Jello Molds, TV Consoles,

Yo-Yo’s, St. Louis Hop, etc.

By Tom Anselm

Last time we met, I was on a riff about what kids did in the dog days of summer. Interestingly enough, I can’t seem to quit thinking about all things ‘Boomer’.

So here goes.

I am sure people are getting sick of hearing how we are the generation that took America by storm, had to change the TV channels by hand, lived many years without air conditioning, used a rotary dial phone with a cord attaching it to the wall… you know, all the stuff that we remember fondly but our kids are getting tired of hearing.

So I wanted to come up with some things that are no less ‘Boomer-ish’, but seldom reiterated in polite conversation.

One of those crazy things that graced many a table in that time was the Jello mold. Jello was very Boomer in and of itself, but then someone came up with the bright idea to put it in a mold and add fruit cocktail to it… the canned Del Monte type. I loved it, but I doubt if I could get any of my grandkids to even taste it.

My parents had a television that was in a brown wooden console. We laughed as the repairman had to come to the house, bend over and pull the dang screen out of the box, sometimes having his pants slip too low in the back, and he wasn’t even a plumber. Then he’d take the whole insides to his shop, and we’d pretend we were doing the news or play-by-play from inside the now-empty console. Good times, right there.

And when the TV came back, up went the antennae with the foil on the ends. For greater reception, of course.   At night, when the stations went off the air, all you could get was the picture of the Indian Chief, with concentric circles around him, and weird numbers and lines… always creeped me out.

My brother was a yo-yo aficionado. We would go to the Ben Franklin department store and watch the Saturday morning demonstrations by some guy, usually named Mr. Lee. He was selling Duncan yo-yo’s. Rick was so good at ‘walking the dog,’ ‘round the world’ and ‘the sleeper’ tricks that he won a brand-new Duncan , shiny red with gold flecks. (Why do I remember such as this when I can’t ever seem to find my glasses?)

We watched Saturdays as Russ Carter brought us St. Louis Hop, that crazy dance show originating from the original KSD studios. And Sunday mornings at 10 o’clock we’d be glued to Channel 9’s broadcast of ‘Soccer Made in Germany’ with Toby Charles narrating highlights of the Budesliga, the German professional league. Almost missed Mass a couple of times.

Randomly coming to mind are clip-on roller skates, fixing broken baseball bats with some sort of nylon mesh and epoxy, trading baseball cards with your friends, then touching something black and saying, ‘touch black, no trade-backs.’

Okay, so that’s it for awhile. I promise to get back to the present. Although I’m not sure that life without having to have upwards of 58 passwords for the Internet (yep, just counted them) can in any way compare to those simple ‘good old days.’

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