My Life, part IV
All right, back to the show.
There is a lot about this time and place a lot of you will never understand. The cost of things for example. A candy bar cost a nickle, a 10 oz soda in a glass bottle cost a dime. No one knew what low fat or low carb meant. Only old ladies drank skim milk, everyone else drank whole milk. The kids price at the movies was $0.35 and I think the adult price was like $0.75. No movie house had more than one screen. Gas was under $0.20 a gallon and cars were the size of a battleship.
It was safe to let your kids run around unsupervised all day and all night. We quite often "camped" out in the backyard but spent the whole night roaming the neighborhood. We never did anything harmful, just wandered around enjoying the night. It's hard to explain what that is like, wandering the streets at 2 AM, unless you've done it.
Anyway, it's around 1965 - 1967. The Beatles and The Monkeys are a big deal. I never liked The Beatles that much but I loved The Monkees. They had a TV show every afternoon and I never missed it. Another funny thing around this time was the 5 o'clock hour. Dad was a big country and western fan and every day at 5 o'clock, some country act had a 30 minute TV show which we never missed. Porter Waggonner had one and that is where Dolly Parton started out.
I don't remember a lot about 5th and 6th grades. Our english teacher used to fall asleep in her chair a lot and she had a nervous breakdown at one point. There was one incident which caused me a lot of grief though.
From 1st thru 5th grades, not much changed, it was pretty much the same bunch of kids all along. Some names I remember, Butch, Kay Cole, Debbie, Mitchell Bias, Phillip Lewis, MC, Peter Bradbury, Kieth, Cody... Anyway, this new girl showed up during the summer between 5th and 6th grades. Connie had blond hair, she was beautiful and I was instantly in love. Add that to the fact that she played the guitar and would occasionally get up and play and sing for the class and it was hopeless. She hung out with a few girls who lived near me and didn't like me much which didn't help the situation. It really didn't matter, I was too shy to even talk to her anyway. So, we're all around 12 and 13 and the hormones are raging. It seems that someone felt the same way about Connie that I did and actually even wrote her a love note which the teacher found and read in front of the class. The fun part was that he signed it "Mr X". Obviously, this was the juiciest thing we had ever heard of in our innocent little lives and it was the talk of the school, who was Mr X. Well, one day in the lunch room or the library, while talking to someone I had my foot up across my knee as usual. I always wore Hush Puppies which have a flat runber sole. Just screwing around, I wrote a big X on the bottom of my shoe. It must have taken all of 10 seconds for the entire school to get the news that I was Mr X. As was usually the case in those days, I handled it badly and vehemently denied it which just gave everyone more ammunition. I caught more hell about that than I probably have about anything I ever did in my entire life. Kids can be really tough on other kids and they worked me over to no end. Toward the end of the year, I made friends with this fat kid named Gerald who, one day over lunch, confessed to me that he was the real Mr X. This is the first time I have ever told anyone, it had blown over by then and no one would have believed me anyway. Besides, I knew how he felt and he was a good guy, I didn't want to put him thru the same hell I had been thru.
I had my tonsels out when I was 12 as well. I remember being in the hospital the day The Munsters debuted. I cried like a little baby.
That's all for today kids, on to Middle School next installment.
There is a lot about this time and place a lot of you will never understand. The cost of things for example. A candy bar cost a nickle, a 10 oz soda in a glass bottle cost a dime. No one knew what low fat or low carb meant. Only old ladies drank skim milk, everyone else drank whole milk. The kids price at the movies was $0.35 and I think the adult price was like $0.75. No movie house had more than one screen. Gas was under $0.20 a gallon and cars were the size of a battleship.
It was safe to let your kids run around unsupervised all day and all night. We quite often "camped" out in the backyard but spent the whole night roaming the neighborhood. We never did anything harmful, just wandered around enjoying the night. It's hard to explain what that is like, wandering the streets at 2 AM, unless you've done it.
Anyway, it's around 1965 - 1967. The Beatles and The Monkeys are a big deal. I never liked The Beatles that much but I loved The Monkees. They had a TV show every afternoon and I never missed it. Another funny thing around this time was the 5 o'clock hour. Dad was a big country and western fan and every day at 5 o'clock, some country act had a 30 minute TV show which we never missed. Porter Waggonner had one and that is where Dolly Parton started out.
I don't remember a lot about 5th and 6th grades. Our english teacher used to fall asleep in her chair a lot and she had a nervous breakdown at one point. There was one incident which caused me a lot of grief though.
From 1st thru 5th grades, not much changed, it was pretty much the same bunch of kids all along. Some names I remember, Butch, Kay Cole, Debbie, Mitchell Bias, Phillip Lewis, MC, Peter Bradbury, Kieth, Cody... Anyway, this new girl showed up during the summer between 5th and 6th grades. Connie had blond hair, she was beautiful and I was instantly in love. Add that to the fact that she played the guitar and would occasionally get up and play and sing for the class and it was hopeless. She hung out with a few girls who lived near me and didn't like me much which didn't help the situation. It really didn't matter, I was too shy to even talk to her anyway. So, we're all around 12 and 13 and the hormones are raging. It seems that someone felt the same way about Connie that I did and actually even wrote her a love note which the teacher found and read in front of the class. The fun part was that he signed it "Mr X". Obviously, this was the juiciest thing we had ever heard of in our innocent little lives and it was the talk of the school, who was Mr X. Well, one day in the lunch room or the library, while talking to someone I had my foot up across my knee as usual. I always wore Hush Puppies which have a flat runber sole. Just screwing around, I wrote a big X on the bottom of my shoe. It must have taken all of 10 seconds for the entire school to get the news that I was Mr X. As was usually the case in those days, I handled it badly and vehemently denied it which just gave everyone more ammunition. I caught more hell about that than I probably have about anything I ever did in my entire life. Kids can be really tough on other kids and they worked me over to no end. Toward the end of the year, I made friends with this fat kid named Gerald who, one day over lunch, confessed to me that he was the real Mr X. This is the first time I have ever told anyone, it had blown over by then and no one would have believed me anyway. Besides, I knew how he felt and he was a good guy, I didn't want to put him thru the same hell I had been thru.
I had my tonsels out when I was 12 as well. I remember being in the hospital the day The Munsters debuted. I cried like a little baby.
That's all for today kids, on to Middle School next installment.
posted by Big Ed at 3:24 PM
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