A new movie is titled "The 500 Days of Summer." That's what it looked like on the last day of school, time reaching forward beyond all imagining. There was a heightened awareness in the room as the second hand crept toward our moment of freedom. We regarded the nuns as a discharged soldier does his superior officer. Here had existed a bond that would never be again. We didn't run screaming out the door. We sauntered. We had time. We were aware of a milestone having passed.
Some kids would go to second homes, or visit relatives, or summer camp. My friends and I would stay at home. We would have nothing planned. The lives of kids were not fast-tracked in those days. We would get together after breakfast and make desultory conversation, evaluate suggestions and maybe play softball, shoot baskets, go down somebody's basement, play cards, go to the Urbana Free Library for Miss Fiske's Summer Reading Club, rassle on the lawn, listen to the Cardinals, play with our dogs, or lay on our stomachs on the grass and read somebody's dad's copy of Confidential magazine. Somebody's mom was probably keeping an eye on us through a screen window.
Our bicycles were our freedom. We would head out for Crystal Lake Park, dogs barking behind us until they grew disinterested in this foolishness and fell back. Or maybe this would be a day when we would earn money. This we did by mowing lawns, or when we were younger taking a card table out to the sidewalk and opening a lemonade and Kool-Aid stand. Some kid would announce he was "opening," and we would look at him in envy, because he was in retail, and we wished we had thought of it first. It was nothing for two adults, perfect strangers, to pull over and invest a dime to drink from two jelly glasses, washed out in a soup pot full of dishwater. When the sun fell lower in the sky, the newspaper trucks would come around pitching bundles, and I would ask a pal, "Want to walk me on my paper route?" Always "walk me." Never "walk with me."
Neighborhood friends on our way to Crystal Lake. Left to right: Jerry Seiler, Steve Shaw, Holmesey, me, Larry Luhtala, Gary Wikoff.
In all of our movements around town, away from home base, we peed when we had to and where we could. Behind trees, in shrubbery, against back walls, in the alley. This we called "Airing the snake," or, more politely, "Going to see a man about a dog." Recently the City of Urbana dedicated a plaque on the sidewalk marking my childhood home, and from my seat on the platform I could see several of my boyhood pissoirs. Why didn't we just go home? Your mom might grab you and make you do something.I was an only child, and content with my own company, especially after I discovered science fiction. I occupied a corner of the basement where I positioned my cast metal book shelves, three books of Green Stamps each. On these I placed the old s-f magazines that the two foreign brothers, graduate students on my Courier route, had given me. Astounding, Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction. Then I discovered, more to my taste, Amazing, Imagination and the last issues of the full-size pulp Thrilling Wonder Stories. These were sold by Smith Drugs on Main Street, where from an issue of Sunshine and Health I learned for the first time what it was that women had under their sweaters, and an electric current shot through me. Science fiction itself somehow had an aura of eroticism about it. It wasn't sexually explicit, but it often seemed about to be.
Down in the basement it was cooler. I reclined in an aluminum lawn chair, and played albums on my record player--Pat Boone, Doris Day, the McGuire Sisters, Benny Goodman, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Polly Bergen, who sent me an 8x10 autographed photo. I wrote to Percy Faith and he mailed me a dozen of his 45s. I wrote asking Stan Freberg for an autographed photo, and he wrote back regretting that he was all out of photos, but as a consolation was enclosing a hairpin from Betty Furness. All recorded music evoked thoughts of girls.
The promise of Eros. From my collection
Sometimes a Central Illinois thunderstorm would come ripping out of the sky, louder and more violent than anything I've ever seen in Chicago. Afterwards the rainwater would be backed up at the corner drains, and we would ride our bikes through it, holding our Keds high to keep them dry. The rest of the time it was hot outside, sometimes for a few days even "above 100 degrees Fahrenheit," we said in an official tone. Air conditioning was rare. Windows and screen doors stood open day and night. The idea was to get a "cross breeze," although actually you just left everything open and the breeze did whatever it wanted.My parents had a Philco window air conditioner in their bedroom. After they finished their iced tea and their last cigarettes on the front porch, my father would say, "Time to turn on the air conditioner." In my room I read late into the night in the heat and humidity, the book balanced on my chest, my chin making a puddle of sweat on my neck. I was decked out in what my Aunt Martha described approvingly as "shorty pajamas."
In the summer mornings, I remember the freshness of the new air, and my father in the kitchen listening to Paul Gibson on the radio from Chicago. For years Paul Gibson talked for 13 hours a week on WBBM, calling himself a "word jockey," and today who remembers him? Television came late to Champaign-Urbana, because The News-Gazette and the Courier were fighting for the license. But we had radio. The 50,000 clear channel stations boomed in from Chicago: WBBM (CBS), WGN (Wally Phillips with "Your Top Ten on WGN" and the Cubs), WMAQ (NBC), WLS (ABC and Dick Biondi). And from St. Louis: (KMOX (Harry Carey doing the Cardinals, until, all kids believed, "Augie Busch caught him with his wife and threw him out of town").
The Dog n Suds on Philo Road in Urbana, summer of 1975. Photo by GaleChicago. (Cick to enlage any art)
The local stations were WDWS and WKID. On one of them one morning from the kitchen (the air filled with the aromas of toast and coffee), I heard "The Wayward Wind" by Gogi Grant, and that song has haunted me all of my life. WDWS had CBS and Larry Stewart, the Voice of the Fighting Illini. WKID had Joe Ryder, the "Country Gentleman," in the morning, and a mix of pop and country all day. It was sunup to sundown. In the evening sometimes I would ride my bike out to the Philo Hard Road and visit the Dog 'n Suds, where the Dog in a Basket, including cole slaw, fries and a root beer seemed to me a spectacular feast.
WKID was right next door. The disc jockey until sign-off was Don McMullen, who also read the news off the United Press wire and did the commercials. One night after gorging myself on a Dog in a Basket, I walked over to the radio station and peered through the screened door. Don McMullen was walking past and asked if he could help me. "I just want to look," I said. He let me in, pulled up a chair, and let me watch him at the microphone. He'd read a commercial (quite possibly for Huey's store), while using his thumb to hold a cued-up record on a turntable that was already spinning. Then he'd announce the record and lift his thumb. This was unspeakably cool.
While the song was playing he took me into a closet where the wire ticker was pounding, ripped off yards of news and threw it away, ripped off the weather forecast, and went back to the broadcast booth. "Something Smith and the Redheads," he said, and then: "We have a young announcer here named Roger who is going to tell us about the weather." He pointed to the paper in front of me and swiveled the mike over. I was almost dizzy with a flush of excitement. "Sunny and warmer tomorrow, with a high around 80," I read. "Good job, Roger," Don said. I had been on the radio. There was no turning back. When Don got married I gave him steak knives.
Karen Weaver and Jackie Yates. Jackie, if you see this, send me your photo,
My best friends were Hal Holmes, Jerry Seiler, Larry Luhtala, George Reiss and Danny Yohe from across Washington Street, and on my side the Steve, John and Chuck Shaw, Johnny Dye, Karen Weaver and Steve and Joe Sanderson, with Gary Wikoff and Jackie Yates on Maple Street. We boys would form circles with our bikes, one foot braced on the ground, as a girl would sit on her porch steps and hold court. I sensed these conversations were about more than they seemed. Hal and Gary were a little older, and seemed to understand more.
The Four Stampers Stamp Club would meet in my basement to trade stamps, allegedly, and look up years and prices in our "Elmers," the thick orange booklets from Elmer R. Long and Co. in Boston. I say "allegedly" because the talk quickly turned to girls--those at school, and, with wonder, Jayne Mansfield. One night a Four Stamper explained to me what men and women "did" together, demonstrating with the fingers of one hand forming a circle and a finger from the other hand poking into it. "You know, like this," he said. All finally became clear to me, although I couldn't figure out what the circle stood for. The navel, probably? Worked for me.
A lot of time was spent trying to get cool. Riding our bikes worked, but when we stopped we'd be streaming with sweat. All of us would ride over to Harry Rusk's grocery, park our bikes against his wooden porch and reach into his cooler, a block of ice floating in the water, and haul out a Grapette, a Choc-Ola, or maybe an RC, because for the same money you got more. Never a Coke or 7-Up, which you got at home, and you didn't see the point of 7-Up anyway, although "You Like It--It Likes You!"
Something like ours looked, but that's not my old man's '50 Plymouth. Painting by Kay Crain.
If we rode our bikes out to Crystal Lake, we would pass the A & W Root Beer Stand at Race and University. A five-cent beer in a frosted mug. Then we would go to the swimming pool and wash off our bike sweat in the water. In high school I was hired by the pool manager Oscar Adams to be an assistant lifeguard. My duties including the Poop Patrol, my tools a face mask, a waste basket, and a spatula. General cheering each time I emerged triumphant from the deeps. Oscar Adams was also the high school basketball coach, driving instructor, Physical Education teacher, and chaperone at the Tigers' Den on Friday nights. Urbana couldn't do without him. He had one daughter in particular, Barb, who brought to life the wonderful qualities of a bathing suit.
Movie theaters advertised, It's Cool Inside! To make this difference more dramatic, the Princess on Main Street made the temperature as cold as possible. Returning to the blinding sunlight, we got immediate headaches between our eyes. Hal and I called each other Holmesey and Stymie. Sometimes Holmesy and I would head across the street to the fountain at McBride's Rexall Drugs where he introduced me to the Cherry 7-Up and my prejudice against 7-Up disappeared. We sipped them so slowly they could have been liquid gold. We agreed it was the best-tasting drink in the world. There I also searched the paperback racks for Robert Sheckley, Arthur C. Clark and Theodore Sturgeon. Also the Ace Doubles, two s-f novels in the same binding, the cover of one novel on one side, and turn it over and upside-down, the other cover. I read my first Philip K. Dick in an Ace Double. To sell Philip K. Dick in those days, Ace had to bundle him with someone else. Today he has two volumes in the Library of America.
Sunday Mass at St. Patrick's was sweltering. The doors stood open, the lower panes of the stained glass windows were propped wide, and big osculating fans swept the congregation, although these were turned off during Fr. Martel's sermon, and we worked the fans that were Compliments of Renner-Wikoff Funeral Home.
Rassling on my front yard. Jerry Seilor has me pinned. Those are his crutches.
The midday meal was the big one on Sundays, and after a nap, for his dinner my father liked oatmeal. Then we watched Ed Sullivan. Then my father would say, "My oatmeal has worn off. Does anyone feel like a chocolate malted?" In my high school years there was the Dairy Queen, but in grade school we went to Hudson Dairy on Race Street, a counter lined with stools, a strong aroma of milk, a malt that came with a metal can to hold the part that didn't fit in the glass. "They give you a smaller glass so it feels like you're getting more," my father explained several dozen times.
What did I read late at night? Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, and Earl Stanley Gardner. Of the countless other books I read, I remember two: Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, and By Love Possessed, by James Gould Cozzens. By Love Possessed made a deep impression on me, although today I have forgotten everything about the novel except its deep impression. Later came Thomas Wolfe, sweeping all before him.
The nature of summer changed as I grew older. I got a part-time job at Johnston's Sports Shop in 1956, and my first newspaper job at The News-Gazette in 1958. Holmesy got an early 1950s Chevy. We'd go out to the new McDonald's at Five Points, across the street from Huey's Store ("What's not on the shelf is on the floor. If it ain't on the floor we ain't got it no more"). A couple of years later I got my first car, $395, a 1954 Ford, sky blue. I painted the wheel rims red, bought sick-on white sidewalls, and hung a pair of foam dice from the rear-view mirror. Left sitting in the sun, it smelled inside like scorched plastic, and the steering wheel was too hot to touch. Summer no longer lasted until time immemorial. The last day of summer came sooner. Time compacted. Life closed in.
¶
The Lovin' Spoonful performs "Summer in the City"
¶Martha and the Vendellas perform "Heat Wave"
¶Eddie Cochran does "Summertime Blues"
¶
Janis Joplin performs "Summertime"
¶Gogi Grant sings live: "The Wayward Wind:
¶
A 1958 Time magazine profile of Paul Gibson.
¶
An "Elmer" was discovered by a reader, DR Deaver, for sale at $19.95 on eBay..
¶
Hal Holmes discovered three of his treasured old Elmers, and if he lists them on eBay he could take Cathy out to dinner:
¶
Freedom in childhood is the essence of "soul". I also grew up in rural central Illinois, in a small farmtown, albeit a generation later. My summer days, like yours, were filled with long stretches of time uninterrupted by the noise of video games and television, which existed but had not taken over the minds of the young. Does it sadden you, as it does me, that children today, including my own children, are over-scheduled, over-stimulated, and exposed to so much that was once only imagined? What resonated with me in your poignant blog entry was the imagination of the boy you described, who dreamed of being a radio dj, a journalist, a lover of women--that and the sensuality of childhood experience: the barking of dogs, the taste of the cherry 7-up, the smell of the morning air. It is, I think, common to all children universally; but I do worry that we are threatening it by not giving children the freedom they need, or bombarding them with canned entertainment. If that idea resonates with you, you might enjoy this surprisingly controversial blog:
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
Ebert: That is a wonderful blog.
Of course I grew up in an essentially drug-free society. I agree with the Libertarians that drugs should be legalized. That would undercut the profit motive in illegal drugs. No more pushers, gangs would be starved of cash, there would be no reason for adults to find gangs profitable, there would be fewer desperate addicts pushed into crime. You would no more sell drugs on a street corner than you would Corn Flakes.
You have captured here the summer of a young boy. At least how it used to be. My oldest son just went today for his first bike ride through our town over to our city park, and he's 15. Sad.
You have such a better memory for names and events from your childhood than I do. Maybe that's what made you a natural to be a reporter.
I do remember the phases of music and books that I went through. From books about famous battles (Iwo Jima!), to Hardy Boys mysteries, to Taylor Caldwell style fiction (Ceremony of the Innocents?), on to Stephen King. In phases of genres, for some reason.
Ebert: I rode my bike three miles across town to grade school in all but the worst weather. So did lots of kids. Nothing to it. Going into high school, I was normal weight. Got my first car at 16. There you go.
...also,
I miss Dog & Suds drive-ins. Great suds.
Now it's Sonic, I guess.
Ebert: Dog 'n' Suds still lives!
On the Great American Root Beer Showdown we learn:
"Dog 'n' Suds - Bottled in Lafayette, Indiana for the Dog 'n' Suds drive-in chain. May be difficult to find outside the lower midwest states. Label calls it "Drive-In Style," which I suppose means very sweet and not much punch. In Round Two of testing, Dog 'n' Suds pulled ahead to come in first place for overall taste. The sweetness and typical taste won over the reviewers: "Very smooth, little bite. I prefer more, but I think this is actually a nice, subtle root beer." "Mellow, smooth, ... A little sweeter than I like but still good."
Here is the Dog 'n' Suds website. That page offers a stirring argument for the benefits of curb service as opposed to drive-thru.
And in the "History" section, here is some blatant misinformation:
"From its rather humble beginning back in 1953 in Champaign, Illinois when two music teachers from the University of Illinois. Don Hamacher and Jim Griggs opened a hot dog and root beer stand. Dog n Suds grew in the 50's, 60's, and 70's to a point where it was one of the most successful fast-food franchises in the country."
Not Champaign! It was URBANA! I am the man who was there.
Thank you for this. Generally when we look back, it's with wonder or regret. This reminded me that there was a time when time itself played more slowly, more with the rhythm of life. I was a military brat, and our duty stations invariably fell in locations where the summer hit you like a fist when you ventured outside. One refuge was always the air-conditioned base library, where I met my first love — and the longest-lasting — when she invariably checked out the latest Heinlein or Clarke seconds before I could grab it. Science fiction was the great escape. It entwined fantasy and logic, imagination and engineering. And gave you an excuse to talk to girls who also read science fiction.
Ebert: Girls who read science fiction weren't as silly as other girls.
It wouldn't be a great understatement to say that Harry Caray
kept me sane the summers of my youth. It was a great relief to
know that in the afternoons there would be a baseball game to
save me from the tedium of afternoons spent inside. For me,
baseball was replacement for going outside on a hot day.
The Cubs were the only team that couldn't play at night because
they had no lights on their field, so like clock work at
2:20 PM there was Harry and the Cubs.
somedays, the neighborhood kids would organize a street football game; i would sit in my wheelchair on our driveway and do play-by=play/
Ebert: Harry leading the crowd in "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and catching pop-ups with his butterfly net. Jack Brickhouse was another legend.
Thanks for the mention on your blog and for the wonderful memories from the past. I recall most of the names and places that you mentioned.
Trivia question for you.........are you old enough to remember who the general manager of WDWS was before Larry Stewart? No prizes will be given if you know......just high honor and admiration!
I recall shadowing Terry Sands when he was a DJ for WKID.
We were in Champaign last month and stopped by to see the plaque in front of your old house.
Best regards.....keep the good stuff coming.........steve sanderson
Ebert: Was it...Mark Howard?
Nice to hear from you, Steve. I'm blanking on the name of the kid who lived next to you. Jeff? I didn't spend much time with him. I believe he was shot down over Vietnam.
*sigh* you make me long for a gentler age. My daughter and her husband had to move from Chambana to Homer to give her kids the freedom to roam in the summer.
I'm a little younger so summer to me meant WLS when it was a top 40 AM station...and outdoor movies flashed on a screen in the park...and, when I was in high school, driving to Danville (I grew up in Vermilion county) to hit Baskin-Robbins and then drive around country roads "ghost hunting."
Those were the days.
Thanks for the memories Roger. I'm of the younger tv-and-videogames generation but find it odd how our suburban neighborhoods - tiny streets, cul-de-sacs and all - try to evoke the feeling of such a neighborhood and town you describe above yet feel unnatural, built to this nostalgic past, and in which the people who live there today hide behind their locked doors in houses dark except for the silver-blue flickering of their televisions.
I mourn for the fact that my children will never experience summer quite the same as I did. "The times, they are a changin'" -- but not always for the better. Sweet memories. Loved this post.
Roger I took that walk with you down memory lane, not where you were of course but in the same era . My own thoughts went back to Lachine where I was at that time. We were lucky as kids to have that freedom and I wonder what it's like for todays children?
Is the magic still there for them? Can kids still ride their bikes with their friends and explore and create their own adventures?
Oh yes! last day of school! "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks!" A century ago It seems at times but at others not so long ago.
There wasn't as much traffic back then and we could ride our bikes from dawn to sunset! We would ride to the 10cent beach. A manmade beach on the St Lawrence, very small and the beach didn't really go past the edge of the water so we had to wear old tennis shoes if we wanted to go in. However to us it was Hawaii, a symbol of all things summer, complete with bandshell and snack bar where you could buy a wishing well pop for 5c and chips for 10c. The old wooden change rooms had the largest missing knotholes in the world! I swear most of the boys I knew got their sex educations there!
Saturday matinee downtown. Always a double feature and the shorts. There was always something to do it seems. If not there was always the park, trading comics or sportscards with friends or watching little league. What happened to all that magic?
Ebert: Saturday matinees...
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/hooray_hooray_the_first_of_may.html
I forgot to ask Roger:
Did you ever invert your bikes handlebars to look cool?
Ebert: No, but I used a clothes pin to hold a plahyig card in the spokes and make a sound like a motorsickle.
Speaking as a child of the '90's, I don't know that our summers were so different from yours. The TV and videogames were mostly there for days when it was too hot to play outside (the majority of my childhood took place in Texas, where 110 degree heat was a bit of a deterrent to outdoor activity) but my friends and I still spent ample time racing bikes around the neighborhood, swimming in a nearby lake, we even built a village in the forest in my backyard, complete with shops where we sold goods (mostly spears we carved out of sticks) with money we made out of paper. Despite what the older generation seems to think, TV and videogames are just another touchstone in a child's life nowadays, and not the dominant note. I suspect that when I'm older, my time playing Mario will be as dear to me as your time reading Thrilling Wonder Tales was to you. Times change, but not always for the worse.
I guess there used to be lots of drive-in places that had their own brand of root beer. It was "Dad's" in Eastern Texas when I was a boy. Adults can never enjoy a soft drink as much as kids do. I remember pulling countless unrefrigerated Dr. Peppers from a wooden crate in the little store I passed every day; it would burn your nose, and we felt special for drinking Dr. Pepper because "they can't get it in some parts of the country."
Wow, Roger. I'm only 34, but when I think of how my friends and I "owned" our neighborhood back in the late 70s and early 80s- we didn't just play in our yard- we played in everybody's yard! This was the Naperville back then. I never remember anyone ever telling us to "get out of my yard!!!" A dollar at the Rexall Drugs downtown would buy me a Mad Magazine, or some Lemon Drops. We'd get Now and Later candy to try to pull out any last baby teeth.
We played all-neighborhood games like Manhunt and Sardines, kind of like professional hide and seek (or hide and seek for big kids). We'd hide in people's window wells (or on their rooftops, with quiet feet), or we'd climb their trees or hide in their bushes. Once in a while, a nice neighbor would make us lemonade or show us her garden.
As I still live in the Chicago suburbs, I see the pristine lawns, and the kids have all gone away. Sure, they head out to the parks, but they carefully use the sidewalks. The ownership of the community has been lost. When we go on a walk with my 4 year old, she'll walk all over the place, up people's driveways, on their front porches, try to climb their trees, but I have to tell her "no- you can't go playing on other people's property. You can't pick other people's flowers, you can't..." The sad truth of the matter is- those owners probably would agree with me. They'd begrudge the kid the flower because they planted it. It's the feeling you get in the neighborhoods these days.
Last time I visited Naperville, they put up a plaque where the old Rexall Drugs used to be.
Naperville has lots of plaques.
This is a wonderful slice of your childhood. Thank you for sharing it with us.
However, I did laugh at your description of Sunday Mass, where "big osculating fans swept the congregation." Did the fans osculate with each other, or were they actually kissing the parishioners? Or did you think they were "osculating" fans at the time?
Ebert: That's what we called them, http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=3M7&q=osculating+fan&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1">and looky here.
I came along rather later than you, Roger, but I remember summer in the Midwest and Harry Carey. And Dog 'n' Suds!
For some reason, though, I don't remember "airing the snake". Perhaps my gender has something to do with that. Lucky guys. We had to run home.
Thanks for a wonderfully nostalgic entry. And a belated Happy Birthday!
I came home on my 16th birthday (in 1977) and found, in the driveway, a present from my maternal Grandfather waiting for me in the driveway: the exact car that he had given new to his daughter (born in 1938) on her 16th birthday, now restored and repainted its original sky blue - a 1954 Ford Mainline. This is the car on which I truly learned to drive and to sense the true freedom that comes from being able to escape the confines of home. We now own a 2008 Acura TSX with navigation, etc. I still miss the old car.
P.S. In yesterday's NYT crossword puzzle, my domestic partner thought that 14 Across: 'Writer on pictures', would be 'autographer' but it was too long. It was 'Roger Ebert.'
Ebert: The Fairlane was classy. I suppose you've seen this, which was on sale at the same time.
What's your favorite Phillip K. Dick novel?
Ebert: I don't clearly remember the novels I read in the 1950s, but from the first Library of America volume, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Great stuff, Roger. You're just a few years older than I am, so this was pretty much my summers too.
Choc-Ola must be the stuff we used to drink, in the small bottles, that I've tried for years (on and off) to identify. It was always difficult to decide for quality (the chocolate) or volume (anything else).
Ebert: Both Choc-Ola and Yoo Hoo are still made by Cadbury's.
Canfield's Diet Chocolate Fudge became very popular after a Bob Greene column, and is still widely sold.
I suspect you would very much enjoy Bill Bryson's take on this same era: "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir". Thanks for sharing such warm and squishy memories!
The kid next door.............hmmmmmmm.............Jeff does not sound familiar.
I recall that the lot just west of us was vacant, then our house, Smiths, Shaws, and your house. A house may have been built on the vacant lot about the time we moved, but I do not remember who moved in.
Are you in touch with Gary Wikoff? He may be able to help us remember. I am in touch with Kathy Shaw McKenzie and she may recall who Jeff was.
Yep, you are right.......Marc Howard was the DWS GM before Larry Stewart. Now........what was the name of the first engineer at WDWS? Again...........no prizes!
Jenny and I send you and Chaz our very best..............ss
Ebert: You were at the West end of the block, with all the rest of us east of you, except for Jeff Smith, who was immediately east, in a newer house that might have been built on the vacant lot.
Wasn't there a colonel in the house between you and the Shaws? I rememeber him showing a crack in his front sidwalk to me and saying "That's where I want to find my Courier every evening. Right on there. Don't try throwing it at the house."
I cannot believe I remembered the name of Marc Howard, which I have not had any occasion to use for decades. I'm discovering that the memory may retain everything, if we can access it.
Do you still have your MG-TD in mint condition?
Those were days when a year was a year long, winters cold and never snowless, food tasted good, ghosts for all practical purposes existed and death, specifically of others a thing of dread...to quote Hazlitt's well known essay:
"No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of my brother's, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for every thing. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals. "
Roger,
Steve sent your blog to me. Sure was interesting reliving the "good old days in Urbana". I remember most of the guys that you mention.
Was the neighbor Jeff Smith? If so I believe that he went down in a Navy helicopter during Viet Nam.
Take care, Jim
Ebert: Hi, Jim! Jeff Smith, yes. How can I remember so much and have blind spots? I don't recall him playing much with us. He was always a little more serious. I'm trying to remember where you lived, because I know we were friends but don't rememeber you living in those two or three blocks.
Every adult beleives their childhood days are the best and with adulthood thinks " every thing is going to hell in a handbasket" or makes the inevitable statement " these kids these days " or " back in my day" etc. I think things ARE worse for children these days. TV, internet, air conditioning, malls, video games are turning our kids into blobs.
I grew up in rural Missouri and I remember I could tell my mom I was going out to play and come back 12 hours later and no one think a thing about it. My friends and I were like savages (noble savages..ha) riding our bikes, climbing rocks, juggling knives....total freedom. Now? Well "these kids these days"....
Mr Ebert it sounds like you had an idyllic childhood and upbringing. Keep up with the stories and nostalgia...
Oh the smothering heat of summer in Chambana, especially on the shadeless campus after the great elms died. I was in grad school there when you were editor of the Daily Illini. Also read science fiction and was married to a fellow sf reader at St. Patrick's by Fr. Martel. But I grew up to be an sf critic. Corresponded with Phil Dick and wrote the intro to the hardback library edition of his "Eye in the Sky." Also wrote an sf novel involving giant intelligent otters in an alternate Chambana.
Thank you for a charming memoir of a vanished world.
Ebert: Are you sure those were otters, or just Champaign people?
Hi Roger,
Thanks for another terrific post, on summers past.
Growing up in a Toronto suburb known as Leaside in the fifties was something out of Leave It To Beaver.
My Mom was home,and my Dad worked.I recall he even had to work half a day on Saturday.He took the bus downtown,to his office.He wore a suit,a white shirt and tie,and a fedora.(no fedora in the summer).
He smoked Buckingham cigarettes.No filters.
We had a family auto,but my Dad always took the bus to work.The car was a 1947 Buick.It had a straight eight cylinder motor.
One summer evening, when I was 14 or 15 and my Dad was away on a business trip (in Chicago,he always stayed at the Palmer House). I took the car keys,started up the car,and backed out of our driveway,and drove around the block.Up Donegal Dr. to Parkhurst Blvd.Left along Parkhurst to Fleming Cres.then left on Fleming Cr. which brought me right back to our street and driveway.
I parked the car,ran into the house,and hung the keys back up.
My mother had been taking a bath. I felt so dishonest,that I blurted out,"Mom I took the car around the block for a drive". She answered "Yea sure ya did,who are you trying to kid,you can't drive."
By the time I was 18 I had my own car,and it was a 1956 Buick, 2 door hardtop. It was a beauty. I learned quite a bit about girls in that car.
I have posted before about the fifties and my recollections of those fondly remembered times,but this story just came back to mind.
Just one more thing for today, we played baseball all summer long,in the park next to the house.We had two great diamonds. And we rode bikes everywhere. Damn I wish I had kept in touch with so many of my pals from those years.We moved away when I was sixteen,and before I knew it, I was married,working, and had a kid on the way.I was nineteen,and grew up overnight,with responsibility,and a wife who was seventeen.
I wouldn't change a thing.
Cheers
Great reading on the summer solstice. I grew up on Elm Street in Urbana during the same era and we used to wade barefoot in the Boneyard (now I realize it was a sewage creek - thank heavens for polio vaccine) and camped out in the bushes next to our house to keep cool. Can't imagine 10 year old girls getting to do that now. Although we shared a lot of the same experiences, I would take a chocolate Coke over a cherry 7-Up anyday. Thanks for stirring up old memories. They are precious.
Ebert: Waitaminit. Waitaminit. It was a sewage creek? And we caught crawdaddies in it?
Hi Stymie,
Thanks for the memories from our childhood neighborhood. In my mind's eye I can see almost all the places you mentioned. My very first memory is of Gary Wikoff and other older boys marching around the block banging lids together to celebrate the end of WWII.
The boy between you and Gary may be Larry Luhtala who lived at 507 East. The two boys on the left look like brothers and one has on a Lincoln School t-shirt so maybe they were visiting.
I remember playing hide and go seek, kick the can and croquet in the vacent lot at 505, sometimes until it was so dark we couldn't see to play. And when the wind was up we had a place to fly kites.
Hope you never run out of ideas for blogging. I check in about every day to read your latest.
Hang by your thumbs and write if you get work.
Holmesey
Ebert: We were way ahead of the curve to be Bob and Ray fans at the time.
That's right, it's Larry Luhtala. I seem to remember a parade at the war's end in downtown Champaign.
I've been meaning to thank you for a long time for finding your dad's Playboys down in your basement.
Roger, Thank you once again great memories... but were you scooping off the bottom of Crystal Lake Pool? When I read that I cringed at all the times I splashed, cool off, swam there after riding my bike through the park...what a great place. And as in this journal and in your answer man column you revive such nice memories of Oscar Adams... Of course having been moved by my parents in mid-sixth grade to Champaign (although I finished the year at Leal), I remember Mr. Adams welcoming us, even those of us from across Wright St., to the Tiger's Den, the only place in C-U for the teen-agers to scope out the guys and dance.
Thanks again... I hope these journals are going to be compiled in a book one day. And did Holmesey start at the N-G at the same time you did?
Ebert: Holmesey did indeed start at the News-Gazette when we did. He was a photographer and on Saturday nights worked in the darkroom. We would always head out together to Tyke Vriner's for meals of staggering proportions, climaxing with chocolate-and-marshmallow sundaes. We had money to burn. Hell, we were making 85 cents an hour!
And are you sure Dog N Suds didn't originate in Champaign. As I recall Don Hamacher was a music teacher in Champaign schools. Hmmmmmmm -- Bets
I just wanted to say that I grew up in the 1980s and loved my video games and movies like nobody's business, but still had plenty of time for riding bikes, playing basketball, football, baseball, volleyball, diving, swimming, fishing, building treehouses, playing make-believe, reading comic books, wearing out my library card, canoeing, shooting bows and arrows, playing dungeons and dragons, catching frogs, climbing trees, listening to music, shooting videos, exploring, and so much more. As it is said, the summers were LONG.
I think "kids today" are more active than they are given credit for, and it's a very small minority that spends the summer jacked into an X-Box or facebook or whatever.
Also: another nice blog entry.
Roger, after reading this I hope you will at some point pen a memoir about your childhood. And perhaps this is fanboy talk, but then it would of course be adapted into a film, a la Bob Clark's A Christmas Story.
I'm 32, and when I was a kid I lived in a small town in northeastern Washington state, and it was long enough ago that my friends and I could spend all day away from home on our bikes and no one would ever worry. I lament nowadays on Halloween that the kids only seem to be able to Trick-or-Treat in shopping malls or in the late afternoon. The freedom of childhood seems to be a thing of the past.
I wish I could say that you make me nostalgic for my childhood, but you don't: you make me envious for yours.
I didn't experience the freedoms you did. How could I? When I was a girl, our neighbourhood was stalked by a serial child rapist. The police refused to make a statement to warn the public and school authorities dismissed worried parents as hysterical neurotic nutcases, but some parents still talked, and we kids were kept at home whenever possible and guarded when we went out. Unfortunately, because the police didn't issue a warning, not every parent knew what was going on - and their children were the ones who ran free, and suffered for it.
The bastard was caught only after he abducted and murdered the girl who lived across the street from us. She was five years old. I had babysat her a few times. In his confession he claimed to have raped over 200 girls and to have spied on hundreds more, including me. His family lived a block away from us.
He wasn't on drugs, he wasn't a product of the permissive age: he was a mentally disabled man whose parents alternated between beating him and spoiling him. He was just released from prison after 30 years: I moved out of town the week before he got out.
I'm sure this is terribly boring to you and completely irrelevant to your topic, but I guess I just wanted to say that the freedoms of the past sometimes left kids vulnerable, and the ones who were victimized might not be here to point that out.
Ebert: And the police didn't make it public? That must have involved some peculiar logic.
I love that Eddie Cochran video!
Summer music sounds a certain way, and a perfect playlist is like a perfectly composed sentence. I had the best afternoon yesterday with these songs on big speakers, a sweaty glass of iced coffee and my gardening gloves.
1) The Kinks - "You Really Got Me Now"
2) The Beachboys - "Don't Worry Baby"
3) The Zombies - "Time of the season"
4) Marvin Gaye - "Can I Get A Witness"
5) The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"
6) Paul Simon - "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard"
7) Cream - "Sunshine of Your Love"
8) The Beatles - "You're Gonna Lose That Girl"
9) Joni Mitchell - "California"
10) Tom Jobim - "The Girl From Ipanema"
11) The Rolling Stones - "Beast of Burden"
12) Frank Sinatra - "Summer Wind"
Summer is a feeling, and sometimes a day feels just right!
Summers were for going outside and reading, among other things. I had my special quiet place for reading, in a wooded part of a local park. I could sit there for hours, lost in whatever the book of the moment was. The thought that anything bad could come of something like that never entered my mind. (My childhood was during the 1960s.) Now, I think most parents would have a heart attack if their kid had a secret place like that. Too many nuts around, too many bad things on the news.
Kids miss a lot by not having the freedom to play Red Rover under the stars while the fireflies float by. The ice cream parlor and the drugstore were just a few blocks away, and it wasn't unusual for anyone to go for a walk to get an ice cream sundae, then go across the street to the drugstore to get candy bars to stick in the freezer for later. Now you have to get in the car to go anywhere, and the drugstore and the ice cream place are both part of national chains and not owned by the guy who lived down the block or in the apartment on the top floor of the building.
Every kid with a bike tried the playing card in the spokes trick, and, to our minds, it did sound like a motorcycle. An older kid in the neighborhood had a unicycle he liked to ride on the streets--coolest thing ever. No one could top that.
"By R. Sabo on June 21, 2009 1:09 PM
What's your favorite Phillip K. Dick novel?
Ebert: I don't clearly remember the novels I read in the 1950s, but from the first Library of America volume, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch."
I am quite the fan of "Horselover Fats." I may not have every work he ever published, but I can count 38 novels and five fat volumes of his short stories on one of my library shelves. I think his best SF novel was "Ubik," though "Radio Free Albemuth," "Eye in the Sky" and his "Valis" trilogy also exemplify Dick's endearing paranoia (which he lived out in real life). His very best work, which is usually considered an attempt at mainstream fiction rather than SF, I think was "Confessions of a Crap Artist." It gets me roiling with laughter whenever I read it, and, as we should all realise, humor is based in contradiction which first requires intellectual analysis. Dick was probably too dark for a kid to enjoy, and many of the novels he wrote when you were growing up, Roger, were thinly veiled commentaries on both the emerging Cold War and the McCarthyism rampant in the early 50's. Childhood favorites for me from back then included Andre Norton (who I thought was a guy), A.E. von Vogt, Arthur C. Clark, Brian Aldiss, Isaac Asimov and, of course, all the SF classics by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. (Why do mothers and sisters throw that stuff out when they take it upon themselves to clean out closets? What agency confers the license?) I daresay it was the early scifi that bent the twig to become the rational empiricist that ultimately matured into the wise old liberal Roger Ebert we know and love.
Ebert: Waitaminit! Waitaminit! Andre Norton was a girl?
"The nature of summer changed as I grew older....Summer no longer lasted until time immemorial. The last day of summer came sooner. Time compacted. Life closed in."
Quite true. This is the first summer when I've fully realized this, and I must say, even though those days of innocence will be missed, I no longer think of summer as that boundless season that was capable of encasing a child's dreams, a feeling that probably announces the proper arrival of adulthood. Its a bitter-sweet feeling, to be sure. Funny, how life works.
So, what's in root beer anyway? Roots? Beer?
What gives it that distinctive taste?
I suppose I could google it...nah.
Great blog entry as always. The thing that I always like about your writing, Roger, is that while you may be politically liberal, you are, in many ways, conservative. I am very similar and I think most people are conservatives at heart. However, to echo Adam and Bob, I think adults, no matter what age they grow up in, will always have fond childhood memories like yours. It isn't so much what we did but who we spent it with and the emotions those memories evoke. I'm almost 21 and I grew up in an age of CD players and TV and video game consoles and the beginning of the internet and I swear to god, Roger, fifty years from now, people my age will fondly remember playing SuperSmash Bros. on N64. In fact, come to think of it, people my age already nostalgically reminisce about SuperSmash Bros'.
There is even a Facebook group called, "If you remember this, you grew up in the 90s". Among the entries are things, you'd probably consider new (but we consider old) like, "when you rented VHS tapes", "you had at least one Tomogatchi [digital pet] and brought it everywhere", "you danced to Wannabe by the Spice Girls" and "Bill Nye The Science Guy". The list ends with a similar nostalgic note, "before we realized all this stuff would disappear. Who would have thought you'd miss the '90s so much!" I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. At least in terms of missing the things that we wish had just stayed the same. The present, obviously, is always so much more complicated than the past.
Ebert: Nothing would ever be quite as real or new as it was then.
Roger sez:
Wasn't there a colonel in the house between you and the Shaws?
Nope...........we were 404, Smiths were 406, Shaws were 408 and you were 410.
Do you still have your MG-TD in mint condition?
By the time my MG collection had reached 6, I got bit by the flying bug and bought a plane in 1977. Bought another one in 1979 and gave the first one to Joe, who was living in Florida at the time. Sold the MG collection in the early 80s. Now I drive a Miata!
I still have the plane I bought in 1979 and we live in a residential airpark in South Carolina. Jenny is a professor at USC and I retired from the U of I and worked for a while as a pilot for Vesuvius in Champaign. We moved here 2 years ago and I still do some flight instructing and aerial photo work.
Good that you heard from Hal and Jim. Are you in touch with Kathy Shaw or Gary Wikoff?
Best regards.......................ss
Ebert: You're forgetting the Weavers at 408. Then the Shaws. Then the colonel;. Then you. Then Jeff Smith in the corner house. No?
I hear all the time from Gary and Connie. Not Kathy yet.
There is no better song that captures what it's like to be a teenager during this particular season than "Summertime Blues." Timeless. Nice pick, Roger. These wonderful little vignettes about life as a youth in Urbana are the next best thing to having a DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor. Thank you for that.
I remember Paul Gibson. Vividly. No one else on Chicago radio was like him. He didn't tell jokes. He didn't do Shepherdian routines. He wasn't a show biz gossip like Jack Eigen. Frankly, Gibson seemed a little unsavory. You could almost picture him rambling on and on at the microphone, sipping from a Thermos filled with gin. Near the end of his stint on WBBM, station managers tried softening his image by pairing him with Lee Phillip, promoting them as 'The Lady and the Tiger.' Poor Lee.
Fifty-some years ago my future sister-in-law was Gibson's 'go-fer,' part of her responsibilities as a young WBBM staffer. When she and her husband retired and left Evanston for Albuquerque, I rescued dozens of old WBBM reels and carts from their trash. Lots of wonderful things were on those airchecks, including some of Mal Ballair's live 'Fashions in Music' shows. But what I really hoped to find was a sample of Paul Gibson at work. No such luck. Of the thousands of hours when Gibson ruled Chicago radio, nothing seems to have survived for posterity.
On a personal Champaign note, Lyle Mayfield recently turned eighty. He and Doris still harmonize on those old country and pop tunes, though not nearly as much as they'd like. Enjoyed our chance meeting at Ed Drier's twenty years ago -- hope to see you on the sawdust floor again.
Ebert: Mal Bellairs. Saxie Dowell. Franklin McCormick. Norman Ross. Art Norman.
Dick Biondi was still on the air until a few months, when his station went automated. The bastards.
The progression of your days reminds me of the phrase "well turning", which I've only heard from Robert Higgs, author of "God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America." He described a rural Southern boyhood in which the days were a succession of events that unfolded with a certain loosely-driven, but purposeful, rhythm. There might be fieldwork, but in the middle of the afternoon the adults might mow down part of the pasture to short grass, perfect for a ballgame. After which might be a release to go to the swimming hole. Followed by more work. And a barbecue at sundown. He said, looking back on it, that there was a quality of turning from one thing to the next thing, at a pace driven by long-standing community culture, that turned so perfectly that he called it "well turning". He seemed happy as he reminisced, as do you.
I grew up in Tidewater Virginia, not far from Jamestown and Newport News, where the Warwick River meets the James River before they flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Surrounded by woods and a seasonal peach orchard across the road. At harvest, the old barn in the orchard would fill up with seasonal hands, packing crates and huge fans to circulate the air while the crates were packed. Swimming in the Warwick River down by dilapidated Young's Plantation, with tennis shoes on to protect our feet from getting sliced by oyster shells (but no protection from the stinging jellyfish, which would wrap their tentacles around your stomach). The woods in which I climbed trees, made spears, threw mudballs, avoided cotton mouth water moccasins, got lost and built forts in -- is long displaced by a subdivision of closely-packed houses, most of which have been there for more than 40 years. The bulldozers were busy knocking down the original forest, which had probably been there since before the Jamestown colonists arrived, in the weeks when we happened to be moving away. The children who were born into those houses naturally believe their neighborhood has always looked that way. It hasn't.
Twice as many people in the world as when I was born 50 years ago. Things change.
Ebert: The ancient Roman proverb has it wrong. The more things change...the more they change.
We were on Florida Ave., near Blair park. Actually, not far from where the Sanderson's moved to on Mumford. Tony Hough, Joe Sanderson, Mike Gianturco, Jim Walker and Paul Ingle were a little closer to my orbit at that time.
Your blog on the early days certainly re-ignited many of the best memories any kid could have experienced.
Ebert: That's right. Such familiar names. And Paula Gianturco. Saw her in San Francisco maybe 25 years ago.
LIGHTNING BUGS!
What I've missed from my childhood summer has been lightning bugs (Photinus spp). They would emerge every evening around dusk and we kids would gleefully capture as many as we could and place them in glass bottles. This would go on throughout the long sultry evenings until the firefly mating season ended. Why? We were kids. When the lightning bugs disappeared, I became a housefly ninja like President Obama, snatching them up in either hand as they sat on leaves and then stunning them by flinging them to the sidewalk. (I must have really bad karma awaiting me in my next incarnation.) Actually, any member of the phylum Arthropoda was fair game for a kid to catch or kill. Some kids even tracked down higher Chordata, critters like snakes and toads. I have not had the thrill of even beholding a firefly for its aesthetic qualities since moving from the Midwest to California in the 70's. Later moves to the deep South and to South Florida, though they familiarized me with the ways of many tropical swamp-dwelling denizens, never again allowed me to enjoy lightning bugs. So, I will always associate those joyful creatures with the endless summers of childhood of which Roger speaks.
The feral quality that Roger ascribes to childhood (maybe more specifically boyhood) back in 1950's Champaign-Urbana was essentially the same in Chicago, at least in the Northwest Side neighborhoods with which I was familiar. Back then, there were no gang bangers yet and most folks were still long term residents of the neighborhood whom your parents knew personally. We scrambled around on our bikes over a range that gradually expanded all the way to downtown as we matured through elementary school. By the 8th grade we were peddling all the way to the lakefront and spending time on the beach. The greatest perils were probably the traffic, not people. I'm sure there were pushers, pimps and other lowlifes on the streets, but they left kids alone. If you didn't cycle to your destination, you walked or took the CTA. Mothers didn't have cars yet, and teenagers in the city sure didn't. The first kids I knew who owned cars drove in from the suburbs to our Catholic high school in the city. Roger would have been unbelievably big heat in Chicago with that car of his at age 16. It seems that American "car culture" was a bit different in the big city than in the burbs and small towns. Has that changed? No one feared taking the subway downtown, to a ballgame at Comiskey, or even to the Museum of Science and Industry on the far south side. Has that changed? I hear so many people say it is far too dangerous to raise kids in a big city like Chicago today. I hope not.
"Ebert: Waitaminit! Waitaminit! Andre Norton was a girl?"
LOL. She was the George Elliott of the sci-fi genre.
I wish I could be carefree enough nowadays to enjoy summer like I used to when I was my daughter's age (eight). Now I just go outside and complain about the heat and humidity, and consider the first day of summer as "the beginning of the downhill slide into fall", which is actually my favorite season.
Now I have to go on a search to find a place that still serves malteds out of a metal canister. I never knew why they tasted better but when I was younger my reasoning was that it had something to do with the blades of the milkshake machine hitting the sides of the canister. And I was an oddball when it came to malteds: I never liked them too thick, but rather a bit on the milky side. Still like them that way to this day and I have to practically give instructions to the teenagers working the counter at Braum's on how to make them my way.
Which reminds me of another treat you just don't see anymore: phosphates. My favorite phosphates were cherry and lime. There was a place I remember going into as a kiddo and the guy making the phosphate would sometimes add extra "whateveritwas" to give the drink a little extra pucker. If it was a lime phosphate, the effect was close to those cartoons where Sylvester the Cat would accidentally suck alum into his mouth....
Ebert: Steak n Shake still makes them that way.
Oh jeeze Rodge yeah... except for one thing (eyebrows arched). No mischief? No mischief at all, young man?
Roger Ebert? Look me in the eye. Is this a true and accurate account? A midwestern Catholic boy in the summertime, and you didn't do one little thing wrong all summer?
Hm?
Ebert: For my sins, I am grievously sorry.
Roger, your memory is so good and likewise the writing that it has, as usual, evoked quite a response from your readers.
I'm watching my 7-year-old daughter live exactly the life you describe in almost all aspects except one: freedom of independent movement. She'll never have those experiences of being 8 or 9 and biking around the neighborhood with a friend with no parents straggling behind. No trips to the store on her own.
We're of slightly different generations, but I recall how I used to get 25 cents for allowance on Saturday morning, then walk, bike, or run to the local candy store on Queens Boulevard and buy a comic book (12 cents) and two pieces of candy at a 5 cents each. A penny left over for a piece of Bazooka. Happily, my daughter is well into Archie comics now (you have to pass along good reading habits early).
I have one memory of my childhood in which all the good elements of life seemed to crystalize. An early evening at the end of a hot summer's day, in which after dinner my father held my hand as we walked from our apartment building several blocks to a candy store and he bought me an Italian ice. About 6 years old. The memory is so tactile--the heat just starting to dissipate, the feeling of my little hand in his large strong hand. The taste of the ice and its temperature. It sounds banal in the writing (sorry--I don't have your gift), but it's worth so much to me.
Now I take my daughter's hand as walk to the local ice-cream store on the same lazy summer evenings. Perhaps she will remember one of those moments when she's well into middle age. If so, then I have earned my stripes this Father's Day.
YouTube is quickly becoming for me as indispensible as Google for audio/video searches. As expected, a search for Gogi Grant yielded this cut of her original recording of "The Wayward Wind":
The Wayward Wind - Gogi Grant
But I was quite surprised to find this video of her belting it out—and looking good—in 2004 at almost age 80 (and, according to Wiki, she's still performing):
gogi grant the wayward wind
Your writings are of a stark and bold honesty, the conscious mind reaching into its own depths--how miraculous it must be , to reconnect with voices from the past lifetime that is childhood--what a boon of technology..
In the summers of the 50's and 60's, "the Popsicle boy" rode up and down the street, ringing the bells on his bike, and we kids would come running. The poor Popsicle boy had to pedal a heavy freezer chest attached to the front of his bike. Couldn't have been an easy way to make a summer income. Unlike the Good Humor man, the popscicle boy only had grape, banana, cherry, and sky blue popsicles.
We kids didn't have any organized summer activities, but we never ran out of things to do. It was great to be able to read as much as we wanted, and we did--not the classics, but the good stuff like Archie comics and Nancy Drew. It was a different time, for sure, a time when the Wanzer milkman would stop by our house and if we were out, would come inside and put our dairy products in the refrigerator. If anyone reading this wonders, "What is a milkman?", please don't tell me. That will make me feel ancient.
Hope you're still able to enjoy an ice cream cone Roger! This post made me crave a triple scoop!
I grew up in the 60s and 70s in a small burb of Toronto. My parents ran a restaurant. Open 7 days a week. Sunday evenings, the restaurant closed early. I have fond memories of summer nights, when my parents would pile us three kids into the car and we would head to the drive-in. I loved that teal blue speaker hanging in our car window, back seat filled with blankets, pillows, the trips to the concession for hot dogs at midnight!!
When I was a teenager, the drive-in was an essential summer activity. I would drive, my friend D sitting next to me, we'd sneak buddies in to save three bucks.... L hiding across my feet by the pedals (she's small!), and the other L in the trunk. When we let her out, there would be a symphony of honks outing us. I loved going home at dawn.
I now live 5 miles from that drive in. Yes, 40 years later, it's still surviving and it's open for the season!
The teal blue speakers are gone. The hot dogs still taste great. And now they have Cram! Cram! Cram! Car Load Thursdays, fifteen bucks for the whole car! Enjoy the summer everyone!
The way that many children relate to summer would change forever in the 1980's. Within a span of three or four years, from roughly 1981 to 1985, we had the abduction and murder of young Adam Walsh, The Night Stalker Murders and the McMartin Preschool molestation investigation. The media surrounding these events were off the charts. These events, I believe, spawned a generation of overly-protective parents. The typical freedoms of childhood were re-defined. A child's natural need to explore and discover away from the nest was stifled or ignored. A healthy suspicion of all unfamiliar adults was fomented, and I can still see the effects of this today because those kids have children now and they're raising them the same way that they were raised . . . A new tier of video game technology arrived in the mid-eighties, as if to accommodate this shift in parental protectiveness, and at the same time obscure it.
It is very soothing to read about your old summer days right after your incisive writing on Bill O'Reily and following noisy comment thread. I was fascinated, but I was already tired even with one YouTube Clip.
My summer days in 90's are mainly represented by fruits, especially watermellon. The monsoon season ended around late July, the weather got hot and humid, and my parents would buy watermelons. They had spherical shape and a little bigger than basketball. My mother would slice them in four pieces, and then dice juicy parts into cubes, immediately put into tupperwares and stored in refrigerator. Of course, I and my little brother ate peaches, plums, grapes and so on, but watermelon was the most vivid thing in my memory.
Meanwhile, we still had to study for fall semester during summer The last day of school is around December in Korea. Elementary school teachers handed us lots of homeworks and we would submit them on the first day of fall semester. Or, there would be hell to pay. In case of grade school, we all have to go to school during these hot days for entrance exams for high school. Thank god we had electronic fans, compliments of the school board. After that, my life in dormitories began during high school years, and entire years belonged to the school except some holidays.
In case of books, I was into mystery books, although I read few SFs like "Rendezvous with Rama". I vividly remember reading nice volumes of short story collections from Ellery Queen Magazine. Some of them were very excellent. Ursula K. Le Guinn wrote some short story about interesting way of eliminating annoying wife. Husband and daughter had been devoted to her and moved to warm place for her health, but she showed her unpleasant side when she got well. Well, husband had subtle solution. Patricia Highsmith wrote chilling one about the character who is as psychopathic as Ripley.
Summer camp was horrible place to me due to sanitation problem and mosquitoes. I read "Foucault's Pendulum"(translated version with lots of footnotes) while enduring it. Recently I wasted my time on reading "Da Vinch Code", and I could not help thinking about that novel,which has more brain with biting message(Don't play fire with historical bulls*it even just for fun; you may get burned). And I still repent for wasting my time on Sidney Sheldon novels(I found it weird that his novels always had room for lovemaking or whatsoever) and V.C. Andrews(Stephen King was right about her novels).
I had very few friends, and I preferred reading than going outside. However, my parents were insistent about going outside the city. I was a little annoyed, but, looking back from now, they were right. We traveled a lot, I saw beautiful forest and mountain, cool river and ocean, and small but impressive Buddhist temples. Our favorite vacation place was East coast area near the border line between North and South Korea. We could enjoy both mountain and ocean easily, and some kind of hotel owned by Dad's company had many facilities including swimming pool and discount shop. We usually went to that building at the end of season, and it was as quiet as the hotel in "Quantum of Solace".
People tend to believe things were more simple when they were young. However, things really change indeed. Even I am 26, I am sometimes amazed by what kids do inside and outside elementary school. I'd love to listen to their summer stories.
Ebert: You paint vivid word pictures.
Sadly I don't remember where I first learned "what women had under their sweaters", or their pants, for that matter.
I remember fondly, listening- not long ago- while lying on my back in the dark, late at night, to cassettes and CD's of Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Billy Joel, Elton John, Alice Cooper, The Godfather Part III soundtrack (WHY?!), Apocalypse Now Soundtrack, Road to Perdition soundtrack, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Dexter Gordon's Round Midnight, Supertramp, Led Zeppelin, and on and on.
This blog entry has me recalling an especially sweaty night in my second story apartment bedroom (shared with twins) in southern California watching my new Constantine DVD (in the dark, naturally) while the twins were downstairs. I think that film (like others) had a similarly erotic effect on me, given that there is no explicit eroticism in Constantine (Weisz, sumptuous flashy visuals). Now, I've gone High-Definition, times change quick...
Indeed, I am still quite young ((and vegetarian) to the extent I avoid red meat and poultry- a thoughtful decision made in college only 3 years ago!).
"'We have a young announcer here named Roger who is going to tell us about the weather.' He pointed to the paper in front of me and swiveled the mike over. I was almost dizzy with a flush of excitement. 'Sunny and warmer tomorrow, with a high around 80,' I read. 'Good job, Roger,' Don said. I had been on the radio. There was no turning back." - Ebert
Who knew that little Roger's name would eclipse, in sheer fame, that of the sweet DJ?
For me, it was The Bookman (three large rooms, side to side, filled with rows and rows of assorted used books) on Tustin in the City of Orange (I also traveled on bicycle) where I liked to browse and/or purchase cheap classics of literature and movie tie-ins (most of which I've still yet to actually read). There used to be a Bookman Basement a few storefronts down, where there were EVEN MORE rows of assorted used books.
What DID I read? The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather, Red Dragon, Jaws, The Shining, Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, The Trial, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dracula, and a novelized version of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula (notice the pattern). There's a few more. Sometimes it was awkward, because I would go back more than once in one day!
Next door was Pepperland, a store from which I liked to browse and/or purchase movies and music on cassettes, CD's, VHS, DVD, and sometimes vinyl. Once the owner wrongly accused me of shoplifting, I was so offended and told my dad. We both went back to the store (a sanctuary for me) and all was better again (as the owner figured I wouldn't have told my dad if I was guilty). Ironically, I never shoplifted from there, but I had shoplifted from other stores owned and operated by major corporations, like Target, Ralph's and Warehouse Music.
Oh, and malts! There is a store in the Old Town Plaza, called Watson's Soda Fountain, where films like That Thing You Do would shoot, that still serves malts that way. I ordered the chocolate, and apparently, according to the menu I read, George W. Bush ordered the strawberry (make of that what you will). Since, to be economically sound, I tend to make my own.
P.S. Now that I think about it, I remember my friend Nick Illanis and I, during my elementary school years, were walking in a sports field at a closed down/deserted Christian high school, across from where we lived, and we encountered an abandoned porn magazine lying on the grass. I suspect that was the first time...There was also a time I, of middle school age, checked out a documentary on the cinematic history of Frankenstein, and was surprised to see topless scenes, but that was later...
Hopefully, this is last time! (Fake Russian accent)
I've always been more of a winter person (maybe that's just because of the drone of southern California weather), probably not 'though...but I love the nostalgia, bittersweet, sentimental mood of this entry, which reflects my own mood lately. I'm sandwiched in between finishing undergraduate school, not working, living at home, and being overwhelmed by all the grad school possibilities (my next goal at this point). I attend community college as my only thing so that I have something to do other than be a college graduate homebody.
It may not seem that way, but sentimental films always hit hardest for me (in the best of ways).
I'm with the previous poster who supposes that the kids these days are most definitely more active than we give them credit for. Even when my friends got their shiny new Super Nintendos, we spent an hour outdoors for every minute indoors (and no, not by bringing the TV into the backyard).
Your memories of your childhood are as vivid as mine... but I'm only 26! I have often thought that my own vivid memories give me a big leg up over most when it comes to my profession (elementary school teacher) but I can only hope to match you when I'll have put a few more decades between then and now.
When I was 5, my parents moved out of the big city to a beautiful little town called Penticton; even that wasn't quite peaceful and serene enough, so we moved to the 'suburbs', which was right up on the side of a mountain. There was a neighbourhood, but getting around by bike was arduous, so I grew up a hiker. The first three years of that life were perfect childhood. There was, as I said, a mountain. A forrested mountain with wildlife. Deer were a weekly sight, and before a disease wiped out 90% of the population, so were majestic bighorn sheep. The crack of their mating battles was like a gunshot.
Every weekend morning we'd wake up early to watch cartoons. The saturday cartoons were particularly attractive. I was a Ninja turtles kid, and later a Batman and a Spiderman kid. Some Japanese anime was just starting to break through, and I particularly liked Saber Rider. He-man was before my time; Nickolodean after. On a particularly lazy Saturday, we might stay in, play Nintendo or Lego starting about 11:00 when the good cartoons had finished, and perhaps start watching the Disney cartoons on ITV at 1:00. Duck Tales was our favourite, but we like Rescue Rangers and TailSpin too. Darkwing Duck never had much appeal for us. When Gargoyles came on, it was a revelation. Saturdays were planned around that show for as long as it lasted, which was perplexingly brief.
Weather permitting, we'd generally spend the days outside of course. We had a solid dozen or so activities we enjoyed, and we learned to select them democratically. The start of every play session would begin with a game of 'choose the game'--everybody would have to nominate a single game they wanted to play, and after everyone had done so, every game would be voted on. We played Ninja Turtles--usually by grabbing sticks and whacking each other with them repeatedly--or guns (I got you! No I got you first!)or store; we'd all open up our own shops and pay for things with gravel money; or we'd build a fort somewhere; there were three particularly suitable locations and we'd construct miniature stone cabins with branch and moss roofs, maybe an additional wall or two. We'd occasionally pack a lunch and go exploring; just hike up the side of the mountain as far as we dared for as long as we dared, then eat and turn back. We never came close to climbing the whole mountain, it could have taken days for all we knew. Sometimes I still regret not ever having seriously made the effort.
Indoors we had our Nintendos; our favourite games were the Dragon Warrior serious. Although it was single player, we'd think nothing of sitting around chatting about the game while one person played. Serious strategy conferences were a common occurence, and the game has a turn-based combat sequence so we could take as much time as we needed to reach a decision. Should we use firebolt on the Ice Golem, or save our magic points? Should we open the battle with sap, or sleep, or increase? Don't forget to parry-thrust with the soldier! Heal with the priest, heal with the priest! Is it time to turn back, or can we explore one more room? What if that treasure chest is a trap? Do we have enough medicinal herbs left? Which sword should we buy? Should we get the armour first, or a shield? How much can we get in trade for our present equipment? (somebody hurriedly fetches a calculator while we nervously chew our fingernails and pore over charts of monsters and items).
Lego was probably the ultimate, defining toy of my childhood. I can't imagine my own children without it. Every single weekend the lego bins would be dragged into the living room, pieces spread over the floor, and cities, armies, space fleets, castles, pirate ships, and pure joy would be crafted. But the building was just the beginning; we had just as much fun playing with lego as we did preparing to play. We usually played store, with each of us constructing their own house and place of business, and a car, and driving back and forth exchanging lego pirate treasure (the gold coins even had amounts--10, 20, 30, 40--stamped onto them). I usually opened up either a weapon shop (swords for medieval themed games, guns for future games) or a casino. I loved constructing working slot machines and other games of chance. Somebody would usually be either the government or the king, depending on our theme, and would hire somebody else to be the police or the warrior, and go out and catch monsters or space pirates.
Today, teaching in China, kids have got an average of 10(!!!) hours a day of schooling. Even during so-called holidays, kids will just be stuck into private classes. I realised the other day that kids do not spend more than a minute outside of the immediate observation of a responsible adult for their entire childhoods. Most kids do not get an ounce of freedom until they are in university, and even then it's curtailed as much as is realistically possible. I'm of mixed feelings on this. A lot of people think that kids need freedom, and play time, to develop their creativity and social skills, to which I would certainly agree. But this is a double-edged sword. One thing you do not see here is bullying. Ever. Kids simply do not have time for that kind of sillyness, and never have the opportunity to get away with it. But growing up, I experienced bullying from both sides, and it was not a healthy thing. I spoke of my first three years in my new home as idyllic, and they were, but I lived there for twelve. As time went by, I became the victim of a bully in the neighbourhood who gradually turned my life into a prison of fear and impotent rage. Looking back I can see how a great deal of it was my own fault; in many ways I brought it upon myself, and so I can't blame the bully or anyone else. I really can't even blame myself; after all how is a 10 year old necessarily going to have sophisticated social skills if nobody teaches them? That's what happens with total freedom; gradually, over time, injustice by necessity develops. We would generally spend almost the entire day apart from parents or any adult at all. It's easy, now, to see how a Lord of the Flies situation could develop.
Ebert: You had me imagining a childhood ldyll right up until that last sentence.
Since I was born in 1979, my childhood was the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's and the summers were a mix of organized activities (mostly PeeWee, Little League and Pony League baseball) and doing whatever you wanted.
I remember countless mornings getting up, eating breakfast and then my younger brother and I heading out to the yard to play a variety of sports all morning and afternoon. Sometimes, we would ride our bikes to a couple of friends, who lived nearby, and all of us would go to a park to play basketball, baseball or football.
If the weather was bad, we would stay inside and play video games. We had a Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. I still own the NES and SNES that my brother and I received as gifts. There was no cable TV in the house until after the O.J. Freeway incident and since the mornings and afternoons were full of talk shows and soaps, there wasn't really anything for boys to watch (except for The Price is Right when we remembered it was on at 11 a.m.).
I looked at the Dogs N' Suds website and saw that I live with in 20 minutes of the only two locations here in Michigan. I haven't been to the Montague location in years, but I visit the Norton Shores location a few times a summer since it's less than 500 feet from the local movie theater.
About the only childhood thing I never did was play outside in the rain, but that was because I wear a very expensive pair of hearing aids and didn't want to ruin them.
When I was 15, my childhood ended since my friend turned 16, acquired a car and I just happened to catch the movie bug 3 months before my 15th birthday watching Schindler's List. From that moment on, my friend and I used the summers to work during the day and spend our hard earned money at the movie theaters at night.
That's funny - you're describing the 1950s as a beautiful dreamland, the way it's usually presented in those nostalgic movies that you're usually a sucker for. How could you be the same person who wrote that hysterical review of "Revolutionary Road," when you made the same decade look like a nauseating wasteland of conformity and ruined lives? You said that "life was a disease." Were you just having a fit or something?
Ebert: That one was about adults.
You forgot lying on your back at night lookig up in the sky for "satellites". Dick Biondi and his On Top of Spaghetti songs. And later in the 60's listening to "Beacon Street" out of a radio station in Kansas City that came in perfectly after dark. Or before air conditioning sitting out on the front patio with the adults looking at heat lightning in the distance( my husband who grew up in New England says there is no such thing as heat lightning, but I know better) while they talked about Sammy Davis, Jr. marrying Mai Britt or going to see Steve and Eydie.....the feeling is like "Our Town" a huge knot under your heart knowing you lived through all those wonderful times and didn't appreciate it. Oh yeah about neighbors keeping watch I was riding my little brother on the back of my bike and he got his ankle caught in the spokes (The worst thing that can happen) and I was screaming and he was screaming and all the mothers on block came out and took care of us and brought us home. I could go on and on but you captured it so beautifully...I would love to have a A & W Hamburger with a frosty glass of real root beer......Manna from heaven on a hot midwestern summer night.
At 24, I can't recall my childhood clearly enough. The farthest I am able to get nostalgic about is high school. Depressing.
Thank you for this vivid portrait. Harper Lee would be proud. Idyllic.
Through all the years of my children's childhoods I felt I was swimming against the tide. While parents all around me were fearfully restricting their children to their own yards, I was saying "yes, ride to the library" and "yes, walk to the beach" and "yes, go play in the woods on the other side of town" and "yes, go roam, be home for dinner." Many days the neighbor kids weren't even allowed out at all - "too hot!" their mother said. Later she'd complain that her kids only wanted to watch tv or play video games, not a trace of irony in her voice.
My children are now 31, 24, and a pair of 17s. I hope they will remember their childhoods with enough clarity not to imprison their own children in the name of "safety".
It must be age. My eyes just well up so easily these days.
I hope that the commentators who said that youthful summers haven't changed much are right. I know your recollections very closely match mine of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I grew up in Gothenburg, Nebraska, a town of about 3,500 (then and now) in the middle of the state.
How did I come to be 38?
I used to read Ray Bradbury's stories about Greentown -- notably Something Wicked These Way Comes -- and think he must have visited our little Carnegie library. Maybe he was describing ALL small town libraries.
Thanks for the memories and the list of great songs. I can remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard all of them. We were lucky to grow up in a time when our parents didn't have to worry about us too much. Many summer mornings I would pack a sandwich, swim cap, and towel and walk to McGuane park for an entire day of swimming. I would not return home till the pool closed at 5:00 PM. As I walked the four blocks I would sing "Crazy Days of Summer" when I got a little older the song changed to "Hot Fun in the Summer Time". On Sunday afternoons The Ramova offered double features with a cartoon. Seeing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" blew me away and "Born Free" was the first film that made me cry at the end.
I grew up in a small town about 30 miles west of Urbana in the early to mid 60s. I remember playing baseball constantly during the summer. When I wasn't playing baseball I had my ear glued to my transistor radio to listen to the Silver Dollar Survey from WLS in Chicago. I also remember several trips to Crystal Lake Pool when I was young, as well. I really loved that round pool.
Hi Roger!
Though I passed my years age 10 to 20 living in Urbana I never knew you then and have lived to enjoy your writing only as an adult; but my Urbana background lets me savor your memories more fully than I would otherwise.
I write now mainly to offer this marvelous poem by Alan Dugan (1923-2003):
Thesis, Antithesis, and Nostalgia
Not even dried-up leaves,
skidding like iceboats on
their points down winter streets,
can scratch the surface of
a child's summer and its wealth:
a stagnant calm that seemed
as if it must go on and on
outside of cyclical variety
the way, at child-height on a wall,
a brick named "Ann"
by someone's piece of chalk
still loves the one named "Al"
although the street is vacant and
the writer and the named are gone.
Roger,
great stories that brought back a lot of thoughts. Did you get the e-mail about Prof Tryun the Polish refugee on the paper route. I sent it several weeks ago but maybe used the wrong e-mail address. He became a well published author while at the U of I but was always a puzzle to me when I would collect my bill on Friday( or when ever I needed money) I have often thought that young people today miss a great deal of social interaction with many interesting characters because of paying newspaper bills directly to the paper and not requiring the carriers to do their weekly collecting.
Also wanted to let you know that I have framed a number of first day covers,one of which is addressed to you. Sure hope I paid you for it.
As always Connie and I enjoyed the film festival this year and the street sign dedication. By the way I have tried to add my name to the bottom but haven't been able to get the job done.
I was interested in your comments about the music you liked. I kind of leaned toward Sinatra during those early years and have stuck with him over time.
Looking forward to seeing you and Chaz next year.
Gary and Connie Wikoff
Ebert: I very clearly remember sitting in your living room and you playing a Sinstra album and informing me he was the best.
Thought I responded to the message about Professor Tryun. He seemed in a world of his own. He would always walk home from campus, and I'd see him on the sidewalk, hands clasped behind, head bowed in thought. I agree I got to meet the neighbors much more because I collected on my paper route. On Saturdays, we'd have to go in to the Courier and pat our collections. Courier Alley would be jammed with bikes.
I'm sure you either paid or traded me for the first day cover. In the Four Stampers we didn't give much away.
Roger,
Even though I`m only 22, I grew up in a verily conservative family, and it always amazing how much more I relate to stories about the 50`s era childhood. My family didn`t have a vcr till I was in my teens and my parents still do not have a tv. Often times I rememeber spending the whole day outside playing street hockey and then going in at night and listening to the Red Wings blaring on the radio(even though hockey is a summer sport the playoffs typically go till the middle of june) I have no idea why my parents tolerated the radio being as loud as it was but at the same time something about a hockey game being amplified any other way seems thoroughly unreasonable. When I got older I remember endless days playing in the woods and some video games though nothing as advanced or as time consuming as current popular video games.
Sam E.
I was a girl growing up in a small Southern suburb in the 70's, and summers were close to what you describe, although you are just a couple of years younger than my mom (not trying to make you feel old, Roger)!
I was fortunate enough to have a best friend whose parents had a pool; he also had 9 brothers and sisters, so the pool was full throughout the summer, and we spent at least part of every pretty day swimming. When we were too waterlogged, we rode our bikes up to the drugstore (locally owned) to get a cherry coke or chocolate soda from the REAL soda fountain (it's still there, though not in a drugstore, which was converted into a restaurant that is owned by the same friend's parents. We also climbed trees, rode go-carts (no helmet-- stupid, I know), built forts and tree houses (don't remember what we DID in them-- I guess sat around thinking, "Cool! We're in the FORT!"), and ran a Kool-Aid stand for movie money. On rainy days, we watched Tarzan or Andy Hardy movies on the Early Show or built a huge tent out of blankets in my brother's room ("Cool! We're in a TENT!")
Lightning bugs also figured prominently; I still have a yard full of them-- was sitting on the back deck just the other night watching their flashes and remembering....
My best friends'sons (15 and 13) have all of their video games, etc, but still spend their summers swimming, going to the movies, playing war (it is called "AirSoft" now), and hanging out. It is different (how could it not be), but still seems of a piece with what both of our generations did, too.
Your summers sound a lot like mine in the 70's. Thanks for sharing the wonderful memories.
Here's the Wayward Wind on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSPLSo3U46Q
June 22, 2009
Roger:
Great blog, as always. Your blogs are Proustian, a contemporary "Remembrance of Things Past." I too was an only child. Every summer, my father, a Chicago newspaper photographer, would take me on his assignments – to accident scenes, to the Midwest gym to shoot a boxing champ, to Wrigley Field, to some district police station to photograph some recently nabbed murder suspect. Some days he'd take me to the wire room on Wacker and LaSalle for a quick bet on some sure-thing horse that Dave Feldman was touting in the sports section. The joint was always packed with people, including uniformed police officers who were not there to bust the place. Often, to make the first edition with his shots, he'd speed through traffic while I cringed in fear in the front passenger street, expecting a catastrophic collision. It was a great, liberal education, and the reason I also got into the business. World's greatest job, as you once said.
PS. I remember Paul Gibson. Fascinating talker and purveyor of arcane info.
Addition to my entry: Did you know you were a dead ringer for Ralphie in a Christmas Story (minus his glasses of course).
Roger,
Great Blog Post - many great comments from your readers. I do not recall all of my childhood friends names, but I have vivid memories. I grew up in the early to mid 70's in Portland OR. We moved to a tiny remote town after I turned 10 in 77, so my city memories is what I will focus on.
When I have returned to Portland I am surprised to see the radius that I covered when I was little. On bikes and my legs. I recall the Saturday matinees and I remember the first Blockbuster that I saw in theaters with a friend that was a little older than me. We watched JAWS and couldnt stop talking about it afterwards. Everything with your friends seemed like you were exploring, and on some adventure. I recall the checking out abandoned houses and various "haunted houses". I had the adventures near my moms house, grandmas house, and my dads house.
I cannot remember how many times I would be told during the hot summers - its a beautiful day - get outside. So my sister and I would walk 13 blocks to the city pool and spend all day their. Like someone commented on - being gone for 10 or 12 hours was not a huge deal. When my daughter grew up in the 90's we had regular check in times.
One reader pointed to how dangerous this could be - we seemed well aware of dangers. I remember my mom telling me about a guy at a local park that mutilated a boy at the parks restroom. She explained what we should watch out for with strangers and try to be with others. I recall leaving school and my babysitter sent her boyfriend to pick me up after school - and I refused to get in the car with him. It was her car, but I had never met him. So I ran back to the school. It was resolved without issue.
The other surprising memory is that I could go down to a local store with a note from my mom and buy her cigarettes! I never smoked in my life - but it surprises young people that you could get a note from your mom and the store would sell you a pack.
Thanks Roger for sharing so much - it brough back memories.
Roger, if you haven't already, you really have to seriously consider publishing all these reminisces in a single book someday... they're great. Just great.
Sir:
You are a national treasure. After Studs died I never thought another writer could fill the void left by the departure of his voice. I was wrong. Thank you!
Roger the blog was one of your best. Ever thought of trying your hand at a science fiction novel? Remembrance of Things Past meets War of the Worlds!
I enjoyed this entry (after getting over the mention of your pissoirs*). I lived on a block loaded with children. We had a ball. The reason we stayed out all day was because inside was boring! You can play I Declare War, Go Fish, Sorry, Battleship, and checkers so many times before you want to bang your head on the wall. Outside we rode bikes, skated, jumped rope, hopscotch, played tag, pop the whip, school (ha), mother may I, freeze, piggy, hide and seek, and a ton of other games. We sometimes combined the activities. A kid on a bike would pull other kids on skates, then pop the whip. We took swimming lessons at Fenger High School. I could go on. We had a great time every summer. On top of that the playground was across the street from the house. The coolest thing about being a child was no bills and no calendar.
* Girls did not have the option of pissoirs. We went home. Maybe that's why your friends were on their own steps when you passed.
Ebert: We called it Cracking the Whip. You could actually get slammed to the ground.
It was shocking for me also to learn that we were playing on a sewer creek too. The boys gigged frogs in that culvert pond. We had camps in the woods, and raids on each others until the boys all got bb guns.
There were so many kids. It was easy to have five or six around. I always figured that was one of the reasons for the freedom. That, and there were so many a few could be spared if you want to get evil about it.
The grownups played as hard as the kids. Parents water skiied and went sleigh riding. My parents were part of what I call the Camelot set. Young and cool in post WW2 America. Small town hip. I escaped Southern Belle training in the nick of time.
Thanks for the post. I identify more with the Who version of Summertime Blues. Lovin Spoonful works for me though. Television came from Nashville when I was a little girl. Even then we had to have an antenna tower with one of those marvels that sat on the set and could turn the top of the antenna from inside the house. At best we could get all three networks. Captain Bob and Captain Bill were also the news anchor and weatherman besides hosting the WSM children's show.
Later we lived in Louisville media market and could pick up WLS from Chicago on the radio in the evenings when stations like WAKY went off the air and the big dogs took over. First time I heard Jimi Hendrix was riding around town with my cousin in her mother's Ford Galaxie 500. Sweet car. White bucket seats.
My own daughter didn't have the woods to roam like I did. But she did have freedom and a bike. Kids still slept out in the back yard once in a while too.
You remind me why I always defend my suburban upbringing in South Jersey. My parents--like many others--didn't want their children growing up in the city--Philadelphia and Camden for us in the southern portion of the state--so they scrimped and sacrificed and moved to a Levittown-style housing development in the 1950s, where I had a childhood remarkably like your own. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to know twenty or so kids by name, to be able to roam two-three miles away from home, to play in a sewage creek--yeah, me too--to lie down on a hill and talk about everything and nothing (while playing the game from Marty--"Whatta ya wanna do?" "I dunno; whatta you wanna do?"). My son once told me that, when I reminisced about my childhood, he always pictured it in black-and-white, like an "Our Gang" short. Lucky me.
What a great memoir of lazy summers past. I am about twenty-five years younger, but I grew up in a town of 400 in the mountains of southwestern Virginia which seemed to be at least twenty years behind the times, so your memories have some resonance with me. Your mention of the Elmer's volumes brought back visions of pasting stamps over their images in Scott's stamp collection binders using those little gummed hinges that came in small wax-paper packets. My dad always got the Elmer's guides and Linn's Stamp News and he turned me into a junior philatelist.
Thank you for another wonderful entry, Mr. Ebert.
Ebert: I could not believe that nowhere on the web could I find a picture of the cover of Elmer's. And I looked.
Wow Roger, you've got great taste in music!
EDDIE COCHRAN ROCKS!
*Does a Bill and Ted air guitar duet*
Dear Mr. Ebert,
Observations like "Science fiction itself somehow had an aura of eroticism about it. It wasn't sexually explicit, but it often seemed about to be" are the reason I'm a fan of your blog, even though I don't watch many movies; certainly not enough to warrant the number of movie critics I read regularly (for the writing, of course!). You certainly grew up during the Kay Tarrant era, when SF writers had to use clever circumlocutions to get anything even remotely sex-related past the bluestocking editors of the time. (I remember Heinlein saying that one had to use the term "ball-bearing mousetrap" to refer to a tomcat, for instance.)
Funnily enough, I had a childhood very like yours, save more rural, and I wasn't born until the mid-1970s. We didn't have cable television until I was 11 or so -- before that, four channels on a good day! -- and no 911 service until I was almost out of high school. These days, the only thing that distinguishes my childhood home from "the city" is the lack of public transportation. Speaking of which, do you have any memories of streetcars? :)
Dear Roger,
What you don't seem to understand about Bill O'Reilly is that-
No, just kidding. Your blog brought a smile to my face, and I thought I'd try to reciprocate.
I enjoyed this post. I recommend reading it with a glass of Dandelion Wine, vintage a la ray bradbury. Gogi Grant...the Wayward Wind...what was it about that song. I can still hear it playing, I used to ride my bike and sing it aloud down the dusty streets of Arlington. And Saturday matinees at the only theater in town. A double feature, four cartoons, and refrigerated air. And next to the theater was a drug store and news stand with a great long counter for the soda fountain and the nicest old guy who let us kids sit on the stools and read the comics without buying them. And nothing kinky about the guy, just a decent fondness for kids.When I was old enough to really carry on a conversation I discovered he had been in the second world war, captured on Bataan and endured the death march, survived imprisonment and torture to tell the tale for those who died. Being around kids made him feel happy and kept the nightmares at bay.
Roger,
I wonder if your parents ever sent you to a dance class. Mine did around 7th grade. It was the first time I got to put my hand in the small of a girl's back and stand close enough to feel her breath on my cheek. And then there was the dance...one two three slide one two three slide all that counting sure broke the magic spell. It was like learning to do architectural drafting with your feet! Step step step and right angle slide. And what you are really thinking about is the feel of her back, the smell of her sweater and the side of her neck and the proximity of her chest....oops sorry was that her toe I just flattened? She's biting her lip to keep from howling. Not a good sign Romeo.
This has NOTHING to do with this post, but i thought i had to bring it up: Von Trier's "Antichrist" is being made into a frickin' computer game!
http://pc.ign.com/articles/996/996656p1.html
Ebert: Only in a specific case like this, would I have allowed you to use a different seven-letter word.
Mr.Ebert,
Your post reminds me of the classic Twilight Zone episode of Martin Sloan (Gig Young)who wanders back through time to his old hometown- just like he remembered it, including himself as a boy. He discovers he can't stay because that time is gone. But what things to remember!
My childhood was much different: Maine coast, poor, father with mental illness (we would say autistic today). I had no siblings, no neighborhood friends, was the only child at church for many years, and the religious school I attended drew kids from an hour away. I lost myself in reading, listening to Red Sox games, and pondering the mysteries of life. Today most of my family is gone, we have no children, but do work in schools. I hope someday someone will write something like this and include me in their story as you have here.
Thanks again for the great writing.
Roger Ebert's Journal was forwarded to me by my brother, Bob Townsend (UHS Class of '53).
I don't recall ever meeting your father, but I knew your mother, Annabelle, when she lived on Colorado Avenue.
The Yohes next door to you were such a great family. Father G. R. (Bob) was my Boy Scouts leader for Troop 6. I remember weekly meetings in the Yohe backyard. Mother Martha was my Sunday School teacher. There was an older brother, Mike, and his younger brother, Dan. Dan went to Uni High and tragically died in his early 30s.
Riding with Steve Sanderson (also a Uni High graduate) in his MGTD so impressed me that I bought a 1951 MGTD Mark 2 in about 1963 from Lyman Larson (UHS class of 1959--now deceased). I had the car for about 5 years.
I remember Terry Sands. Terry's mother and my father worked together for a few years in the early or mid fifties.
I dated your classmate, Sheryl Patton, for 3 years. She later became a lawyer and died at age 47.
I remember Hal Holmes. Hal's father, Hal Sr. was an executive at the News Gazette as you know. Hal's mother, Lucille, ran a savings and loan and gave my wife and me the mortgage for our first house in 1965.
Your high school classmate, Ron Mahannah, and I are good friends. Along with his younger brother, Roger, we get together at least once a week.
I remember going to a movie with you (in a group of 6 or 7) at the Princess Theater. You were sitting next to me on my left side and Cathy Lanier was on my right. I was not impressed at the time to be sitting next to Roger Ebert (you were not a movie critic yet). What impressed me was that Cathy put her head on my shoulder.
I really enjoyed your blog. It has brought back many memories of our younger days.
Ebert: Every name brings back memories. Our class reunion comes up next year Cathy put her head on your shoulder? Might have been "April Love," with Pat Boone.
Did you see this about the Princess?
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/hooray_hooray_the_first_of_may.html
I'm always grateful to meet other people who understand that summertime and reading go together like beer and pizza. One of my fondest memories is of a couple-week stint at Boy Scout camp between the sixth and seventh grades, and the cache of old paperback science fiction novels I smuggled down with me - Isaac Asimov's "Pebble in the Sky", Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama", and William Shatner's "TekWar" (no one will ever believe me, but it was surprisingly good!). I kept something to read with me at all times - long road trips, outdoor concerts, laying at the poolside - if there is something I have learned about life, it is that few occasions are so sacrosanct that you'll regret stuffing a book in your pocket.
And when I wasn't reading, well, with both parents working, I spent many summers at a day care for low-income families staffed by education students from the local city college. There were sponsored trips to the zoo and the ballet and the amusement park, but there were also surreptitious "field trips" to the QuikTrip down the street for comic books and sodas, or "nature walks" through the middle of the city wherein we would pause under an overpass to marvel at the graffiti while one of the helpful staff patiently explained to the curious what some of the more obscure four-letter words meant. And at the height of summer, every couple of weeks everyone in the neighborhood would gather in the city park to run around and dance while a phalanx of fire trucks sprayed the crowd.
Oh, and people paid me to mow lawns. That might be my fondest memory of all.
It seems like the sudden change in weather here in Chicago has you thinking about summer! The heat & humidity didn't matter as much when you where a kid. It wasn't as oppressive as it sometimes feels now.
I grew up in the 70's (Syracuse, NY) and during the summer, I was allowed to go off with my brother and our friends as long as we were home by dinner. We could ride many miles on our bikes, exploring forests, fields and shopping centers (they weren't called malls yet). This is when we were 8 and 9 years old. We had a club, we traded comics, we built forts. We didn't need "organized activities".
I really hate to be the guy who says things aren't what they used to be, but in this day of cell phones & video games...
Thanks Roger for helping me remember those times.
Mr. Ebert,
I can empathize with your experiences on poop duty. My first year as a lifeguard for the local pool led to my extraction of the most mysteriously enormous turd I had seen since my visit to the local horse ranch in the third grade, in front of many, many fellow townies, old and young, waiting to show off their backflips, "gainers" and "inverts" in the thirteen-feet-deep diving pool. The accomplishment of the chore took several minutes, a scuba mask, two pairs of rubber gloves, and a fishing net. Just as you were, I was greeted with applause as I triumphantly held the brown-stained net in the air. That is until, amidst the commotion, my boss clocked me with a bar of soap just before hosing me down.
I cannot begin to understand how you can remember so many details from those fretless summer days. And allow me to observe a miracle of the internet, in the response from so many of the friends you mention in the article, immediately replying with comments and memories of their own. That, for me, was the most touching part of this exercise in nostalgia- that those who shared the experiences then celebrate the memories with you now.
All the best,
PF
Ebert: I have rejoiced, after many entries, in the friends who have written in as fellow eyewitnesses, demonstrating that I really hadn't made anything up. And just now a comment came in from someone who also remembered his treasured orange "Elmer."
Roger, your summers sound a lot like mine, though yours were a bit earlier than mine. The ones I had in the 70s were filled with days of doing whatever we felt like as the mood struck us. Most of these things we kids did on our own.
Walk in the woods. Wade in the creek behind our trailer. Walk to the ice cream stand (though this required an adult's presence to cross the 2-lane highway). Grab a transistor radio and listen to music. Ride your bike. Once a week take your books back to the school library that stayed open during the summer and get new books. Ask the mailman on his route for a piece of bubblegum as he drove by in his station wagon. Hang out with pretty much the entire town at the pond the Strileys owned (I think it was the Strileys) from 6 or so at night till it got dark out. Walk up Kellum road and pick berries or strain to get a glimpse through the trees of the abandoned hotel that had once been a tourist spot for the rich and famous decades earlier.
Television? That was for days when it rained or you were sick (a terrible, terrible thing to have happen during the summer!).
The last great summer I had was in 1988, when I was twenty-two. What I wouldn't give for just one more like it.
Hail, and well met, Wordsmith! I miss my own carefree days of summer swelter, when the clock would take its own sweet time to click out each second. You obviously know the one I mean; when kids are being taught on Mars, classrooms will probably still use that same analog monster. I was definitely of the first group that you mentioned, going somewhere else for the break. Divorced parents. Still, there were plenty of times when I rode around my various hometowns, seeking adventure. When I lived in Albuquerque, my friend and I would spend weekends cycling and busing to flea markets, malls, a fast food joint with the best tacos in town...
I just finished watching something amazing, "The Hobart Shakespeareans." It's a short documentary, made for PBS in 2005, and follows a year in teacher Rafe Esquith's fifth-grade class. The man is amazing. I have been blessed with many fine teachers throughout my school career, but I must say that I envy those children. I watched ten year old children cry at the ending of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and almost cried myself when, during a tour of UCLA, a child that had been considered a "problem" by his previous teacher, stated a goal to come back and help Rafe with his class. Then, of course, you get to see these kids read and perform Shakespeare. You see that they aren't just reading by rote, either. They get it, in a way most high schoolers and collegians don't. Because they are inspired by their remarkable teacher. You've gotta love a guy who has ten year old public school kids reading the top ten banned books... And loving them. I was reading your post, enjoying and debating myself about sharing this experience, until I got to the part about you reading "Julius Caesar" into the night.
Questions in the "How alike were we as kids?" category: did you ever sneak a novel into the classroom, and read it with the camoflage of a textbook? Did you ever read history, literature or science textbooks all the way through, ahead of schedule, for the fun/interest of it?
Ebert: The textbooks, no. Sneaking in the novels, yes. I remember reading Hawaii that way.
My beloved Dog n' Suds! Best root beer EVER. :)
Ordinarily I would concede that such things are of course, subjective. Not for this. It was way better than your root beer whatever you drank, so there. That was not directed at Roger unless he disagrees.
And ah, summer!
Tricycles and bicycles, roller skates too, pop-cycles melting almost too fast to eat. Sunburns and cherry pits and grass stains on my knees. A toe swollen by a startled bee. Newly washed beds sheets stolen for tents, clothespins left abandoned on the lawn, necessity the inspiration for many an unrepentant thief. Betty & Veronica by flashlight and well into the night, where fear was a spider and Lucifer a mosquito and God the above ground swimming pool in our yard. Floating in the water while gazing at an harvest moon, all that was required to believe in one.
I was a tom boy with dolls who also owned a squirt gun and my sneakers were pink. I had a fort in a towering cherry tree growing in our backyard from which my mother was sure I'd fall to my death. I had pigtails and freckles on my arm; still do. I went where I wanted and did as I liked, and got into trouble with my sisters and the neighbour kids; we played with boys. :)
Case in point; late night garden raids! Someone in the area was growing grapes and they had a angry dog we learned too late - insert running for your life, pockets full of stolen booty, hitting the man's fence too hard and SPLAT! Scrambling over, heart pounding, arriving home to find Mom waiting and then screaming upon catching sight of me!
Did you know, that if you smash grapes in the pockets of pale pink pajamas - at night it can look a lot like blood stains akin to an episode of Dexter?!
I reckon my childhood was a lot like Roger's - ie: right down to a Dairy Queen and malted milks and inserting cards into the spokes on my bike. I once had a banana seat, remember those? My favorite bike was this battered dog of thing, painted red and white and so well constructed despite its looks, that it could tackle any hill or obstacle and carry me long past the point where others bent a wheel or punctured a tire. Someone stole it one summer from the side of our house and it was gone.
It's okay, I'd placed a curse on it and I'm sure they're dead now.
My mother was French Canadian and the best summers were spent in Bromptonville Quebec. Her side of the family owned a cottage by a lake where bon-fires would light up the night sky where every star could be seen, and marshmellows were gleefully sacrificed on the end of a branch serving as a stick. Or a sword, depending on one's mood. One aunt owned a small farm, where in the winter months she'd tap the maple trees. She had a horse named Bridgette and how I learned were "manure" came from. And a german shepard named Timothy who used to follow our canoe when we took it out onto the lake; I'd lean over the edge and we'd trade kisses.
You've never lived, until you've seen a thunder and lighting storm sweep across a Canadian lake in the summertime. We were fearless then, and grabbed our black-rubber inner tubes and jumped into the water - the wind was making waves! Our mother, and in both English and French yelled "get out!" from the shore which we ignored, as lighting cracked and thunder BOOMED! It was glorious. :)
Later that evening, the storm grew in intensity, taking with it the courage we'd earlier displayed. The cottage not a fortress and why I started to pray. Suddenly the hand of God descended - CRAAACCKK! BOOOOM! Lighting had struck, but not us. A nearby cottage. The next morning and by canoe so as to see it from the water's edge, we'd discover the extent of the damage; three properties over a huge tree had been split down its center, a large branch sent shooting through the front window of the cottage where it stuck out like a giant's hand. It was the last time I would jump in a lake during a lighting storm.
I dare say I enjoyed a childhood the likes of which few will ever know now. We weren't rich so much as money went farther. I think my Dad paid $4,000 for our small 1912 Bungalow style house in the late 50's. And he never bought a new car, they were always used. He never bought anything new for that matter, unless a metaphorical gun was pointed to his head; his genes are Scottish. Here's a picture of where I grew up, decorated for Halloween! There's a ghost holding a bloody axe being projected onto the garage door - so you see, I was always different. :)
http://www3.telus.net/thiliasspace/Marie/jpegs/house2.jpg
I had a Norman Rockwellian childhood in many respects. Imagine allowing your 5 year old now to peddle her bike around the block, alone?
That aside, I adore the sunny happy-face Roger's using for his thread! So too his musical choices to which I'd like to add two more and in honor of the pot smoking U.S. Vietnam draft dodgers who moved into a house across the street from mine in the summer of 1969...
It's My Life - The Animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJUI-NRDflU
Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMnES7WoT4
Thereafter, everyone burnt-out and the music kinda sucked. Until the Sex Pistols arrived to save me from Disco duck and KC and the Sunshine Band; shudder. (My insincere apologies to any of their fans.)
P.S. I saw "Starship Troopers" for the very first time last night. I read your review:
"Starship Troopers" is the most violent kiddie movie ever made. I call it a kiddie movie not to be insulting, but to be accurate: Its action, characters and values are pitched at 11-year-old science-fiction fans. That makes it true to its source. It's based on a novel for juveniles by Robert A. Heinlein. I read it to the point of memorization when I was in grade school. I have improved since then, but the story has not."
Remember when the brain bug was captured and Carl Jenkins: Neil Patrick Harris, was able to touch the brain bug and sense its fear? And all the Troopers yelled "hurray!" - that scene? That sucked! Poor bug! I felt sorry for him, even though he'd sucked someone's brain out earlier. They don't even really explain how the fight started, either! Mankind strayed into their territory..?
What was Heinlein's intentions in the book? What was the moral of the story? What were the bugs supposed to represent? Or was it just an excuse for boys named Roger to read about blowing up bugs?
At least the girls in the movie got to shoot guns and fly planes, so that was okay. :)
Ebert: Pop-cycles. That has a neat symmetry with a word we always used, motorsickles.
Mr. Ebert,
I loved reading your memories. You are an extraordinary writer and I love your film reviews, as well. You should write an autobiography. It would be a nationwide bestseller. I can see it now. It would be a great book and I would love to read it,
Have a good day, Roger,
Get well soon,
Bobby Meyers
Almost forgot! Wit your poolside experience, I imagine that you must have had quite a laugh during the Baby Ruth scene in "Caddyshack."
"Though I have long since ceased to think about my home, seeing this laver brings back many familiar memories, and I am saddened and find it hard to bear. It is the same kind of laver I saw long ago on the shore at Kataumi, Ichikawa, and Kominato. I feel an unwarranted resentment that, while the color, shape, and taste of this laver have remained unchanged, my parents have passed away, and I cannot restrain my tears."...Nichiren Daishonin(1222-1281)
Roger,
I wasn't sure if I could paste the photos of the Elmer's book here, but I did find one of the books for sale on eBay, with several good pictures of it. It's a 1954 edition, so am not sure it's the one you're referring to. But here's the long link to it:
http://cgi.ebay.com/1954-ELMER-R-LONG-COLLECTORS-HANDBOOK-38TH-EDITION_W0QQitemZ130294199076QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1e5623b324&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1205%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50
Ebert: OMG! I had that very one! Treasure! I love it that they show inside pages.
Ebert,
Thanks for the blog...do you think children today will have the same types of fond memories of summer?
Many adults say they won't because of all the technology present in their lives, but I disagree. People in the 1950s probably thought communism, sci-fi magazines with semierotic women, and evil rock and roll, ruined your chances for a golden "tom sawyer" childhood, which is, of course, just plain false. So do you agree with me that in 2076 old adults will write with fondness about the simpler days of facebooking after school, txting their friends during class, and catching the latest Transformer movie?
Ebert: I hope so. But somehow Twittering with your friends isn't the same as messing around in the vacant lot with them.
Roger,
A wonderful small portion of a memoir this is. I have to say that one thing I enjoy so much about following your journal is the varying tone. One minute we're debating the role of biggot talk show hosts and now we're treated to a wonderful slice of translucent memory. I do believe that memory is one of the most fascinating and incomprehensible elements of human existence. The first several sections of "Remembrance of Things Past" is one of the greatest meditations on memory I have come across. Though things have certainly changed there is one seemingly constant facet: the bike. In my own childhood this is probably the most prominent feature. Even today kids still ride around on their bikes. I remember that and also trying to open a candy store with my friends on the front lawn. We would buy lots of candy at the dollar tree and attempt a mark-up. The "Big League Chew" had the promise of a full rebate with a mail in proof of purchase. 100% profit! I don't know what possibly went wrong with this scheme. We were also going to build a submarine out of a combination of the stuff in the garage. What went wrong?
Great stories. I grew up on Cape Cod in the 80's, but the idea of summer was basically the same. We'd play street baseball, go swimming at the beach and ride our bikes to the little store that still sold penny and nickel candy. The best days were when we'd ride our bikes along the Cape Cod canal to Buzzard's Bay and see a movie at the old movie theater and then spend an hour at Bob's Cards and Comics looking for our favorite baseball cards. There was nothing better, and summer lasted so long. I'm 33 now and I still get a little restless every year at about this time - part of me wants to shed the day-to-day routines and have summer just stretch out in front of me with nothing planned. Oh well, I'm an adult now and I'll just have to settle for two weeks out of the office and hope the weather is nice.
Ebert: Winding roads that seem to beckon you
Miles of green beneath a sky of blue
Church bells chimin' on a Sunday morn
Remind you of the town where you were born
Ooh, what finally made me hit "reply" was a comment on "Beacon Street." There may have been such a show out of Kansas City, but the one in my dim memory was "Beaker Street" out of KAAY in Little Rock. That's where I got m first taste of the other world, represented, perhaps poorly in retrospect, by "The Raven," from the Alan Parsons Project, and the first album by that dangerous sounding girl group, the Runaways (members included Lita Ford and Joan Jett, after all). At night, it was just a twitch to the right of KFAB, the Omaha station that must have been among the last to run NBC Radio's omnibus "Monitor" program. That show once re-aired the sci-fi series "X Minus 1" adaptation "A Pail of Air," by Fritz Lieber. Its concept of humanity trying to survive after Earth is ripped from its orbit and becomes so cold the atmosphere freezes was my own "Chicken Heart" (ref. Bill Cosby).
Oh, root beer (yes, I wiki'd it): originally based on sassafras bark until that was found to be carcinogenic. That's now an artificial flavoring backed up with other spices, vanilla, wintergreen, etc. There's no single root beer recipe, which is why so many brands taste different from each other, and vive la difference! And just to be a completist, most colas no longer use Kola nut, that was just for bitterness. The main ingredients are citrus oil, cinnamon and vanilla.
Forgot to answer about root beer. I won't check the internet either. We learned about it on the farm.
Root beer is made out of the root of the sassafras tree. We used to chaw sassafras leaves when we were kids. More knowledgable grownups would boil the fragrant roots down to a syrup. A little goes a very long way, but that's a lot of boiled roots. Add plenty of sugar. Since it was a farm folk drink, there are/were lots of variations to the recipe.
Back in the old days the brew was left to ferment by itself. Naturally carbonated root beer was unbeatable. You'll have to make this yourself. What they sell in bottles these days is... well, some of it's passable. But when you've had the real stuff, even the some of it that's passable isn't passable. Like real hard cider and apple jack. It can't be imitated in commercial processing.
Mr. Ebert,
Thank you for a look back to the time of youth. Your description of the reading of the weather on-air at the radio station brought back sweet memories of my own similar experience.
May God bless,
lee
Your mention of reading Earl Stanley Gardner novels brought back memories of my own childhood. I am now 29 years old and when I was maybe 11 or 12 my father introduced me to his collection of Earl Stanley Gardner's. He must have had close to 75 of them, some softcover and some hardcover. I spent many long hours reading them during those summers.
I still have them all in a box in my basement. He gave them to me a few years ago, thinking that I could get more use out of them than he could. I now have an overwhelming urge to bring them upstairs, along with the Agatha Christie novels he gave me as well.
Thanks for sharing your memories with us.
Marc
I certainly remember Jeff Smith's house on a corner.
Relatively vivid are pictures of the time his dad, a Lincoln-Mercury mechanic, built that racing hydroplane in the basement and then had to cut a hole the foundation to get the boat out.
They took it up to John Garland's cabin on Lake Wisconsin for tests.
John Garland, Sr., grumped to me later, "It was just too fast. He drove it once and then sold it."
That's what I heard anyway.
RE: First Dog 'n Suds.
Philo Rd. Urbana.
We were all there. Before we could drive cars, we'd bicycle out East Washington St., cut over Cottage Grove and then out Fairlawn Dr. After we had licenses we'd drive all the way to the end of East Washington, St., turn onto Philo Rd, then hit the gas and drag race up to the right-hand sweep, hit the curve, (attempting not to lose it), then hit the brakes before Dog 'n Suds.
Jim Adams might remember that. He had this great hot-rod (was it a 47 Ford?) with three-duces. Hot ticket.
Ebert: Buster Keaton made a short about a man who couldn't get his boat out of the house. Name of boat: /i> Damfino.
Betsy Hendrick insists the first Dog 'n;' Suds was in Champaign. Those Champaign people.
Maybe it's just a Midwest thing, but my boy is going to spend the next month on his Uncle's truck farm in Cobden, Illinois. He's going to work the farm (and I mean work!, hoe, pick, and pack), maybe drive the tractor, play wiffle ball on the wiffle ball field at night with his cousins and maybe an uncle, aunt or two, sell produce at the Carbondale market, herd cats, jump on trampolines with 5 other kids, ride bikes on dirt roads, throw rocks at turtles, shoot hoops, marvel at the stars and fireflies, and work the farm some more. Of course there'll be DQ's, movies, fireworks, and the internet as well.
What you can't get in Chicago, Houston or Des Moines, summers in rural Illinois and Iowa can still deliver our youth to our eleven year-olds!
Roger, I find it interesting that many of the "I remember--a lot of danger" posts come from women, who didn't have quite the same experience in the summer as you did.
I grew up in the early 80s, in the very small, isolated town of Burns, OR.( This is in Eastern Oregon, high desert country, where it's literally two hours to any other town.) The isolation led to a lot of security: everyone knew who you were, but also to a lot of small-town ickiness--four pregnancies per year in the high school, two per year in the junior high were pretty standard.
One of my most vivid memories was riding my bike all over town (no helmet--ahh, those were the days) and to the pool to go swimming. I could never understand why so many men honked at me as I rode. I was only eleven or so, but apparently puberty had its wicked way with me fairly early. It's hard not be able to get away from male attention, no matter what you're doing or how assudiously you mind your own business.
Anyway, the pool! The temperature of the water varied day by day, and the number was chalked on the blackboard behind the desk as you went in--79 degrees, 80, 85. Anything below eighty was pretty chilly, no matter how hot it was outside, and on the rare occasions it was 90, it was cause for celebration. I remember sunburning the tops of my ears one day when I had my hair in ponytails. I remember jumping off the high dive just once. I remember a burger place across the highway, and the inhuman amount of daring it took to sneak over and have a meal that no parent had sanctioned. I remember carefully lifting big grasshoppers out of the water by their wings and setting the on the cement, and coaxing dragonflies to land on your finger when you were out front waiting for your mom to pick you up.
Tired of the pool, you could go to the one movie house in town. It was open only on Friday and Saturday and was packed each night. When a kid freindly movie opened, the manager would pace the aisles during the previews, bellowing in an Old Testament Angry God voice that any prankstering would be met with a boot to the ass. I remember making graveyards, mixing one of every kind of soda at the snack bar.
Off to the library, where it was cool, air conditioned, and you had the run of the place. I read all of Erma Bombeck's books, of all things, and checked out six books a week, toting them home in a string knit totebag, wondering why grown men honked at me. One nice elderly man had the world's sweetest cocker spaniel, Mickey, who ran to each gap in the tiny hedge to be petted, wriggling with delight. Once, on the way home, two girls passed me on ten speed bikes, buzzing the way they do, and as I came to the guy's lawn I wondered why I could still hear them, until I looked down and saw a giant and perturbed rattlesnake in front of me! I flung all my books at it and ran shrieking home to get my mom. The nice guy had to face down the snake, whack its head off with a shovel, and bury the thing in his yard. Ahhh, summer.
So sad to see your one-star review of "Transformers 2," particularly after you admitted to enjoying the first one. I had hopes that this one might be more of the same, which was enough to get my childhood nostalgia juices flowing. Oh well.
Hi Roger.
I've spent most of this blistering hot sweltering day inside.
Sitting for several traumatic hours in a pediatric medical office waiting during hours of testing.
As I stared at the wall I realized that there was painted - amongst the colorful mushrooms and trees and fairies - a saying:
"There are two treasures that we can give our children:
Roots and Wings"
I think that it's clear, from reading this excellent post again and other rememberances of your life, that you were given both. Roots and Wings. And you have soared.
I wish that for all children, and hope that I'm doing that right for my children.
Peace.
Randy
Ebert: I hope so. But somehow Twittering with your friends isn't the same as messing around in the vacant lot with them.
You know, I think "twitter" sounds very much like getting to second/third base with your significant other. I have a feeling if I told my father I was twittered by my wife, he would start to blush.
Ebert: Where does Facebook rank?
My favorite elementary-age summer memories are of playing Statues on the lawn, mocking those who were so uncreative as to freeze in the position of the Statue of Liberty. We also climbed The Mountain behind my house (a 150-or-so foot hill), then tried to find the elusive buried Playboys up at the summit. If we dared, we walked our Sting Rays up there and coasted back down at what seemed like 90 miles an hour. Helmets? Hah. Speaking of bikes, we also built ramps at the end of the driveway, then jumped over the littler kids who laid side by side like so many barrels/semi-trailers/whatever Evel Knievel had most recently crashed into on Wide World of Sports. We also got together in circles of 4 to 10 kids and told jokes: Polack, Blonde, farmer's daughter, and worse. I was never the guy who always knew the "good ones."
In middle and high school, we slowed down a bit. Those of us without summer jobs would go down to the lake, swim out to the raft, and lay out, working on our savage tans. When it got too hot, we jumped in for 5 minutes, then repeated the cycle.
Thanks for coaxing out these memories, Roger!
Hi Roger, it's Gracie, just wanted to let you know that Dad has jumped on the bandwagon and started a blog of his own (with my help) and is even on Facebook. Thought it'd give you a good chuckle :)
http://brucecameronelliott.blogspot.com/
Ebert: Bruce has finally caved in to the overwhelming demand for news of his dung beetle team!
I became a follower of the blog, which is pure Bruce,, and tried to post a comment, but was bewildered by how to "choose an account." Here is what I tried to post:
Bruce, do the dung beetles only travel in your suitcase, or did you originally find them there?
P.S. Urgent to Marie Haws: Bruce is the proprietor of the Old Town Ale House, whose site you became addicted to.
By gary wikoff on June 22, 2009 11:12 AM
Ebert: I very clearly remember sitting in your living room and you playing a Sinstra album
Typo there on Sinatra's name there Rojay.
D.W. in Markham
Ebert: Wasn't that the guy's name?
i always enjoy your blogs roger.
and i laughed my ass off at your new review for the transformers
film.(Michael bay doesn't need THAT much money ever again i think)
but as per usual, your writing always makes me reflective on my own experiences.
and i here i sit with a hot cup of black coffee trying remember my
own dysfunctional childhood summers.
this is my 21st summer now so i'm allowed the benefit of hindsight
i guess.
the only real place i spent summer several times in was in
las cruces, new mexico.
and needless to say it could get scorching at times.
i had a friend from school. but his mother didn't really approve
of me and my family (because she knew we were very poor)
so i didn't hang out with him outside of school really.
i would always walk down to the library with my brother.
i hadn't really developed a strong taste for literature yet.
so i'd basically go down there to read game-pro magazine or
look at hentai on the internet (sometimes other stuff too)
i don't really remember my other summers cause i moved around so
much.
after leaving las cruces i was homeless almost a year. and after
that i spent the later part of my teens (about 15 through 18)
locked up in a house going stir crazy.
i just posted this to give a taste of something else to everybody's
Else's summer experiences.
and maybe give some kind-of idea of what kids summer's are like
now.
oh i thought i'd tell you too if i had to make a list of 5 people
i'd like to meet it would go something like this.
neil young
you.
cormac mccarthy
maggie gylenhall (i just think she's a lovely actress)
seth rogen (he's funny as hell. i think me and him would get along)
p.s check out neil young's cover of the wayward wind.
it had the same effect oh him as it did you.
it's a good track.
Ebert: With that as a childhood it seems you have arrived at 21 in good shape.
Like in my comment a few blogs back about (Carl) Sandburg's inability to hit the curve? ;)
Many thanks for giving me a credit for finding Elmer, but don't you think you should buy it before another Elmer fan snatches it up? One of the fun things about eBay is that you can reclaim lots of childhood treausres now no longer available anywhere else. One of my cherished possessions was a Frango mint tin purchased at Field's on State Street in the 60's, long lost, which I found again on eBay.
Cheers!
Julie
Ebert: I'm always a day late and a dollar short.
Ebert wrote: "Pop-cycles. That has a neat symmetry with a word we always used, motorsickles."
Sometimes a spelling mistake can give rise to unexpected but no less welcome moments of serendipity. :)
I have the Rolling Stones and The Animals to thank for that moreover, so too, wherever my post rhymed or flowed with a beat; I was listening to music while writing and clearly, my thoughts were tapping their toes, chuckle!
And now I'm hearing a poem inside my head and put there by you! For having read the word "symmetry"...
"Tyger" by William Blake - read by the late actor Frank Silvera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUQcQ_5IeQ
"Roger Roger, typing fast
And far too loudly for Chaz,
Unable to bear it she had to go,
Or shove his Mac out a window."
Note: I remember everything I read unless I happen to forget it.
Roger wrote: "Of course I grew up in an essentially drug-free society. I agree with the Libertarians that drugs should be legalized. That would undercut the profit motive in illegal drugs. No more pushers, gangs would be starved of cash, there would be no reason for adults to find gangs profitable, there would be fewer desperate addicts pushed into crime. You would no more sell drugs on a street corner than you would Corn Flakes."
I wanted to respond to this because of where I live. :)
"420" at the Vancouver Art Gallery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o-IEOhCaGc&NR=1
"The origin of the term stems from a story about a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, United States in 1971. The teens would meet after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue." - Wiki
Hi Roger
I was just reading your review of the New Transformers movie. It contains a quote for the ages.
Ebert: "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.
You had me at "horrible experience of unbearable length". Oh, to have a dollar for every experience of mine that could be described that way, from my first marriage to reading Atlas Shrugged. I will be using that quote for years to come, thanks.
Do you think that one will be "pulled" for the ad campaign? More likely it will be "punctuated by...amusing moments".
And to qualify for posting on this thread: a friend of mine, well into her adult years, thought the expression was "It is SMELTERING out". Which, in its own way, trumps sweltering.
I still don't understand Twitter's appeal. I don't give a damn whether my friend Nancy ordered the chicken or the steak at her sister's wedding. Also, Twitter seems to be a one way conversation, in which the Twitterer talks at the Twitterees (whose potential responses are deemed unimportant). Isn't a bit narcissistic? It's like a thing kids used to do when I was in elementary and middle school: he would tell a girl (through another girl) that he "liked" her, then she would tell him (through another boy) that she "liked" him, but then the boy would lose the courage to ask her on a date, they wouldn't speak of the subject again.
Hi Marie Haws.
Ebert wrote: "Pop-cycles. That has a neat symmetry with a word we always used, motorsickles."
I free-associated that to Arlo Guthrie's motorcycle song, which I often sing to the dismay of my boys:
"I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorsickle
And I don't want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy...cle"
You have to really pause between motorCY and cle, for effect! Love that song.
Randy
Here's a cleaned up version of the things we would do as a kid. Play tag, sports, video games, play ninja (hide from the neighborhood security truck),play tag or freeze-tag, or hide-and-seek, after school play Pencil Break after school or maybe recess, which was where you would hold out your pencil and both ends--"no bracing"(holding too tight)--while another person would try to break your pencil with the metal edge of the eraser of his pencil; Moonbeam was a good brand, and some just had really thick round pencils that would always win--Huffy, I think was the brand--, but there was a skill involved; also if you weren't accurate and didn't hit the pencil with your eraser you might break your own pencil. Here is a youtube video (dark-lit) that kind of captures the game as it was played, (notice how they tap the spot that they are going to hit before they hit it; this is to better know your target, which you at first dent and deepen the dent etc, until you break the pencil) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbYZNt830QY&feature=related
Real Root beer, carcinogenic? Fiddle faddle. See, it's a bad idea to check the internet about certain things. That's another thing us kids didn't have in summer time -- cancer.
Still don't.
Ebert wrote: "P.S. Urgent to Marie Haws: Bruce is the proprietor of the Old Town Ale House, whose site you became addicted to."
OH MY GOD!
He's going back to Tijuana to defend "Team Elliott's" title as won in last year's Mexican National Championships for dung beetle fighting!
And I quote Bruce from his blog:
"As most of you probably know, the victory of Ceasar, my top Elephant dung beetle, and Hector, who won a dark horse victory in the donky dung division cause quite a stir. Hector especially. He beat Zorro, who is sponsored by the Mendez drug cartel, and was the defending three time champion. At the time Pancho Guerro, an attorney for the cartel, told me with literal exactness, "that I would be smart not to return to Tijuana."
If a member of a drug cartel had threatened to nuke MY dung-beetles until they glowed in the dark, personally, I'd have reconsidered; but then Roger's pal Bruce is apparently blessed with a level of fearlessness worthy of a Templar Knight heading back to the Crusades.
Oh I'm sure he'll be just fine. He's from Chicago. :)
Chuckle!
Ebert: Coverage of the Dung Beetle Extreme Fighting Championships is at
http://brucecameronelliott.blogspot.com/
I have a peculiar childhood memory---having a sudden urge to throw away something--like an eraser or a coin--I remember on a few ocassions I actually did throw whatever it was....a lurking perversity?
In the summers of the 50's and 60's in suburban Chicago, our family would hit North Avenue and go to the twin screen drive-in theater. You could watch the movie your parents paid to see, or turn around and watch the other movie playing on the other screen. The snacks were the best--hot dogs, popcorn and root beer, and we kids often went in our pajamas and brought our pillows. Remember the pre-show cartoon advertising the snack bar? "Let's all go to the movies, let's all go to the movies..."
Someone up above mentioned how kids all have to wear helmets when riding their bicycles these days. Man, what a drag having to stick your head in a can. Kids from the 40's and 50's would have felt smothered from such cephalic confinement. Back in the 60's I didn't even wear a helmet while riding my motorcycle through Chicago or Champaign-Urbana. Part of the enjoyment was the feel of the wind in your hair and the bugs in your teeth. I'd have to wash the grease and grime from the road off my face when I arrived at the lab before commencing my research for the day. No, never took a spill that might account for my peculiar outlook on life. My major professor (looked like Brando in the Wild One) and several other profs were also motorcycle aficianados. Probably all manic boyhood bicyclists earlier in life.
Like you, Roger, I've never had kids, so I've only observed them from a distance. From what I can tell, their existence does seem to be different from ours. The most conspicuous thing about contemporary kids is the ubiquitous backpack they all wear. It's almost like part of a uniform. It's like they're outfitted for combat maneuvers or something. What sort of essential gear do they carry that can't fit into an old fashioned school bag? (And, can they have backpack fights like we had school bag fights? Two kids ramming each other with school bags like a couple of big horn sheep. Remember that?) Another part of the modern uniform would be the grossly oversized baggy short pants most of them wear, often with the waist band positioned below their coccyx. I can't fathom how they keep those trousers from falling down to their ankles when they attempt locomotion. I don't mean to come off sounding crotchety, it all just amuses or bemuses me. Maybe these are all just Southern things and Midwestern kids are still the same as ever. I dunno. More power to 'em.
Another thing I've observed is that relatively few extant kids use bicycles for transportation the way we Norman Rockwell kids did. I think it has to do with the way modern cities are laid out (at least in the South and in Florida). Every subdivision built in the past 30-40 years is a cul-de-sac, generally with only a single narrow street leading in and out. Developers just don't integrate neighborhoods into a grid system of through streets, city councils or planning commissions do not mandate it (or won't approve it), and buyers do not want such free access to their homes. (All mistakes for numerous reasons, if you ask me.) To cycle any significant distance, kids have to cope with high speed automobile traffic on major arteries without sidewalks or adequate shoulders. Many kids have been hit by cars in this South Florida town while walking to their school bus stops on these arterial streets. Only Evel Knievel would risk riding a bike on them. So, bike riding (with helmets) is essentially confined to riding around the block or up and down the same street. Sad.
Brian D: So do you agree with me that in 2076 old adults will write with fondness about the simpler days of facebooking after school, txting their friends during class, and catching the latest Transformer movie?
I know for a fact I won't. You know why? Because I can't remember ANY of my cell phone texts or facebook comments unless I sent them yesterday. I do, however, remember in childhood spending the lazy summer days at the local swimming pool and tennis courts, using a concrete wall and a tennis ball to play "STING," walking to the town basketball courts for "HORSE," and, of course, glimpsing at my first explicitly-photographed magazine.
As for the children of today, I do see some texting and some facebooking; but I also see daily trips to the lakes and main streets and abandoned baseball fields and empty parking lots, always with their friends in packs, playing games and attempting to catch the attention the opposite gender's pack.
Like some others here I am amazed at the detail of your recollections. It reminds me of Stephen King's "On writing" (what I have read of it so far, on the strength of your recommendation), which is more a memoir than an essay.
I recommend Ebert's view of "Pleasantville" as a counterpoint to this piece. His concluding paragraph has deeply influenced my thinking about a whole era, knowing him to be a true witness.
"Pleasantville'' is the kind of parable that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent. Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom. I grew up in the '50s. It was a lot more like the world of ``Pleasantville'' than you might imagine."
Roger,
In your review of the new Transformer epic, (Wrath of the Rubik's Cubes?), you mention that no aliens in the history of alien movies are ever injured by gunfire. I forget your exact quote. But with this blog I am reminded of those wonderful fifties sci fi flicks and recall that the aliens from "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers" initially succumb to gunfire when they land at a scientific base. However they then put up a force field and are protected. Also the lizard-like alien from "20 million miles to earth" is injured by rifle fire and then killed by a soldier wielding a bazooka. The cucumber-like creature from "It Conquered the World" is killed by a soldier...I think it is Lee Van Cleef...using his rifle and bayonet and going toe to uh flipper with the monster in a dramatic finale.
Who needs CGI ?
Watch the skies amigos,
kerry of inframan
Ebert: Technicalities, mere technicalities. Bazookas don't count.
Another great piece, Roger! I grew up on the south side of Chicago and remember well the long, infinite summers that lay before me as a child. Funny, , when I was 8 I looked at pieces of time in days, and there were so many of them! As I aged, my perception of time slwly changed in to longer and longer intervals. Now, age 59, I look at tracks of time in seasons, and unlike my childhood, they just fly by, faster and faster. I wish they would slow down! Once again, thanks fortaking me back. Regards, Joe
Hi Roger, I'm sorry for bringing this up here, but I MUST tell you there is one reason to see TRANSFORMERS 2...
It's to read your review AFTER one has seen it. I swear to God, your review is bliss after such torture. I have never bellowed harder.
Really... thanks!
Ebert: So you didn't enjoy it?
Since going to college, my summers have been spent in various air-conditioned offices, writing press releases, entering data, and wishing I could be elsewhere. Long stretches in front of the computer in this air conditioned room are broken by hours in my sweatbox of a dorm room. Of the 15 or so people living on campus this summer, I am the only one who chose not to live in the air conditioned dorms, firmly believing that air conditioning makes me fat and content to sit around and do nothing. Window open, fan on, door ajar; I am in constant search of a cross-breeze.
When that doesn't work, I go to the movies. Cincinnati has a great multitude of AMCs and Showcase Cinemas and whatnot, but they also have the peerless Esquire Theater, currently playing Goodbye Solo, which I hope to see this weekend. I also went to Bonnaroo, a yearly music festival where you camp and sweat and listen to great music. At times, I was literally 10 feet away from Bruce Springsteen. For five minutes, 70,000 sweating, nasty people joined the E. Street Band in a round of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I also went to C-U to see Parliament-Funkadelic and took a look around U of I's campus.
I recently joined Twitter, but have only made two updates, both made on the only two occasions I've visited the site. While summer has become an excersize in acting like an adult, it has yet to slow down or become trivial for me, though my best ones are definately behind me.
Probably the best summer I can remember was six years ago, during the Northeast Blackout. While Wikipedia tells me that power was restored to "parts of Michigan" by August 14, the day the power went out, I distinctly remember having no power for three days, likely because my part of Dearborn was at the crossroads of three unimportant, poor neighborhoods.
Those three days were incredible. The whole community opened up, coming together like a stereotypical 1950's television suburb. Cook outs were plentiful, bountiful, and open to everybody. Corner conveniance stores sold everything that was cold for mere pocket change. Anybody who was alive was on their bike, riding from day to night. It was everything I ever associated with summer, minus the public pool, rolled in to three days. The only people who weren't having fun were the ones who had power generators and an endless supply of gas to run them. On the last day, you could hear the power surging through the lines, starting up like the engine of some mad scientist's machine. On our bikes, we raced the powerlines until the streets dead ended into railroad tracks. How many kids get a chance to race electricity?
I was 15 then, a whole two years removed from being interested in my car. I never drove a mile until I was 17. I prefered to walk my neighborhood. One mile to the movie theater, three to the comic book store that I worked at. If the carpool to high school hadn't broken down by then, I may have never learned how to drive.
And yet, I've always been fat. Life ain't fair.
Ebert: Tell me about it. By being forced to live for three years on a controlled liquid diet, my body has turned itself into a field experiment proving that at 1,600 calories a day, low sodium, low fat, my weight will level off at the correct level, regardless of exercise. But try eating like that. Calories in Big Mac, value fries and vanilla shake: 1,100.
Ebert: So you didn't enjoy it?
Are you kidding? Godzilla movies are better (They're smarter and more coherent).
I too loved your Transformers review, Roger, and even got my Transfomers-crazed husband to concede that the fights are a waste of time, since you can't see who's who. However, he has compelled me(by "compelled" read "would not shut up for twenty five minutes on the subject") to correct you on the following point: it was not Starscream who had the little beard, it was Jetfire. Sighhhhh....
But I can't be to hard on him, since Transformers are a big part of his childhood memories, summer or otherwise. When we went to visit his parents before we wed, he spent two hours in the attic playing with the big box of toys he left behind (they were too Velveteen Rabbited to be worth anything on Ebay) while his mom showed me beyond adorable pictures of him with a towel tied around his neck for a superhero cape. Awwww.
Ebert: I jumped off the kitchen counter and twisted my ankle wearing a towel like that. Thing wasn't worth a damn. Cannon.
As for me I don't know whether or not I should envy you, 'cause apart from my late parents and brother, I never think about me past since the complexities of the present are a handfull by itself....the past is a movie already seen, and a film is for me never the same second time round...at three score and three, I definitely feel that the the real battles remain to be enacted...
Bazookas don't count! I beg to differ. The WW2 bazooka is grandfathered in under the classic science fiction movie ruling of 1956 (or was it 1957?) which states that said bazooka or grenade launcher attached to a GI issued WW2 vintage rifle can repel if not permanently injure/dismember the alien invader in question unless said alien invader be of cosmic, pseudo-Japanese in origin, in which case only Godzilla can kick the invaders back to the evil empire-hole they crawled out of.
kerry of inframan
In reading about your formative years, I see a lot of similarities between yourself and my favorite musician, Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen. He has written a number of pieces about the influence that science fiction and late night radio had on him growing up in the suburbs in the late 50's and early 60's. Many have been archived at http://donaldfagen.com/writing.php
Same way I got hooked on mysteries, except it was my aunt that gave me a big ol' box o'Agatha.
As I remarked the last time you wrote one of your beautiful paeans to a Midwestern childhood, mine was similar, though it came 20 years later. I, too see that as an idyllic, innocent time. I saw the overprotected, overscheduled childhoods my nieces and nephews lived and felt pity for them. However they all seemed to turn out happy and healthy. I don't think they know what they missed.
Nobody wants to live for too long, least of all for ever, but rebirth is a different cup of tea, how can one dislike anything in advance, one can best have healthy expectation.
Ebert: I dislike root canal surgery in advance.
Nobody wants to live for too long, least of all for ever, but rebirth is a different cup of tea. How can one dislike anything in advance, one can best have healthy expectation.
Ebert: I dislike root canal surgery in advance.
Roger,
I have been meaning to contact you for quite some time.So, I thought that I would quit "meaning to" and actually do it. Your career has been phenomenal. Congratulations on all of your great accomplishments. I enjoyed your above article about summer...brought back a lot of memories. My cousins, Steve, John and Chuck were your neighbors as you mention above. Gary Wikoff and I are still here in Champaign Urbana and close friends. Is it possible that the second kid from the left in your picture, is one of my cousins, like Steve or John? Also, unless my memory is wrong, you and I were co-editors of the Urbana High School "Echo" Sports Page. Hal Holmes became a great gymnast and my third brother Harold followed suit. Harold was Illinois State Gymnastic Champion for two years (I think Hal Holmes was too)and Harold was Captain of the Illinois gymnastic team in college. He changed his name from Harold to Hal after Hal Holmes. One thing for sure, that you mentioned, is that the summers are getting shorter. That is definitely true...I mean, just think, we're almost up on the Fourth Of July already. Take care of yourself. Hope to hear from you.
Ebert: Hi Wayne, Yep, the Echo.
Hal Holmes won the Pan-American Games held in, I think, Bogata. He was famous for his double back flip with a full body turn, or maybe it was triple. Today's Olympic gymnasts utterly amaze me. But then Hal was just a local kid, with no coaching from birth and with normal parents. Hal did it all himself--Hal and Illinois coach Charlie Pond.
By John Kratz on June 23, 2009 10:57 AM
I certainly remember Jeff Smith's house on a corner.
Relatively vivid are pictures of the time his dad, a Lincoln-Mercury mechanic, built that racing hydroplane in the basement and then had to cut a hole the foundation to get the boat out.
They took it up to John Garland's cabin on Lake Wisconsin for tests.
John Garland, Sr., grumped to me later, "It was just too fast. He drove it once and then sold it."
That's what I heard anyway.
RE: First Dog 'n Suds.
Philo Rd. Urbana.
We were all there. Before we could drive cars, we'd bicycle out East Washington St., cut over Cottage Grove and then out Fairlawn Dr. After we had licenses we'd drive all the way to the end of East Washington, St., turn onto Philo Rd, then hit the gas and drag race up to the right-hand sweep, hit the curve, (attempting not to lose it), then hit the brakes before Dog 'n Suds.
Jim Adams might remember that. He had this great hot-rod (was it a 47 Ford?) with three-duces. Hot ticket
John, the first one was a 1937 Ford Coupe, the second one was a 1934 Ford Coupe.
Great memories of the cars and all of the kids back then.
I have a seventeen year old that I can't imagine that he will have the cherished memories that we share. Jim
Ebert: I remember your hot rod. Still got it?
Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song! I'd never heard it before, so I had no idea you could play guitar while driving a motorcycle at 150 MPH - and there's a pickle in the story, too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g266Uwp6ZnI
Ebert wrote: "Technicalities, mere technicalities. Bazookas don't count."
No, they don't - however recently I watched "Starship Troopers" and they did use guns to shoot the Alien bugs! I've also learned more about Robert A. Heinlein's novel on which the film is based and holy crap! I thought the story was meant to be an over-the-top satirical parody of the United States Military at the time, ie: late 50's. Indeed, the film was made in 1997 and when viewed today or at least through my Canadian sensibilities, everything seemed intentional. At any rate, I thought it was supposed to be an anti-war movie and for being SO pro-military, you know? Now I'm not so sure.
And speaking about bugs who fight..
Readers, if you have a curious bone in your body, you will check-out Bruce's blog while he's still alive to write it. I've got it bookmarked now and today, I learned about a world I shall never, ever ever ever see....
"After a wonderful meal of sweet potatoes and grouper, Pepe and I headed for Club Satan, which was the only club in Tijuana that still had a live donkey act." - Bruce
NOTE: Roger, does Bruce have his comments "enabled" or did he forget to do that? I've got a Google account and used it to join his Blog; you can see my avatar there now: Pepe the King Prawn. :)
P.S. seems Mexican border police can be bribed for $100 US. I'm curious now to hear what's going to happen on the return trip after sharing that. :)
Hal9037,
I don't even like wearing a hat--feels like it's squeezing my head.
In my middle school or junior high school(grades6-8), because of worry of gang affiliation, suddenly in 7th grade everyone had to wear uniforms with our shirts tucked in! It's horrible enough to have to wear a uniform, but it's even worse when the year before you were able to wear regular clothes and then have that freedom taken away from you. I was still a prankster: I would scotchtape notes on peoples back, and I would always put one on my own back just in case I "got caught." I was like a mischievous mastermind; the principal would say, "the teacher caught you red-handed with all the notes at your desk pre-written" and I'd say "I had one on my back too. Call her and ask her if I had a note on my back", which she did and then released me. The teachers were shocked when I came back unpunished. In elementary school, I used to forge my mother's signature on a referral slip, which is what you were supposed have your parent's sign when you were written up. I forged it for an entire school year, and the school never bothered to just try calling them.
I'm 40% of the way thru your list, James: I've met Roger (in my sig link above) and Maggie (twice: when she was in Chicago doing Stranger Than Fiction, and when I was a background extra in The Dark Knight). She's sweet, of course, and she and Peter Sarsgaard are both very nice and intelligent. I hesitate to call Roger (or any man) sweet, but...OK, he's sweet, too. ;)
Back in economics class, we used to talk about the Law of Supply and Demand. In a free market, when the level of Demand rises, more competitors will enter the market and the supply will increase. for example:
SUPPLY: There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines. (Roger's review of Transformers 2)
DEMAND: I discovered science fiction. Astounding, Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction. Then I discovered, more to my taste, Amazing, Imagination and Thrilling Wonder Stories...an issue of Sunshine and Health I learned for the first time what it was that women had under their sweaters, and an electric current shot through me. Science fiction itself somehow had an aura of eroticism about it. It wasn't sexually explicit, but it often seemed about to be.
Not sure if this falls under the category of "Loss of innocence" or "cynicism comes with age," but I wonder how young Roger Dodger would have reviewed Transformer 2.
At least 3 (three) paragraphs full of compliments about Megan Fox? Surely some quote-worthy opinions.
I don't think the excessive noise would have bothered him, because he would have been standing on his seat, aiming his Buck Rogers laser rifle at the Decepticons and screaming "blat... blat... blat... blat..."
Ebert: I agree with the Libertarians that drugs should be legalized. That would undercut the profit motive in illegal drugs. No more pushers, there would be fewer desperate addicts pushed into crime.
I don't agree. Go down to an auto salvage yard and observe how many people have destroyed their own cars. And there's no addiction involved, just stupidity. Many people cannot control an addiction. If you provide a legal way to obtain drugs, you will increase the number of addicts a hundredfold. No, more. Crime would go up, not down.
Ebert: I wonder if ending Prohibition increased the number of alcoholics.
Also wonder if Amsterdam has more addicts than New York, not counting drug tourists.
I guess if a lot of others are talking video games, I'll say something. Video games used to be something you did out in public places. You could be 8 years old and challenging an adult, or have them on your team. It was seen--and correctly so--as instant gratification. Now, the controllers on video games have 2 thumb joysticks and 14 buttons--this is not an exagerration--as if to say, "you ain't going anywhere." I can't play games, which is the vast majority of them, that requires I learn how to use these controllers, and what's worse is that people hurt their hands after playing too long with them, which may cause arthritis or permanent loss of dexterity in your fingers. Before you'd go to a restaurant and just play--with easy to use controllers--a game for a short period of time. Now, when they go out to eat, it's, "Could you just slide that piece of chicken into stiffly contorted fingers?", giving a whole new meaning to Chicken Fingers.
Bill Hays,
I've never heard of that addiction.
But I think drugs should be legalized and sold in the kind of the way pornography is sold...low key, in black bags, no television commercials, etc. Also, once it becomes legalized that takes out the romance of it being illegal. The addiction you mentioned above sounds like someone who is addicted to chaos. What's more chaotic: being sent to jail (violent) for doing drugs (non-violent) being bought from drug dealers with guns (violent), or being watched under supervision doing drugs with police officers present handing you clean needles?
Reply to: Keith: I've never heard of that addiction.
My post didn't specify the drug.
I responded to Roger's post, the first one in this entry
Ebert: I grew up in an essentially drug-free society. I agree with the Libertarians that drugs should be legalized. That would undercut the profit motive in illegal drugs. No more pushers, gangs would be starved of cash, there would be no reason for adults to find gangs profitable, there would be fewer desperate addicts pushed into crime. You would no more sell drugs on a street corner than you would Corn Flakes.
I guess we're talking about a drug that's being sold illegally, by gangs. I didn't specifically say crack cocaine. I was talking about Addiction.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/drug-addiction/ds00183/dsection=causes
MAYO CLINIC: Physical addiction appears to occur when repeated use of a drug alters reward pathways in your brain. The addicting drug causes physical changes to some nerve cells (neurons) in your brain. Neurons use chemicals called neurotransmitters to communicate. Researchers have discovered that addictive drugs, such as cocaine and morphine, affect some areas of the brain in the same manner.
http://drugabuse.gov/tib/meth.html
Approximately 10 million people 12 years and older have abused methamphetamine in their lifetimes; in 2005, approximately 500,000 were current users (NSDUH).
According to NIDA's 2006 Monitoring the Future Survey, there has been a significant decline of past year methamphetamine abuse by 10th graders;
Methamphetamine increases the release of dopamine in the brain, which leads to feelings of euphoria. However, this influx of pleasure is followed by a "crash" that often leads to increased use of the drug and eventually to difficulty feeling any pleasure at all.
What Does Methamphetamine Do to the Brain?
In animals, methamphetamine damages nerve terminals in brain regions containing dopamine and serotonin. In humans, methamphetamine alters the brain in ways that impair decision-making, memory, and motor behaviors, and causes structural and functional deficits in brain areas associated with depression and anxiety.
a recent neuroimaging study of methamphetamine abusers showed... function in some regions did not display recovery after two years of abstinence, suggesting that long-lasting and even permanent brain changes may result from methamphetamine abuse. (end)
Making drugs legal.... sends the wrong message to kids, who depend on adults to set limits.
In the original "The Godfather," the other four New York crime families wanted to sell drugs, but even a piece of human slime like the head of the Corleone crime family had moral qualms about making drugs available to children.
I don't have a solution. Humans are dumb. More education about the perils of addiction could help.
Roger, Hope you don't mind the familiarity, but i have been reading your reviews-and relying on them -for over 40 years, so I feel like we are old friends. During that time, I have only disagreed with about 4-5 reviews, so you have a great batting average. I just recently discovered your blog and love it as well. Your recent "summertime" writing was right on. I grew up a bit northwest of you in Mt. Carroll, and you have nailed my life as well. The one advantage I had was that my dad ran the theater in town as I grew up. I saw virtually every American film of the 50's. The "family or blockbuster" on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday; the "adult"(with a very different definition) on Wednesday & Thursday, and the "date" movie on Friday & Saturday. And then the westerns, serials, etc on Saturday afternoons! Sometimes 5-6 different films each week - it was heaven. As a result, we didn't have a TV until I was about 8-10 as it was "the enemy" of the theaters which gave me the time yo read - my first science fiction was The Green Man from Space (or something like it), but I soon discovered the Ace doubles, Heinlein, Asimov, and our Illinois buddy, Bradbury. Now after 40 years of teaching high school English - including using film, I am still at it! I know this is long, but I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate you as a friend
Ebert: You remind me of Jonathan Rosenbaum, whose day owned movie theater in Alabama, and who seems to have seen very move ever made.N
Roger, thank you for this wonderful blog. It brings back my childhood in southern Missouri, living in a small town. My best friend Mary and I were turned loose on our bicycles in the summer to roam around, taking packed lunches and fruit with us. My next door neighbors and I played with our dolls, creating our own dramas, and we skipped rope, played hopscotch, played tag, and came in for snacks (again, usually fruit) and to "get out of that heat for a while, you'll make yourself sick." It was a big deal to go to the Municipal pool where my two older brothers were lifeguards and get to swim for a couple of hours while my father sat in the shade and read a book. My parents left me alone to read, daydream, play the piano, listen to my records, write little stories, and just be by myself. The most scheduled I ever was, was going to Vacation Bible School for a week. In the evenings, we sat on our front porch and watched cars go by, sometimes eating strawberry shortcake that my mother had made or sending someone down to the "hamburger stand" for a "coke" (my father always had Seven-Up--no cherry--and my mother always drank Grapette, but it was still a "coke"). Sometimes, we went to my aunt's cabin in the Ozarks for a week at the river--no TV, no telephone. I swam, ran around with other children climbing the bluffs and exploring, and paddled the canoe. And read. And daydreamed. How sorry I feel for so many children these days with their playdates and activities. Do they get a chance to just be, without having some schedule to meet or someone to "do" some canned activity with or without some electronic "thing" beeping at them or making noise? Do they ever watch the clouds go by and try to see shapes in them? Do they drop a leaf in the river and watch where it goes? Have they ever skipped stones, followed an ant trail, or swung on a tire swing?
Ebert: I wonder if they've even forgotten some of the games, like marbles, or mumbety-peg?
Hey Rodge, how about doing a thing on legalizing drugs some time? That is, if you can handle 500 replies a minute... pretty amazing that you handle all these posts as you already do...
Dad's box of Playboys... that brings back memories of a good lesson he taught me. Punish the deception ("We're going inside to listen to my new Michael Jackson tape"), not the curiosity (there was no tape player in the attic).
Roger, I loved this story. I, too, remember unplanned summers: sleeping late, bike riding with friends, following the Cubs, listening to the radio-- transistor!--while basking in the sun on lawn chairs (we called them "lounge chairs"), playing made-up games with neighborhood kids, playing Kick the Can until it was so dark we couldn't see our hands in front of us- and our mothers would call us to come in already for God's sake.
I was astonished, a few weeks ago while looking at a video online, to see a public service announcement with Shrek characters reminding kids to "go outside and play." I don't have kids and it never occurred to me that you had to remind kids to go out and play. In summers when I was a kid, the parents had to track us down outside and remind us it was time to come in!
Oh! Had another thought! Back in "those days" the only phones were in the house-- mounted on the wall or sitting on a table. Ah, the peaceful days before cell phones. Such freedom! Kids didn't walk around carrying phones. Our parents couldn't call us to find out where we were. Funny, though, that we didn't have phones yet our parents always seemed to know where we were and who we were with. It really did "take a village" back then, as the neighbors were always watching out for us--not always a good thing for a kid, because if your parents didn't see you doing something bad, chances are someone else's did and told your parents, who didn't respond by saying, "Mind your own business."
Mr. Ebert:
I am from the midwest as well, a generation or two following yours. It was the rhythm of life that was most magical. Summers were the most wonderful time of childhood. We did not plan, we just did, and let the flow of the day carry us. Thank you so much for that article!
"The 50,000 clear channel stations"? No, make that "The 50,000 watt clear channel stations"
I remember those. They were the most powerful radio stations on the AM dial and they were located only in big cities. "Clear channel" meant that their signal was so powerful that no other station for hundreds of miles could use that frequency, lest their signals interfere. Oh, the pleasures of exploring the AM radio dial late at night when you might pick up a distant station carrying a memorable programs, such as, in my boyhood, Guy Lombardo and his Canadians, live from a ballroom somewhere.
Roger, I love your descriptions of life in Urbana. My daughter was born at Carle Clinic, so you've made her proud too. I'm your exact contemporary and grew up in Athens -- I trust you know how to pronounce it. Our house was about the size of yours, but we made it through the summer nights with an exhaust fan in my parents' bedroom that pulled the air into my bedroom (another only child). It was always chilly by morning. My parents taught school, and Mother always said, "Summer is half over by the 4th of July." I've come to see that she's right. You didn't drink cream soda? I loved Wally Phillips, and the night I heard that Flying Officer Leonard Baldie had crashed in his helicopter, I called the Legion Hall to interrupt my father's penny ante game to tell him. And I've told my old roommate Judy Pickerill about your great journal -- many thanks from us all!
Ebert: As I recall, they played funereal music for hours. Now that traffic copters are everywhere, it's easy to forget how big a deal he was. WGN was always sort of family--in Urbana as well as Athens.
I always thought I knew how to say "Athens" until you created a question in my mind.
Bill Hays,
"I guess we're talking about a drug that's being sold illegally, by gangs. I didn't specifically say crack cocaine. I was talking about Addiction."
Well, now you are: methamphetamine (earlier--I was referring to what you said about the salvage yards--it didn't sound like substance abuse--that's why I said "chaos addiction"). It seems like after abstinence of the drug that the brain function would recover (I'm not sure drugabuse.gov is the most objective place for research on this). Methamphetamine, if used intelligently, meaning not taken too frequently--basically, with all drugs they should be taken sporatically--take a few months off etc.--, taking it by mouth (lesser tolerance--less need) instead of snorting or smoking it, being careful of what they are combining it with---basically, amphetamine-based prescription drugs out there (ritalin, dexadrine,adderall etc.--or plain old amphetamines)that have high amphetamine content are basically the same drug. So, it already is legal, in a sense. What we're talking about is the abuse of it, which yes, when used wrong, can make you crazy, and bad patterns that will interfere with a healty lifestyle. And if indeed that research is correct, it should be part of a drug education program, which brings me to:
I think drugs should be legalized and be freely available, but I don't think they should be legalized overnight. What should be done before the legalization is the decriminalizatin of drug users, honest, objective drug education modeled on sex education (not the abstinence one), role models of acceptable behavior for those that do or may use them, telling them if they want to avoid the harm to not use them, perhaps scaring a few into not doing them, telling them the desire to alter one's consciousness is a fundamental human drive and drugs are one way of satisfying it--every human culture used drugs, in history--caffeine is a drug, and nicotine as well--, but it really comes from within and that one learns to associate it with drug effects, giving them examples of how to get a natural high, and accept that some just need to find out for themselves about external drugs, perhaps, and it can be an evolution of of the two etc.--but mainly giving them the best possible information as to their use, which inherently stresses a non-abusal route or basically how to protect themselves to produce the least harm--"they are harmful!"
Also--speaking of educating about drugs--a lot of illegal drugs have medicinal use (aside from the prescription drugs mentioned above, which have a fairly low success rate, yet, nevertheless, very rampantly prevalent with kids), such as cocoa plants and marijuana. Marijuana, taken as medicine, doesn't have to be smoked, the cannabinoid can be ingested as a pill, I think, instead of smoked, which the medical literature is discovering has many physical benefits. Cocoa plants can be a good stimulant as a chewing gum, and also has medicinal value for digestion. Cocaine is just a small little part of the cocoa plant that was extracted-the alkaloid--, from misunderstanding the plant. Cocoa gum, which releases the drug very slowly, may be a good substitute as a stimulant for smoking cigarettes, which drug users use as a substitute for harder drugs, which may have the possibility of replacing methadone as well for instance with heroin users, which is a much less poweful stimulant. Coca stabilizes blood suger for diabetes, as well, and has low abuse potential. Medicinal uses or the stimulant use of the cocoa leaves or as gum etc. may create a market for the drug, and it will take away from the black market use of it, with stimulants for truck drivers, soldiers etc. It's about how you use the drugs or how you sell them or prescribe them, and that takes education.
Athens, Illinois, is pronounced with a long A, as you've probably feared. (I believe that's true in New Athens also.) It's near "San Joe's" and "New 'Buhr-lin". Thank you for correcting the "Dog & Suds" misinformation. My father (98 in August) went to Normal during the time Steak 'n' Shake was founded, and it sure as heck didn't start in Bloomington! Great tribute to them too -- thank you! I stopped at one once at noon on Sunday along I-55 and said to my children that I was sure every single person in there knew what he was ordering when he drove up. On the pronunciation front, I don't know if you patronized the English Library at Illinois. As an English major (class of '64) I worked there, and I think I might have recognized you. Anyway, the librarian was a delightful lady with her gray hair in a knot -- Eva Faye Benton. When she was born, her parents were surprised to learn that they were getting twin girls, so they named them both the name they'd chosen, but her sister's name was pronounced Eh-va. Saved effort.
Ebert: I remember her!
Don't get me started on Cairo, Illinois. Rhymes with Karo syrup.
Karo, yup. And Wikepia (if it's to be believed) confirms my memory that the Embarras River is pronounced AM-brah. It says it springs from Champaign County -- surely not the Boneyard! And I'm pleased that you had your carefree summers (except for the pool duty -- Good Grief!), because I was in 4-H from the age of 10, slaving away cooking, sewing, presenting demonstrations, competing in Share the Fun (musicals) and preparing entries for the county and state fairs! I'm glad no one was training you for your household duties, and perhaps Susan Wittig Albert, blossoming simultaneously just a few miles from you, was also spared for her literary life. There wasn't a whole lot to read in Athens, I can tell you!
Ebert: Don't get me started on Cairo, Illinois. Rhymes with Karo syrup.?
As a lifelong midwesterner I have always been amused by the consistent mispronunciation of small towns named for famous cities world-wide, such as "Moe-Skoe" and "My-Lan" Illinois. I doubt this is by chance, but rather a concious attempt to distance themselves from places populated by a bunch of furriners.
Reply to: earlier--I was referring to what you said about the salvage yards--it didn't sound like substance abuse--that's why I said "chaos addiction").
Keith, I never claimed there was any kind of "addiction" associated with destroying cars.
I was trying to make a different point.
Go out to a place where they store wrecked and damaged cars. Every one of those cars was purchased. Presumably the owners wanted to enjoy them until it came time to sell them. And yet, look at the cars.
http://www.wreckedexotics.com/articles/010.shtml
http://www.wreckedexotics.com/599/599_20071106_003.shtml
TEXT: Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne was driving on the A1 highway in Switzerland when a Renault in front of him suddenly slowed down. He ended up crashing into the Renault and finally into a guardrail.
http://www.autocult.com.au/NewsDetail.aspx?id=1060
According to newspaper Corriere della Sera, Marchionne was doing about 100km/h (62mph) when the accident occurred. Neither Marchionne nor the 76 year old driver of the Renault were harmed by the accident
My point was, humans do dumb things, even when they are NOT suffering from an addiction.
Reply to: It seems like after abstinence of the drug that the brain function would recover (I'm not sure drugabuse.gov is the most objective place for research on this). Methamphetamine, if used intelligently, meaning not taken too frequently
Well, it's easy to say "this site is biased" or "we can ignore this medical study." But all that does is explain HOW and WHY so many people do dumb things. Res ipsa loquitor.
The correct answer is, many drugs cause permanent changes in brain chemistry. There is no such thing as "after abstinence the brain function would recover." Why do you think they call it addiction? Once you're addicted, it's permanent. In Alcoholics Anonymous, people who haven't taken a drink in 20 years will tell you they're still addicted.
http://www.alternatives-for-alcoholism.com/alcoholics-anonymous.html
SITE: Alcoholics Anonymous has a very low success rate for long term sobriety...about a 2.5 percent success rate for over 5 years of sobriety. Most alcoholics do not recover from their disease, they die. Those who do recover using a 12 step program fight constant cravings to drink and suffer with a variety of other symptoms like irritability, anxiety, tension, fatigue and depression that has a deep impact on the quality of their life. Staying sober is a constant battle and they continue to be addicted to a variety of other substances and activities like sugar, caffeine, sex and cigarettes.
Even a drug like alcohol causes a PERMANENT change in your brain's chemistry.
Reply to: I think drugs should be legalized and be freely available, but I don't think they should be legalized overnight.
that's the problem. People who think they can take "just a little" and not suffer permanent damage.
Look at the photos of that $300,000 Ferrari 599. Just a little speed on a deserted highway can't hurt anybody, right?
WLS! Those letters triggered such a neural cascade that I must have stopped reading for 10 minutes. High power clear channel AM stations like that were the satellite radio of their time. You could drive for hundreds of miles through the midwest with your dial set on WLS, at least at night. I guess it's still there at 890 but like the rest of AM, relegated to all jabber all the time.
Ebert: Rush and others on the right. No moderate or liberal.
Hey Roger,
Nothing like reading about my life on your blog! (similar, anyway)
What a kick to read about Steve, Jerry, Jim (whose orbit was closer to mine) and the Urbana Free Library. I remember riding my bike there. Did you mention the Southside Grocery? And the Elbow Room?
Steve and Joe lived about 3 houses down from me on Mumford Drive (if you read this, Steve, say hi) But your memory is much better than mine. Thanks for the memories!
Ebert: That means we both remember where you lived! Chaz's h.s. reunion is this weekend. Reminded me that ours is coming up in a year. They played a great game: Rememeber when? They passed around a mike and everyone shared memories.
The Elbow Room? Was that the snack shop at Race and Washington?
Bill Hays,
Well, once again, I think the problems you mentioned with substance abuse: people should be educated more about them and how to use them responsibly. And one of the reasons people may abuse things like cigarettes and especially caffeine is that they don't think of them as drugs, but they are just as addictive as any other drug and can be abused in kind. I am a little skeptical on the research you showed because I think the brain is very resilient, and I was just saying that as a rule of thumb objective research should come from a third unbiased party, and sometimes science is bad science. And I think the research you showed might be proof of that, but if it is right, then all these prescription drugs on the market that I mentioned (ritalin, aderral, with high amphetamine content) should be taken off the market. With those drugs, there is high withdrawal symptoms and it's typical to have to gradually reduce dosage just to get off the drugs. And in the research you showed, it said that if it were correct, then the medical field can could very probably manufacture a counter drug for permanent loss of brain function, so it doesn't happen.
As far as people doing dumb things, they are doing them right now with methamphetamines by snorting it or smoking it, instead taking it by mouth, as I said for starters. But if you have that kind of attitude towards people, why should we all be allowed to leave the house--if "people do dumb things?" It's part of freedom that at any time someone may go on a shooting spree and kill you because they are bored. Or as Richard Pryor said in one of his concerts about a jail inmate in a federal prison:
Richard: "I said: Why...did you kill...everyone...in the house?" And he said, "They was home" [in a I-don't-know...why-not? tone]
I'm just talking now. But when I look at a lot of these shows on television I'm a little frightened...shows like the reality shows and to a lesser degree sitcoms, which are ironically some kind of assault on the senses or emotions, rather and also the people who do all the voice-over work on commercials (what do you think of when you think of those infomercial guys for instance?...non-stop shouting right?) I'm a little scared of the minds that absorb this stuff, which must take an act of will.
Roger:
I love writing that evokes. Thanks. It's the reason I read Bradbury so slowly and deliberately, and (in many passages) King.
BTW, I think you thought a dog in a basket, fries, slaw and a drink were a spectacular feast because, well, they are!
Roger:
per one of your comments, above, my pop could play mumbly-peg. I usually take the time once a year to explain to my (middle- and high-school students) these days what "mumbly-peg" entails, and then feign surprise that NONE OF THEM HAVE A POCKET-KNIFE?! It always get a big reaction.
"Your dad carried a knife?"
"Sure; all the time! In fact -- I'll bet in his day that if you DIDN'T carry a pocket-knife, you'd be the laughingstock of the schoolyard!" :o)
So, mumbly-peg? No; that won't be coming back anytime soon!
P.S. Pop was from Peoria, IL; then moved to "Picksburgh," PA. Not too long ago, he and his brother (in their 60's) went to their old neighborhood in Peoria, WITH A VIDEO CAMERA IN HAND, and knocked on the door of their old house, and the PEOPLE LIVING THERE LET THEM IN AND GAVE THEM A TOUR. I've seen the video; it never fails to make me laugh with wonderment. Try something like that where I am from (Southern California) nad see how far you get. But "things ARE different" in flyover country!
;o/
What a wonderful description of your childhood summer! I'm around the same age as you, though a female, and mine was VERY much like yours! I, too, rode my bike for miles, all day. I was horse-crazy, as some girls are around 12 (are they still?) and I used to ride my bike a couple of miles to the edge of the village where there were two horses in a field! I used to bring carrots or sugar cubes and they would trot right over to the barbed wire fence and I would stroke their faces - that was really one of the high points of my childhood! Yeah, we would be outside all day, doing nothing, hot and sweaty. No adults hovering or demanding where we were, were going, or had been. I used to check out the comics book rack at the Rexall Drugstore, and later (unusual for a girl) got very heavily into Marvel Comics - 12 cents each! Talk about addiction. My favorites were the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Thor.
Thanks for the great memories, Roger, and for bringing back my own. Life is so different now for kids.
Yes, that was the Elbow Room, and the Southside (was it really south then?) Grocery was next door. I used to walk by there on my way home from school, stop in, and call my mom to see whether I could get a Hershey bar. Good times! I didn't make the 40th reunion because my son got married on the same day. Tried to talk him out of it, didn't work. I hope somebody in Urbana is thinking about it. Let us know if you hear anything.
Ebert: Right. And in between was a gas station? And the Elbow Room looked exactly like one of those soda fountain hangouts in 1950s movies? And we looked like teenagers, which is more than the stars of those movies could say? And girls wore skirts or dresses? And the Elbow magazine rack was loaded up with movie and hot rod magazines? And we were living in the past of Back to the Future?
Richard Peterson wrote:
"As a lifelong midwesterner I have always been amused by the consistent mispronunciation of small towns named for famous cities world-wide, such as "Moe-Skoe" and "My-Lan" Illinois."
It's here in New Mexico, too; we have a town called Madrid and it must drive the Spanish-speaking population crazy that, unlike the city in Spain, it's pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable- and the first syllable rhymes with "sad."
Reply to: and I was just saying that as a rule of thumb objective research should come from a third unbiased party, and sometimes science is bad science.
Over on the "Intelligent Design" thread, the Bad Guys like to use the argument "IF science was wrong a century ago, we always have to leave room for it being wrong now." And that's a poor argument. (In fact, it's the kind of argument that con men use to try to sell you pricey rip-offs.)
When you do a medical study for two years, you actually get good data. And most of our "science" is the sum total of thousands of studies. I don't mind doing a Google search, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, either. If you think I've posted the wrong answer, post a link to the right one.
Reply to: And I think the research you showed might be proof of that, but if it is right, then all these prescription drugs on the market that I mentioned (ritalin, aderral, with high amphetamine content) should be taken off the market.
They aren't available over-the-counter. I like the idea that "real doctors" have the option of prescribing ritalin. I see no reason to take it off the market. Some mental conditions are worse than the side effects.
Reply to: the medical field can could very probably manufacture a counter drug for permanent loss of brain function, so it doesn't happen.
No, that's not possible. Imagine a flat piece of plywood with a hundred 1/4" holes drilled into the top surface. The game comes with red, yellow and green pegs that fit in the holes. But... if you were take a hammer and pound big nails into all the holes, you would make the holes larger. And then, ONLY the big nails would fit. The smaller pegs don't fit any more.
The receptors in the pleasure centers of our brains are designed to give us a goofy happy buzz when we meet someone of the opposite sex and prepare to have sex. It's the motivating factor that spurs us to reproduce, and we're not always aware of it. When guys who know about this go to bars, they look for girls who give off subtle signals. (Well worth a Google search.)
Using cocaine is like pounding a big nail into all the receptor holes. You can't go back. You can't take a different drug that fixes the problem. The only thing that gives you a better "high" is more cocaine.
I think it's sad, but worth talking about. Kids should know that using cocaine and other drugs can permanently impair their ability to enjoy ordinary sex. For the rest of their lives.
Prolonged use of cocaine changes the structure of the brain permanently, but you might not be aware of it. Take Michael Jackson as an example. His doctor prescribes Demerol (similar to cocaine.) Jackson takes Demorol and under drugs under the close supervision of a doctor who has his own cardiac care clinic... and now Michael Jackson is dead of a heart attack.
I'm certainly open to new solutions to our drug problem. Mexican gangs with billions of dollars, now moving into Atlanta, Georgia and stockpiling weapons. But I think our greater obligation is to tell dumb, gullible kids that doing drugs is NOT great, and the long-term problems far outweight the immediate benefits. I'm scared of the 5% who will abuse the drugs, get addicted, and go out on the freeway and kill people if drugs are simply legalized.
Even if you think a drug is safe and harmless, twenty years from now, it can leave you with a deep depression that makes your life miserable, and push you into suicide, and that's why there aren't a lot of old drug addicts around to warn kids of the danger. The responsibility falls to the federal government, which is why their web site is actually MORE credible than anyone else.
Every generation forever cherishes the lost summers of youth. Here's Kid Rock singing about summer 1989 in northern Michigan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhjvpGt4r44 Very evocative of auld lange syne.
Actually, it looks a lot to me like the summer of 1959 in Lake County, northern Illinois, where my grandfather lived on Nippersink Lake in the Chain-o-Lakes. The summers spent there in my childhood and youth were probably the happiest moments in my existence. You had absolutely no worries and the simplest things, like fishing, the cool morning air, and birdsong, gave profound satisfaction.
Of course, most of my family was still alive and vigorous then, long before I was to become the last of the Mohicans from my clan. Now I have only the world to worry about.
Yep. We were the prototypes. This exchange has made me try to remember things I haven't remembered in a long time. I haven't thought about the statue of Abe Lincoln that the sr. class officers' picture was taken on, for example. Is it still there? We were lucky to have that. These days it would be a "modern" piece of public art, if anything.
Ebert: Still there's. It's by Loredo Taft, an Urbana boy who also did the Alma Mater, the lions in front of the Library, and the Fountain of Time on the midway of the University of Chicago.
Did any of your bike-riding cohort have an English Racer?
Quite exotic in my neck of the woods (Humboldt Park area) in the 50s.
And anyone older than 16 who rode a bike was...odd.
bill hayes,
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/related/92183.php
http://www.healthiertalk.com/stay-focused-without-dangerous-drugs-032
As i said, if the addicts has orally ingested the meth instead of shooting, snorting or smoking it, it would be much less addictive. And that's what this is about, people who abuse the drug. The second link shows that almost as many people abuse prescription drugs with amphetamines as methamphetamine users, which are both basically the same drugs, as I also said.
I only mentioned that the research you showed might be false because there is a precedent of this happening: with MDMA. They were saying it causes brain damage too, and now it is approved by the government to have medical benefits. And yes, some kids(or adults) do get better with using these prescription drugs (ritalin, aderral, etc.) with high amphetamine content, but not many. This is kind of going into healthcare now. But I think we should all have free healthcare, but that we also need a fundamental revolution in the way we use healthcare. I think this month Dr. Oz (of Oprah fame) and Andrew Weil (who probably had something to do with the MDMA medical benefits) and two others have been testifying to congress about healthcare, and there are many cost effective things that can be done, and Andrew Weil said that something as simple as breathing techniques can do absolute wonders. Watch the video. I couldn't find the whole thing, which is a few hours long, but here this is: http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART03042/Dr-Weils-Senate-Testimony.html
click on video link
bill hayes,
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART03042/Dr-Weils-Senate-Testimony.html
In that link, which is the whole 163 minute long video on healthcare, go to about the 82 minute mark.
Roger - thanks for a great blog about growing up in Champaign-Urbana (I grew up in Champaign). It sparked a lot of summer memories, the most memorable was 1968. In our neighborhood we played "kick the can", wiffle ball, and caught lightning bugs. And yes, we had a brand new Dog N Suds on Mattis Avenue, but it burned down within a year and replaced with a Bailey and Himes Sporting Goods store. By the way, I'm pretty sure the Dog N Suds pictured in your blog is one from the town of Philo. We would pass it every time we would travel to Charleston to our relatives, where there is still one of the "original" Dog N Suds.
Ebert: Not in Philo but on the so-called "Philo Hard Road."
I was just thinking of Dog N Suds the other day, explaining to a friend of mine how I've never again tasted root beer that good. Mine was in Clubb, MO, a post office in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. School was a long bus ride away, in Greenville (pop. 282). Jerry McKittrick and I would leave our houses in the morning, on bike or on foot, spending the day exploring the woods, sliding down leaf-covered hills into damp valleys, gulleys, and hollers. Bathrooms were the nearest tree, and killing snakes was a parent-approved sideline.
Girls were unbelievably strange to us. I still have the scar under my chin from landing impaled on a picket, when Sharon McCrumb pushed me off the fence rail, after I laughed at her when I made it further along than she did. To be fair to her, she was trying to push me off into the rose bushes.
Beverly Emerson was everyone's sweetheart, although neither she nor we knew it at the time. A tomboy, she could play baseball with the best of us, and also got sick with me from eating too many green persimmons.
I can still recall her lopsided, freckled smile.
Ebert: Lots of freckles in the memories under this entry.
Roger, this is some interesting reading. I have been there and done that.I lived on Cottage Grove in east Urbana.Graduated Urbana High in 1953.My sister says she went to High school with you.
Oh by the way I believe The A&W Root Beer stand was on the corner of University & Broadway,not University & Race.
Thanks for the memories.
Have a nice day !!
reminds me of one of my favorite songs.
"Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end"
I was a few years behind you at ST mary's & St Pat's & UHS, you might remember my sister Judy... I remember you well, and all the piccures you painted in my head with your article. Crystal lake pool was our babysitter most days, with a family pass. Judy worked at that A&W, and I see the Rawles boy... now an attorney, whose family owned parts of Dog n Suds, and went to ST Mary's.
Good luck, great article (s) Dan Cedusky
Ebert: Danny and Judy Cedusky. Of course I remember you, and your friendly smiles.
Ebert: Final warning:
Readers, this is your three-day warning to get those recipes in for the cookbook inspired by my entry "The Pot and How to Use It."
Here is your chance at gourmet immortality. Include your name and where you are. Just a first name or handle if you insist.
They can be amateur, seat-of-the-pants recipes. We will polish them up. You can just list the stuff that goes in and let me figure out how gto concert for the Pot.
I especially would like to hear from the many readers in India, South Korea, China, Japan, Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Germany, the UK, Ireland and Sweden. Also from Marie Haws.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/the_pot_and_how_to_use_it.html
Roger
Roger, Surely you recognize the guy second from the left in that great photo with the Days of Summer. That has to be Steve Shaw. I have no idea about the first guy.
My summers in Urbana were your summers. Lazy and very long. I also spent lots of time in the Crystal Lake pool and the Princess Theater.
Ebert: Mmmm. Maybe so. Holmes and Wikoff didn't recognize him, either.
Roger, What a great piece! Since I was growing up in Champaign during exactly this period, the memories came tumbling back. It WAS idyllic, and fun, and innocent, growing up in the Midwest without a care in the world. I remember catching lightning bugs and keeping them in jars with holes punched in the lid, 17-year locusts crunching under your feet, the sounds at night made by the "creatures," burning leaves in the street, playing kick-the-can and capture-the-flag in the park, riding bikes everywhere (including the little 9-hole course at the U of I), Illinois football games on Saturdays, dancing cheek-to-cheek in someone's basement, dressed plaid short sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled up and ALWAYS with T shirts, listening to our favorite shows on the radio, ordering double-secret decoder rings from cereal boxes, putting on plays in someone's garage, making various crafts at the park and carving initials in the nearest tree, and going to sleep with the huge attic fan that sounded like a 747 taking off into the night.
Thanks for bringing it all back. Email me for details on 45th fraternity reunion. All the best, Greg
The hot summers..I remember sleeping on the stairs heading to our 3rd floor..my folks put an exhaust fan there with hopes of bringing all the cold air up from the basement and through the house..didn't work! We also rode bikes everywhere..my favorite trip was out to the U of I farms. With July 4th coming up I remember the great firework displays at the U of I football stadium.After a party with Vedders, Larsons and Shulls we'd head to the stadium --early of course, to watch Charlie Pond's gymnastic students tumble and bounce on the trampolines. He was a great coach and family friend. My brother Ron helped at one of his camps in Michigan. Once again, thanks for the memories!
Roger I think that the second kid in the photo is Steve Shaw. I don't know who the first one is, but he has a Lincoln school t-shirt, so he may not have lived in the neighborhood.
Ebert: Okay, that settles it. Jan St. Clair Walsh also thinks it's Steve. And now that I look more closely...I'm changing the caption.
Hey, Roger, great blog. Loved the photoofo 'Dog 'n Suds' with the WKID sudios in the background.
While an undergrad at Illinois, I was a staff announcer at WILL with Bob Goralski (later White House correspondent for NBC), John Regnell, Harold Hill, Phil Spradling among many others.
Upon graduation, I joined the staff of WKID with Dean Milburn, Mike Wladen, Harry Honig and others. While there, I still did 20 hours a week at WILL and weekends at WDZ in Tuscola (now Decatur).
Some of us announcers used to drive to Chicago to in the WMAQ studio for Dave Garroway's 'Eleven Sixty Club' which aired at 11:00pm. Hugh Downs was his announcer.
Who was the gentleman who always began his show, I believe on WGN, by reporting "It's a BEAUTIFUL day in Chicago" regardless of the weather.
Then there was Ernie Simon on WIND, certifiably mentally disturbeed.
My Cham-Bana career ended with a time with WCIA Channel 3 when it first went on the air. I announced a country western show called "Bar None Ranch" with Jack Carson and his Bar None Ranch Gang.
I'm now 85 years old, living in Georgetown, Texas retired from 38-1/2 years with Decatur's Mueller Co.
Thanks for the memories and hang in there!
Lou Mautz
I remember Marc Howard's afternoon record show on WDWS, his themesong was 'Twilight Time'.
Ebert: When Mark Howard would play "Twilight Time" as the days grew shorter and cooler in the Autumn, I felt a nostalgia that was totally unwarranted at my age. I just listened to it again (by the Three Suns, of course) and had nostalgia for my nostalgia.
Remember when WIND played "The Wiffenpoof Song" every single morning at 2 a.m.?
Roger, thanks so much for this article. It sure brings back a lot of memories! I grew up like you (I'll be 51 soon), roaming the neighborhoods alone and generally figuring out how to take care of myself. My parents would have probably killed me to know I rode my bike at age 11-12 from across I-74 down Brownfield road up to Rt. 45 and over to the Howard Johnsons to have an ice cream cone! But, it was a life experience and I ws so thrilled with myself! I did this many times alone with no fear of strangers. I remember stopping at the Dog 'n Suds with my Mom for a frosty mug after swimming at Crystal Lake's old round pool. Our bus driver, Morris Chrisman, used to occasionally let us stop at the DQ at 5 Points on our way home. If Huey's didn't have it, you didn't need it and everyone wanted to ride the pig! My grandmother Erlene Cedusky used to shop at the IGA? near where the Subway is before Lincoln Ave. Now Carle occupies everything over there! Changes! Not sure I like them but there's nothing you can do about it. I think we do our children a huge disservice by not letting them learn, fail, and experience life.
Ebert: Are there still IGAs? I also remember the A&P and the Piggly Wiggly ("I got this chicken at the Pig"). Did anyone realize they would never use certain sentences ever again?
Moved to Champaign at age five from the south side of Chicago in 1949. I remember Crystal Lake Park and hanging out on the campus of the U of I, the Steak & Shake, Lendales and the Friday night dances at the Y.
I was touched by the reminder of The Wayward Wind, a tune I danced to with my first love the last day of 6th grade. Her name was Eileen and she was the escence of princess/angel/heartthrob. The "romance" didn't survive the summer. She died of a brain tumor on my birthday while we were in the 9th grade. I still get that constricted throat feeling when I hear that song and think of her.
Gene
Canby, OR
There are still IGA's. There's a great one across from the Esquire Theater in Cincinnati.
Well... I'm young. So growing up in the 90's my bike rides were restricted to certain roads that were "Private."
Zack and I would ride our bikes (or at night, run naked) back and fourth these two, tired miles.
Private communities were considered safe.
So the other day my mom is on the internet. Her face is pale as a bleached sheet.
"What's wrong mom?"
"I'm on this website that shows where sexual predators live! There are THREE on Dry Creek Road and TWO on Bevan!"
So reading articles like yours above (MY GOD... I read it twice) make the past seem so much more innocent. Was the past so innocent? Has internet, television and that great simplifier that complicates everything - TECHNOLOGY- somehow stolen our innocence? Or were there always five sexual predators for every two miles, we just didn't know it cause the internet didn't inform us?
I really enjoyed this journal entry.
Hey Roger:
Love your reviews!
I'm from China and studying in Chicago now, and I've read your review of "Moon" - which is the movie I wanna watch badly recently, but I didn't find it in the AMC theater yesterday- I guess because it's limited and independent movie, right?
But would you tell me where can I watch such "limited" movies in Chicago downtown?
I don't wanna miss any great independent movies any more.
Ebert: Hey, welcome to town. "Moon" is playing at AMC Piper's Alley. Downtown? The Gene Siskel Film Center at State and Randolph is, incredibly, the only cinema operating in the Loop. But they show fine films.
Sunshine and Health...once you learned the title codes these publications became my portal to the unknown, the seldom seen, the inexplicable and often the terrifying.
Mr Ebert,
Reading this blog entry, i wondered if you have ever read the fantastic memoirs or the American/British author, Bill Bryson - entitled "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". His book chronicles his experiences growing up in the 50's and 60's in Des Moines, Iowa and ultimately the changing nature of the American suburbs. Both this article and a few earlier ones (specifically the one in which you describe that iconic Chicago-ian fast food outlet with such fondness and pride, as does Bryson with his own sweet shops and diners in Des Moines) remind me of Bryson's writing style and experience. As i'm not from America, and growing up in the 90s in Australia, have missed out on much of that "free range" care free upbringing, the connections between your two experiences fills me with longing and nostalgia for a chidhood that i was not a part of.
ANYWAY, the times in which i did feel, and now remember, a sense of freedom was on holiday, at the beach. I wondered if you ever holidayed (or "vacationed") and whether if that change of environment and situation altered your own freedom - giving you more responsibility or less? Were they times of connection for the family, or like me, were the times of exploration and adventure for a young mind?
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/bb_title/display.pperl?isbn=9780767919364
This comment may have been posted without my name and info. If so, please delete that one!
"On these I placed the old s-f magazines that the two foreign brothers, graduate students on my Courier route, had given me. Astounding, Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction. Then I discovered, more to my taste, Amazing, Imagination and the last issues of the full-size pulp Thrilling Wonder Stories."
But Astounding, Galaxy, and F&SF were so much better magazines than Amazing at the time, or Thrilling Wonder!
And it's a shame to put up a picture of a cover of Ray Palmer's magazine with a Richard Shaver story on the cover and not explain the Shaver Mystery! :-)
Ebert: I know. But Amazing was more fun for me in the early days.
The Shaver Mystery...quiet! Shaverites are lurking even now to flood this blog.
McSweeney's has a pretty good anthology in the vein of Amazing, Astounding, Thrilling, etc. The authors are all "name" authors, so something might be missing, but man, that cover.
Ebert: I subscribe to McSweeney's and love that issue. People should check out Amazon to see that every issue has a different design and even shape.
Haunting. Gogi Grant. "The Wayward Wind." Haunting. Absolutely.
My sister alerted me to your Journal and as I read it many good memories flooded back. I do believe that the "Lincoln school boy" on the left in that picture is me. I went to Lincoln school until 1954 when we moved from Coler to Washington street across from you.
Do you remember the time(s) you called the drugstores to ask if they had "Prince Albert in a can"? As I recall they always said that they had let him out years ago.
I still vividly remember the Saturday double features at the Princess. As I recall it cost 9 cents if you were under 12 (which I was for some time). And I still marvel at the brief continuing feature that the motorcycle that went off the cliff and crashed last Saturday suddenly had a parachute this Saturday which brought it safely to ground.
Ebert: Jerry! Long time no hear. I've corrected the entry to include your name in the caption. Remember looking at the moon through binoculars? Your folks making bowls of popcorn while we listened to the Cardinals broadcast? Helping to can endless jars of tomatoes in your basement?
I'm gratified you also remember the nine-cent Princess admission fee. People have told me "Naw, it couldn't have been that cheap." I wrote a separate piece about those Saturday matinees:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/hooray_hooray_the_first_of_may.html
Let me know where you are and what you're up to.
Ebert: We have inherited the same Jerry Seiler here in East Tennessee who appears in pictures in your blog and received a reply from you. I didn't get to know Jerry until a few years ago, but be assured that he is alive and kicking and beating the crap out of me every day on the golf course,even though it was only months ago he experienced a knee replacement! He has yet to wrestle me to the ground like he did to you in the picture though.
Carl
Ebert: I think I can claim a little credit for that knee.
Roger, as you can tell from my friend Carl's comments I am now retired here in East Tennessee- Knoxville.
I graduated from the U of I in 1963 in accounting. I went to Chicago to work in public accounting and eventually worked for 4 different companies. I retired from a healthcare sevices company (First Health) in 2001 where I was corporate controller. The Chicago area was a great job market that was very good to me. But it was a tad bit cold for me and the real estate taxes in the suburbs were more than I wanted to pay in retirement.
My wife and I picked Knoxville beacause of the weather (4 seasons and summer temperatures that are not totally unreasonable), taxes that are low (I think RE taxes are about 20% of Lake County, IL) and a view of the mountains that we have from our back porch (IL doesn't have a lot of those).
I play a lot of golf and enjoy working in my yard. The freedom from the pressures of the workplace is wonderful. We enjoy our 4 grandkids (now in Minnnesota but soon to be in California) and try to spoil them as much as we can. I had a very succcessful knee replacement in February.
I don't get back to Urbana much at all but I do have my sister still living there and we plan to attend my 50th class reunion in Urbana in September.
Jerry
Ebert: Yeah, it gets chilly here. But growing up in Urbana, of course you wanted four seasons. That area is beautiful.
Remember when we'd go to pick strawberries on the South Farms and come back burned red as lobsters? Today the University would be in violation of child labor laws.
One of my favorite novels, Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, is set in Knoxville. Dark and depressing, but great.
I too grew up in Urbana and have fond memories of the Philo Road Dog n Suds. We would ride our bikes there for lunch and gorge ourselves on three or four hot dogs and a quart of root beer in the cone shaped waxed paper containers. Like you, my dad always refered to the Dog n Suds as the root beet stand and, in the evenings we would drive out there in the station wagon. My brother and I would get the small root beer for a nickel and my mom and dad would get the large for a dime. I can remember watching thousands of lightening bugs (we didn't call them fireflies back then) flickering in the fields as we drove south, on our way home, down Philo Road.
I'm about 12 years younger than you so, most of my summer memories are from the sixties. The blog below entitled "Confessions of a Teenage James Bond", describes some of our adventures.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=32355264&blogId=460548058
There's another blog on my myspace page entitled "Lips and Buttholes" about the demise of the only Weinerschnitzel restaurant in Illinois, and my dad's fondness for hotdogs.
Ebert: It was only a dinky little hot dog stand on a two-lane road out of town, but it inspired such affection!
My dad was such a nut about hot dogs we would pile in the car and drive 30 mile to Westville, south of Danville, to patronize his favorite Coney Island Hot Dog stand. Melissa Merli of The News-Gazette, who grew up in Westville, tells me the place was famous. Well, as far as Urbana. anyway.
My home town of Muskegon,Mi still has a Dog 'n' Suds.
Ebert: I gather from their web site they're doing fine. A recent poll praised their root beer.
I am Jerry Seiler's older sister and I think the date of our move is wrong. I think we moved from the Lincoln School district to 407 E. Washington (across from you) in 1951. I was in high school then and I graduated in 1953.
I have always lived in Urbana. Our local HS class members get together for lunch every 4th Thursday at Timbers at 11:30.
I haven't read all these entries, but haven't yet seen the name of Jim Moore. He and Jerry are the same age. I remember he would come to our house and he and Jerry would do homework using our World Book encyclopedia. He lived on Maple St. just south of you.
Ebert: Hi Shirley! Yes, I well remember Jim Moore. Didn't his family have a company named Morgas? The foreign students on my Courier route who gave me all the sci-fi magazines lived behind his home in a little tarpaper house. ("Tarpaper" makes it sound worse than it was; they were happy there with their mother.)
Again, another wonderful conversation. Childhood in Midwest [Winona Minnesota] in 1950s. How lucky we were! Got all the way through this without a tear = even past "Wayward Wind" which is a heart-wrencher = but, then came the word "fireflies" and it all fell apart. One single word and the melancholy and nostalgia for times lost. Fireflies in flight. Dark of night. My own backyard, nothing to fright. Gosh.
OH, and roller skating around the block one thousand times. And when the "California Burger" came to A&W! A hamburger with lettuce and tomato on it ! ! ! ;.)
Love you more every day, Dear Ebert. So glad we know you, if only long-distance. . .
Thanks so much.
Cassandra
I'm sure you don't know me because I was behind you in UHS, but my sister was either in your class or a couple of years behind.(Gay Harlow Briggs) Your mother and mine, Jane Harlow were very good friends at Uni High!
You haven't mentioned in your blog the building of Lincoln Square! My father, Scotty Harlow used to have a DX gas station right across from the Urbana Lincoln, as it was formerly known. When the sale for Lincoln Square was approved, they demolished the old building, and he was relocated with Shell Oil Co. on Vine Street in a new filling station.(Now a parking lot) No one has yet mentioned Hoods Drug Store located on Vine Street across from the Junior High. I remember ordering lime phosphates and enjoying riding my bicycle from our home on Florida Ave. Also I have fond memories of Blair Park and summer Park programs that I attended.
Ebert: Charlie Hood! And the barber shop next door. And the IGA store. And Harlow Shell. Yes. And Gay Harlow! Memories come flooding back. I'm realizing that everything is stored away somewhere in the mind, waiting for a trigger to be reawakened. And recalling waiting for the next chair at the barber's and reading Car & Driver magazine, or Popular Mechanics. And leaving plastered down with Vitalis.
Roger,
I talked to my sister and she told me about your blog. In fact, she mentioned my name in her comments to you. I was in the class of '62 at UHS. You were right, the station our dad had was a Shell on Race, before Lincoln Square was built. I remember being lucky enough to have my parents car one night so we could could cruise the Steak 'N Shake. It didn't take many quarters then, but we still had to pool our money to come up with a 50 cent piece and a few quarters to get those 2-3 gallons.
You mentioned your Aunt Martha. It was your Aunt Martha that my mother was so close to. I remember one story in particular my mother told about the two of them at University High. It seemed my mother and I assume your Aunt Martha, too, would do about anything to get out of school during the time of the Elite 8--as I think it was called then. They decided to have an "accident" going down the steps at school. I don't remember for sure which was the "injured" one, but Mother told me one had to help the other to the hospital, as it was an ankle injury...they left with excused absences and headed over to the gym to watch high school basketball. One did quite a realistic limp in pain and the other helped the injured one. They were very pleased that they came up with the idea and thoroughly enjoyed a day spent watching high school basketball. I do remember the two of them said they were joined at the hip and great friends in school. Mother said Martha was so fun and full of life and laughter.
It is so wonderful what your blog and the written comments from others have done to my memory bank. As you have said, and it is so true, that one thing jogs another and all of a sudden I am thinking more and more about things from yesteryear. I thoroughly enjoy reading the comments and have found I remember so many of the people from the UHS years you have talked about--those before and after my class.
One writer named Gene, from Canby, OR, wrote on July 3, 2009 about his 6th grade girlfriend, Eileen. I lived in Champaign then and went to school with an Eileen Daily. She was in class with me in 5th grade; a very sweet, kind, pretty blonde often in pigtails. We were in Girl Scouts together. After moving to Urbana, for my 6th grade year, I heard she was ill and later she died. Even now I can remember how sad I was. After all these years, and reading this entry from Gene about his Eileen, could it be the Eileen I knew?
Thank you, Roger, for all the memories! I will continue to follow the comments for additional trips down memory lane.
Take care.
Ebert: Hi Gay! Yes, my Aunt Martha was a great spirit. She and Uncle Bill spent the whole summer at my place in Michigan before she died on Thanksgiving of that year.
Maybe Gene will see your post and tell us who Eileen was.
Wasn't there also once a Shell dealer in Urbana named Norman Early? I remember him with one of the old pumps where you had to bring the gasoline up from the underground tank with muscle power.
Indeed there was a Shell Station in Urbana operated by Norman Early. It was at the corner of Broadway & Green, across from the Urbana Lincoln Hotel.
The day WWII ended with the surrender of Japan, I, along with my buddy Doug Weitzel, were working there. The streets were full of parading cars with honking horns.
Norm was a nice guy.
There is a new KAAY blog going on here:
http://mighty1090kaay.blogspot.com/
Several of us enthusiasts, listeners, former deejays, etc. formed the new blog after A. J. Lindsey ("Doc Holiday") passed away May 17, 2009...here is his old blog (still viewable, but nothing can be posted therre):
http://kaay1090.blogspot.com/
Lots of audio there for Beaker Street and KAAY's Top 40 era!
Come visit, leave a comment, or e-mail one of the moderators there for a full-fledged post...we hope to see you there!
Bud S.
Roger,
I am a 20 year old Mexican (studying film in London), so I have pretty much nothing to do with the world and memories that you and everyone here talk about. But this was simply fascinating to read. This has to be the best blog there is. Your great entries and the countless comments are fantastic. No one uses the medium that is the internet like you do.
Thank you for everything.
Ebert: To be 20 and studying film in London. No, you have pretty much nothing to do with my world, you lucky dog.
Jose
I can't believe I've lived this long (62), mostly in the Chicago area, and not "discovered" Roger Ebert. I've always known who you were...mostly through your TV show. As a loyal Tribune reader, I don't think I've ever read one of your newspaper pieces. A few days ago a recovering friend sent me the link for your blog about AA. Ahh...the writing! I don't know why I was so surprised at the depth and breadth of it. I spent hours and hours pouring through the posts laughing and crying over the raw emotion on display. And that was just one thread! Now I'm discovering all the rest that your blog has to offer. The piece on growing up in the 50's in Urbana is priceless. It awakened so many memories that I thought were lost forever. I can't wait to dive into some of your other essays in the archives. But wait, there's more...the movie reviews!
Anyway, at the risk of sucking up too badly, thanks for getting and keeping this thing going. I'm so looking forward to exploring what you and the followers of this blog have to offer.
I googled myself just for fun yesterday, and found this post. I was so excited to see my painting of the A&W ! It is from my series called "Kodachrome" , Many of which are from old kodachrome slides which I love or old photos which I collect. That particular photo ref. I found online and got permission from the site owner to paint.
I grew up in the 50's /60's in Macomb , Illinois which you have probably heard of, so your blog post brought back many memories. We lived "Out in the country" which was really just outside the city limits. We roamed the creeks, played in haymows, waded through ditches after it rained, and rode our bikes everywhere. The town is not that huge so we could still ride our bikes to the municipal pool, or the library.
Dairy Queen and A & W were favorite spots . Dog n Suds came later as I recall. I remember the song "windy" playing whenever I think of Dog N Suds.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane and the glimpse into your childhood past, which was not unlike my own. And thanks for using my painting to illustrate it.
Kay Crain
St. Louis
Ebert: I love your painting.
St. Louis! Does this entry ring a bell?
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/01/car_table_counter_or_takhomasa.html
St. Louis! Does this entry ring a bell?
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/01/car_table_counter_or_takhomasa.html>>>>
MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm. Steak N Shake. Macomb didn't have one, but my first Steak N Shake moment was in high school when the Madrigal group I was in came to St. Louis for a music workshop at Shattinger Music . My dad's cousin's husband drove us in his eight passenger station wagon . Lunch that day was Steak N Shake, and although I have no idea what I had, I remember distinctly that our music teacher, Mrs. Parks had the chili mac.
Damn! There are some brain cells i'll never get back!
Now we have Steak and Shake 15 minutes from our house and it's as good now as it was then.
I guess now I'll have to do a painting of Steak n Shake.
As later responses and cover illustrations confirm, Elmer R. Long operated his stamp business from Harrisburg, PA. I had the good fortune of living only 18-miles away in Elizabethtown, Pa. Elmer had a full-service ground floor store on Market Street, a main street that was only one block west of the city square. For a young collector, a visit to the store was a revelation of what stamp collecting could be. A long "L-shaped" counter filled the first area and was about 24-feet long. The whole length was glass covered with stamps on displayed with prices. To the right of the counter, the entire wall had stamps on display at eye-level. Elmer's store was where the Capital City Stamp Club met.
Elmer was a natural merchandiser. With his national presence (largely through his annual catalog) he had many buying opportunities. When he purchased 5,000+ airmail covers, he asked me (a 16-year-old graphic designer) to design a group of album pages for the early history of airmail. He offered the pages with the covers to fill them. He also published several "Introduction to Stamps" albums.
Alas, there was no plan of succession, and on his death the store was soon closed and the inventory dispersed.
Ebert: When I was that age, I would have been joyous to walk into that store. There is something awesome about a stamp dealer: He has all these stamps! How many stamp dealers are remembered on the internet decades later?
Urbana in the late 60s was unlike any other place.
Thanks for stirring up the memories!
Roger,
Sorry - you are 100% wrong about Dog 'n Suds starting in Urbana. It was Champaign. I went to CHS with Don Hammacher's daughter, Diane. The first one was on south Neil St. in Champaign.
Trish Gronlund
Roger,
Your Urbana memories really hit home. Lorry's Sport and Hobby Shop was where I went after turning in my Courier money. I spent every penny on Revell and Aurora plastic models, as well as outdoor gear for camp outs and fishing trips.
Blair Park was for little league baseball. I played for "Stinkin' Lincoln" (Urbana Lincoln Hotel) Carle Park was where we hung out. The upper floor of the old pavilion was closed off because of the "murder" that left the large stain of "blood" on the wall. My dad was the master of "scientific air management" in our house. In the heat of summer all windows had to be closed except for the two with exhaust fans in order to draw in the cool night air.Radio was king, but when we got our first tv, my brother and I would stare at the test pattern, waiting for programming to start in the late afternoon. Channel 3 had great local programming such as Sheriff Sid, Diane's Kitchen, Ruffles the clown and The Hop. For our science fiction fix we watched Captain Video. I used to ride my bike several miles out into the country to fish and catch critters. I got in real trouble once when I came home late- in the dark. The county roads were freshly tarred, but not chipped yet when I started home. I fell off my bike as it slid out from under me, and I rolled in the tar for several yards. It was a long walk back pushing my bike and trying to carry my net and one remaining unbroken jar of crawfish and minnows,
My brother Jim was in your class. I was three years behind. He hung out with some of the names you mentioned, as well as Joe Nadeau, Jim Hageman and Mike Russell. Robert McCammon's excellent book "Boy's Life" could have been written about Urbana. If you have not read it, you should. It evokes the same type of memories as your stories, but with a little twist of fantasy added. For forty four years I have been married to a Champaign Maroon girl. We moved from Urbana to the Chicago area in 1968, but we still attend Illinois football games every year.
Ebert:H i Dick. There isn't a memory I don't share, including the "bloodstain." Remember Lorry's old pipe? And next to Blair Park, the statue of Lincoln we knew was by "somebody famous," but we never quite knew who? Nor did we know he was born in Urbana and also sculpted the U of I's Alma Mater and the lions in front of the Art Institute.
I watched the same TV shows on Channel 3. Captain Video! Always creeping out from behind the same three Moon rocks. Sheriff Sid! He always led the Fourth of July Parade on horseback, so he had to be followed by his own designated poop scoopers, who (he never caught on) smiled and waved to the crowd just like he did. He thought the cheering was for him.
Thanks for reminiscing about my old boss at WDWS in Champaign, Larry Stewart, who passed away last September at 88. I worked for Larry, using the name Mike Conrad, in 1958-59 while I was in the Air Force and stationed at Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul.
My Japanese wife and I lived in Urbana, and I always looked forward to my evening stint as a dee-jay at WDWS, where I did the Oskee-Wow-Wow Show and The Owl Hour to sign-off.
Larry was instrumental in helping us to return to Japan after my wife's father died, leaving her younger brother and sisters parentless. My departure left Larry with an important time block to fill, but he didn't hesitate to help us.
I always felt a debt of profound gratitude to Larry, who was a wonderful, generous human being and capable of great empathy for people with problems. I'll surely honor his name with respect.
Why do the simpler times seem so much more interesting than today?
What, hot in Chicago just now? Funny you should put this up just when it's turned very hot here. AKA New Mexico.