All Posts – Page 41 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

Dime Store Gliders

When we were kids, our options at the local neighborhood grocery or the dime store were manifold. Most of the time, we walked out with candy. But sometimes, we would invest our hard-earned (or begged) coins on magical little flying machines made of balsa wood.

They came in little clear plastic packages with cardboard at the top. The hole in the cardboard allowed them to be hung on a rack, frequently at the top of the candy display, as I recall. The plain ones cost a dime, the fancier rubber-band driven models were 29 cents, as best I can remember.

Since I usually was given two nickels a day, buying a glider meant making a tough decision. I had to forego my morning candy fix and come back later in the afternoon in order to have ten cents to purchase my flying machine.

But as much as I loved the elegant little airplanes, I made the tough call many times, and walked home proudly carrying my plastic-wrapped wooden prize.

My craft of choice was usually the simple ten cent glider, for obvious reasons of affordability. However, sometimes I would manage to cajole mom into springing for a rubber-band powered model at the dime store.

The propeller-driven plane was seriously cool indeed. The fuselage was a simple square stick that held a hook on the rear and a slide-on red plastic propeller holder on the front. It had its own hook, and the special long thin rubber band stretched the entire length of the stick.

The plane also had wheels. I guess a more skilled pilot could make it take off or land that way, but not me.

Powering the plane involved patiently turning the propeller backwards. The rubber band would become evenly twisted, then would take on a new shape as the twists would be transformed into large knots. When the entire rubber band was a series of large knots, it was time for the flight to begin.

Letting the plane go on its own on concrete would generally result in it running rapidly along the ground and eventually smashing into something. So I would launch the plane by throwing it skyward, just like it was an unpowered glider.

Eventually, the rubber band would break. That was not the end of the fun, though!

You could open the window on the car and hold the rubber-band-less plane into a thirty MPH breeze and the propeller would spin rapidly, as your imagination filled in the rest of the WWII battle scene taking place outside the Plymouth’s window. At some point, the wings might rip off in the stiff breeze. By then, however, I had gleaned many hours out of a 29 cent investment (that would be thirty cents including tax).

The simple glider featured instructions that allowed you to move the wings forward and back in the slot cut into the fuselage. This would cause the plane to do loops or streak straightly. You could also bend the horizontal stabilizer in order to cause it to turn to the right or to the left.

Eventually, the piece of metal at the front would dislodge, and we would learn how important it was for an airplane to be properly weighted in order to function. I remember it was a real eye-opening experience for me to learn that a plane could actually be too light to fly!

Another lesson that the cheap gliders taught us was that wonderful things came in small, inexpensive packages.

You can still find balsa wood gliders at the toy sections of many stores. The dime stores and the corner groceries are long gone, though. So is the ten-cent price. But you know what? It’s nice living in a rapidly-moving modern world with the added luxury of having memory banks full of wonderful moments from our childhoods.

Baking Powder Submarines

In the tradition of coonskin caps, today’s memory is one that was before my time. However, due to popular demand, I present it anyhow.

They were called baking powder submarines, as well as baking soda submarines. However, loading baking soda into one of them would cause it to sink straight to the bottom and await rescue. No, it was baking POWDER that the minuscule watercraft required for propulsion.

Baking powder, you see, is a combination of sodium bicarbonate (a base, chemistry fans) and cream of tartar (an acid). You kids who had a Gilbert chemistry set (which will be my next article) know what happens when you mix an acid and a base. Fizz!

The fizz causes the submarine to rise. As the bubbles beak at the surface, the heavier-than-water sub sinks back down, only to have more bubbles form on the bottom, causing the cool process to repeat.

Freshly arrived from Kellog’s, baking powder subs and a diver!

The first baking powder submarines were introduced in 1954. The nation was buzzing about the first nuclear powered submarine, the timing was immaculate. They cost a quarter, and required a cereal boxtop to be mailed in. Within a couple of weeks, the miniaturized vessel would arrive in the mail, to the relief of the child who had been checking the mail box for thirteen days.

In short order, a sink would be filled with water, mom’s baking powder would be “borrowed,” and the submarine would begin one of hundreds of voyages.

Inevitably, the baking powder would run out and baking SODA would be tried. Within minutes, mom would be notified of the need for more Clabber Girl.

The subs were a huge sensation. The sub’s manufacturer, Hirsch labs, went from a cosmetics maker to a toy maker. They created a smaller version intended to be a giveaway, cut a deal with Kellog’s, and started cranking them out by the millions. Other Hirsch creations would include diving frogmen, magic moon gardens, and more neat toys.

Kellog’s sold several tons of cereal thank to those little submarines. Eventually, models were sold that ran on tablets, actually compressed baking powder. The invention of the diving sub by Hirsch resulted in nice profits for themselves, Kellog’s, and Clabber Girl. It also resulted in cherished memories for the founding members of the Baby Boomer generation.

For a much more detailed account of baking powder submarines, check out this excellent site.

The 1960’s Arcade

A kid with a dime had many diversions to choose from when LBJ was President.

You could trek down to the corner grocery and buy yourself a couple of candy bars. You could feed a plastic capsule machine and maybe get yourself a prize worth twice that much. Or, you could slide that dime into the slot of a loud, mechanical, wonderful arcade game.

Arcades have been around since the 19th century. But it was the prosperous Boomer generation, with pockets full of change that were unprecedented in history, that caused arcades to explode in popularity.

I don’t recall any self-sufficient arcades in 1960’s Miami, Oklahoma, but they could be found in larger nearby towns like Joplin and Tulsa. We did have arcade games in the local bowling alley, as well as certain restaurants and businesses that might attract teenaged crowds.

The games were a magnet to anyone between the ages of six and sixteen. If you were old enough to see over the top (perhaps with the aid of standing on a metal chair), then you could feel the draw of the machine.

We are talking about real machines here, with moving parts. Electrical solenoids would operate with a subtle “ka-chunk!” as points were tallied, runs were scored, or moving targets were shot.

You could actually feel the gears and such operating through your interaction with the periscope handles, the lever that operated the baseball bat, or the button that shot the basketball.

Sea Devil was one of the first that used any sort of electronic graphics. You would launch your torpedo, leading the ship just enough, and would hear a “whoosh” as it sped towards its goal. A hit would be accompanied by a deep “boom!” and flashing lights viewed through the periscope.

Then there were the driving games. No, I’m not talking about moving video displays of indy cars screeching by, I’m talking about cars mounted on a wire, which was actually moved back and forth by the motion of the steering wheel! One model in particular that I played at the swimming pool clubhouse at Bella Vista, Arkansas in the early 70’s had a landscape on an endless belt that featured a road with twists, turns, and hazards. If you hit something, the game would make horrifying crash noises. Maneuvering through the rolling display with your wire-mounted car would result in a score to be boasted about to your cronies.

I was impressed with a 1950’s vintage driving game called Motorama. I found it at a terrific website called Skooldays. Boomers, not all of the nostalgia there is from our generation, but much of it is. Go have a look.

My personal favorite arcade game was baseball. While individual designs varied, they were all pretty much the same. The pitched ball would pop up out of the floor of the game, and you would operate a lever to swing the bat. Various doors in the outfield were marked with single, double, out, etc. There was a ramp in the middle which, if the ball hit it with enough speed, would be launched into the stands for a home run! The momentous event would be accompanied by cheering noises and flashing lights, as well as a feeling of well-being that only a carefree kid growing up in a great era could experience.

Our grandkids are used to games with realistic HD graphics, surround sound, and everything else that state-of-the-art electronics can offer.

But our games had one big advantage. You could play them for a dime.

Aluminum Christmas Trees

Lady enjoying her aluminum Christmas tree

It was great growing up in the Jet Age, which melded seamlessly into the Space Age.

We took the Art Deco dream and turned it into real life. The ultra-modern, automated society that was envisioned by the generation that endured the Great Depression was becoming real for us, the Baby Boomers.

What better way to turn the old into new than to remove that messy firetrap known as the Christmas tree and replace it with a beautiful, shimmering aluminum model, complete with bright blue globes and a light wheel that would magically transform it into a rainbow of colors in a darkened room?

Thus did many of us grow up with memories of, not coniferous smells, strings of lights, or mom sweeping up dead needles on a daily basis, but instead, past visions of conical-shaped metallic tannenbaume that lived in boxes in the attics eleven months per year.

The aluminum Christmas tree can trace its “roots” (groan) to 1958. It all began in Chicago, when an anonymous enterprising Ben Franklin store employee created a small Christmas tree out of metal and put in a window display. Tom Gannon, who worked for Manitowoc, Wisconsin’s Aluminum Specialty Company as the toy sales manager, was in town for a visit, and he was impressed. So when he went back home, he pitched the idea of an aluminum tree to the company president. You see, Manitowoc was known as the Aluminum Cookware Capital of the World. So why not create a Christmas tree out of the same material, which could be used year after year, and which would leave nary a stray needle on the carpet?

The president was impressed, and designers soon set to work. By late 1959, the aluminum Christmas tree was offered for sale to the public.

Aluminum Christmas tree with color wheel

The tree was in a kit form that would be assembled by the homeowner. The package included a floodlamp with a rotating four-colored disk in front of it that would change the colors of illumination every fifteen seconds or so.

There was a very practical reason for the lamp’s inclusion. The first trees’ branches were made of aluminum-covered paper which was even more flammable than spruce needles. Not only that, but a broken bulb could cause a nasty short circuit amongst the metallic foliage. So customers were strongly discouraged from hanging any other types of lights on the tree. However, bright blue ornaments were encouraged (and included in many packages).

The trees sold fairly well the first year, but the 1960 Christmas season saw their numbers skyrocket. Thus did many of us have sweet memories planted in our young minds of glorious scintillating aluminum branches that magically changed colors before our very eyes.

The boom lasted for ten years. During this time, colored trees appeared with shades like blue, pink, and green (imagine that!). Then, closely paralleling the same fate and timeline of plastic pink flamingos, they fell out of style and began to be considered tacky.

But, like their polycarbonate avian brethren, aluminum trees have once again become fashionable in a retro sense. Thus, at least one brick-and-mortar museum dedicated to aluminum trees, ATOM (site has been shut down), exists, and vintage aluminum trees in immaculate shape sell on eBay for prices approaching four figures.

And yes, they are making them again. The ones our parents bought were less than ten clams. At this site (site has been shut down), (sale) prices range from 289 to 939 bucks.

So, like many of our memories, you can once again enjoy this blast from the past. Just remember to bring a fat pocketbook with you…

A Step to the Side: Computer Advice for Boomers

Today’s column is going to be something different. It’s going to be advice for Boomers from one of their own.

I’m a professional geek. My specialties are web development, networking, and desktop support. The Fortune 500 business I work for runs 95% Windows XP desktops, 4% Windows 2000, and 1% Linux. My desktop and laptop machines are among the latter 1%.

Many of you are in the market for a new PC. Mine is a year and a half old, a dual-core AMD with two gigs of RAM, so I’m fine for a while. I’m not a gamer, I don’t create videos. My system (running Ubuntu Feisty) should be fine for years to come.

However, those of you who are buying new systems face a dilemma. Microsoft would like to see XP ride off into the sunset. It has made it clear that it feels that Vista is its future, and you, the consumer, will accept and embrace it.

My advice: Don’t.

I still need to run Windows apps. I run a Windows “virtual machine.” It’s a fully functional Windows XP machine running within a free product called VMWare Server (available at http://www.vmware.com/). I am using the licensed copy of XP Media Edition that came with my PC. I had to make an additional phone call to Redmond to activate it, but that was no big deal.

So, within my Linux system, I run Dreamweaver (for web development), Paint Shop Pro 7, and Quicken 2006. I could probably wean myself off of the latter two apps and use free alternatives, but they run so well, what’s the point? VMWare imported my existing Windows machine into a virtual one that will literally run anywhere, as long as I have access to VMWare Server or Player, both free of charge.

Why do I recommend staying away from Vista? To keep this as short as possible, let me concentrate on its hardware requirements, and why it demands so much horsepower to operate.

When I am running my Windows virtual machine with four or five apps open, and also have five more Linux apps open on my Ubuntu system, I might be using as much as 650 MB of my two gigs of RAM. That’s the most I’ve EVER managed to use. I might as well take the extra gig out and sell it to a Vista owner.

That’s because Vista can easily exceed a gig of RAM usage. Most reviewers recommend two gigs to run it, four is better. And if you’re not using a dual-core or quad-core processor, fuggetaboutit. Vista will routinely max out a single-core Pentium 4 processor when the most modest programs are launched.

You see, Vista was built for its “customers.” Not you, but the corporate entities of the RIAA and the MPAA. It’s loaded with enough DRM (digital rights management) to choke a horse. And it requires lots of cycles of CPU time and many megabytes of RAM to function.

No, you can’t turn it off. It’s there because forces much wealthier than you have demanded and gotten it.

Yes, it’s buggier than Florida night skies in September. But I’m not going there.

I suggest you avoid Vista because you are being forced to run a slow, cumbersome system by Microsoft’s “other” customers.

Since Microsoft has agreements with all of the major PC manufacturers to pre-install their operating systems, odds are any new PC you buy will come with Vista. You can attempt to get XP installed instead, but not for much longer. Microsoft has instructed the manufacturers of hardware to concentrate on Vista drivers ONLY. That means the odds are not good that the newest video cards, printers, etc. will be XP-compatible.

However, if you’re willing to learn something new, I recommend buying a bare-bones system without an operating system and installing Ubuntu Gutsy (the most cutting edge) or Ubuntu Feisty (the most reliable) on it. Tiger Direct, whom I have happily traded with for years, currently has this system, which is pretty hot, for 270 bucks. Install your downloaded Linux from a CD-ROM or DVD, and you’re off.

Sure, it looks a bit different. And you’ll have to paste a few error messages into Google at first. But stick with it, and experience the delightful world of free software. And you will also discover that Ubuntu is VERY well supported via various forums that Google will direct you to.

Microsoft hacked off the world a couple of years ago by installing Windows Genuine Advantage on user’s computers who had elected to automatically get updates for the perennially security-challenged system. WGA does the customer no good whatsoever, but it DOES alert Microsoft to what it considers signs that the copy of Windows that the consumer is running is pirated. And if the program decides that that is the case, it gives you a limited amount of time to “make things good” before it starts shutting things down.

I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty crappy way to treat customers, especially when WGA has proven to be notoriously unreliable. Type WGA into Google and see for yourself what sort of returns you get. And Vista is even more draconian in its treatment of customers whom it doubts to be legal. In some cases, you get THREE DAYS to fix things before features are shut off.

That’s a long weekend, during which you might not even be home!

You’ll never get that treatment from the Ubuntu folks. Ubuntu comes pre-installed with Firefox and Open Office, two more free products whose creators simply appreciate the fact that you choose to use them.

And if you can’t do without certain Windows apps, you may be able to run them with Wine (it tricks Windows apps into thinking that they are in a Windows environment under Linux). Or, you can purchase a basic copy of XP and install it onto a VMWare virtual machine.

It will take a week before you have everything tweaked right, and you’ll spend lots of time on Google. But compare that to the weeks of agony that Vista owners are experiencing. I’m willing to wager that you won’t go through any more trouble than a user with a brand new Vista machine. And you will have the same wonderful, warm feeling I have, knowing that the very fact that I use free software and promote it helps its cause.

And no, I haven’t mentioned buying a Mac or installing Apple’s OS-X on a PC. That’s because I’ve never done either one. But they are both excellent alternatives to putting up with Microsoft’s intentions to please fat corporations at the expense of you, the consumer.

Come on, guys, we’re Boomers. We never did trust the Man. Don’t purchase a computer loaded with his software.

A Little Extra

I’d like to take a minute and reflect on what has happened since I woke up in the middle of the night last November with the thought “I Remember JFK! Now THAT would be a cool name for a Boomer nostalgia site!” To my delight and surprise, the domain name was available.

I just received my Google ranking, and it’s a pretty good one. That was my initial goal when I put this site together. I’m now getting good, steady traffic from the king of search engines.

What I never envisioned was the response I’ve received from Boomers. I’ve always had a slightly better-than-average memory. The cumulative effect over the years is that my wrinkled bald head is filled with all sorts of trivial recollections that have proven to have an emotional impact on many who had long since forgotten similar events from their own childhoods.

And the fact that I have been the extremely fortunate recipient of traffic blasts from Pirillo’s Picks, CBS News, KSDK TV in St. Louis (GO CARDS! Tony! Can’t you afford a cab??), and the lovely Kim Komando. That last one alone was worth a cool 18,000 visits on March 20 (2008). Glad I switched to a dedicated server last year!

It’s given me a pleasure that I have never attained with any site I conceived of or hosted in my ten years in the business. I can’t wait to get home from work each day and write a new I Remember JFK reminiscence! And the slew of comments from you wonderful fellow Boomers shows that you’re enjoying this ride, too.

I figure I’ve tapped perhaps 1% of my childhood memories. So keep tuning in every day, and sign up for the emailed summary of each day’s article, if you haven’t already!

And thank you so much, all of you visitors who make this so rewarding.

45 Inserts

You never had enough of them. The antithesis of coat hangers (which reproduce on their own), they would vaporize soon after purchase, and you didn’t have enough to stack all of your 45’s on your changer.

Also known as adapters, inserts, or spiders, they were essentials pieces of hardware to have long before we started packing literally days of music on our hips in packages smaller than a carton of cigarettes. Portable record players had to have them to work.

Many home stereo systems had built-in adapters of various types. The one we had featured a disk that could be pulled up and rotated slightly to lock in place. that allowed for single play. You still needed inserts for multiple play. Other changers had a rectangular piece that fit over the spindle and allowed the 45’s to be dropped one at a time, allowing multiple play. But for portables, you needed these devices, period.

If you want to have fun, offer one of the classic Jasco yellow inserts pictured here to your teenager and ask them to identify it. Only the ones who are most savvy of vintage equipment will be able to do so. When we were teenagers, we knew what they were for, and that they disappeared as fast as we could buy them.

I love waxing nostalgic, but I really don’t miss those 45’s that much. My digital music is now backed up four ways. Nothing short of a nuclear catastrophe could cause me to lose it all. Those 45’s would quickly become covered with scratches that produced clicks and pops that accompanied our favorite tunes. In fact, sometimes a skip would become so much a part of a song that it just didn’t sound quite right when we heard it on the radio, free of the blip.

But seeing one of those yellow inserts immediately takes me back about forty years.

3D of the 50’s

The neighborhood movie theater was a welcome spot for rainy and/or swelteringly hot summer afternoons in the 50’s. The drive-in theater was likewise a fond destination that many of us remember. One of the most amazing innovations that were enjoyed by the older members of the Boomer generation were 3D movies and comic books.

Man has always sought greater realism in the representations of the world which he has generated. It goes back to the day when a caveman would blow pigment over his hand placed on a rock wall in order to add a realistic, human touch to the mastodons and mammoths that he had drawn. By 1838, stereoscopic photography had been invented, bringing astonishing realism to tiny images viewed through a special device.

L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, filmed in 1895 by the Lumière brothers, is credited as being the first 3D film. Audiences would scream in terror as a speeding train appeared to head straight for them.

Except that the film wasn’t really 3D. it shocked the world with its realism, but it was just a simple two-dimensional film.

In 1915, three short films were shown in New York that were filmed using the anaglyphic process. Two camera lenses filmed two separate scenes from 2 1/2″ apart. When developed, the films were given treatment which overemphasized the colors so that viewing the finished film through red and green glasses would create a seamless three-dimensional image.

That same technology was called upon 37 years later by nervous Hollywood producers who saw the future of motion pictures seriously threatened by television. Thus, in 1952, Bwana Devil was released in 3D. The low-budget film created a sensation, and soon theaters all over the US were scrambling to add the ability to show three-dimensional films.

The next year, 27 more 3D films were released, including Vincent Price’s chilling House of Wax, considered one of Hollywood’s greatest horror films. 1954 saw the release of the 3D Creature from the Black Lagoon, another great scary flick.

The 3D movie craze came and went in a flurry. By 1955, only a solitary 3D movie was released. Thereafter, films would come out in 3D on an occasional basis. One of them was Ghosts of the Abyss, which my wife and I watched on a rainy Florida afternoon in 2003. I liked it, she didn’t.

Movies weren’t the only source of 1950’s 3D entertainment. Three Dimension Comics made its debut in 1953. The single issue, documenting the adventures of Mighty Mouse, sold over a million copies. Soon, 3D comic books were all over the newsstands, with the obligatory red/green glasses included as part of the package. Harvey, Archie, EC, DC, and practically all of the other major comic book publishers released three-dimensional versions of their familiar lines.

3D comics died out even sooner than films, the last one being published in 1954. Again, they have appeared off and on since then, but never in the 1950’s quantities.

Nowadays, we have, for the most part, given up on the idea of ubiquitous three-dimensional media. Instead, many of us have opted for HDTV’s. Perhaps not as exciting as seeing bright red blood fly three-dimensionally as many of us witnessed way back in 1953, but hey, it’s nice not messing with those darned glasses!

Things Go Better with Coke

We Boomers bought a lot of Coke when we were kids. We still do, for that matter. So did our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. In fact, so have our kids and even grandkids. I didn’t research any figures, but I’m guessing that Coca-Cola is the largest selling product in the history of the US, possibly the world.

I bought a slew of Cokes from the old machine at my father’s truck garage in Miami, Oklahoma. It looked just like the one to the right. You dropped a dime in, and pushed that big lever to move an endless belt of cokes inside one step along. Then, you opened that little door and grabbed six ounces of frosty refreshment. You ended the ritual by popping the lid off in that opener, hearing a reassuring clink as it fell among its brothers in the bin.

That bin full of lids would prove to be very lucrative to me about 1966. Coke had a Things Go Better contest, where you scraped the cork off of the inside of those lids to reveal letters that would eventually spell “Things” and “Better.” Then it was a matter of finding the Holy Grail: the word “Go” surrounded by stars.

You glued all of the caps to a piece of paper. And what would happen is that you would quickly spell the words, then look in vain for that elusive “Go.” That’s where the bin full of lids paid off for me.

Over a period of a couple of weeks, I would sit in the floor in front of that Coke machine and dutifully scrape cork from dozens of lids. Then it happened: I scraped off cork and revealed a Go!

I was ecstatic. The color of the magic token revealed your prize. I had a black one, the lowliest, but it didn’t dispel my joy at all. Dad drove me to the local bottling plant (many small towns had them) and, beaming with pride, I turned in my completely filled out set of caps and received a case of 16 oz. Cokes.

I was so excited that I drank one of them hot as soon as I got home.

I also bought a lot of Cokes from Moonwink Grocery. They were contained in a slider machine, like the one to the left. You dropped in a dime, then maneuvered your desired pop through a maze of sliders until it finally rested under the locking mechanism which kept you from stealing them. Your coin unlocked it long enough to pull your Coke up and out of the chest.

Indeed, Coke can do no wrong. Even the seemingly disastrous 1984 flavor change worked out in their favor in the long run, with a stronger fan base than ever after the return of the original formula.

Someday, our grandkids will be reminiscing about drinking Cokes as a child, as our grandparents and ourselves also have.

When Vending Machines Required Muscles

Ah, the love/hate relationship that we have with vending machines. on the one hand, it’s pleasant not to deal with a surly convenience store clerk behind bulletproof glass, on the other, getting ripped off involves taking on a machine weighing much more than one’s self, with possibly disastrous results.

But by and large, with the exception of manhandling larcenous machines, the experience of popping in currency and retrieving merchandise has gotten much more mechanized than when we Boomer kids were, well, kids.

For instance, a vending machine typically has rows of chips, candy bars, etc. behind glass with corkscrew mechanisms that operate when you push buttons. You hear a little whir, your prize drops, you walk away.

But flash back to 1964, and vending machines involved muscle power. One of the experiences that I recall the most clearly was getting cigarettes for dad. I would drop two quarters into the machine, locate Philip Morris Filters, and pull the knob underneath them with a mighty jerk. One pack of coffin nails would obediently drop into the tray below for retrieval.

There was a yellow warning sign on the front that announced the illegalities of minors operating the machinery. That didn’t concern me a bit. Though we had lead and zinc mines in the area, I most assuredly didn’t work at them.

I was a bit confused as to why those who dug up minerals and metals for a living should be forbidden from buying cigarettes from a machine. Probably something to do with their lungs being exposed to dust, my seven-year-old mind reasoned.

Candy machines required a similar hard tug to get to the sugar-sweetened delights within, to be retrieved at the cost of a dime. I know that I paid a nickel for a Pay-Day at the corner grocery, I don’t recall ever seeing a vended candy bar for less than ten cents. In fact, one of the first lessons that a kid learned about life was that you only had one shot at your favorite treat once that dime went in the slot, and you’d better give the handle a hefty tug. It was tragically possible to pull a handle out only part way, so that you lost your ten-cent credit AND walked away empty-handed.

However, school troublemakers also delighted in spreading accounts of how you could pull TWO handles at precisely the same time and get two candy bars for the price! I actually saw it happen, and even did it myself a time or two. However, you would walk away empty-handed enough to where I believe the odds were, just like at Vegas, in the house’s favor.

The illustrated Coke machine shows that once you bought your can of pop, you still had work to do. You had to place the steel container underneath that opener and shove down with all of your might to place a triangular hole at the edge of the can, then rotate it 180 degrees and do it again.

I wonder how often that cutting blade was washed?

Dad’s old nickel Coke machine required work, as well. It had a big handle that turned the internal mechanism to align a Coke bottle up with the opening so that it could be removed by an eager kid.

So the next time you put a ten-dollar-bill in a vending machine and get your sandwich accompanied by a rain of dollar coins in the change tray, think back to when you were a kid, and recall when vending machines required strength and dexterity to operate. And maybe, just MAYBE, you could get two items for the price of one!