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Traveling in the Slow Lane…Revisited

Posted on October 22nd, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

A couple of weeks back, I began to write  about life when I was growing up. Blame it on my kids. They asked me to do it. Maybe they’d like to know what it was like to live in one place while growing up. In this post, I’ll use the metaphor in the title of the post as the basis for some real experiences, not just metaphorical ones. I’ll tell you about transportation when I was a child.

Of course, I wasn’t born way back in the 19th century when horses and buggies were the main means of transportation, but believe it or not, I saw some of those still being used when I was a child. I should note that they were a rarity and objects of some interest whenever we’d see something like that. Everyday transportation was by cars for most people. My dad had purchased a 1939 Buick Special new from the dealer back in 1939. He still was driving it when I was born seven years later. Although the picture on the right is not of our car, it does show what that type of car looked like. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but cars of that era featured “running boards” , which would run along the side of the car, just below the doors. You could stand on them while climbing into the car. The car shown is a two-door, but I seem to recollect that our car was a four-door, but I could be mistaken about that. Note the headlights being separate enclosed units and not an integral  part of the car’s body. Automatic transmissions were a real novelty when I was a child, and we didn’t have one until I was in perhaps the third or fourth grade. The transmissions were manual, with a shift lever on the column to move from first to second to third gear. No “four on the floor” in passenger cars as I recall. That was reserved for farm vehicles and my uncle’s pick-up truck with its massive shift lever was always a source of wonder for me. Of course, we didn’t have air conditioning or even seat belts. Seat belts didn’t become popular until I was in high school and weren’t mandatory until even later than that. You would open the windows by “rolling” them up or down, using a crank on the door panel. Each front window also featured a vent which could be “cracked open” to get more air flow or to allow cigarette smoke to blow out of the car. We used to joke that our cars had the famous “4-55″ model air conditioners. That’s “Four windows down at 55 miles per hour”. Oh yeah, we were regular comedians.

My mom and dad drove that  car until the clutch gave out about a block from our house. I can remember my mom crying when that happened. I was very young and didn’t know what was going on, except the car wouldn’t go anywhere. When it was discovered that it was not cost-effective to repair the car, my dad bought a 1946 Buick. Like the previous car, it had eight cylinders and a standard transmission. All cars of the day had carburetors, and fuel injection systems were not heard of, at least not in our experience. And something else…they were huge compared to today’s cars.

Later, we had a 1950 Buick (are you seeing a pattern here?), a 1954 Buick, a 1956 Buick (I learned to drive on this car), a 1960 Buick (a behemoth with gigantic fins in the rear). After I left home for college, I seem to remember that they had a 1964 Buick and later a 1968 Buick. By then, I had my own cars, and yes, I even owned a couple of Buicks. All of the latter cars that we had were automatic transmission vehicles. I remember my mom saying to my dad when he brought that 1950 car home for a test ride, “Oh, it’s got one of those things.” Now what could that mean? It seems that “one of those things” referred to an automatic transmission. My mom had learned to drive a stick and always had driven a stick but something new really bothered her. As an aside, both of my daughters learned how to drive a stick. I wonder if either of them could do so now if they had to. I’m betting that Allison could probably do it with a little practice. Wendy’s participation in that exercise would be a stretch.

A lot of things that we take for granted today were not available in those older model cars. For example, when turn signals first came out, it was a source of interest to us as to just how they worked. My mother opined that they must be foot-operated. Can you believe windshield wipers that were not electric? Yep, they were run from the vacuum of the engine. So they were “variable speed” before anyone new about variable speed. The problem was that the driver didn’t pick the speed. It was determined by whether you were accelerating or idling the engine.

And how about the roads? In the midwest, the lexicon of the day included the term “hard road”, at least among my parents’ generation. I’m sure that that dates back to their farm upbringing when most of the roads were dirt and became impassable after a rain. My mother used to tell stories about how she would carpool to work in the city (during the Second World War many women went to work in factories to make up for the lack of male workers who had gone off to war). I guess that a former governor named Len Small had been the one to pave many of the roads. Because of the expense, the phrase of the day was “God damn Len Small.” My mom used to laugh about the driver of the car that she rode to work in. Whenever they would pull off of the dirt road, with its ruts and potholes, onto the hard road, the driver would say, “God bless Len Small”.

Most of our highways were two-lane, but some four-lane roads provided some quick transportation between some cities. Many of these roads were named as well  as numbered. For example, there was the Lincoln Highway that spanned the country from east to west. My university was situated along the Lincoln Highway (by then it was called US 30) and I could hear the big trucks rolling by all night while in my dorm room. There was the Dixie Highway which was also famous. Perhaps the most famous highway of all ran through my town. That would be US 66, the subject of a television show called “Route 66″. Eventually, those highways were replaced by “super highways” called “Interstates”.

OK, dear readers, here is a pop quiz for you. Can anyone tell me where the Interstate Highway System construction was begun? If you are related to me, you aren’t eligible to answer, because you already know the answer. Perhaps one of my three other readers will know. The Interstate Highway System actually was conceived by Adolph Hitler, but he didn’t know it at the time. General Eisenhower, later President Eisenhower, remembered traveling across country on the Lincoln Highway as a young officer. Later, as a commander in the European Theater during the War, he saw the benefit of the German Autobahn system which was built to move military vehicles around Europe. They still do that, by the way. As a point of interest, I was hospitalized back in 1992 for retinal surgery in a German hospital. One of my fellow patients was a gentleman in his 70s who had been an engineer and helped construct the Autobahn (all German nouns are capitalized, by the way) for Herr Hitler. He had some very interesting stories to tell.

Well, Ike wanted to duplicate the feat in the USA and got Congress to pass the Interstate  and Defense Highway Act of 1956. Defense? You bet. That’s how Ike got Congress to go along. He tied it to the defense of our country based on his experiences in Germany. These new super highways required some driving skills that most people did not yet possess. There was a massive public relations program to instruct people in how to drive on the new interstate highways. I can recall that these public interest spots on tv featured a young boy, maybe 13 or 14, asking his dad how to drive on the new highways. Each one started off with “Say Dad….” and then there was a question about a particular situation. For example, the dad would remind us that we should not miss our exit because you couldn’t back up on the interstate and the next exit might not be for miles. Another spot told us how to pull off to the side of the road if our car broke down. We were told to raise our hood or tie a white handkerchief to the door handle. We couldn’t do that these days because door handles on cars are integrated in the doors. Not so in the mid-50s, giving rise to the famous urban legend about the artificial hand found on the door handle after a night on Lovers’ Lane. Check it out on snopes.com if you are interested in that one. Or just ask anyone over 50. We’ve all heard that one.

Well, that’s my recollection of automobile travel in the 1950s. Maybe I can cover trains and planes in a later post.

Tchüss (that’s “bye-bye” in the German colloquial)

Retired-Ed

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Das Ende der Weinstrasse (The end of the wine road)

Posted on October 20th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Travel

Over the past weekend, I made two blog posts about our trip to the German Wine Road over the previous three-day weekend. Today will mark the final entry chronicling that trip. The weekend “had its moments” because it seemed that almost every community was having a “Weinfest” (wine festival). Normally, these are good times and everyone has fun. However, when you are traveling and trying to cram as much into about 48 hours as you can, taking the time to look for a parking place can be frustrating. But that wasn’t the case in every community we visited. Here, for example, is a picture of some people enjoying music, wine, beer, and good eats. The Queen and I decided to sit and enjoy the local musicians. From the picture, you can see that the sun was shining brightly in a blue sky. Not five minutes later, the clouds rolled in and the rain began. We hightailed it back to our car to decide if we wanted to wait it out or not. While sitting in our car, a German man came up to me and asked if I planned to stay or leave. He would like my parking place if we were going to leave. Since he was so nice about it, and being the good neighbors that we are (or at least try to be), we pulled out of the parking lot for our next adventure. The band shown in this picture is typical of such bands all over the country. They play at fests and Christmas Markets. We always enjoy them. If I weren’t diabetic, I would be enjoying them with a mug of Glühwein, but it’s too sweet for me to enjoy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Weinstrasse runs from Bockenheim to the French border. You have seen the gate at Bockenheim marking the beginning of the road. Near the end is the Deutsche Wein Tor, or the German Wine Gate. This gate is very close to the German/French border and gave us a reason to stop and take more pictures. Evidently at one time, cars could pass through the gate and continue on into France. Today, however, one must drive around the area. There was a small park with some antique implements formerly used in harvesting the grapes and making wine to be displayed. The pictures below will give you an idea of how things were done there in the past.

Nowadays, vintners use metal barrels or casks in many cases. But there is something to be said for the flavor of the wood that is imparted to the wine when it is stored in a wooden barrel.

We saw a great many churches on the trip. The grotto at left was found embedded in the side of a church in Deidesheim. I have shown pictures of a couple of churches in the previous posts. One that we saw at the end of our trip was in the town of Frankenstein. Yes, that Frankenstein. We went there deliberately because of the castle that is there. Supposedly, this castle was visited by Mary Shelley and was the inspiration for her book. On the other hand, there is also a castle near Darmstadt that claims to be the Frankenstein castle. I’ll leave it to your imagination to sort it out. The picture at right is of the church in Frankenstein. Yes, the town really is named “Frankenstein”, as the sign at left will signify.

As we entered the town, I was trying to watch the road, watch for other drivers and also look for a castle. Had the Queen not been with me, I would have certainly missed it. The castle sits high on a hill which was only visible from the passenger side of the car. Maybe if I had had the sun roof open I might have seen it, but again, I was trying to drive. She told me to turn around so I could see it as well. We were lucky to find a small parking lot where I could stop and take the picture of the castle shown at the right. I wonder if I would have had a creepy feeling if I could have gotten closer to the castle. Maybe next time we’ll see if we can go to the top.

At the beginning of the wine road, there was an “international traffic sign” that was not in my study guide when I got my German drivers license. I doubt if it is in anyone’s study guide, but it leaves little doubt as to its meaning. I just hope that the sign is not an editorial comment on my blogging ability. You be the judge.

Dog poo
Dog poo

That’s it for the Weinstrasse Reise (Wine Road Trip). See you next time.

Retired-Ed

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Weinstrasse Revisited

Posted on October 17th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Travel

Yesterday I started to report on our trip to the Deutsche Weinstrasse. After posting that entry, I heard from one of my critics (the Queen). She said that I alluded to meals but didn’t say anything about them. Also, she was concerned that the picture of the Bockenheim church didn’t give the reader enough of an idea of just how “medieval” the steeple looked unless someone clicked on the picture to enlarge it. Well, to appease the woman that I have to live with, here is a picture of that steeple:

Unfortunately, a microwave antenna and a tree will block your view of this steeple, but you can still click on it and get a good idea of what it looks like. We only had two evening meals on this trip, and the first one was, regretfully, at a Chinese buffet, the only place where we could find parking at 8:30 at night after looking for hours along the road. The food in the area is very similar to the cuisine of Alsace, the French region along the German border. We’ve had Alsatian food before and liked it. (They love their sauer kraut and what the Germans call Flammkuchen…but for the life of me, I can’t remember the French word for that item). We ate in our hotel restaurant on Sunday evening and had a delightful meal. There was only one other table occupied by diners. That was obviously a “girls’ night out”, and I use the term “girl” in its most inclusive meaning. Some of them were probably my age, and that’s old. They sure were having fun! The Queen wanted to have broccoli soup, which is one of her favorites. Unfortunately, the server came and apologized that they were out of it. So instead, the Queen got potato soup with blood sausage. Doesn’t sound all that exciting, but I had a taste, and it was very good.

So the above ought to appease my travel companion. Now back to what we saw. I showed some old-time wine barrels in my last post. How about the largest winebarrel in the world, as found in Bad Dürkheim? This behemoth is not used for wine, but serves as a tourist attraction. Note that it’s capacity is over 1 million liters. Many wine shops will have the saying “In Vino Veritas” ( In wine is truth) posted somewhere on their premises. At one location, this barrelhead embedded in their wall gave a unique opportunity to display that slogan. And some fool had to stand right in front of it to have his picture taken by the Queen. Note just how well-dressed this government retiree is. And you need to know that this picture was taken before I had sampled any wine!

Once inside a winery, the proprietors are more than happy to let you sample their various wines, and their selection is unbelievable. Reds, whites, sparkling wines, dry, semi-dry, sweet…you name it and they have it. We prefer dry whites, and the Queen also likes some rosés. We were able to find many suitable opportunities and took advantage of most of them! I had some trouble loading the trunk! On the left, you’ll see a picture of one of the wineries that we visited. This proprietor spoke English very well. Originally, the Queen opted to stay in the car, because we had been at that shop the day before and she didn’t think that she’d see anything different. But the day before, there was a different salesperson who only spoke German (the Queen’s German is not as good as I pretend that mine is). So when I told the guy on Sunday that I wanted to have my wife hear his explanations, he asked me where she was. When I said, “In the car,” he laughed and said that we were not in an Arab country, and women were welcome in his store. “Go get her!” was his direction to me.

Many of the stores, like this one, had signs that hearken back to a much earlier time. One is reminded of what these shops must have looked like in the 13th or 14th centuries. Some of the locations boast that a winery has been on that location for that long!

One town along the Wine Road is Deidesheim, which captured our attention for quite some time. On the left is a picture of the town center.  The large building is the Deidesheimer Hof, which is a hotel in the town. Hof basically means a large yard or open area, so the hotel is named for its location. And, although you can’t see it very well in the photo on the left, there is an added attraction in the Hof. Check out the fountain in the photo on the right.

Certainly, some of the more striking scenes were of the architecture of some older houses. We stopped to refuel the car along the way (we are required to use Esso stations if we want to fill up with tax free gasoline, and believe me, we want to do that). We had to drive a few miles off of the wine road to find the Esso station (thank you, GPS), and as we were driving back, the Queen spied something and had me turn around to get a picture. The photo on the left shows a Fachwerk Haus, or half-timbered house. I think it was worth the time to double back and get the picture. We got to stay there a little longer, as a warning light came on in the car and I had to wait for the engine to cool a bit to check out the coolant level. As far as I could tell, it was a false alarm. The car is getting “up there” in years and mileage. It turned over 340,000 km while we were on the trip. That’s well over 200,000 miles, so I am holding my breath. But BMWs are supposedly built to last longer than that. I hope so.

That wasn’t the only cool house that we saw. Check out these houses below. I am no expert in history or architecture, but these have to be old and remind me of many mansions that we saw in England.


To paraphrase Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice, men and bloggers, gang aft agley.” I thought I could complete the reporting on the Weinstrasse with this post. However, there are still a few photos left, and it’s not nice to overwhelm (or underwhelm) your readers. I’ll save the rest for a subsequent post. But please visit again to see some of the final pictures.

Retired-Ed

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Deutsche Weinstrasse

Posted on October 16th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Travel

Over the long Columbus Day Holiday weekend, the Queen and I traveled the German Wine Road (or the Deutsche Weinstrasse). Although the weather varied from sunny to rainy, we did have a chance to check out many wineries and have a great time. We even had one or two memorable meals, but so many communities were having special celebrations, including Weinfests, that parking was a problem at many restaurants. One night we were forced to eat at a Chinese buffet. Wasn’t bad, but wasn’t exactly what we were looking for either.

I have posted several pictures on my Facebook page. Hopefully you can see them here, even if you aren’t a “friend” on Facebook. The first day was Saturday, and as we left our house, it appeared that we would have a gloomy day. But once we got to southwest Germany, things improved a bit. The road runs from Bockenheim south to the French border (or in the other direction, depending on your perspective). This gate, with its accompanying restaurant, marks the northern terminus of the wine road. The entire route is probably only about 50 miles or so, but there are wineries located all over the place. Each location offers a Wein Probe, or an opportunity to sample the wares before you buy. Wow, someone could really get drunk just sampling the various wines. They were delicious! We ended up buying several cases to bring home.

And if you turn around and look in the other direction, you get a view of this elegant church. It’s one of many along the German Wine Road. Churches, lovely community centers, wineries, and lots and lots of vineyards mark the way. Germany is mixed in its religious affiliations. There are many Catholic churches and many Protestant (or Evangelische) churches as well. We could call the Protestant churches “Lutheran”. I saw mostly Catholic churches, but I do remember one town showing the times of the church services on a sign as we entered the town, and the Protestant services were listed first. That often denotes the majority of that particular denomination in that town.

But what is the most obvious sight along the Weinstrasse? Of course, it’s the vineyards. Here are some photos of vineyards that you’ll see if you travel along the German Wine Road, including one with its own church in the vineyard.

And where is wine stored? In barrels, of course. Here is a picture of the past along the Weinstrasse. But today, modern equipment, like the wine press on the right, is the norm. Vintners use modern technology to make the best wine possible, but they must comply with government standards and European Union regulations. For example, a very popular sparking wine is called “Champagne”. I’ll bet you’ve heard of it, but only sparking wine from a special area in France can be called “Champagne”. Another sparking wine from Italy is called “Prosecco”. However, in Germany, a similar wine cannot be called Prosecco, because it is from Germany instead of Italy. We bought a case of “Rosesecco”, which is Prosecco with a little red wine to give it a blush.

As I said, the weather did not fully cooperate. We had storm clouds the entire time, but they were mingled with periods of sunshine. The picture on the right will give you an idea of what some of the day was like. But every cloud has some type of lining. Silver, is it? Not sure about that, but rainy days sometimes will produce scenes like the one on the left.

Well, there were so many sights to see, and so many wineries to report about, I’ll need to tell you about those in another post. Meanwhile, remember the saying, “In Vino Veritas”, and I’ll help you remember that in the next post. Tchüss.

Retired-Ed

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Fall Comes to my Village

Posted on October 13th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Travel

Last week I grabbed my camera and set out on a short walk around the neighborhood on a particularly glorious day. The leaves were not yet in their full color, but were still quite lovely. All of the photos were taken within three blocks of our house. Over the long weekend, the Queen and I took a drive to the Deutsche Weinstrasse (German Wine Road), and I’ll have some pictures to show of that trip in a subsequent post. Meanwhile, enjoy some of the fall colors of Unterfranken (Lower Franconia).

This is a picture of my neighbor’s shrubs which line our driveway. His house is a few meters higher up the hill than ours. You can see his solar panels on the roof through the leaves.

And the trees on the far side of our youth Fussball (soccer) field are just beginning to turn.

And the trees don’t all change color at the same time…


We don’t often get a lot of reds, but some of the smaller trees and shrubs can show off a little bit.

And some are pretty in the sunlight even if they haven’t started to change.

I don’t know if these guys are edible, but they were certainly colorful. Check out the star on each one.

And, finally, the fall flowers were in bloom and reminded me of college homecoming. Mine was last weekend, but of course, I missed it. I was at home in Europe.

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. The colors and the cooler temperatures make for such an exciting experience. I hope that you have enjoyed this little taste of Unterfranken.

Retired-Ed

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Still in the Slow Lane

Posted on October 8th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

Well, readers, after my last post, a few people asked for me stories about the “olden days”. Both of my daughters seem to think that I have more stories to tell. One fellow blogger, Sue, decided to also write about her childhood experiences, but I learned that she is much younger than I thought she was. Sue, do you really want us to believe that you are doddering when you are still a youngster? I think we’ll let her slide, because she can add a Canadian perspective to the mix, but I doubt if it’s much different than a US perspective.

Well, to get to some of the suggestions. Allison wanted to know about nuclear attack drills. What a hoot they were. As I look back, I am incredulous. Did anyone really believe that we could survive a gound-zero nuclear attack by doing what they were telling us to do? What I will relate is a composite and not specifically what I had to do in school. For one thing, we had to watch these crappy 16mm movies that were supposed to instruct us on what to do in the event of an attack. If you heard the sirens, you were to take cover in a basement or other “safer” location. If you saw a white flash that was “brighter than anything you have ever seen before”, you were to dive into a ditch, ravine, or any other low-lying location in order to avoid the worst of the blast. Can you believe that? My goodness, none of us would last for a microsecond if we were that close to a nuclear detonation.

The Cold War had everyone scared witless. Supposedly, we might have had as much as 30 minute warning before getting fried. I suppose someone could try to break into his neighbor’s fallout shelter. Yes, some people actually built them, but I didn’t know anyone personally who had done so. You were told to stock them with food for so many days. The idea was to stay underground until the fallout danger had passed (yeah, like in about 40 years!), and then it would be safe to come out and see what remained of your city. Like NOTHING! We actually bought into that stuff. School drills had us going into the hallway and covering our head with our hands. Some of the wiser kids were saying to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye, and that was probably the right idea. I can remember OPAL, which stood for Operation Alert, and occurred somewhere around 1957 or 58. All the schools in town were in on the exercise and when the air raid sirens went off, we all filed into the hallway and practiced what we were supposed to do. It made the town fathers SO proud. Looking back, I just shake my head.

I was also asked about summer vacations. One of my daughters suggested that we didn’t get to go to Paris or Berlin. Smarty pants (herself) got to do those things, so she’s just rubbing it in. Well, my dad worked in a factory and got two weeks vacation every year. The whole factory shut down and people traveled all over. I can remember summer trips to Colorado, Chicago, Lake Superior, the Smoky Mountains, New York City, Washington, DC and other locations. The rest of the summer was spent riding bicycles, swimming, going to movies (which cost 75 cents, by the way….90 cents for adults), playing baseball and just goofing off in general. I had a blast every summer.

So many things that we take for granted today were either unheard of back then or just coming on the market. For example, the dial telephone was standard. Touch-tone dialing didn’t get to my location until I was in college in the middle ’60s. A long-distance call was made by dialing “0″ for the operator. Yes, someone actually answered. You would tell her that you wanted to place a long-distance call (station to station or person to person) to some other location. It might have been across the country or 10 miles down the road. It made no difference; you still had to go through the operator. When we got direct dialing, it was really something! We couldn’t believe how many digits you had to dial to make a call. When the touch-tone system came in, not everyone had it at first. I think I made my first touch-tone call on a pay phone downtown. It was a real treat, and I was probably 18 or 19 at the time! I can remember once in college when one of my friends wanted to call his girlfriend on her birthday. He was in Indiana, and she was in Africa for some reason (I can’t remember why she was there). He had to pump $12 in quarters into the pay phone in the dorm lobby for 3 minutes. Now we talk to the States from Europe for less than 1.5 cents per minute. Yes, times really change.

I got a few comments about the laundry after my last post. That was the honest-to-God truth. Most people didn’t have automatic washers or dryers. We had “solar-powered” dryers. Heh-heh. The clothes were hung on the line, and people really did check out just how white your whites looked while hanging on the line. In another post, I’ll explain how the wringer washing machine worked. Which was very modern compared to what my grandmother did with a washboard and lye soap. She also cooked over a wood-burning stove. Yes, we thought we were so modern then. I guess everything is relative.

Retired-Ed

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Life in the Slow Lane

Posted on October 6th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

In a recent post, I bemoaned the fact that my life has become so dull that I don’t have anything to write about. My daughter Wendy commented that I didn’t need to have anything happen. Some of her favorite posts in my blog, she said, were of when I was growing up. Maybe that’s because she grew up thousands of miles away from her extended family, and even lived on a different continent from them. She didn’t get to hear a whole lot of stories from her grandparents and other family members. At least she got to spend some summers in the home where I grew up.

Not so for her sister Allison (formerly known in this blog as “Child A”, which was a terribly-kept secret). Allison is almost seven years younger than her sister and was very young (six years old) when my father died. I’m not certain when my mother moved out of the house and into an assisted-living facility, but Allison couldn’t have been much more than ten years old or so. So both of my kids know only a little about life back in the 40s and 50s in a small city in the Midwest (Springfield, Illinois).

I was born during the Truman administration and really “grew up” during Ike’s term in office. I was 14 when JFK was elected, to give you some time perspective. And, yes, I got to shake JFK’s hand, as well as Nixon’s, in separate caravans during their election campaign. I also stood along the street when Ike went by in a parade. I was  close enough to touch him, but didn’t. Times have certainly changed!

As I said, I lived in a small city. Although it is a state capital, Springfield has never been a “metropolis”, and that may be part of its charm. It’s in the middle of miles and miles of cornfields and only advertised 83110 population on the signs leading into the city during my formative years. Now, the population is said to exceed 116,000. Still no Boston, Indianapolis, or Atlanta, but is much more like Jefferson City, MO or some other small capital city. Life was much simpler.

I can remember riding on a city bus to and from kindergarten at my parochial school in the downtown area. Nobody thought a thing about a 5-year old kid riding the bus. My dog Skippy would walk up to the corner to meet the bus when I came home. I don’t even remember being scared. We only had one car, but I think that my dad carpooled with someone when I was a bit older and my mom took me to school. At least I seem to remember something like that. When I started third grade, we moved to a brand new school (still in use) and I could walk if I wanted to, but my mom frequently picked me up.

As a young student, I wore clothes that my mother had sewn. I guess we were poor, but I didn’t realize that at the time. We did without a lot, but again, I didn’t think anything of it. For example, my parents didn’t get an air conditioner until I was in college, and even then it was only a window unit in my bedroom. I have pictures of myself in overalls and/or pants with suspenders. It seems that I was too skinny to have a belt hold up my pants. Or maybe we all wore suspenders back then. Those clothes were washed in a wringer washer and hung on a line to dry. Woe be unto some unsuspecting neighbor who burned trash or leaves (yes, you could do that then) in the alley on laundry day. Women were judged on their cleanliness by how white their linens looked on the line. “She is so clean,” was an expression that you’d hear often. She might have been a closet drunk or an embezzler, but if the wash was white, she was OK.

I can remember playing baseball in our “vacant lot” next to our house. Every few years, some poor kid would break one of our windows with a foul ball. Once, a girl took a swing at a ball and fell down with a broken leg. My parents didn’t get sued; yes, times have changed. We could stay out until after dark, especially if we were catching lightning bugs or trying to catch bats. It’s amazing what gullible kids would believe. Some of the older kids had us believing that if you wrapped a cinder (do today’s kids even know what a cinder is?) in newspaper and then threw it up in the air, a bat could swoop by and catch it and fall to the earth. We did this for several summers. Gosh, I didn’t even know what a bat looked like. When a bird (any bird) would fly by and we would throw our “bat catcher” up into the air, some other kid would tell us that it was just a “chimney sweep”. What the hell that was is beyond me. On the other hand, when we (wife, kids, and I) lived in north Germany, we’d have real chimney sweeps come to our house, dressed in top hat and tails, to clean out the fireplace chimney and the heating system. They rode bicycles. That was something my kids might actually remember, since they were old enough at that point.

We could ride out bikes anywhere in the city, and our moms wouldn’t care as long as we got home on time. We’d play games in parking lots and right on the street, and nobody freaked out. Sometimes we’d ride our bikes to school, but never to junior high or high school. That would not have been cool. It was just expected that we’d get to school OK. Nobody was concerned about kidnapping or terrorism. Nowadays, when I was a school administrator…not that long ago, we had to purchase special telephone programs to phone parents when kids were late or not at school by a certain time. I could write another whole post on that subject, but I think I’ll wait.

Speaking of phones, we could have phones in one color: black, and they must have weighed seven or eight pounds. On the plus side, if it broke, the phone company would come out and fix it, and you didn’t have to buy the phone first. The first color phones and smaller phones were such a novelty that they got lots of advertising on tv shows. Remember the “Princess” phones? And speaking of television, we didn’t even get one until I was 9 years old and in the fourth grade. Other neighborhood families had theirs earlier. We used to go across the street to an older widow’s house to watch the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. Every time an airplane would fly overhead, the signal would go haywire. As I write this, the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York is in the news, but for a very different reason.

I could go on and on about growing up in the 50′s: a-bomb drills, Mickey Mouse Club on television, the Edsel, Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev, and on and on. Maybe this post will trigger some memories of yours and you’d like to comment. Please do.

Retired-Ed

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