Monday Memory

Learning the facts of life with Judy Blume. Always wished I had a daughter so I could read Judy Blume all over again.

Monday Memory

• "All skaters, change directions" means something to you.

• This rings a bell: "and my name, is Charlie. They work for me."

• You remember when film critics were certain that no movie could ever possibly get better special effects than those in the movie TRON.

• Your jaw would ache by the time you finished one of those brick-sized packages of Bazooka!

• You remember having a rotary phone.

• You remember when your cable TV box had a sliding selector switch and your "cable or VCR remote" was connected to the TV by a CORD!

• You actually remember Mr. Bill.

• You took family trips BEFORE the invention of the mini-van and remember riding in the back of the station wagon trying to get passing trucks to honk at you.

• You remember Bo and Luke Duke, Daisy, Boss Hogg, or, worst of all - what Sheriff Roscoe's full name was. (Coltrain)

• You found nothing strange about Bert and Ernie living together.

• Leg warmers were cool.

• Schoolhouse Rock played a HUGE part in how you learned things like grammar, math and history.

• You learned to swim at about the same time "Jaws" came out... and still carry the emotional scars to prove it. (Guess that explains why I can't swim!)
  

• You ever had a Dorothy Hamill haircut or used Short and Sassy shampoo.

• You remember having to get off the couch to change the TV channel.

• If male: your first love was Marsha Brady, Jeannine, Samantha from Bewitched, Josie or any one of the Pussycat.

• You were unsure if Diet Coke would ever catch on.

• You remember the days when "safe sex" meant "my parents are going out of town".

• Chevy Chase was really funny in those vacation movies.

• You actually believed that Mikey, famed kid on the Life cereal commercials, died after eating Pop Rocks and drinking a Coke.

• You were not allowed to see The Exorcist, The Omen, or The Blue Lagoon when they came out.

• The Brady Bunch Movie brings back warm memories.

• You tuned in regularly to the adventures of the Bionic Man and Woman, Wonder Woman, and/or the Incredible Hulk.

• A predominant color in your childhood photos is "plaid".

• You remember trying to guess the first episode of the Brady Bunch from the first scene.

• Your first musical purchase was an 8-track tape.

• Your parents paid $2,000 for a top-loading VCR that was almost the size of a coffee table.

• You ever owned a Donnie and Marie or Sonny and Cher poster.

• You remember wanting to stay up to see Mr. Bill on Saturday Night Live.

• You ever wanted to learn to play "Stairway to Heaven" on the guitar and choreographed "Dancing Queen" by yourself in your room.

• You know all the words to the double-album set of the "Grease" soundtrack.

• You thought that Shawn Cassidy was "dreamy", lusted after "Ted, your ship's photographer" on the Love Boat or Chachi.

• Most of the fillings in your mouth are directly related to Bazooka or Bubble Yum.
  

• You remember when there was only "G", "PG", and "R".

I cheated a little to put together this post today. Found this site and selected the relevant bits for me. Man, was it ever cool being a child in the 70's. Kids these days don't know what they're missing.

Monday Memory

Monday Memory

My first film at the cinema on a school trip when I was a little girl, I must have been in grade 2. That's when I fell in love with bears.

Monday Memory

Kraft Dinner Ad, 1976

Mom always knew that Mac & Cheese would bring a smile to my face. My number 1 childhood comfort food. I could do with some right now! What's your top comfort food?

Monday Memory

I found my childood buddy - Harriet the Spy. Just a couple of months ago I was trying to tell a friend about one of my favourite childhood characters. All I could recall was that her name was Harriet & she loved tomato sandwiches - that's how I got started on tomato sandwiches! My friend couldn't remember Harriet. The other day as I was going through ICLW blogs I found someone's list of favourite books and there was Harriet! Eureka! Oh the joy, I had finally found her! I feel like I've been reunited with a long lost friend. I'm off to Amazon to order the books. How wonderful it will be to read Harriet at (nearly) 40. I feel like a kid again. Forget plastic surgery and botox to slow down the ageing process. The answer is finding the child inside of us and keeping that child alive!

BTW, another favoutrite character was called Betsy...does any one remember where she comes from? I must have been in grade 2 or 3 when I read the books.

Monday Memory

When I think back to my childhood, I still can't believe I never learnt to swim. Disgraceful, I know! Once school was out for the summer, our days were spent at Sunnyside Pavillion Pool (see entrance gates above), built in 1925, on the shores of Lake Ontario, along Lakeshore Boulevard.

One particular memory I have of Sunnyside dates back to when I was around my son's age. My mom had grounded me, as punishment for breaking the neighbour's screen window while playing softball (ball wasn't so soft after all). If I was grounded that meant Uncle Armie, who lived with us, was grounded too because he had to look after me while my mom was at work. But he had a new girlfriend at the time and had arranged to take her to the pool. So I decided to strike a deal with him. He could go to the pool, if he took me and my friends along, and mom wouldn't have to find out. After a short hesitation, he went along with it. We had a great time at the pool. Just before heading back home, making sure we got back way before my mom did, Uncle Armie gave me money to buy ice-creams for everyone, reminding me to look carefully before crossing the street. On the way back with a box of ice-cream cones, I got hit by a car and went flying like a rag doll. Thing is, I did look, but the car was coming the wrong way on a one-way street. The blow knocked me out cold and when I came through, the first thing I saw was a horse. SHIT! Where the hell was I? The horse belonged to the Mounted Police who happened to be patrolling the park. Then I saw my uncle in tears and about to clobber the driver.

I wasn't as bad as people thought, just some cuts & bruises. The worst part was trying to convince my uncle not to take me to the hospital and....not to tell mom!!!! That was the hardest part. After a lot of tears and quite a few sniffs I managed to talk him into not telling mom. I think he was terrified of her himself. Big sister would have killed him. We got away with the whole thing telling my mom I had fallen from the tree in our backyard (not the first time). The whole cover up nearly backfired when, during the week, the driver called to find out how I was doing and mom answered the phone! I froze, sensing a bomb about to go off, but she simply said, "Sorry, wrong number". Phewww!!! Major Mom never found out the truth.

My uncle tells this story over and over today. Not when my mom is around, of course! And I've forbidden him of ever telling my son. Don't want him getting any funny ideas in that beautiful head of his.

See some lovely pictures of Sunnyside here.

Monday Memory

Cashing in on those hot summer days with our special home-made, ice-cold lemonade. What do bored kids do to kill time when school's out for the summer? Set up a lemonade stand out on their front lawns, of course. And when we weren't selling lemonade we'd be worm picking after those hot summer storms, bringing in a lot of cash from the bait. They don't call me "Resouceful Raggedy Ann" for nothing. The money would come in really handy to buy us some popsicles from Dominic's corner store. That's what you get from growing up in a downtown Toronto neighbourhood in the 70s & 80s. Remember "Everybody Hates Chris"? It was a bit like that, just not as rough.

John Irving

Every once in a while I like to get out an "oldie but goodie". After re-visiting Margaret Atwood, John Irving is the next one up. He certainly influenced my early teens with his zany characters. You see, I was a zany teenager myself. Don't know where to start. Hummm! The World According to Garp or the Hotel New Hampshire? Tough decision. I think, of the two, Garp was the one that marked me most, with both joyous and heartbreaking moments. I'll never forget that scene in the movie when his mother, a radically independent nurse, conceives him by taking advantage of a brain-damaged soldier. The Hotel New Hampshire is by far his quirkiest novel with all those dysfunctional characters. It also brings back quirky memories of my own childhood at The Rideau Hotel. I think I'll start with the latter as I could do with a good laugh right now.

"Although Irving's first three novels were well-received critically, popular success had eluded him for a decade. The publication of his fourth novel was to change his life irrevocably. The World According to Garp featured, as its protagonist, an author whose stories comment on his own life and on the book itself, and involve him with a set of dizzyingly eccentric characters, besieged by hostile fate. First published in 1978, Garp received ecstatic reviews and sold prodigiously. It won its author a loyal worldwide audience. Passed over for the National Book Award in 1979, it was honored in 1980 when the National Book Foundation granted separate awards for fiction in hardcover and paperback. Since the international success of Garp, every book Irving has written has been a best-seller. Although success freed Irving to write full time, he did not choose to cloister himself in his study. After completing the last of his Writer-in-Residence appointments, this one at Brandeis University, he coached wrestling at prep schools for most of the 1980s, while writing the most popular literary novels of the decade.

Like The World According to Garp, Irving's next novel, The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), presented a cast of vividly imagined eccentric characters. The Cider House Rules (1985), is set in Maine in the early decades of the 20th century, at an orphanage presided over by a kindly, ether-addicted obstetrician and abortionist. This book threw Irving into the thick of the debate over abortion in America. Irving's own pro-choice position was informed in part by the life and writings of his adoptive grandfather, a prominent obstetrician and gynecologist. Questions of religion, morality and the randomness of fate figure strongly in Irving's next work, A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), in which a foul ball hit by a small boy in a Little League game kills a spectator, the mother of the boy's teammate."

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/irv0bio-1

John Irving on how the Canadian and American literary scenes differ. Amen to his last comment!

Monday Memory

Those certainly were very Happy Days for me. Teenagers nowadays don't know what they're missing. I feel very fortunate to have grown up with the Fonz, Richie, Ralph, Potsie (had a little crush on him) & Chachi (had a little crush on him, too). Check out the episode below - when Mork meets the Fonz! Mork & Mindy, was another one of my all-time favourite TV shows, a spin-off from Happy Days, just like Laverne & Shirley.

Friday Flower

Little Earth Stars

To some the dandelion is a weed; but not to me, unless it takes more than its share of space, for I always miss these little earth stars when they are absent. They intensify the sunshine shimmering on the lawn, making one smile involuntarily when seeing them. Moreover, they awaken pleasant memories, for a childhood in which dandelions had no part is a defective experience.

Source: "The Home Acre," by E. P. Roe

Monday Memory

There's definitely something wrong when you've got me posting Janis Joplin & Joni Mitchell one after the other. A bit of nostalgia? Perhaps age kicking in? Well, I can tell you it certainly hasn't been an easy week. And I take refuge in memories - my safe haven in troubled times.

I love Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. To be honest, I love all her music. And a true Canuck! There are many other covers of this song, the most recent one being by Counting Crows, I think. But you just can't beat the original.

"I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart... this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song."

http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-96/12-07-96/b01ae065.htm

Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin

Undoubtedly, my all-time favourite, still giving me goosebumps whenever I listen to it. I remember driving my dad up the wall when I played Janis Joplin full blast at home as a kid. I drive my husband crazy when I listen to her now. Think the little guy has taken after his mom. He does a mean version of Cry Baby.

"Joplin's only number One hit was a posthumous one, and a country, not a blues, song. "Me and Bobby McGee" came from her drinking buddy and occasional crush Kris Kristofferson, but she gave the song its definitive interpretation. (It had already been recorded by "King of the Road" singer Roger Miller.) Joplin's version was "just the tip of the iceberg, showing a whole untapped source of Texas, country and blues that she had at her fingertips," recalled pianist Richard Bell. It was a standout from Pearl, her last solo album, released less than a year after she died of a heroin overdose." Rolling Stones

Monday Memory

Cruising the Saint Lawrence River - Thousand Islands.

Memories of summer holidays in Smiths Falls, popping over to Brockville for a swim.

Mahna Mahna

Now try getting this tune out of your head!

Monday Memory

I read "Summer of my German Soldier" in the summer of 1982. Since then I must have read 3 or 4 times & wouldn't mind reading it again.

Beautiful film version, starring Kristy McNichol.

Bill Bryson on growing up in the 50s

I'm a huge Bill Bryson fan, I think I've read each one of his books. Having spent my life between two continents as well, I can appreciate the humour of sometimes feeling you belong to neither. I'm just about to launch on his new book - "The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid" - that takes us on a trip through American society in the 50s. I guess the image I have of those times is greatly influenced by TV, with series like Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners.

Synopses

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century — 1951 — in the middle of the United States — Des Moines, Iowa — in the middle of the largest generation in American history — the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons) — in his head — as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality — a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and of his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson's earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods (*), will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

...

(*) A Walk in the Woods is without a doubt my favourite. I was rolling on the floor with laughter at his adventures with his college buddy Stephen Katz as they embark on The Appalachian Trail, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to the trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin.

Monday Memory

Growing up in a Parkdale neighbourhood.

It's Not Easy Being Green

“People tend to pass you over, cause you’re not standing out / Like flashy sparkles in the water, or stars in the sky.”

Despite its melancholy opening, "It’s not Easy Being Green" is meant to be redemptive. "Green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain," Kermit sings at the song’s close, "and I think it’s what I want to be."

From Sesame Street, 1970

Monday Memory

After nicking a few nickles from my dad, running to Domenic's corner store to get some life savers.