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DRINK IT UP!

Now that the weather is getting warmer, my kids are constantly in the fridge, reaching for the drinkables. We go through a gallon of milk a day, plus several pitchers of lemonade, numerous liters of soda and countless bottles of Gatorade. And, of course, water, which comes right out of the front of the fridge (unheard of back in my day).

When we were growing up, we had milk for breakfast and lunch. At dinner, my mom would bring out the sleek plastic teacups, and we would have a cup of hot tea liberally cut with milk while my parents had their evening coffee.

Of course, the real treats were the rare occasions when my parents allowed us to have chocolate milk. Remember Ovaltine? Those chocolate crystals never quite dissolved all the way, sticking to the top of the glass until we scrapped them off with our spoons. They were delicious.


When summer came, however, the four of us wanted something lighter and cooler than glasses of chocolate milk or hot milky tea. By the time school was out for summer, we were pleading for Kool-Aid, in fantastic colors and flavors. My mom reluctantly agreed....the packets of unsweetened drink were cheap enough, but we weren't the neatest kids when it came to adding sugar (and we always complained the drink wasn't sweet enough when she added it). What was your favorite Kool-Aid flavor?


In 1964, Pillsbury decided to challenge the Kool-Aid monopoly by introducing the Funny Face Drink mixes. I can remember the original line up - Goofy Grape, Injun Orange, Freckled Face Strawberry (my personal favorite), Chinese Cherry (complete with gong), Loud Mouth Lime and Rootin' Tootin' Raspberry. I remember loving their commercials, which started like this:

By 1966, the commercials were pulled due to protests from Native Americans claiming the name "Injun Orange" was racist. Pillsbury changed the name to "Jolly Olly Orange" and did some damage control by turning "Chinese Cherry" into "Choo Choo Cherry." The new commercials looked like this:

My mom preferred Funny Face to Kool-Aid because it was pre-sweetened, meaning we didn't need to be near the sugar bowl. Unfortunately, in the early years, Funny Face was sweetened with cyclamates, which were banned by the FDA in 1968 as a possible cancer risk. Goofy Grape and the gang were pulled from shelves, returning the following year sweetened with saccharine. The aftertaste was no winner, so in 1970 a new Funny Face was introduced with the tag line "just add sugar." Back to the sugar bowl!

They Say It's Your Birthday

Circle This Date
THIS WEEK IN BOOMER BIRTHDAYS
May 15 - May 21

Need a reason to celebrate this week? Then check out these Boomer birthdays...and remember, we're not just getting older, we're getting better! (Ten points if you can ID that ad of our youth!)

May 15 - George Brett, baseball player and American League MVP of 1980, born in 1953
May 16 - Debra Winger, actress who was lifted up where we belong, born in 1955
May 17 - Bob Saget, daddy dearest of the "Full House" crew, born in 1956
May 18 - Rick Wakeman, rocker and Yes keyboardist, born in 1949
May 19 - Joey Ramone, one of the, duh, Ramones, born in 1951 (RIP 2001)
May 20 - Ronald Prescott Reagan, ballet dancer and Presidential son, born in 1958
May 21 - Al Franken, comedian, writer and exposer of lying liars, born in 1951 (oh, yeah, did we mention senator?)

Oh, and answer to the trivia question - that was Nice and Easy hair color. Proving once again that truth in honesty isn't a given. 

You Are My Candy Girl

Top Ten List
TOP OF THE POPS 1969

Welcome back to another episode of our very own top ten. This time, the year is 1969, and the list comes courtesy of Wolfman Jack. Clap for the Wolfman....and take a trip back to the days when our radio was blasting these babies:

1. "Crimson and Clover" - Tommy James and the Shondells
2. "Everyday People" - Sly and the Family Stone
3. "Dizzy" - Tommy Roe
4. "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" - The Fifth Dimension
5. "Get Back" - The Beatles
6. "Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet" - Henry Mancini
7. "In the Year 2525" - Zager and Evans
8. "Honky Tonk Woman" - The Rolling Stones
9. "Sugar, Sugar" - The Archies
10. "I Can't Get Next To You" - The Temptations

Where Have All The Folkies Gone?

This Day In Boomer History
PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON PEAKS AT #2
May 11, 1963

"A dragon lives forever
But not so little boys..."

When I was in my formative years, both of my parents played guitar. It was almost like Hootenanny when friends and family came to visit. Everyone would get together downstairs in the family room and play guitar and sing their favorites, the songs they grew up with and old church songs and even a few original compositions. It was such an important ritual in my family that I asked for a tambourine for my sixth birthday, wanting to be part of the music coming from the grown-ups downstairs.


Before that birthday, my dad discovered folk music, and soon songs by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seegar became staples in his musical line-up. So I probably first heard "Puff the Magic Dragon" not on the radio or from our old RCA Victor record player, but wafting up the stairs from our family room while I nodded off down the hall.


"Puff", written by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow and performed by Peter, Paul and Mary (Yarrow was the "Peter" part), became a staple across the country, too, embraced by nursery schools and New York hippies alike. Children loved the story of a dragon and his friendship with the magical dragon, while the soothing melodies made it a favorite of coffeehouse performers and their audiences. There was even the hint of scandal - did Puff and his little human friend (with the suspicious surname of "Paper") really refer to smoking marijuana?

This interpretation was dismissed by Yarrow and the group that made the song famous, and "Puff" went on to be covered by such diverse artists as Bing Crosby, John Denver, Seal, Dolly Parton and Alvin and The Chipmunks.

But for me, the best version will always be the one I heard coming from my family room on a Saturday night after I'd been tucked into bed. My parents divorced, my mother died, and my siblings and I followed the lead of Jackie Paper and grew up. But the music continues on. One of my brothers bought our childhood home, and whenever our family and friends get together, we always seem to end up in our family room, guitars in hand and songs in heart.

Sometimes, if pressed, I'll even play a tambourine solo.

 

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CLASSIC BOOMER COMMERCIALS

The other day, the old Henry Mancini theme for The Pink Panther movies began looping in my head. (Yeah, these things happen all the time once you're on this side of the hill). So I hummed along, "Doo doo doo doo, do do, doo do doo do doo doo..."

"What's that?" my daughter asked.

"The Pink Panther song," I told her. Then the words of the old ad came back to me:

"Pink panther flakes are pink and sweet as you can tell
The color of pink tickles me pink."

Pink Panther Flakes, the cereal introduced by Post in 1973  to coincide with the feline's Saturday morning cartoon, were actually frosted flakes with a pink coating which turned the milk in our cereal bowl pink. I remember the commercial in more detail than the actual cereal, and I found it on YouTube to appease my curious child:




So I got to thinking about the other commercials of my youth, back in the day when we couldn't TIVO the show and fast-forward through the advertising. Remember the Frito Bandito?



How about when Hawaiian Punch was downright violent?



And this ad for Good N Plenty must be one of my earliest memories...I remember it distinctly, yet it ran in the very early '60's:



What are the favorite commercials of your youth? We'll revisit this topic later, so let me know what you'd like to see!

Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen

Circle This Date
THIS WEEK IN BOOMER BIRTHDAYS
May 8 - May 14

Boomers are always up for a party, so each Saturday we'll give you reason to celebrate. Here are the birthday boys and girls for this week:

May 8 - Alex Van Halen, of the group and the brothers Van Halen, born in 1955
May 9 - Alley Mills, "Norma Arnold" of The Wonder Years, born in 1951
May 10 - Bono, Irish activist and front man of U2, born in 1960
May 11 - Martha Quinn, one of the original MTV VeeJays, born in 1960
May 12 - Emilio Estevez, Brat Pack member and Martin Sheen's son, born in 1962
May 13 - Peter Gabriel, former member of Genesis and rock artist extraordinaire, born in 1950
May 14 - Robert Zemeckis, director of Romancing the Stone, Forrest Gump and the Back to the Future series, born in 1948

Up Your Nose With A Rubber Hose

This Day In Boomer History
THE BIRTH OF ROBERT HEGYES
May 7, 1951

"Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out..."

The year was 1975. TV, that nursemaid of my generation, was going through a lot of changes. In January, Another World became the first soap opera to air hour-long episodes. A brand new game show, Wheel of Fortune, made its debut, and the beloved Colonel Henry Blake was killed off on M*A*S*H.

And then - in September, of course - America headed back to school, and TV did too, by way of  Brooklyn. Welcome Back Kotter entered our homes - and our vocabularies - in September 1975. It was a vehicle for stand-up comedian Gabe Kaplan, and based on his own high school years. Now, the show is probably best known as the show that introduced us all to a young unknown named John Travolta.

Travolta played Vinnie Barbarino, the leader of a group of, er, academically challenged teens who called themselves The Sweathogs. Check out this video - it looks like an early audition for Saturday Night Fever, eh? The other Sweathogs were the smooth black basketball player Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington (played by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs),  the childish oddball Arnold Horshak (Ron Palillo), who raised his hand enthusiastically and yelled, "Oooh, ooh, oooh!" whenever he "knew" an answer, and the tough "Puerto Rican Jew" Juan Epstein (played by birthday boy Robert Hegyes), who had a note from his mother for every occasion.

The Sweathogs' time in high school pretty much echoed my own, and the show was canceled in 1979. As a side note, Hegyes was a Jersey boy who attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University), which is where I took my post-baccalaureate certification classes. While I was there, Hegyes came back (a conquering hero, I guess) and took the stage for one night in a college production. I attended the production, which was a vanity piece for the local-boy-done-good, who didn't turn out to be nearly as interesting as I remembered Epstein to be. But at least he isn't getting beat up by Screech!