“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 Boomerhood, causing both young men and women to truly struggle in order to get their pants on. Pegged pants had their … [Read more...]

Boomer kids divided everything into months. January was noted for New Year’s Day and celebrations before heading back to school. February was cold, which meant snow, which meant school closings, which meant tearing down hills sides in a genuine Flexible Flyer sled and hoping for the best. March meant wind and wind meant kites. Kites were a big deal back then. Every kid had one. Some could … [Read more...]

  They are trying to resurrect American Idol. Good luck with that. I saw the first episode, and instead of focusing on talent, they do touchy, feel-good background stuff about the performers. It’s not who the best singer is, it’s who has the best, most politically correct sob story. They’ll have to get along without me for however long the show lasts – I’ll give it one season. But … [Read more...]

  Aloha! Aloha is a Polynesian word meaning, “Are we there yet?” We are now in Hawaii, celebrating our 50th anniversary. If you’ve never been here before, let me say this: “Hawaii a long way from Charlottesville. It’s like taking a space shuttle to Mars, well maybe not all the way to Mars, but at least to the outskirts of the Red Planet. It is so far that – due to the time zones – … [Read more...]

  I’ve been spending a little more for eggs, recently. That’s because the cage free eggs are fresher and better tasting, so I splurge a little when I go to the store for eggs. There was a time when the cage free eggs came to us. We had an Egg-Man. His name was Bill Handley. Bill had a small farm west of Lewisburg, WV and raised cattle and poultry. He was a member of our church and … [Read more...]

There weren’t many ways to earn money as a Boomer teenager. Allowances were meager, maybe 50c a week. This was before child labor laws, where kids were required to do things like mow the lawn, load dishwashers, tend to younger brothers and sisters and help weed the garden for a lousy 50 cents a week. Summer offered some respite with a few lawn-mowing gigs, but there was often intense competition … [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 the greatest … [Read more...]

My grandson, James, turned 16 this week and it reminded me of a magical time when the number 16 was the sweetest of all. Breathes there a Boomer who doesn’t remember what it felt like to turn 16? Sweet sixteen meant one thing – car keys. In West Virginia we didn’t have a learner’s permit, which kids in some states could get when they turned 15 or 15 ½. Nope, for us it meant we had to wait … [Read more...]

No one knows for sure what causes cataracts, but it may have something to do with not eating the required 6 daily helpings of fruits and vegetables and not flossing your eyeballs twice a day. It also seems that age has something to do with developing these nasty little blobs, which can occur unannounced anytime after age 50. There was once a time when I could not only read license plates on … [Read more...]

  Subscriber Nancy Jackson found this description of Boomer memories floating around on the Internet and it’s worth sharing.   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. For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born, Where navels were for … [Read more...]