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Good Old Days Quick Navigation
I received the following e-mail from my daughter Debbie. I changed a few of the things to fit my memories. I added memories from my brother and sisters. Lightning Bugs / Older 'n Dirt!!
"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?" 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 chicken. 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. There were many hot dog stands and guys with carts selling hot dogs in the old neighborhood. There was Sammy's Red Hots by Carole's house on Maplewood and Division. There was Freddy's Hot Dogs and Moishe Pippick's (Yiddish for belly button) Hot Dogs. You could get a dog, and fries for a quarter and any of these places. There was the "Humboldt Spot" on California and Division that was later renamed "Ricky's" where you could get a corned beef sandwich with pickle, and coleslaw for fifty cents. It was owned by Art Melmen, whose son Ricky is now one of the country's biggest restaurateurs. The closest thing we had to "Fast Food" was Saturday's lunch. Mom would send me to the corner grocery store where Josie was the lady in charge. We would get some fresh buns and some sliced ham along with a big dill pickle. Josie would always put in a bar of Ivory soap since Saturday was "Bath Day". One memory that I have was on a day when Mom sent me to the store with a note. I gave it to Josie and she got the "can of corn" grabber and pulled down a box that was wrapped in plain brown paper. The secrecy got the best of my curiosity, so I ripped a hole in the wrapper on the way home to see what was in there. You guessed it, I had a box of Kotex sanitary napkins. Looking back, I wondered how I was picked for that job and I surmised that my sisters were too young and my brother was too smart. 
This is what I looked like when I played 3rd base in college. That was our Serval gas refrigerator. My dad used to say that the little man in the refrigerator who turned the light on was named pieniądze. (pieniądze is money in Polish That is one of the few Polish words that my dad knew that were not cuss words)
Humboldt Park Amvets 1955. (Not much protection for your important body parts.)
My Dad, Herb Lopatka was quite a player, according to accounts from my grandpa and Uncle George. They watched him play with Cub Great, Phil Cavarretta.
This is my Father in law Edmund
This is my Dad's glove. Mom said that he bought it at the Wilson Sporting Goods Factory for 2 or 3 dollars in the late 1930s. The Wilson factory was on Milwaukee Ave, near Rockwell Street. I bought my Roy Campanella catchers mitt (Pictured below) from a guy who worked there for $20. I later bought my A2000 fielder's glove for $25 in the late 1950s. They were selling for about $50 in the stores. Most of the professional players were starting to use the A2000. I was earning $1.10 per hour at Carl-Sons Hardware store at that time. I worked there part time when I was in High School and College. I had to take some time off when I was playing college baseball and Carl didn't like that too much, so he told me, " You have to make up my mind, do you want to work or play baseball." I asked my Dad for advice. He said, "Tell Carl that you are going to play baseball now, because you will have to work the rest of your life." My Dad knew Carl well from his grade school days. Carl was a rich kid whose mom used to dress him funny. Kids picked on him and my Dad used to keep the bullies away from him. Carl used to give my dad candy to pay for his protection. Carl liked to schedule deliveries of 80 pound bags of ready mix concrete on days when I was working, since I didn't mind working up a sweat hauling and stacking those bags into the bins. We didn't have weights to lift back then, so I was building a strong back and arms while getting paid. I was one of the first football players to use weight training on my legs. I took sections of lead pipe that my Dad removed from our house and hammered them flat. I then sewed a pocket in some old baseball socks and inserted the flattened lead pipes into them. I would go jogging with the weights and build up my legs.
The ball in my Roy Campanella catchers mitt was caught bare handed by my Dad in the Wrigley Field Bleachers. It was a home run that came off of the bat of Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, Ralph Kiner. Ralph had 54 home runs in 1949 (The year my Dad caught that ball) . Kiner later played for the Chicago Cubs from 1953-55. He teamed up with Hank Sauer and Frank Baumholtz to give the Cubs the slowest outfield in the history of baseball. We were sitting on the last bench in the left field bleachers. My Dad stood on the bench and caught Kiner's line drive homerun and handed it to Herb and me. My dad would take his 2 week vacation when the Cubs had a home stand. We went to every game. That was Dad's vacation and we loved it. The next day, there was another homerun that Dad had to run back and jump for. He caught it with one hand, then scraped his back on the screen. His back had some sun burn blisters and when he hit the screen, he dropped the ball and 10 fans jumped on the ball and fought for it. I remember my Dad asking my brother and me why we didn't jump into the pile and get that ball. I was 9 and Herb was 12 at the time. We never got out of our seat and could not give him a good answer for our inactivity. We kept the Kiner ball on a shelf and we were not supposed to play with it, but it was so tempting, because we seldom had a ball with a cover on it. We used to play with a ball until the cover came off, then we taped it with friction tape and played with it for years. The problem with a taped ball was that it started out as a spheroid then evolved into an ellipsoid as more layers of tape built up at the poles of the ball. One day, Herb and I took the ball off of the shelf to play catch in the alley. By the way, people in Chicago never said "let's have a catch" We said, "let's play catch." We agreed to play very carefully and never let the ball touch the concrete. So we started throwing the ball back and forth very carefully. Then it happened, I uncorked a wild pitch that went skipping down the alley picking up numerous scars. Once the ball was scratched up, we got more reckless with it and we played catch many more times. It was such a thrill to throw a ball that had seams. Later in the year, we decided to cover the scars with varnish. I remember going to Wrigley Field when I was 7, in 1947 when Jackie Robinson made his first appearance in Chicago. I had never seen a person of color at Wrigley Field before that day. I was amazed to see the park was filled with colored people. That is what they were called back then. All other colored players were playing in the Negro Baseball League until Major League Baseball lifted the ban on people of color. |
Click on the pictures to see the full image
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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 chicken, but it was 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 called Mercurochrome to paint on our sores. (Mercurochrome, is a topical antiseptic used for minor cuts and scrapes. It is readily available in most countries but no longer sold in the United States because of its mercury content.) We played with mercury every time a thermometer broke. We also had lead pipes in our house until my dad replaced them with galvanized pipe when I was in high school. My uncle Frank had lead pipes for all of his 96 years. When Dad removed the pipes from our house, I took a couple of 14 inch sections and pounded them flat and sewed a pocket on some baseball socks ana went jogging. We had baseball bats with lead in them for practice swings, so I used the logic that if I jogged with lead weights, I would be able to run faster once I got the lead out. There was no weight training, I pushed a broom and built up my arms. (I worked at Carl-Sons Hardware store, where I was always on duty when the 90 pound concrete bags were delivered. I worked there through high school and college. I quit when I was on the college baseball team and had to take some time off for games. My boss, Carl, said, "You better decide if you want to play baseball or work." Carl was an old school mate of my Dad and when I told my Dad what my boss said, my Dad said, "You tell Carl that you're going to play ball, because you will have to work the rest of your life." I told Carl what Dad said and I was free to play the rest of the season.
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 butter. 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 Sisters of Providence that taught us at St. Mark School. 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. ** Note from my sister Pat
Mary used to eat her canned spinach and make us
look bad. You and I would be sitting there with the clock
ticking away and our eyes tearing up and the cold spinach
coagulating on our plates. Then Mom would cave and say,
"OK, you don't have to eat your spinach if you do the
dishes." Our faces would light up! Anything was better
than the dreaded canned spinach.
Pat
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We always had a bat or a ball in our hands. (Right) My Dad, Herb and Mom, Adeline, Brother Herb, me and sister Pat. |
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I started thinking about how we celebrated Christmas.
Santa came on Christmas Eve and we stayed up late. All of the kids
took their last drink of water before midnight, so that we could
receive Holy Communion the next day. (When we got older we went to
midnight Mass) Santa usually came to Uncle Frank's 3rd floor first. When we went up to see what they got, Santa would come to our house on the 2nd floor. The next day we had the biggest party of the year, because our grandparents lived on the first floor. We never saw Santa except when we went to Aunt Anna's house a few days before Christmas. They had an evil Santa that scared the hell out of us, because he would take his belt off and give her teen age boys and their friends a good whipping for being bad. We were sacred speechless. We were afraid to ask for anything. Here is where I need some help, I started counting how many people came over. Aunt Irene and Uncle Joe brought 4 then 5, Uncle George did the same. That is 14 added to our 6 and uncle Frank's 5 plus our grandparents. Can you remember any others that were there? It was quite a scene with kids running up and down stairs playing with all of the new toys. I remember my Dad would spend most of his Christmas bonus buying gifts for our cousins some years. My cousin Debbie (Uncle George's daughter) e-mailed me to remind me that My Dad's Sister Aunt Bella and her husband John always joined us for Christmas. That would put the count at 29. She also told me she got in trouble for feeding our dog some M&Ms. I remember my Dad and Uncle John had a fist fight one time to settle a disagreement. I guess it was like a hockey fight, because no one got hurt. I didn't see it, but I heard whispers about it. I had my first taste of Blackberry Brandy when I was an 8th grader singing Christmas Carols. I was an Altar Boy and we made a stop at Alderman Tom Keane's house. It was a cold night, so he gave each one of us a shot of Blackberry Brandy to warm us up. He later did a little time in the "Big House" for dipping in the City till. Tom Keene's wife, Adeline, took over his City Council seat and tried to woo the Latino Vote by announcing her support for teaching Latin in schools. Herb sent me the following:
You got the number of kids that came for Christmas
right. The kids usually drifted away from Grandma and
Grandpa's and came upstairs to play with our winnings.
That toilet water thing was Mary's invention. Pat
is innocent on this one.
I can remember drinking water before midnight.
We'd normally have a glass but our cousin Frank would drink multiple glasses of
water while holding his breath. I can remember Uncle Frank
shouting, "Bunnie, you're going to burst!!"
I remember being up there when Aunt Bella was visiting, I was
about 5 years old. Frank had this little table and chairs and
decided we were going to have our own party, so he got two juice
glasses and a pint bottle of cod liver oil. He poured one for
himself and one for me. He drank his and wondered why I hadn't
imbibed. I told him I didn't want it, so he drank mine too.
He must have had some diaper the next day. One to boast about.
He had strange tastes. In kindergarten a bunch of
us were bad and the nun pulled out about 6 bars of soap and told us
all to eat it. We all sat and licked it and made faces and after
about 10 minutes she said we didn't need to finish, She held out a bag for
everyone to deposit his soap. When she got to Bunny he didn't
have the soap. She asked what he did with it and he very
obediently said, "I ate it."
(Herb went to Kindergarten at St. Aloysius, a German School)
Don't forget the handkerchief with 'mustard' on it
story. (You will have to e-mail me for that story)
My sister Pat sent me the following:
I gave you toilet water? I thought I did that to Dad. See what
you guys get for asking a little kid to do impossible jobs? How
was I going to reach an actual faucet?
How about the time you and Herb tried out my new little oven and burnt
the corn bread. It always smelled like that whenever I turned it
on. You did this before Christmas Eve. I think trying it
out was unnecessary. Admit it. You guys just wanted to
play with it.
You got the numbers right. Who else would be there? I
think we had enough with Uncle George and Aunt Irene's kids. Our
flat was the most popular because we had the most toys. Some of
our cousins got shoes for Christmas.
Pat
I remember going downtown to Marshal Fields, I don't remember buying anything because I had the feeling it was for rich people, but it was a great time just walking around and riding the escalators to all of the many levels. They also had enervators with real people taking you to the floor of your choice. Here is a link to a terrific Youtube video about the Marshal Field Store.
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This cartoon reminds me of the time my big brother passed one of his ideas on to me. When Mom used to try to smack us, sometimes she would hurt her hand when we blocked her swing with our forearms. So when we had a spanking coming, she would use one of Dad's belts that were hanging in the closet. One day just after a spanking, while my but was still smarting, Herb told me, "You know, if We hid Dad's belts, Mom wouldn't be able to spank us." I said, "That is a great idea!" So in the next few days, I proceeded to hide the belts under the mattress. I even hid his money belt, the one that had a zipper pocket. That plan worked well for a while until Mom changed the sheets and all of the belts fell out. Herb was just like the big brother in the cartoon. He said, "Greg did it!" (he didn't admit that he made the suggestion, but Mom knew Herb was the master mind.) We got a couple of spankings to catch up. My Mom was the enforcer in our house, her biggest threat was, "wait till your father gets home, I'm going to tell him." We hated that worse than the belt. He never hit us, he just talked and talked until we were ashamed and promised never to do it again. The biggest punishment was when She made me sleep with Dad and he talked and talked and when I was dozing off, he would wake me and say, "Are you listening to me?"
This is what Dad's Money Belt looked like
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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. Mom could get evil when you tried to pay her, and she even
got uglier when you tried to refuse money from her.
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 spent 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. (My improvement was helped a great deal when I started going out with Joyce, she studied every night, so I started going to her house with my my books) I couldn't see myself working in a factory for 52 weeks, so when I graduated high school, 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 it until the following day when Brother John Kuhn 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." (My penmanship was extra messy to cover my poor spelling) Brother John 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 for a 7:00 AM class. 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 with "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. |
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This was our first TV, I remember Dad saying he paid $200 for this beauty.
Ever wonder where those names come from? In this case, a small company
was formed to produce car
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. (Or maybe it was too heavy to carry down from the 3rd floor) After Uncle Frank passed away, the person who rented his apartment told me I could leave it there. Make me an offer!
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. This picture was featured in Reminisce Magazine in 2008.
Reminisce Magazine sent me this 57 Chevy for the article.
Sometimes this test pattern was the only thing on TV.
We watched Kukla, (Russian word for puppet) Fran and Ollie (Oliver J. Dragon) , every day. My Mom made us Kukla and Ollie puppets so that we could be Burr Tillstrom the puppeteer and the creator of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Other puppets on the show were Beulah Witch, and Fletcher Rabbit. The B/W photo below was taken by my brother Herb. He turned a closet into a photographic dark room and started developing pictures 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 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' 4th of July party.
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 Herb's bed 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 my 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. (one thin dime in the pay phone) 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, telling the girls how nice they looked and giving me a lecture about car battery care. I knew that day, what I always suspected that he was a saint! |
A 7 inch Motorola.
 In the late 70s, I worked at a Chicago Public
Schools camp for inner city kids. I was sitting near the
dinning hall waiting for the high school counselors to bring their
campers to dinner. There were a lot of ground squirrels that
the kids liked to chase. On this occasion, there were a dozen
11 year old boys in hot pursuit of one of the little rodents.
They had him surrounded and as they closed in on him he disappeared
into a hole. One of the boys was so angry, that he got on his
knees and yelled into the hole, "Yo Mama!" I called the
boy over and had a little heart to heart talk with him. I
always preached the "Golden Rule" so I told him, That
little squirrel is probably down there crying his eyes out and
telling his friend, "That boy was talking about my Mama."
the boy told me he was sorry as I stifled a laugh.
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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. When Wally passed away on March 28, 2008, I recorded some of the memories that I had of him 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 we 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. A St. Mark Grad sent me the following memory after reading the above.
I have a memory of being on his show and I danced with someone and
received 2nd prize. I am trying to think of his name but it's not
coming to me. (MANY things don't come to me these days) I too,
was speaking in a commercial. When Wally gave me a signal I was
supposed to say "BUY IT AT WALGREENS" but what
came out was BLY ( rhymes with buy) IT AT WALGREENS. That was the
end of my commercial career.
Joyce Pecka
Wally Phillips helped me help my students I
started teaching at 47th and State
in 1962 and many of my students from the Robert Taylor Homes, had a hard time
finding clothes that were suitable 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.
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 on 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! |
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My Dad did had 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.
My 2004 Toyota Prius weighs 1111 pounds less.
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. *Correction: My son Dan sent me the following e-mail when he read this: Dear Dad, In your car section you state that you traded in your 65 Mustang for the Red 76 Old's. Are you sure you traded in the 65 Mustang for your 76 Olds? I don't think I was around when you had the Mustang and I remember you had a F-85 Gold Oldsmobile that I cried when it got towed away from our house. That was the car that you had to hold the button in while closing the door for it to lock, and I remember trying to do that at Doerhoffer Park and slamming four of my fingers in the door. I was about four years old then. When I was born you probably had to get rid of the Mustang for your Gold Olds for more room. Darn kids always costing you money.
In the year 2000, I bought this 2001 Toyota Prius pictured above in front of my Mom's house in Chicago. (Our grandchildren Jeff and Michelle are on the porch sweeping up some leaves) I sold that car to my son Ken in 2004 when I bought a 2004 Prius. Ken has 220,000 miles on it in 2011 and it is still going. That car was one of the first Prius cars in this country. The VIN number shows that it was number 32.
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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.
Grandpa Z on his porch
This is Grandpa Z'z hand made wooden shovel. I laughed at it at first, then I tried it and it was so light weight, that I started using it to scoop up yard waste.
This is my son Ken's Car, it can do a quarter mile in less than 11 seconds!
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. 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?
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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 with a curtain rod 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. Her 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 hit the bottom. We did wake up grandma, but she was such a saint, she never complained about it.
In June of 2010, the young lady who rented my Mom's apartment, dug up part of the yard for a garden and she found these 2 marbles. Katie put them in an envelope with the July Rent.
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. 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 taught me how to play basketball. He coached our 8th grade team to a championship. For more St. Mark pictures go to: St. Mark
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 Ted attend there in the 1950s. I posted some of my Year book pictures on my web site. Click here to read more Holy Trinity Stories
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Someone asked me if I got into a lot of fights, I was one of the bigger guys in my class, so I seldom had someone challenge me. When they did, I just laughed and walked away. I don't like to fight, although I may have a fighting gene in me somewhere, because my Dad had some brawls when he was a street kid. I did have a few tussles while growing up. I remember popping a relative at a Communion party when I was about 7, I don't remember any of the details except I was forced to apologize and I had to act like I was sorry. One thing we learned to do in Catholic School was apologize and look sincere. In 4th grade, Jim Schmidt and I got into a "Fight" over something that I can't remember. We wrestled each other to the ground, (no punches were thrown) then he noticed his school pants had a tear on the knee, so he started to cry and so did I. I sat next to him and put my arm around him as we both cried. (7 years later we were tough football team mates at Holy Trinity and we tried never to cry) See Jim's nickel memory of me below. In 7th grade, I got in another fight with George Izakowski: It was a fight at recess I don't know what he did to provoke me, but I don't remember throwing any punches, but I did feel I won the tussle. I was worried that Sister St Helen would come down hard on us for fighting, but she told me later that She was glad that I taught him a lesson, because he needed it. The following summer, I was working at the St Mark Carnival in a booth with Mr. Janaki when Joe Kurgan, a bully from the class of 1953 was giving me a hard time. I was afraid of him, but he reached into the booth and grabbed my white shirt and ripped a few buttons off, so I lost it! I jumped out of the booth, grabbed him and dropped him with one punch, Mr. Janaki loved it and called me Joe Louis from that day on. Joe is on that Lionites Softball picture on my St. Mark webpage He never gave me a hard time after that punch. When I told Ray this story, he laughed and said Joe was never a bully with his class.
We don't fight when we play hockey, we just laugh. Once in a while some of the younger guys get heated, but we remind them why we are here and why we let them play with us.
Jim Schmidt told me the following story at our 50th reunion:
Jim and I were good friends since grade school, so He needed a loan one day when he brought a date to my neighborhood theater. The Queen Theater was only a half a block from my house and the admission was 14 cents on week days. The Crystal Theater was just 2 blocks west of the Queen but it was very fancy and they charged 25 cents. You wouldn't impress a date by taking her the the Queen, so Jim took his date to the upscale theater, only to find he was a nickel short when he got there. He walked over to my house and asked me if he could borrow a nickel. He tells me I gave him a quarter. I don't remember that, but Jim swears it is a true story and he never forgot that.
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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. 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!
A few years later, they came out with LPs (Long Playing) records that rotated 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. |
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One summer, we got into fishing. We went fishing at the Humboldt Park Lagoon almost every day, my brother Herb did not like the feel of worms, so he used pliers to put them on the hook. We caught all kinds of fish that we used to carry home in a bucket. We tried our best to keep them alive in an aquarium, but they never made it through the summer. (We didn't have a pump or a filter) One summer I raised 2 tadpoles and when they sprouted legs and crawled up out of the water, I became an expert fly catcher. When I was 8 or 9, I saw my 90 year old Great Grandpa Klemm catch a fly that was on his mirror with one quick swipe of his hand. He squeezed his hand until the fly was crushed, then washed his hands. From that day on, I tried to catch every fly that I saw. When I was successful, I didn't like crushing them, because I didn't like washing my hands, so I just threw the fly to the sidewalk and stepped on it. When I became a frog parent, that skill came in handy. I started feeding the flies to my frogs. I later learned that I could catch more flies by sneaking up on them with a wide mouth mustard jar. (I learned that they would fly away if your shadow went over them) Once I captured some flies, I would cover the jar and drop it in to my frog terrarium then quickly cover the top with the screen. I then watched the frogs stalk their prey. Sometimes a frog would jump out if I didn't cover it quickly, so that would keep me out of trouble for a while. Those frogs got fat on my flies and lived a long life. We also went to lake Michigan to catch lake perch with our long Bamboo fishing poles. We used to see many fishermen at Montrose Harbor in the early spring when the Smelt Fishing season began. That looked like fun, so several of my friends, Jim Cowley, Chuck Wolf and Herman the German) pitched in and bought a smelt net, line, pulley and anchor. Herman dropped out of school when he was 16* and got a job and a car, so he was able to drive us to the Lake. We went to the Lake right after school and got a great parking space. (There was free parking in those days) I started tying the anchor on the the line and got distracted, Chuck Wolf came by and swung the anchor around and sailed it out to the lake, it was a great toss, but the line was still in his hand. We made a quick collection then Jim and I jogged a mile and a half to a bait shop to buy another anchor. (We didn't want to give up that parking spot) By the time I got back, the line was tangled and we spent an hour getting it untangled. When we finally lowered the net into the water on the pulley, it was time to go home. We never caught one Smelt. They are only about 3 inches long, so you need a bucket full to have a meal. I never had a meal from the fish that I caught until I took my son Ken to Canada when he was 12. That event has a lot of stories that I should record when I get time. *There was another kid that emigrated from Germany, Karl Marx dropped out of school also and got a job. He had a nice orange Mercury Convertible. I can't blame them for dropping out of school, because when they came to this country they were 15 and knew very little English except the words that they learned on the playground, so they were placed in 1st grade until they could read the "Dick and Jane" books, then they moved up to second grade. I remember asking them what they did at recess with all of those 6 year olds. Herman said, "I just light up a Lucky Strike and puff on it until the bell rings.
The Smelt that got away
This is me fishing for perch with Bill Link and his Dad. I just got the new rod from my Mom's cousin Mike Wigas. Our Wigas cousins gave us lots of cool things. Like lead soldiers that they made by pouring hot molten lead into the molds that they had. A small box of those soldiers weighed 80 pounds. |
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Carole and I lived only a half mile away from each other, but our paths never crossed, even though she went to St Fidalas School that was 2 blocks from my house and I went to St. Mark School that was 2 blocks from her house. We went to a Church Teen Club Picnic at Cedar Lake in Northern Illinois in the summer before our senior year of high school. We entered an egg throwing contest at the picnic with the hope of winning the one dollar prize. The guys were lined up on one side facing the ladies. Some guys moved down the line so that they could team up with their girl friends. I was just looking to team up with someone who could catch my tosses. I looked at the gals and gave up trying to maneuver, so I just let fate take over. I was paired up with Carole by chance. I did not know her and she did not know me. Each guy was given a raw egg and was instructed to toss it to his partner, who was about 10 feet away. After the first toss, several girls broke the egg by snatching at it or missing it completely. We moved 2 steps back and then the girls tossed the eggs to the guys. Several more partners were eliminated after that toss. We backed up 2 more steps and tossed the eggs back to our partners and I was very impressed at the way Carole caught that egg. She pulled her hands back just as the egg touched her hands and gave the egg a very soft landing. 2 more teams were out. One contestant had egg on her face. We backed up again and she tossed me a very catchable egg and we were in the final 4. We backed up some more and now we were about 20 feet apart. I tossed that egg to her and held my breath. She caught it with out any problems. 2 of the remaining 4 ladies failed to make the catch, so we were in the finals. We backed up again and the eggs were tossed. Again Carole made a good throw that I was able to catch, but our opponent was not as lucky. He had scrambled egg on his pants and shoes. We were the winners, so I tossed one more just for good luck and she grabbed it like a pro. We each were given a dollar and at the award presentation, I felt that I should ask her what her name was, since she helped me win the big prize!* That was it, I went off and played in the softball game and never saw her again until the next Friday night when our teen club had a dance. We danced and soon we were dating. We played tennis she was good at that too. We went bowling many times and she was real good at that. I had a 180 average, but she beat me many times. A few years later when we were 20, she wanted to go bowling and I didn't feel like going bowling, so I asked her to marry me. She said yes and when we were 21 we tied the knot. We had a boy, 2 girls and a boy in the next 10 years. 48 years later, we had four granddaughters, four grandsons, one great granddaughter and one great grandson.
*you could buy 20 bottles of Coke or 4 packs of cigarettes with a dollar. (I never smoked because it was too expensive, but I did down a lot of Cokes) When I started teaching, I used to have a word problem for my students, where they would try to calculate how much money I saved by not starting to smoke when I was 13. One pack a day for 10 years was almost $1000.
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The above is a picture of a lead pipe that was removed from my Uncle Frank's flat in 2009. My grandson thought I was Superman when he saw me bend this pipe with just a slight grunt. |
Uncle Frank was drinking leaded water for 95 years, he passed away when he started drinking unleaded water in a nursing home. When I pick this up, I know what a lead pipe cinch is. |
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Less than a week later, my Mom was washing curtains and other things for the good nuns. * After Mom washed the curtains, she had to stretch them out to dry on a curtain stretcher. (Pictured below) Mom had it located in the narrow hallway that connected the kitchen and dining room. The stretcher had hundreds of sharp needles that held the curtain in place. When you walked or ran too close to the stretcher, you went away with a bloody leg that Mom would treat with Mercurochrome or a tincture of Iodine. (either one caused more pain than the cut)
* My wife told me that she volunteered her Mom to do some washing for the Nuns at St Fidalis, only her Mom did not have a washing machine, she had to use a wash board and tub. When you washed clothes like that, you soon developed "Washboard Abs"
When I did an image search for a washboard, several pictures came up with guys showing off their "Washboard Abs", but they had to go to work out at the gym to develop them. |
When
I saw this Family Circus cartoon. I immediately thought of the day in
grade school when my teacher, Sister Veronica Ann, asked us if anyone had
a washing machine. My hand shot up, because we had an electric
washer with a power wringer that my Mom slaved over.
We had a shoe store that was located just around the corner from our house. It was on North Ave, just west of Rockwell Street, next to the "Dime Store", That's what we called the Woolworth Store. Whenever we walked past the shoe store, we would go in and ask the guy if we could x-ray our feet, he was a friendly guy and always said, "sure, go ahead." We would take turns putting our feet in and we would look at the bones in our feet!
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Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope (ca. 1930-1940) |
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Basic
Description The shoe fitting fluoroscope was a common fixture
in shoe stores during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. A typical unit, like the |
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Donated by Purdue University, courtesy of Paul Ziemer. |
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According to Williams (1949), the machines
generally employed a 50 kv x-ray tube operating at 3 to 8 milliamps. When
you put your feet in a shoe fitting fluoroscope, you were effectively
standing on top of the x-ray tube. The only “shielding” between your
feet and the tube was a one millimeter thick aluminum filter. Some units allowed
the operator to select one of three different intensities: the highest
intensity for men, the middle one for women and the lowest for children. Most units also had a push button timer that could be set to a desired exposure time, e.g., 5 to 45 seconds. The most common setting was 20 seconds. Thanks to Oak Ridge Associated Universities in Oak Ridge Tennessee for the above information |
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Black and White TV
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These are Duffer Friends of mine. |
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Life was better in black and white!
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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. If
I could just turn back the clock tonight Life was better in black and white!
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MEMORIES from a friend: 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. |
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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?
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Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all
the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about! Ratings at the
bottom.
12. Peashooters "Senility Prayer" "...God grant me...
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Go to some Olden Days Family Pictures
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
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