Don't Cross The Street - In The Middle

   Dispensing practical advice to kids is just one of the many jobs assigned to parents. You can’t blame them. They see danger where a kid might see fun. Armed with anecdotes about kids who blew their finger off with firecrackers or lost their sight because they wouldn’t eat carrots – parents have a sworn role to protect their kids.

   There was no lack of advice and caution in my household.  I love my parents for it now but I might not have felt the same when I was a kid.

   That’s why I felt so guilty when I ignored my mother’s advice to “never cross in the middle of the street.”

   As a result, I was hit by a car when I was twelve years old.  I slipped my bicycle out into the middle of the street between two parked cars and wham! 

   My bike took most of the hit but the slow-moving car’s bumper popped me in the shin.  It shook me up but not as much as it shook up the elderly driver. I assured him that I was fine and I began walking the bent bicycle home.

   Walking, actually limping, home I was reminded of an annoying but catchy public service announcement that ran on New York City TV and radio stations in the 60’s. It was called “In The Middle.”

   Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle- in the middle - in the middle in the middle of the block; Use your eyes to look up -Use your ears to hear -Walk up to the corner when the coast is clear -And wait - And wait …Until you see the light turn green!

   Find a baby boomer from NYC and they will probably sing the whole tune for you. It was written by longtime songwriter Vic Mizzy who also penned classic TV theme songs including The Addams Family, Mr. Ed and F-Troop.

   Vic’s song was speaking to me on that fateful day.  I had indeed crossed in the middle and in the process I had almost given a little old man a big heart attack. I was too old to be scared and too young to realize how lucky I was that I could even limp away.

   My real fear was facing my mother.  “If I tell her, I will get in trouble for disobeying,” I mistakenly concluded.

   Therefore I did what many adolescents in my situation would have done…I said nothing.  It wasn’t actually a lie, I reasoned, if I didn’t say anything.  Instead, it was more of a cover-up.  I hid the bent bicycle, limped for a few days and surprisingly got away with it.

   I finally did tell my mother almost thirty years later.  She was up late one night watching Carson and we started swapping secrets.

   “Did I ever tell you that I got hit by a car when I was twelve,” I asked her. “Really,” she said not flinching at all. “Yeah – it was no big deal but my bike got crushed and I was afraid to tell you.” 

   Without showing any surprise or concern she paused and then said “what else haven’t you told me?”

   No reports were filed the day I got hit by a car but the evidence still exists on my left leg where a small indentation perfectly fits the front bumper of a 1966 Oldsmobile.

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Allen's Technology Museum Opens

 

   It’s January and if you didn’t receive the memo – it’s officially time to get organized – again.  The holidays are a time to decorate and generally make a mess of things around the house. This month is a time of reckoning.

   Apparently, January 2 was the official New Year’s holiday. For us, it was the official day to take down the Christmas decorations and pack them away.

   That inspired me to tackle a bigger project – my home office closet. While it’s never been spoken, it is the one place in our home that I take full responsibility (or blame) for. My wife would be challenged to guess what’s squirreled away inside but she might characterize it with one word – junk. I see it as more of a technology museum. 

   I have tackled this project before and made good progress.  I gave away hundreds of records and cassette tapes after I sold the 1980’s component stereo. Still, there are items I just can’t part with like the original scratchy albums by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other rock legends. I no longer own a turntable but it gives me comfort knowing that they are there. Several hundred CD’s, a small stack of 45’s, a bunch of cassette mix tapes and one 8-track.tape round out the collection.

   Stored above the music is a digital camcorder that captured every moment of our kids’ childhood. I also have a box of the original 8mm video cassettes tapes and backup VHS tapes that have no value, since I no longer own a VHS player. Trays of 35mm slides are balanced on top of the video equipment just waiting for someone to say “let’s look at slides tonight!”

   The box marked cables is literally that - a box of mysterious cables with names like SCSI and RCA and Ethernet. I am afraid throwing out even one cable will lead to a regrettable chain of events.  For example, once people get excited about seeing my home movies and slides, I may need a power cord to hook up the projector.

   The showpiece of my closet museum is a complete set of Aurora H.O. slot cars that I bought used from a high schooler in 1969. I thought they would dazzle my son in the late 1990’s but the Mario Kart video game required no setup, offered more excitement and didn’t smell like burning oil. I’m currently hoping his children will be enthralled with papa’s smelly race cars but I’m not too optimistic. By the way, did you know H.O. stands for Half O, a model train gauge size?

   Your closet may not; probably doesn’t, have 50+ year-old slot cars stashed inside.  Still, there is likely a “museum” somewhere in your house with Barbies or grandma’s fine china or creaky Lionel trains that must be worth something. 

   Make a commitment to open all the boxes in your closet this month.  Dig through them and tell stories about their contents to anyone who will listen. Then carefully repack them into the closet for another year as they increase in value. Your kids may thank you some day for saving all that valuable stuff.

   Send your comments, not your stuff, to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Last Minute Christmas Advice

 

There is no shortage of advice online at this time of year. There is gift advice, decorating advice and even advice on dealing with the annoying relatives at Christmas dinner. What we really need is a column where people can get last minute Christmas advice as they’re heading out the door on Christmas Eve.  It might look something like this: 

Dear LMS (Last Minute Santa) – I haven’t started my shopping yet and it’s Christmas Eve. What would you suggest I buy for my family?  Since time is short, I suggest you head to the nearest big box store and only buy items that come pre-wrapped in a holiday box. For dad, try the 18-hole desktop executive golf course. Consider the perfumed pencil set for mom and the Bluetooth slippers for your sister.

Dear LMS – We have a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve after church. Last year my little brother got to open a cool gift while I opened a sweater?  Try this. Each family member can open one package or “steal” one that’s already been opened. This should lead to some quality family time.

Dear LMS – We want to bring a gift for our friends tonight but hesitate because we don’t want to embarrass them if they didn’t get a gift for us. What should we do?  Make the first move. Present the gifts to them at the door. This courteously gives the host time to wrap someone else’s gift or drive to a nearby drug store before they close.

Dear LMS – I will get home from college at about 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve. My old high school friends are having a really cool party tonight as well.  How long do I need to stay at my parent’s house before I can leave for the party?  There is a formula for calculating PQT (parent quality time).  Take the number of weeks it has been since you were last home and multiply times five to get the proper number of minutes. For example, if you saw them at Thanksgiving, you need to make small talk for at least 20 minutes. Showers don’t qualify as parent quality time.

Dear LMS – My kids want Santa to bring them a drone, an Ipad and a Playstation 5. Santa is magical they say so he should be able to bring anything they ask for. Unfortunately, my bank account is not magical. Any advice would be helpful. It’s about time you got some credit here.  Tell them that mommy and daddy send money to Santa on April 15 every year.  Based on how big that check is, Santa decides what he can bring. Show them the cancelled check from last year and explain that IRS stands for I (love) Rudolph & Santa.

Dear LMS – My older sister and her boyfriend are great people but they are lousy cooks. It’s our turn to go to their home for Christmas and we dread it. What would you do? Instead of the traditional hostess gift, bring a round roast with mashed potatoes and some mixed vegetables. Explain that you are both are on a strict diet.

Dear LMS – I will cook for hours tomorrow while my family watches football all day. They will then devour the meal in 15 minutes and return to the TV room. Is there anything I can do?   I would start with a 7-course meal that takes an hour to serve. Next cut the cable TV line in the yard and set all of the DVR’s in the house to record the Little House On The Prairie holiday marathon.

 

Merry Christmas to our readers.  Send column suggestions and comments to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Hanging Onto Halloween

 

 Halloween may be this nation’s second most popular holiday, but I won’t be trick or treating this year. My biggest concern this week is how much candy to buy.  In recent years, that question could also be “how much candy do I want to eat in early November?”

 Each year we get less and less trick or treaters and I eat more Kit-Kats.  Ironically, I wouldn’t buy a ten pound bag of chocolates any other time of the year but in mid-October I get this urge to splurge.  I always buy the candy that I like most because I know that’s what kids will like as well.  What would be the point I buying a giant bag of Smarties if I have to eat them for weeks after Halloween.

Parents apparently had few concerns about their children walking all over town asking total strangers for candy in the 1960’s. If it is our nation’s second most popular holiday, what happened to Halloween? 

Some things are better if we don’t try to understand them.  Twinkies would fall into that category and so would Halloween.  Halloween is this country’s second most popular holiday yet most people on the street have no idea what it’s all about. 

The full history of Halloween is a colorful one.  The holiday’s origins actually go back 2,000 years to Celtic harvest festivals and superstitions.  They celebrated Samhain (sow-in) on the night of October 31 when ghosts of the dead where believed to return to earth causing trouble and damaging the community’s food supply.  Romans added their own twist to the holiday and Christians established a holy day called All Saints Day or All-Hallows Day on November 1. All-Hallows Eve gradually became Halloween according to legend.

Somewhere along the timeline, candy corn was created and an American tradition was born. You don’t have to go back 2,000 years to see how the holiday has changed.  Just ask any 40+ adult and they will describe in detail how “the good old days” of Halloween are gone forever. 

My friends and I literally knocked on hundreds of doors and filled one or more paper grocery bags with candy bars – full size of course. We would return to stack our bounty by brand and swap candy bars as though we were trading wheat futures.

As we grew older and roamed on our own, the danger didn’t come from strangers - it came from the older neighborhood boys.  Tribute was often paid in candy bars to teenagers too old or lazy to trick or treat themselves.

 Halloween has always been a weird holiday for kids.  They get to beg from strangers, eat gross amounts of candy and stay out late on a school night.  Try that on March 31 and your kids will get picked up for creating a disturbance. Halloween also differs from other holidays because it often falls on a school day.  Is there a longer school day for kids or teachers than October 31^st?

Of course the big attraction of Halloween was always the costume. My earliest memories are of cowboy vests and chaps sewn from hokey 1950’s Simplicity patterns. Mom finally broke down and bought me the cheap silk Superman costume with the cheaper mask and painful elastic band.  As my friends and I grew older, originality was no longer a requirement.  We were either football players, hobos or guys in a black t-shirts with scary masks. For a short time, Halloween was just too much fun to miss but too cool to participate in. We halfheartedly put together “costumes” and basically hung out at the neighborhood park causing mischief and hoping girls might come by.  They didn’t. 

These days Halloween has lost some of its luster. More homes than ever turn their porch lights off, candy bars keep shrinking and legitimate safety concerns keep kids from roaming far and wide.     

Still, there’s plenty of fun to go around on Halloween and I hope your kids have as much fun as we did when the sun sets on Monday night.

A True Crayon Experience

 

I found some crayons at The Shops at Willowbend today.  I was heading to another store but was drawn into the Crayola store. More specifically, I was drawn in by the comforting smell of thousands (tens of thousands?) of fresh Crayola crayons.

A lot has changed since old folks like me were little kids. Wooden Lincoln Logs are now made of plastic, they put a talking chip in GI Joe action figures and even outlawed lawn darts. What they haven’t changed is the look and the smell of crayons. 

Crack a yellow and green box of 8 or better yet – 64 crayons and you will be transported back to that first week of school in the elementary grade of your choice.  

Crayons for children were first created in 1903 by the Binney and Smith Company.  The two cousins began producing slate pencils for schools around 1900. They next created dustless chalk and one year later perfected the non-toxic and colorful Crayola Crayons. Many have tried but no company has come close to competing with Crayola.  

The Crayola store at Willowbend is part of the Crayola Experience – an interactive crayon playland in the mall that looks like a fun way to kill a winter afternoon with the grandkids.  For now, I settled for browsing the attached store which had every imaginable variation of Crayola product.

The store showpiece is an entire wall of fresh crayons where customers can pick out their favorites and create their own box set. I’m sure it was the aroma of those open-air crayons that drew me in. Every imaginable color was displayed with the date the color was “born.”  Over the years, many new colors have been introduced while others have been retired but here they all were for the picking. 

I found three old “crayon friends” along the wall whose names brought back coloring book memories: Brick Red, Cornflower and Periwinkle.  I think it was the names more than the colors that I remember. Red, blue and purple just don’t have the same allure to a budding artist.

It’s not just the smell or the names that has made crayons so popular. Coloring is one of the first activities we learn to do on our own. A toddler or an eight-year-old can get satisfaction from putting a crayon to page. They choose the color, they pick the subject and create their own refrigerator masterpieces with a little stick of wax.  Coloring is much more than the busy work some parents and teachers think. It’s a license to create within or outside the lines. 

Another reason might be the billions of crayons Crayola drops on the world each year.  The company estimates that it produces 12 million crayons per day which rounds out to about 3 billion per year. That’s a lot of crayons!

I took my three old “crayon friends” home for a quarter each. They now live in my desk where I can open the drawer and catch a whiff of crayons instead of that stinky Elmer’s Glue. 

Send your crayon memories to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com

 

45 Labels Tell The Story

 

   Buried deep in my old stereo cabinet is a tattered red portfolio full of 45 rpm records. Each page is a sleeve that holds one record with a 3” hole to reveal  a colorful label.

   Thumbing through the book I can name almost every record without reading the labels because those labels are so familiar.  The odds are good that orange and yellow swirls on a Capitol Record label means Beatles or Beach Boys.  The solid red Columbia label belongs to my oldest record: The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton. The record is completely unplayable but I can’t let it go.

   The light blue pattern signaled the Rolling Stones on London records and the solid blue label with the white whale was undeniably Happy Together by the Turtles.

  Something I never realized about record labels was how often they changed in the early days of rock and roll.  The most striking example was Elvis Presley who began his career on the colorful Sun label but hit his stride with the black label of RCA Victor Records. RCA was one of the five major labels in the 50’s along Decca, Columbia, Capitol and Mercury Records.

   Beyond the big ones were hundreds of small labels owned by companies that came and went and merged throughout the early 1960’s.  Anyone who owned a stack of 45’s will remember some of the more familiar ones like Bell (Box Tops, Delfonics), Roulette (Tommy James), Dot (Pat Boone), and Scepter (BJ Thomas).

   Teenage record buyers weren’t all that concerned about who owned what but many new labels in the 1960’s were derived from bigger companies.  Columbia Records owned Colpix (later Colgems) the familiar label for The Monkees.   Atlantic or Atco owned Stax Records and Kama Sutra Records (Lovin Spoonful) merged with Buddah (Melanie).

   The 1960’s ended with many of the same big companies dominating record sales although Motown, MCA and the Beatles’ Apple Records gave them all a run for the money.

   I didn’t start this column intending to lecture on record label history. I wanted to say that thumbing through the 45’s was like visiting with some old friends. These guys were played over and over and over again on a cheap phonograph that quickly gave them a scratchy background noise.

   I asked for the record “album” one Christmas so that I could haul my collection of singles around to friend’s houses. We would sit and play take turns playing the new ones or if mom allowed, we would stack them on the grownup’s phonograph.

   While the 45’s were gradually phased out by lps in the 1970’s we continued to have listening sessions in basements and attics and later dorm rooms. I can tell you where I was when I first heard many of the classic rock albums that now fill my IPOD.

   Simply listening to a new recording is something that has been lost with the advent of digital music and headphones.  Listening to a new song is more of a personal experience in earphones or the car although accessibility to music has never been greater.

   My meager 45 rpm collection included 24 records.  Today my IPOD has over 10,000 songs inside of it, including files for every 45 in that old collection. I’d love it if I could have some friends over and we could play them all. They just don’t seem to have the time.  I understand though. According to I-Tunes, my collection is 23.1 days long. 

Celebrity Cruising In The Hometown

 

While visiting my old friend Tom Casey this past week, the name of Connie Francis came up.  The question was ‘where in our hometown of Bloomfield, New Jersey did she live for several years.”  

 

Old time music fans already know that Connie Francis was among the most popular singers in the country about 60 years ago. Let’s call her the Katy Perry of 1960.  Francis actually grew up in an Italian section of nearby Newark and later moved to Belleville, where she graduated high school.  The family then moved “up” to Bloomfield.  To complete the story, her family later moved further “up” to the exclusive community of Essex Fells.  She got her big break in 1958 on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand show.  She was the first woman to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and went on to sell over 100 million records worldwide.

 

Our discussion focused on Bloomfield though. Was it Beverly Road or Huck Road that she lived on? Neither of us really cared but it was out there - kind of like searching for the Bat cave’s actual street address.  A thorough web search turned up no clues for her address but she definitely lived in the neighborhood. 

 

It was after posting this important question on the “I Grew Up In Bloomfield” Facebook page that I realized how much people enjoy connections to celebrities.

 

“She went to the prom with a family friend,” said one post.  Another reader remembered Connie coming to her grandmother’s apartment building to see her dressmaker, Mrs. Zuckerman.  “My friends and I walked by their house and saw the garage had racks and racks of clothing. They also built a bomb shelter while they were there.” Post after post spoke kindly of interactions with the girl who put Stupid Cupid and Who’s Sorry Now on the pop charts.  

 

I never saw her in person but pointed out her former house many times. Today I realized I was pointing out the wrong house all those years. The Facebook crew straightened us both out – she lived on Dalebrook Road, just around the corner. 

 

Connie was probably not there in 1960 but that didn’t stop people from walking or driving by.  There is something fascinating and a little embarrassing about driving up to a celebrity home when the famous people no longer live there - or never did in my case. 

 

They didn’t have to fear stalkers and would come out to greet fans. One post said that Connie’s family gave out memorabilia instead of candy on Halloween.  Those are the fun stories about hometown kids who made it big. Many smaller towns and neighborhood fans tell similar tales of celebrities who walked the same streets.

 

One final post caught me by surprise.  A grammar school classmate, Bob Fredette, and his family lived in the Francis house when they moved out in the 1960’s.  The 1950’s split level (now affectionately called Mid-Century Modern I guess), still had the bomb shelter and probably still had Connie Francis fans cruising by now and then. 

 

One of those celebrity seekers was me but the Fredette’s had no worries there.  I was incorrectly showing off a house a block away.