Tag: my childhood

‘Disney+’ loses 1 Million-Plus Subscribers

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Angry Donald Duck Sticker | Donald duck, Duck cartoon ...

Honk if you’re at all surprised:

Disney Corp’s “Disney-Plus” streaming service lost 1.3 million subscribers–in the last quarter of 2023 (https://www.newsweek.com/disney-plus-mocked-over-subscriber-loss-1868083).

Social media platforms are buzzing with comments summed up by “Go woke, go broke–and it serves you right!” Unsatisfied customers cite Disney’s continual mud-flow of Far Left Stupid content–grooming children for sex, etc., all the usual garbage. They’re also unhappy with the prices, after a recent increase.

Golly gee, stop the presses–Disney+ is toxic waste. Who knew? Well, a million subscribers knew. That’s why they’ve stopped subscribing.

Y’know, Disney’s product was a huge part of my childhood in the 1950s, from Mickey Mouse to Davy Crockett and all points in between. We watched The Mickey Mouse Club and sent away for Mickey Mouse ears and T-shirts. Walt Disney himself was still alive and running the show, and he kept it clean–or else. They say he wasn’t an easy man to work for. I wonder how many Disney personnel would still be employed if Walt came back.

Who will mourn its passing if Disney Corp goes out of business?

Not me. How about you?

Memory Lane: ‘Down By The Riverside’

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We used to sing this at YMCA camp–practically sang the roof off the mess hall. We didn’t have the immortal Louis Armstrong with his horn, but we did the best we could. I don’t know what brought this spiritual into my mind today, but I’m glad it did. And it’s great when you’re around the campfire.

By Request, Bovine Baby-Sitters

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Carhartt baby. farm baby. calf and baby. farm photoshoot ...

“Unknowable” asked me to elaborate on this story, and I always try to please.

This is one of my earliest memories. I couldn’t have been more than four years old, because my brother was still a baby and my parents didn’t want to subject him to a long car ride. They were going to spend a weekend at a farmhouse somewhere in upstate New York. I kept falling asleep in the back seat; it was surely the longest car ride I had ever experienced.

Now this farm had a nice back yard, separated from a pasture by a stone wall. They were big stones, and I couldn’t stay away from them. I’d brought some of my toys, plastic cowboys and horses, and sitting atop the stone wall was an ideal stage for make-believe.

There were two or three cows in that pasture, and they came walking over when they noticed me. I could reach out and pet them. I sat on that wall the whole day, and the cows stayed right with me, listening avidly (so I thought) to the stories I was making up for them and showing a polite interest in my toys. To this day I don’t know where my mother and father were that day. It’s hard to believe they just went off and left their four-year-old sitting on a wall, and probably they didn’t; but one way or another, those cows were watching over me.

I will always recommend cows as baby-sitters.

Memory Lane: ‘Sing Along with Mitch’

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A childhood memory: It’s snowing, I’m nine or ten years old, curled up on the old green couch in the sitting room, ogling the toys in the Sears Christmas Catalogue; and we have a Mitch Miller album playing There Is a Tavern in the Town.

Mitch was big back then, leading his chorus in an inexhaustible round of good old songs that everybody knew: it was always easy to “sing along with Mitch.” These songs were already old when he recorded them. They were, if I might use a word that doesn’t get much use anymore, Americana. Part of our daily lives. Everyone I knew had at least a few Mitch Miller albums. He was on TV, too.

This was popular music with a capital P. Songs your grandma and grandpa knew as well as you did. We could all sing them together.

Can that be said of our music anymore?

In Quest of the Whim-Wham Whistling Shark

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I’m amazed I found this! It’s one of Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies, vintage 1939: Fresh Fish, it’s called.

This was the kind of harmless stuff that passed for kids’ TV in the 1950s. Although I must admit that for as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a fear of sharks. Could early exposure to this cartoon have caused that?

The diving bell was cutting-edge oceanographic technology back then. Today I doubt there’s anybody under 60 who would know what a diving bell was.

Whim-wham Whistling Shark–don’t laugh! Nobody knew what was down there, in 1939. Coulda been anything! Remember the bathysphere? The bathyscaphe? I think the world half-expected them to find Atlantis.

Keep looking. It’s gotta be somewhere.

Taking a Break… at Tommy’s Pond

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Patty and I have been feeling rather stressed lately, so we took a break from work and went off to spend some down-time at Tommy’s Pond.

It was a big piece of my childhood–fishing, sledding and ice skating in the winter, Summer Fun Club with the YMCA, just around the block. There were Fun Club kids there today: scheduled for a water balloon fight, but somehow that didn’t come off. We settled down on a park bench and chatted with the kids. I had a lot of pleasant memories to share with them: once upon a time, I was a Fun Club counselor. Then they went back to the Y and we had the place to ourselves.

It was lovely, and we’re much the better for it. There’s a lot to be said for places like Tommy’s Pond, when you’ve known them all your life. Happily, it hasn’t changed. My cousin Jeffrey lived right across the street from the pond: what good times we had together! I wonder where he fetched up; his family moved when we were kids.

I think I’ll save any more nooze reporting for tomorrow.

 

Memory Lane: Holy Moly, Hot, Hot, Hot!

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Flashlight Reading Images – Browse 4,662 Stock Photos, Vectors, and Video | Adobe Stock

“And the heat would make yer bloomin’ eyebrows crawl…”  –Kipling, Gunga Din

There’s a lot of talk about heat these days–in the summer! who would’ve thought it?–but some of us are old enough to remember real heat.

When I was a boy in, say, 1958, no one I knew had home air conditioning. We didn’t even have an upstairs fan till later. So when bedtime came around, up we trudged to the bedroom: you could cut the air with a machete.

Way too hot to fall asleep, I used my flashlight to read comic books. Eventually the batteries would start to fail, but fair enough–by then I was too tired to stay awake.Turn off the light, turn over the pillow to the side that wasn’t saturated with sweat, close your eyes, and–

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

Our house was fully screened, but somehow mosquitoes always got in. Oh, that hateful humming sound! You couldn’t go under the covers, it’d cook you. Children must have been incredibly tough and resilient, to make it through the night back then. Up and at ’em in the morning, all ready to play horseshoes!

People are carrying on now like summer heat is a new invention, and government can stop it if only we give it more power over our lives and a lot more of our money.

You wait! Someday they’ll declare mosquitoes an endangered species and make it against the law to swat them.

 

Memory Lane: ‘Playmates’

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*Sigh* My mother used to sing us this song, way back when.

How far back? I’d heard of rain barrels, but I never knew anybody  who had one. What was it for–a mosquito hatchery?

Here it is, as sung by The Fontane Sisters in 1955. I like it much better, the way my mother sang it.

‘A Cryptic Message From Beyond’

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Vintage 1962 Noilly Prat Vermouth Advertisement Photograph by Robert Kinser - Pixels

This ad used to freak me out. 

Whatever happened to Noilly Prat? I haven’t seen it in donkey’s years. Which is just as well–it used to scare me.

A Cryptic Message from Beyond

Happily, I can now look upon it with unspoiled equanimity. Maybe Heidi was right: maybe the guy in the cloak is a French cop. (Doesn’t he look like Frankenstein? Square head, etc.)

All the same, better cross the street if you see him coming.

Memory Lane: Playground Chatter

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498,750 Mars Images, Stock Photos & Vectors | Shutterstock

The planet Mars–without the scary clouds

Do people have an inborn compulsion to believe things that make no sense at all?

I remember a day at school, in the playground, with a rumor that had the whole fourth grade buzzing. It came in two parts.

*One: The government had a secret plan (which somehow all these kids found out about) to blow up several atomic bombs on the moon… just to see what would happen.

*Two: Every time they talked about this plan, “two dubular clouds appeared on Mars.” Because of this the plan was canceled.

Not one of us had even the foggiest idea what a “dubular cloud” was, but we all believed the rumor and found it rather disconcerting. I was sure I’d Heard It On The News! and it was therefor true. The Martians were out to get us, just like in the movies. Who knew what they were up to, out there on the dark side of the moon?

The scare died away when nothing happened. I don’t remember what new foolishness replaced it. Nor can I remember how I first heard of dubular clouds. But I never heard of them again.

I’m not prepared to say the news has become any more reliable since then. That goes for its viewers, too.