Boomers look back fondly on many events and milestones throughout their lives:  The days of hot cars, great music, graduations, weddings, birth announcements and lives full of excitement and memories. But like the 18 ½ minute gap in the presidential tapes of Richard Nixon, there was one segment from Boomer history that should be erased – the era of Leisure Suits. How did we let that … [Read more...]

I don’t remember when it was that I decided to become a Cleveland Browns fan. I think it was when Otto Graham passed for three TDs and ran for three more in the 56-10 win over the Detroit Lions in the 1954 NFL championship game that I became an official Browns fanatic. I lived or died with the Browns, and then something special happened. Jim Brown, All-American fullback out of Syracuse, was … [Read more...]

Sunday dinner was over, and Brad Stuart was outside. He had rounded up enough kids for a 4-on-a-side baseball game. But I couldn’t play. Yet. I had to do dishes. Mom had used every pot and pan in the kitchen to fry her chicken, bake her homemade yeast rolls, boil and mash potatoes, fix two bowls of vegetables and cook a chocolate cake. It was a great Sunday dinner (we called a fancy lunch … [Read more...]

Summer is fast approaching, meaning modern children will be busier than ever with activities galore. It’s mind boggling to try and appreciate all the things in store for today’s kids. It wasn’t always like that. Boomers look back and remember that when school let out, if you didn’t play Little League baseball, you were sentenced to a summer of Scrabble, Clue and Monopoly games. Unless, … [Read more...]

Last Sunday, the preacher and I were the only men in Church with a coat and a tie. Others wore sport shirts, knit shirts and maybe their best jeans. I am old school. I believe in dressing for respect of the occasion. I don’t wear a baseball cap to a nice restaurant, and I consider blue jeans to be work clothes, I don’t care how much they cost. I had moved to Charlottesville on the first day … [Read more...]

  We were driving from Lewisburg, WV to enroll at UNC in Chapel Hill on a September day in 1962 when I first heard the group. The song was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” sung by a group called Peter, Paul and Mary. Boomers grew up with this trio, pioneers in folk music, which gained steam in the 1960s. To many, folk music meant protests and flower children. To me, it meant some of … [Read more...]

Some of the greatest treasures we have are old family recipes, traditions passed from one generation to the next. Many of these old recipes can date back a hundred years and more. They connect us to our past. My wife Nancy has accumulated a thick volume of these priceless wonders. Nancy married into a family of incredible cooks. Not me. All I could cook when we first married were hamburgers, … [Read more...]

  “Hurry son! You’ll be late for school!” “I’m trying Mom. I can’t get my pants on. I think the pants legs shrunk!” Such might have been a morning conversation in any number of homes in the 1950’s. That’s because a certain fad called pegged pants swept all of Boomer-hood, causing both young men and women to truly struggle to get their pants on. Pegged pants had their origins when … [Read more...]