“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...]

If you ever refer to refrigerator as an icebox – you are definitely a Boomer, or maybe even a pre-Boomer. Today, ice and refrigeration are part of our lives. It’s hard to imagine life without ice, but it wasn’t always that way. Until about 200 hundred years ago, ice was just something that happened in winter. In the 19th century, a few industrious sorts began shipping ice, harvested from … [Read more...]

Among the fastest growing segments of all the retail stores are “the dollar stores” – Dollar General, for example. Folks like the idea of buying stuff for a buck and they are flocking to dollar stores throughout the country. Boomers, however, remember the dime stores - “Five and Dime’s” we called them, once a staple on every main street in every town in America. As Christmas approaches, I … [Read more...]

Becoming a Boomer is not all it’s made out to be, even though they say we control 80% of all the spendable income in the United States. If that’s the case, Boomer wives control 99% of the 80%. So male Boomers aren’t much better off than they were as teenagers, when a gallon of gas sold for a quarter and vanilla Cokes at the malt shop were a dime Also, with Boomer-hood, comes Arthur, whether you … [Read more...]