Christmas Eve Advice

Dear Flip - I haven't started my shopping yet and it's Christmas Eve. You seem to have experience in last-minute shopping. What would you suggest I buy for my family?

Since time is short, I suggest you head to a large department 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 perfume dispenser for Mom and the Mp3 slippers for your sister. Good luck.


Dear Flip - 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 CVS before they close.


Dear Flip - 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 Mr. Side - I will get home from college at about 7 p.m. tonight. 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 Flip - My kids want Santa to bring them a laptop and a Wii and a bike. 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 Flip - My brother and his wife 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.


Dr. Tim - 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 seven-course meal that takes an hour to serve. Then I would set all of the DVRs in the house to record the Little House On The Prairie holiday marathon.

Dear Flip - My sister is still angry that I melted her David Cassidy 45 rpm record in my EZ Bake Oven on Christmas almost 40 years ago. Isn't it time she let it go?

You have one chance to put this conflict to rest. David Cassidy is appearing at the Nokia Theater on Feb. 6 with Davey Jones of the Monkees. Go to the concert and buy a new 45 record for her at the souvenir stand.


Merry Christmas to our readers!

You can find old Flipside columns at http://flipsidecolumn.blogspot.com. Send column suggestions and comments to flipside@tx.rr.com.

I Know Who Let The Dogs Out

If dogs could speak, the discussion would quickly turn to food. If dogs could perform complicated mathematical tasks, they would probably design a park like the one I visited recently.

Kelly Acree has saved them the trouble with a new indoor dog park called Unleashed.

Unleashed is an upscale facility on Samuell Boulevard in east Dallas that offers dog owners the benefits of an outdoor dog park along with the temperature control of an indoor arena.

The most unique feature of the 50,000 sq. ft. facility is the special K-9 turf along with the drainage and flushing system that keeps the park clean. Oversized ceiling fans and dehumidifiers keep the air moving and smelling less like – well - dogs.

Catering to dog owners as well as their dogs, Unleashed includes amenities such as a café, gift shop, grooming salon and doggie daycare center.

Unleashed is the brainchild of Dallas residents Kelly and Cody Acree. The couple regularly visited a dog park near White Rock Lake with Lucas, their Labrador retriever. Watching the packs of dogs and owners each week, they imagined a place that could take the best elements of the outdoor park and eliminate some of the less desirable ones like cold weather, mud and irresponsible owners.

“It took about two years to put this together,” explains Acree. “Our objective was to create a fresh and clean park that would be attractive to owners as well as their dogs.”

The result was a $10 million, 50,000 sq. foot facility along I-30 about 4 miles from downtown Dallas.

Opening day in April attracted over 300 dogs but a typical weekend day brings in 50 – 60 dogs and owners. An up to date vaccination record is required to register a dog on the first visit. Afterwards, a collar tag similar to a toll tag checks the dog into the park and charges the owner’s account.

The play area offers large space for large and small dogs. Movable walls allow the staff to reconfigure the space for events and their growing dog daycare business.

The staff watches 15-20 dogs per day in the daycare program. For a small fee they will also watch dogs in the play park for short periods of time while owners shop or take a break in the adjoining café.

Pampered dogs may also enjoy an evening with friends in the Unleashed bedroom suite that includes a queen sized bed, chairs, couches, dog beds and access to the play park all night long.

The task of keeping peace among the dogs and owners goes to the Unleashed staff. “Our staff members have experience in working with dogs and understand dog behavior,” says Acree. “They try to anticipate problems before they occur and intervene if necessary when fights occur.”

The park does reserve the right to remove overly aggressive dogs and pit bulls are not allowed at all, she added.
Most dogs just enjoyed the chance to run and chase and sniff their way around the park.

Expansion plans are already in the works, says Acree. The café will eventually be expanded and moved to the second level. An outdoor dog water park is also planned for the property.

Admission to the park is $7.50 per day or $150 per month. Daycare runs $25 a day and can exceed $50 if combined with a spa treatment.

Local and national media attention for Unleashed has Karen and her husband Cody pondering requests for new parks in cities such as Phoenix and Minneapolis. They would also like to open a facility in the north Dallas suburbs but their energies are currently focused on Unleashed #1.

“I’m very pleased with the response so far,” says Acree. “This is the first facility of its kind and we have overcome a number of obstacles in getting to this point. It’s very gratifying to watch the dogs and their owners enjoy the park.”
Visit www.unleasheddogparks.com for more information.

Holly Jolly Music Memories

There was a time when Christmas music signaled the start of the holiday season. It usually cranked up in stores on the day after Thanksgiving and continued through New Years.

Some ambitious retailer pushed that to mid November and before we knew it, Christmas music season began on November 1. I had barely gotten the Monster Mash out of my head when Brenda Lee started Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.

I ran into the first song of Christmas this year in mid October. The store with the big red dot opened its Christmas tree and ornament display before the costumes and candy had been packed up for the year. It was a little disappointing but not surprising.

Still, I love to hear Christmas music (in late November) because it has the power to transport me back in time. More than any music in my collection (with the possible exception of Stairway to Heaven), Christmas music puts me back in a time and place that is long gone. That place is generally my parent’s living room where toys magically appeared and gifts were exchanged to the tune of Frank Sinatra and the Ray Coniff Singers.

My parents owned a handful of records and rarely listened to them but each December my mother would pull out the Christmas albums – all six of them.

There was Little Drummer Boy by the Harry Simeone Chorale, Burl Ives’ Have A Holly Jolly Christmas, The Sinatra Christmas Album and A Christmas Album by Barbara Streisand. My favorites were Happy Holidays, the Columbia Records anthology sponsored by True Value Hardware and Great Songs For Christmas by Goodyear Tire. They had all of the popular songs by guys like Johnny Mathis, Al Martino and Bing Crosby.

It wasn’t our favorite kind of music but it set the mood and we all had our favorites. At the same time, our AM radio pumped out the classic “rock and roll” holiday tunes like Jingle Bell Rock, Rockin Around the Christmas Tree and Blue Christmas.

Despite the tens of thousands of Christmas songs recorded by every imaginable artist, the most popular songs still come from the late 1950’s and 1960’s with a few notable exceptions.
White Christmas remains the most popular Christmas song of all time. It was written by Irving Berlin and recorded by Bing Crosby in 1942 for the movie Holiday Inn. It has sold over 100 million copies in 67 years.

WCBS-FM in New York compiled the following top ten list of the most popular Christmas recordings ever. Like them or not, I would bet that every person reading this column could sing along with all ten.

1. White Christmas, 2. The Chipmunk Song, 3. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer; 4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus; 5. Jingle Bell Rock; 6. The Christmas Song; 7. Snoopy’s Christmas; 8. Here Comes Santa Claus; 9. Little Drummer Boy and 10. Done Esta Santa Claus.
More contemporary artists like Bruce Springsteen, The Carpenters and John Lennon show up in the top twenty list.

For the record – literally – Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas is the second best selling Christmas album behind Bing Crosby.

I recently asked my teenagers what music reminded them of Christmas and they rattled off songs by Brenda Lee and Bobby Helms. That’s what happens when mom and dad control the holiday soundtrack in your house. It’s the same reason my Christmas memories soundtrack includes Burl Ives.

It makes me wonder if two generations from now, kids will be forced to listen to their parent’s Jessica Simpson Christmas playlist because that’s what mommy listened to when she was a kid.

Pizza For Thanksgiving & Other Improbabilities

Yes, I did have pizza for Thanksgiving many years ago. It seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do in 1976 but I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning and you might need an atlas to follow along.

I was attending college at Murray State in Kentucky when I decided to visit Billy Lees - a New Jersey friend who was at Colorado State in Fort Collins. Lacking reliable transportation, I checked the ride share bulletin board at school.

Someone was looking for riders to Colorado Springs for only $20. It seemed like a good idea to this naive 19 year-old and I could just hitch hike from Limon to Fort Collins.

So – I packed into a small Datsun sedan with three strangers on the Friday before Thanksgiving and headed north and west. It was a smooth start for the 1,050 mile trip that included a breakdown, a snowstorm, Mexican food and an unlikely meeting at a Tennessee roadhouse. Let’s continue.

I spent the first leg of the trip making polite conversation with a sorority girl who was heading home to Colorado Springs for the holidays. She was asleep before we hit St. Louis. The other passenger was a guy from Louisville who planned to meet friends for an impromptu ski trip at Copper Mountain. The driver, who looked to be in his late twenties, was a whole different story.
I caught the front seat just as we hit Kansas and learned that he had served in the US Army in Viet Nam and was then stationed nearby at Fort Leavenworth. The subject of his ex-wife was breached and he ranted from Topeka to Junction City about her getting the kids in the settlement.

He finally cooled down when we realized that our headlights were fading fast. Somewhere along I-70 near Salinas we lost them completely and pulled into a rest area with a dead alternator. If we waited 90 minutes til sunrise and jumped the car, we could drive through to Colorado Springs without turning off the engine.

I was surprised how desolate Limon seemed when he offered to drop me off. Instead I chose to ride on to Colorado Springs and hitch north along I-25.

I reached Denver late that afternoon and nearly froze when the temperature dropped through the floor at sundown. An American Indian family offered me a ride north and I squeezed in the backseat of an old station wagon with their two children. They deposited me at the the Fort Collins exit where I met Billy Lees at a small restaurant and had my first taste of Mexican food (recently explained in The Flipside chili cookoff column).

We spent a few great days driving in the mountains in a Volkswagen Beetle with bad breaks. We also ate poorly like two 19 year-olds would be expected to eat. Did I mention we had pizza for Thanksgiving dinner?

I left Fort Collins just as the snow began to fall. By the time I caught my ride home, the roads were covered but that didn’t stop us. The cramped Datsun crawled across eastern Colorado until we outran the storm. The sorority girl was asleep before Goodland, Kansas. Twenty hours later we pulled back into Murray, Kentucky. Now the story gets weird.

Back in Murray, a friend was entertaining her older brother who was visiting from Denver. He had met a twenty-something waitress at a roadhouse in Tennessee during his visit. I met them all the night I returned.

All the waitress did was complain about her ex-husband and how nice it was that he spent the week at his parent’s house in Colorado Springs.

Go figure.

Chili Fans Converge On Allen

I was 20 years old before I enjoyed my first bowl of chili. It just wasn’t on the menu in the Carroll’s New Jersey household. Pasta was as ethnically diverse as our dinner menu became although we did experiment with cans of LaChoy Chop Suey on occasion.

My first experience with Mexican food came on a Thanksgiving trip to visit a friend named Billy Lees in Fort Collins. I had hitched a ride from Murray, Kentucky to Colorado and now found myself in a small café looking at the strange menu options.

“It’s kind of like Italian food but with a funny taste,” my New Jersey friend explained.
He proceeded to compare enchiladas to manicotti and chili con carne to pasta e fagioli so I cautiously tried both. His description of enchiladas was accurate but the chili really had no comparison. I had never tasted anything so spicy and despite the initial “discomfort,” I grew to enjoy the stuff.

Contrary to popular belief, chili con carne is not a Mexican dish. A writer from San Antonio once remarked that chili – as we know it in the U.S., cannot be found in Mexico. If it had come from there, it would still be there.

The International Chili Society (www. chilicookoff.com) explains that “if there is any doubt about what the Mexicans think about chili, the Diccionario de Mejicanismos, published in 1959, defines chili con carne as (roughly translated) “detestable food passing itself off as Mexican, sold in the U.S. from Texas to New York.”

Chili pepper and meat dishes have been in Latin America for hundreds of years but cooks on the early Texas cattle drives popularized it. Chili was a convenient way to flavor or hide the flavor of game caught along the trail. If beef wasn’t available, a pot of chili might include buffalo, armadillo, venison or even rattlesnake.

The chili website adds that cattle trail chili grew in popularity throughout the tiny Texas trail towns. Frank and Jesse James are said to have eaten a few bowls of "red" before pulling many of their bank jobs. Pat Garrett is supposed to have said of Billy the Kid: "Anybody that eats chili cant' be all bad."

As the weather slowly turns cool and the football season heats up, chili will be cooking in many Allen kitchens this weekend. Gallons and gallons of the stuff will also be simmering outside Dodie’s Sports Grill this Saturday as the Rotary Club of Allen kicks off the 1st Annual Allen Chili Cook-Off.

Sponsored by Dodie’s Place, the Courtyard Marriott, Miller Light and Visionary Marketing & Design, the cook-off is being held to raise funds for the Allen Rotary Club’s various community service projects.

Organizers are expecting about 20 entries from local restaurants, businesses and individuals including Davidson’s Auto Care – our team sponsor.

That’s right - using a lifetime minus 20 years of experience, I will be competing in this gastronomic Hiroshima along with local chili fans Keith Taylor and Barry Lanier.
Can a team of rookies compete? Can a guy from Jersey actually make a pot of chili without oregano?

All will be revealed this Saturday, October 25 in the parking lot between Dodie’s and the new Allen Event Center. The event is open for public tasting from 12 noon – 6 p.m. Visit www.allenchili.com for details.
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Two Dots and a Dash

Two dots and a dash were all we needed for entertainment during the Christmas of 1975.

My friend Tom Casey’s family had invested in a home version of the arcade game Pong and it was a big hit. Being the oldest brother, Tom had wrestled it away from his 7 siblings so we could get our first taste of home video games.

Watching my son play FIFA Soccer on a high definition television last night, I was reminded of that Christmas afternoon. The Casey kids and a few stragglers like me were sitting in front of that black and white television watching a dash chase two dots up and down the screen.

Pong actually wasn’t the first video game but it was the first game to be adapted for home use. Alan Alcorn, an engineer for Atari Incorporated, created the game in 1972 based on an electronic ping pong game included with the Magnavox Odyssey system.

Pong was first rolled out as an arcade game and later marketed in 1975 as Home Pong. The game was sold exclusively by Sears because no other merchandiser felt it had a future.

The future arrived in 1977 when the Atari 2600 game system was introduced. That was followed by the Odyssey 2 in 1978 and Mattel’s Intellivision system in 1980.

By 1980 I was a college graduate and married. I had written video games off as children’s toys and we didn’t have enough money for such luxuries anyway. That Christmas, we visited some old friends who had just bought Intellivision for themselves. They even owned a color television set!

They were hooked on Intellivision and had already built up quite a collection of games. We played football and baseball, raced horses and leapt over alligator infested ponds that night.

By today’s standards, the 8-bit graphics would be laughable but all we had for comparison was Pong.

It wasn’t long before we saved up and bought our own Intellivision. We bought the sports titles along with silly games like Frogger, Pitfall, Worm Whomper and Donkey Kong.

Our favorite though was a simple game called BurgerTime. The concept was simple enough. Chef Peter Pepper had to build a hamburger without being harmed by Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg.

In the days before children or pets, we found ourselves consumed with BurgerTime. It bordered on an obsession for both of us as we beat the game and played on and on.

BurgerTime was such a hit that its developers created versions for competing game systems like Atari and ColecoVision as well as video arcades.

We both eventually tired of the game and bought a fifty pound, top loading video recorder in its place. Today we could buy a rack of VCR’s for the price of that first one but it was quite a luxury in 1981.

Daydreaming about the old Intellivision system this past week led me to Ebay where all nostalgia lives on. Apparently an entire game system with a few odd games is running about $50. I could even pick up a stack of games for only $12.99 if I bid within the hour.

The prospect of repurchasing classics such as Frog Bog, Sea Battle and yes – BurgerTime tempted me. Then I walked into the game room and heard the roar of that high definition virtual soccer crowd and I forget all about Intellivision again.

I do wonder what Burgertime would look like in high definition though.

Front Yard Sports Comlex

As I was mowing the grass last week I concluded that either my yard is shrinking or my trees are growing. I know because I spend much more time ducking branches and circling trees than I used to.

There was a time when mowing wasn’t necessary. The grass was trampled by endless games of soccer and football and baseball on the fields of the Carroll Multisports Complex.

As the head groundskeeper at the complex, I was able to quickly convert the playing surface from a soccer stadium to a Frisbee golf course in just minutes. Trim a few branches and we were ready for football or wiffle ball depending upon the season.

The Carroll Multisports Complex included a little less than Olympic-size pool for swimming competitions and of course pool basketball. Unfortunately the pool consumed our backyard so other field sports were moved out front.

Using the trees as imaginary defenders or mid fielders, we were able to simulate Super Bowls and World Cups right in my front yard. The crowds were much smaller but the parking was free.

Adapting sports to the landscape is nothing new for kids. Baseball fields have been cut into corn fields and shaped around abandoned city lots. Soccer is played by kids around the world in just about any space and surface that can hold a ball – if there is a ball at all. Regardless of the location, the rules are basically the same with a few considerations for local hazards.

I learned to catch a baseball and dodge cars the same year. We had no yard so we played catch in the city street outside our house. The stream of moving cars was only one of many challenges. Parked cars could be just as dangerous and so could their owners if balls landed on them. Sewers and fenced yards simply increased the odds that an extra game ball might be needed.

In the days before PlayStation, we spent almost all of our outdoor time playing sports. In the fall we played touch football in the street. On short winter days we even played “under the lights” although the best passes often flew over the lights and reappeared halfway down the street.

Basketball season was re-enacted on my friend’s driveway with clotheslines and curbs officially out of bounds.

Once the baseball season rolled around, we alternated between playing running bases in the street and stickball in the schoolyard down the block.

No matter what sport, the distance between two telephone poles was just about the right distance. A “football field” would extend the length of three telephone polls and manhole covers made great home plates in baseball. Trees or cars served as first and third base while second base was anything that wouldn’t blow away.

The Carroll Multisports Complex saw a lot of action in its early years. There was ASA soccer practice and that game where dad throws the ball at his kid’s baseball glove in the hope that it gets stuck there. We graduated to running football passing routes during halftime of Notre Dame games and later created a very tight Frisbee golf course.

These days the sports complex lies silent like Texas Stadium. My kids are more likely to drive 35 miles to Arlington than they are to play ball in our front yard. I’m not complaining though. At least the grass is growing again.

Fast Food Feeding Frenzy

Cruising along Route 46 in Little Falls, New Jersey last weekend, I came upon a strange sight. A string of cars were pulled over on the shoulder which was slowing traffic across the busy highway.
As I gradually came upon the source of the slowdown, I saw streamers leading to a giant Grand Opening sign. Police were directing traffic off the highway while several confused teenagers were funneling them into the new parking spaces. North Jersey was welcoming its first Sonic Drive-In.

The double-wide Sonic had opened that same day within sight of a New Jersey landmark – the Park West Diner. It was literally a fast food feeding frenzy as drivers waited along the highway (no access roads here) for tater tots and a shake.

The scene reminded me of the first McDonald’s Restaurant I ever visited. A friend’s mother drove us to nearby Belleville to check out a new hamburger stand. It was crowded and I had to scrape off the onions and pickles but those fries sure were good. My folks preferred the diners but we hit my friend’s mother up on several occasions for a trip to the golden arches. It wasn’t fast food, it was affordable food and we became regulars when McDonald’s finally came to our town.

Allen’s official hangout in the early 1970’s was The Royal Drive-In. Located at the corner of Allen Drive and Central Expressway on the east side, The Royal was the only hangout until Dairy Queen opened on Main Street in 1973.

“We called it the figure eight,” said Honey (Bankhead) Gray, a 1974 AHS graduate. “Kids would drive up to one, see who was there, and then circle back to the other restaurant. Then we’d congregate in the Dry Goods Store parking lot at the corner of Allen Drive and Main Street between the two restaurants.”

The Sonic on East Main Street opened near Allen High School (Lowery Center) about 5 years later and shortly after that came the McDonald’s Restaurant at the expressway and McDermott. Rounding out the first wave of fast food venues was Burger King, which opened in 1983 and Taco Bell (currently Bar-B-Cuties), which opened in the late 1980’s.

These restaurants are so familiar but they have only been around for about 50 years. Many know the story of how Ray Kroc convinced the McDonald brothers to franchise their popular drive-in in 1954 but did you know that many other chains were already selling franchises by that time.

The first franchised food service chain was started by Allen and White in 1924 based around their unique root beer syrup. J. Willard Marriott opened an A&W franchise in 1927, changed the name to Hot Shoppes and began selling barbeque sandwiches. That led to today’s hotel empire.
Howard Johnson’s chain of restaurants were the first to spread across the country, mostly on the popularity of their ice cream. It was the creation of a machine that could turn liquid dairy mix into a continuous stream of soft ice cream in 1944 that started fast food’s golden years under the name Dairy Queen. One of Dairy Queen’s original partners, Harry Axene, then left to start the rival Tastee Freeze in 1950.

A chance meeting between two restaurant owners named Pete Harmon and Harlan Sanders led to the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain’s creation in 1952. Finally, a fellow named Dave Edgerton helped create the InstaBurger King chain in 1954.

For the record, Sonic was born as the Top Hat Drive-In in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1952. The name was later changed to Sonic because “service was delivered at the speed of sound.”
From what I could see, the new Sonic staff in Little Falls wasn’t exactly serving at the speed of sound but they had only opened that morning. Maybe I will drop them a note and recommend some roller skates.

Still Coo Coo For Cocoa Puffs

Cruising the store aisles to complete a grocery list is no problem for me but don’t ask me to pick out a box of cereal.

The cereal aisle of any grocery store has the power to stop me in my tracks. I know what peanut butter we buy and which tea is my wife’s favorite but I just can’t seem to make a decision in the cereal aisle.

I know I’m not alone because I often find myself working around others who suffer the same affliction.

Should I buy the Captain Crunch that’s on sale even though it has almost no nutritional value or should I pay double for some “adult” cereal that is supposedly better for me? Just this week I bought a box of Raisin Bran and Cocoa Puffs because they were on sale. I just couldn’t help myself but I was proud that I walked by the Frosted Flakes display without incident.
It has been years since we had Cocoa Puffs in the house but the box was almost half empty the next morning. The Raisin Bran remained fresh and unopened. Looks like the Carrolls are still coo coo for Cocoa Puffs.

I have a lot of practice cruising the cereal aisle. As a small kid in the A&P grocery store, my mother would turn me loose and say “go pick out a few boxes of cereal.” Mom didn’t allow those “sugar cereals” into our house so my choices were limited to products like Cheerios and Chex and Special K. I still jumped at the chance just so my mother wouldn’t buy Puffed Rice – the most tasteless cereal ever invented. It took two full tablespoons of sugar to bring a bowl of Puffed Rice to life.

I loved sleeping over at my friend’s houses because their parents bought those sugar cereals that I constantly saw advertised on television like Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms and many I no longer could name.

Searching the Internet for discontinued cereals this week, I was surprised how many I did remember – at least from the advertising.

Do you remember Quisp and Quake, Kaboom, Sugar Jets, Puffa Puffa Rice, Stars, Freakies, Fruit Brutes and Quickaroos for starters. How about Twinkles, the cereal with the book attached to the box?

Almost as memorable as the cereals were the characters who pitched them. There was Tony The Tiger (Frosted Flakes), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp), Linus the Lionhearted (Crispy Critters), Dig-Em Fog (Sugar Smacks), Snap, Crackle and Pop (Rice Crispies) and many others.
Cereals may come and go but three big companies still compete for shelf space: General Mills, Kelloggs, and Post. A 2008 survey showed that General Mills’ Cheerios is the most popular cereal in America with Kellogg’s Special K and Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats running in second and third place. The all-time favorites list shows Life, Cap ‘n Crunch and Frosted Flakes in the top three spots. Rounding out the top five were Apple Jacks and Honey Bunches of Oats.
Donkey Kong cereal does not appear on either list. Neither does Banana Frosted Flakes, Fruity Marshmallow Crispies, Mr. T’s, Strawberry Shortcakes or Urkle-O’s. Can you imagine what an unopened box of Urkle-O’s would be worth today? Neither can I.

Eating cereal became such a bedtime routine in my house that the only motivation I needed to take a bath as a kid was a bowl of Cheerios, A bowl of cereal with ice cold milk is still a late night treat in the Carroll household.

Come to think of it, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs sounds like fun if there if the box isn’t empty.

It's Getting Better All The Time

Do I really need to do this again? Do I really need to buy another copy of the Beatles album Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band?

A logical response would be no since I already owned seven copies over the past 32 years. Our first copy became family property when my mother purchased it at E.J. Korvettes in the summer of 1967. Years later my brother laid claim to it as I headed off to college. I purchased a used copy from Cheap Charlie’s discount records and later upgraded to an unscratched version in honor of the album’s tenth anniversary.

The 8-track version I purchased in 1977 got stolen along with my under dash 8-track player which was not exactly a great loss. I upgraded to a cassette player for my car and promptly recorded Sgt. Peppers to a new Maxell UDXLII tape. The cassette later melted or was eaten by the tape player.

Ten years later my wish for a perfect copy of Sgt. Peppers came true when a release of the entire Beatles catalog on compact disc began. I gradually replaced every Beatles lp with a scratch-free, pop-free compact disc.

Those discs were eventually loaded onto numerous Mp3 players which brings me to the present day. I now have the ability to play Sgt. Peppers or any Beatles song ever made with the twirl of a finger on my IPOD.

So why would I consider buying Sgt. Peppers or any other Beatles album again?

Well, the engineers at Abbey Road Studios have digitally remastered the entire Beatles catalog and the results are worth the cost.

Digital remastering is a process that literally pulls the music apart, cleans it up and reassembles it in the way it was originally intended. The push to digitize music in the late 1980’s cleaned up the scratches but flattened the sound, according to critics. Most of us didn’t notice but there was a big difference between the early vinyl recordings and the new compact discs. New digital technology now allows engineers to recreate that original vinyl sound.

Imagine scanning an old photograph and digitally cleaning it up. The photo visually comes back to life as long lost color and details reappear. The audio remastering process yields similar results.

Reviewers are raving about the quality of the remastered albums, particularly the early mono recordings such as Please Please Me and Hard Days Night.

Apparently the album that shines the brightest is Abbey Road, the Beatles’ final studio effort that was first released 40 years ago.

Beatle fanatics can purchase the entire 14 album remastered set for $260 or grab a limited edition boxed set called The Beatles in Mono for $299. The 14 discs will also be available individually for about $19 each.

The series was released in conjunction with The Beatles Rock Band interactive video game on September 9. Together, the game and “new” discs have created a bigger Fab Four frenzy than we have seen in 40 years.

As for my personal collection, I will probably drop $19 to see what the excitement is about. The odds are good that I will get hooked once again and eventually repurchase the entire set. Anyone interested in a complete set of vintage Beatle compact discs?

First Day Sets The Stage For School Career

Can you remember the first time you didn’t “go back to school?”

The summer after high school or college ended and you just kept going. There was no back to school shopping or schedule pickup – just another day of work. Maybe it was a summer job that rolled into the fall or maybe you started that first “real job” and got so busy that you didn’t notice school was starting again.

Then, you found yourself driving through the familiar school zone waiting for the crossing guard’s signal to pass. Even if it was just for a moment, you probably wished you could walk right back through those school doors.

As a student, my two best days of the school year were always the first day and the last day. No research exists but I would imagine many teachers feel the same way. Not taking away from the great things that happen during the school year, but the first day is just the best.

There is something comforting about the start of a new school year. There’s the anticipation of a new teacher, the pride of new clothes and of course the smell of new school supplies. Is there anything better than cracking open a fresh box of Crayolas?

My very first school day may not have been my best but it was certainly memorable. I don’t remember the details but it involved bringing a note home from the principal. I never saw it but I’m sure the note read something like this…

“Dear Mrs. Carroll - your son Timothy and Nicholas Terrafranca were disciplined today for playing on the rectory steps. Father O’Connor brought this to my attention when he returned the playground ball that was left on the porch. I hope this is not the behavior we can expect from Timothy at Sacred Heart in the coming year.” - Sister Mary Agatha.

Actually it was exactly the behavior they came to expect. Luckily for me the nuns, like all teachers, were very good at forgiving and “helping me make good choices.”

It is a remarkable transformation that takes place over the summer. No matter how hectic the end of school is, teachers and kids return each fall refreshed and eager to start all over again. Many moms are celebrating for a different reason as they recapture their homes from the summer invaders.

One big exception are the kindergarten parents who hover and fuss as their kids are led away to class for the first time. Comforting PTA groups even offer “crying rooms” outfitted with coffee and Kleenix for distraught parents. Similar rooms should be made available for parents who watch their young ones drive away to college for the first time.

High school is a different story. Their first day is more of a social event and fashion parade interrupted by classes. It is all about who’s in my class and where do I sit at lunch this year. Still, it’s the first day and there’s a buzz in the air.

This Sunday marks the end of a long – a very long – summer. I hope every one of you has a great first day – whether you’re walking through the doors or just driving by. And parents – don’t be upset if your kindergartner comes home with a note from the principal. It will all work out in the end.

Connecticut Coed Weds Jersey Boy

Mr. and Mrs. John Brownrigg request the honor of your presence at the wedding of Ann Grace Brownrigg and Timothy Joseph Carroll on Saturday, the eleventh of August in one thousand and nine hundred and seventy nine at eleven o’clock at Christ Church, Redding Ridge, Connecticut.
It may have seemed an unlikely pairing at the time but here we are thirty years later about to celebrate another milestone.

The first time I met my future wife, she was administering a swimming test for counselors at Camp Weequahic in Lakewood, Pennsylvania. She had the whistle and the clipboard and I had a very slim chance of swimming four laps. The outcome was predictable and I failed the test.
Those who worked as overnight camp counselors know that the best week of the summer is the week before kids arrive. Staff members work all day and usually head to the nearest town for refreshments at night.

That was my plan when I offered a group of counselors, including the future Mrs. Carroll, a ride into town. The following night I repeated the offer but forgot to invite everyone except the future Mrs. Carroll.

I know the topic of marriage didn’t come up that night. In fact, the subject wasn’t breached for several years. But there we were in the bustling town of Hancock, New York trying to recreate our brief twenty years of history.

In a romantic comedy movie I would have told her she the most attractive lifeguard I’d ever met (she was) and could she possibly rethink that swim test score. A more dramatic script would have me offering charming comments (not a chance) about the summer we would spend together. In an action movie, we would be pursued through the Pennsylvania woods by thugs in velour running suits and big chains. I probably wrote a column about their father Carmine.
In the reality show of life, I probably opened with a probing question like “where do you go to school and what’s your major? What an opener.

I did learn that we both shared a desire to get out of the house for the summer. I was beginning my fifth summer as a counselor at various camps and she was facing her first. Neither of us would finish out a month at Camp Weequahic though and it wasn’t because of the guys with the big chains.

Two weeks later, I realized I’d had enough of summer camp life after five years. When I confided that thought with Ann – she admitted she couldn’t wait to leave. So we did.
I graciously offered to drive her home to Connecticut which was not exactly on the way to New Jersey but – let’s just say we had lots more to talk about. Maybe this could be a romantic road trip movie instead.

We retired to less exciting jobs in New Jersey and Connecticut and kept in touch before we headed back to college in opposite directions - New Haven (CT) and Murray (KY).
Many letters and hours of late night phone calls and a few visits back and forth kept the long distance relationship running until I graduated and moved back from Kentucky.

True to the romance movie formula, we broke up for a few months and then saw the error in our ways. The topic of marriage was finally breached in a serious way and we were married the following summer on August 11, 1979.

The story of how we came to be married thirty years ago hardly deserves a spot on the shelves at Blockbuster. Long ago it would have been moved from the college humor section to the drama pile and now to the faded family section.

That’s ok with me but this week I think it deserves to be in the Employee’s Best Picks section under romantic comedy.
Happy anniversary Ann.

Fluffernutter Crushes Foes In Taste Test

I did not eat a school cafeteria lunch until ninth grade. It wasn’t an option since our school didn’t even have a cafeteria until I hit seventh grade.

Many of us walked home at lunch time until the school built a cafeteria. Others just ate at their desks which made the classroom smell like stale milk each afternoon. In one hour I was able to catch a hot lunch, watch some Leave it To Beaver on television and run one block back to school.

The new cafeteria didn’t actually serve lunches. Instead, we could buy milk and sit at big tables while the room was monitored by volunteers to give the nuns a break. Imagine our surprise that year when we realized that nuns ate lunch too. We just assumed they went back to church to pray for strength to get through the afternoon.

Once I started bringing my lunch, every day was a surprise. Just like June Cleaver, my mother packed our lunches and had them waiting for us at the door. There was little discussion and even less argument about what was in the bag. So just like Wally and the Beaver, my brother and I grabbed the sack lunch and walked to school.

The lunches were not what you’d call gourmet but I enjoyed them anyway. Looking back, I wondered how my mother’s school lunches would fare with today’s discriminating lunch critics. To find out, I conducted a taste test using nine kids from Allen ISD’s Kids Club program. The highly scientific study asked the kids to rate each of my mother’s signature sandwiches as Great, OK, or Terrible.

I called the first sandwich a “Goober” after the jar of blended peanut butter and jelly with the same name. We were fascinated by the convenience of combining both in a single jar and overlooked the marginal taste of both. One young taster observantly noted that it tasted like peanut butter and jelly. Overall it earned 6 greats, 2 ok’s and a no comment.

The next sandwich was called a Philadelphia after the cheese. Cream cheese and jelly was a standard lunch item. Spreading cold cream cheese on dry bread was the hardest part of this delicacy. Four kids said it was great, 2 said ok and 2 rated it above a great with an “awesome” and a “love it.”

The Deviled Sandwich refers to that small can of deviled ham. With a consistency and smell similar to cat food, I can’t imagine why I liked the stuff. I mixed some with mayonnaise and three of the kids thought it was great. Two thought it was ok, 2 thought it tasted like tuna fish and 2 wouldn’t touch it.

Finally came the most delicious and disgusting sandwich of all – The Fluffernutter. I could almost sing the whole commercial jingle as I spread the marshmallow fluff on the cheap white bread. I learned years ago to add the peanut butter to the other slice. Rumors circulated that astronauts on Apollo 13 used marshmallow fluff to fuse pipes together but I couldn’t verify it.

The kids loved it though and one said he would go home and beg his mother to buy some fluff. This classic rated 5 greats, 2 ok’s, an “I love it” and a “best ever.”

Mom knows best again. She didn’t get a single “terrible” rating. The kids, who admitted eating almost nothing but peanut butter and jelly, have expanded their tastes and are almost ready for Spam.

Girl Toys - Barbie Rules

I readily admit that The Flipside column is biased towards guys. With topics like Creepy Crawlers and chemistry sets, this should not be much of a surprise.

In an effort to share the spotlight, I recently spoke with five former children who shared their own experiences growing up with toys.

Dolls and board games dominated the conversations. I learned about Betsy Wetsy who had the unique talent of wetting her diapers. Thumbelina was the most lifelike and Patty Play Pal was the biggest. Then there was Chatty Kathy, the first truly talking doll who said “take me with you” and “tell me a story.” As a side note, June Foray was the voice inside the first dolls but she was better known as the voice of Rocky The Flying Squirrel.

Three of our panelists fondly remembered Mystery Date where pre-teens could imagine taking a dreamy hunk or dud to the dance. It was one game that could clear a room full of annoying boys very quickly.

Jane Bennett recalled a game called “Park and Shop” that required girls to arrange their shopping errands efficiently so they could get home on time. “Playing the game as much as I did probably explains my keen interest with organizing things.”

It was really all about Barbies, added Regina Taylor. We spent hours upon hours setting up house and playing with Barbie and her friend Midge.

“I can still see the Barbie dollhouse under our Christmas tree,” said Mary Kruse. “The furniture was attached to the house and the whole thing folded into a suitcase.”

Bennett was lucky enough to have one of the first dolls. “My father converted an old three shelf bookcase into a house and changing room for the dolls. I absolutely loved playing with it.”
“It was all about the fashion for Sandy Wittsche. “We would go to the store and buy a single outfit, then run home to pick out all the accessories that matched. It was a big event.”
“Eventually I grew too old for Barbies,” she added, “and they went into the closet for a long, long time. Years later I dug them out of my parent’s home and remembered how much I had enjoyed them.”

That led to her collection of vintage Barbie dolls and accessories that fills a display cabinet in her home. She also pulls a rare pink Barbie Christmas tree out of storage each year
“I wish I’d kept some of them,” said Taylor. My mother gave them away to my cousins and they promptly pulled the heads off the dolls.”

What made Barbie so appealing to us was her age, added Ann Carroll. “We had outgrown the baby dolls and here was a teenager doll that wore cool clothes and did the kind of things we hoped to do.”

Television advertising didn’t hurt either. The doll was among the first mass marketed toys and sold 350,000 units in the first year alone. According to the Mattel website, over $1.5 billion worth of Barbie products are sold each year.

Everyone agreed that Barbies were strictly girl territory. Unless G.I. Joe was looking for a date, there was no room for guys when the girls were “playing Barbies.”

“It didn’t really matter what we did with them when we got together,” explained Kruse. “The fun was in setting up the house and changing outfits around. Itw as a very social activity.”
Cruising the Internet world of Barbie collecting I found 11,367 different items listed on Ebay. They included such rarities as Allan (Midge’s boyfriend), the head of a 1960 Ken doll, a vintage 1958 Barbie ($495 bid) and a Japanese Midge in her wedding gown ($2,500).

Maybe us guys should have spent more time in “the pink aisle” when we were kids and less time picking out weapons for G.I. Joe.

It came It Thawed It Conquered

I went out for dinner three nights in a row last week. Even for me, it was excessive. I could make excuses about how busy we were but the truth is that eating out is too convenient – especially in Allen.

I certainly did not acquire the habit from my parents. Our family “went out” for dinner after funerals and sometimes on holidays. Fancy eating for the Carroll’s was the Wedgewood Cafeteria in Montclair, New Jersey. It must have been fancy because the chef wore a big hat as he cut off slabs of prime rib. In reality, the Wedgewood was probably closer to a Luby’s with linen tablecloths.

That doesn’t mean that mom cooked every night. My father made the pizza and late edition newspaper run on most Friday nights. The big treat for us came when mom sent one of us to the store for that 1960’s gem – Swanson’s TV Dinners. The standard order was two turkey and two fried chicken frozen dinners although my father occasionally broke tradition with the Swiss steak dinner.

Forty minutes later (no microwaves yet), the Carroll’s were watching family television while eating scalding hot dinners on metal TV tables.

The history of the TV dinner can be traced back to a trainload of 270 tons of leftover turkey. Swanson and Sons had undersold their Thanksgiving orders and were left with ten refrigerated cars full of turkey. The trains literally crossed back and forth across the US to keep the refrigeration units working.

Gerald Thomas, a Swanson executive, spotted the trays used for airline food service and created the famous three-part metal tray with frozen food in 1954. The first TV dinners (turkey of course) sold for 98 cents. Swanson took a risk and produced 5,000 dinners. They ended up selling 25 million in the first year thanks to the clever tie-in with the most popular appliance in America – the television. Fried chicken was added in 1955 followed by Swiss steak, Mexican themed meals, macaroni and cheese and more. Mean Joe Greene introduced the Hungry Man Meal in 1973 and the first microwave meals appeared in 1986.

I recently conducted a slightly scientific survey of about 60 Rotary members showed that about half never ate TV dinners as a kid. Those that did preferred the macaroni and cheese dinner with turkey placing a close second. Swanson’s Web site states that turkey is still the most popular meal with fried chicken in second place.

Three Rotary members remembered watching Bonanza over a TV dinner many times and one presumably younger member tied TV dinners to the Mork and Mindy show.

Like many childhood memories, my enjoyment of TV dinners should remain frozen in time. My steady diet of Banquet pot pies in college effectively killed my love for frozen foods.

While she may be mentioned in the company history, I do believe my mother had a hand in planning the meals. I couldn’t hide the vegetables because they rested in their own neat compartment. The desserts remained scalding for about 20 minutes so you couldn’t eat them first and everything was soaked in butter; just like mom’s pre-cholesterol cooking. As a final salute to mom, there were no dishes.

Take a frozen trip down memory lane by visiting http://www.swansonmeals.com/.

Sixth Grade Research Saves Lives

Life is full of questions. When we were young, our parents and teachers seemed to have all the answers. As we grew older we relied more on the limited knowledge of our friends which was where things start going wrong. After all, there were questions that we would never ask an adult but our friends were always willing to offer an opinion.

“I wonder if this will burn” would be one of those questions. It might make a great segment for the David Letterman Show but no good can come from two eleven year-old boys discovering the answer.

Fully aware of the “don’t play with matches” campaign from Fire Safety Month, Billy Garrabrandt and I tested the combustibility of an old canvas chair – in my garage. Much to our delight and then horror, the old dried out chair flared up almost instantly.

Our immediate reaction was to find something to put the fire out in the unattached garage. There was no water and racing into the yard to run a hose into the garage would likely cause alarm from my mother. Our solution was to smother the fire with a fifty pound bag of dry cement that we found in the corner. Cement powder was everywhere but the real threat of burning down our garage was abated.

For the first time ever, we voluntarily cleaned up the garage and carefully trimmed the burnt seat of the chair hoping the grownups wouldn’t notice. We then threw the chair out with all the garbage from our cleaning frenzy. It was one of the few times that we didn’t get caught doing something stupid but I did admit the whole incident to my mother thirty years later.

Scientific discovery was at the heart of many theories that Billy Garrabrandt and I attempted to prove. We tested Newton’s theories of gravity by tossing objects out of our third floor window. Seeking an answer to the age old question “what will happen if I throw this out of the window?” we dropped airplane models, army men and even food out of my attic window.

Years later we reversed the process to answer the question “what can we sneak into the attic?” but that’s a story for another column.

“Do you think it will explode?” was the most dangerous but also the most entertaining question that Billy and I struggled with. Chemistry sets were still the rage and enterprising youngsters could purchase refills of ingredients at the local hobby store. We pooled our meager resources and bought sulphur, charcoal and potassium nitrate to play with. With absolutely no thought of the danger involved, we made gunpowder and stuffed it into objects that we detonated. I don’t believe we ever created an explosion but running at full speed away from a lit fuse was better than any amusement park ride.

There were so many unanswered questions that Billy and I struggled to answer. Each of them would have made an excellent sixth grade science project.

“I wonder if this will make him throw up?” “What will happen if the dog drinks beer?” “How long will it take my two year-old nephew to learn a swear word?” “How far will car model parts travel when exploded with a cherry bomb?” “If a bus is passing by at 35 mph, what trajectory is needed to reach it with a snowball and still leave enough time to run away?”

There were no marble lab books, but Billy and I solved these and many other puzzling questions of childhood. I am not sure if humanity is better for it but it sure was fun.

The Flipside Column - November 2007

Bill of Rights Bulmer

Article I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

Her name was Agnes Bulmer but we affectionately called her “Bill of Rights Bulmer.” She was my sixth grade teacher at St. Thomas the Apostle School. By all counts, she was a very good math teacher and probably a really nice person – unless you were a sixth grade student.
Sixth grade was a very big year at St. Thomas. The sixth, seventh and eighth grades were all located on the top floor of the old school. Kids rarely visited the top floor unless they were collecting mission money or attending detention. I visited more often for detention.
My feet didn’t touch the floor at the desks in the detention room and the textbooks were a lot thicker than ours. That was the extent of my third floor memories until I arrived in Mrs. Bulmer’s room in 1967.

Mrs. Bulmer was an unknown to us. She came to St. Thomas that year after a long career with the public schools. We had no rumors or inside information from older brothers and sisters. We would just have to break her in like we did Sister Theresa in fifth grade.

Sister Theresa had issues with classroom management as we say in the business and ended up leaving the convent altogether and getting married. We took full credit for her nun meltdown but I would imagine her fiancé was a bigger factor. Like a relief pitcher trying to finish out a losing game, Mrs. Nicholas took over the class for the last 2 months of school. It’s possible she became a nun after a few months with us.

So we arrived at Mrs. Bulmer’s sixth grade door with an attitude. Her reaction to our antics was calm and efficient. In that first week, four of us had a giggling fit that could not stop. She calmly wrote our names on the board and said she had a special assignment for our misbehavior.
We were told to write out the Bill of Rights and turn it in the next morning. It took about 45 minutes that night to write it out by hand which was annoying but not deadly for a punishment.
For one reason or another (mostly talking), my name appeared on the board again and again. I accepted my fate and wrote copy after copy of the Bill of Rights like a monastic monk.
Mrs. Bulmer rarely raised her voice and most kids learned to keep their names off of the Bill of Rights list. Michael Rosetti even erased the whole list once but she conveniently had it jotted down in her teacher book. She assigned the Bill of Rights to the whole class on several occasions and a collective groan came over the class.

One day I was filled with patriot pride and I challenged Mrs. Bulmer saying that we had a right to exercise our free speech. It said so right in the Bill of Rights and I was practically a constitutional scholar by now. Her response was to make me write the referenced document 5 times.

It got so bad that year, that I memorized the ten articles. I would write them in advance on pages in the back of my theme tablet and turn them in as needed. In a moment of stupidity, I handed her one moments after she assigned it just to get a laugh. The class laughed at me instead as I got another five assigned.

I wrote the darned Bill of Rights about 63 times that year according to the check marks on my notebook cover. I could have supplied the entire Continental Congress with copies two hundred years earlier.

I am ashamed that I can’t remember all of my grammar school teachers but I’ll never forget Agnes Bulmer and I’ll never forget the Bill of Rights.

The Flipside - May 2009

Don’t Tell Mom I Got Hit By A Car

I was hit by a car when I was twelve years old. The accident could not have been more predictable. I slipped my bicycle out into the middle of Byrd Avenue 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.

It’s not as though I hadn’t been warned. My parents had cautioned me about jaywalking since I was old enough to cross a street.

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?”

I tossed out a few more gems but held back a few memories from high school as we all do when sharing the good old days with our parents.

She threw some interesting tidbits out for me as well but held back a few memories as parents do when sharing the good old days with their children.

I had many late night conversations with my mother but this one always stuck out because we were just in one of those moods.

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.

The Flipside - April 2008

Take 10 Records For Only $1.99!

“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Columbia House Record and Tape Club Mr. Carroll?”

“Yes sir, I paid $1.97 plus postage and handling just like the magazine ad said.”

“Could you share with the court how many times you joined Columbia House Mr. Carroll?”

“That would depend on how you define the word joined.”
“According to our files, you enrolled in the club at least eight times from 1972 – 1980. You agreed to purchase six 12” stereo records or 8-track cartridges. Did you fulfill your agreement plus postage and handling in each of those enrollments?”
“My attorney has advised me not to answer that question.”


This fictional account is a public service message to those readers who have not completed their Columbia House enrollment agreement. It could happen to you!

Columbia House began as an experiment in 1955 when an executive at CBS Records formed a new division called the Columbia Record Club. The purpose of the new division was to test the idea of marketing music through the mail. To attract interest in the concept, Columbia Record Club offered one free record to those who joined the club, offering its new members a wide selection of jazz, easy-listening, and Broadway show titles from which to choose. By the end of 1955, the Columbia Record Club boasted 128,000 members who purchased 700,000 records. The club’s success led CBS to move its operation from New York City to a sprawling distribution center in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1956.

According to the company’s history, the Columbia Record Club changed the profile of the retail music industry within a decade. By 1957, Columbia Record Club was using its Terre Haute facility to ship seven million records to its members, the ranks of which were swelling by the month. By 1963, the division accounted for 10 percent of all the money spent on recorded music and thirty-six years later, membership exceeded 13 million.

While their history doesn’t mention it, the key to Columbia House’s success was the full page magazine ad that tantalized music fans with the offer “Take any 10 records or tapes for only $1.97.” The offer later rose to 13 records or CDs but the deal was the same. Get a lot of free stuff at once and then pay exorbitant prices (plus postage and handling) for six records to complete your agreement over two years.

It was a fair proposition if you divided 21 records by the total investment but few of my friends were concerned about long term investments. Instead, they broke the agreement and never became eligible for the bonus plan.

Few activities were more entertaining than selecting the 13 records and filling in the boxes or licking the little album stickers for the enrollment card. Then, 3-6 weeks later a heavy cardboard box full of listening joy appeared at my mailbox.

Another memorable feature of Columbia House that has been duplicated by many mail order businesses was the selection of the month. If I did nothing, Columbia House would still send a record each month. I could return the record postage free if I didn’t open it. Otherwise, it would cost about a dollar to return it. The challenge was finding out what record was inside the packaging without appearing to open it.

Somewhere on Fruitridge Road in Terre Haute, a woman sits with my name on a yellowed index card. “One of these days we’ll catch this guy and make him complete that agreement,” she says. “He still needs to buy 3 more 8-tracks.”

If she calls, have her contact my attorney. Thanks.

The Flipside - February 2008

Bloomfield HS Prom 1974

The best photographs are able to tell a story without words. Other photographs beg the viewer to ask more questions. The prom photo on this page would certainly fall into that second category.

If I hadn’t been there myself, I’d first ask why. “Why would the four guys in this photograph think it was a good idea to dress up in pastel tuxedos?” I would just have to ask “what’s with the hair – are you kidding?” Then finally I might ask why four apparently normal high school girls would be seen with this bunch in the first place?

The answers to these important questions are two familiar words – the prom.

The word prom comes from the French word promenade, which means walk or stroll. According to the mostly reliable Wikipedia, it was considered inappropriate in the early twentieth century to dance with a man you were not married to. Instead, the girls would take short and heavily-chaperoned promenades around the block with their dates. That practice grew into formal chaperoned dances by the 1920’s.

Proms became common in the 1930’s and reached their outlandish peak in the 1950’s in the same way that Cadillac tailfins did. The traditional prom survived the 1960’s and found its stride once again in the disco 70’s. Proof that the annual event is going strong in 2009 can be found this coming weekend at The Plano Centre where several hundred Allen High School couples will dance the night away.

This year’s Allen High School prom resembles the 1974 Bloomfield High School extravaganza in name only.

A couple this year might spend $400 or even more on the prom. The evening usually includes dinner at a fancy restaurant, a limo rental, the dance, flowers and after-prom activities. Toss in a new hair-do, prom gown, flowers and a rented tuxedo and kids today are faced with one pricey evening.

I laid out $30 for a prom ticket, which included dinner at one of the many Jersey banquet halls that survive on proms, bar mitzvahs and weddings. I admit that I probably could have spent more on the yellow and brown crushed velvet tuxedo. The pink satin tuxedo was an upgrade though. The new pair of platform heels completed my transformation from mellow 70’s guy to disco king for one evening.

There certainly was dancing at the ’74 prom but it is possible that our group never hit the dance floor. Bands like Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers provided the soundtrack for our high school memories. Unfortunately songs like Rock The Boat and Dancing Machine dominated the dance. Just imagine the eight kids in this photo dancing The Bump to Boogie Down. It’s hard to visualize.

Our all night party began with a misguided trip into Manhattan where we sat in horrible traffic and imagined people were looking at us. They weren’t.

The New York City adventure was followed by an evening of driving aimlessly around northern New Jersey in my father’s car. After a late night stop at the diner, the four of us rolled in close to dawn to face my worried and then furious parents.

The 1974 Bloomfield High School prom didn’t meet all of our expectations but we still had a good time. We got to dress up and pretend we were adults for one night. That’s the story behind this crazy prom photograph and I’m sticking to it.

As for the Allen High School prom-goers this weekend, I hope every one of them has a fantastic time and can laugh just as much at their photos in 2044.

The Flipside -May 2009

Penny Candy Obsession

I love candy and have the cavities to prove it. Medical journal articles could be written about the size of my sweet tooth but let’s just say the evidence is clear enough.

My dentist was probably onto something when he started rewarding his young patients with Trident Sugarless Gum instead of candy. It was a losing battle though, because candy was everywhere and it was cheap.

Every classroom teacher in my parochial school sold candy at recess. Watermelon slices, coconut bars and fireballs would hardly qualify by today’s food of minimum nutritional restrictions for schools. We were actually doing God’s work by consuming an extra candy bar or two becaue the “profits” went to the missions.

Jackie Granger and I strayed from God’s work one day in fourth grade when found boxes of candy stored in the coat closet and helped ourselves. In retrospect, leaving the wrappers in the closet instead of my desk would have been a better strategy.

Some mission is South America was a little short that month. The yardstick we were whacked with was probably an inch shorter as well.

We rarely had candy in the house except for holidays. Boxes of incredible chocolate from Holstein’s (site of the final Soprano’s episode) would be set aside by my mother “for company.” It was painful to smell the homemade candy and not devour it. Once the relatives arrived and dessert came around, I stayed through the boring adult conversation just to score a few extra pieces.

Once the holiday was over, the extra candy wouldn’t last a day, even when my mother hid it in the linen drawer. My father used a different approach to protecting his sweets. He just bought licorice treats, especially the black licorice assortments that kids ate in desperation when the chocolate was gone.

Halloween was a gold mine. Our haul was no less than two grocery bags (paper of course) full of candy including stacks of Nestles, Hersheys and Snicker’s bars. Once the good stuff was gone, we picked at the leftover stash of Good and Plenty, Chuckles, Dots, and Neco Wafers that had a shelf life of several years.

Once we were old enough to walk to the newsstand alone, we squandered our allowance on candy that would make a dentist cringe. Charleston Chews, Sugar Daddy’s and Jaw Breakers were popular choices but my favorite was Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy. The candy was so hard and chewy that kids smashed them on the sidewalk before eating them.

An old fashioned country store called Rowe-Manse Emporium in nearby Clifton was the motherlode for young candy lovers. They sold penny candy out of glass jars for a penny! For one dollar we could fill a small paper bag with candy that could last all afternoon – or less. Walking home from Rowe-Manse, I once consumed fifty malt balls on a dare from the previously mentioned criminal, John Granger.

Like them or not, some candies just had more sizzle than others. Atomic Fireballs, Pop Rocks, Lemonheads and extremely sour Warheads all provided entertainment and oral torture for youngsters.

The Flipside - February 2007

Milton Bradley Comes Out Of The Closet

Absolutely the best part of any friend’s house in the 1960’s was the game closet. Television advertising must have been very effective because every family owned shelves filled with classic board games like Monopoly, Clue and Parchesi.

In the days before Atari, board games filled many an hour of our childhood. My friend Gary Costa and I often hoped for rain during the summer so we could stay inside, play games and drink Tang.

A rainy summer day in sixth grade might start with a game of Trouble. The game was slow but the Pop-O-Matic dice made it all worthwhile. Later we might move into a game of Life before heading to the basement to run the slot cars for a break.

Eventually we’d get bored and start rummaging deeper into the game closet. Most of the game boxes on the bottom of the pile had flattened out and spilled their pieces. Sorry pieces mixed with Monopoly hotels and caroms on the floor but at least we knew where to look if game parts were missing. Games at the bottom of the closet were either too easy or too hard but that didn’t stop us from pulling them out.

There was no shame in a game of Chutes and Ladders as long as out friends at school never found out. On the very bottom was Scrabble in that familiar dark brown box. I am convinced that our parents played Scrabble in the days before kids but hadn’t had a peaceful evening in the twelve years since. That explains why it worked its way to the bottom of the game closet stack – even lower than Candy Land.

It is naïve to think that board games were a product of the 60’s. The earliest games are 2,500 years old, according to the somewhat reliable Wikipedia. As for the classic games we played, many were golden oldies by the 1960’s. Those include Chutes and Ladders (1943), Candy Land (1949), Yahtzee (1956), Monopoly (1935), and Scrabble (1938).

The Game of Life has an especially long history. A lithographer named Milton Bradley created The Checkered Game of Life in 1861 as a new game to be played on a checker board. The company survived and 100 years later The New Game of Life was introduced (and endorsed by Art Linkletter).
Board game companies have fallen on hard times in these days of video games. Hasbro purchased Milton Bradley in 1984. The company, which was best known for Mr. Potato Head and GI Joe, also gobbled up Coleco, Tonka, Kenner and Parker Brothers in the 1990’s.
There is no research to back this up, but I would guess that most baby boomers have a game closet of their own. They probably scavenged games from their childhood or repurchased them in the hopes that their kids would find as much pleasure in playing them as they did. Eventually Nintendo and its competitors won the kids’ hearts and minds but those board games wait silently in the closet.

Our game closet fits the description. Classics like Life, Clue and Monopoly are stuffed under Mousetrap and various editions of Trivial Pursuit. Unlike most household toys, we can’t seem to let go of those childhood games so there they sit.

Maybe it’s time for the PS3 to power down and for Milton Bradley to come out of the closet.
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The Flipside - October 2008

Sixth Grade Research Saves Lives

Life is full of questions. When we were young, our parents and teachers seemed to have all the answers. As we grew older we relied more on the limited knowledge of our friends which was where things start going wrong. After all, there were questions that we would never ask an adult but our friends were always willing to offer an opinion.

“I wonder if this will burn” would be one of those questions. It might make a great segment for the David Letterman Show but no good can come from two eleven year-old boys discovering the answer.

Fully aware of the “don’t play with matches” campaign from Fire Safety Month, Billy Garrabrandt and I tested the combustibility of an old canvas chair – in my garage. Much to our delight and then horror, the old dried out chair flared up almost instantly.

Our immediate reaction was to find something to put the fire out in the unattached garage. There was no water and racing into the yard to run a hose into the garage would likely cause alarm from my mother. Our solution was to smother the fire with a fifty pound bag of dry cement that we found in the corner. Cement powder was everywhere but the real threat of burning down our garage was abated.

For the first time ever, we voluntarily cleaned up the garage and carefully trimmed the burnt seat of the chair hoping the grownups wouldn’t notice. We then threw the chair out with all the garbage from our cleaning frenzy. It was one of the few times that we didn’t get caught doing something stupid but I did admit the whole incident to my mother thirty years later.

Scientific discovery was at the heart of many theories that Billy Garrabrandt and I attempted to prove. We tested Newton’s theories of gravity by tossing objects out of our third floor window. Seeking an answer to the age old question “what will happen if I throw this out of the window?” we dropped airplane models, army men and even food out of my attic window.
Years later we reversed the process to answer the question “what can we sneak into the attic?” but that’s a story for another column.

“Do you think it will explode?” was the most dangerous but also the most entertaining question that Billy and I struggled with. Chemistry sets were still the rage and enterprising youngsters could purchase refills of ingredients at the local hobby store. We pooled our meager resources and bought sulphur, charcoal and potassium nitrate to play with. With absolutely no thought of the danger involved, we made gunpowder and stuffed it into objects that we detonated. I don’t believe we ever created an explosion but running at full speed away from a lit fuse was better than any amusement park ride.

There were so many unanswered questions that Billy and I struggled to answer. Each of them would have made an excellent sixth grade science project.

“I wonder if this will make him throw up?” “What will happen if the dog drinks beer?” “How long will it take my two year-old nephew to learn a swear word?” “How far will car model parts travel when exploded with a cherry bomb?” “If a bus is passing by at 35 mph, what trajectory is needed to reach it with a snowball and still leave enough time to run away?”

There were no marble lab books, but Billy and I solved these and many other puzzling questions of childhood. I am not sure if humanity is better for it but it sure was fun.

The Flipside Column - November 2007

Playlists For the Boomer Generation

We may look back affectionately on our record collections but nothing beats the quality and accessibility of digital music. Online music services like I-Tunes and Rhapsody give us access to music we remember but lost and even more tunes we never knew existed. For almost forty years, rock music fans have consumed their music through albums, 8-tracks, cassettes or CD’s. Albums are still released but the digital teens of today are more inclined to pick and download their own playlists. Listening to a new compact disc from end to end is just so “nineties.” With that thought in mind, I offer the following playlists for your listening pleasure. I admit up front that they show my bias for 60’s and 70’s music. Put together a few of these playlists yourself; load up your IPOD, sit back and enjoy the ride. Best Soul You Haven’t Heard (Take a break from Motown): Billy Stewart – I Do Love You; Little Richard – Milky White Way; Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come; Solomon Burke – Cry To Me; Wilson Pickett – Hey Jude; James Brown – Begging Begging; Ray Charles –Mess Around; Elvis Presley – Reconsider Baby; Erma Franklin – Piece of My Heart; Otis Redding – Respect. Heavy Seventies Revisited (Tune up your air guitar for this set): Alice Cooper-School’s Out; Aerosmith – Dream On; Jump! – Van Halen; Black Sabbath – Iron Man; Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear The Reaper; Ted Nugent – Cat Scratch Fever; Grand Funk Railroad - We’re An American Band; Joe Walsh – Life’s Been Good; Meat Loaf – Bat Out of He--; Deep Purple – Smoke On The Water. Ten Country Classics Worth Revisiting (Corny country is cool once again): Buck Owens – Act Naturally; George Jones – The Race Is On; Tammy Wynette – I Don’t Want To Play House; Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn – After The Fire Is Gone; Faron Young – Hello Walls; Floyd Cramer – Last Date; Merle Haggard – Mama Tried; Johnny Cash – Get Rhythm; Johnny Horton – Golden Rocket; Wanda Jackson – Let’s Have a Party. Ten Guilty Pleasure Songs (Sing alongs when you’re alone): Chad & Jeremy – A Summer Song; Jonathan King – Everyone’s Gone To The Moon; The Vogues – Turn Around Look At Me; Association – Cherish; Cowsills – The Rain, The Park & Other Things; Spanky & Our Gang – Like To Get To Know You; Carpenters – We’ve Only Just Begun; Tom Jones – It’s Not Unusual; Mamas & Papas – Monday Monday; Jackson Five – Got To Be There. Ten Beatle Songs Worth Revisiting (This list is only about 50 songs too short): There’s A Place; I’m Happy Just To Dance With You; Don’t Bother Me; Honey Don’t; Bad Boy; In My Life; It’s All Too Much ; I Want You; Revolution 1; One After 909. Ten Unlikely Number One Hits (Somebody must have bought these records, did you?): New Vaudeville Band – Winchester Cathedral; Chuck Berry – My Ding A Ling; Ringo –Lorne Greene; The Singing Nun – Dominique; Kyu Sakamoto – Sukiyaki; Ray Stevens – The Streak; Sammy Davis Jr. – Candy Man; Paul Mariat – Love Is Blue; David Rose – The Stripper; Frank and Nancy Sinatra – Something Stupid. Ten Maximum Volume Albums (Turn your amplifier up to 11 for these): Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin I; King Crimson – Court of the Crimson King; Allman Brothers – Live At Fillmore East; Derek & The Dominos – Layla; Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon; The Who – Quadrophenia; Santana – Abraxys; Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus; U2 – Rattle & Hum. Dust Off These Oldies (Under the radar in the late 50’s and early 60’s): Ronnie Self – Ain’t I’m A Dog; Chuck Berry – Too Much Monkey Business; Ivan – Real Wild Child; Don & Juan – What’s Your Name; Jive Five – What Time Is It; Elvis Presley – Guitar Man; Jerry Lee Lewis –Meat Man; Janis Martin – My Boy Elvis; Vito & The Salutations – Unchained Melody. Send comments to flipside@tx.rr.com or post here.