irememberjfk_l6fq3c – Page 6 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

All in the Family

Our generation saw a lot of walls crumble down, for better or worse. We grew up with sweet, sugary shows like Leave It to Beaver, Andy Griffith, and Dick Van Dyke. Make no mistake, these were classic shows in their own right, but it’s impossible to picture Ward Cleaver using derogatory ethnic remarks.

However, when we think of Archie Bunker, the terms Polack, Spic, and Chink immediately pop into our minds.

Norman Lear foisted the Bunker family upon the public on January 12, 1971. It was an immediate hit, as well as an outrage to folks used to watching schmaltz like Mayberry RFD (which was NOT a classic show in its own right).

Lear chose to tackle racism the same way Mel Brooks did in his utterly brilliant Blazing Saddles. I.e., laugh at it, because the very concept is so stupid that it lacks any credibility at all.

Archie and “Edit'” lived at 704 Houser Street in Queens. Mike and Gloria Stivic, his daughter and son-in-law, lived upstairs. Archie was a little right of Rush Limbaugh, and he also believed every ethnic stereotype he ever heard. Mike was a little left of Hillary Clinton, so needless to say, things were a bit lively when they got together.

Archie was further plagued by the fact that he lived in a racially diverse neighborhood, so he had to deal with spics, polacks, jungle bunnies, and the like on a daily basis.

His next door neighbor was George Jefferson, who was as prejudiced toward whites as Archie was towards blacks. Lear was indeed a genius for creating situations for comedy.

Perhaps the greatest episode was on in which Archie is visited by Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy had left his briefcase in Archie’s taxi, and came over to collect it. Note this exchange between them:

Archie: Now, no prejudice intended, but I always check with the Bible on these here things. I think that, I mean if God had meant for us to be together he’d a put us together. But look what he done. He put you over in Africa, and put the rest of us in all the white countries.
Sammy Davis Jr. Well, he must’ve told ’em where we were because somebody came and got us.

When the two posed for a picture and Sammy kissed him, it made for the longest single burst of live audience laughter in TV history. Archie’s reaction was, well, priceless, and he had to hold that expression for better than two minutes.

In addition to being the #1 rated show for five consecutive years, it also spawned five successful spinoffs, as well as its own successor, Archie Bunker’s Place.

The show was loud, offensive, and it went a long way towards showing us how to ignore each other’s racial and religious makeup.

1960’s Game Shows (Part 2)

To continue where we left off yesterday, we watched a lot of game shows in the 60’s. The game show craze originated on radio, and carried over naturally to television.

Concentration was a show that I always enjoyed. Host Hugh Downs made a big impression on me, so much so that I think of him as the guy from this show, not Good Morning America or 20/20.

The premise of Concentration should be known to any human in the western world, so I won’t go into it. Instead, I’ll dwell on my personal memories. One frequent feature of the show was the awarding of “the envelope,” a mystery prize. Any time a contestant revealed “the envelope,” someone offstage would ring a little bell. It was a blast trying to figure out that rebus, too. I remember more than one occasion when the board was cleared, and the contestants STILL couldn’t figure it out!

The special effects were pretty imaginative circa 1965. One show had the contestants themselves provide the special effects. Of course, I refer to Let’s Make a Deal.

The show debuted in 1963. Host Monty Hall and assistant Carol Merrill would give audience members dressed in outrageous garb opportunities to win prizes, provided they made the right choice. Do you want what’s in the box, or behind door # 2? There might be a stack of money under the box, or a chicken. Door # 2 might contain a brand new Chevy Bel Air. Or, it might be the rusted wreckage of a 1941 Studebaker. Decisions, decisions.

The show was a creation of Chuck Barris, who liked to bring the natural comedy of clueless contestants into play on his productions. This tactic would be brought to full fruition a few years later with the infamous Gong Show.

Bill Cullen was another familiar 1960’s face hosting game shows. I can’t look at Drew Carey without thinking of the immortal Mr. Cullen, who had a pretty acute sense of humor himself. Eye Guess ran from 1966-1969. It was a memory game. Two contestants were shown eight answers. They tried to memorize where they were on a game board. Next, they had to match a question with an answer by calling a number where they thought the correct answer was located. Calling out a wrong number could lead to some unintentionally funny answers.

Bill’s wit and mental acuity also landed him a gig as a panelist on I’ve Got a Secret, which began its run in the 50’s and closed shop in 1967. Its original producer was none other than Allan Sherman, who penned the greatest novelty song ever, Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda. It basically ripped off What’s My Line, but it was okay, because it was on the same network. I vividly remember Bill, Comedian Henry Morgan, and beautiful Betsy Palmer and Bess Myerson The fact that Steve Allen was hosting only added to the fun. I loved that show.

There were so many game shows on 1960’s TV that I’m probably going to have to add to this. But that’s enough for now. Stay tuned.

1960’s Game Shows (Part 1)

One of the things I loved about summer vacation in the 60’s (that’s a mighty long list!) was the fact that I could get up in the morning and start watching a slew of great TV shows beginning at 9:00 Central Time.

The shows included great kids’ fare like Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street late in the decade, and the local cartoon shows. But another summer treat was watching all of the game shows that were on in that era.

It’s taxing my brain cells to the limit to even remember the NAMES of these shows, much less the network and time slot. But when I can recall such tidbits, I’ll toss them in.

My very favorite show was the Match Game. It was an afternoon offering. I don’t know why it was so appealing to me, but it was the one that I never missed.

Now I’m not talking about the tasteless 70’s version. The 60’s show didn’t feature the provocative clues like Gene Rayburn would feed Charles Nelson Reilly circa 1974. It was much lower key, and darned entertaining to a seven-year-old. Maybe that’s why CBS spiced it up so much ;-).

Tom Kennedy autographed photo, mentioning You Don’t Say

Tom Kennedy was a prolific game show host in the 60’s. One show I remember was You Don’t Say. It was along the lines of the more famous Password, where you had to guess a clue from a celebrity without hearing it spoken.

To tell the Truth was a show that featured a very familiar closing signoff: “A Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production.” The prolific pair created a big pile of game shows before their run ended with Bill Todman’s death in 1979. This show would feature a person who had accomplished something that was remarkable, but out of the panelists’ view. Celebrities would ask questions of three subjects, the real person and two impostors (I learned that word at a very early age, thanks to this show). They would then guess who was the real deal. The suspense would be prolonged when the real (fill in blank) would be asked to stand up by host Bud Collyer. There would be gestures by all three of standing up before the actual one would reveal his or herself. I remember the panelists of the 60’s frequently featuring Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Kitty Carlisle, and Orson Bean (one of the funniest men who ever lived).

The aforementioned Password was another MG-BT show. Host Allen Ludden held sway over two celebrities who would try to get their John Q. Public teammates to guess a password (and vice-versa). One of the funniest moments ever to happen in afternoon TV was when comedian Nipsey Russell was being prompted by a (Caucasian) lady to say the word “buck.” She said, very slowly and carefully pronounced, “doe.” Nipsy’s innocent, immortal response was “knob.”

Reach for the Stars was a trivia show, as I recall, and it involved contestants grabbing stars from a board with questions on their reverse sides. “Reach for the stars!” they were exhorted by its host.

Joe Garagiola hosted Sale of the Century. It was a bit out there. Contestants won small amounts of money by answering questions, and were allowed to spend it on items that were ridiculously cheap, a bedroom suite for 30 bucks, for instance. I believe the winning contestant each round was allowed to shop after each victory, if I remember right.

Man, this is getting out of hand. I’m going to draw this segment to a close, and we’ll dig up some more old game shows in the next column.

Wishniks

Wishniks were all the rage in the 60’s. They were available in all sorts of sizes, from plastic dolls nearly a foot tall to mini-wishniks that fit inside a plastic container that was dispensed by vending machines that took quarters. They were utterly worthless and totally irresistible.

Supposedly, they brought good luck. Whatever. I just know that I used to have a few of them sitting on various shelves in my bedroom. I don’t recall my fortunes as being particularly provident.

The troll doll was first produced by a danish woodcutter named Thomas Dam the same year I was born, 1959. Genuine Dam trolls from the period are quite valuable.

It wasn’t long before cheap knockoffs appeared, the most prolific of which was the Wishnik.

Even wishniks found themselves cloned, by toymaker Mattel.

One of the Thingmaker series of toys was Creeple People, which let kids make trolls that fit on the end of a pencil out of Plastigoop. Hey, you could tell they were just Wishniks with orifices that allowed a pencil to be, ahem, inserted.

Trolls never really died out. They have had various comebacks over the years. But the early-to-mid 60’s was the time when the Wishniks ruled the toy stores.

Wham-O SuperBalls

Wham-O Toys were a big deal in the 60’s. One of their products came out in 1965, a big year for toys. It was a ball made of highly compressed rubber. That gave it amazing bouncing ability. In fact, as the ad said, you could bounce it over a house!

And I did, too. Once I convinced my parents to shell out the 98 cents necessary for its purchase, the first thing I did was bounce it over the house. What a rush!

The SuperBall traces its origin to a California chemist named Norman Stingley. He compressed rubber under 3500 lbs. of pressure to create a sphere that bounced like no ball had ever bounced before. Realizing its potential as a craze, he offered it to his employer, the Bettis Rubber Company of Whittier. The rubber was not quite ready for prime time (it would fall apart within minutes of play), and they declined any interest in it.

Enter Wham-O.

Wham-O worked with Stingley to create a more durable rubber. By mid 1965, the SuperBall was released, along with an avalanche of TV commercials. Wham-O scored yet another instant hit, and more than seven million SuperBalls were sold by year’s end.

The ball, besides having tremendous bouncing power, also has a mighty grab. You could drop it on a hard floor with some english and it would hop back and forth, reversing its direction each time. We also threw them back and forth the length of a city block.

Like many toy crazes, the mighty rush to buy them soon died down, but the toy itself survives to this day. Wham-O still cranks out SuperBalls, as do many imitators. But in the mid 1960’s, the entire country was caught up in SuperBall fever.

By the way, as I penned this article, a 1965 SuperBall in its original packaging was up to $31.00 with three days left on its eBay auction. So if you have an original, put it in a safe place!

Using Your Imagination to Create Toys

Kids have great imaginations. And some of us lucky ones keep it throughout our whole lives. I know I couldn’t crank out six new memories a week without lots of imagination!

But the cost of toys has dropped, and their quantity has grown in the average home compared to the 60’s. And I fear that kids today no longer feel motivated to devise their own toys out of mundane objects.

I remember being entertained for hours by throwing my hand-made parachute up in the air and watching it float back to earth. All it took was a handkerchief out of dad’s drawer, a rock, and some string. Oh, and also some imagination.

The paper airplane is another example. By the time I was twelve years old, I could make a half-dozen different styles of paper airplanes. I’m not sure today’s average twelve-year-old could duplicate that feat.

It was pretty cool taking a sheet of paper and skillfully transforming it into a flying machine. I learned how to make a flat airplane that would take great swoops up and down as it made its way to earth after a good hard throw. My friends and myself would sometimes just make a mess of paper airplanes and head out to the yard and toss them for hours.

Pipe cleaners were another source of entertainment. I’m not sure anyone ever actually cleaned pipes with them, but mom would sometimes purchase a pack of them at Woolworth’s and thereby provide me with more hours of entertainment creating strange looking creatures out of the wiry, bendable stuff.

You could also create toys out of scrap lumber. I remember building some pretty impressive structures just by stacking short pieces of 2×4’s and 2/6’s. There was a cabinet shop in the neighborhood whose trash cans were frequently raided by kids looking for pieces of wood that would be transformed into houses, skyscrapers, and other miniature engineering projects.

Empty thread spools were also a blast to play with. You could stack them as high as possible without tumbling down. You could use them as mines or bombs for your G.I. Joe to avoid. You could set them up to make an obstacle course for your Tonka cars to drive through.

I could go on and on, but I think there may be a second column’s worth of making toys out of non-toys.

In the meantime, do your grandkids a favor. Teach them how to make a handkerchief parachute.

The Toys in the World of Plants

Every previous generation had it tougher when they were kids. My own children grew up in a world of Nintendo, VCR-recorded cartoons and movies, and light-up-sneakers. My world was playing outside all day long, black-and-white TV, and PF Flyers. Our parents, of course, grew up during the Great Depression. Food was much more on the minds of many of them rather than play.

But we Boomer kids enjoyed the privileged days of play that our parents never enjoyed. Instead of spending long hours working in the field, as did my father, we spent long hours pursuing imaginative new forms of play.

After all, asking for toys meant hearing about those long hours working in the field all over again. So we learned to keep our requests for toys at a strategic, effective minimum, and to make toys out of things at hand. Many times, these things were provided us by various members of the plant world.

For example, springtime meant natural helicopters! Our neighborhood had lots of those nasty silver maples that nowadays I view as brittle-branched, too-fast-growing giant starling nests. But when I was a kid, all I knew about silver maples was that they would deliver a bumper crop of miniature helicopters every May.

You would throw a maple seed like a dart as high as you could, then watch it come spinning earthward like the Hueys that we saw a half a world away every night on the news.

Sure, you would get tired of it after a while, but an hour or so later you would spot another maple seed lying on the ground and the fun would start all over again.

Our yard was kept neatly mown, but it was by no means ever in golf course condition. Witness the thousands of dandelions that would spring up all over our corner lot.

After a couple of days of blooming yellow, the flower would magically transform itself into a little sphere completely covered with miniature parachutes. Picking dandelions and blowing the seeds all over the place was an activity completely irresistible to a seven-year-old. Any neighbors who were striving for the golf course look with their yards would have harrumphed their displeasure, but we kids didn’t notice if they did. We were too busy launching planeloads of paratroopers over Germany.

That reminds me of an interesting little fact about playing army. We NEVER acted like we were in Vietnam. Young men in our neighborhoods were actually dying over there, there was nothing light-hearted about that. No, we picked a nice harmless vanquished enemy, those pesky Germans.

But play with plants wasn’t only a boy’s activity. Girls figured out how to have fun with them too. At Nichols School in Miami, Oklahoma, many early fall and late spring recesses were spent by the girls making clover necklaces.

They would take a clover flower with a stem at least a couple of inches long and use a fingernail to cut a small slit in the stem end away from the flower. they would then take another clover flower, thread the bare stem through the slit until the flower head stopped it, then repeat the procedure. Eventually, they would create a beautiful necklace or tiara made from nothing but clover flowers.

A boy who was sweet on one particular member of the female gender might just find himself wearing a clover necklace created by the object of his affections, at least until he started playing another round of army.

So the next time your twenty-year-old last-kid-still-living-at-home asks for a loan to obtain a new set of headphones for his iPod, tell him about how you used to entertain yourself with maple-seed helicopters.

Sure, you’ll get eyerolls, but the ultimate effect is fewer loan requests.

Tonka Toys

Many of us Boomer kids had toys that were only obtainable locally, or perhaps handmade ones that were absolutely unique. And some toys appeared too late for our more senior members to enjoy. But I would be willing to venture a guess that any American Boomer boy in the United States either owned Tonka toys, or at least played with them at friends’ homes.

It is difficult to imagine a toy that was more appealing to its intended customers. Kids love cars, trucks, and construction equipment. And they particularly love durable, big, colorful models of them. So to no one’s surprise, Tonka toys are one of the biggest sellers in history.

And they showed up just in time to entrance the Baby Boomer generation. Our back yards would never be the same. Somewhere, we created a construction area where we could grade roads, haul dirt, and drive our trucks.

When I first launched I Remember JFK, I wrote a short article about how much I adored the Tonka bulldozer. But, like all of my buddies, I loved all of them.

Tonka tow truck, in typical condition after being passed down a few siblings

Tonka got its start on September 19th, 1946 when Mound Metalcraft was created in Mound, Minnesota. Their intent was to produce garden tools. However, the building that they obtained had a former inhabitant who had tried and failed to make miniature metal toy vehicles. The partners thought such a sideline might produce a little extra income, so they reworked the tooling a bit and started making Tonka toys, from a Dakota-Sioux word meaning “big.” They started selling them a year after founding the company.

That first year, their initial offerings, a steam shovel and a crane, sold 37,000 units.

With sales like that, who needs to be making hoes and shovels? So the company began ramping up Tonka production, creating many new designs. In 1955, Mound Metalcraft changed their name to Tonka Toys Inc.

Parents, particularly those with more than one child, loved Tonka toys as well. They were made to last forever. That meant you could buy one for your firstborn, and it could be passed down from sibling to sibling. There were certainly cheaper plastic alternatives to Tonkas, but there was no better long-term investment.

An immaculate 1950’s fire engine and box, what a thrill for a kid to be handed one of these

Tonkas taught us a lot. For one, they showed us that someday we would be agonizing about that first scratch on our new car.

Many of us were given Tonkas obtained at yard sales, or perhaps we were the younger brothers who received hand-me-downs. But some of us were fortunate enough to get mint models straight from the store. When we opened the box, we were greeted by a metal machine with gleaming paint, in many cases yellow. But sooner or later, it would get its first ding. And that would hurt.

But soon we would forget about it, and our road grader or tow truck would obtain in short order many more scratches, dings, and chinks. They were badges of honor.

A shady area under a big tree would frequently have sparse grass coverage, and would be summarily transformed into the aforementioned construction area. I spent many, many happy summer hours digging under our big elm tree. I’m pretty sure my older brothers had their own projects there as well.

What was cool about Tonkas is that they were scaled the same, so if you had, say, a car hauling rig, you could load it with your other Tonkas. And as other children got older, your collection was continually being increased as you got them handed down to you from other relatives or friends of your parents.

Many of us still have a Tonka or two around. I held onto a semi-truck that my boy played with, intending to restore it someday. But even if I don’t, I’ll put in a yard sale so some lucky kid will have it brought home by a parent who knows a good investment when they see it.

Tonka Bulldozer

We all grew up with Tonka toys (and Structos) in the sandbox or the bare dirt part of the yard. But the ultimate for me was the bulldozer.

Tonkas were amazingly durable toys that weren’t cheap to buy, but that was all right. You usually inherited a few from your older brothers or cousins. Mom and Dad might make a special gift of a new one that would quickly assume the same battle-worn appearance of the veteran pieces.

I built hundreds of mini-miles of roads with my Tonkas, and my bulldozer was the star of the fleet. I could quickly demolish massive hills of dry humus beneath our tall elm tree in the front yard. There was just something about those mega-cool rubber treads and the patterns they would leave in the dirt.

My Tonkas were long ago sold at yard sales, but maybe someday I’ll start rebuilding my old collection.

Tinkertoys

As I recall my childhood, I can remember that there were some toys that were owned by just a few of us. These were generally at the higher end of the price scale. For instance, I was the only one in the neighborhood to be the extremely proud owner of the James Bond Attache Case. My best friend had the only G.I. Joe Space Capsule. But some toys were universal. Take green army men, for instance. Or Hot Wheels cars. And, of course, the subject of today’s article: Tinkertoys!

One of the most familiar and delightful sounds we were all familiar with was the sound of those Tinkertoys hitting the metallic bottom of that cylindrical cardboard container when we were finished building whatever construction projects were slated for that after-school session with our friends. It’s a sound I haven’t actually heard since childhood, yet it’s still fresh in my memory banks.

Tinkertoys, like Lincoln Logs, was a Baby Boomer plaything that was actually created long before our births. Tinkertoys, according to the Great Idea Finder,

“were the invention of Charles Pajeau, a stonemason from Evanston, Illinois who established The Toy Tinkers company. Inspired by watching children play with pencils, sticks and empty spools of thread, Pajeau developed several basic wooden parts which children could assemble in a variety of three dimensional abstract ways. He designed his first set in his garage, and with high hopes, displayed the toy at the 1914 American Toy Fair. But nobody was interested. He tried his marketing skills again at Christmas time. He hired several midgets, dressed them in elf costumes, and had them play with “Tinker Toys” in a display window at a Chicago department store. This publicity stunt made all the difference in the world. A year later, over a million sets had been sold.”

Tinkertoys plans were as engrossing as the toys themselves!

They have obviously delighted untold generations of children since their introduction. Yet, if your parents were children of the Depression, they probably never had them. However, they made sure WE did!

Tinkertoys were often passed down from generation to generation. They wore very well. The first thing to go would be the plastic fan blades. The next thing to break would be the split ends of the long sticks. The round pieces would last forever.

I remember playing with a hand-me-down set when very young, then being presented with a set just like the illustrated one during a holiday. It was with that new set that I discovered something new car buyers also appreciate: the wonderful aroma of the brand new product. It was a delicious smell of wood, paint, and just all-around newness.

You could freelance your own creations, or you could build the illustrated ones in the manual that came with the set. Most of the kids I knew still had those manuals with their sets, it was easy to tuck into the can when you were finished. Of course, it would also age rapidly, soon developing tears and such.

The ultimate Tinkertoy creation was the Ferris wheel, and I constructed dozens of them. It would turn, just like a real one, and would even give rides to those aforementioned green army men.

I have no idea how many architects were inspired to pursue their careers by Tinkertoy sets, but I’ll bet it’s a significant number. As the sets are still being produced, that’s a number that is no doubt increasing daily.

I went a different direction myself, careerwise, but still have fond memories of constructing bridges, vehicles, and, of course, Ferris wheels long ago.