Remember when

I needed those, no lie. And I had to roll up the cuffs to allow for growth, with high hopes they'd last long enough.
But I wore out the toes out of my boots far faster than trouser knees! ??? I remember more than one shoe salesman telling my mom "he'll out-grow these before he can wear them out". About a month later we were back... (looking for the same size though)

 

Remember hunting for the perfect "Y" branch, then finding one, and making your own slingshot? Such pride beamed when a soda can went DOWN! (or critter)
But even the best of those got tossed into the toy box once you could afford a WristRocket! Now that was the talk-o-the-town!

 

Uphill, in the snow, both ways?

 

Nope, just a 6 year old going across the road, down the bike path, across the street without worry of someone freaking out or causing problems.

 

Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology to make the worlds first bionic man. …….. or something like that, as I recall the intro to the TV show.

Steve Austin AKA the “Six Million Dollar man”, was played by Lee Majors. Santa Claus brought me this somewhere back around 1975. Every boy just had to have one of these.

 

You can still find those in the Everett Boeing factory. Slightly modified though.

 

Had one.

 

I remember when they invented the G.I. Joe doll. I never had one as a child because my parents thought that eight year old boys should not play with dolls..

They bought me a BB gun and a telescope and a microscope and a transistor radio, a Hang Ten skateboard. Chrome cowboy cap guns with a fake leather holster and little stars. A like-new Schwinn tornado bicycle from the local thrift store. A chemistry set that had a little plastic volcano that you could shoot at your sister.

 

That is pretty awesome dude.

My dad went in ‘64 and he brought me a reversible jacket with a black velvet embroidered with a dragon on one side & a map of Vietnam on the other.

At some point my mom tossed it out because it was too small for me. It would be worth some money today as a souvenir

 

my catholic school teacher duct taped me too my chair in 3rd grade, my add ass wouldn't stop getting up

 

So…. You were spoiled?

 

Going to a country school with more than one grade in the same classroom.

For me it was fifth grade, and a lovely lady with a huge Buick convertible. The Electra 225! She taught 3rd, 4th, & 5th in one room of a wooden schoolhouse outside Gloversville NY, Right on the edge of Appalachia basically.

I was the year my dad went to Vietnam.
This is pretty freaky because it was in 1964. Where school kids now go door-to-door selling chocolate, we went door-to-door selling toothbrushes.

We made some money for a class trip, and she took all three grades, which amounted to 21 students as I recall, to a real sit down restaurant with a banquet hall, cloth napkins and fancy furniture.

These kids were all poorer than we were, and we 4 were living on the salary of an Air Force tech sergeant.

I’m sure she dug pretty deep into her pocket to pay for that meal, because we sure didn’t sell very many toothbrushes.

This was the best lesson in table manners & etiquette we all had ever had, but it was far from the most memorable part for me.

I was the top student on the final exam, and I got to ride in the convertible. My dad drove an International Scout*** with no upholstery inside. I’d never been in a car like that.

***this one

 

I remember taking my two year-old daughter to a fancy restaurant in San Francisco and she would not stay down in the high chair. It was lovely and expensive, and right on the end of Pier 39, where you can see Alcatraz out the 8’ tall windows.

I untied the laces from her shoes and tied them to the chair. She didn’t get mad because she was so confounded that it didn’t work anymore for some reason.

Eventually the food came & she calmed down.

 

I remember many jackets like that, though most were satin (or silk), not too many velvet. But that may be because of later years. '64 is early (not the beginning, but closer).
I brought back some paintings that are on velvet (instead of canvas) so it was there. Attached is one of fishing in the Mekong (1972).


edit: damn that flash is bright.

 

Absolutely, from day one.

I was the first child, and only son, and the only boy to be born on my mother’s side of the family in 75 years.

So although we were not well to do, I was celebrated so much. My mom probably gave up her cigarette budget for a whole week to buy me that skateboard. I don’t remember ever thinking that my parents did not love me enough.

when dad came back from Vietnam he also bought me a BB pistol and a expensive Sheridan pellet rifle, and took me out in the desert to teach me how to shoot.

It was his third experience going to war, and although the second one was just the Cold War, 42 guys in his unit went down and died in the ocean.

I don’t know what he spent for those guns but I truly never appreciated it at the time. Anyhow he surely figured that I would be going to war sometime in my life too, and I’d better know how to shoot.

For a 67-year-old guy, I am a crack shot at 200 yards with a Savage varminter.

But I missed Vietnam completely and I was too old by the time the Desert Wars started. I was never called upon to serve and I thank God for that every day.

 

Mine was silver-blue satin on one side and black velvet on the other.

 

I had a Scout!

 

Dad’s has had a possum living under the hood for quite a number of years and the engine is frozen. But it will run again, because the engine (big 4) should be rebuildable, and I have a running engine (small turbo-4) for it as well.

The engine bay was filled with leaves to the very top when I opened the hood, and it was packed all the way down to the skid plates.


You can see that there is some corrosion. Evidently he didn’t like the smell of the brake fluid and he made that fender well a possum toilet.

 

867-5309

There.