Playing The Slots Ain't What It Used To Be

There were toys that every boy had like army men and Matchbox cars. Then there were toys that only a select few had and the rest of us dreamed about like gas powered airplanes and slot cars.

After years of slot car envy, I finally saved up and bought a used HO scale set when I was eleven. I had been “hired” by a retired teacher in the neighborhood to do outdoor chores such as mowing and raking. The money was good at $2 per hour so I couldn’t understand why my friend Gary would give up the job and pass it along to me.

As it turned out, he wasn’t giving me a job, he was getting rid of one. After two weeks of well supervised yard work, I was ready to pass the same thankless job onto another friend. I did leave with about $40 and quickly spent it on the slot car set.

My “new” set was made by Aurora in the early 1960’s and was sold to me by a 17 year-old neighborhood kid who drove his real car like a slot car. The cars and track and accessories were dumped in a large box but I was thrilled just to have a set for my own.

For those who are unfamiliar with slot car sets, the road to enjoyment could be paved with frustration. First, the track had to be built. Most layouts looked more like the high five interchange than Daytona because every single accessory and track in the box had to be used. Step two involved the tedious process of connecting and testing the tracks to eliminate dead spots. Finally, the cars had to be reassembled and cleaned and oiled before they could even complete a full lap.
Kids with ambitious dads had permanent track layouts that looked more like model train sets. My friend Gary and I settled for the basement floor with the constant threat of destruction by Duke, his German Shepard.

We spent countless hours playing with our slots car sets and devoted almost as much time building new track layouts. There was no Playstation or cable TV so slot cars could fill a long winter day better than any other toy in the house.

Many years later (but a few years too early), I bought a big slot car set for my son. He eventually grew into it and then quickly grew back out of it when he started driving his own car. It had been stored deep in the closet ever since -until last weekend.

In the name of research, I pulled out the box and set up the old slot cars one more time. My friend Barry joined me and we tinkered with the track and cars until everything was running smoothly. Then we sat back down and watched the football game and never really got back to it.
I realized that it never was about the competition. There was no neighborhood slot car champion when we were kids; we didn’t even keep score. The real fun for us was in the building and tinkering.

I packed up the slot cars tonight and placed them back into the closet next to the model trains. Like many things in that closet, I have no need for them but no desire to part with them either. It’s comforting just knowing they are in there – for research purposes of course.

Cardinal Red Trumps Yankee Pinstripes

There are two different scenarios that may have taken place by the time this column appears. The Texas Rangers will have won the World Series or the St. Louis Cardinals and the Rangers are preparing for a dramatic game seven. Either way it plays out, I win.

I have faithfully followed the hometown Rangers baseball team for years and enjoyed their rise out of mediocrity. I cheered them on through last year’s World Series and celebrated with each win in this year’s playoff rounds. The only team and I mean the only team that would test that allegiance is my team - the St. Louis Cardinals.

The sports pages are full of adjectives to describe the unlikely circumstances that led them to the National League Pennant so I won’t repeat them. Let’s just say that anyone who is truly a Cardinals fan should admit they were lucky to play a single game in October.

I admit that I rooted for the Cardinals last Sunday as I attended my first World Series game. Actually, it wasn’t much of a game at all for Cardinal fans. The Rangers were certainly favored to win the series and the momentum is heading towards that end but I will remain loyal to the team that killed the Yankees.

Growing up in the New York City area in the 60’s, loyalty to the pinstripes was an expectation. A few disillusioned kids rooted for the terrible New York Mets but the Yankees were king. They had played in 15 World Series over the previous 20 years and they were favored to win another one in 1964.

There were Yankees pitching everything from cars to Yoo Hoo I just wasn’t buying the whole Yankee thing but didn’t have an alternative yet.

I was eight years old and joined my classmates each afternoon as we ran home to watch the second half of the games that started around 2 p.m. I secretly tuned in to the 1967 World Series on a small transistor radio and my junior high teacher tuned in the game for the whole class in 1970. The Sisters of Charity were not as understanding when I was in third grade. They had us reciting Mother Seton poems while Bob Gibson was throwing pitches to Mickey Mantle.
The Cardinals won that ’64 World Series in seven games and earned my loyalty for life. Many years later when I moved to the Midwest I learned that a good portion of the country were Cardinal fans because their radio broadcasts reached from Minnesota to Texas. In New Jersey, however, you had to search hard to find a Cardinals fan.

As our hometown team, I have celebrated or suffered along with Texas Ranger fans since moving to Texas in 1995. It’s not like I was cheating on the Cardinals. The Rangers were an American League team and the odds of St. Louis and Texas ever crossing paths were nearly impossible.
Now that the impossible has occurred, I need to stick with my Yankee killers but I’ll be cheering that Rangers victory parade if (or when) it occurs. Is that wrong?

West Side Story Goes West

You know the hit songs and probably saw the award winning movie. You may even own the soundtrack but have you ever seen a stage production of West Side Story? Many critics rank it among the best American musicals of all time but the opportunities to see the production performed live have been few and far between.

That is why the opening of West Side Story at Fair Park Music Hall this week is such an opportunity for hard core musical fans and those who want to experience what they can only imagine on their television screen.

West Side Story was conceived by Jerome Robbins in 1949 when he brought the composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents together to modernize the story of Romeo and Juliet through a stage musical. The project was first called East Side Story and focused on the romance between a Jewish boy and Italian-Catholic girl set on New York City’s lower east side. The project floundered and was delayed for six years. By that time the storyline seemed dated and it was rewritten to reflect gang conflicts between Puerto Rican and Polish gangs on New York’s west side. A young lyricist named Stephen Sondheim was added to the team and the rest is history.

As a youngster I had no idea what the musical was about but the familiar red and black album sat in my parent’s stack of records. I would skip over the ballads (mushy songs) and drop the needle on sing-alongs like Gee Officer Krupke, America, the Jet Song and Cool. I eventually saw the movie starring Natalie Wood and made some sense out of the storyline. I’ve seen it many more times since then but caught my first live performance of West Side Story at Fair Park this week. It was amazing.

To understand why West Side Story was so big from the start, you have to consider the year 1957. Up to and including that year, musicals were happy sing-alongs that followed a standard formula. With the possible exception of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma, musical theater was very predictable in the 50’s. West Side Story shared the spotlight in 1957 with The Music Man and while both are golden era musicals, they couldn’t be more different.

For starters, The Music Man is a musical with dance. West Side Story is a dance production made even better with a memorable score. The current national touring production that opened on Tuesday is an amazing display of dance from the big production numbers to the choreographed fight scenes. Numbers such as The Rumble could best be described as ballet with a switchblade.

Fans of the 1961 West Side Story movie won’t be disappointed and stage musical purists will find this current production to be an excellent revival of the original musical. Either way, it is memorable show to close out the Dallas Summer Musical season.

West Side Story is playing through October 23 at the Fair Park Music Hall as part of the Dallas Summer Musical series. The show is concurrent with the Texas State Fair so parking is a challenge but a ticket to the show is also good for admittance to the fair. For more information about tickets, visit www.dallassummermusicals.org or call 800-982-2787.