, saying, "We got the message, Ernie Banks should not be on the bench." Ernie was back in the starting line up on Sunday afternoon!

Cars

My Dad did have a car that he used to drive the Nuns around town. He traded this one in for a brand new 1952 Chevy with a Power Glide automatic transmission that quit going in reverse in a year, so Dad traded it in for a new 1953 Pontiac with a stick shift. I took my test for my driver's license in that car in 1956, because my Dad wanted me to get a license with no restrictions. Back then when you took your Driving test with an automatic transmission, you got a restricted drivers License. I did knock some chrome off of the Pontiac when I was taking a lesson with my brother. My saintly Dad was good about it and Herb talked the guy, who's car I scraped, out of pressing charges. As soon as I got my license, Dad bought a 1956 Buick Century that I couldn't drive for a long time. I bought a 1950 Desoto from my brother for $100 when I was a senior in college. My Brother got that car from my Father in law a year earlier for $100.

Our 1952 Chevrolet with a Power Glide Automatic Transmission and fender skirts.

This is My Dad's 1956 Buick, Century. It was big, heavy and Fast, even with the "Dyna Flow" Automatic Transmission!

This was my first car, a 1950 Desoto that I bought from my Brother for $100. It was his first car too, He bought it from my Father in Law.

This is my 1976 red Cutlass with a white vinyl top. It had a 6 cylinder L engine with a stick shift. It cost around $5,000.00 (No Air Conditioning) It had a CB (Citizen's Band radio that let me keep track of the convoy of school busses that carried students from the West Side Chicago Schools to Camp Ravenswood in Lake Villa Illinois. The building behind my car was the Camp Office, where I slept when Camp was in session. (usually 30 weeks of the 40 week school year. I was the camp Naturalists in 1975 until I was promoted to the Camp Coordinator from 1976-1980 when the program ended.) We traded in our Yellow 1965 Mustang for this car. I'll have to scan some old slides for a picture of that "Hot"car.

My Grandfather had a Ford. He called it a "Machine."

That was before my time, this is my Uncle George getting a ride on the running board with My Grandpa at the wheel.

This is my son Ken's Car, it can do a quarter mile in les than 11 seconds!

"FENDER SKIRTS".

A term I haven't heard in a long time and thinking about "fender skirts" started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like "curb feelers"

And "steering knobs." (AKA) suicide knob

Since I'd been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first.

Any kids will probably have to find some elderly person over 50 to explain some of these terms to you.

Remember "Continental kits?"

They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental.

When did we quit calling them "emergency brakes?"

At some point "parking brake" became the proper term. But I miss the hint of drama that went with "emergency brake."

Didn't you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the "running board" up to the house?

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the dining room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line. My wife didn't have a phone until she was 19. When I wanted to call her, I had to call her aunt Angie next door and she would tap on the window and pass the phone over.

Pizzas were not delivered to homes, But milk was. We went to the dairy for fresh milk in a gallon glass jug. When I was about 10, I remember hauling one of those jugs 4 blocks and then up 2 flights of the back porch stairs. When I got to the top stair, I banged it and a gallon of milk started a white "Water Fall" that formed a puddle on the landing. Mom gave me some more money and sent me back to get another gallon, as soon as I mopped up the mess.

That story reminds me of another stair climbing night mare that took place about midnight as we were quietly returning from Aunt Anna's house. Their kids were older than us, so they always gave us neat toys that they had outgrown. This night I had a huge steel cookie tin that was filled with hundreds of beautiful glass marbles (Called Knicks by my Dad) we were tip toeing up the front stairs that went right over my Grandmother's bedroom. I got to the top stair where the railing ends and the stairs take a left turn. I shifted my load and dropped the tin. That started a flow of marbles that made a loud noise on each stair as each one slowly made it's way to the bottom. The noise lasted about 60 seconds and finally ended when the last marble one hit the bottom. We did wake up grandma, but she was such a saint, she never complained about it.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and most boys delivered newspapers. I never delivered newspapers, That job stunk! You had to get up at 4 AM six days a week. On Saturday, You had to collect the 42 cents from the customers. Some customers gave you 50 cents and told you to keep the change. Some customers were never home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them. The Catholic Church had a news paper called "The New World" they rated the movies. I remember the Movie called "The Moon is Blue" got the "Condemned" rating.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

Here is our St. Mark Church that was in the basement of our K-8 School.

Boys on one side, girls on the other side.

Thanks to my Brother Herb, he had special permission to take pictures in church.

Pastor Father Dunne at Sunday Mass. The priests gave sermons back then, not homilies.

Father Faucher

For more St. Mark pictures go to: St. Mark

This is where I went to Holy Trinity High School from 1954-58 at 1444 West Division Street in Chicago, about a mile and a half from my house. My brother and I usually walked to and from each day. My uncles went there in the 1920s. I also had 7 cousins and my wife's brother attend there in the 1950s. I posted some of my Year book pictures on my web site.

This is what our CDs looked like, they rotated 45 times every minute.

You could put your name on it when you went to a party

They came separately or in Boxed sets like this that had two records with 2 songs on each side where you got 8 songs!

We listened to music that was on 78 RPM records that broke when you dropped them. In 1952, my brother Herb bought a new RCA Victor 45 RPM record player that had no speakers, and had to be plugged into a radio or TV that had RCA jacks that tapped into the speakers. We had to call on our Tech expert Uncle Al to wire up our radio. Herb paid $10 and got 8 free records. My Dad told him he got robbed and those big hole records will never catch on. A few years later, you couldn't buy a new 78 RPM record.

A few years later, they came out with LPs (Long Playing) records that rotated at 33 times per minute.

When I was in college, I got a Reel to Reel tape recorder that would play hours and hours of music. I used to tape my speeches and listen to myself before class.

Then the 8 track tapes came out in the 70s. You could listen to 12 -15 songs.

There were 4 stereo tracks that would play over and over. You could jump tracks by pushing a button. Our 1971 station wagon had an 8 track player built in.

The Wrigley Field Scoreboard had all 16 teams displayed. The Cubs just beat the Brooklyn Bums the St, Louis Browns and Philadelphia Athletics had the day off. Picture thanks to my Brother Herb.

The June 2007 issue of Reminisce Extra featured the above picture.

(Left to Right) my sister Pat, cousins Marcy, Josie, sister Mary and cousin Frank. Bill Link was resting on the Turf.

Black and White TV

These are Duffer Friends of mine.

Harvey-This is my friend.JPG (172230 bytes)

You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,

"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."

Dependin'g on the channel you tuned,

You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June.

It felt so good. It felt so right.

Life looked better in black and white.

I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys,

Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys,

Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train,

Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane.

Father Knows Best, Patty Duke,

Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too,

Donna Reed on Thursday night! --

Life looked better in black and white.

I wanna go back to black and white.

Everything always turned out right.

Simple people, simple lives...

Good guys always won the fights.

Now nothing is the way it seems,

In living color on the TV screen.

Too many murders, too many fights,

I wanna go back to black and white.

In God they trusted, alone in bed, they slept,

A promise made was a promise kept.

They never cussed or broke their vows.

They'd never make the network now.

But if I could, I'd rather be

In a TV town in '53.

It felt so good. It felt so right.

Life looked better in black and white.
I'd trade all the channels on the satellite,

If I could just turn back the clock tonight
To when everybody knew wrong from right.

Life was better in black and white!

MEMORIES from a friend:
My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember?
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
Real ice boxes!
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

My dimmer switch went bad on my 1950 Desoto, so I installed a new one that worked until I drove the old tank to the junk yard. I had a 53 Chrysler, so I removed the dimmer switch, Radio and a few other parts that would serve as replacements for my Chrysler. I was removing the Radio around midnight when a Chicago Police car pulled up next to me and and looked in. He pulled up a few car lengths and I waited and started sweating, even though it was a cold winter night. I kept removing the Radio, what else could I do, I was a block from home. Then He drove off into the night. I took my parts and went home.

The Land of Sandra Dee

Long ago and far away,

In a land that time forgot,

Before the days of Dylan

Or the dawn of Camelot.

There lived a race of innocents,

And they were you and me,

Long ago and far away

In the Land of Sandra Dee.

Oh, there was truth and goodness

In that land where we were born,

Where navels were for oranges,

And Peyton Place was porn.

For Ike was in the White House,

And Hoss was on TV,

And God was in his heaven

In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We learned to gut a muffler,

We washed our hair at dawn,

We spread our crinolines to dry

In circles on the lawn.

And they could hear us coming

All the way to Tennessee,

All starched and sprayed and rumbling

in the Land of Sandra Dee .

We longed for love and romance,

And waited for the prince,

And Eddie Fisher married Liz,

And no one's seen him since.

We danced to "Little Darlin'",

And Sang to "Stagger Lee"

And cried for Buddy Holly

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

Only girls wore earrings then,

And three was one too many,

And only boys wore flat-top cuts,

Except for Jean McKinney.

And only in our wildest dreams

Did we expect to see

A boy named George with Lipstick

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

We fell for Frankie Avalon,

Annette was oh, so nice,

And when they made a movie,

They never made it twice.

We didn't have a Star Trek Five,

Or Psycho Two and Three,

Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold,

And Chester had a limp,

And Reagan was a Democrat

Whose co-star was a chimp.

We had a Mr. Wizard,

But not a Mr. T,

And Oprah couldn't talk yet

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

We had our share of heroes,

We never thought they'd go,

At least not Bobby Darin,

Or Marilyn Monroe.

For youth was still eternal,

And life was yet to be,

And Elvis was forever,

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

We'd never seen the rock band

That was Grateful to be Dead,

And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson ,

And Zeppelins were not lead.

And Beatles lived in gardens then,

And Monkees in a tree,

Madonna was a virgin

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

We'd never heard of Microwaves,

Or telephones in cars,

And babies might be bottle-fed,

But they weren't grown in jars.

And pumping iron got wrinkles out,

And "gay" meant fancy-free,

And dorms were never coed

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

We hadn't seen enough of jets

To talk about the lag,

And microchips were what was left at

The bottom of the bag.

And Hardware was a box of nails,

And bytes came from a flea,

And rocket ships were fiction

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

Buicks came with portholes,

And side show came with freaks,

And bathing suits came big enough

To cover both your cheeks.

And Coke came just in bottles,

And skirts came to the knee,

And Castro came to power

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

We had no Crest with Fluoride,

We had no Hill Street Blues,

We all wore superstructure bras

Designed by Howard Hughes.

We had no patterned pantyhose

Or Lipton herbal tea

Or prime-time ads for condoms

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

There were no golden arches,

No Perriers to chill,

And fish were not called Wanda,

And cats were not called Bill.

And middle-aged was thirty-five

And old was forty-three,

And ancient were our parents

In the Land of Sandra Dee .

But all things have a season,

Or so we've heard them say,

And now instead of Maybelline

We swear by Retin-A.

And they send us invitations

To join AARP,

We've come a long way, baby,

From the Land of Sandra Dee .

So now we face a brave new world

In slightly larger jeans,

And wonder why they're using

Smaller print in magazines.

And we tell our children's children

of the way it used to be,

Long ago and far away

In the Land of Sandra Dee.

I remember it well. What happened to that world?

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about! Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive-6933)

12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16 Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18.. Mimeograph paper
19 Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
2! 2. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my life.

"Senility Prayer"

"...God grant me...
The senility to forget the people I never liked
The good fortune to run into the ones that I do
And the eyesight to tell the difference."
Have a great week!!!!!!

Go to some Olden Days Family Pictures

Some High School Stories

Put your birth date in the pop up window after you click on the link below. What happens is pretty interesting. Click on the link below:
Age Gauge

More Good Old Days pictures

To E-mail Web master, just click here! greg@lopatka.net

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