Much of our cruising experience has been aboard Norwegian ships. On our past cruises, we have been joined by anywhere between 2,100 and 5,000 other guests. A river cruise on the Viking Mississippi has a maximum of 386 guests and that makes a huge difference. The 450-foot-long ship was built in America, flies the American flag, and includes only American crew members, all of whom speak fluent … [Read more...]

Today, we have Dollar General and Dollar Tree stores, and they are among the fastest growing of today’s retail establishments. Except, now they should be called “Dollar and Quarter Stores” after a fling with spiraling inflation.   I remember the dime stores or “Five and Dime’s” as we called them. Stores like Woolworth’s, Ben Franklin, W.T. Grant, McCrorys were once staples on every … [Read more...]

For the heck of it, we watched Frosty the Snow Man on TV one night this week. Jimmy Durante was the narrator, of course, and we sang along to the words of Frosty the Snow Man. “Thumpity, Thump, Thumpity, Thump, Look at Frosty Go.” One thing I dearly miss from our Boomer years is a December full of great Christmas specials on TV. This was entertainment at its finest – top stars, top acts, great … [Read more...]

Otto Graham of the Cleveland Browns Thanksgiving is just around the corner and for many of us Boomers, Thanksgiving meant more than just turkey and dressing. It meant Old Timey football games on television. Go way back with me, if you will, to the early days of the National Football League. Typically, my family made the long drive from Beckley, West Virginia to Raleigh, North Carolina … [Read more...]

There was a time when November 11th was my favorite day of the year. More so than Christmas, more than Thanksgiving, even more than my birthday was November 11th – Veteran’s Day. Veteran’s Day was always a special day for me because my father, James E. Brewer, was a veteran who lost his life in WW II. My stepdad, Daddy George, was also a Veteran, serving in the Pacific with the U.S. … [Read more...]

Back in the 50’s, one of the staple toys in a kid’s arsenal was a gyroscope. The little round balls of metal wire could do amazing things. None of us knew how they worked, but if you pulled a string and sent the toy spinning round and round, it would dance on the floor for long periods. You could even position it on top of a pencil, and it wouldn’t fall off. There were numerous tricks you … [Read more...]

A Genuine Flexible Flyer It was on every child’s wish list for Christmas, or at least on those lists where a kid didn’t have one. It was a Flexible Flyer Sled and “Look out hills, here we come.” I think I was six when Santa squeezed a new sled down the chimney. That was quite a feat, considering we didn’t have a chimney, but somehow it showed up beneath the Christmas Tree that … [Read more...]

I was still 4 when we were transferred to Beckley, WV. Daddy worked in an office with two other FBI agents. His territory covered 4 counties and he often was gone for several days at a time, often to the home office in Pittsburg. As I would come to learn, a lot of the work that Special Agents for the FBI did was investigative. If a woman from one of his counties applied for a Federal job in … [Read more...]