Random:

The above reminds me of a girl I knew back in the day. She was so unusually skinny that her mother couldn't find clothes that fit her in the store, so her mother used to knit her pants. And she used to come to school with her lunch in a zip-lock bag: two oreos and a nickel (milk was a nickel back in the day). To save her the embarrassment, I won't tell you her name ... although if I was the mean-spirited type, I'd tell you her name was Kathy.

One of my all-time faves:

Hand-held poker games:

Back in the day we had a couple of hand-held poker games, similar to the above. A couple of my friends' parents had them. They were quite popular. The above looks almost identical to the one we had. I got the above pic from an ebay listing, where I get quite a few pics for this site. The above is dated '71.

Back in the day I loved Fractured Fairy Tales:

I remember an episode of "Alice"....

... when Mel decided to institue a new policy in the diner. He gave all the waitresses smiley-faced pins, and if they didn't smile when waiting on a customer the meal was free if the customer called out "You didn't smile!". The plan was a disaster and at the end of the show Vera was waiting on a customer and Mel started chewing her out. She started to cry and so she ripped the pin off her lapel and slapped it into Mel's hand and basically told him what he could do with his new policy. The pin stuck Mel and he yelled in pain. The customer looked up and said "You didn't smile!".

So the '70s wasn't exactly the decade of political correctness..

Misc. Remembrance:

It was sometime around '72, and we were at my grandparents' house in Chatham. Mom was getting the upstairs guest room ready for the night, and while she was making the bed I was at the top of the stairs, and I was balancing myself on the top landing with my heels hanging over the edge and I wanted to see how far I could lean backwards without falling. I finally leaned back too far and I fell backwards down the stairs. I couldn't stop myself and I rolled like a tumbleweed all the way to the bottom. I was sore for 2 days. Haha.

Stuff I didn't have:

I had tons of stuff as a kid. There was very little that I asked for that I didn't get. My folks were very generous with me, but you can't have it all. One of those things was Stretch Armstrong. He was a rubbery figure that stretched to great lengths then shrunk back to normal size once you let go. Back when I was into eBay, I thought of purchasing one, but decided to pass. Quite frankly, if someone walked in the room and caught me playing with Stretch at 40 years old, I'd probably have alot of explaining to do..