Category: memory lane

Memory Lane: Spring Shoes REPRINT

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From January 7, 2017

For years I’ve been looking for these, and the closest I could come is this video. Actually, the “Diet Helper” shoes demonstrated by this pair of sages very closely resemble what I have in mind.

My friends across the street always seemed to be the first to get really weird toys that defied our efforts to play with them. Stilts, for instance. But weirdest of all were these shoes with great big springs under them, that were supposed to help you bound around the playground like a kangaroo.

They looked like they should work exactly as expected, but no! We tried and tried, but all that ever happened was, we fell down. Maybe we weren’t heavy enough for the springs. Otherwise, the shoes sort of fit. You just couldn’t go anywhere in them, except down.

Sixty years later, I would love to give them another try. True, the pogo stick was my true art form. You shoulda seen me pogo-stick up and down the bleachers on the football field, up and down the cellar stairs. If my mother could have ever seen that, she would have taken forceful action, if she didn’t keel over in a faint first.

But spring shoes? Oh, to locomote like a human super-ball! Fond dreams of youth…

I Think I’ve Been There REPRINT

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Entelodon | Cool Dino Facts Wiki | Fandom

From July 5, 2020

This is Charles R. Knight’s 1894 painting of Elotherium, an extinct animal that resembled a wild boar. That’s cool–but what I’m really interested in is the backdrop.

This reproduction, the only one I could find, doesn’t quite capture the dried-out yellowish tones of the banks of this gully. You’ll have to imagine that. The gully is full of water and the animals are crossing it. Farther up toward the horizon, the gully feeds into a more permanent stream. And then a river? Then the sea?

The thing is–I think I’ve been there! Years and years and years ago. You got there if you went all the way down Orchard Street, back when there was still an orchard there, well past all the houses, and then just park your bike where this little bridge went across the gully. You could easily climb down and wade in the water–which of course you wouldn’t do if  there were Elotheriums present. They look irritable.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Knight used real places as the backdrops for his paintings of prehistoric life. I wonder: did he wander into my childhood, or did I wander into one of his paintings?

A Crazy Commercial REPRINT

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From August 18, 2016

Hey, remember this commercial? All about cowboys herding cats instead of cattle. Generally I don’t pay any attention at all to Super Bowl commercials, but this one was really funny, and famous, too. Notice the cowboy carefully rolling cat hairs off his shirt!

Memory Lane: The Cone of Silence REPRINT

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From February 12, 2022

The “Cone of Silence” bits from Get Smart were some of the funniest TV comedy ever. Edward Platt (the Chief) never failed to make me laugh; and of course you had Don Adams, too.

It made me laugh then, and it makes me laugh now. They worked up several dozen variations on this theme, every one of them hilarious. YouTube has a bunch of them, if you want to laugh yourself silly.

Get Smart ran from 1965 to 1970. That’s a lot of Cone of Silence gags!

Memory Lane: ‘Melvin the Moon Man’ Reprint

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Image result for melvin the moon man game

From June 9, 2018

 

Before the advent of video games featuring blood and guts flying all over the screen, children had to be content with benign, peaceful, harmless games–like this one.

Remco put out “Melvin the Moon Man” in 1959, and it was a hit. My parents got it for us for Christmas, and it was simple enough for all three of us to play: my sister, age 4, my brother, 7, and me, 10. If we had had a cat, he probably could’ve played, too.

You spin the handle of the unique Tumblebum dice glass (that, and the colorful graphics, were the game’s big selling points), and your plastic Spaceman traveled around the United Craters of the Moon collecting Moonbucks. The one with the most Moonbucks wins. No tactics or strategy involved. Just follow the map according to the roll of the dice.

I don’t know what Melvin cost in 1959, but it’s selling on eBay today for up to $150. In 1959 anything over $5 was a major expenditure for my father which my mother would have to weigh carefully. They really must have loved us to buy us silly stuff like this.

And that’s what makes this memory so sweet.

Today

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The predicted snow did materialize, but not quite as much as they had forecast.  That’s fine with me.

Yesterday, the handymen came and I now have a nice bright fluorescent light in the kitchen.  What a difference that makes.  No more preparing supper a la flashlight.  They were very efficient and were here for only 15 minutes.  Now I can see how sadly neglected that kitchen is.  That will be one of my projects for next week.  That and getting my car to inspection.

Every year, for our anniversary, Lee would make me a card.  He was a good cartoonist, and the cards would be decorated with these various  characters that he had made up.  These characters were featured in the story he would tell me at bedtime.  Yes–I got a bedtime story.  Every night.  Except for the last few years.  Today I came upon the large manila envelope that I had saved many of them in.  Should I open this–I asked myself.

I did open it and I shouldn’t have.  It’s far too soon to look at anything like that.  To be honest, it set me off for a while.

It is very gray and overcast today.  It looks like it could snow some more, but it isn’t supposed to.

I am going to watch some TV, prepare my supper and go to bed early.  As I usually do.

God bless everybody

Patty

A Humorous Exchange

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From February 14, 2018

 

So my wife’s new bra was too tight and she wanted to stretch it. She turned to me–without first explaining the situation–and asked, “Would you please wear my bra?”

“Certainly not! I’d look like a pervert.”

“You can wear it backwards.”

“Then I’ll look like a crazy pervert.”

That was a few years ago, but Patty was laughing about it this morning. Ah, memories!

 

The Doll That Scared a Boy Silly

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From September 22, 2018

It is not the usual thing for boys to be afraid of dolls. Nevertheless, I knew a boy, who grew up to be a star athlete and a model citizen, who had a dreadful experience with a certain doll. I must not reveal his name, lest he be embarrassed by this anecdote. For the sake of convenience, I’ll call him Ariobarzanes.

As he was a new boy in the neighborhood, my friends and I decided to introduce him to our local wilderness, preparing him with lurid tales of Hangman’s Tree, which stood at the very heart of it. To this day, we whispered to him, as we followed the trail beside the creek, some evil force continued to string up people from that tree. But it ought to be safe to go there in the daytime. Probably.

Meanwhile, my friend Ellen, a very good tree climber, went on ahead to set the stage.

We had poor Ario pretty well pumped up by the time we entered the clearing where the tree glowered down on all of Middlesex County. And there Bobby and I stopped short, pointing and crying out, “Oh, no, not again! Oh, no!”

A hapless little doll hung from the lowest branch, swaying dismally in the wind.

With a great cry, Ariobarzanes turned and ran all the way back home without stopping even once, showing great promise of the track star he would one day be. He didn’t even need to use the path: he made one of his own.

I admit that this was a naughty prank, but Ario soon laughed it off and he and I became great friends. Best freakin’ shortstop we ever had, too.

But now you see, I’m sure, that under the right circumstances, a boy can be scared by a doll.

When We Were All Little Sages

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Sometimes what you knew turned out to be not true.

All this bowing down to children and asking them to please tell us what our public policies should be, reminds me of how wise we all were when I was in fifth grade.

Out on the playground, which was our grove of Academe, we liked to discuss weighty topics with one another: the more philosophically abstruse, the better. We especially liked scientific subjects.

One of the topics we discussed at great length went like this: “Ya know, every time they talk about shooting a rocket to the moon, these two dubular clouds appear on Mars…”

Dubular? What does that mean? Well, nobody asked! Each of us took it for granted that everybody else knew exactly what it meant. I didn’t know, but that didn’t stop me from repeating that baloney. It got so I didn’t have to know what it meant! Just saying it made us sound so wise.

If only adults had listened to us, back then! Obviously they had no appreciation for our childly wisdom.

But that seems to be changing fast.

Keep your eyes peeled for dubular clouds on Mars.

From November 2019

The Very First Oy Rodney Post REPRINT

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This is from 2017.  The picture is a different one, as I couldn’t bring Lee’s picture over, I put a picture of a dog that looked exactly like my little guy from many years ago.  Dobie.

All right, so I don’t have a dog.  I wouldn’t let my cats read it, either.

Oy, Rodney! by Violet Crepuscular is one of those awful romance novels, but with an added twist: the author has hired goons–formal job description “literary consultants”–to go into bookstores and make thinly veiled threats.  The plot ain’t nothin’ to write home about, either.

Can young Lord Jeremy Coldsore, 5th Viscount Atropine, win the love of the aging but still quite homely Dame Margo Cargo, the richest woman in Scurvyshire?  Or will the mysterious stranger who looks like Ed Begley, but isn’t, get in first?  What is the awful secret concealed under the Vicar’s plastic wading pool? And how come there’s no character in this book actually named Rodney?