North Korea, Iran, left wing extremists, right wing extremists, mass murders, ersatz news, et al and etc.
I’m tired of it. I can turn off the tv, unplug the radio, cancel the “news” blogs, and walk past the newspapers at my local Publix, but what do I have to fill the void?
At my age, memories; good memories mostly.
Memories are made of this
I started making a list of things I liked thinking about. Even alphabetized it — yes, I am THAT type person.
I remember walking to an A&W Root Beer stand1 with a “sitter.” I suppose we could have caught a street car or trackless trolley — back in the day there was a distinction. I have no idea how much a mug of root beer cost, but a nickel was all it took to make a call from pay phone. Try and FIND a working pay phone today.
I miss billboards. I remember when Lady Bird Johnson decided they were a blight on America’s landscape and had to go. I also recall Ogden Nash’s doggerel: I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all Having traveled the country from North to South and East to West on several occasions — I was a reporter and editor in my younger years — I miss the billboards.. They helped keep me awake and looking forward to whatever was ahead of me — South of the Border comes to mind or Wall Drug.
Motels used to have “personalities.” There were motels that offer individual cottages for guests, and there were motels that offered quarters shaped like a teepee, albeit they were called “wigwams.”3.
It’s hard to find a non-chain motel and even harder to find a motel that doesn’t look like every other motel you passed the last 200 miles.
Hotels used to be “semi-grand,” but save for a few brands in a few cities, most were close to bus or train depots that usually were situated in less desirable parts of town. I stayed in a nice hotels in Montgomery AL and Baltimore MD and a not-so-nice hotel in Boston MA.
When I was a kid in South Florida, the movies were a quarter and for that two bits kids saw cartoons, a serial, and a suitable-for-their-age feature. Movies also had news reels; tv was in its infancy. What movies did NOT have were commercial after commercial for outside-the-theater vendors. Now I pay too much and I still have to sit though advertisements for things I neither want nor care about.
Still on movies — and this may be unique to Phoenix AZ c 1956 — but I used to hitchhike into the local drive-in. Cars were $1 no matter how many people crammed into the flivver; walk-ins were 50 cents. I was one of many with a thumb out. The theater had bench seats for the walk-ins and stow-aways.
Back in the day hitchhiking was commonplace. While the military officially frowned on hitchhiking even back in 1960, it was a way to get from Point A to Point B on “air”; “A’re you going my way?” Hitchhike today? Not likely.
I did thumb my way from Orlando to Miami one night. The cops in a string of Palm Beach County towns, to keep me moving and out of trouble, hauled me from city limit to city limit. One cop had a Ford with an Interceptor V-8 … we went though his town at “slightly” above the speed limit.
Cracker Jacks used to have real toys — a “surprise in every box.” Today, there still is a surprise — a disappointment. I suppose the prize went away with the 5 cent Coke.
Stuckeys4 road side gas and food stops. I thought all the Stuckeys were associated with Texaco (and the Man with the Star) but on looking for Stuckeys on the WWW I discovered it also had deals with other oil companies, many of which are just memories.
Driving across country meant seeing different oil company brands — Pure, Phillips, Union, 76, Esso, Sohio, Standard, Cities Service. Some still survive: Shell, Mobile (but sans Pegasus), Sunoco. I can’t recall the last time I saw a Texaco station. I vaguely recall seeing a Pure station somewhere, but maybe not. I pumped gas and washed windshields at the Cities Service station on the Broad Causeway5 between North Miami and Bay Harbour Islands “back in the day.”
Back in the day, gas stations were (a) full service and (b) had actual mechanics who could get the vehicle running.
Texaco reminds me of “Uncle Miltie” and Milton Berle’s other major sponsor, Nestles: N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestles makes the very best. Maybe, maybe not.
Times seemed quieter then but perhaps that’s because there were other things in — and on — the news besides murder and rape. There were problems; many of those problems remain, in exacerbated form, today. On the other hand, there have been thousands of technological and medical advancements that, in one way or another, benefit us all.
I like my memories, but I would not want to revisit the reality of the time.
Sources
1. A&W stand: http://tinyurl.com/yct3h927
2. Burma Shave: http://burma-shave.org/jingles/ and https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2289808
3. Teepee vs. wigwam: http://tinyurl.com/y97qffx7
4. Stuckeys: http://tinyurl.com/y9jewd4k
5. Broad Causeway: http://www.pbase.com/image/132047198 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_State_Road_922
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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