Going to the movies ( or the show house !) for 25 cents. Cruizing with older cousin in his 1956 chevy that he got for $10 and his dad's ladder. Looking at the 1969 Mach 1 mustangs and the Super Bee's in the showrooms while walking to school ( uphill each way). Getting a bottle of pop at the Skelly gas station with my dad. Watching my dad hand hammer a new trunk floor for a guys 56 TBird. Nearly losing my helmet when riding on the back of a cousins new 750 Honda while ripping through the Black Hills near Sturgis.
Ah, yes, KRLA with 'Emperor' Bob Hudson (and Hudson & Landry sketches). I can remember listening to KRLA when we were riding in cars that didn't have an FM radio (which was usually the case). In the latter part of the '60s, I turned my friends onto an underground station based in Pasadena - KPPC - which needed all sorts of additions to radio aerials to receive. The music was sooo good and you heard stuff that the Top 40 stations never played.
Art Laboe's Original Sound Records' 'Oldies but Goodies' compilation LPs. I loved the fact that these had a 'Dance Side' and a 'Dreaming Side' (romantic ballads), the latter was perfect music to make out to. I still have the first one, 'Memories of El Monte' (late '60s reissue) in my collection. it has some great old L.A. bands from the '50s.
Making beer can cannons. Can't do that with aluminum. Using an old metal ironing board as a sled. Chasing carts at the local country club for 4 hours for maybe if we were lucky, $5.
This is one of my greatest events as a kid. My sister, her two friends and I were dropped off in Downtown Dallas to attend our first music concert. I was nine and Sis was 13. The 3 girls had cotton candy hair and wore identical black dresses. I thought that was weird. I could barely hear the music over the screams and my ears rang afterwards. Kennedy was shot a few blocks away the year before. Those were the days.
Taking a few of mom's wooden clothes pins and using them to secure baseball cards on the fender supports on my bicycle so they made a click-click-click noise against the spokes. The faster you pedaled, the louder they got. If you put four of them on, you could hear 'em a block away...
ju-ju bee candy that would pull out your fillings the little rectangular cardboard comic strip that came in a Sugar Daddy the guy Mort in the Bazooka Joe comics who always had a turtle neck sweater pulled over his mouth those crummy candy dots that were on long strips of paper...when they got stale you'd be eating the paper too little six packs of wax "soda" bottles with awful tasting colored sugar water in them Smacking down the Bonham Turkish Taffy Bars to fracture them candy cigarettes in a paper sleeve that had a "lit" end and powdered sugar in them so you could blow "smoke" out of them.... soda machines that made the soda in front of you..when it ran out of cups it would pour the stuff down the drain and the ice cubes would fly out at your feet...course you could also hit the chrome "no ice" button. Wise Bar-B-Q potato chips...came in a white bag with red "bricks" printed on it and the owl had a chef's hat on..your mouth would burn for an hour .
I was talking to my dentist just about a month ago and we were talking about this store that is close by that has all the original recipe soda pops. They also have Jujubes. He said he keeps a box of them in the drawer. When he has a stubborn old tooth crown that needs to be removed, he says that many of his patients get a kick out of having some Jujubes, chewing with them on the problem tooth and ...WALLA!, the patient removes it himself by getting the candy stuck on the crown. He says that everyone loves the idea and that they get a big laugh of "helping" with the procedure.
Then somebody came up with the idea of injection molding something that looked like a motorcycle engine and sat in a bike's frame rails, made exactly the same sound as what you describe, Ed, and needed D-cell batteries to run it. One of my friends got one for his birthday when these things first came out;I didn't get the point of it all when you could make the same sound for free. I don't think he did, either.
Sometimes parents just don't "get it", even though you have to love 'em for trying... I'd spend hours doing wheelies on my Schwinn Sting Ray (gold!), so my dad figured that what I really wanted was a unicycle...a freeeeking unicycle...for Christmas, no less....I wanted to do wheelies...like the drag guys did, not ride around like a fruitcake circus clown...sheeesh... sure was a nice gesture, though...
..sending away to the Johnson Smith Co. for a "Rocket Engine"..they sent me a tin tube and some solid fuel tablets that I couldn't light with a blowtorch. ... sent away for the 12 ft tall "lifelike" Frankenstein Monster...$1.98...came folded up in a little envelope, printed on cellophane. ...the Venus Fly Trap plant...tried feeding it raw hamburger as the ad suggested, it closed up, turned black and croaked a week later. ... and those crap X-Ray glasses did not allow me to see through my neighbor's blouse as promised.....just made me look like a moron wearing cardboard glasses with spiral lenses. I pictured this Johnson Smith guy leaning back in his leather office chair puffing on a big cigar and laughing his ass off. Mr Smith if your out there, I'd like my paper route money back .
How about putting cards or ballons on your bike rims so they rubbed the spokes for that sound. The drive inns had those big old metal box speakers. Friday night wrestling here in Houston with Paul Bosch. Kung fu theater movies on Saturdays. Going to the public swimming pools was free only cost you a quarter to rent a basket or locker to put your clothes in. Going to fun shops to buy chinese stars and spanish fly. Drinking t-bird and cruising around looking for chicks at 15 in my first car. That hard piece of gum that took like an hour to soften up to chew in the baseball card packs. Them old washing machines that looked like a bathtub with the rollers on them to squeeze out the water and clothes lines no dryer's here. The green machine although I never had one. Train sets that were made out of real metal along with the race tracks. Electric football where the men would just spin in circles and never really go anywhere.
...there was one item I mailed away for that was NOT a disappointment...my Whammo Wrist Rocket slingshot! Wicked cool and friggin' lethal..all for something like $4.99 Had to keep it hidden from my mom. There was a nasty old guy who lived all the way down the street - had the first house to get aluminum siding in the neighborhood....I would fire a marble all the way down the block and it would ring off his house like a tamberine...then I'd run inside our back door and flop in front of the TV watching cartoons.....he must have been looking out his widow saying "who the hell is doing that"? .
Early days. Pegged trousers, lurex shirts, sports coats with one button. Gotta get that hair just right. Ah those Saturdays..
Pulling in for gas on a weekend night and telling them to put in"a dollars worth of the cheap shit" then scooping the loop all night on that dollars worth of gas. And our black and white TV only picked up three stations.
Thanks Mazooma, for reminding me of real (powdered) malt. And that reminded me of phosphates, cherry phosphates ....... and real root beer (sarsparilla). I know only one place left where it's all still available, the repro Rexall at Fair Oaks & Mission in So. Pas. Speaking also of making your own toys (a biggie with me), how 'bout spool racers, rubber band guns & stick match guns. We also did 1"x4" wood broadswords with cardboard & heavy tape armor (from the dumpsters behind the markets), and had some mighty battles thus (bruises, cuts & laughter included).
Oh yeah, we had those in Seattle back in the '70's; think I saw some for sale as recently as 2000... I remember 'Mom and Pop' stores, and independent grocery stores. Nowadays, the closest you get around here are 'ghetto-marts' that sell glass pipes, knives, and posters of Scarface, Bob Marley, and gangster rappers. How about ads on the back of match books? Or being able to get a book of matches with your pack of smokes? Or, the ads in the back of comic mags? Did they ever sell all those surplus Jeeps? The sound of a playing card stuck to a bicycle's fork, ticking against spokes... Oh, yeah... I think I heard about that one on Oprah, or something... I remember the smell of leaded pump gas. And having my first 'tab' at the local hobby shop. A few guys have mentioned Sears... I remember back when they FILLED that whole big building in So. Seattle, plus had their clearance center a couple miles away. And the big store out north of Seattle (back when Shoreline was just 'north of Seattle). And they sent catalogs. ...racing mini-bikes with other kids. ...caller I.D.? What's that? "...hi, I'm looking for Michael Hunt. Is Mike Hunt there?..." Oh, yeah, when having a 3 speed car was still normal; having to step on the gas to 'set the choke' was normal, and having to remember to push in the clutch, because the car could start in gear was normal. I remember buying Mom a microwave in the 1980's... she was asking what use we could possibly have for that... I also remember only having a black and white TV from when I was a kid. And damned if everywhere outside of town was long distance to call! Businesses around here used to show their phone numbers with a prefix that was two letters designating the part of town, followed by one number, and then the four-digit suffix. Like "SU-2-4866" being a SUnset hill (Ballard) number. -Bill
Getting thrown out of the 25c (later 35c) Saturday afternoon movie matinees because I'd constantly put in my own dialogue watching those old Sci-Fi B-movies (I still do it, albeit watching TV...). Years later a bunch of guys from Minnesota made a mint doing the same thing on TV - Mystery Science Theater 3000
The Jalopy Journal
