irememberjfk_l6fq3c – Page 32 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

Tricking Out Your Bicycle

Huffy bike with a sissy bar AND a steering wheel!

In the 60’s and 70’s, if you weren’t old enough to drive, or if you were, but didn’t have a car, odds are you got around on a bike. And if you had a bike, the odds were also great that you had customized it in some fashion.

The coolest bike I ever had was a Stingray knockoff (I think mom got it at Sears) in 1971, when I was 11 years old. This bad boy was green, my favorite color. It had a 36″ sissy bar with a top cover, high-rise handlebars, and a cheater slick. I could do some monumental jumps on that bike. But that long sissy bar discouraged riding wheelies.

I remember my earliest bike customizations. They involved clothespins and baseball cards, some of which could have been very valuable had I squirreled them away somewhere. Clipping the card with the clothespin to the frame so the spokes would whack against it made your bike sound like a motorcycle.

There was a bewildering array of accessories you could put on your bike to pimp it. I always liked the klaxon-styled horns with the twist in them. That made for a deeper honk. Bikes on Leave It to Beaver always had bells instead of horns. That must have been a 50’s thing. No self-respecting kid on my block circa 1966 would have been caught dead with a bell on his bike.

Then there were the streamers. The streamers would look best dangling from a set of high-rise bars. The idea was to make them go perfectly parallel to the ground as you zipped along as fast as you could go.

You could also put a speedometer on your bike. They used a little rubber wheel to rub against your wheel rim to calculate your speed. I’m not sure how accurate they were. Going as fast as I could generally peaked my speed out at about 30 miles per hour.

A headlight might be affixed to your trusty banana-seater. It would either be powered by a couple of d-cell batteries, or by a generator turned by your wheel. The power unit would goof itself up in short order, by the rubber stripping off the wheel that contacted your rim, or by simply locking up. Even if you managed to get a better-quality unit that would last longer, it still added a noticeable drag to your bike, very bad when there was a need for speed.

One of the funkiest customizations you could perform on your bike was installing a steering wheel. These were pretty popular in the 70’s, although I was unable to locate an image of one. The wheel was smaller than a car’s steering wheel and lightweight. They were adept for spinning your front wheel around rapidly while riding a wheelie, very impressive. The less talented could hold their front wheel up while standing stationary and do the same thing.

You could also wrap metallic tape around your frame, put reflectors on your spokes, or attach a basket (yeah, right! Only if you wanted to get beaten up). Customizing your bike could take many forms indeed. The important thing was that you do SOMETHING to distinguish it from the rest of the bikes with their front wheel stuck in the stand in front of the school.

Transistor Radios

What better device could a 1960’s guy have in his shirt pocket than a transistor radio blasting out tunes that sounded absolutely great on a two-inch speaker?

Pocket-sized transistor radios started getting affordable and common in the early 1960’s. Prior to that, they were bigger, many 1950’s vintage radios being about the size of a portable eight-track player (more on those to come!). But they were tiny compared to the tube-driven models of a few years before.

Transistors, invented in 1947, revolutionized the world as much as any other twentieth-century invention. When they started being utilized in electronic devices, radios and the like began shrinking!

It wasn’t long before transistor radios, powered by the ubiquitous nine-volt battery, were a common sight in shirt pockets and sitting on desks all over America. And they would be tuned to rock and roll stations, of course.

And you also used the monophonic earpiece. It provided as high-quality a sound as the built-in speaker ;-).

The music that came in over the AM stations back then simply didn’t need a better speaker than what came with the transistor radio, or its earbud. Sure, you could listen to records on a hi-fi, but just try lugging one to the beach.

The transistor radio was a familiar sight in the 60’s to those of us old enough to remember bell-bottoms, paisley shirts, and, of course, JFK.

The Three Speed Bike

Boomer kids grew up on two wheels. From the time the training wheels came off, we were spotted buzzing around town on our Sting-Rays, or on less expensive banana-seated clones.

However, many of us had more technologically sophisticated rides. Perhaps we inherited them from our parents or older siblings, or perhaps the non-conformists among us showed our rebellious traits at an early age by opting for them over the high-handlebarred models that everyone else preferred.

The result was the fairly common sight of three-speed bikes on the 1960’s streets where we lived.

The three-speed bike has a venerable history. Before the invention of the automobile, bicycles were seen as an alternative method to getting around town for those without a horse. And let’s face it: it was difficult for a city dweller to own a horse, so the bicycle may well have been an essential part of his or her life.

Thus, around the turn of the century, technological developments were taking place very rapidly on bicycles. In 1909, the British Raleigh bicycle, equipped with a Sturmey Archer 3-Speed hub, started production. Thus began the three-speed revolution.

The three-speed hub allows for variable gear ratios. This makes for easier hill climbing as well as greater speed on level areas.

Comfort was the priority of the three-speeds. Most of them had a spring-loaded cushioned seat. They also had upright handlebars that your hands found naturally comfortable to grasp. The shifter might have been found on the bike frame in the form of a “stickshift,” but was more likely found near the right handgrip.

Front and rear brake levers were also found attached to the handlebars. The three-speed hub made it impossible for the bike to use the coaster brake that most single-speed models used.

The bikes were designed for a leisurely trip through town. Many were equipped with front or rear baskets. All of them came with fenders, to prevent that nasty road grime from covering your back while pedaling in wet conditions.

What they weren’t was cool. Riding around on a three-speed meant that you were not:

A sports jock
A babe magnet
Likely to be voted Most Popular in school
More concerned with image than functionality
Afraid to be seen riding a contraption more suited for your Uncle Joe

At the time, non-conformity was a course taken by a courageous few. The rest of us were slaves to image, and were sadly likely to poke fun at those who weren’t.

The three-speed bike was a classic design that had the further advantage of being extremely durable. Bike frames were generally made of good old heavy steel. The gear mechanism was sealed against the elements. The tires were massive rubber monstrosities, with thick treads, designed to go thousands of miles. Try THAT on those skinny 27″ tires that came on the later ten-speeds.

Thus, many a three-speed pedaled by a Boomer kid was a hand-me-down. Those bikes could last for decades with just a bit of care and the provision of a dry place of storage.

Nowadays, three-speeds have their fan clubs. For instance, take a look at the 3-Speed Adventure Society, who enjoy dressing up in tweed and hitting the road like it was 1920.

It was the ten-speed that caused an explosion in bicycling in the 1970’s, and a future article will cover that in full. But here’s a doff of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap to the three-speed: the triumph of function over form.

The Wham-O Frisbee

Ah, the rivalry between Ivy League schools. Who invented the ubiquitous flying disk known as the Frisbee? The consensus agrees that the Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, made pies that were sold to many New England colleges. Students soon discovered that the empty pie tins could be tossed and caught, providing a fun way to work off the calories just consumed. But who did it first?

Yale claims that a student named Elihu Frisbie grabbed a collection plate from the chapel and flung it across the schoolyard in 1820.

Even very few Yalies believe that.

The identity of the first pie-pan throwing student, or what school he/she attended, will forever be a mystery. But Frisbie pies, while gone since 1958, have their name live on in (at least in homonym form) the Wham-O Frisbee,

The plastic disk can trace its origin back to one Walter Morrison, who was enjoying tossing a popcorn can lid back and forth with his girlfriend in 1937. Morrison conceived of an aerodynamic toy that would likely be popular.

In the meantime, World War II intervened. Morrison found himself a prisoner in Stalag 13, along with another soldier named Warren Franscioni. They discussed going into business together if they could survive the grueling prison camp.

Survive they did, and in 1946, Morrison patented a flying disk. His first model was the Whirlo-Way, which didn’t make a whole lot of noise, sales-wise. Franscioni and Morrison parted ways in 1950.

By 1955, the public began to be captivated with UFO’s. Morrison began producing the Pluto Platter that year, and was more successful. The owners of a small but up-and-coming company called Wham-O saw big sales potential, and bought Morrison out while still giving him royalties. Everybody won.

The only thing Wham-O’s Rick Knerr didn’t like about the amazingly aerodynamic disks was the name. “Pluto Platter” didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Having heard the pie plate story, he decided, with a trademark-ready spelling change, to call the flying disks Frisbees.

Today, Frisbee is one of the most recognizable brand names on the planet. In fact, it was back in the mid 60’s, when I got my first one and tossed it around the yard. You can buy them in many incarnations, from glow-in-the-dark to edible (for your pet) to expensive tournament models.

Of course, if you don’t mind an advertisement on it, you can get them free at trade shows. That’s my preferred method of ownership.

The Viewmaster

There was a tiny little world that I remember entering as a child. To get there, you had to use an object that required you to point it to a bright light source. Once you did so, you peered through the eyepieces and observed a miracle: gorgeous color images of national parks, cartoon characters, or perhaps animals in incredible three-dimensional realism!

A Viewmaster was found in practically every house with kids in the 1960’s. Perhaps one reason for its popularity was that it wasn’t just fascinating to the young! Parents got a kick out of them too.

The Viewmaster actually predates the Baby Boomer generation. It was debuted at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. It was invented by organ maker and photographer William Gruber, who wanted to create a stereoscopic way to view recently invented Kodachrome slides.

The product was inexpensive from the start, and this contributed to its popularity. And it also contained few moving parts and required no batteries. Plus, it established a standard size for the Viewmaster reel, or disk, that let you view the latest releases on the oldest Viewmaster, or vice versa.

And they also opened up a wonderful world to kids. We saw stunning images of Yosemite, Yellowstone, New York skyscrapers, massive mountain ranges, and, of course, Donald Duck.

The fact that every kid had one meant that visiting your friends’ homes would give you access to reels you might have never seen before. A Viewmaster sitting out with a few reels would quickly be grabbed up and checked out by visiting playmates.

After several ownership changes, the rights to Viewmaster were eventually purchased by Fisher-Price, who still manufacture them today. In fact, you can buy a brand spanking new viewer for six bucks. It doesn’t look much like the pictured vintage model, but it works the same.

How about it, fellow Boomers? Why not introduce your grandkids to the same wonderful 3-D world you remember as a child?

The Vac-U-Form

You want to keep a kid absolutely entertained? Give him (or her) something they can make their OWN toys with.

That was the premise of the Mattel Vac-U-Form. It was a very sophisticated little manufacturing system which would allow kids of the 60’s to create their own plastic molded toys, using the very same process that produces bathtubs, windshields, and countless other everyday items these days.

The Vac-U-Form used plastic sheets that were heated via the same mechanism that would later power the Fright Factory, i.e. a hot oven that would make modern-day ambulance chasing, mass-media advertising shysters drool with delight. The sheets would be drawn by manually creating a vacuum over molds that would allow kids to create some amazingly cool toys and gewgaws.

My memories of the Vac-U-Form were solely of the cool name and the fact that my first best friend’s older brother had one, or so I thought. Then I watched the featured YouTube commercial and I recalled the trademark line “What can you do with a Vac-U-Form?”

The fact is that you could do an amazing variety of tasks. Built-in extras allowed you to make miniature signs with included letters, a glider that would launch with a rubber band, a cool little race car, put-the-balls-in-the-holes games like you might find in a Cracker Jack box, and, most stupendous of all, YOUR OWN CREATIONS.

You could take modeling clay, mold it into a positive mold, and draw the heated plastic over it to create anything you wanted! Such power in the minds of creative youngsters no doubt launched many a successful engineer and artist.

The Vac-U-Form was aimed at a more sophisticated youthful demographic than mine. What I mean by that is that my buddy’s older brother (probably ten) could handle it. But seven-year-old Ronnie Enderland was more suited for the aforementioned Fright Factory.

It was kismet that someday I would attain Vac-U-Form-worthy wisdom, but alas, the product ceased being manufactured before I ever had a chance to get my hands on one. Ergo, I had to settle for chemistry sets.

So here’s to yet another creative, fun, slightly dangerous toy that our parents didn’t buy for us until we were mature enough to handle it. If we burned ourselves, it was a valuable lesson to be learned, not an excuse to call a sleazy lawyer.

(sigh)

The Spring Horse

I suspect today’s recollection may touch many Boomers, because I remember nearly all of my 1960’s friends had spring horses similar to mine.

The fascination that 20th and 21st century kids have with toy cars is probably directly related to archaeological discoveries of small terra-cotta horses in Greek ruins. The horse was the transportation of the day (at least for the well-heeled), and kids love playing with miniaturized versions of things that get you around.

Sometime during the medieval period, stick horses appeared. And by the 17th century, the first rocking horses appeared. The rocking horse King Charles I played with as a child still exists today.

As technology improved, so did the sophistication of rocking horses. Additionally, they became affordable to other folks besides royalty. And many handymen became adept at creating rocking horses that would turn into family heirlooms.

The Wonder Products Company of Collierville, Tennessee was manufacturing wooden rocking horses during the 1940’s. The cheap cost of molded plastic caught their attention, and during the next decade, they began making plastic spring horses that were suspended from a tubular frame with four stout springs.

And believe me, a kid could spend many hours happily riding that plasticine bucking bronc. I have many, many memories of riding mine while chasing imaginary outlaws, or perhaps being chased by them, or simply watching TV from a fun perch.

Wonder Products continued to make the spring horses throught the 60’s and early 70’s, then became a victim of the bad economy of the decade. It’s a wonder any toy companies survived the 70’s.

In 1988, the Hedstrom Company began manufacturing spring horses right in the good old US of A. Unfortunately, at presstime, it appears that they have hit hard times of their own.

But Radio Flyer still makes them, in a beefier, safer version that the ones we played with. To be honest, though, I don’t recall ever falling off of mine ;-). So Boomer grandparents, keep your eye out for Radio Flyer spring horses that are quite similar to the ones you played with as children. I’ll bet you’ll have some very, very happy grandkids if you do!

The Spiro Agnew Watch

“What kind of watch does Mickey Mouse wear?”

“A Spiro Agnew watch!”

I guess it was funny at the time. You had to be there. Of course, if you’re reading this, you probably were.

Spiro Agnew was definitely not a soft-spoken individual. An avowed Hawk, he was constantly criticizing those who questioned the Vietnam War. Remember his calling the media “nattering nabobs of negativism?” He was a dream come true for Johnny Carson, who was provided with plenty of material for opening-show-monologues every time Agnew would hold forth.

The watches came out in 1970. They sold like hotcakes for a time.

By the time Agnew was embroiled in his infamous scandals (taking bribes while in office was looked down upon), their manufacturing had stopped. 1973 saw him resign, and the watches quickly became a forgotten fad.

However, thanks to eBay, you can still score one if it tickles your fancy. They seem to run about $60 to $80.

So here’s to Spiro Agnew, man of many unique achievements. He was the only Vice President to have Greek lineage, the only one to resign in disgrace, and the only one to ever have a wristwatch named after him.

The Radio Flyer Wagon

Some of our toys were unique to our own childhoods. The senior members of the Baby Boomer generation had Howdy Doody dolls. Boomers my age and a little younger had Schwinn Sting Rays.

But generations of kids stretching back to 1923 grew up with wagons produced by the company founded by Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin. And they still do. Even Calvin would take his friend Hobbes on some harrying trips down hillsides in a Radio Flyer.

The wooden wagons were known as Liberty Coasters when they came out that year. In 1930, Antonio’s company was renamed Radio Steel and Manufacturing. His first metal wagon, which came out that year, was known as the Radio Flyer.

Despite the Great Depression, Pasin’s company hung in there. The wagons were sturdy enough to serve for working purposes, and Radio Steel also made other implements like wheelbarrows.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Pasin and company went to work cranking out hundreds of thousands of blitz cans, the familiar five-gallon containers seen bolted to the backs of Jeeps. No Radio Flyers were produced during a period of time from 1942 to 1945.

However, that meant that as soon as our fathers got back from the war, Radio Flyers would once again be available for them to buy for us. And buy them they did. They recognized a good investment when they saw one, and a Radio Flyer would typically be handed down to multiple aged brothers.

Of course, girls enjoyed them too. Pasin made sure they would be included as his customers with his original slogan “For every boy. For every girl.”

The wagon was the finest kind of plaything that there was. The perfect toy should teach a child a lesson. A Radio Flyer was simply a four-wheeled device with a pulling handle that also steered. What you did with such a device was use your imagination.

For example, a kid down the street transformed his Flyer into a fire truck. A wagon that might have once served for hauling toys, puppies, rocks, pop bottles, or anything else a kid might want transported was serving noble duty loaded with bottles of water, a bucket of sand, and other various firefighting implements that he found appropriate. I believe the high point of his life was when a grass fire mom started in our yard to burn off thatch got a bit out of control. David came roaring into the yard making a siren noise and sprayed the miniature conflagration with his water bottles until it was extinguished.

Another lesson the Flyer taught was that you had to watch where you put your fingers. If you caught a digit in the handle hinge, it would get pinched and hurt like the devil. Like a finger in a light bulb socket, you only did that ONCE.

Radio Flyers continue to be big sellers. And unlike so many other toy companies from our childhoods, it has survived intact as an independent business. Radio Flyer, Inc. is a family-owned company in Chicago that is doing quite well, thank you. While their products are manufactured overseas, their administrative and creative center is right here in the good old USA.

So why not start a new tradition with your grandkid and give them a genuine Radio Flyer? His or her younger siblings will be as grateful as the lucky recipient.

The Polaroid SX-70

1972 was a banner year for inventiveness, consumer-product-wise. That year, Mr. Coffee was born. The coffeemaker, which forever changed the way the morning brew was prepared, will no doubt rate its own future mention here.

The other big release that year was the Polaroid SX-70.

Polaroid had long ago made its name with instant photography. They released their first peel-and-see camera in 1948, just in time for our fathers, getting more prosperous by the day, to preserve images of their lovely kids (that would be US!). By 1965, they released the affordable Swinger, which many Boomers made their first camera purchase.

But let’s face it: peeling off the top layer after exactly the right number of seconds was, well, a pain. While still preferable to waiting days for pictures to get developed, we tired of having to carry waste disposal means with us wherever we went. And that emulsion was seriously nasty, sticky stuff if you happened to touch it.

Thus, the world was overjoyed when the SX-70 was released, a camera that spit out a picture that would magically develop right before your very eyes! And no nasty paper to throw away!

The SX-70 was a true SLR, i.e. you viewed the subject through the same lens that would record its image. This was sophisticated stuff for our parents, who might have owned Kodak Brownies that had primitive viewfinders that had to be used by looking down at the top of the camera. This feature was previously only available on expensive Hasselblads, Nikons, and the like.

Not only that, but its design was amazing. Polaroid had long produced cameras that would fold down to a smaller size for transportation between shots, but they went the extra mile with the SX-70.

The camera would collapse in upon itself to form a small rectangular box that would fit in the smallest purse. It wasn’t quite pocket-sized, but was a lot of fun for a kid to open and close. Now it’s a camera, now it’s a little box.

It was a beautiful piece of art. Its metal was brushed chrome, it also featured genuine leather. Oh, and the camera had another groundbreaking feature: it focused itself! Though the initial model was a manually-focused device, it was soon released with sonar-activated auto-focus. Cool beans! Later on, Polaroid would sell the One-Step, which didn’t collapse and was made largely of plastic, to those of us who were financially challenged. That way we could enjoy the power of an autofocusing instant camera (albeit not an SLR) without the pain of the SX-70’s steep price.

Such a sophisticated instrument called for sophisticated accessories. Thus, you could purchase a telephoto adapter, a macro adapter, a self-timer, and external flashes (the original used a flash bar). It was possible to take some seriously detailed photos with the camera’s one-to-one ratio of image to film, though limited to 3.1 x 3.1 inches in size.

Experimenters soon learned that you could get quite artistic with SX-70 images. You could fold, spindle, and mutilate the prints into unique creations. Of course, you could also screw them up pretty good if you weren’t careful.

The SX-70 was a high flyer for the rest of the decade. The popularity of its more inexpensive instant cameras caused the company to discontinue the original SX-70 in 1981 (They also had instant-picture competition from Kodak, but squashed that with a victorious 1986 patent lawsuit). This was a cause of worry for its owners, as fear of no more film became a threat. However, Polaroid continued to manufacture SX-70 film until 2005. And even then, owners were able to hack their cameras to use 600 film. Unfortunately, Polaroid has ceased the manufacturing of all films for cameras of the 70’s and 80’s, but check out this SX-70 hack site, which shows that the inventive spirit of the camera’s fans will triumph over the mere lack of original accessories.

The digital camera revolution has forced camera companies to adapt or die. Kodak is doing great. Polaroid failed to change their business model in a timely manner. Hence, they have had a series of bankruptcies since 2001, but the company appears to still be going fairly strongly.Their website shows a diverse number of products, including digital cameras, “retro” film cameras, and some decidedly non-photographic items.

I hope they turn a profit. A world without the Polaroid brand name would be a little sadder. Any company cool enough to come up with the Swinger and the SX-70 deserves to survive.