#49725 - 09/01/05 01:16 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
Paul I
Member
Registered: 02/24/00
Posts: 7913
|
Rosebud, that is too weird. I vaguely recall that back when everyone watched Candid Camera. It would freak me out if it was coming directly at me and split in half. Too bad you can't get it up here.
Paul I
_________________________
"...only the shadow knows"
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49726 - 09/01/05 10:51 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
rosebud
Member
Registered: 07/20/05
Posts: 1149
Loc: NY
|
Well P1, I enlarged the article, but it's still unreadable on the screen. I give up! Anyway, here's the jist of it:The car was a 1957 Renault 4cv, a mechanic by the name of Ron Jerauld heard that the "Candid Camera Show" was looking for people to build props for sight gags. He sent a letter to Alan Funt (the show's host). The show called him a year later with the task of building a "split" car. He got a hold of the Renault then sawed it in two fitting each half with a motor, a third wheel for stability and its own steering gear, so that a passenger could drive his half when the car split. (The secret was the timely release of a series of hydraulic locks. The segment was filmed in Binghamton,NY in 1965.
Remember the scene where the policeman was directing traffic and the Renault was coming right at him then split and went around him in two pieces? lol That was funny TV! The car was on other segments, too.
He also built a radio controlled lobster and a telephone that jumped off the hook as it rang for the show.
Funny you mentioned the old VW, I've got a picture of my brother standing by his old VW. I remember when he first got it, he sat on a wood crate until he found a replacement seat for it! lol After he fixed it up, he took me for a ride (can't believe I could actually get in and out of it, but I did). It was a terrible ride very noisy and extremely bumpy.(that was around 1970)
Goodnite
-Barb
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49728 - 09/01/05 11:36 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
Roadrunner
Member
Registered: 07/08/03
Posts: 2516
|
Well I was going to post this in Arts and E, but decided this is a better link. Went to see Tanya Tucker tonight and she still has a great voice. Looks darn good to albeit she's put on a little weight (but then who hasn't)? I was more than surprised to see her come out in faux leather pants with a cute sparkling balero jacket top. My opinion of her went way up with that. Good for her for not buying into this 'skin and bones' look. She did a fair number of her hits, "Delta Dawn" for one, and made me a very happy camper when she did "Love Me Like You Used To", my all-time fav by her.
_________________________
Beep Beep 
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49729 - 09/02/05 09:44 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
rosebud
Member
Registered: 07/20/05
Posts: 1149
Loc: NY
|
I got to see Tanya several years ago at a county fair near here, just after her Glenn Cambell relationship. She sang great and put on some show. The people that went with me were very glad they did after we were all shuffled to the front of the grandstand from the middle of the crowd by the organizers who made sure all wheelchair occupants and families got front row seats. (Sometimes our situation can be advantageous, huh?) lol That was a hot summer nite and I can almost smell the cotton candy in the air now just thinking about it.  Yep, Tanya likes her leather. She had a leather skirt (about 6 inches long) and matching vest zipped up front with nothing under it and cowboy boots and hat. The audience went wild when she came out! A good time was had by all that nite.
Goodnite.
-Barb
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49731 - 09/03/05 01:02 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
Roadrunner
Member
Registered: 07/08/03
Posts: 2516
|
Originally posted by cbal-craig: Originally posted by Roadrunner:  
_________________________
Beep Beep
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49732 - 09/03/05 07:33 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
rosebud
Member
Registered: 07/20/05
Posts: 1149
Loc: NY
|
That's so cute, Craig.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49733 - 09/04/05 11:44 AM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
Paul I
Member
Registered: 02/24/00
Posts: 7913
|
I thought this might fit in a little.
Editorials/Op-Ed Home Editorials Columnists Contributors Letters New York/Region Opinions
Summerscapes
The Boys of Summer
*
E-Mail This
* Printer-Friendly
By ANN HOOD
Published: September 4, 2005
Providence, R.I.
IN 1970, the summer I was 13, aliens arrived on my street. They came in VW Bugs of every color - yellow, white, blue, lime-green. They came unshaven, with long hair and torn jeans. They were against the war. They listened to FM radio. They were mysterious, full of secrets and private jokes. They smelled strange, like sweat and smoke and clothes that needed washing.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Stan Fellows
Summerscapes
An occasional series on the rites of summer.
Readers
Forum: Op-Ed Contributors
The year before, my brother, Skip, had gone off to college in raspberry Bermuda shorts with a pale pink polo shirt. He returned home in June changed. His hair was wild, a mane of tawny waves. Rather than wear his glasses, he began to squint at the world, chin tilted, eyes narrowed. He cut his blue jeans in half and frayed the hems. He brought with him all of these boys from far-flung places like New Jersey and Long Island and their VW Bugs.
My brother slept until noon, then unloaded boxes at a department store until evening. By dusk, the boys began to arrive, waiting for him in our yard. I watched from the window on the second-floor landing. I always heard them first, the distinctive whir of their engines, like small wind-up toys. I would rake a comb through my waist-length hair, sniff under my arms, then run downstairs and pretend to read.
The first car door would slam, the sounds of sandals on our front walk followed, then one boy or another would press his face against the screen door of our tiny kitchen and say, "Hey! Skip home yet?" Soon, there would be half a dozen. I had just bought my first bra, just started to shave my legs. All of these boys, so close and pungent, made me tingle.
Sometimes, bored, one of them would take me for a Del's, a Rhode Island concoction of frozen lemonade, sold at tiny take-out places where older teenagers went. I would pretend the boy who brought me there was my boyfriend, leaning across the small space between the seats until we almost touched, until we looked like couples I envied on the road, who sat so close they seemed to be one body with two heads.
Sometimes, out of pity, they took me to the beach, my brother protesting the entire way. They went to distant beaches with exotic names like Moonstone and Ninigret, where the surf was rough and wild. I bodysurfed until I was bruised. I let the sun burn my skin beside a scratchy Navy-issue blanket covered with boys who had hair on their chests, fat blue veins on their hands, and beers in their backpacks.
I secretly loved one of them, of course. He had thin pale hair, small blue eyes, and an air of tragedy: his father had died the year before. Once, he came early, before the others. "Want to go to the park?" he asked finally. "Throw some Frisbee?" I nodded, grateful that my father was not yet home; he would never let me go off with a college boy, in a car, alone. Grateful too, for last summer, when my brother, bored and recently dumped by his high school girlfriend, had taught me how to toss a Frisbee, how to catch it in one hand.
In the car, the boy told me about college and his job at a lab. When the Carpenters' "Close to You" came on the radio, he groaned and changed the station before I could blurt that this was one of my favorite songs. At the park, he bought me a Del's from a truck, held aloft on his Frisbee. I pretended he liked me, that his girlfriend, a doe-eyed girl named Cathy who wore shells on her ankles and scooped ice cream all summer, who drove her own baby blue Bug, had vanished somehow.
Of course I got in trouble when I got home. My brother threatened to beat up the boy, who, it turned out, thought I was a senior in high school. "You went in a car with a college boy? Without our permission?" my father raged, his blue eyes bulging.
My father spent a lot of that summer angry. As much as I welcomed these aliens into my boring life, he hated them. He didn't trust the way their eyes looked, downcast and swollen. He didn't like their politics. He didn't like the way they invaded our home every night, taking up our space, drinking our beer and eating my grandmother's meatball subs.
But most of all, he didn't like that my brother was one of them. He was no longer the dreamy boy working out chess problems at the kitchen table, or talking about physics over dinner, or playing our favorite family card game, Pitch, long into the night. Somehow, he was on the other side, having left our familiar world behind.
How jealous I was of his ability to do that. All summer I listened to the boys and their ideas. By August I too believed the Vietnam War was wrong, Robert McNamara was a liar, Nixon an evil president. I saved money for gypsy skirts, wire-rimmed glasses, and boxes of Rit dye to tie-dye everything white that I owned. I read books by Hermann Hesse and Jerzy Kosinski and Jack Kerouac.
My whole life, something had buzzed in the back of my head, a yearning that I could not put into words. But now it was taking shape at last. It was telling me that I too was an alien, someone who did not belong in this white house in this small town in the middle of nowhere.
One night, one of the boys came in wearing a jeans jacket with an American flag sewn on the back. This was the boy with the blue Bug, the boy from New Jersey who had a twin brother. There were so many boys in the kitchen that he was forced to stand, pushed against the wall. My father walked in, his face a map of bewilderment. Were they multiplying, these boys and their cars? He'd had to park way up the street, he complained. Several boys went and re-arranged their Bugs, lifting them up like pieces in a game.
My father rubbed his eyes. He frowned. The summer was nearly over. Already, the humidity was gone and nights, like this one, had grown cool. Soon, the boys would be gone, back to college, and we - I - would be left alone.
"What is that on your jacket?" my father said, pointing to the boy from New Jersey.
The boy giggled. Said, "What?" Fingered the worn denim.
"Is that an American flag?" my father demanded.
Before the boy could answer, my father was in his face, pointing, shouting about our country, about respect.
"Get out of my house!" my father yelled. "Get out!" The boy did. His twin brother followed. Slowly, they all did. In the summer night, I heard those tinny engines start. I watched from the window as one by one the Bugs drove away, their lights growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared. We were left in the quiet, empty kitchen, my parents and I. Only then did I realize that my brother had gone with them, leaving us behind.
By the time I started college, there were no more Bugs or long-haired boys. The war ended. The country mellowed. No longer aliens, those boys all married, bought houses in suburban subdivisions, drove Volvo station wagons.
My own brother, the tallest and handsomest and smartest of them all, died in an accident the summer he turned 30. Maybe that is why, every summer, I find myself remembering that one long ago when my world finally, blissfully, cracked open. Or maybe I would think of it every summer anyway, at the taste of a frozen lemonade, or the sight of two boys playing Frisbee, or in the long hot nights when even now sometimes the air crackles with possibility.
This summer, I caught sight of a bright orange VW Bug. Not like the ones of my childhood, with the engines in the back and the faulty heating systems. But a shiny new one. When I looked at it, I could almost see my 13-year-old self inside, waist-long hair, open heart, a belief that something really wonderful was about to happen at any moment.
I bought that car that very day. And as summer wanes, I drive it, windows down, music loud. For a moment, I can remember that girl, so alien to me now. For a moment, brief and wonderful, I can be her again.
Ann Hood is the author, most recently, of "An Ornithologist's Guide to Life."
_________________________
"...only the shadow knows"
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49734 - 09/04/05 01:35 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
rosebud
Member
Registered: 07/20/05
Posts: 1149
Loc: NY
|
Nice post, Paul. Realy enjoyed it.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49735 - 09/04/05 03:12 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
Roadrunner
Member
Registered: 07/08/03
Posts: 2516
|
Originally posted by rosebud: Nice post, Paul. Realy enjoyed it.
I so clearly remember one of these young guys with the long hair, beads, etc. who believed that, "what was mine was his" concept. He had nothing and didn't want to work..........
Anyway ran into him some years later, doing quite well, suit, tie, flashy car, family, you get the pic. His beliefs had taken a 180 degree turnaround. He had become a productive memeber of society. Quite a few of the "organic" food companies have sprung from this generation, plus alternative medicine, etc.
_________________________
Beep Beep
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49736 - 09/05/05 02:57 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
dashing
Member
Registered: 08/31/01
Posts: 6633
Loc: home
|
My older sis recently attended her 35th hs reunion  . A few days later I got a phone call from the guy who pried my Mom's car fender out while delivering afternoon papers (I was driving illegally) and taught me how to shoot pool. We talked for over 2hrs, laughing and reminising  . I thought I was talking to Bobby! Well, she emailed me a photo. There I saw some good looking man w/ white hair ! I couldn't connect the two  . confused-when did we grow up? still fighting it  , dash
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49737 - 09/05/05 04:00 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
whiterabbit11
Member
Registered: 11/09/02
Posts: 1435
Loc: Middle of Nowhere
|
Pretty neat article Paul-she's a tad younger than me.
It seemed like the summers were so long and hot. The biggest worry was gas money and a couple bucks for the snack bar at the drive-in movie-or that dannable zit that popped up on your nose Friday morning when you were going to said drive-in movie with your G/F. 
I dunno what happened dash-now and then I think I died and went to hell. wr
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49738 - 09/05/05 04:57 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
cbal-craig
Member
Registered: 04/06/00
Posts: 17675
|
Great story Paul, I was 16 in 1970.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#49739 - 09/05/05 10:28 PM
Re: Just plain ole aging..
|
rosebud
Member
Registered: 07/20/05
Posts: 1149
Loc: NY
|
Well now, you're just a young whipper snapper there Craig!
I missed my 40th hs reunion 2001, but received a group pic of the attendees. Twenty-one out of 27 showed up. I had trouble figuring out who several of them were. A few, who didn't look cool then, looked pretty good in the pic and visa versa, and the least likely to succeed, did. I obviously didn't end up designing clothes for Jackie Kennedy, as was predicted in yearbook.
Dash, I agree with you about still fighting the years. It takes quite a bit of effort, but we've gotta keep at it. Thanks to Miss Clairol, she helps a lot.(lol) A good sense of humor helps, too.
A white sport coat and a pink carnation.........
I never felt more like singing the blues........
Aahhh, memories.
Goodnite
Barb
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
