When I was boy, about 10 or so, my mom and dad were active in the local country club and went to lots of dances and events on Saturday nights. A lady friend of the family, Burtell Turner, often did the baby-sitting chores for me and my younger siblings. The young ones went to bed early, but I was allowed to stay up and watch TV with Burtell. There were two things she loved to watch – wrestling and … [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 Boomerhood, causing both young men and women to truly struggle in order to get their pants on. Pegged pants had their origins when … [Read more...]

I suppose if a child brought a squirt gun to school these days, he or she would be tased, wrestled to the ground, bound in chains and then really bad stuff would happen. For Boomers, squirt guns at school were a way of life. We considered them to be part of the Second Amendment – the right to keep and bear plastic weapons that would soak your fellow classmates. We did not need a concealed/carry … [Read more...]

“Hey mom, what’s an arachnid?” “I’m busy icing this cake. Get an encyclopedia and look it up.” And we did. Boomers, that is. Those of us fortunate to have a set of encyclopedias in our homes looked it up. If not, we went to the school library the next day. Printed encyclopedias have largely gone the way of passenger pigeons. Old sets now languish on E-bay. Good Will stores refuse … [Read more...]

I suppose it all started with saddle oxfords. In the early 1950’s, these black and white shoes took America by storm. Coinciding with dancing and the Jitterbug, saddle oxfords drew attention to fast moving feet. They were supremely popular with Boomers guys and gals. Then came suede shoes, immortalized by Elvis Presley’s version of Blue Suede Shoes released in 1956. With suede shoes in vogue, … [Read more...]

It didn’t take a lot of money for a young Boomer to have a few niceties in life. Candy bars were a nickel, ice cream sandwiches were a dime and Fleers Double Bubble Gum was just a penny a chew, but in the 50’s and 60’s, there wasn’t a lot of extra money lying around. Most Boomers had to supplement their dime-a-week allowances with extra income. In other words, many of us had to take on second … [Read more...]

We have hundreds of television channels these days with quality programming 24-7. It wasn’t always that way. Boomers remember late Saturday nights, in particular. That’s when the producers scheduled the cheapest available old movies – generally Grade B horror films. Yet, we watched. In fact, for my boyhood friend, Brad Stuart, and I, Saturday nights were special. We often had sleepovers and … [Read more...]

Every Boomer remembers test patterns. In the early days of television, each channel (usually one or two, that’s all we got) began the day and ended broadcasting with a test pattern on the screen. Most of us didn’t know what a test pattern was, really, or its purpose. All we knew that when the test pattern finally appeared (it took the tubes a while to warm up), there was nothing on the … [Read more...]

James Dean had captured the imagination and envy of most every young male in the mid-50s with his standout performance in Rebel Without a Cause. In the movie, also starring Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, Dean had rolled into town, a new kid on the block and oozing coolness. He was, in fact, beyond cool. He was the epitome of everything a young teen male would like to be - confident, rebellious, … [Read more...]