No gas-driven cars, trucks or buses other than emergency vehicles. That’s how they advertise the charm of Mackinac Island, located just off the northern tip of lower Michigan. 
The best way to get there from the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan – cross the five mile long and elegant Mackinac Bridge that joins the Upper Michigan Peninsula to the Lower Peninsula and then take a forty minute ferry boat ride from the regular mainland.
Continue reading “The Road to Mackinac”
Tag: growing up in the 60s
No Soap, Radio!
One of the first “clean” jokes I learned in high school in the 1960’s from a new group of friends was the “no soap” radio joke. It was a small step up from those annoying “knock, knock” jokes. The idea was to start telling a humorous story that seemed to be directed to a punch line but then instead of delivering it, the teller would say “no soap radio”. The recipient of such stupidity instantly acquired a feeling as if two minutes of their life had been wasted. It is akin to what all Cubs fans experience while watching a Chicago Cubs game where they are leading in the 9th inning only to witness the so-called closer walk the bases loaded and give up the winning runs. You think to yourself, “why bother?”
The thing in listening to the joke was that you knew it was coming to an illogical conclusion but you still laughed because you thought it was supposed to be funny but were maybe too stupid to get it. Sort of like an initiation within a cabal of lunatic friends.
I did a search on the Internet and found a plausible suggestion that the expression at one time had to do with listeners being upset that the show they wanted to hear was not on the airwaves but instead a boring, soap opera. Thus, “no- (it’s) soap radio!” The idea being was to laugh it off and think that at least older folk would be happy because they could hear their favorite dramatic soap opera. The ones who would be frustrated would be those attuned to the half hour sitcoms starring Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Burns and Allen, Amos and Andy, and the list goes on.
Baby boomers, of course, were mostly born after World War II as the beginning of the decline in network entertainment radio occurred. When I came aboard, television was in its infancy but already stealing away audiences from radio. I grew up on the stars mentioned above, but while watching them on their television shows. I didn’t even know that they had a previous career on the radio dial. Sort of like kids today finding it a hard time to believe that their grandparents had black and white television sets that required an antenna and offered at the most six channels in the larger cities.
One day in the early 1970’s Dad discovered a Chicago radio station that found its niche by playing reruns of so-called Old Time Radio. His enjoyment of these shows rubbed off on my kid brother and me. More than fifty years after these shows stopped broadcasting first run, they still provide entertainment. Now, instead of waiting to hear the one Chicago station that still plays old shows at midnight, I go on the Internet and click websites such as:
http://www.streamingthe.net/index.php?v=8&genre=Old+Time+Radio&s=N%2FA&c=USA
StreamingThe.Net is also a useful site to find just about any radio station format in the world. No soap, radio!
The Music Man or Every Good Boy Does Fine
My first formal introduction to music was as a 3rd grader in 1960. Mr. Applebaum was hired at our school to teach us music appreciation. Apparently, someone made a donation to our poor private school to give us this luxury beyond mere reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Applebaum was a roly-poly guy but with an authoritative attitude. Even though he looked like an easy mark, no one messed with him. Besides, he carried a long wooden pointer (but with a rubber tip) to emphasize the words that came out of his mouth. Or maybe he was just a creature of habit as he also conducted a band.
Mr. Applebaum never called us by our first names- it was always mister or miss so-and-so. Even though he was dealing with eight year old kids, it was all business. His life was music and he expected everyone else to share the same enthusiasm.
Fifty years later, I still remember the music associations that were drilled into the deep recesses of my mind: EGBDF- or “every good boy does fine”, as well as FACE. Both of these acronyms are notes in ascension placed in between each other. In other words, it starts with E, then F, followed by G, then A, B, C, D, E and finally F. Supposedly, you can place the first E on one the of lower lines or spaces on a musical graph and you will never forget how to sight read music. Okay, if you say so.
Mr. Applebaum wanted to show the school authority as well as parents that his charges were getting bang for the buck. He organized both a choir and a small school band. His trademark conducting method was to arrange all songs that were to be played with musical instruments to start with the same two beat staccato lead in as he waved his magical wand. It was very common and comical to witness the Star Spangled Banner start like this: “one, two, one two, one two, (slow down the beat) Oh.. Oh.. say (pause) can (pause) you (pause) see…”
Years later, good old Applebaum convinced the private high school board to let him put together a play production for my senior class. Nine and a half years after I first observed his baton waving shenanigans and marching band staccato, he was at it again and for four performances of My Fair Lady, the audience heard songs like “Loverly” and “I Should Have Danced All Night” start with the ubiquitous “one, two, one, two, one two..” I was one of the few who was in on the secret as only a couple of my 3rd grade classmates had gone on to the same high school. I guess Mr. Applebaum thought of himself as another Professor Harold Hill.
The next year as a freshman in college I took Music 101. I could read the sheet music and play half well a recorder but the lady music teacher did not share my sense of rhythm and gave me my first D. I had one more in Speech and Performing Arts but for the next three and a half years in a normal discipline of coursework I got mostly A’s and a couple of B’s and ended up graduating with honors.
About a dozen years later, I decided to take voice lessons as a lark. Again, I had to get used to sight reading a musical composition sheet. This time, though, there were words in Italian all over the page. My instructor, a Doctor of Music no less, kept on telling me to sing from the diaphragm. The next time I came to his place for a lesson, I brought one with me and asked him how I could sing through it. That’s when he threw me out and that was the end of music as a hobby. I don’t sing in the shower but I do in my car. Now that people talk on their cell phones while driving, with the window raised, most people can’t tell if I am making a fool of myself or breaking the law. Aren’t the two mutually exclusive?
Chicago Radio Daze
Do kids listen to the radio for music anymore? Apparently less and less are doing so and broadcasters are taking notice. A new 24 hour all-news radio station is taking to the airwaves in Chicago with the call letters of WWWN-FM , 101.1 on the dial. Most recently the same spot had been WKQX, a music station. In addition, WBBM-AM in Chicago, a CBS-owned radio station, has just started duplicating their AM signal on 105.9 FM. It had until recently been WCFS, an adult contemporary music station.
CBS officials say that by adding the FM signal for their all-day newscasts, other than seasonal sports broadcasts, those in downtown, high-rise congested areas as well as far out suburbs will now be able to pick up their signal. AM stands for amplitude modulation which relies on the strength or loudness of the signal. This is why some stations covet having 50,000 clear watt signals that get picked up at night as well. There are some AM stations that are even mandated to go off the air after sundown. WGN was chartered an all clear 50,000 watt station because they were willing to air a decent amount of farm related news to the Midwest.
FM stands for frequency modulation. The ability to pick up these signals are based on the proximity, not the loudness, to the transmitter. This is why it is often easier to pick up FM radio stations than AM in areas with tall buildings. The signal strength is not interfered with as much especially if the FM transmission tower is nearby.
This jockeying for supremacy of the Chicago airwaves and changing of the guard in listener tastes brings back several memories for baby boomers listening to radio in the 1960’s. Before the Beatles showed up we used to listen to rock and roll stars like Elvis, The Beach Boys, Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Leslie Gore and many others. The music played loud and it all sounded pretty much the same. But to us the real stars were maybe the disk jockeys who fought for our attention on the various music radio outlets.
At one time or another three stations- WLS, WJJD and WCFL rocked us for loyalty and ratings numbers. Dick Biondi was king of the hill on WLS. By 1964 he was gone and returned to Chicago on arch-rival WCFL in 1967. Biondi as of most recently was still on the airwaves doing nostalgic radio, some fifty years later.
Art Roberts took the baton at WLS in the mid 1960’s and was the top dj for a while. Larry Lujack went on to super stardom first at ‘LS and then ‘CFL in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
By the late 1960’s, I didn’t care much to listen to the British rockers who inundated American culture. As I was in my late teens then, I was more interested in sports and talk on the radio to help me fall asleep.
In the morning, I’d wake up to, as did most kids, Wally Phillips on WGN radio because that’s what our mothers were listening to in the kitchen as they prepared breakfast. In my case, it was something I could not avoid. I slept in the dining room adjoining the kitchen as we only had three bedrooms and five kids- three sisters and a baby brother. I drew the short end of the stick in a stacked deck.
Wally presented a hodgepodge of news, weather, sports, talk, bits of humor, topical discussions, and a sliver of music. Until the day he retired, he was at the top of the radio Arbitron ratings.
In the early ’60s, to help me fall asleep, I’d listen to Jack Eigen on WMAQ in the Palmer House Pump Room, or was it the Chez Paree, interview celebrities passing through town. Or, if I was in a different mood, it would be good old Franklin McCormick on WGN playing his big band music and lullabies. His mellifluous cadence was enough to hypnotize anyone to sleep in 10 minutes or less.
Today some of these call letters are used on different frequencies and the station formats are a far cry from those in the 1960’s. Some, such as WMAQ and all-news WNUS have been retired. WIND is now
a conservative talk station as well as WLS. WCFL which had 1000 on the dial has given up the spot to an all sports talk station owned by ESPN. During the past twenty years, with the migration of Mexicans to Chicago, Spanish language oriented stations have developed large followings and big numbers in the ratings. Incredibly, WGN is still what it was 50 years ago, catering to sports and mostly middle-age tastes. As always , they host the Chicago Cubs games on radio and despite a few blips of post-season success, no announcer has yet to be able to boast that one can hear the World Champion Cubs on WGN. I think when it does happen, radio programs will just be transmitted over the Internet. And the announcer will be called a podcaster. Transistor radios will be shown in museum exhibits and clock radios will be thrown out when seniors sell their homes and move to assisted living facilities. But, don’t touch that dial!- or should I say website address url?
An Autobiography is Not Henry Ford’s Account of His Life
It’s not coincidence that the words ‘library’ and ‘liberty’ are closely related by root. Despite what some people think, the more one knows, the better he or she is. Reading books gives one knowledge that frees the mind from stupidity. Of course, there are those who might say that I am confusing knowledge with smarts.
Ever since that game Trivial Pursuit was introduced in 1979 it seems as if our culture has put a premium on all types of knowledge, even insignificant data that won’t help pay for a cup of coffee or a bottle of water.
Regardless, I’ve always respected anyone who is weighed down with mounds of trivial facts on obscure subjects. After all, I’m the guy who will tell you to make three right turns instead of a simple left turn. I have a need to let you know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. On this latter subject, don’t ask me- check it out through using a web browser.
Growing up in the 1950’s on the West Side of Chicago, my first exposure to a storehouse of knowledge and information was the Legler Regional Library Branch near the northeast corner of Pulaski and Wilcox. Being quite young at the time, I only recall Ma holding me by the hand as we walked up a whole bunch of stairs to the library front entrance.
A few years later, I remember visiting the Austin Branch Library just north of Lake Street and west of Central on, I believe, Grace. During this period, I finally received a library card and was made to understand the importance of taking good care of it as well as returning books back on time in lieu of paying a fine.
Attending college at Northeastern Illinois University in the early 1970’s, I became quite impressed with the non-book materials available at the campus library such as micro fiche and microfilm rolls of old newspapers and magazines.
By the mid 1970’s, it became more important to spend the energy on finding a decent career or at least the stepping stones to building a career. When not working, I was playing sports during evening time.
Come the new century and my body had a talking with my mind and said I had to quit the extra curricular activities. I now had more time to devote to refueling my mind with insignificant but enjoyable and entertaining data. I started the path back slowly by going once every two weeks to a book store and leafing through the discounted material section. I also decided not to waste time reading fiction. After all, life itself was strange and more often ironically funny. I didn’t need to read someone else’s made up stories. I concentrated on books of fact and information as well as biographies.
I learned that the best stories about people’s lives were the ones that the subject matter wrote himself. After all, if one is going to tell a good lie, I’d rather here it from the person who fabricated it than from someone looking from the outside in.
After a while, it dawned on me that I was wasting precious money at the book store and was better off going to the library and reading books for free. A year ago, I started by visiting every other week to borrow two biographies to read. Now it seems as if I go twice a week. The one dread is that I run out of interesting non-fiction books that tickle my fancy and am forced – gulp- to start checking out the fiction section.
To reshape a phrase spoken by Lieutenant McGarrett on Hawaiian Five-O: “Book It!”
Hanna Barbera and Baby Boomer Cartoons
By Larry Teren
Enjoying cartoons is one of those things a person never outgrows, right? It must be- Matt Groenig’s The Simpsons has been around for more than twenty seasons of new-run episodes and still going strong. The 1930’s and 40’s have Walt Disney, Max Fleischer and Leon Schlesinger. The 1950s and 60s have Hanna Barbera. I and most baby boomers will take that ex-MGM animation team, Hanna Barbera, thank you.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Penny Foolish
Does anyone still pick up a penny when they see it on the floor? C’mon- anybody? That’s what I thought. For baby boomers, there was a lot we could do with a penny or two.
Back in the early 1960’s, there was lots of candy that still cost a penny. In September 1964, I spent seventh grade in a private school in the Chicago Lakeview neighborhood. The school was in the middle of the first block in from Lake Michigan and Sheridan Road on Melrose Street. At the northwestern corner by Broadway there stood a small candy shop. It was a gold mine for the elderly couple that owned it. Not only did they have our school as a locked-in customer, but directly across the street was a public grammar school.
Our nickname for the old man behind the counter was Mr. Miser because he distrusted all regardless of age. In his mind, everyone was out to try to steal his merchandise. Well, not exactly everyone. Most girls were given the benefit of the doubt. But, if you walked in wearing a pair of pants- look out. It was like strolling in a prison yard during the designated time break with cops wearing sun glasses and pounding billy clubs against their open hands watching your every move. And heaven help you if you took too long to decide what you wanted or changed your mind after Miser put the goods in a paper bag. Anything to ruffle his feathers guaranteed an unleashing of verbal abuse and a demand to leave the premises immediately.
Continue reading “Penny Foolish”
Ice Cream, Ice Cream, We Don’t All Scream For Ice Cream
Things ain’t what they used to be- especially for baby boomers. There used to be special places to visit in Chicago back in the 1900’s- that sounds so quaint- that are no longer around.
Continue reading “Ice Cream, Ice Cream, We Don’t All Scream For Ice Cream”
My Mama Done Told Me
I got my masters in the discipline of causing trouble by spending several years observing two seasoned pros- my parents. Dad would be sitting down at the table as Ma brought him a bowl of soup. He’d take one slurp, pound his fist on the table and shout to no one in particular, “hot, hot, bitch, bitch, bitch.†And he’d finish it off with, “why did you have to make it so hot?†to Ma who would thrust his parry and reply with, “aw, go to hell.†And then Dad would counter with, “show me the way.â€
Of course, if any innocent bystanders would smirk, Ma would quickly look at us and say, “what’s your problem?†and we would try to hold off falling on the floor from laughing so hard or it would have turned into the other extreme.
Then there would be the time my kid brother would visit from out of the country, he in his thirties by then and me in my- never you mind. Gary would stay at Ma during his visit so I would come over and we would be having a glorious dinner and the two of us would start in needling each other until it rose to a crescendo. At that point Ma would shout, “stop it you two, or I’m going upstairs!†After we waited the necessary five minutes to keep our collective mouths shut, we’d start up again and Ma would say, “can’t you two ever get along?†Of course, what she didn’t want to acknowledge was that it was our way of getting along- she just found it annoying.
I’ve been told by Ma’s younger brother that when they were kids, she organized a gang of two- them. They would go around beating up other kids who refused to play ball with them. Literally- I mean, she would beat them up if they wouldn’t let her play in the ball game already going on.
In the late 1950’s, when it was just my older sister, a younger one and myself hanging around the house, if one of us got on Ma’s bad side, she would vent her anger. If one of us stood behind her laughing at the sibling taking the brunt of her wrath, she would quickly turn around and say, “you want a piece of this, too?†And this from a lady who tells me when I chauffeur her around now that I need to to take anger management.
A couple of years ago, I invited to her house a family who lives near me to expand on her friendships – the father, mother, son and daughter. At the time, the daughter was twelve. We were eating a fancy meal in Ma’s dining room and I was goofing off as usual, so Ma threw me a wicked slider and said for all to clearly hear, “stop acting like a baby. Can’t you grow up already?†Naturally, since then that twerpy teenage girl throws that line in my face as often as she can. But again, when we used to play one-on-one basketball in her driveway, I never showed mercy and beat her off the dribble too many times. She won’t play ball with me anymore, so who’s the baby now, huh?
Politics of Change
As a kid growing up in the 1960’s I was a Democrat because I didn’t know better. It had been schooled into me that Republicans were only for rich people and believed in war which was in their opinion good for the economy. It didn’t make a difference since I couldn’t vote.
The first time I took notice of politics was when we road home in a school bus from Orchestra Hall on Michigan Avenue back to our school in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s Far West Side. We had just been treated to seats up in the rafters watching and listening to a matinee presentation put on by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was around the same time Leonard Bernstein was doing television shows dedicated to the same purpose and they were quite popular.
On the forty-five minute ride home due west we rode through neighborhoods with signs on front lawns or taped to windows that either read ‘Go All the Way With JFK’ (John F. Kennedy) or ‘For the Future’ (Richard Nixon). My buddy Perry sat next to me and he made a point of telling me for whom I should be but it did not resonate. When it came down to it, Kennedy made more sense because he was better looking and didn’t look mean. Besides, I had a kid’s version of Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage or was aware of it so I had somewhat of a sophisticated approach to my choice.
I recall being fascinated on election night watching the news coverage and Walter Cronkite explaining about all the sophisticated computer equipment in the room that was making loud noises in the background.
He said that with the equipment, he would be able to predict who won the election within a couple of hours after the polls closed. In those days, they did not make predictions on East Coast electoral votes until all the states had officially closed down the voting. There was still a sense on the part of the media in playing fair and not trying to discourage West Coast voters in wasting their ballots on a loser.
I liked watching war movies on television but in real life preferred to be a passive bystander although not a conscientious objector. My simple philosophy was ‘leave me out of it’. Besides, I wore glasses due to depth perception problems and double vision as well as had flat feet. I inherited these from Ma.
By the time 1969 came around, I was not yet seventeen and hardly a member of the pot smoking peace movement. Heck, I choked whenever someone smoking a cigarette was within fifteen feet of me. Didn’t have long hair because the high school administration frowned upon it and besides I was not out to make a statement. Did, though, grow a beard which looking back on it was ridiculous as at best it was Solzhenitsyn-like. And you needed a magnifying glass to see the accompanying mustache up close.
During the summer of 1970, after graduating high school, a kind of rash or impetuous thing overcame me. I invited a female classmate to go a movie, a quasi-date. I don’t recall if I even paid for her admission ticket. Wasn’t really that much interested in her romantically- at least, I didn’t think so. I knew her as far back as kindergarten. Anyway, we agreed to meet at the theater and saw Mash. At the time, it was a very risque comedy, totally irreverent, making fun of actions taking place during the Korean War.
The movie had little to do about the 1950 police action in Korea. It was more about the nascent anti-war attitude during the height of the Viet Nam era. There were several things disturbing about the plot- it made fun of suicide, presumed that all married military personnel were playfully cheating on their spouses back home and that all soldiers were against the war. The actors seemed to have haircuts that were more popular after the 1964 Beatles Invasion than the 1950’s crew cuts they should have worn. The dialogue was more late 1960’s than Eisenhower era. It was a distorted political statement. And it helped turn me off to the anti-war cause. Yet, I went through the 1970’s with a “can’t we all get along” attitude mostly because I was hoping to butter up the “man†or basically get on somebody’s good side who would help improve my economic condition.
It wasn’t until the 1980’s that the conservative approach to politics appealed. When Ronald Reagan ascended to his Presidency I finally felt that the voice of reason and a pragmatic approach to an American lifestyle would finally direct the nation back to our collective senses.
The schism that divides America has always been there. Hey, we even had a civil war, remember? So, why is everyone so worked up about trying to get us all to agree? I kind of like the balance of power. I just don’t like paying taxes at the Federal, State and Local levels.
Everyone hates America but everyone wants to live here. I like things the way they are but also like new ideas if they make sense. I’m a bleeding heart conservative who sides with the underdog.
Hey, if I make sense then give me the change.