LIFE IN THE SIXTIES
Humorous and entertaining stories about growing up in the sixties. Also advice and tips on pretty much everything. Movie and Music reviews. See http://lifeinthesixties.googlepages.com/ for more cool stuff.
THE 1964 NORTHWOOD SCHOOL FAIR
By the summer of 1964 I had stretched out my adolescence to the breaking point. The following summer would find me working in a warehouse in downtown Baltimore, the summer after that, boot camp in Fort Gordon, Georgia, the next summer, Long Binh, Vietnam.
Many events and adventures with the gang were yet to come, but the summer of '64 was the time when most of us bid our youth a fond farewell. Thankfully it was a great summer, maybe the best of my younger years, and it began, as every summer did, with the Northwood School fair.
The Northwood School fair was the event that marked the official beginning of summer vacation. Our school semester ended the third week in June. The school fair was always the last Saturday of that month. The contingency plan was to have it the first Saturday in July if there was a rainout, but, to my recollection, that never happened. That Saturday was always a beautiful early summer day.
The fair was held mostly outside (the candy and plant sales were indoors) at the rear of the school.
I guess you could say it was sort of a combination flea market/amusement park. Tables were set up around the school's perimeter for selling contributed items like clothes, tools, and even records. There were also stands selling hot dogs, sodas, snowballs, and cotton candy. There were pony rides and various beanbag tossing games.
The fair opened at 9 AM, but my brother and I would get there early to help a friend's mom set up the tables. After that, we were on our own. The gang would start showing up one or two at a time during the morning hours until all were present and accounted for.
Let me say right now that it was never our intent to create mischief at the fair. We started the day in a courteous and polite fashion. But by early afternoon, after checking out all the tables, playing most of the games, and eating a couple dozen 25 cent hot dogs, we were getting restless.
Sitting on the crest of a grassy hill, watching all the action, some of us noticed a child open a rear door to the school before being scolded by his mother.
The gang happened to know that door was always locked because we had often tried to enter it on weekends. We simultaneously looked at each other with the same thought in our heads; a hangout.
We raced down the incline and into the door. We found ourselves on the first floor of a stairwell. For a while, we were content to lounge around on the steps, listening to the commotion outside. But soon we tired of sitting and talking and decided to explore a bit.
At the top of the stairs was another door. It too was unlocked and, to our amazement, opened up into the school gym.
We couldn't believe our luck. What started out started out as a somewhat forgettable stairwell adventure had now suddenly developed into much more.
The gym had ropes hanging from the ceiling and tied down to the walls. An assortment of balls littered the floor from small dodge balls to huge medicine balls. A large piano occupied one corner of the facility.
I'm not sure to this day the purpose of a piano in a gym. It was an elementary school so maybe the kids climbed ropes to Beethoven or Mozart. At the time nobody paid it much mind. The ropes held most of our attention.
Once untied, we began to swing around the room with wild abandon. It was such a unique thrill to have a fully functional gymnasium to ourselves that one of us went outside to spread the word.
Soon the gym was filled with young guys taking advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity. All the ropes were being used by at least one boy. Some had two or three hanging from them. Balls of all sizes flew about the room, some aimed at the swingers, others at the walls and ceiling.
At some point it was decided that the piano would make a good launching pad for the ropes. It was rolled out to the center of the gym and while one talented young man played a medley of Jerry Lee Lewis standards, others jumped off its surface, swinging out on their improvised Tarzan swings.
It was around this time that we realized our shouts, yells, and off key rendition of 'Great Balls Of Fire' had drawn the attention of a few adults. We saw them crowded outside the door that led to a school hallway. Fortunately for us, that door was locked from the inside.
They were trying desperately to get in. From the door's small glass opening we could see their mouths moving frantically, but the din in the room prevented us from hearing their words. One woman in particular seemed in obvious distress. Every time a guy would mount the piano she would open her mouth wide in what looked like a scream, but, as I said, we couldn't hear her.
Then it appeared that a light bulb was turned on simultaneously over their heads. They had figured out our entranceway.
As fun as this was, no one really wanted our day to end being brought home by the cops.
We took off in a flash, at least thirty of us, leaping down the stairwell and out the door. Adults outside scattered to avoid being trampled by the onslaught. It was several seconds of sheer chaos.
Most of the guys mixed into the crowd, heavy panting the only obvious sign of their shenanigans. Our gang headed back up the hill in time to see several pissed off adults enter our former hangout.
The remainder of the day was a rather normal affair. A couple of us were kicked out of the plant room after a shoving match knocked over some azaleas. One of our gang took a pony ride when he thought we weren't looking. But we saw him and gave him grief throughout the summer. But mostly we ate hot dogs and cotton candy and talked about how we'd spend the rest of our vacation.
I can't remember how many more years the Northwood School fair continued. It wasn't many. It was, despite our occasional ill behavior, a unique social event that defined the innocence of the sixties. And like many memories from that time, it was irreplaceable.
Oh and by the way, that door was tested many times during the course of the summer, but it was always tightly locked.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byLET'S TALK SWIMMING POOLS AND SWIMMING HOLES
Even though it meant we had to pay an entrance fee, we settled on the public pool or the quarry.
The quarry was was the most dangerous of the two. Despite the best efforts of the management and the lifeguards, there were always a few near drownings and other mishaps during any given summer. I don't remember a lot about the quarry. Our gang really didn't go there that often. The ambulances idling in the parking lot dissuaded us.
The welcome alternative was the public pool in Baltimore County. It was a short drive from our neighborhood but, because most of our swimming occured on summer weekdays, we relied mostly on our thumbs to get us there and back.
Once there, we'd change from our cutoff jeans into our cutoff jean swimsuits. No one in our gang had a normal bathing suit back then. They were either considered too sissy-fied or just not cool, I'm not sure which.
The pool itself was large and comprised of mostly shallow water. It started about 6" deep (there was no wading pool for the tots) and worked its way down to a small 10' diving area. There was a big fenced-in grassy area, for spreading out your towels, surrounding the pool. There were even a couple of trees in the back of the expanse that provided 'make out' privacy for the lucky few.
Unless we were showing off for girls, we stayed off the diving board and away from the deep area. Our favorite water game was tag, in which the person who was 'it' tried to tag another person so they could be 'it'. Nobody wanted to be 'it'. No wonder. Once you were 'it', you were avoided like the plague. Even the older family swimmers, not playing the game, avoided you. It was quite demeaning to be 'it', and if you were stuck in that capacity for any length of time, rest assured, therapy was in your future.
We would do whatever it took to avoid being tagged by the person who was 'it'. That might include grabbing an innocent child to be used as a shield if near capture.
I also remember diving in extremely shallow water (the lifeguards let you, if you were dumb enough to do it). My brother and my friends did also. Looking back on it, it's a wonder any of us made it through those days relatively intact. Down the road I'll write about some of the crazy things we did that make shallow water diving look tame by comparison.
I remember one summer particularly, more for the music than anything else. It was the summer of '64 and three songs played over and over again on the jukebox in a small pavillion by the pool. They were 'Don't Worry Baby', 'I Get Around', both by The Beach Boys, and 'Fingertips Pt. 2' by Little Stevie Wonder. 'Don't Worry Baby' got the most airplay. In the summer of '64, at The Orchards Swim Club, it was the song of choice. Thank God it was a great song.
That public pool also had dances occasionally on Friday nights during the summer. There was dancing to live music in the pavillion and, of course making out around the trees in the moonlit grass.
A few years ago, my brother and I and our wives, drove up there to see if the pool was still around. We found that the entire area was now an industrial park. The same fate that met our drive-in movie theater. But I could swear, as we were pulling away, I heard the final chords of 'Don't Worry Baby' faintly drifting on an August breeze.
LET'S TALK SODA FOUNTAINS
During the lazy days of summer, me, my brother, and my friends would often walk to a pharmacy for one of the main staples of our lives; comic books, baseball cards, candy, or a snowball.
Back in those days, there wasn't a snowball stand on every corner as there is now. And, at least in our neighborhood, snowball vendors didn't drive up the alley in back of our house like the good humor man. So we had little choice but to walk or ride our bikes to the treats.
Thankfully, the closest pharmacy also had the best snowballs. It was a place called The Alameda Pharmacy. It was the hub of the smaller half of a shopping center divided by a road. The soda fountain took up the the back left hand side of the store. It had round green cushioned plastic revolving stools surrounding it. The stools had no armrests or backs and would get notoriously slick from perspiration and spilled drinks. Quite often, one of our gang would simply slide off of one and land embarassingly butt first on the tile floor. Spinning on one, on a hot summer afternoon, was suicidal. There were also a few booths for the less daring patrons.
The snowballs didn't cost much, I think they were a quarter, and it was a good thing because they were served in a funnel shaped cup. What a gyp that was! The farther you went down in the cup, the smaller it got. By the time you got to all juice, there was maybe a thimble full left, and that was if you were lucky. More often than not, much like a dixie cup, the thin waxy paper would begin to unravel and leak out of the bottom, forcing the boy or girl to bend their neck back and hold the leaky container over there open mouth until all the juice drained.
The other problem was that they were top heavy and had to be balanced with delicate precision. One false move and the entire upper ice shelve would be on the pavement.. It was such a problem that the women behind the counter would ask that we crush down the treats with our plastic spoons outside the premises lest the soda fountain area look like the aftermath of an iceberg explosion.
For some strange reason, my favorite flavors back then were lemon and spearmint. A couple of years ago I tried a spearmint flavored snowball and almost gagged on it.
We would walk to another pharmacy a little farther away called The Medical Center. The soda fountain there wasn't as large, but, man, did they serve a wicked vanilla malted milk shake.
Whenever I went there, which was probably at least twice a week during the summer, I'd get the milk shake. Unlike the snowballs, I always felt I got my money's worth out of the milk shake. They were a bit more than the snowballs, but they would come to the counter in a large aluminum container. Depending on who your server was, you could get as much as two full glasses out of it.
The gang and I also liked coca-cola but, when ordered at the soda fountain, they had to be flavored. Back then you had three basic choices, vanilla, cherry, and chocolate. I wasn't that fond of chocolate flavored cokes, so I would usually alternate between vanilla and cherry. Don't let anybody tell you that they tasted the same as the store bought brands of today. They didn't. They had a much stronger syrupy flavor. Man, were they good.
As much as I don't want to, I have to bring up another flavor our gang would order. Ammonia. That's right, we would drink ammonia flavored cokes. Don't ask me why. I certainly don't know why we drank them and I'm sure my freinds didn't either. I suspect that we thought that anything that tasted that bad would give you a quick high. Maybe we heard it somewhere. Well anyhow it was an awful concoction that first cleared your sinuses and later your digestive track. The weird thing is we continued to order them in lieu of tastier fare much to the amusement of the counter workers.
It's possible that we might have ordered food on occasion from the soda fountains that we frequented, but, if so, the meal was too unmemorable to recall. I only remember the snowballs, the malted milkshakes, and the flavored cokes. Oh, and by the way, I don't allow ammonia based cleaners in my house.
Great Stuff on Amazon
Celtic Thunder: The Show
Amazon Price: $14.99 (as of 08/08/2008)
21 (Single-Disc Edition)
Amazon Price: $15.99 (as of 08/08/2008)
27 Dresses (Full Screen Edition)
Amazon Price: $15.99 (as of 08/08/2008)
MY TOP 10 MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME
But occasionally the music not only complements the film, but raises it to a higher level. The following are my top 10 movie soundtracks of all time. All, with the exception of 'Farewell to the King' are in print on CD.
10. THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Ennio Morricone composed tons of great music for not just spaghetti westerns. But, in my opinion, this opus was his best. The title track and 'The Ecstacy of Gold' are favorites.
9. FAREWELL TO THE KING
Basil Poledouris is one of my favorite composers. The high points of this soundtrack are the opening and closing themes. The soundtrack is out of print on CD and highly sought after. Sadly, Poledouris passed away last year.
8. THE MASK OF ZORRO
James Horner composed many excellent soundtracks, but this is my favorite.
7. THE TIME MACHINE
The 2002 version of the H.G. Wells book was okay, but the music by Klaus Badelt stood out throughout. I've watched this film more than once strictly for the music.
6. STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE
Argueably Jerry Goldsmith's finest achevement out of many excellent soundtracks. A true testament to its glory is the fact that it's theme was used time and time again in other Star Trek films.
5. CONAN THE BARBARIAN
Basil Poledouris again. I remember watching this movie in the theater. The music grabbed me at the opening credits and just wouldn't let go.
4. WEST SIDE STORY
Bernstein, Sondheim, one great song after another. What more can be said.
3. THE WIND AND THE LION
Jerry Goldsmith again. I can not think of a better example of the music complimenting the action and drama on the screen. A great movie made even better by Mr. Goldsmith.
2. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Composed by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman. I don't know whose idea it was to incorporate a celtic flavor into this soundtrack, but it certainly worked. Just haunting music.
1. EL CID
Composed by Miklos Rozsa, who also did the Ben Hur score, in 1961. I fell in love with this soundtrack the first time I saw the movie in the theater at the age of 14. Watching it again today, the movie itself seems a bit overwrought, but the music is still great. There are 11 separate themes on the CD, each as good as the one proceeding it. This is music that soars.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Robocop, Sommersby, Star Wars, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Star Trek 2 - The Wrath of Khan, Ben Hur, and For a Few Dollars More,
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