Tag: nostalgia

Memory Lane: Venus Paradise Colored Pencil Set

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So there you were, expecting a real wowser of a snowstorm that would have kept the schools closed on Monday and led to a glorious day of sledding and snowball fights–but all it did was rain. What to do with your Sunday afternoon?

I loved these Venus Paradise pencil sets. Each set came with a raft of colored pencils and a bunch of pictures to color by number–always with a wonderful result, if you didn’t make careless mistakes. The pictures we got back then were complicated and it took a couple of hours to color one in. But it was worth it!

I don’t think these are available anymore, and I wonder if kids today would have the patience to enjoy them. After all, it’s not electronic. And no mayhem. Just really nice pictures of ducks flying over the cattails in a marsh, or a scenic covered bridge on a sunny day in the fall–stuff like that. All you needed was a pencil sharpener, and a bit of peace and quiet. There are still some similar toys around, but once you fell in love with Venus Paradise, nothing else would do.

I’ve still got some of the pencils, but the pictures are, alas, long gone.

Memory Lane: Running Boards

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When I was a little boy, there were still cars with running boards. In the photo, that’s the wood-colored board between the front and back fenders and below the door. The man across the street from us had a car with running boards, although he soon replaced it with a newer model that didn’t have them. And of course a lot of the cars I saw on TV had running boards–some with riders standing on them. That’s how I knew what they were for.

Today some SUVs have running boards, but their purpose is to help you climb into the car.  The original running boards were for extra passengers.

If your imagination is up to the challenge, you can give yourself quite a good case of the horrors by imagining yourself perched on a running board and clinging to the car door for dear life as it barrels down the Garden State Parkway at 70 mph. That will also help you to understand why no one does this anymore.

I don’t remember anyone actually riding on Mr. Rankin’s running board, so the custom had probably already gone out of use. But if they ever needed to transport eight cops in a four-seater squad car, that was went the running boards came into their own–on small-screen TV, in glorious black and white.

Memory Lane: Goofy Stories

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I grew up in a large family, and as the first of the grandchildren, I got a lot of attention. It was all loving attention, but some of it was a little bit odd.

I’m thinking of certain things that certain adults told me that turned out to be quite untrue. For instance, Grammy (my daddy’s mother) told me never to swallow chewing gum because, if I did, a gum tree would grow inside me. I can’t say I believed that; but I did stop swallowing chewing gum.

When I went to kindergarten, I was upset at being away from home, so I cried. This encouraged the other kids to pick on me mercilessly, to make me cry some more, for their amusement–good old public schooling!–but Grandma (my mommy’s mother) had a solution. Watching the news on her small-screen TV, with me sitting on the floor by her feet, she pointed at the screen and said, “See that man? He’s never cried in all his life. And now he’s on television!” I forget which newscaster that was–it’ll come to me at 2 a.m. tonight.

Now, why did Grandma say that? Obviously I already had no chance to match the newsman’s level of stoicism, I’d already blown that. Even at five years old, I found that story a little hard to believe.

My grandmothers told me those weird stories for my good, because they loved me. It just seems, in retrospect, a funny way to show it.

How about you? Did you ever get any curious stories like that? If it’s not too embarrassing, please share! I’d hate to think I was the only one.

Memory Lane: Our Classic Department Stores

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When my mother shopped at Newberry’s in the 1950s, she often treated me to one of those wonderful wax dinosaurs by the Miller Company. A lot of towns had J.J. Newberry department stores.

I haven’t seen one in donkey’s years; and it’s not only Newberry’s that I don’t see around anymore. Several classic department stores have vanished from the landscape.

E.J. Korvette’s–great sporting goods department, I got my Wally Moon baseball glove there. Two Guys from Harrison: their pet department seemed to have trouble keeping the birds in their cages, which always fascinated me. Woolworth’s. Surely you had a Woolworth’s somewhere nearby. And W.T. Grant’s. As a child, these stores looked big to me; but I guess you’d have to call them medium-sized department stores. Or even small department stores.

Where have they gone? Replaced, I suppose, by Target and Wal-Mart. Replaced by the malls: who needs a not-that-big department store, when a mall offers you a whole bunch of specialty stores all under one roof?

Is Bamberger’s still in existence somewhere?

I enjoyed them all. Newberry’s had the best toys, and great Halloween stuff–what you’d expect from a chain that started out as a bunch of five-and-ten-cent stores– Two Guys the best pet department, and Woolworth’s the best candy. They weren’t so big as to be intimidating. You can practically hitch-hike from one department to another at Wal-Mart. Sometimes big is too big. Some of the big stores today seem like they could double as hangars at an airport. I never got that feeling at Newberry’s. But the last Newberry’s store, Wikipedia tells me, closed its doors in 2001.

And oh, for some Howard Johnson’s ice cream!

 

A Christmas Conspiracy

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Once upon a time, my brother and I were beguiled by Genuine Oriental Malay Throwing Knives they had for sale at Metuchen Center. I mean, what could be cooler than that? And besides, Christmas was coming! And the deadly knives were well within even our meager price range–a steal at 75 cents each. So we conspired to give each other Genuine Oriental Malay Throwing Knives as Christmas presents.

When the presents were unwrapped on Christmas morning, we earned some sour looks from the obvious source. But my mother needn’t have worried. The Genuine Oriental Malay Throwing Knives wouldn’t cut a piece of bread. I can only imagine what Genuine Occidental Malay Throwing Knives could do. And no matter how many times you threw your throwing knife at a tree, it always struck with a “Splat!” instead of with that satisfying “Thwunggg!” that you always hear in movies. It always, always hit the tree flat, never, never with the point.

As a self-defense weapon, these babies were perfectly useless. You’d have a better chance fending off attackers with ribald limericks. As projectiles, they were only very slightly better than plaster statues of Liberace.

But at least they were cheap!

A Truly Unexpected Gift

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This Christmas, give the gift of plaster teeth!

I once did this. The dentist next door threw out a load of unusual-looking boxes, and it made me curious. The boxes contained plaster models of various patients’ teeth. I knew a lot of the people whose choppers were represented there.

This was too good to pass up. I scooped up a lot of them and gift-wrapped them as gifts for my family at the family Christmas Eve party at my aunts’ house. Everyone was going to be there! And everyone was going to get a nice little set of plaster teeth, probably reflecting the dental state of someone that they knew.

I relished the raised eyebrows as I handed out the gift boxes. Like they would ever guess what was inside! Like my sister would have any idea what to do with a model of Wayne So-and-so’s teeth, who once upon a time lived next door to us.

Oh, the puzzled looks! Puzzled? Try dumbfounded! Oh, the bewildered silence! And finally, the payoff–a whole room full of laughter and merriment. Years later, you could still get a chuckle out of anybody, just by mentioning the incident. Although I very much doubt that anyone who received a set of somebody else’s teeth kept it.

The gag didn’t cost anyone a red cent, but just try buying that much laughter.

By Request, ‘Silver Bells’

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This isn’t really a Christmas hymn, but Erlene requested it, and besides, it brings back fond memories to me. We sang this in our seventh-grade Christmas concert. Mr. Held’s entire home room, including me, was drafted into the choir. I was in the back row with all the other kids who couldn’t sing–but never mind, it was fun: and there was no one there to complain about it.

Fun fact: Did you know one of Burl Ives’ middle names was Ivanhoe? Cool!

‘Late Night TV, Circa 1958’ (2013)

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I can pronounce it now, but I still don’t understand it.

Now they’ve got 150-some channels instead of just three or four, and yet it doesn’t seem there’s half as much on as there used to be.

Oh, those old TV listings! Endless fascination for a 10-year-old who was packed off to bed at 8 o’clock.

https://leeduigon.com/2013/08/25/late-night-tv-circa-1958/

Well, this is a blog for sharing memories, isn’t it? I’d love to hear some of yours.

‘Memory Lane: My Erector Set’

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There used to be a lot of toys like this–toys that got you to use your imagination: and your hands, too. Among the greatest of these was the erector set.

https://leeduigon.com/2016/12/18/memory-lane-my-erector-set/

With these toys, you start with just a bunch of parts that don’t look like anything, and with your hands and your brain, you turn them into something. What could be cooler than that?

All of the kids in my family got their start on my aunts’ erector set that they had when they were kids. I’m happy to say my brother still has ours.

Memory Lane: ‘Davey and Goliath’

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Remember this? Davey and Goliath, which ran on TV from 1961-1965 and again from 1971-1973, a Christian children’s show produced by first the United Lutheran Church in America and later by the Lutheran Church in America, it featured a boy and his talking dog, Goliath, and was created by Art Clokey, famous as the creator of Gumby. I’d have watched it if I’d known it was sort of like Gumby–although it was on Sunday mornings and most of the time, I’d be at Sunday school or church, so I didn’t get a chance to see it.

But once upon a time, American TV, plain old network television, used to have any number of Christian shows. This one sought to teach kids how to live as good Christians. That was before The Smartest People In The World realized children had to be protected from Jesus Christ. It’s surprising they never got around to banning Gumby, too.

What was it like, to find wholesome Christian programming on regular TV? We’ve come so far from that, it’s hard to remember.

But we haven’t entirely forgotten, have we? And maybe, someday, we can find our way back to it.