Culture | 03/04/2010 2:30 am
A Walk Down Memory Lane: What Do You Remember?
Cigarette vending machines, roller-skate keys, Modess pads … Joni Evans asks: What do you remember?
Photo Essay
I’ve always known there is a connection to women my age (in my 60s) when I reference the Wolfman Jack (rock-and-roll radio disc jockey), Azuma (furniture that revolutionized living cheaply — but stylishly — in the ’70s), Modess belts (no description necessary) and beyond. If you live in NYC, like me, the references are regional: Trader Vic’s at the Plaza Hotel, the Camel sign blowing smoke over Times Square, JAX on 57th (I once saw Audrey Hepburn shopping there). So I thought it would be fun to start a running list (with pictures) and see how much we all can remember (before we lose our memories!) … —Joni Evans
Tell us below what you remember. If you have pictures, even better. Send them to submit@wowowow.com for possible inclusion in this slide show. Please type “Memory List” in the subject line.
225 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
They are harder to find, but you can still find them.
http://www.drive-ins.com
Is it just me or does anyone else remember pizza being a treat???? Going to McDonalds once a month for a burger and milkshake was a treat. On Friday nites we each got one pop of our choice (I always got either Pepsi or Cherry Crush). And what ever happened to Penny candy, you could get two maple creams for a penny. You didn’t need a parent to walk down to the beach at the park . And Saturdays were mine, my chores were done and after lunch I’d walk to the library and get my two books for the upcoming week. Were talking 1965 - 1972, I left home in 73 and went to live with my Dad and my life was at such peace for a while, no fighting or drinking among adults, just sitting on the beach with bomb fires and my friends singing along with the radio. We’d have bomb fires right up until Thanksgiving, the beach was a cool place to walk even in the winter, Dad gave me a dog (Lady a Irish Setter) and she followed me everywhere, she was the most beautiful dog I ever saw). There was a drive in near Dad’s house and for 1 dollar per-person you got to watch two movies, I never made it through the second movie even as a teen, lol
The first time I took my children to a drive in, it was just my daughter and I and we went to see E. T., only problem is she was still being breast fed and of course doesn’t even remember, her daddy was overseas. But when my son, daughter and I went to Western NY to see my Dad I took them to see the Never Ending Story and they still talk about it to this day. So when ever we went to W.NY I’d take them to a drive in after going to see the Falls. At least I got to share some of my happy memories with them first hand.
Thanks for asking this question, I’ve been smiling with all the happy memories. :)
Good manners. Writing hand-written thank-you notes always. Dressing up to go to church and Sunday school. Tap dancing classes in black patent leather shoes with cleats on the bottom. "Skinned knees". Group neighborhood games like "Kick the Can" and "Red Rover". Penny candy. The Roller Derby. Groucho Marx movies. A large shiny picture of me and Danny Kaye sitting on the top of the back seat of a convertible in Canada (which I have with all my other pictures with celebrities "somewhere" in the attic). Dial phones. Train pullman cars ( and now I can’t imagine 50 people sleeping together in a railroad car with only a heavy curtain separating us - and feeling safe). Falsies. Panty girdles that left their marks for hours afterwards. Stewardesses. Planes with two levels in the front — are they still around? Parking at the airport fence to watch the planes take off was "the thing to do". "Shirley Temple" drinks for kids. Flying from Key West to Cuba on a sea plane that flew the whole way low over the water - beyond memorable!! The importance of "going steady" and wearing the boy’s ring wound with lamb’s wool to make it fit (or wearing it around your neck on a chain - which I had in all the yearbook photos!) The Junior Prom. . OMG!! Life magazine. Look magazine (the editor lived next door). Seventeen magazine — that had a huge part in my life then.
Those were the days …
Joan - I can remember just about all the things you so splendidly recall. I was trying to remember where I was in Canada when Danny Kaye visited this Country because I think I saw him in person someplace. He was a favorite of mine.
"Kick the Can" and "Red Rover" are games I played also. You might enjoy a little story about another popular game played by the kids in my neighborhood. You have to understand that I lived in a neighborhood inhabited by French and English kids. We played together and learned each others favorite games. From the French side, the kids learned a game which we played for years. It was called, “Brunchy-Brunch”. Whenever the kids got together, “Brunchy-Brunch”, was one of the most popular games. “Come on kids, let’s have a game of ‘Brunchie-Brunch”. One summer holiday time, I went to summer camp in a completely English province and I joined the children there in Kick the Can, Red Rover, and some other games I had to learn about because they were never played where I lived. A new one to me was “British Bulldog” ?? To add some variety to the regular games we summer campers enjoyed, I suggested a game we always played in Quebec. I explained how the game was played and told them it was called, “Brunchy-Brunch”. The camp Monitor listened very attentively and when I had finished explaining the game she said, “ Well, that’s the same as a game we often play here too, only we call it, “Run-Sheep-Run”. Well, to my amazement I suddenly realized that here was another case where a French kid picked up the name of a game from one of his English pals, who told him the name of the game was “Run Sheep Run”. After that kid passed on the name “Run Sheep Run“, of course the French kid took note of the name and he in turn, passed it along to his friends, and in his parlance, he explained that, “le nom du jeu est “Brunchie-Brunch”.
If you say it fast enough and often enough, with a bit of a French accent, you’ll understand why “Run Sheep Run” became known as, “Brunchie-Brunch”. The kids still call it “Brunchy-Brunch”.
Lauriate . . . you have been able to capture in words a singular story that we here would never have known about. I loved it - brunchie-brunch!! Now I am wondering if you played "Statues" or played "Mother, May I?" And you must have played marbles. Well, didn’t you? But let’s go inside our homes. I was a very competitive youngster and card games and board games - well, I was determined to win. "Chinese Checkers" — loved it! "Authors" at a time when we all read in our spare time so we were good at that one. "Dominoes" anyone? Checkers - of course.
LR, I am betting you were very sharp with games. So it is lucky you didn’t know me as I was sweet and all that, smiling, and WINNING!!! Remember how we used to hit each other once in a while with our fists? I am betting you would have to get back at me and I don’t think I would be wrong. But then you would be able to name all the Knights of the Roundtable - which I couldn’t - and then you would no doubt act stuck-up (remember THAT word???) and really smug - and wouldn’t share your CrackerJack with the prize inside. Would you? Maybe.
"Those were the days, my friend … "
"We thought they’d never end … " I remember playing "Statues", "Duck, Duck, Goose", Parcheesi, Little Red Schoolhouse. Long summer afternoons could be whiled away in games of tag, and car trips made bearable by license-plate bingo. We played "Telephone" at parties, cracking up as the original phrase gradually deteriorated into a hilarious mash-up as it was passed along in hurried whispers.
I also remember the party line phone, having a simple four-digit number, getting my very own Princess phone (baby blue, thank you very much). Technology marches on! Somewhere in the world of lost things are all those skate keys that went missing, my Little Lulu comic books, and at least ten thousand marbles. I wonder what ever became of my Roy Rogers six-shooter, and the snazzy cowboy hat I would have gladly worn to bed if my mother had let me? I managed to hang on to my James Dean Fan Club ID card, but I lost my Davy Crockett scrapbook somewhere along the line.
I remember those blue glass bottles of "Evening in Paris" perfume that I used to save up to buy for my mother. (It’s still around, but doesn’t seem to smell QUITE as elegant as I recall, and bless my mother for gamely spritzing it on to make me happy.) I remember Elnet hair nets, gold circle pins and setting my hair by rolling it up in rags. I remember Dippity-do gel, to get that perfect Annette Funicello flip, and from college days, Revlon’s Moondrops moisturizer and Ponds cucumber cold cream. Life was simpler then - we truly believed that mixing a little iodine into a bottle of baby oil and slathering it on before baking under a hot sun would make us all glamorous and alluring. (Who knew?!)
As for candy, I’m still mourning the demise of Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy that we would stick in the freezer and then smack on the formica counter to shatter it into pieces that we could savor for hours. Nik-L-Nips … little wax bottles filled with some kind of ultra-sweet flavored syrup. You’d put the whole waxy thing in your mouth and chew as the wax and syrup mixed … not exactly gourmet, and most likely responsible for my generation’s dental woes as the years went on, but oh, how good they were as a special treat.
And your comments about "Authors" really resonated! I can still close my eyes and see the pictures of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott. And I can honestly say that this simple card game made me curious about all the authors - and I’m still reading Dickens with awe and wonder all these decades later.
Yes, indeed, Joan, Lauriate and wOw - those WERE the days! Delightfully silly, simply delicious, and full of pleasures and treasures.