Yikes, I almost forgot... Before the wife and myself slip off for our anniversary getaway, I want to share this week's Blogging Boomer's Carnival #69 with you. It's over at Contemporary Retirement, and it's good stuff! Go see for yourself...

My beautiful bride and myself have been united in marriage for twenty-five years. To celebrate this momentous event, I Remember JFK, as well as a whole bunch of my other projects, will be on hiatus for a week or so while we escape for a bit. We'll be back from our sunny Florida getaway with new Boomer memories soon. I'll see you then!

In the summer of 1967, we traveled to Montreal to see Expo 67. On the way back, I got to see some pretty amazing stuff, including Niagara Falls, the Great Smokeys, and about a million painted barns and roadside signs imploring me to See Rock City. Well, guess what. It worked. My father was relentlessly hammered by me to take us to Rock City. He continued to be pelted with requests until he finally relented, and our big Plymouth was aimed at Chattanooga, TN. As we drew closer to the eastern Tennessee burg, the signs got more numerous. By the time we arrived at Lookout Mountain, I was ravenously ready to See Rock City! As hungry as I was to check it out, I really don't recall too much of the actual experience. I remember standing at a high point where I could See Seven States, and a big balanced rock. That's about it, really. But I remember that it was a very, very fun day, and even my staid parents seemed to enjoy it. Rock City was founded by a man named Garnet Carter. The area atop Lookout Mountain had long been known to locals as "Rock City" because of unusual rock formations that formed "streets." Evidently, Native Americans had long earlier enhanced natural formations to create them. Carter obtained the land, then began making plans to build a residential neighborhood called Fairyland, as well as a golf course. The golf course was a bit too ambitious, so Carter instead built the world's first miniature golf course. His plans for Fairyland, which would be modeled after Imaginary European cities, also proved impractical. In the meantime, he and his wife had built winding paths around the massive rock formations and also planted wildflower gardens. They had sunk a lot of money into Rock City. Now what? Carter realized that the public would pay a modest fee to experience the immaculate botanical garden that he and his wife had created. So in 1932, in the height of the Depression, Frieda's Rock City Gardens opened to the public. Carter knew that it would take advertising to get the public to show up. But times were hard. He really didn't want to shell out bucks to newspapers that would be read today, forgotten tomorrow. So he enlisted the help of a sign painter named Clark Byers. He hired Byers to travel the nation's highways and offer to paint farmers' barns in exchange for letting them paint three simple words: See Rock City. Many a farmer took Byers up on his offer, and the painter would make certain that whatever side of the barn was best exposed to the (always) nearby highway would be brightly and boldly emblazoned with the words "Rock City" and as much of a sales pitch as he could finagle from the farmer. As the painted barns multiplied, so did the crowds. By by 1940, Rock City barns were spotted as far away as Michigan and Texas. And the crowds kept coming. Rock City was known as a honeymooner's retreat. It was also a great place to take the kids. National media writeups added to the success. Carter and Frieda's dream of a European-styled neighborhood never came true (and the world's first miniature golf course didn't last too long either, although the Tom Thumb Golf chain that it became certainly has), but untold numbers of kids across all generations, including Boomers, have fond memories of making the long climb to the top of Lookout Mountain and checking out what Rock City has to offer. The numbers of the painted barns have dwindled, but Rock City continues to thrive today, still owned by the Carter family. It's nice when some things DON'T change.

Yikes, I almost forgot! This week's tasty selection of the Blogging Boomers carnival is located over at The Boomer Chronicles. It covers the gamut from history to relationships to retirement to middle-age-spread to floral prints. That's pretty typical, really. ;-) Go have a look!.

I was a kid who was whisked down Interstate highways at 75 MPH. Billboards had to be huge in order to be noticed. But my older brothers were able to experience a more relaxed and charming way of travel: Being driven down two-lane motorways that passed through rolling countryside that included one of America's most beloved forms of advertising: Burma-Shave signs. Burma-Shave got its start back in 1925. The Burma-Vita company made a smelly liniment designed to aid the sore and sick. It sold modestly well, but the company directors concluded that making a product that you didn't have to be in a bad fix to use might be a good move, business-wise. So they released Burma-Shave that year, with the radical concept that you didn't need a brush to create shaving cream in a cup any more, you could just open a jar of Burma-Shave. It was a good product, but suffered from ineffective advertising. Allan Odell pitched a unique sales idea to his father, the owner of the company. He had noticed signs along the road while he was out trying to sell his father's products. So use small, wooden roadside signs to pitch Burma-Shave. Dad wasn't wild about the idea but eventually gave Allan $200 to give it a try. Allan picked a couple of busy roads near Minneapolis and put up a dozen sets of signs in series, so that you had to read them all to get the whole message. The format would ensure interest from drivers and their passengers, he hoped. He was right. Drug stores in the Minneapolis area began calling in orders for Burma-Shave. The company, which had nearly gone under, was reborn. A sign service was hired in 1926, and Burma-Shave slogans began springing up alongside roads all over the US. Our parents grew up reading Burma-Shave signs, and so did the elder members of the Boomer generation. They were good stuff. Here are a few examples from Wikipedia:

The monkey took / one look at Jim / and threw the peanuts / back at him / he needed / Burma-Shave Listen birds / these signs cost money / so roost awhile / but don't get funny / Burma-Shave If you don't know / whose signs these are / You haven't driven / very far (No final "Burma-Shave" sign) Round the corner / lickety split / beautiful car / wasn't it! / Burma Shave That big blue tube / is like Louise / it gives a thrill / with every squeeze / Burma-Shave If harmony / is what you crave / get a tuba / Burma-Shave

They once posted a slogan meant to be a gag that implied that if anyone brought or shipped a fender to the Minneapolis headquarters, they would get a free jar. Well, needless to say, they were inundated with fenders from genuine and toy cars. And every person who held up their end of the bargain got a free jar of Burma-Shave. As Interstate highways began opening up in the late 50's, the Burma-Shave concept of a series of six small signs stopped being effective. Sales slumped, and the Burma-Shave brand name was sold to the Philip Morris company in 1963. The new owners immediately ordered the removal of any remaining Burma-Shave signs. That's why I personally don't remember ever seeing any of the genuine article. But Burma-Shave was a treasured memory of many of the more senior members of our generation. It was also a symbol of how the old would have to make way for the new as times changed and got faster. For better or worse, that sums up the years we grew up in.

Ah, the services that we grew up with we took for granted would always exist. The guy at the gas station would always be willing to throw in some nice freebie just so we would continue to buy his fuel. Your favorite AM station would continue to blast great rock and roll music across the country after dark. And you could always duck into a phone booth to make a call insulated from the elements and noise of the street. Individual telephone booths still exist, but the ones that do have been in place for many years. As they decay, they are being removed, to be replaced by small standalone kiosk phones, or perhaps not being replaced at all. After all, we all carry cell phones nowadays, don't we? Telephone booths first began showing up in American city street corners late in the 19th century. Besides providing a nice shelter for making a call, they also isolated the user and the outside world from each other, necessary for the welfare of both. The noise outside was a distraction for the caller, but he/she also had to practically shout into the phone to get their lossy signal to the other end at a volume discernible to the callee. Phone companies were making good money from phone booth customers, so they began proliferating all over the country. By the 60's, a phone booth could be seen at practically any corner grocery, gas station, or supermarket, as well as many busy street intersections. It seemed that you were never more than a few hundred feet away from a phone booth. It became a part of American culture. We all know where Superman preferred to change his wardrobe. Phone booths became familiar places for plot twists and high drama in movies and television shows. And of course, the opening scene of Get Smart would feature Don Adams disappearing in a phone booth in order to get into CONTROL headquarters. Plus, college students of the 50's delighted in seeing just how many individuals that could be stuffed into them at one time. But we Boomers used them for their actual purpose, as well. I made hundreds of phone calls from booths. Many times, it was for the purpose of getting a little privacy (as in a homebound teenager calling a young lady ;-). But when you were away from home in the 60's and 70's, making a phone call meant finding a phone booth. You simply didn't have any other options. The numbers of phone booths in the US peaked in the late 60's. They were expensive, and also not very accessible to the handicapped. Their days were clearly numbered. Free-standing telephone pedestals would usually replace phone booths that had become decrepit, as they were wont to do. Indeed, phone booths were often pretty disgusting places to be. Grime and trash would build up in their confines, and who had the job of keeping them clean? Nobody, that I can recall, except perhaps nearby business owners. But quite as few phone booths persist. This Washington Post article tells the account of one such survivor. Perhaps you have one somewhere close to where you live. If so, slip inside, drop a quarter into the slot, and make a call for old time's sake. Who knows, for just a moment, you might be able to take a little trip in time back to when gas was cheap, Sullivan was on Sunday nights, and JFK's death was still recent enough to hurt. Pretty good investment of 25 cents, wouldn't you say?

I grew up in a two-income household long before it was fashionable. My father owned a truck garage in Miami, Oklahoma, and my mom was a first-grade teacher. That meant times were busy around my house, and a kid frequently was expected to fend for himself, lunch-wise. No problem. The good folks at Campbell's Soup took care of that. A good-faith estimate is that I have eaten 3,744 cans of Campbell's Soup over the years. That's averaging about a can and a half per week. If anything, that figure is low. In fact, in my cubicle at work, I have four cans of Chunky stashed away (along with fat-free saltines, of course, more on that later) for those days when I really don't want to go out and blow ten bucks on lunch. Making Campbell's vegetable soup (my childhood favorite, LOVED those alphabet characters!) was a snap for a seven-year-old. Just open the can, mix up a can of water, and heat until just hot enough. Mmm, mmm, good! Campbell's Soup got its start back in 1894. A man named John Dorrance was hired by his uncle, the company president (then Anderson & Campbell Preserve Company), for a salary of $7.50 a week. While that may have been good pay for a laborer, Dorrance had a chemistry degree from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of Gottengen in Germany. But he took the meager wages in order to work for his uncle. It turned out to be a very good move for the Campbell's company. Canned soup was very popular in Europe, as the younger Dorrance was aware. And it was inexpensive to manufacture. However, it was mostly water, and therefore expensive to ship. So Dorrance set to work to see about removing some of that weight. He eventually developed a technique to remove half of the water, lightening the canned soup's weight considerable, and making its preparation a simple matter of pouring the can into a pan and adding one more can of water. Suddenly, sales of soup to Americans was feasible. And as Campbell's began marketing it, sales skyrocketed. At ten cents a can, consumers loved it. By 1922 Campbell's added the word "Soup" to their name. And hopefully, Dorrance received lots of very nice raises. So kids of many generations grew up with the tasty stuff. By the Jet Age, parents on the go loved quick, easy lunches that their kids willingly devoured. And tons of TV and magazine advertising ensured that every cupboard in America was supplied with a generous amount of Campbell's Vegetable, Chicken Noodle, and Tomato Soups. At least ours was. Pop artist extraordinaire Andy Warhol saw that Campbell's Soup had become a part of American culture, so he began producing paintings that incorporated it. And they, like campbell's Soup itself, were also huge sellers. Campbell's Soup was simply something that I never got tired of. As I grew older, I learned to spice it up a bit. A little hot sauce goes a long way towards waking up subtle flavors in chicken noodle and tomato soup. And a pinch of curry powder is great in the chicken noodle variety as well. Then there are the crackers. I'm a cracker smasher, I'm a bit abashed to say. My idea of a perfect serving of Campbell's Vegetable Beef is to heat it to near boiling, then pour it in a bowl big enough for the entire amount (or simply eat it out of the pot if I'm sitting in front of my home computer) and crush an entire sleeve of fat-free Premium Saltines into the hot mixture, then stir to form a cracker/soup colloid, of sorts. Strange, I know, but you know what? It's mmm, mmm, good!

Blogging Boomers Carnival is hot, it's sexy, and it's dead. Okay, I stole that from a Rolling Stone cover article about Jim Morrison about 1981. The Blogging Boomers carnival is all that, except that it's very much alive, as opposed to the lamented Lizard King. Go check it out at Don't Gel Too Soon!

"J E L L O!" the letters, sung to a rising scale, were a frequent childhood memory for me from TV commercials. Indeed, we were big Jell-O fans in the Enderland house in the 60's. Mom loved it because it was inexpensive and simple to make. Dad loved it because it was easy for a dentures-wearer to consume. And I loved it because of that chewy, rubbery layer that would form at the bottom of the casserole tray that mom would typically pour the hot mixture into before popping it into the fridge, or icebox as we called it back then. Of course, it would always be cherry Jell-O, with banana slices added. I must have eaten two or three hundred pounds of the stuff as I grew up in the 60's. Another variant that mom would create was orange Jell-O with a can of fruit cocktail thrown in. Good stuff. We inhaled lots of the sweet gelatinous substance despite rumors going around school as to its source: cow hooves. I would roll my eyes at such allegations. How could something so sweet and irresistible come from such a disgusting source? I mean, sure, we had heard that Elmer's glue was a product of horse hooves, but that only made sense. After all, it was not something you would eat (although a kid or two in grade school did try it, as I recall). But delicious Jell-O must surely have originated from a formula with nothing more sinister than lots of sugar, syrup and the like. Jell-O first appeared in 1895, when a fellow who manufactured patent medicine who had the rather unlikely name of Pearl B. Wait purchased the patent for the gelatinous dessert from industrialist Peter Cooper. Wait and his wife didn't have much luck selling Jell-O, so they sold the rights to entrepreneur and high school dropout Frank Woodward. Woodward was within inches of selling the rights to the poor-selling product to his plant superintendent for 35 bucks when the product suddenly took off. Sales rose steadily, as Jell-O became viewed as a sophisticated dessert for the beautiful people. Eventually, the company that made Jell-O became food mega giant General Foods. By the 70's, Bill Cosby became a spokesman for Jell-O products and kept that position for thirty years. Other gelatin manufacturers would try to compete with Jell-O, but the only one that I remember was called Mr, Wiggles or something like that. Jell-O has managed to thoroughly dominate a market without having its extremely familiar brand name (99% of Americans are familiar with it) turn into a generic term, as happened with Aspirin, for example. You either loved or hated the rubbery layer that would form at the bottom of the container. My wife couldn't stand it. I thought it was the creme de la creme. Oh well, she won't eat raw oysters either. Of course, nowadays we know that gelatin does indeed come from repellent sources, including cowhides, pig skin, and bones. But, we simply put it out of our minds as we enjoy a parfait, a Jell-O shot, or simply a casserole full of the cherry-flavored variant with banana slices thrown in for good measure, just like mom used to make. Oh,and a BIG thanks to Mr Toast for the great graphic of Jell-O boxes from the 60's!

Our Boomer childhoods were quite well recorded when compared with those of our moms and dads. Growing up in the Depression, when you could either eat or take pictures, but not both, ensured that few photographs of our parents as cute kids would exist. And movies were simply unheard of. But in the boom years after WWII, our parents could afford nice gadgets like they would never have dreamed of owning in their youth. And they were also very proud of their kids. So many of us were immortalized on 8mm film in our childhoods. My father didn't have a movie camera. But I had an uncle who had one, and I'm reasonably sure that he shot movies of me. It would be a thrill to see them, but I probably never will. My wife's parents had a movie camera as well, and also have movies of her running around as a toddler. She was a real cutie, BTW. ;-) They also have footage of the 1964 Winter Olympics. Cool stuff. 8mm film can trace its origin to 1932. Eastman Kodak released a movie system that used a 25 foot 16mm film roll. The film was exposed, then turned over and exposed again. When processed, it was split lengthwise to produce a 50 foot 8mm movie. By 1965, the venerable 8mm format received a major overhaul with the development of Kodak's Super 8 system. The sprocket holes were shrunk, providing 50% more frame size. Plus, Super 8 cameras had a built-in filter that allowed you to use one type of film for both indoor and outdoor movies. Previously, you had to buy daylight- or tungsten-balanced film to get the right colors. Another innovation of most Super 8 cameras was a light meter. Amateur moviemakers now had a much better chance to create a perfectly-exposed film. Oh, and Super 8 was now one continuous 8 mm roll of film. No more turning a cartridge over and shooting the other half of your movie. The mid 60's to the early 70's was home movies' heyday. Super 8 sold like hotcakes, and Boomer kids all over the country were being filmed in massive numbers. That meant that many of us also grew up with the rest of the home movie equation: a noisy projector and a screen to present the fruition of our fathers' cinematic efforts. One of the first things we learned was how HOT that projector bulb would get! We would generally only touch the metal enclosure only ONCE. And of course, having company over meant getting everything out and forcing them to watch our movies, which we assumed was as much fun for them as it was for us. Of course, the invention and eventual affordable price of the videotape recorder caused Super 8's popularity to decline. This is particularly ironic considering that a Kodachrome movie of the 60's that has been kept in moderate conditions is likely in pristine condition. However, twenty-year-old videotapes are frequently unwatchable due to tape deterioration. If you have videotapes you want preserved, you'd better get them digitized quickly. 8mm and Super 8 moviemaking has made a nice comeback, with vintage cameras in good condition available for reasonable prices on eBay and would-be cinematographers using the still widely obtainable film to make movies that have a lot of charm that digital recording lacks. However, we kids of the Boomer generation can remember when home movies were cutting-edge technology, and how vacations were frequently accompanied by the familiar whir of a camera recording our fun times.

One of the things that I have to do when I write an article is obtain graphics. I try to use public domain images whenever possible. But sometimes, an individual will have the PERFECT image on their website. That means asking that particular site owner nicely if I may use an image. I'm scratching my bald head nowadays. The last couple of requests that I have made have netted me negative responses due to the fact that I appear to be making money off of I Remember JFK. Well, yes, I am making a little bit of cash from this site. But I work a 40-hour per week job as a geek, and also provide editorial content for FamilyFirst. And I host sites for others, and write other blogs as well. I probably work a 50-60 hour week at the age of 48. So I'm going to refer potential contributors of images to this article in the future. I don't apologize for making a few bucks from text-based advertising here. The sites that I visit most often have a heck of a lot more advertising than I do. If you object to the little bit of income that I get here (which doesn't even cover my server hosting fees, BTW), then my apologies for asking to use one of your images, which are free for the stealing for the less principled. The internet is a wonderful place full of information. That doesn't necessarily mean that anyone who actually manages to make a buck or two here is out of line for asking politely to use the intellectual property of others. Sorry for the rant, friends. A new memory will post Friday.

CBS faced a dilemma in 1971. Sure, they were the top-rated network. Sure, they were making untold millions in advertising revenue. But their audience was old enough to remember WWII, many even recalling the hard times of the Great Depression. CBS execs would have preferred a younger demographic. So they did what any clueless bunch of corporate clods would do: they unceremoniously dumped a batch of well-performing shows because their audience was too old. The victims of what became known as "the rural purge" included The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Sullivan, and a relative newcomer called Hee-Haw. Hee-Haw was a variety show that had a distinct country flavor. Hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark at the peak of their popularity in 1969, it was kind of like Laugh-In set in a cornfield. It was also a hit. But, of course, seeing how the target audience wasn't precisely 24.879 years old, the show had to go. But Hee-Haw's producers felt like they had a winner, and offered the intact show to any stations that would like to syndicate it. The result was phenomenal. Not only was it grabbed up by stations all over the country (including decidedly non-rural L.A. and New York City), but it remained on the air for another 22 years. Not bad fora show deemed by CBS to be not worth keeping. Hee-Haw was a montage of acts that became very memorable to its fans. Some people became fans despite themselves, sneering at a corny, countrified variety show until they saw enough episodes to get hooked themselves. A group that never lost their animosity was the critics as a whole. They didn't like the clean, simple humor. They didn't like the the country music, which was years from being popularly embraced itself. And, horror of horrors, the Politically Correct among them decried the perpetuations of stereotypes. Oh well, we simple, homespun, unsophisticated fans all over the country tuned in anyway. Among the acts that we came to know like a a comfortable old pair of shoes was KORN News (performed by Canadian Don Harron as Charlie Farquharson); Pickin' and Grinnin'; Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me; The Fence (somebody would tell a bad joke and get smacked in the wazoo by the fence); Hey Grandpa! What's for supper? (Grandpa Jones would then recite a short poem describing a calorie-loaded Southern dinner); and, of course, my favorite: Samples Sales. Samples was a former stock car driver who garnered a novelty hit in 1966 at the age of forty by telling a story about a really, really big fish. A local Georgia celebrity, he was added to the cast and his bumbling misdelivery of lines became an audience favorite years before Andy Kauffman. One I recall was when he asked Buck Owens "How come some women are called amazin'?" Buck's reply, delivered through unsuccessfully stifled laughter was "That's because so many of them are named Gracie! You know, (singing) Amazin' Gracie, how sweet thou art . . ." Samples was supposed to say "Amazon," not "amazin'." The beautiful Hee-Haw gals added to the festivities, including Barbi Benton, Misty Rowe, Lisa Todd, Gunilla Hutton, and many others. In addition, Grand Ole Opry queen Minnie Pearle, comedienne Roni Stoneman (who frequently played a nagging wife), and telephone-operator-gogo-dancer-turned-comedienne Lulu Roman rounded out the female cast. And let's not forget Stringbean, whose life took a tragic twist. One of his gigs was playing a scarecrow with a cawing crow on his shoulder in the Cornfield segment. After his death, the now silent crow remained as a memorial. The show probably stayed on too long. Many of the original female leads had to deal with aging issues after twenty years. So did the males, for that matter. Plus, Buck Owens, half of the starring cast, split in 1986. A disastrous attempt to reinvent the show as more appealing to younger audiences was made late in the game. It didn't go over well, particularly with long-term fans. But when a Boomer pours himself a good glass of bourbon and puts his feet up and recalls pleasant memories of the past, one of them is surely Hee-Haw, even if he once watched it from a Brooklyn tenement.

We Boomer kids were used to seeing "Made in Japan" on the bottoms of our various toys. Japan was the cheap place to make everything back in the 50's and 60's. But we were also used to seeing "Made in England" on one of our most beloved playthings: Matchbox miniatures. It all began with a couple of unrelated Brits by the name of Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith on January 19, 1947. They founded Lesney Products in London, and began producing die-cast steel stuff. By the end of the year, the stuff included toys. British kids grabbed them up from local stores as fast as Lesney could make them, so they kept it up. By 1953, Lesney realized that they could make a very nice living concentrating on toys exclusively, and began looking at new product lines. Partner Jack Odell had a daughter whose school would allow kids to bring toys with the restriction that they be able to fit into a matchbox. So he took an existing Lesney toy, a green and red road roller, and miniaturized it so that it would be school-legal. Lesney decided to sell the miniature vehicle in a replica matchbox. Thus was born a Boomer memory. More models followed, and they were soon designated as the I-75 series. The implications were obvious: ALL must be collected! While some kids with generous parents were able to accomplish that, most of us had to merely settle for as many Matchbox cars as we could cajole from mom and dad. Matchbox miniatures had no rhyme or reason as far as scale was concerned. They were all roughly the same size, whether a VW Bug or a dump truck. This caused derisive comments by some collectors who insisted on a particular scale. Whatever. The world in general didn't care, and sales skyrocketed. Kids loved the sturdy, detailed vehicles. While they were pricey compared to lower-quality toys, they were faithfully manufactured as authentic miniaturized versions of their bigger cousins, even original blueprints being used in many cases to get everything just right. As the 50's transformed into the 60's, miniaturized cars were very, very hot. Two other British companies, Corgi and Dinky, got in on the act with their own accurately scaled, larger incarnations, and everybody sold lots and lots of cars, both in England and all over the rest of the world, particularly the USA. Matchbox created other series, including airplanes, ships, and car/trailer combos. In 1968. Mattel turned up the heat with the introduction of Hot Wheels. Suddenly Matchbox had a real rival. Hot Wheels were built with speed in mind. They had those cool spring-loaded wheels, too. Matchbox soon responded with their own Superfast series, and practically every American middle-class boy had either Matchbox, Hot Wheels, or both brands of cars in their bedrooms. Matchbox cars seemed to appeal to more serious kids who appreciated their accuracy. Hot Wheels were more for us happy-go-lucky types. Some would take the rivalry so far as to shun one brand or another, but not me. I loved them all. The bad economic air of the 70's doomed Lesney, as it did so many other successful companies who couldn't cope with the tight times. In 1982, they went into receivership, and the Matchbox brand name was sold for the first time. By 1992, rival Mattel owned Matchbox. This distressed collectors, who feared that the line would either disappear or become Hot Wheels clones. But Mattel has for the most part kept Matchbox a more serious, accurate line of miniatures. Of course, they're no longer made in England. However, they are still around, unlike many of our treasured toys that we grew up with. And they still exist pretty much as we remember them. In fact, many of us middle-aged businessmen have a few kicking around our offices or cubicles as stress relief. Sometimes, a brief trip down memory lane with a toy is what it takes to deal with corporate stupidity.

Rock and roll music. Television. These two very potent forces of the 50's combined to create a juggernaut of a television series that possibly every single Boomer watched at least once. It was a regular Saturday afternoon ritual for me in the early 70's, until I became observant enough to note that many of the artists were lip-syncing. By then, the Midnight Special was on, and that's where I got my fix of genuine live music at the much cooler time of late Friday nights. But that doesn't mean that AB was a bad show. On the contrary, the fact that it began as a Philadelphia local in 1952 that soon became a national staple that ran until 1989 shows that there was something very, very special about American Bandstand. It all began with Philadelphia station WFIL on October 7, 1952. At first, host Bob Horn showed music videos. Is that visionary or what? Of course, the music wasn't rock and roll. That's because the show actually predates the craze. Soon, though, the TV show began playing hit records as kids danced to them, imitating a local popular radio show. The format clicked, and Bob Horn's Bandstand (as it was initially known) became a smash local hit with the schoolkids who hurried home to watch it, excellently portrayed in the overlooked NBC series American Dreams. Horn hosted the show until 1956, when a very public drunk-driving arrest got him kicked off the show. He was replaced by an answer to a trivia question named Tony Mammarella for a bit, then Dick Clark took over the reins. Besides possessing a personality that clicked with the kids, Dick was smart enough to stay sober behind the wheel. The result was the creation of two icons: Clark himself, and American Bandstand. After Clark had hosted for a year, ABC finally relented from a hard-sell campaign and began broadcasting the show. That's when "American" was added to its name. It kept its after-school daily time slot, and a Saturday night version was added in 1958. Bandstand began as a Philadelphia experience, and remained so until 1964, when it moved to LA. The regulars became as known to TV viewers as their own school friends. A kid could spot and imitate the dance styles of, say, Kenny and Arlene, or Bunny and Kelly. Kids in Philly could even line up at the studio in hopes of being selected to dance among the regulars. It was a tight ship, too. Girls weren't allowed to wear slacks or tight sweaters and the boys had to wear a coat and tie. Nasty vices like smoking and chewing gum weren't allowed. The 1964 LA move put an end to the hominess of the original show. However, its popularity continued to soar as a national institution. Another big change in the ABC show took place a couple of months before JFK was killed in 1963. The daily format was scrapped in favor of a single weekly show that was aired at noon in my area. And it made the jump from black and white to color in the fall of 1967. Regular features included Rate-a-Record, where three kids would hear a new release and give it a grade from 35 to 98. Live acts began appearing after the move to ABC, and in fact many stars received their first national exposure on the show. Thus did America learn about Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many others. The show finally ran out of gas years after I quit watching. Its final episode, by then in a syndicated format, took place in 1989. Clark has toyed with the idea of reviving it, but has yet to actually do so. He's a busy guy these days with So You Think You Can Dance, which reminds Bandstand viewers of their national dance contests. So whether AB was an after-school memory for you, or, like me, a Saturday afternoon experience, this one's for you. I hope you give it a good rating!

When television was in its infancy, it may well have foundered if not for the influx of advertising dollars from tobacco companies. Thus, many early shows featured cigarette brands as part of their names. As television got bigger and bigger, the concept of a single sponsor for shows waned. This didn't bother tobacco companies in the least. They simply swamped the airwaves with commercials. Thus, we Boomer kids grew up with a steady diet of catchy ads designed to put into our minds the desire to someday smoke cigarettes, just like the grownups. The ads were quite insidious. I remember the whistled "I'd walk a mile for a Camel", Lark's charcoal filter, The Marlboro song (which I later learned was actually the theme from The Magnificent Seven), the fact that you can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem, and many, many more. During the early 90's, there was a firestorm of controversy over the Joe Camel figure encouraging kids to smoke. Cigarette ads aired during the 50's and 60's weren't really aimed at us, as I recall, but they were incredibly effective nonetheless. Why? Because smoking was absolutely, positively COOL. It was something that adults did, and what kid didn't want to be a grown-up? During the 60's, ads were broadcast that WERE aimed at kids, showing the bad side of smoking. One that was repeated for years was this one, known as the "like father, like son" ad. This one, as well as many more anti-smoking spots, did serve as a discouragement to me, so that by the time I made it to high school, I viewed the gang who smoked out behind the shop as decidedly UNcool. The generation of Boomer kids who grew up in the 50's weren't so fortunate. What they saw were irresistible ads that made no mention of any disadvantages of having a cigarette blasting smoke into the deepest recesses of one's lungs. Thus, many, many of those old enough to be concerned with the draft were hooked. Of course, it wasn't just television. Radio ads extolled the benefits of one brand over another, and big, colorful magazines of the 60's were loaded with full-page ads. Thus, talk among kids of the neighborhood gang was of smoking, and how we could actually score a pack for ourselves. I display the Benson and Hedges ad because one day a bunch of us decided to give smoking a try, and the extra-long cigarettes seemed like the best bang for the buck. It felt extremely cool, to be sure, but when the pack was gone, I don't recall any of us tempted to try it again. The last cigarette ads aired on TV and radio on January 1, 1971. As I recall, practically EVERY ad was for cigarettes that day. Thus, my own children weren't exposed to grammatically-challenged spots like "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" or "Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch." Indeed, even magazine advertising has been severely clipped since then, and long-standing traditions like NASCAR's Winston Cup have been forced to choose another sponsor. Ads for cigarettes are rare nowadays. And even though I thoroughly despise the concept of political correctness, I have no regrets that this particular Boomer memory is now considered heinous by the Well-Informed. I had enough headaches raising my kids without the idiot box convincing them that smoking was cool. For lots more info on old cigarette ads on TV, check out http://www.tvparty.com/vaultcomcig.html