esrosedotblog

Of all the Broadway musicals I saw, the best one of all was

Damn Yankees (1958)

They made the musical right after it hit the stage and has many of the same cast that I saw when it did its pre-run in Boston.

It also has my friend Jean Stapleton who later found the promised land as Edith Bunker. Much of that character is seen in the film today.

I met Stapleton when she was at the local playhouse and sang at church while I was the organist. Yes. Me. Her.

So the film has a special resonance. Nostalgia.

It is very well done and because it is the same producers and cast it is pretty faithful to the original.

One would think that casting Tab Hunter instead of the original Stephen Douglas was wrong but it is not. I am pretty sure that he does his own singing as all the cast do. And he hits a home run.

I love this show. I now own the DVD. I can watch it anytime I want to.

There is no good trailer for it. I used this old original one. You will get the idea.

Labels: films, nostalgia

I was a faithful listener of "Car Talk" for many years.

Well, not all of it. Parts. And mostly because I liked listening to the Magliozzi brothers, both MIT graduates incidentally.

Then I moved away from Boston and didn't follow them anymore although they were on NPR nationwide for a very long time.

Now, we have lost Tom. He is the one on the right. The older and wiser one with the maniacal laugh.

Tom Magliozzi, Popular Co-Host Of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies At 77

Sad. And I can't help noting that he was my age less a year.

I don't remember him or them at MIT but it is nice to know that we shared that.

I am losing peers. It made my father depressed and worried every time one of his friends would go. I try not to let that happen to me. At least the worry part. But it is difficult not to personalize it in that way.

I would rather personalize it with the memory of all the laughs I had with these guys. I didn't learn fuck all about cars but I sure got a lot of happiness out of it.

Labels: automobiles, nostalgia, radio

Jerry Lester, Dagmar, Milton deLugg.

All stars or near stars of the first late night television show Broadway Open House.

I was there.

I was allowed unlimited television time. School was a walk through for me (college not so much), so I had plenty of time and freedom.

I loved this free wheeling show. It had no format. It was talk but it was also play and just plain fooling around.

Jerry Lester was an unreconstructed burlesque comedian and he was more or less uncensored. Dagmar was a statuesque blond with no discernible talent but her big juggs. In fact she was a great personality and played the dumb blond role to perfection with just a hint of a wink that let us in on her joke and that made it just fine. Wonderful.

Milton De Lugg was the bandleader and the first band leader in late night who spoke. He became part of the action. Always funny. Later, many band leaders would become minor luminaries of the late night shows but De Lugg was the first.

He was blessed with a great wit, a funny scratchy voice, a huge nose and a blatant smart ass jew-boy persona that became indelible in my memory.

De Lugg went on to other shows.

And now he is gone.

He sure lasted a long time.

Watch this. It is a fuck lot better than a lot of late teevee. DeLugg is part of the fun.

And, a good look at Dagmar! I couldn't resist.

Labels: nostalgia, obituary, television

I went and retrieved the Volvo from the dealer service today.

They had to replace a chip in the starter electronics and do some kind of upload of info.

A 21st Century ailment.

A minor annoyance which I sort of blew out of proportion. I didn't have plans for using the car. But without it I felt twinges of anxiety which made no sense.

It is my experience that trying to reason with ones self in these circumstances is not very useful. The angst is there. Trying to explain it only makes it stick out more.

There is the "do I want to go out to eat" thing. Followed by a few "what ifs" like needing it for an emergency.

And so on.

I had fun with the driver who brought me home yesterday and the car this morning.

A natural born desert rat who can't wait to get out of the desert. And that would be to Boston!

As far as he can figure to go without traveling overseas. He has a friend at Wentworth and will be going to join him. He has no idea of work once he gets there. Carefree.

He has never been cold, never seen snow, never had the pleasure of thick immovable traffic.

It made a kind of unpleasant experience interesting. I didn't need the car but doing without it felt bad. I am an American.

I don't get too nostalgic about Boston but everyone in awhile I surprise myself.

Labels: Boston, nostalgia

I was brought up to see Memorial Day as a non-holiday. Well not one to have fun on.

In those days, it had not yet acquired the phoniness of being just another Monday off. An excuse for a long weekend.

The history is pretty well laid out here.

It came into being after the Civil War and was basically continued over time to incorporate the memorial of all veterans killed in the line of duty. Another holiday, Veterans Day, is meant to honor all veterans of all wars.

The basic idea was to decorate the graves of the fallen, hence the original Decoration Day.

It was not until 1968 when Congress passed the uniform holiday act which set various Mondays aside as the official celebration.

So, on Memorial Day, which could have been any day, we had the day off sort of.

In our community there would be a service around the big flagpole at the consolidated (all 12 grades) school.

Then a march to a cemetery which varied from year to year. Some of them were too far and so we were bused to a starting point. Then marched.

It was a solemn event.

Each year we would go to a specific grave where there would be another service including a firing squad and some other stuff.

I was in the band so I always had to go to this. Saxophone. Mostly faking it. But that is another story.

I remember that in our town there were only so many dead veterans, killed while in service, to go around.

I am not sure whether they were killed in battle or not. Maybe just while in the service.

I remember that there were about four guys. They rotated.

By the time we had the services and marched there the day was pretty well blown. There were no picnics or other recreation.

I remember a sort of vague ache behind the eyes, the result not of withheld tears but of utter boredom.

There was always a good turnout of the professional veterans. The Legionnaires, the VFW. Their little hats on a bit cockeyed. The vague odor of alcohol hovered over.

My Dad was a veteran and he did see some battle. He was in the Legion but he was not a drum beater. He took it seriously though.

I can remember the feeling that if there was any possible way that I could get out of military service I would do it.

In those days it was mandatory. I used the ROTC as a quasi service. I learned there to do the minimum, to get by and, if at all possible to malinger. My first commanding officer was a past master of this and he taught me well.

That is not to say that I don't take the day seriously but now it has been so diluted with bullshit of one kind or another, the original purpose is lost and along with it any stray feeling of memory or respect.

Sorry.

I am more into Veterans Day.

Although I am not officially a "veteran". If one is a reserve officer it is not the same thing. I never quite got the distinction but I suspect that when Congress passed the 6 month wonder legislation, the old grizzled veterans made sure that none of us fake soldiers would benefit from any veteran benefit at all.

I didn't feel slighted. Still don't.

Labels: holidays, nostalgia

IT IS ALL MY FAULT

Believe it or not, if you care, Cracker Jack is getting a makeover

Cracker Jacked

When I was a kid (look out, nostalgia incoming), it was one of my favorite treats.

Candied caramel popcorn and peanuts in a slim box, unique shape, and a "toy" inside.

The toys were crappy little plastic things like cars or soldiers or a paper pinwheel to put on your pencil or something cheap. But it was real.

No more. It is out. There will be a code on the side that you can stick your phone reader on and it will take you to some fucking game.

So what happened.

First of all, I was hurt to find that the brand was now owned by Frito-Lay, the snack conglomerate. Not a good sign.

Then I see that some genius sees the CrackerJack™ as an extendable brand. They have invented line extension favorites.

And they have also redesigned the box. The new packaging bears no resemblance to the iconic Cracker Jack™ look.

The traditional box, which they say they will keep, stands alone.

The kid with a sailor suit who has stood guard over the product for so long is on the bags in a kind of sick shadow of his former self.

And so on.

In another context, I call this "looting".

I have to admit that a lot of this is probably my fault. I used to lust after Cracker Jack™ and ate a lot of it in my time. Then I quit. I am loyal to the brand only in my head.

But I can still taste the product.

What can we expect?

No one sings "take me out to the ballgame" anymore, I suppose, and so the free plug the product got all those years is not there anymore either.

Now, looked at objectively, the little fairy on the box and the baseball sign was probably not doing much for the world of "share of market killer shelf space" marketing.

I used to encounter the Frito-Lay vendor rep shelf filler when I shopped in the morning. We would talk. Since I switched from Staters to Ralphs for my groceries it is a different guy who I don't know. So there is no way that I can comment about such things to someone in the chain of command.

A week or two ago, I introduced myself to the vendor rep guy who was stocking up on our boxes of Snyders Pretzels. I complained to him about the preponderance of broken pieces. (The come all the way from Pennsylvania).

He looked at me as though I was insane. A being kind smile on his face. When I told him I wanted him to pass the word up the chain of command to the president, I realized that I probably was insane.

There will be no repeat of this quixotic behavior about Cracker Jack™. It is just one of those things that have hit their Darwinian moment. The rudimentary new wings or fins or whatever are sprouting. Nothing to do.

I have always wanted to leave the world in a better place than I found it but it is getting harder to do when some of the really good things are evolving out.

This is a 60s commercial starring Jack Gilford, another all time favorite.

Labels: nostalgia

MEMORIAL

When I was a kid, Memorial Day was meant to acknowledge and honor the war dead of our country.

It was not about live veterans. That is another day.

It was the actual dead.

We marched to the graveyards on Memorial Day and usually honored a recently dead soldier or sailor.

As I recall, there was at least one in each of four or five cemeteries in our area. Of course, there were many old dead. The Civil War in many cases being the oldest, through the Spanish American, World War I and, of course, the WWII guys who were getting the honors.

It wasn't about cookouts or auto races or any of that. It was a time of quiet and remembrance.

And it wasn't about peace either. Or politics. Or even about the right and wrong of it.

These were people, mostly men, who died in the virtually perpetual state of war that we have had here since the beginning. Loss. Suffering. Sacrifice.

At every ceremony, each year, a kid would recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. One year, my sixth grade year, I think, I was that kid.

I can still remember most of it. Don't test me though.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

When thinking about what they died for, I also like to think of the MLKing line about the arc of history pointing toward justice.

War is a squalid, mean exercise but if it means anything at all, we hope for justice. I am less interested in "freedom" now because that word has been co-opted for the cause de jour.

Justice and more of it.

Memorial Day was also a day to go and clean up and decorate the family graves.

We would go and get rid of the dead flowers, mow or sickle the grass, sit and think about who is in the soil and so on.

The local VFW or American Legion would have put a little flag on the grave of each veteran. Nothing wrong with that.

I remember that you had to go and get buckets of water and carry the dead grasses and plants to the junk pile.

It was a serious deal.

I am proud to say that my kids still go and visit the family graves. A few of the go together. Make it a trip. An occasion.

This is more than I ever did in my adult years. They have taken a beloved tradition and made it real again. They have to travel to do this. Cross three states to do so.

By now they have a lot of visiting to do. Some of the graves go back beyond grand and great grand parents. Or great great, if you can find them still.

Memorial Day.

Labels: nostalgia, patriotism, war and peace

YESTERDAY TODAY

Well almost.

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.
Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer - Madison Square Garden, NYC - 2009/10/29&30

Labels: fun. music, nostalgia

DESIGN CLASSIC

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Sony FM/Tuner ca 1970. My first serious stereo machine.

I don't know the model number or anything. Sony.

I found this photo on a design site.

It is now a classic. Design. I am sure that it would play good too.

I don't know who ended up with this. A kid. A 1 in 5 guess.

Maybe someone still has it.

Labels: culture, life, nostalgia

FROM THE PAST

Charles Manatt, Former Democratic National Chairman, Dies at 75

I was in ROTC summer camp with Chuck in 1956. Quartermaster Corps. Fort Lee Virginia.

We never connected again but I kept track of him over the years and watched, with pleasure, his tenure with the Democratic apparatus including being DNC chair and also the head of Bill Clinton's campaign.

I think Michelle Obama spent some time in his firm or something like that.

It is not unusual to see people my own age felled by a stroke or heart attack.

It's weird.

I notice the age and then pull back and disqualify myself from contention for the big prize. The last one.

When I know or knew someone it is a little more sobering. But not much.

There is some nostalgia, the memory of younger days and then, blam, into the present and back to work.

So long Chuck. You and I had about the same proficiency for the military. Couldn't even shoot straight. But we had a lot of fun trying.

Why were we even there?

In those days of the draft, one alternative open to a college guy was to go into ROTC and sign up for six months active duty and six and a half years in the Reserve or go on active duty for two years and then Reserve for four. Or something like that.

It was known that one could negotiate the Reserve part and I did. I served the time but not very seriously and not in a unit.

That summer when Chuck and I met, the ROTC camp at Fort Lee was filled with people like us who saw this option as the best of a set of bad choices. It also seemed as though my company and platoon had more of us fake soldiers than any other.

We excelled at fooling around.

Always well dressed, passing inspections, gung ho on field exercises, we were, in a way, mocking the reality by taking it seriously in an unseriously way. Irony.

If you look at this official photo of the older Mannatt, you will see a slight glint of a smile that says "even this isn't to be taken too seriously".

Our platoon won the mock battle at the three day bivouac which everyone dreaded but somehow converted into a lark. Camping. Chuck and I were on the CO's staff. Another buddy who couldn't not take it seriously even if he did not.

The conversion of a painful duty into a brilliant experience with intensity and purpose for an ironic end was a great lesson for us.

We would never, ever be in the Army. This was it. So we made more than the most of it.

"If you are stuck in an asshole situation, get over yourself, take it in, have fun. Make it your own. Join others in the fun."

Labels: Democrats, gay military, nostalgia

I KNEW IT!!

Can a Playground Be Too Safe?

Yes, godammit, yes.

Sponges on the ground. Low plastic jungle "gyms". All the soft looking, risk free, environmentally controlled, wildly colored boring playgrounds now are no challenge, not interesting and basically they scare kids. Jeez. It isn't safe to play.

This article mentions the importance of heights and getting scared.

Instantly, I remembered my climbing tree up on the hill near our house. Not even a built recreational device.

It was hard to get into that tree and I had to be a bit taller and stronger before I could lift myself into it.

Once I could, there was no limit to the heights I would go to see over the other trees below and out into our larger town.

But the thrill was the climb, the shaky limbs, the fear of falling. All of these things, sometimes an inch at a time, conquered.

And not an adult in sight. Nowhere. The tree was on a rock "fence" line and so the fall, if any, was perilous indeed.

To their credit, my parents did not tell me to stay out of it. Actually, they may not have even known that I was in it.

I was mostly a latchkey kid, on my own as both parents worked.

I went and did what I wanted.

In those days, the neighbors had eyes and that helped kids stay safe (although they took Mr. Vernoy, two doors down, away for molesting some other boys in the neighborhood). But still.

I am so against all this over-protective bullshit. Parents who come with their kid to meet me when I interview for MIT. Jesus.

When it was time, I flew to Boston and stayed overnight in a hotel, went and visited MIT and flew home again all by myself. I was 16. Imagine. Part of why I could do that is that I climbed that tree by myself.

Do kids even think of climbing trees any more?

The world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Labels: kidtime, nostalgia

AFTERMATH

We had all the visitors over the weekend. It was good.

John's friend from 50 years ago showed up with his wife and they all went to lunch. The wife got to hear the two reminisce. I missed out.

Then our friend Randy came for an overnight. Good time had by all. Booker fell in love all over again.

Yesterday an old business friend, alienated for 20 years, came into town, emailed about getting together and we said yes.

It went well. Not a long time. An amend for the past was made to me and accepted. I had forgiven any grievance a long time ago but it was nice to hear it anyway. It was a bit indirect but the meaning came through. They stayed an hour. They were with friends so they packaged it nicely for the friends to come back and pick them up.

Just what I would have done. No open ended visits for me.

So I don't know if we will see any of them again. Well, Randy. Of course. It was great he was here between. He provided a nice meat in an anxious sandwich. Not meat. He is a vegetarian. But you know what I mean.

Labels: friends, nostalgia

PINNED

Mourning the Loss of Yet Another Alley

I grew up with a regular bowling alley just down the road. I went and occasionally bowled but I wasn't very good at it.

Then I moved to Boston to go to MIT. The Dining Hall where I worked had a bowling alley in the basement but it wasn't the same bowling! It was candle pins. A small ball. No thumb holes.

Way different.

And, what is more, I was good at it. And I enjoyed the sport.

A lot of us did a lot of bowling as a way to slack out. Beer bowling was a special occasion.

One thing I liked about candle pins is that it evoked a much more informal atmosphere. No special shoes required. Smaller scale. No elaborate scoring pads and equipment. We set up our own pins.

It was a great sport.

I am not sure that you could find the kind of bowling the rest of the country enjoyed around New England. All candle, all the time.

But it is fading now. Its time is passing.

Bowling itself is a lesser sport. I grew up hearing about the likes of Andy Varipapa was the reigning bowling champ. There were bowling shows on teevee! People would watch them breathless with anticipation.

Sure it was slow. Not the roller derby. But a lot of people still watch golf. Not as many. But slow? Golf is very very slow. Bowling is speed of light compared.

So there goes another thing that isn't done any more. Too bad.

I haven't bowled in years. When I was a Dad and a Grandad still back east we would go to the old bowling alley I knew as a kid to pass the time on visits to my parents. My own kids were just there and played a frame or two.

We have bowling here. One alley I think. It has lasers and a light show.

Times change.

Labels: nostalgia

KEMO SABE

This just in.

He’s 6’5”, 220 pounds, and there’s… one of him! According to Deadline, The Social Network’s Armie Hammer has been tapped for Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, in which he’ll play the titular Old West masked crusader opposite Johnny Depp as Tonto. After the film’s long and winding road to development, Hammer marks the last major piece of the HR puzzle although Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have yet to find the requisite love interest and villain. Any ideas as to who’d make a good foil to both Hammer’s stoic All-American boyishness and Depp’s worldly swagger?.......Movie Line

No. Not Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp. The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

Most gay boys did, I understand. We should have checked this out at the time.

And, I have a long term thing with Johnny. I am working on Armie.

They better not fuck it up! How could they.

Labels: films, gay identity, nostalgia, sex

HOME TOWN

My cousin Mike sent me this.

Barrett Township Historical Society Archives

This is where I grew up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Barrett Township. Five towns all sort of stuck together separated by mountain ridges and hollows.

If you click on the village names you see photos that are, in some cases, contemporary with me!

If you go to Cresco, you will see Seguines "department store" where my mother worked and I hung out with my uncle who lived across the street next to Henry Price's garage, another photo.

Then the RR station where I used to go watch them switch cars and see the trains come in.

In Mountainhome, the Acme Store and the Onawa Lodge are right next to my Aunt Flora and Uncle Pete's house where I stayed a lot of the time. My mom worked. I was a latch key kid.

Then on Buck Hill, a huge "cottage" colony, big big cottages and an Inn. I ushered at the daily movies at the Inn. The Forks, where Donnie Dougherty lived, my first gay encounter.

Canadensis corner, with Browns and the first A&P my Dad managed. I used to go with him Sunday and fill sugar bags while he did, well, something. I can still smell that store. The coffee. Cheese. Oiled wood floors.

And so on.

Post cards from my youth.

Labels: nostalgia

KA-CHING!!

I mostly find David Pogue, the too cool tech man at the NYTimes, really annoying but today, he hits something right on the head.

The Fading Sounds of Analog Technology

Digital is silent.

Pogue lists a number of sounds we will never hear again. The cash register is one. Actually, I have lived with three kinds of registers. The "kachung or kaching" kind and the kind with a motorized/manual setup. Hit the keys and the motor runs the tape out. Or use a crank if there isn't any power.

Now the digital.

He doesn't mention some other sounds that are gone. The sound of a watch ticking (still used on 60 Minutes) or the sound of someone picking up the receiver on another line while you are talking on yours. Impossible to mask. I tried when I used to listen in on my cousin Charles' party line. Those were already fading then. 1948?

My husband has a ring tone on his phone that sounds like the old dial telephone. I mean the big ones before the "princess" type. A real bell.

My ring tone is the classic doorbell sound. Ding-Dong.

We still have one of those, an analog doorbell. But it buzzes. Still. It is analog. Not likely we will ever have a digital doorbell but you can get them in the wireless things (that don't really work all that well) you glue to your gate.

Nostalgia. It is good for what ails us.

Some day there will be systems that are different than digital. Nano? Maybe they will make a noise but don't bet on it.

Labels: computer, nostalgia

HERO

Jack LaLanne, the Father of Fitness Dies at 96

I took a day or two to decide whether to write about LaLanne.

I have a hero category for people who I have looked to emulate and have reached the age of 90 as I hope to do.

LaLanne is a question mark because he got his foot in his mouth over some gay talk that wasn't nice. Bodybuilders have long been sensitive to any hint that they might be just a little bit light in the g-string and so, as most insecure men would do, go on the offense before anyone can call them a fairy for admiring their own and other men's muscles.

LaLanne's great contribution comes after his body building days anyway.

I can't find the data, only the implication that he did this but I have gotten over it anyway.

Look, LaLanne had a television show about exercise and his force of belief and his winning personality got people off their asses and doing stuff in front of the teevee. Then they went out and got themselves to a gym. The rest is history.

I watched him. You know, a lot of us have our total impression of him on YouTubes or when he was kind of over the hill. He kept going to the end.

I remember his little talks most of all. Between exercise sets. He would pull up a chair, take it easy for a minute and exhort.

He does look a litte excessive in these old kinescopes but it is kinescope and in those days you had to overact to get across. Most people's television sets were very poor soundwise and you had to continually adjust the antenna or tuning to get a good picture.

Look at the Lucy shows. Over the top and loud. They had to be.

LaLanne was not the only one to innovate with exercise shows. Vic Tanny and others too. They were often tied into a gym enterprise that had questionable sales tactics and membership agreements that suckered a lot of people into lifetime memberships. Such was the case with a lot of shows like this. Arthur Murray Dance studios.

The stars had turned their program over to a franchising business and the hucksters had a holiday with it. But the stuff was still good.

He lived to a ripe old age. I think he was OK down to the end and not vegging out. Lifetime exercise. A testimonial.

Labels: fitness, heroes, nostalgia

SHOCKER

I suppose it was inevitable but I still wasn't prepared for it.

We found out that our old house had been repainted. A deep brown. Chocolate. With black borders.

People seemed to enjoy telling this and watching my response.

I kept up a pretty good front.

But, I was dismayed to hear it.

This came in a covey of other stories about the new guy who seems to be doing alright otherwise.

When I picked up John, he suggested we go by the house and we did.

Awful. Worse than I had pictured.

I have gotten pretty good about letting go of the place. Someone else is with the plants I left behind. Someone else is painting the newish kitchen cabinets red. He told me that and I asked him to stop telling me about it.

But the outside of the house.

It was very retro-fifties. Tannish stucco with a "California turquoise" trim. I know it sounds garish but it is original. The color the house was painted in the 50's.

There are a few houses on Farrell that still have this color scheme.

But "my" house is now shit brown. Forget "chocolate".

Of course, it was night and not at its best.

And I notice that he has put his recycle bin and garbage cans right up front in the carport. Ugly.

There is more but I won't go into it.

A close friend told me that whenever I felt homesick or thought about "my" stuff being ruined by the new owner, I think of the money we got from selling it.

So, this morning, I am thinking of the money.

Chocolate money but still, money. We did OK. It isn't our house anymore.

Labels: nostalgia

REMEMBER WHEN

Today is the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It is a day of memory for many of us who were "there".

Here is a guy who was there, there.

On Ms. Kennedy's Detail

Clint HIll, Ms. Kennedy's Secret Service man.

When I say we were "there", I mean that we felt the event and its aftermath very closely. Most people can still remember where they were and what they were doing at the time they heard.

I was out on an "illegal" coffee break, my friend John and I. We snuck out a lot as there was no coffee break allowed where we worked. A vote had been taken years ago to exchange the breaks for an early out. No one asked me, so I took my break and went home later. Well, maybe not that later. A small rebellion against the biggest company that I ever worked in.

We were coming up 15th Street in Philadelphia and there was a bar open already just next to the entrance to our building. This seriously irked the Presbyterian owners of the Company. After all, they were the ones who didn't have coffee breaks. At least we weren't in the bar.

But the bar had a big window and a television and people were going nuts. Crying. Wringing their hands and coming out into the street. This is how we heard the news.

At that point it was only that he had been shot and taken to the hospital.

That is it. Freeze frame.

There are other memories of the weekend. Jack Ruby killing Oswald on live television. That happened the morning we had to take our son to the hospital with lower body pain which turned out to be a hernia.

Quite a time.

Nothing else stands out from it, not even the attempt on Reagan.

Everyone thought that it was the end of an era. A very short era.

And it was.

Labels: history, life, nostalgia

TWENTY FIVE

If you can stand the chit chat, this is a nice reunion for the BTTF gang.

Labels: nostalgia, television