This Is For The Older Ladies

[Bulldog1948]

Okay, you silly youngsters in your late 50s or early 60s. Have a question for you. Do you remember back when the girls wrapped angora thread around their boyfriends classrings and brushed it up into a big puff?

Heck, go ahead, get silly. Let's go back a few years and have some "Golden Memory" times together.

Mike

[Guest Elizabeth K]

Women (girls too) bought wood cigar type boxes, glued photos and saying on then - lacquered about 20 coats of clear on them, added hadles and called them purses!

Decoupage!

Lizzy

[Guest Joanna Phipps]

Loud paisley shirts and bell bottoms so big you lost your feet in them

music that you could actually understand the lyrics to, and the lyrics had a reasonable meaning (yes kids this old gal hates rap, hippop and those kinda things)

watching the apollo moon shots, landings and splashdowns all in glorious black and white

20 cent a gallon regular leaded gas

feeding a family of 4 at micky D's and getting change back for a ten spot

when the big mac actually was a big sandwich (or did it only seem that way through kid eyes)

[Guest viv]

Hey Mike,

Fab post hun. Ok , I am from the wrong country and the wrong age and I

only ever had a passing interest in this but felt compelled to throw my hat into the

ring,,,,,,Louis Armstrong /Count Basie/ Cab Calloway/Tommy Dorsey/Eddie Duchin

and soooooo many many more , Oh those times , that Big Band stuff Mike, can you

hear it playing in the back of your head hun ?????,,,if only I could go back in time ,,

just for a visit ....luv,viv

[Guest Joanna Phipps]

Hey Mike,

Fab post hun. Ok , I am from the wrong country and the wrong age and I

only ever had a passing interest in this but felt compelled to throw my hat into the

ring,,,,,,Louis Armstrong /Count Basie/ Cab Calloway/Tommy Dorsey/Eddie Duchin

and soooooo many many more , Oh those times , that Big Band stuff Mike, can you

hear it playing in the back of your head hun ?????,,,if only I could go back in time ,,

just for a visit ....luv,viv

Smiles, dont forget Dame Vera Lynn, The Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Cole Porter the list is nearly endless

White Cliffs of Dover, There Will Always be an England, Stage Door Canteen, Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree, Apple Blossom Time, Lilly Marlene, In the Mood (both vocal and instrumental), your in the army now, bless them all, and the list goes on

[Sally]

Yes the list goes on and so does the beat (as in "The Beat Goes On"), I am a trumpet player in a Jazz band that performs a lot of those classic tunes - This was even before my time but Benny Goodman back in the late 30s performed the first swing concert in Carnegie Hall where they featured a young drummer named Gene Krupa on a Louis Prima tune called "Sing, Sing, Sing".

Then from my generation we started watching the sentimental love songs take a slight detour toward the modern lyrics with the Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and interesting lines like, "She came in through the bathroom window."

Ah, love and its constantly mistaken inseparability from random sex as we watch "Teen Angel" give way to "Love In An Elevator"

It wasn't all bad we saw the rise and fortunately the fall of Disco.

There is so much from hip huger jeans so low that they invented the body suit so girls wouldn't get arrested (oh my how badly I wanted a few of them).

The Civil Rights movement had reached a calm after the Watts Riots and legislation was taking place, war protest over Viet-Nam with men burning their draft cards, the women's rights movement began with women burning their bras - no wonder we started haveing such bad air polution everybody was burning something and every other person was smoking.

I watched gasoline go from 29 cents a gallon for full service where they not only pumped the gas, cleaned the windshield, aired your tires, checked under the hood and even gave you a set of dishes, glasses or silverware if you bought 8 gallons or more to 69 cents a gallon where you had to pump it yourself and pay and then all the way up to last summer's nearly $4 a gallon.

There never used to be a self service check out in grocery stores, no prepackaged meats, they had a butcher who ground beef to order and carved the steaks to the thickness that you wanted and by the way the ground beef was a quarter a pound.

Don't think for one minute that I want to go back to the age of my childhood where we had such paranoia that people were digging bomb shelters to prepare for the Nuclear War and gays and transsexuals were not discussed unless some one was planning a little outing to beat a few of them senseless - yes there was a lot of bad in the good old days but there was some good so let's remember the good times as we enter the Autumn of our years, why carry a lot of excess baggage.

Love ya,

Sally

[Guest Elizabeth K]

Hey you music buffs - you go back toooooo far - what about just clothes and pretty stuff women and girls had when we were in school! How they presented?

Like the BIG HAIR! Using empty coke cans to roll up their hair!

And pierced ears were out! "Too Catholic" in our Texas backwater city! Geometric shapes were in - clip ons.

Colors! Patstels! Goldie Hawn look!

Lizzy

[Guest viv]

Hey gang,

I could read your stuff all day long , Love ya all.

Will someone win the lotto so we can have a get together.

Joanna , White cliffs of Dover, nice sentimental song . viv

[Guest Joanna Phipps]

Hey you music buffs - you go back toooooo far - what about just clothes and pretty stuff women and girls had when we were in school! How they presented?

Like the BIG HAIR! Using empty coke cans to roll up their hair!

And pierced ears were out! "Too Catholic" in our Texas backwater city! Geometric shapes were in - clip ons.

Colors! Patstels! Goldie Hawn look!

Lizzy

OK lizzy how bout pretty woman by roy orbison

[Guest Donna Jean]

The Civil Rights movement had reached a calm after the Watts Riots and legislation was taking place, war protest over Viet-Nam with men burning their draft cards, the women's rights movement began with women burning their bras - no wonder we started haveing such bad air polution everybody was burning something and every other person was smoking.

Love ya,

Sally

Yeah.....I was up front and in the middle of all of that...

In 1967 I marched with the NAACP in front of the courthouse in Painesville, Ohio...

I also served In Vietnam....

But, I was thinking the other day...I still have my draft card...and I have a bra...

I could kill two birds with one stone and burn them both together!....LOL!

Good 'ole Donna Jean

[Guest ricka]

Well I was a Moody Blues fan and loved Buffy Sainte Marie-----I met her and thought she was the most gorgeous woman I had ever laid eyes on. And years earlier as a little kid my mother introduced me to Jane Russell who was attending a tea my mother had hosted. Oh! My! When she bent down to shake my hand my eyes nearly popped out of my 10 year old head (you older girls will understand why! LOL) Well back in those days I started having crushes on guys and I was developing breasts.

Ricka

[Guest ChloëC]

Oh, yeah, Mike. Very vivid memories of about 1964 in study hall with a number of girls sitting around me with their boyfriends class rings with that light blue angora wrapped around them hanging from chains around their necks. I wanted a class ring - not that I had any girl to give it to at that moment, but I still thought about it - but every time I mentioned it to my parents, the 'You are planning to go to college aren't you?' retort was quickly forthcoming. As in, if we're going to help you pay for that how do you or we afford some silly extravagent item like a class ring.

Speaking of national events, about a year later, I remember reading and talking about the student riots at Columbia in NYC and Berkeley in Cal. and thinking, those odd and crazy people on the coasts. That'll never happen here in the sleepy mid-west.

It's always fascinated me to look at pictures of the 1920's or so and see college guys wearing those full length raccoon coats with the little porkpie type hats (rumble seats, college pennants, you know the image), and wondering if they all were like that. A friend of mine in our HS class of 65, decided during homecoming week, to get beanies with '65' and our school colors and by the end of week probably over 500 (or more) of the 1000 students in our class were wearing them. The yearbook shows numerous pictures filled with students wearing beanies. I wonder what kids of today think we all did back in 1965.

Chloë

[Guest i is Sam :-)]

Yes the list goes on and so does the beat (as in "The Beat Goes On"), I am a trumpet player in a Jazz band that performs a lot of those classic tunes

Jazz????!!!! You youngsters and your devil music!

[Bulldog1948]

Hey Mike,

Fab post hun. Ok , I am from the wrong country and the wrong age and I

only ever had a passing interest in this but felt compelled to throw my hat into the

ring,,,,,,Louis Armstrong /Count Basie/ Cab Calloway/Tommy Dorsey/Eddie Duchin

and soooooo many many more , Oh those times , that Big Band stuff Mike, can you

hear it playing in the back of your head hun ?????,,,if only I could go back in time ,,

just for a visit ....luv,viv

Hi Viv, Thank you for contributing to this fantasy post. Are you saying you're younger than 60 or a wee bit older??? Just wondered because of your choice of the Fabulous 40s era bands. I've got their music on my playlists on my putor; my wife loves it and so do I. I played a lot of their songs in high school orchestra. My wife's a tad bit older than I am.

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Women (girls too) bought wood cigar type boxes, glued photos and saying on then - lacquered about 20 coats of clear on them, added hadles and called them purses!

Decoupage!

Lizzy

Ah, yes, I do remember those purses. Quite a hot item back then; if you didn't have one you weren't cool at all.

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Loud paisley shirts and bell bottoms so big you lost your feet in them

music that you could actually understand the lyrics to, and the lyrics had a reasonable meaning (yes kids this old gal hates rap, hippop and those kinda things)

watching the apollo moon shots, landings and splashdowns all in glorious black and white

20 cent a gallon regular leaded gas

feeding a family of 4 at micky D's and getting change back for a ten spot

when the big mac actually was a big sandwich (or did it only seem that way through kid eyes)

My brother brought me back a wild paisley shirt from NYC, no one around here had ever seen one and I was quite the hit. LOL I think I'v got it packed away up in the attic [ pack-rat here].

Ah yes, the biggest wildest bellbottoms that one could find. Don't forget the "Beads' also remember that Sonny and Cher wore some crazy clothes ha ha. Our parents thought we'd gone mad- maybe we had; trying to bury Vietnam deep as it would go. Peace protests,war protests,the Manson, SLA, Black Panthers,Maruinna,LSD. WE were and still are a crazy wild lot- aren't we. Those kids nowdays think they're bad- heck we are the "Orginial badas..s"

Crank up our radios to hear the latest and great music,Elvis,Supremes,Tom Jones,and all the other groups and yes we could understand what they were saying. Nope, I flip off when rap and hip hop come within earshot;can't stand that crap. Just a bunch of thugs who can't sing a lick [ but they sure know how to rub.

Watched the Apollo moonshot while talking on the phone with a girlfriend and wondered how it was posssible to transmitt stuff from the moon [ ld hat stuff now].

Our first fast food jooint was Burger Chef and when Micky Ds came to town,folks went crazy.

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Yes the list goes on and so does the beat (as in "The Beat Goes On"), I am a trumpet player in a Jazz band that performs a lot of those classic tunes - This was even before my time but Benny Goodman back in the late 30s performed the first swing concert in Carnegie Hall where they featured a young drummer named Gene Krupa on a Louis Prima tune called "Sing, Sing, Sing".

Then from my generation we started watching the sentimental love songs take a slight detour toward the modern lyrics with the Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and interesting lines like, "She came in through the bathroom window."

Ah, love and its constantly mistaken inseparability from random sex as we watch "Teen Angel" give way to "Love In An Elevator"

It wasn't all bad we saw the rise and fortunately the fall of Disco.

There is so much from hip huger jeans so low that they invented the body suit so girls wouldn't get arrested (oh my how badly I wanted a few of them).

The Civil Rights movement had reached a calm after the Watts Riots and legislation was taking place, war protest over Viet-Nam with men burning their draft cards, the women's rights movement began with women burning their bras - no wonder we started haveing such bad air polution everybody was burning something and every other person was smoking.

I watched gasoline go from 29 cents a gallon for full service where they not only pumped the gas, cleaned the windshield, aired your tires, checked under the hood and even gave you a set of dishes, glasses or silverware if you bought 8 gallons or more to 69 cents a gallon where you had to pump it yourself and pay and then all the way up to last summer's nearly $4 a gallon.

There never used to be a self service check out in grocery stores, no prepackaged meats, they had a butcher who ground beef to order and carved the steaks to the thickness that you wanted and by the way the ground beef was a quarter a pound.

Don't think for one minute that I want to go back to the age of my childhood where we had such paranoia that people were digging bomb shelters to prepare for the Nuclear War and gays and transsexuals were not discussed unless some one was planning a little outing to beat a few of them senseless - yes there was a lot of bad in the good old days but there was some good so let's remember the good times as we enter the Autumn of our years, why carry a lot of excess baggage.

Love ya,

Sally

Sally, I agree with you, as we enter the Autumn years of our lives. When I get stressed out from biz stuff to world events, I allow my mind drift back to the good ole days and all the cool stuff that we did.

Yes, our generation carries more than its share of baggage, some good and a lot not so good. Guess we need to leave that bad baggae on the train as it pulls out from the station.

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Hey you music buffs - you go back toooooo far - what about just clothes and pretty stuff women and girls had when we were in school! How they presented?

Like the BIG HAIR! Using empty coke cans to roll up their hair!

And pierced ears were out! "Too Catholic" in our Texas backwater city! Geometric shapes were in - clip ons.

Colors! Patstels! Goldie Hawn look!

Lizzy

If any girls around here pierced their ears, they were classified as sluts or worse. Couldn't find them [ earings] anyway; stores refused to carry them. But, the hairdos were outta sight.

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Hey gang,

I could read your stuff all day long , Love ya all.

Will someone win the lotto so we can have a get together.

Joanna , White cliffs of Dover, nice sentimental song . viv

Okay, so here's the deal- whoever wins the lottery has to rent an entire hotel floor and then...let the party begin. But, please remember that us "Old Foggies' go to bed at 10pm lol!!!!

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Yeah.....I was up front and in the middle of all of that...

In 1967 I marched with the NAACP in front of the courthouse in Painesville, Ohio...

I also served In Vietnam....

But, I was thinking the other day...I still have my draft card...and I have a bra...

I could kill two birds with one stone and burn them both together!....LOL!

Good 'ole Donna Jean

Dee Jay, Nah, don't burn your draft card or your bra; they're your badges to prove that you made it throuh all the he..l and craziness of the 50,60,& early 70s.

I remember a little bit about that march up in Painesville- didn't it get a little rough?

You know that we are a "Twisted Generation". Gesh, our parents we the "Greatest Generation", as the saying goes. Being raised strict,we were expected to be sucessful no screwing off allowed. And then we just went plain wild and crazy with our music,drugs,booze,black lights,dope,protesting and going off to a war that we [might at first] have beleived in only to discover that no one gave a da..m about us at all. Just baby killers and dopeheads,listening to wild crazy music that was sending our souls to he...l

You know, it's really a wonder that any of us survived that era.

Mike[ lost in black lights,beer and babes]

[Guest ChloëC]

McDonald's got me thinking about Alaska in 1968. When I got there (Anchorage, military), there were no fast food restaurants to speak of, the only chain restaurant was a PizzaHut, but that was strictly for eating in. There was a Sears and Pennys and MonkeyWards, and maybe a Walgreens, two small malls. No Kmart or anything like that except for a small store where the owner discounted things as he saw fit, never mind the marketing.

The local hamburger joint was right out of the 50's, LittleChicken DriveIn, with carhops, and speakers and above was a small room called the Chicken Coop that the evening drive-time local Rock and Roll station broadcast from. At that moment, hamburgers there were $1.95. Remember this was 1968 and McD basic hamburgers were going for 15-20 cents.

You get the picture. In late 68 or early 69, something called Grizzly Burger moved in about a 1/4 mile away. First fast food hamburger place in Alaska, with basic hamburgers going for 33 cents. The Little Chicken closed within a month or less. Two months later a McD's move in with the basic hamburger going for 30 cents. The Grizzly Burger promptly closed.

Next, a store called ValueMart moved in, with (get this!!!) circulars with the same items going for the same prices as in Seattle and Portland. The store was mobbed the first weekend it was open, the 800 parking spaces were packed every hour it was open, and 3 days later when I went, it looked like a battle zone, with 3/4 of the shelves practically empty. The Sears across the street built some fascades, threw on some new paint, and upped their prices.

Oh yeah, TV was two weeks later then the lower 48, with CBS evening news being only about 12 hours late, when the planes weren't delayed. The first live TV we got was the 1969 moon landing and it took practically a miracle. I watched it from the back of another guy's truck with a portable TV outside our secure building.

Civilization had arrived. (oh, btw, Sarah Palin was about 5 years old).

Chloë

[Bulldog1948]

Well I was a Moody Blues fan and loved Buffy Sainte Marie-----I met her and thought she was the most gorgeous woman I had ever laid eyes on. And years earlier as a little kid my mother introduced me to Jane Russell who was attending a tea my mother had hosted. Oh! My! When she bent down to shake my hand my eyes nearly popped out of my 10 year old head (you older girls will understand why! LOL) Well back in those days I started having crushes on guys and I was developing breasts.

Ricka

Ricka, the Moody Blues were velvet cool, wern't they. Hey,Jane Russell was onne lovely lady. Just ask the boys from WW2. heck my brother had her,Gina lolabridgter,Sophia Loren and other beauties tacked up all over his wall. And, Sophia Loren still blows my whistle lol.

Mike

[Guest Angelgrlsue]

Hmmm, I just remember bell bottom pants, tie dye shirts, beads, big poofy hair doo's on the women, the beatles "White album", black lights, the peace sign all over the place, 8 track players, 8mm movies, groovy and basa nova were the cool words to use, long boards, the list can go on but I will stop here.

Hugs,

Suzie

[Bulldog1948]

Oh, yeah, Mike. Very vivid memories of about 1964 in study hall with a number of girls sitting around me with their boyfriends class rings with that light blue angora wrapped around them hanging from chains around their necks. I wanted a class ring - not that I had any girl to give it to at that moment, but I still thought about it - but every time I mentioned it to my parents, the 'You are planning to go to college aren't you?' retort was quickly forthcoming. As in, if we're going to help you pay for that how do you or we afford some silly extravagent item like a class ring.

Speaking of national events, about a year later, I remember reading and talking about the student riots at Columbia in NYC and Berkeley in Cal. and thinking, those odd and crazy people on the coasts. That'll never happen here in the sleepy mid-west.

It's always fascinated me to look at pictures of the 1920's or so and see college guys wearing those full length raccoon coats with the little porkpie type hats (rumble seats, college pennants, you know the image), and wondering if they all were like that. A friend of mine in our HS class of 65, decided during homecoming week, to get beanies with '65' and our school colors and by the end of week probably over 500 (or more) of the 1000 students in our class were wearing them. The yearbook shows numerous pictures filled with students wearing beanies. I wonder what kids of today think we all did back in 1965.

Chloë

Hi Chloe, Were you able to go to college and get your class ring there? I wanted a guys ring,but it wasn't allowed, so I had to get the other type.

I don't know where you're from, but we also thought folks on the East & West coasts were some type of nut cases. We seemed to be from 2 different worlds. The Midwest being staunch conservative family and farm people.

Hey, I like the "beanie" story. Amazing what kids can think up, right ha ha. If I saw a pic of you guys in the yearbook with beanies on, I'd have to root out the story behind it.

Our class of 66 became a very interesting one to say the least. You could call us the first Protesters at a high school in Ohio. The administration informed us that all of the money that we had raised to pay for our class trip to NYC and DC was going to go into the school fund. So, we decided to protest. We made up picket signs,had a sit in and refused to go to class. LOL did that ever rattle the teachers and stuff. We did it for 2 days until the school gave us back our money. In the meantime, some of the guys had stolen one of the local prison's signs and put it in the yard of our high school. Yup! we were bad and got even badder ha ha.

Mike

[Bulldog1948]

Hmmm, I just remember bell bottom pants, tie dye shirts, beads, big poofy hair doo's on the women, the beatles "White album", black lights, the peace sign all over the place, 8 track players, 8mm movies, groovy and basa nova were the cool words to use, long boards, the list can go on but I will stop here.

Hugs,

Suzie

Hi Suzie, I see that you're from CA. Now, I'm just kidding when I say this to you so please don't get ticked off at me,ok..All in fun, were you one of those radical Berekly chickes that protested bare-chested? LOL Actually, I thought you guys were pretty brave for all the crazy things that you pulled.

The West coast went crazy first, then bout a year later the East coast started to go crazy, but all He...l broke loose when us sleepy midwestern kids started protesting. And, Kent State ratteled us Ohio kids that we were ready to tear this state apart.

It was the craziest of times.

Those were the days my friend

we thought they'd never end [[ hum a few bars in your head]

Mike