Now for Sunday Stealing’s quiz from last week, because I liked the questions.
1. Tell us about a time when your family got a newfangled invention (your first air conditioner, color TV, VCR, microwave, computer, etc.).
Ooooh, which one to choose! I remember our first microwave, and our first computer (a Commodore VIC-20), and even our first crockpot (which is still around, in the things that belonged to my mother).
Let’s go with the VCR. We got it in, I think, 1985. I don’t remember the brand, but it loaded through the front (many initial VCRs had the tape going into a carriage that popped up from the top of the machine). The machine had a bank of manual channel buttons running across the front where we selected the channel when we were watching through the VCR, and there was a programming process we had to go through to do it. (I don’t recall if our VCR came before we got cable down our road, or after.) It was a VHS machine; this was when people were still choosing between VHS and Beta. (For those who don’t know what this is about, with the rise of home VCRs, there were two major formats that were duking it out for market share. VHS became the standard, and Beta faded.) The first thing we recorded was an episode of Riptide, an NBC private-eye procedural show. The first movie we rented was Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was even before movie rental stores were much of a thing; that rental was from a local stereo and teevee equipment seller, and to rent a movie you had to leave a deposit of 50 bucks that you got back when you returned the tape. Later on, our town’s first actual video store opened…and they made no effort at all to classify or organize the movies in any way! You literally had to wander the entire store in hopes of seeing the movie you wanted, if you were there for a specific title. Those were fun times. I’m not particularly nostalgic for them, but I remember them with some fondness. There was a time when watching movies on clunky videotapes, forced into a 4:3 aspect ratio on low-resolution teevees (think YouTube twenty years ago), was a technological marvel. Wow.
2. Is there a particular song that sparks a childhood memory?
I’m not usually one to lock music in my mind to specific moments in time that I remember, but I will never not hear any rendition of “San Antonio Rose” and not think of my father. He loved that song and it was often on his lips.
3. What is something an older family member taught you to do?
Back in my college days, the local Hy-Vee store in Waverly would run a drawing for free turkeys every year for a few weeks before Thanksgiving, something like “Get a ticket for the drawing for every ten bucks you spend”, and one year I actually won a turkey. It was just a small 10-12 pounder, but still, hey, free turkey! My roommate had actually won one the week before and donated it, but this one I decided to actually roast up for our friends and The Girlfriend (now The Wife). But I had no idea how to do it, so I called Mom at home and got her detailed instructions as to how to make a turkey dinner. It turned out pretty good, too!
4. Back in the day, what name brands would we have found in your family’s kitchen?
Ooooh, that’s kind of tough. Campbell’s, obviously. We always had cheap Ramen on hand, but I don’t recall the brand. My parents shopped generics and store labels pretty religiously…and by generics, I mean exactly that. Rice Krispies were in a white box with black lettering that said “Crisp Rice Cereal”. There’s a brand called Shur-Fine that was in a lot of stores, if I recall correctly. The best frozen pizzas back then were by Totino’s. (I have a feeling that if I were to revisit those, I’d be grossed out big-time!) My mother always had coffee on hand; it was a staple for her while Dad hated coffee, but I don’t know what brand she used. For a while it was likely generic.
And then there was beer. My father loved beer and drank…well, in retrospect, there might have been something going on there, but some closets are best left unopened, right? I will note that even in times when money was tight, there was always money for beer. Make of that what you will…but it wasn’t like Dad was drinking the expensive stuff all the time, and this was the 80s, when the “expensive beer” was (a) harder to find out in the sticks like we were, and (b) still well in advance of the craft beer craze. Brands I remember were Stroh’s, Utica Club (this stuff came in little squat bottles), and Genny Light. I also recall a time when Dad somehow got wind that the Park-and-Shop store (this was a local chain of small grocery stores, larger than convenience stores, smaller than supermarkets) in Portville, NY had got in a shipment of Yuengling beer. (Yuengling is much more well-known and widely distributed now, but back then it was a local Eastern PA thing, and for it to show up in WNY was pretty rare). Now, I’ve just looked it up on Google Maps, and to drive from home to that store in Portville was about 25 miles, round-trip. And we did it, a few times, so Dad could buy up as much as he could get. And it was somehow my job to unload all this from the truck and stack it in the garage.
5. As a child, did you collect anything (rocks, shells, stickers, etc.)?
I had a stamp collection! I wonder if it’s still knocking around somewhere. Stamps were an interesting way to learn about history. Also comic books; I still have those someplace. For a short while, for some reason that baffles me now, I gathered up travel pamphlets. We road-tripped a lot and we also moved a lot, which meant lots of opportunity to grab a pile of pamphlets from someplace. That phase didn’t last long, but it was kind of fun. I also had a small rock collection for a bit, but that kind of fell by the wayside too.
No, I didn’t collect overalls at the time. Never even occurred to me. I did have a pair that I only wore in my room with the door shut because I was embarrassed by it (why? How the hell do I know? I was 8.). I did take notice of overalls brands as I saw them out in the wild, noting differences and whatnot…and there was even one time I saw someone wearing a specific outfit involving overalls that I have since replicated…but more on that another time!
And now, reading all this, I’m suddenly thinking that I had a kind of strange childhood….