Sparklers on the Fourth: Upon Further Review...

The human memory is a fascinating and flawed thing. It's pretty common knowledge that eyewitness testimony is generally considered to be unreliable. In fact, there have been cases thrown out because it had been determined that prosecutors (or defenders) had planted false memories into the heads of people testifying. I think that the major problem is that the human brain (which is vastly underused according to most research) simply can not reliably recall every detail about everything that a person experiences. Instead it sometimes seems to take little fragments of memories and tries to piece together a "memory" which is probably more fabricated than based in reality. A memory we would swear is real could in fact be made up of fragments of actual (possibly unrelated) memories, stories about the past we've heard, and a bit of pure fiction created by our active imaginations all mixed together. Since it's in our heads we don't see any reason to doubt the memories that we have--sometimes even in the light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Our brains seem to have an ability to use something like persistence of vision (which allows us to watch different frames of a film and fill in the blanks between them to make it seem that we are watching seamless movement) to make random bits of memories easier to use and relate to.

I've seen this happen myself on a message board I frequent that is dedicated to the old Creature Double Feature show on Boston's WLVI Channel 56. People will swear that they remember seeing a certain movie on the show even though that movie isn't on a list of the movies that aired on Creature Double Feature. It's pretty understandable, and has happened to me too. A lot of great movies were aired on all the Boston area TV stations during the time Creature Double Feature was on. Combine a hazy memory of watching one of these movies with the fond recollection of sitting in front of the TV on Saturday afternoons to watch Creature Double Feature and you have a hybrid memory of watching that movie on CDF--even though you never did!

I recently wrote about a very old memory of mine from the time of America's Bicentennial celebration in 1976 (see Sparklers on the Fourth of July!). I had a very limited recollection of being in my hometown watching a huge parade held in honor of the Bicentennial. I had taken my memory "fragment", figured out approximately when it must have been from and decided that it had to have been from 1976. I was pretty happy with solving an old mystery, and the blog even generated a couple of comments from people who also remembered that very same parade. Those comments were really a great affirmation that I had done something right. However...

I decided to look at some microfilm from the local newspaper to find some stories and photos of the Bicentennial parade to see if I could jog any additional memories of the event. I spent several hours over a few visits to the library and managed to come up empty. All the towns around my hometown (Uxbridge, MA) had various parades, carnivals and fireworks displays, which were all listed in the newspaper. After the Fourth of July these events were all subsequently reported on. But nothing at all seemed to be written about the huge parade in Uxbridge. Uxbridge is a small town, but I couldn't believe that nothing at all would be mentioned about the parade. Finally I found a big article about "The First Annual Firemen's Muster" in Uxbridge, which was an early part of Uxbridge's big 250th anniversary celebration, which would take place the following year (1977). According to the article, the muster "marked the beginning of a year long celebration of Uxbridge's 250th birthday. 'Incorporation Day' is June 27, 1977". (Worcester Telegram, Monday, June 28, 1976; page 9E)

Armed with this clue I decided to look at the newspapers from late-June 1977. It turned out that Uxbridge did indeed have a big parade around the Fourth of July (like I thought), but it was in 1977 instead of 1976! Skipping a parade in 1976 is pretty understandable considering that they knew they had something big to celebrate the following year. They probably just let the other towns in the area take care of all the Bicentennial celebrations so the 250th Anniversary Committee could concentrate on their big plans for 1977.

My first indication that I was looking in the right area was when I found this photo from the Friday, June 24 Telegram (page 15E). I couldn't get a great scan of it, but the caption says: "UXBRIDGE-The town is making some last-minute repairs along the Bicentennial parade route. The celebration is planned for the weekend. Francis Roy of the Highway Department used gasoline in a wheel barrow to burn tar from tools." Note that the paper erroneously referred to the it as being a "Bicentennial" parade rather than a 250th anniversary parade. That's understandable, considering that it was only a year removed from the country's big Bicentennial celebration in 1976.

Worcester Telegram: Friday, June 24, 1977; page 15E

Saturday's Telegram provided a complete listing of all the 250th anniversary activities and events. The parade was scheduled for 2:00 on Sunday, and it was listed as being a "six-division parade, expected to include about two dozen floats". Sure sounds like the one I was thinking about...

Worcester Telegram: Saturday, June 25, 1977; page 8

Sunday's Telegram (the day of the parade itself) reported on the full day of activities from Saturday's Heritage Day in Uxbridge:

Worcester Telegram: Sunday, June 26, 1977; front page

Worcester Telegram: Sunday, June 26, 1977; page 20A

And, finally--after all this searching--the Monday, June 27, 1977 Telegram had coverage of the Uxbridge 250th anniversary parade. All signs point to the fact that this was indeed the event that I was remembering which I mistakenly thought had happened in 1976 in the previous blog.

Worcester Telegram: Monday, June 27, 1977; front page

Note that in the above photo caption there is a very important clue. Both of the people who commented on my previous blog (about my memory being of the 1976 Bicentennial parade) recalled rain that day during the parade. This photo, titled "A Change In Weather" mentions the fact that the rain came halfway through the parade. Here's more coverage:

Worcester Telegram: Monday, June 27, 1977; page 3S

Worcester Telegram: Monday, June 27, 1977; page3E

While this all of this amply covers the parade and festivities of Uxbridge's 250th anniversary celebration, there were a couple more interesting things I found. The parade took place on Sunday, the 26th. The actual anniversary occurred on Monday, the 27th. To commemorate the date, and to close out the celebration, a time capsule was buried on the Town Common.

Worcester Telegram: Tuesday, June 28, 1977; front page

Although I never realized this event happened one day after the parade, I was very glad to learn this fact--as I also have a pretty strong memory of standing on the Common on that day as the time capsule was dedicated and buried. I couldn't actually see anything because of the crowds, but do remember thinking that it was a momentous occasion. It seemed incredible to me that the capsule would be buried for fifty years--FIFTY YEARS! Of course, fifty years is actually a pretty short period for a time capsule to be buried. But to my seven-year-old mind fifty years practically seemed like an eternity. It was hard to conceive that I might be around to actually see the capsule dug up and opened. Heck, it was going to be opened in 2027--I had seen movies that took place in the 2000s, but couldn't imagine that era actually arriving in reality. Well, of course were now in 2011. the time capsule has already been buried (and forgotten about by many I'm sure) for 34 years. It only has 16 more years left before its scheduled excavation date. I'll be 58 when it's dug up. That little seven-year-old boy on the common couldn't envision himself being fifty-eight years old, but this forty-one-year-old doesn't find it nearly as unbelievable.

Here is the marker for the 250th Anniversary time capsule as it appeared on the Uxbridge Common in December 2010

Life went on after the 250th celebration of course. On that same Monday the time capsule was buried--the actual date of the anniversary--there was a regularly scheduled town meeting. I certainly wouldn't have been interested in hearing about this as a kid, but it seems worth at least mentioning here as the very last "event" of the town's anniversary commemoration:

Worcester Telegram: Tuesday, June 28, 1977; page 3S

In closing, I'd like to apologize for any confusion my original blog might have caused because of its inaccuracies. Another funny thing about the human brain is that we have a tendency to believe what we read. This can be especially dangerous with the internet, where we read things every day without having any real way of knowing if it's accurate (Wikipedia is a good example of a great resource whose "facts" have to be taken with a grain of salt). There's no real "rules" when it comes to blogs, but I always try to be as accurate as possible when I write something here. There may never be more than a handful of people who will read it, but I just don't want to mislead any of those who do happen by.

See you in 2027!

Resurrecting The Past: Flying Saucer/Satellite Wafer Candy

Even at a very young age I remember sometimes wishing I had been born a generation or two earlier. Most of the movies I loved watching while growing up were the monster/horror/sci-fi ones from the 1950s and 1960s. As much as I enjoyed watching them on TV--beamed out to me from Boston area stations like WLVI 56 (and its Saturday afternoon show Creature Double Feature), WSBK TV38 and WCVB Channel 5--I also always wished I could have been around when those movies first came out and people went out to see them, brand new, at local theaters and drive-ins. I suppose we always look at the past through rose-colored glasses, and I'm sure I did that too. I idealized the 1950s and 1960s, concentrating on all the good and interesting aspects of them and being blind to the problems and strife that all eras have to some extent.

It wasn't until quite a bit later that I realized that growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s wasn't really that bad. I certainly wasn't as far removed from the ways of the 50s and 60s as a kid growing up today would be. Even though I didn't get to see all those great (and not-so-great) movies in the theaters it was still a wonderful thing to be able to have them on TV all the time. You certainly aren't likely to see the likes of "It Conquered the World", "Them" and "The Amazing Colossal Man" on regular TV these days. In fact, while there are exponentially more viewing choices today than the ten or so channels we could pick up on our old TV set growing up, there still isn't a reliable outlet for those kinds movies.

I suppose a few factors went into the realization that the 1970s weren't as "bad" as I thought while growing up during them. First off, the TV channels I was watching were being programmed by people who had probably grown up during the 50s and 60s when the films I love came out. It was natural for them to put them in the schedules since that was what they were familiar with. Also, the movies that were churned out for double-bills at drive-ins and movie theaters were so plentiful and still of semi-recent vintage that they were probably the easiest things to plug into schedules. It would be like seeing movies from the 1980s on TV today (and that certainly does happen). Movies from the 1950s and 60s simply weren't as old in the 1970s as they are today (which is a pretty obvious fact indeed).

One other aspect of the "old days" that lingered into my formative years and I was lucky enough to still be able to experience was Penny Candy. It's amazing to think there was a time when a penny was actually worth something, yet they were. There was a small convenience store down the hill from my house that I would frequent. This little old-timey store actually still had jars of Penny Candy that you could choose from to spend the small amounts of change a little kid would be likely to have in his/her pocket. Not realizing the connection to the past that I felt so much nostalgia for, I would pick and choose as many pieces of candy that I could afford and take them home with me in a little paper bag. Most of these candies still exist today of course--but you're not likely to find them for sale in individual pieces. They either come in sealed packages or can be bought by weight at certain places. Caramel bullseyes, Swedish Fish, wax syrup bottles, and those little candy dots on paper strips were among my favorites.

But one thing I always remember as being a bit extra special was the Flying Saucer Candy (which I just found out were also called Satellite Wafers). These little things were made up of two saucer-shaped wafers made of an edible paper-like material that were sealed together and contained a number of tiny, colorful candy beads inside which would rattle when the saucer was shaken. These weren't a particularly sweet candy. In fact the wafer part had pretty much no taste at all. It was like eating something that was sort of cross between paper and cardboard. The candy beads themselves were sweet, but so tiny you didn't really get much flavor from them either. I think what made them so special (to me at least) was the overall experience of eating them. It was simply fun to put them in your mouth and bite down on the wafer to get to the candy inside. Or you could let the wafer part melt in your mouth first. Plus, you could shake them like a little maracas. And (probably best of all) they actually looked just like little flying saucers or UFOs! Nice.

While I've seen most of the other Penny Candies from my youth in recent years--even buying some of those paper-mounted colorful candy dots for The Little Monster (and myself of course) while on vacation last year--I hadn't seen the Candy Flying Saucers/Satellite Wafers for many years. Well it turns out they still exist and can be found pretty easily now that we have the magic of the internet (it's funny to find myself using cutting edge technology to track down something like an old-fashioned candy treat from my youth).

I hadn't even thought of these particular candies in quite some time until a couple weeks ago when I visited the Grafton Flea Market (Grafton, MA) for the first time this season. I used to go there all the time, but now that I've moved just far enough away to make it a bit of a distance I only get out there a few times a season. Well, there's someone there that sells candy, nuts and dried fruit on little plastic bags. A lot of the candies are of the old-fashioned, Penny Candy variety. And the bags aren't factory sealed packages, but simply baggies tied up with a little twist-tie. This dealer has been setting up there for many years. The funny thing is that I don't recall ever buying anything from the stand through all my hundreds of trips to the flea market. I decided to check out the variety on this last trip and was pleasantly surprised to see those little Flying Saucers! I simply had to pick up one of the bags for a dollar. The bag contained a dozen of the colorful saucers. That works out to about eight cents apiece. While not "Penny Candy" by any means, that doesn't seem all that bad considering the general level of inflation. The six- or seven-year-old version of myself probably wouldn't have been able to afford such an indulgence, it really wasn't much of a hardship to hand over a dollar bill for that little bag.

While I was excited to re-discover this tiny "lost" part of my childhood, I was also looking forward to sharing these Flying Saucers with The Little Monster too of course. It didn't take her long to "get" what was fun about them (or at least if she didn't, she did a good job of humoring her old man). She seemed to enjoy eating and playing with the little flying saucers. In fact, a neighborhood friend of hers came over to visit and she told him about the new candy treat. I gave him one and his reaction was "this doesn't taste very good". That's an understandable and very honest thing to say (nice tact kid!), but it just showed that he's more accustomed to all the "boring", but super-sweet candy choices that kids of today are familiar with. He wan't interested in using his imagination and putting in the extra "work" that transforms Flying Saucer Candy from a tasteless treat into a fun experience that includes nearly all the senses (taste, sight, touch and even hearing). Luckily The Little Monster didn't let me down in that department! A small link to the 1950s/60s carried on through the my youth, and now I've been able to pass it along to another generation of Monster Kid in the 2010s! Yet another proud moment in the Monster Dad experience.

Here's a look at the Flying Saucers that were in the bag above

A blue Flying Saucer

And a pink Flying Saucer

A peek at the little candy beads inside a Saucer

The Little Monster prepares to enjoy a Flying Saucer/Satellite Wafer Candy!

Here are a few resources where you can find Flying Saucer/Satellite Wafer Candies (and other nostalgic old-fashioned candy too for that matter) if this post has got you wanting some:

• Candy Favorites
• Hometown Favorites
• Blair Candy
• Old Time Candy
• Groovy Candies
• Retro Candy Online
• O'Ryan's Village

The Day My Dad Saved a Bully's Life

Listening to Queen's "Radio Ga Ga" recently got me to remembering a long ago event that I thought I'd share. Every time I hear this song I think of this memory--which has nothing to do with the song besides the fact that it was from the time that "Radio Ga Ga" was a hit song. This fact also helps me to date the memory to approximately spring of 1984 (the song was released in January of 1984 and would have been in heavy rotation by spring). It's interesting how something like a song or a particular scent can bring back a memory from long ago...

I would have been a freshman in high school in the spring of 1984. My father and I didn't do a lot of things together as father and son. He and my mother were big fans of flea markets and yard sales. They used to set up regularly at flea markets as a hobby and a way to make some extra cash on the weekend. When they weren't at flea markets selling their stuff, they would visit the various flea markets in the area. This one particular Sunday my mom must have been feeling under the weather. Dad took me to a flea market that day while she stayed home. I enjoyed it, though I don't recall finding or purchasing anything too memorable. It's just fun going and seeing what kind of stuff people will put out for sale--searching for that little gem mixed in with all the stones. After more than 25 years it seems understandable that I don't recall much specific about the wares for sale that day. One thing I do recall was that this trip took place during the time that Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album was still a huge hit (and that was a long stretch of time indeed). There were various cheap Michael Jackson knockoff products for sale along with the usual assortment of used items from people's houses and stuff like that.

So what does all this have to do with "Radio Ga Ga" and my Dad saving a bully's life? Well, nothing--but that part is coming up. After our visit to the flea market Dad and I got back in the car and headed back home. We were coming up to the top of the hill that our street was on and nearly home. There on the side of the road was a prone body lying on the ground with a female standing over it. The seemingly-lifeless body belonged to a member of my class who had taken a life-track that led to him becoming a bully and general trouble-maker. I actually remember being friends with this individual when we were very little, before our lives started to diverge into very different directions. Dad stopped to ask if everything was okay. The girl responded that everything was fine, but obviously it wasn't. Dad drove me the rest of the way up to the end of the street and dropped me off at home, then went back down the street. I went inside with a feeling of unease, not knowing if this person I knew was even alive or not. I went inside, turned on the TV and tried to pretend that everything was normal. I'm pretty sure that I either saw the video for "Radio Ga Ga" or heard it on the radio at this time (and thus the reason the song and this event are eternally connected in my mind).

Dad came home much later to report that he brought the bully (against his girlfriend's wishes) to the hospital. I'm not sure if it was drugs or alcohol, but he had overdosed on something, and he had to have his stomach pumped. Apparently he was going to pull through and be "okay". He did indeed return to school--at least long enough to drop out and go onto whatever he's doing today. I've always wondered if he had any idea that my Dad may very well have saved his life that day. Probably not. It's a shame he couldn't have taken advantage of that second chance to straighten himself out or something (or who knows, maybe he eventually did). It all just goes to show how much different the lives of two people can be. We had grown up in the same town, but because of various personal circumstances and choices we had become very different people. While I was being taken to a flea market by my father he was out drinking or shooting up on a Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Bully, if by some incredible coincidence you ever happen to read this blog and recognize yourself, I'd like to make you aware of something. Do you remember waking up in a hospital after being unconscious and having your stomach pumped? Do you know how it is that you ended up at the hospital? I just wanted to let you know that my Dad took it upon himself to bring you there that day. I don't know for sure that he saved your life. Perhaps you could have just slept it off on the side of the road. Perhaps someone else would have come along and brought you to the hospital or called an ambulance (though this did happen on a dead end street which didn't get much traffic). Perhaps your female companion would have finally decided that the situation was serious and taken the initiative to do something herself. I really can't say--but I can say that my Dad did take action that day which may very well have saved your life. Dad died three months ago and I can't help but think that your life and everything you've done since that day in 1984 is in some small way a part of my father's legacy. While a lot of time has passed and I have no idea where you are today or what you are doing, I just thought you should know what happened that day so long ago while "Radio Ga Ga" was playing...

Resurrecting The Past...One Piece At A Time

As anyone who might have read Monster Dad over the past year or so probably already knows, I tend to think about the past. ...A lot. We're not talking about the distant past of dinosaurs and The Old West, but rather my own personal past of playing with dinosaur toys and playing Cowboys and Indians. For anyone reading this blog for the first time, trust me--it's true.

I have already written a lot about my past on here, and am currently contemplating a whole bunch of similarly themed entries. While there was some consideration about starting a whole new blog just for these archeological digs into my younger days as a Monster Kid, I've decided to continue posting them right here at Monster Dad. To set these posts off a bit I will call all of them "Resurrecting the Past:" from now on, with the subject of each particular excavation listed after the colon. Hopefully this will make it easy to find such entries without muddling everything else up too much. I always wanted to keep the theme of Monster Dad open so that I could write about all different kinds of random things that might pop into my head (things like Little People, exterminators, the weather, NBA basketball, hot dogs, tofu, MRE's...). This type of stuff will continue to be featured (sorry if it's not your cup of tea), but the probing looks into my past will be easy to categorize from now on.

While I haven't laid down any hard and fast rules, it seems likely that these "Resurrecting the Past" posts will generally tend to be of three types:

1. Rediscovering an old piece of my past that I had thought was long-lost (a toy, piece of forgotten ephemera from my childhood, some random memento from my past). These posts will talk about when I originally had the item in question, how and where it was found, and what The Little Monster thinks of it (if it's something appropriate to share with her).
2. Pondering something from my past that is indeed long-gone, or something I had always wanted as a kid but never had...until now (whether I recently purchased one for myself of for The Little Monster). As you can see the whole parenting aspect of Monster Dad will still be in effect.
3. Using detective work to try to put together random bits of memory from my past into a coherent narrative. Solving mysteries from my past and putting a specific date or place with a formerly vague memory.

There have already been example of these types of stories written about before. I just didn't know that there would be enough of them that it might be a good idea to give them a title they could all fall under. For examples of this kind of post see: Anorexic Toy Soldiers (where I rediscover a set of Army Men purchased through a comic book ad that I thought were thrown out decades ago), Happy New Year 1976 (where a few random memories of a New Year's Party are finally confirmed through research into TV listings from the mid-1970s), Creation Convention--25 Years Later and Creation Convention Part II: Geeks on Parade (where the discovery of an old flyer for a sci-fi/comic book convention kindles fond memories of a geeky past).

I mentioned that I considered starting a whole new blog for "Resurrecting the Past". Part of the reason that I didn't do that was because I ALREADY started another blog recently--and I don't want to spread myself too thin. There haven't been any posts to that other blog yet. Stay tuned for an announcement about it when I finally do get around to writing there (hopefully soon)...

Here's what's been dug up and/or resurrected so far:

• Flying Saucer Candy/Satellite Wafer Candy

• The Whoopee Cushion

• Drive-In Theater Speaker

• Rotary Dial Telephone

Sparklers on the Fourth of July!

TV Guide cover from July 1976

(And there's a reason I picked that year's Fourth of July cover...)

Listening to the sounds of far-off fireworks going of in the distance on a hot summer night near the Fourth of July brings back many memories of Fourths gone by. As a kid I always loved hearing those distant fireworks popping, cracking and exploding as the Fourth of July approached. These sounds came from both big-time professional fireworks in other towns and smaller backyard displays around the neighborhood. I liked playing Army when I was young and the "sound effects" made the perfect background for a pretend battle. Hearing those summer sounds today brings back those old memories and also makes me think of how the Fourth is different (and also the same) for The Little Monster compared to when I was a Monster Kid.

I don't really recall a lot of well-established Fourth of July rituals and traditions in my family. I'm sure we did have some (like our other holiday parties and get-togethers throughout the year), but it seems like they were starting to fade out by the time I came around (I was the youngest of nine children). I do recall some summer cookouts that might have very well been on or around the Fourth. I also remember at least a couple of times that fireworks were brought to our house and set off (and a vague memory of the scary time my sister was burned by one of those fireworks). And I remember going out to firework displays and bonfires in various locales. It seems like every Fourth of July from my early years was different, but the memories are all jumbled and interchangeable in my mind. All except one...

In 1976 I was six when July 4th rolled around. Needless to say, that was a BIG year for the Fourth. America was celebrating its 200th anniversary. The celebration lasted through most of 1975 and 1976, but the country's "real" 200th birthday was on July 4, 1976 of course. I have always had a snippet of a memory that I can't quite confirm is from that Fourth of July, but I'm almost positive that it was. My family was sitting by the side of the road in my hometown of Uxbridge, Massachusetts waiting for the Bicentennial parade to go by. I don't really remember much from the parade itself (or what we did before or after it for that matter) but it always seemed like that was what we were there for. The location is interesting because it wasn't on or near the town's Common--which is where I remember watching nearly every parade I ever saw in town as a kid. This was at the end of a street near where my oldest sister and uncle lived.

It seems a pretty safe bet that this little fragment of a memory is indeed from 1976--mainly because the Fourth of July celebrations in my town didn't usually include a parade. The sheer differentness of this fact is probably why I remember it. And perhaps it's also why I don't remember anything else from that year's celebration. For the most part the rest of my early Fourth of July memories are interchangeable and could be from pretty much any Fourth of July from the mid- to late-1970s. This parade memory is such a fleeting and isolated memory that I feel I need to "exercise" it to make sure it stays with me. It seems that every year at this time I recall this special parade, but now I'm kind of afraid that the only real memory I (believe) I have from the Bicentennial might fade as it's replaced with other information constantly filling my head. I liken the "exercising" of this memory to taking a stick out of a campfire and blowing on the glowing embers at the end to keep them from going out. It won't be long before the ember will grow dark and cold if you forget to blow on them. I don't want that to happen to my little Bicentennial recollection.

Now it's time to discuss what's different about today's Fourth of July celebrations. Obviously the 1970s and the 2010s differ in many ways. But for the most part, my personal memories of Fourth of July celebrations from my youth are filled with things pretty similar to the stuff The Little Monster is experiencing now: family, friends, food, fun, and fireworks. Up until this year The Little Monster was terrified of fireworks and wanted nothing to do with them or their noise. Two nights ago we took the girls to our town's Fourth of July celebration and fireworks display. The Little Monster put on a brave face all day, insisting that she did indeed want to see the fireworks, but we had our doubts. I'm happy to report that she had a great time (even though we were relatively close to the action--and the noise). She didn't cry at all, and barely even covered her ears!

So, if The Little Monster's Fourth of July experiences are so similar to my early ones, then what exactly is different? One word... SPARKLERS! I remember that every Fourth of July celebration when I was growing up included sparklers for the kids to go along with the fireworks the adults would be setting off. How I loved waving those magical things around in the air, watching the sparks fly. Those little metal wands which looked (and acted) quite a bit like welding rods were an important part of those long-ago celebrations. Apparently they have been deemed too dangerous for kids over the past couple of decades, and you don't seem to see them much anymore (at least not in Massachusetts). I can kind of understand this. After all, these "toys" were ignited with fire (matches or a lighter) and then threw off a shower of real, honest-to-goodness sparks. They were also red-hot while in full glory. I never witnessed anyone being hurt by sparklers, but I'm sure some kids did get careless with them and got burned.

Back in the 1970s getting burned by a sparkler would be considered learning a valuable lesson (I'm sure those kids that got burned were a lot more careful the next time--if they ever picked up another sparkler). These days the possibility of getting hurt--and the ensuing lawsuits--make the fun and excitement of playing with sparklers (a fun which was indeed heightened by the potential dangerousness) something that kids today probably don't get a chance to experience. Understandable to some extent, but kind of sad. I suppose that there are a lot of glow sticks and battery-operated blinking and glowing toys that parents can buy for their kids to wave around at parades and fireworks displays, but it's just not the same.

Note to self: Next year, make it a point to track down and buy a package of sparklers for the Fourth of July!

And, finally, here's a look at our town's celebration of this year's Fourth of July, including just a few moments from the parade as well as part of the fireworks show. This fireworks show was the first one for our Littlest Monster. And it also marked the first time that The Little Monster didn't cover her ears and cry herself through a fireworks display. A special moment, and a special new Fourth of July memory indeed!

UPDATE:

It turns out that I was wrong about the memory of the parade as being in 1976 for the Bicentennial. Further research into the past has revealed the truth. Read it here:

Sparklers on the Fourth: Upon Further Review...

Inside The Mind of a Monster Dad

A Penny For Your Thoughts...

Just thought I'd give you a little inside view about how my mind can sometimes work. Random things will manage to get stuck my head for no apparent reason (see Unemployed Munchkins for an example), and then they just take off on some haphazard journey through my brain. They cause me to ponder all manner of odd things. I'm sure everyone has experience with this kind of phenomenon, but figured it was worth relating my latest episode of random thought processing.

Yesterday I was going through the drive-thru of our local McDonald's. I had just taken my two year old daughter to get some blood work done. It was a routine thing (a lead test), but it was still pretty harrowing putting her through the experience. She was a trooper, but I felt so bad for her while I was holding her down as they stuck a needle in her little arm. She must have been wondering what the hell I was putting her through, and maybe wondering if I truly was a "Monster" of a dad. Anyway, after that experience I figured it was as good a time as any to indulge in a little McDonald's breakfast treat for us on the way home. So I ordered a couple items off the Dollar Menu (big spender!). My Sausage Biscuit and Sausage McMuffin came to a grand total of $2.14. I still haven't gotten used to the fact that Massachusetts has increased its sales tax from 5% to 6.25%. It used to be so easy to figure out that you had to pay five cents on every dollar. Now you have to add 6.25 cents to every dollar (a little tougher to do automatically in your head). I know it's only a few pennies, but I swear that some places take advantage of the fact that it's not a whole number and round the total up a little more than they should. Paranoid? Maybe. But I digress (again). Back to the random topic at hand...

After placing my order I heard "That will be $2.14 at the first window" from the speaker, and wondered if I might have the exact change in my wallet. Sure enough, I found a dime and a bunch of pennies in the change section amongst the other coins. I pulled out four pennies to go along with the dime and two singles. Then I had a few moments to wait because the line at the drive-thru was pretty long. I decided to check out the dates on the pennies while waiting. Big mistake! Instead of simply holding them and giving them to the cashier without incident (as most people would do) I just had to look at the dates on the pennies and ponder all kinds of things about them. Strange how four little pennies and a minute or two in a drive-thru waiting for food can give a person so much food for thought. Here's what I learned in those couple minutes...

The first penny was from 1967. It seemed strange to think that one of the coins in the small pile of change I held in my hand was older than me. Because I wasn't around in 1967 I didn't have to wonder what was going on in my life when that penny was minted. But I did try to ponder just how much that penny's little Abe Lincoln has seen over the past forty-four years. How many places had it traveled (has it been circulating in Massachusetts most of that time, or has it been through more states in its time than I have in mine?)? How many hands has it passed through?How many purchases had it been a part of (and what those purchases might have been)? Is it possible that I, or someone I know, have had this very same penny at some time in the past? How many people who have spent this penny have since died? How many pennies end up in a penny jar and never get the chance to do all the traveling that (I assume) this one has in its time? Could this very penny have spent a couple decades forgotten in a piggy bank before returning to the world of retail? It certainly seemed pretty well-worn, so I can only imagine it's seen quite a bit in its time.

The second penny was from 1980. This was right in the middle of my Monster Kid salad days. I kind of tend to relate the golden age of the show Creature Double Feature with my own high point of childhood. The show started it's familiar two-movies-on-a-Saturday-afternoon format in September of 1975 and ran straight through the early 1980s. They started messing with the format around 1983 (going from double-features to single ones and then back again, dropping the show altogether for short periods, changing the starting time...), and it finally petered out in 1985. In 1980 I would have been ten or eleven years old. There's no doubt that I was watching and being terrified by some of my favorite old horror and sci-fi movies at that age (many for the first time). In three years I'd enter high school and my priorities would start to change. But in 1980, I was deeply entrenched in my Monster Kid heyday. I wondered what the chances were that I may have owned this very penny around that time. Could this penny have been change for me in the early 80s when I bought a package of Twinkies at the little mom-and-pop convenience store down the hill from my house? Could I have dropped it in a gumball machine or used it to pay for a piece of penny candy (when there was still such a thing as penny candy)? Could it have helped pay for a string of bowling on one of the trips to the bowling alley my nephew and I would enjoy on Saturdays? (This was back in the days when kids could be dropped off at a bowling alley and left unaccompanied for a couple hours without fear of horrible things happening.) That penny has been making the rounds since those more "innocent" days and is still out there in this modern age of hyper-fear that prevents kids from having the "unstructured playtime" that made my childhood so magical. Were will that penny be in another 20 years, and what will that world look like?

The final two pennies were from 1992 and 1993 respectively. Suddenly we are in the distant future (as far as the 1967 and 1980 pennies would be concerned). I was an adult at that time. Not only had I graduated from high school five or six years earlier, I had even entered and left the Army and been back home for a couple years. The early nineties were a time of transition for me as I tried to figure out my place in the world and how I fit into it. While there weren't any pennies from the 2000s in my McDonald's pile to bring us up to date, I'd say that I'm still in a similar place now as I was in 1992-93. I'm getting older and older (am now married, own a house, have two beautiful and challenging daughters) but in many ways I still feel like that little Monster Kid who'd drop everything to sit in front of the TV on a Saturday afternoon to watch a couple old black-and-white monster movies on Creature Double Feature.

That's a lot of pondering over four measly pennies that just happened to be sitting my wallet yesterday morning. Suddenly it was 2011 again and my turn to drive up to the window and pay for my order. I made another check in my wallet and found four more pennies (which I made a point of NOT checking the dates of). I used them to pay for my breakfast and held onto the original four just long enough to write this blog before releasing them back into circulation for more monetary adventures in the great big world...

For more on my shaky relationship with the concept of Time, see Monster Dad vs. Time.

Movies, Memories and My Dad

My father passed away recently after a long battle with cancer. Naturally I've been thinking about him a lot since he died. I've always regretted that we didn't spend more time together and that we weren't as close as we could have been, but at the same time I feel very lucky to have had him in my life for my first forty-one years.

Movies are (and have always been) an important thing in my life. While I have many, many great memories of watching all kinds of movies throughout my life, my parents haven't been a part of very many of those memories. I wrote about some of the films my sister took me to as a kid in Movies My Sister Made Me Watch, but in general I didn't really see a lot of movies with my parents. I'd like to share the movie-related memories that I DO have which involved my Dad. I'll split these recollections up into three parts: stories Dad told me, moviegoing experiences with my parents, and making up for lost time later in life.

Dad's Movie Stories

I'll only tell two of these stories here: one that I remember hearing many times since I was a Monster Kid, and one that I only heard a couple weeks before Dad died.

When I was a teenager (I believe) Dad must have realized how much I enjoyed going out to the movies with my friends and that movies had a certain importance for me. I remember him telling me this story on a number of occasions, and I always enjoyed it. Basically he just told me about how he would go to the movies as a kid during the Great Depression--when getting a little entertainment on the big screen could be a nice diversion from the realities of life. He always told me about the fact that it only cost a five cents to get in. Of course, a nickel went a lot further back then, but it was still a lot cheaper than the ten dollar-plus price of movie tickets today. It turns out that that nickel provided my Dad with a whole afternoon of entertainment--not just the movie he went to see. Before the feature at these kiddie-matinees there would be a number of cartoons. The cartoons were followed by some newsreels about current events in the world. Then there would be the latest installment of whatever serial was being run at the time. Finally, the movie would run. I always thought it sounded like a great way to spend a day in a darkened theater with a bunch of other kids all around you.

While I heard this story many times over the years, Dad told me another one for the first time just a couple weeks before he died. My Mother knows how much I love the movie "Psycho" (1960) and told me a few times about how scary it was to see it when it was new. Dad just recently told me the story of how they went to see "Psycho" at the drive-in. I guess they couldn't get a babysitter and had to bring my sister along with them. They thought she was soundly asleep in the back of the car. At least they thought so right up until the famous shower scene--when my sister poked her head between them to see what was going on and scared the crap out of them both!

Going To The Movies With Mom And Dad

I mentioned that I didn't actually go out to the movies a lot with my parents. This isn't to say that we NEVER went out to see movies together. Maybe it is because of the fact that it didn't happen all that often, but I have very fond memories of the times that they did take me to the movies.

I remember them taking me to see Disney's "The Gnome-Mobile". This somewhat obscure movie was released in 1967 (two years before I was born). After doing a little research I found out that it was apparently re-released in 1976. That would make sense, as I would have been either six or seven when we saw it--a perfect age for that movie. I remember having a great time watching it with Mom and Dad. Last year I was finally able to see the movie again (for the first time since seeing it with my parents as a kid) when I got it from Netflix and watched it with my Little Monster. It was a pretty emotional experience for me--remembering watching it with my parents, now introducing it to my own daughter, and thinking about the fact that my father was currently in the midst of his battle with cancer.

Another "kid's" movie I recall watching with my parents was "The Muppet Movie" (1979). I'm pretty sure we saw this on a Sunday afternoon, as I'm almost positive that we went to see it after visiting a flea market--where I bought a cool plastic toy version of an M-16 rifle! This is a movie I remember enjoying when we saw it, but one which I haven't seen in a long time. I suppose that I should take it out and introduce the Little Monster to this one too.

I also remember that we went on a couple of important (to me) shopping trips when I was young (to buy my first bike and to buy my first tape recorder). These shopping trips generally also included dinner and a movie. I remember going to IHOP (International House of Pancakes) the night we went to Child World to buy my first bike. I don't recall exactly what the movie was that we saw that night, but it might have been one of the Clint Eastwood orangutan movies "Every Which Way But Loose" (1978) or "Any which Way You Can" (1980). I can't recall which it was, but now that I look at the release dates, it was most likely the first one as 1978 was more likely when I would have gotten my first bike than 1980.

I have clearer memories of the night I got my first tape recorder. That tape recorder was a very important thing to me in the days before we got our first VCR in 1985. My parents took me out to K-Mart to get the tape recorder in March of 1981, and we also saw the Lily Tomlin movie "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981). this is one that's hard to find these days. I think I saw it on TV way back in the 1980s, but otherwise haven't seen it in many years. It'll always be a part of a special night for me though.

I also went to the drive-in quite a bit as a kid. Back in the 1970s the drive-ins were on the wane, but there were still a lot of them around. Even my little home town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts had a drive-in of its own--The Quaker Drive-In. In addition, there were a number of other drive-ins within a half-hour drive of home. While I tend to remember going to the drive-ins with my older sisters (and later with my friends when we start driving ourselves), I do remember an important drive-in experience with my parents. Though I don't recall what movie it was paired with, in the summer of 1978 my parents took me to see "Star Wars" at the Quaker Drive-In. Of course "Star Wars" was released in 1977. for years I always assumed that my memory of seeing it at the drive-in was from the summer of 1977. For my 40th birthday we had a backyard drive-in party where we showed "Star Wars". I went to the library to try to find the drive-in ad from when saw it at the drive-in. I searched through every week the drive-in was open in 1977 and couldn't find "Star Wars" anywhere. I KNEW that I had seen it at the drive-in though. Then I tried 1978 and found ads for it playing the drive-ins that year. Dad had a big, yellow U.S. Postal Service van (not one of those little ones you see driving around these days, but a huge one that was more like the size of a UPS truck. He had turned the cargo area of the van into a camper--complete with a fold-down bed, a table, a sink and a toilet. I remember lying down in the back of the van, watching the movie up on the screen and playing with some of my "Star Wars" action figures.

My last memory of seeing a movie with my parents as a "kid" was when they took me and one of my best friends to see "Star Wars" again in 1987, when it was re-released for its tenth anniversary (and while I was a senior in high school). At the time, my friends and I were already going to the movies on our own, but it was a nice day spent with my parents that didn't feel as awkward as one might expect for a couple teenagers.

The Final Chapter

In the past couple of years I was lucky enough to have had an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with the idea of going to the movies with my parents. National Amusements movie theaters have a series of bargain-priced shows called "Silver Screen Classics".

They show an old movie (usually a Public Domain title, so they don't have to pay for it) on the big screen. It's only a DVD projection, but it's still a great program. For only two dollars you get to see the movie and you also get a small bag of popcorn, a small drink and a cookie! This series is mainly geared towards retirees, seniors and elderly people--as evidenced by the Monday at 1:00PM time slot of the movies, as well as the fact that most of the movies are from the 1930s to the 1950s. My parents started attending these shows a few years ago, and because of some luck in my schedule, I was able to join them a number of times. After my Dad was diagnosed with cancer they weren't able to get to the Silver Screen movies as often, but I made a point of trying to get to as many of the ones they did go to as I could. It all made for a great time and a good chance for me to spend more quality time with my parents than I had in a long time. It was also fun to see a bunch of classic (or not-so-classic) old movies of all types (war, musicals, comedies, film noir...) on the big screen for the first time (at least the first time for me--my parents remembered seeing many of them when they were first released). I was even able to hear my Dad's story about going to the movies for a nickel when he was a kid again! The last time we all went to the series was at the end of last October (a Halloween show that featured "Bride of the Gorilla" (1951)). Dad was hospitalized soon after, and while he managed to live for another six quality months, he was never quite up to going back to the movies. Last Monday I finally got back to the Silver Screen Classics show to see "Father's Little Dividend" (1951) with my mother. It was tough going without my father, but it was nice to go back there to remember him. I'm hoping we'll get to a lot more in the future.

Mom and Dad at the Blackstone Valley 14 cinema for the "Silver Screen Classics" show