70s-child: Misc. Remembrance:

Monday, June 25, 2012

Misc. Remembrance:

In the early '70s, when my grandmother used to take me to the beach, she'd give me some change and have me go to the concession stand and get us each a frozen Milky Way bar. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to eat a frozen Milky Way bar? It was like trying to gnaw my way through a block of wood. It took me 15 minutes to not even get through half of it, and by then I'd give up and bury the other half in the sand while she wasn't looking.

Don't expect much out of me for a quarter:

As a kid, I never got an allowance. That's something my folks weren't into. They were very generous with me, I never lacked anything, and usually when I asked for something they'd get it for me, but an allowance just wasn't going to happen. In '76, just before my folks split up, dad decided to give me a "job". It was sometime in January and the weather was pretty brutal, so he told me he'd pay me a quarter if I'd open the garage door for him when he got home so he wouldn't have to get out of the car and open it himself. We lived in a split level house (a raised-ranch), and the garage was in the lower level. The very first night, I was watching TV and I heard him pull in and stop at the garage door. I didn't want to leave my show, and it was pretty cold down there in the garage, and I was rather warm and cozy and comfortable sitting in front of the tv, so I basically ignored him. He honked. He honked again. And again. And again. Finally I heard him open the car door, open the garage himself, pull into the garage and slam the door shut. The way he slammed the door, I could tell he was angry and that I was in trouble. He came upstairs and just looked at me. Let's just say I lost my job that night, which didn't really bother me. A QUARTER??? I didn't get out of BED for that kind of money...