it was good!
What, me worry? I was there, if you weren't yet alive in the best years of being an American, you missed it, that's your loss and I feel for you. It was the years after World War Two. We had It Pays To Be Ignorant on the radio every week ("It pays to be ignorant, to be dumb, to be dense, to be ignorant. It pays to be ignorant just like me."). We had Pogo the Possum with Albert the Alligator, and Maggie & Jiggs, and Our Boarding House with Major Hoople, and MAD magazine, and Dick Tracy, and Buzz Sawyer and his pal Roscoe Sweeney and Sweeney's sister Lucille, who played football, and The Squatleys with their filthiness (Mrs Squatley complaining, "Don't nobody never come clean up fo' us").
We had Captain Easy. We had Archie with Betty and Veronica. We had Li'l Abner with Sadie Hawkins Day and Lena the Hyena, and the wealthy giant crow who rode in the back seat of a long, chauffeur-driven touring car with the top down and his arm around a couple of blond babes - - what the H a giant crow would want with human girls was part of the fun of it - - and Out Our Way.
We had afternoon radio serials for the kids, and Tom Mix ("Shredded Ralston for your breakfast starts the day off shining bright, gives you lots of cowboy energy with a flavor that's just right. It's delicious and nutritious, bite size and ready to eat. Take a tip from Tom, go and tell your mom Shredded Ralston can't be beat"), and The Three Stooges on at the Ritz Theatre. Robert had a box full of comic books on his front porch, and if you were careful you could often quietly and sneakily read comic books with the front covers torn off in the dumpster behind Cooper's garage down the dirt road from Cove School on 2nd Court (they owned Cooper's News Stand, which was downtown on Harrison just south of Marie's Hotel).
About next door to Cooper's News Stand was Sorrentino's, I think Mr Sorrentino's name was Tony, when I didn't get my hair cut at the barber shop here in St Andrews, my barber shop was Sorrentino's about next door to Cooper's News Stand - - I remember the day I was sitting in the barber chair when someone stopped out front in a brand new, black 1948 Cadillac Sixty Special and everybody was shouting "Wow" at him. I think he must have been a salesman at Lloyd Pontiac Cadillac. Somebody asked him how much the car was and he said, "Five thousand fifty dollars!" holy jumping smoke).
Television came along, it was the late forties or early fifties, a brown wooden box with a little funny-shaped screen showing a black and white picture that you only got clear if you dangled the tin-foil right on the rabbit ears (in later years your family might show off with a TV antenna strapped to your house's chimney, and WOW! when it came out that you could get an inside adjuster for the outside antenna). But WTH, we had one or two TV channels to switch back and forth between. I remember when we got WJDM, our TV station here in Panama City. Red Skelton, Jack Benny with Rochester and the 1912 Maxwell.
Before that we just had WDLP, our local radio station, I think the foundations for their tower may still be there behind their building on W. Beach Drive in one of those two little houses that now host something else, IDK what. If you wanted to listen to something different, you could fiddle with the dial ("Don't touch that dial, listen to BLOOOONNNNDDDIIIIEEEE") and find WWL, your fifty thousand watt clear channel station in New Orleans, Loyola University of the South, with studios in the Roosevelt Hotel.
An exciting Time was every fall when searchlights started playing in the evening sky announcing arrival of the new model cars. I remember them all, especially the 1949 Chevrolet, and Pop my grandfather taking me to see the new 1949 Ford on display in Cook Ford's showroom on Harrison Avenue.
It was good, if you missed it, I'm sad, sorry for you.
This morning I wasn't worried about my doctor's appointment either, I mean, WTH, I'm ninety years old, less then a month from turning ninety-one, and it's been good. But so was the doctor's visit good. All the catscan shows was some calcification in my skull, the lab work was all clear, and the sonogram showed "less than fifty percent blockage" in whatever vein or artery they scanned me for. So I'm clear and good to go for another year, with my next appointment in August 2027.
We celebrated with breakfast at Golden Corral, then I came home and for late morning treat had a magic mug of club coffee with a huge slice of the coconut cake that friend's brought over for Linda's birthday - - the huge slice that we'd frozen and I was saving for this very What Me Worry? moment.
The coconut cake is so good that we may go to Touch of Velvet Bakery in Lynn Haven and order one for my birthday.
Weight control to go along with all this? Between my electronic scale in my bathroom, and my bottle of furosemide, I can control my weight to the pound so that the doctor never suggests I start coming in more than once a year, nomesane? Otherwise, with my CHF, the fluid-retention weight gain and lasix loss may fluctuate ten pounds in a week.
Anyway, I'm healthy enough that the doctor agreed I'd not come back until my appointment this Time next year.
Time to prep for a special evening.
RSF&PTL
T90