Do You Remember Your Bicycle went straight back to the sixties when your bicycle was your ride and not some poofy imported status symbol which may be fast but is hella uncomfortable to ride.
That triggered the memory of the Schwinn Stingray and at least one person was so lit up by the original article she just had to find one. She did.
There packs of cigarettes for a quarter and that was the same price for a gallon of gasoline. Jobs were all over the place, so much so Mexican migrant workers weren't hated but rather in high demand, at least up and and down the West coast and likely Southwest states as well.
This was a time of Zero candy bars and you can still find them, they're still just as good.
"American Graffiti" took place in these years and these were the ones with the high school sock hops in which, at least on the surface, there was an innocence which hasn't existed since.
The sock hops were times of 'grinder dances' like "Surfer Girl" which may have been the ultimate in the worst of the surf rock since it was such smarmy drivel but it was a grinder and all that means to sock hops boys is the dance was easy and it allowed the opportunity to be sweaty close. Coincidentally, these were also the same reasons many sock hop girls hated them. There was always a couple or two who were already sweaty close, ahead of their years and they gave a never-ending spectacle of grinder love, so much so that dance chaperones would come around like World-Wide Wrestling to separate the grinder and the grindee.
(Ed: chaperones?)
I'm definitely not kidding. Some teachers were cool and didn't care that much but there were others with rulers and don't look for joy from those unloved old spinsters (larfs).
Later, the young lads with their hotrods had plaques in the rear window to identify the car club to which they belonged. Such clubs were reputed to have initiations and all the Elks Club mumbo jumbo you could possibly want ... but they were cool. Usually these were the ones the others called greasers. They weren't all like Fonzi, tho, as it was de rigueur to have a switchblade from Mexico. This was before the even more savage butterfly knives but they were highly-impressive for making a blade appear out of nowhere. There wasn't anywhere near so much gun fighting but people definitely got stabbed sometimes.
Note: that never happened in a school or you would be in a reform school faster than you could pocket the blade.
This was also heaving into the time when ganja started appearing commonly and it first appeared in matchboxes. That became a code of 'do you want a matchbox' which makes no sense to anyone else but the cognoscenti knew.
That was also the time of Detroit's greatest glory with big iron which was unlike any from anywhere else and it was fast, fast, fast. Those demented Detroit geniuses came up with the progressive carburetor and that's, you know, the gadget which permits the airflow into the motor.
(Ed: they use injectors now, Grandpa!)
Yah, of course they do but injectors can't do this. With a progressive four-barrel carburetor the motor normally runs on two of them as that's all the air/fuel mix it needs. However, when you floored the accelerator (i.e. kick it down, Daddy), the other two barrels opened and that big iron motor would roar with all the flaming drama you would ever want.
My ol' Mother was just as reckless at times as my ol' Dad and we would egg her on, kick it down, Mummy. Kick it down! I don't know if it thrilled her or scared her or both but she would come down laughing from it.
The cars probably weren't even getting five mpg while they did it but no-one cared because you could get more for a quarter a gallon.
Then JFK got shot and I do remember what I was doing since I was walking across the street at the junior high school in Davis and the word came, the President has been shot and was probably dead.
People were weeping all over the place but I didn't really know what to make as how do I know how often they cap Presidents. It must not be too often when they get weepy like this. What else should I know as we had only been in the country for a year and this made not even a tiny bit of sense. Someone shot him? What the hell is this with shooting people? Who the fuck does stuff like that? Apparently they still don't really know but that's not much interesting in our nostalgia.
Going beyond that into what came is not my purpose but it's fair to say that's when the bubble burst for "American Graffiti" and the time of innocence was over. Prior to that time it wasn't and that time was grand.
That triggered the memory of the Schwinn Stingray and at least one person was so lit up by the original article she just had to find one. She did.
There packs of cigarettes for a quarter and that was the same price for a gallon of gasoline. Jobs were all over the place, so much so Mexican migrant workers weren't hated but rather in high demand, at least up and and down the West coast and likely Southwest states as well.
This was a time of Zero candy bars and you can still find them, they're still just as good.
"American Graffiti" took place in these years and these were the ones with the high school sock hops in which, at least on the surface, there was an innocence which hasn't existed since.
The sock hops were times of 'grinder dances' like "Surfer Girl" which may have been the ultimate in the worst of the surf rock since it was such smarmy drivel but it was a grinder and all that means to sock hops boys is the dance was easy and it allowed the opportunity to be sweaty close. Coincidentally, these were also the same reasons many sock hop girls hated them. There was always a couple or two who were already sweaty close, ahead of their years and they gave a never-ending spectacle of grinder love, so much so that dance chaperones would come around like World-Wide Wrestling to separate the grinder and the grindee.
(Ed: chaperones?)
I'm definitely not kidding. Some teachers were cool and didn't care that much but there were others with rulers and don't look for joy from those unloved old spinsters (larfs).
Later, the young lads with their hotrods had plaques in the rear window to identify the car club to which they belonged. Such clubs were reputed to have initiations and all the Elks Club mumbo jumbo you could possibly want ... but they were cool. Usually these were the ones the others called greasers. They weren't all like Fonzi, tho, as it was de rigueur to have a switchblade from Mexico. This was before the even more savage butterfly knives but they were highly-impressive for making a blade appear out of nowhere. There wasn't anywhere near so much gun fighting but people definitely got stabbed sometimes.
Note: that never happened in a school or you would be in a reform school faster than you could pocket the blade.
This was also heaving into the time when ganja started appearing commonly and it first appeared in matchboxes. That became a code of 'do you want a matchbox' which makes no sense to anyone else but the cognoscenti knew.
That was also the time of Detroit's greatest glory with big iron which was unlike any from anywhere else and it was fast, fast, fast. Those demented Detroit geniuses came up with the progressive carburetor and that's, you know, the gadget which permits the airflow into the motor.
(Ed: they use injectors now, Grandpa!)
Yah, of course they do but injectors can't do this. With a progressive four-barrel carburetor the motor normally runs on two of them as that's all the air/fuel mix it needs. However, when you floored the accelerator (i.e. kick it down, Daddy), the other two barrels opened and that big iron motor would roar with all the flaming drama you would ever want.
My ol' Mother was just as reckless at times as my ol' Dad and we would egg her on, kick it down, Mummy. Kick it down! I don't know if it thrilled her or scared her or both but she would come down laughing from it.
The cars probably weren't even getting five mpg while they did it but no-one cared because you could get more for a quarter a gallon.
Then JFK got shot and I do remember what I was doing since I was walking across the street at the junior high school in Davis and the word came, the President has been shot and was probably dead.
People were weeping all over the place but I didn't really know what to make as how do I know how often they cap Presidents. It must not be too often when they get weepy like this. What else should I know as we had only been in the country for a year and this made not even a tiny bit of sense. Someone shot him? What the hell is this with shooting people? Who the fuck does stuff like that? Apparently they still don't really know but that's not much interesting in our nostalgia.
Going beyond that into what came is not my purpose but it's fair to say that's when the bubble burst for "American Graffiti" and the time of innocence was over. Prior to that time it wasn't and that time was grand.
No comments:
Post a Comment