March Badness

It was March, 1963. I missed my old school from last year. I longed to have friends like the ones I had there. My new school experience at Oakview Elementary in Silver Spring, Maryland, was one big bore. Tedium. Rote drills. So many things, over and over again. Even air raid drills.

Curled up in a ball under my tiny wooden desk, I wrapped my arms tightly around my knees and bowed head. All I could think was – hadn’t World War II ended twenty years ago? Was sitting under this desk going to save me from our school roof falling down, let alone an H-bomb that landed on the cafeteria? Scarier still was coming face-to-face with sharp, petrified boogers down here, ones that dated back to World War I students.  If that wasn’t scary enough, what about the words, “Hitler was here,” and “Burn this school,” scratched on the underside of my desk?

Suddenly, my teacher said, “All right, children. Get up, now. The drill is over.”

Oh, no. Reading hour was next. Remember the exciting day back in early October when reading period was cancelled? Just to watch TV? That day had such potential.

It was a cloudy morning when a hundred students assembled on Mrs. Clark’s classroom floor, all eyes locked on the RCA Victor TV set showing Mercury Atlas 8 standing straight up against a clear Cape Canaveral sky. I sat cross-legged on the hard linoleum tile, my body forced between other kids’ legs and torsos. The position grew increasingly uncomfortable because the launch went through several delays. Even teachers began to whisper. “What’s taking so long?” “Do you think the rocket’s having technical difficulties?” 

Then the TV screen began to flutter. The picture turned snowy. The horizontal hold went wild.

An assistant librarian rushed to the scene to fix the ever up-scrolling picture. It looked like Mercury Atlas 8 had already blasted off six hundred times. Frustrated teachers fidgeted with foil-wrapped rabbit ears and various loose wires behind the set, all to no avail. If world-famous RCA Victor couldn’t keep its own horizontal hold under control, how was America to keep China from dropping the big one on our cafeteria, let alone Washington DC, worse yet Disneyland?

Out of nowhere, the TV announcer proclaimed the mammoth rocket had taken to the air. Everyone in the class rose to their feet and cheered the incredible news, even though no one actually saw the rocket go anywhere.

Eh. I wasn’t as impressed. Just not the same without seeing it. What a letdown. Even October had been boring. 

I missed my old school. I missed their horizontal hold, their TV sets, and my friends, the few that I had. I could think of nothing else. It was as though I was frozen here, locked in time forever, never to escape the worst month of all – March.

This was an excerpt from my memoir, Maybe Boomer. Read more there about my nostalgic look back at the 60s and the Baby Boom generation.

Scary Autumn Memories – Soap on a Rope and Empty-handed Blouse Copping

Peggy’s late October party was like entering a subterranean vault permeated with English Leather cologne. Apparently, first time users hadn’t been schooled on how much of the fragrant substance to mete out, while others seemed equally clueless about English Leather’s new soap sensation, Soap on a Rope, and how much to rub when bathing.

The girls at this gathering were certain about one thing, however. Despite the plush rug, couch and love seat provided for everyone to neck on, no girl used them for fear of being labeled a slut. As a result, a line formed outside the furnace room, the hostess’s special sanctuary offering heat and privacy for all her party guest’s make-out sessions.

I could visualize it now – guys making out with girls, faces plastered together, hands groping for skin while mouths gasped for air in the hot steamy darkness. Unfortunately, my opportunity with Mary – my current heartthrob – was closer to fumbling in the shadows, bobbing for anything soft and round, ducking under protruding shelves, reaching over hot pipes, and getting only as far as copping a cold blouse before burning my back on a hot water line. So embarrassed, it wasn’t until the family beach vacation later that summer that I finally took off my shirt in public.

I retreated to the love seat to be on my own (still too young to appreciate the irony). This wasn’t a make-out party but a strike-out fest. I dreamed how the incident might have gone better. But even the rewrites were bad, now including a cast of thousands.

One rewrite had Mom in it, saying, “Be careful, Michael. Do you know what you’re doing?”

Another starred Mary, looking down on me from above, laughing.

A third scenario featured Dad walking in, looking for his golf clubs, then walking out.

The last one involved police storming in, asking if my parents knew where I was.

Was every intimate moment in my life going to be some sort of ménage a trois? A quatre? Cinq, six, sept?

I was coming to understand that when you went for the best women you never got anything at all. Love seemed so unreliable, so random, like picking flower petals and saying “she loves me, she loves me not,” or standing so long under mistletoe your feet cramped up, or desperately hoping some girl would pull the fruit loop off your shirt and ask you to go steady with her.

Every autumn for me is a mixed bag of whispers from the past. This memory is of the first make-out party I ever went to in sixth grade back in the 60’s, an excerpt from my memoir, Maybe Boomer, Chapter 10, “Girls.“

Remember This Guy? Chef Boy-Ar-Dee

As a kid, I assumed this handsome Italian chef guy made all the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee brand spaghetti personally. I visualized him stirring a huge vat of it in a factory somewhere around Gary, Indiana, the factory capital of the US. But even as a four-year-old, I knew Chef Boy-Ar-Dee wasn’t great spaghetti.

Regardless, I learned one very important thing from Chef B-A-D: the taste difference between “canned” food and fresh. Unfortunately, Mom – head chef in our house – preferred canned spaghetti (and peas, corn, beans, Spam, potted meats, etc.) Tin-encased foods represented one less meal she had to prepare from scratch over a hot stove. (Mom took this to the hilt in retaliation for too many other housewife responsibilities. Read more about it in the introduction to Chapter Three, “Revenge,” from my memoir, Maybe Boomer.)

Actually, the Chef Bor-Ar-Dee people are still around, but have a new guy modeling as Chef. I’ve gone to a health food diet in my adult years and kind of miss the old Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, even his Beefaroni and Spaghetti & Meatballs. Do you? Or do you still (secretly) crank out the can opener for an occasional comfort food hit?

Remember This? Army Men

Army men were the bomb – my most explosive nostalgia memory. I had all kinds – Civil War army men, Revolutionary War army men and WWII army men. For years, I enjoyed placing my toy miniature plastic soldiers in fresh war scenes concocted in the dirt battlefields of my backyard.

But, as I got older, there came a time when my revered toy troops needed to be reinvented, recycled. My middle school friend, Paul, showed me how – by burning them. Oh, the seductive, searing sound that drops of molten plastic make when they drip to the ground!

But playing with fire proved far too tempting for my comrade and I one afternoon. Dousing the heads of the army men in gas, then the grass below, the gas can accidentally caught on fire. The rest of the story is chronicled in my memoir, Maybe Boomer (although you can read more about kindling friendships in the introduction to Chapter Five, “Friendship”).

Did anyone else out there nearly burn their house down by accident?

Remember This? Travel – Corvair Style

 

What a hunk of nostalgia these cars were.

When the sleek Chevy Corvair first hit the 60s’ roadways, I thought it was cool. It was a far better car than some of the other wrecks around at the time, such as the Studebaker Lark and Rambler American. Like the spiffy new Mustang and Corvette introduced recently, would I like Corvairs as much?

The only Corvair I saw around our Silver Spring, Maryland, neighborhood was driven by the mother of a girl from my sixth grade class I had a big crush on. This little excerpt from my memoir, Maybe Boomer (Chapter 10, “Girls”), explains it:

Then Mary came along in sixth grade. She was one of the first to present breasts in our class, although they were always difficult to corroborate with falsies so prevalent at this age. I really liked her, but she was one of those girls who did everything with her mother. What good was showing off a nice bust after school if your mother was always there? Maybe Mary didn’t like her breasts. Did I want a girl like that? The only thing she ever flaunted was the new, chocolate milk-colored Chevy Corvair her mother chauffeured her around in.

Of course, after I was eventually dumped by Mary, I knew I hated all Corvairs everywhere.

But I got the last laugh only five years later when Corvairs filled landfills across the country. Were Corvairs really that bad a car to travel in?