Kindergarten Romance -- Not!

Here's the as-yet-unshared valentines I received in 1962 for Valentine's Day, in Mrs Pickell's kindergarten class. 

But first the pouch they came in.

Sad to say, I can't put a face or even a last name to David B.

Similarly, I don't remember playing with a Margaret.

I'm pretty sure that this Paula was Paula Bland.

Check back on Thursday, which due to the frabjous happenstance of this being a Leap Year, we'll have one more installment of MY SIXTIES VALENTINE.

It's a date (in a purely platonic way)!

   

Platonic Love, I Hope

You know, childhood in the Sixties had a lot more innocence for us than I imagine is the case nowadays.

I mean, we all know what bunnies do when nobody's lookin -- they make more bunnies!

Someone could leeringly make a voyeur joke about that one.

Am I wrong, or shouldn't there be a hatchet or maybe a log or board in this kid's hands?  Otherwise, someone might think he's referring to another kind of wood when thinking about his sweetheart?

But thoughts like that didn't come up when we were innocent.  See you on Monday for the last week of MY SIXTIES VALENTINE!

  

Movin' Along

Yup, these valentines from 1963 feature motivation of some kind.

It's interesting that a lot of Valentines seem to be emulating the lives of our parents or grandparents, vide the 1800s locomotive above,

... and the 1930s flivver here.

Of course, a mouse on an elephant never goes out of style, right!?!  See you Thursday!

  

Now We're Cookin'!

These three valentines from First Grade, in February 1963, demonstrate that old adage about gettin lovin' through food. Umm, yeah!

If only our grown-up metabolism could handle a sundae like that, without an immediate ten-pound weight gain!

You could say this guy's love is saah-MOKE-in'!

All of us rough-n-tough type of super-manly guys would have pretended to be all polite and obedient if we would've got some fresh-baked sugar cookies from that little girl.  "Sure, Susie, I'll play house ... until I gobble the last one and run out to play ball until I throw up!  Bye!"

See you Monday, fellow crumb-dusters!

  

Simple and Direct!

For this batch of Valentines from First grade -- February 1963 -- they ain't nuttin' high-falutin' or high concept. Just simple, direct, unequivocal luv.

They's nuthin' wrong with simple and direct ... as long as I don't gotta kiss no girls!  If THAT has to happen, warn me so I can get a clothespin for my nose!

See you Thursday, fellow nose-holders!

  

Animal Love from 1963

Yes, these valentines from first grade (1963) kept things on a subhuman level.

This one confuses me.  Generally I don't associate being cuckoo with being "ho-hum" drowsy ... unless the crazy bird has been doped up by the headshrinkers.

This one recalls the memory that violins used to be strung with "catgut."  So, Is this cool cat serenading YOU by playing music on the eviscerated GUTS of his last girlfriend?

Whatta buncha animals!

See you Monday!

  

Welcome Back to MY SIXTIES VALENTINE!

Yup, we're gonna have another February filled with actual Valentines I received for 1962 and 1963, when I was in Kindergarten and First Grade.

These are from 1963.  The middle one is front-and-back of a single card.

The one above didn't come from a first-grade classmate, but from the big sis of my best friend, Tom Hefner.  I guess Pam was forced into it, although I DO have proof elsewhere that Pam didn't totally hate me, if I can ever find the comic-book proof.

Remember, in the Sixties, such images were one hundred percent innocent.  So no butter jokes or remarks about being stacked ...

See ya Thursday, fellow nostalgians!

  

Hoe Latte Love

 

Let's start this supposed Month of Love with a new music compilation with a couple of dozen ... umm, ... different takes on the subject.

01 - Tropical Fish - The Elevators - 1980  (3:09)

02 - Love Potion No 9 - The Clovers - 1959  (1:54)

03 - Indigestion - The Prams - 1979  (2:08)

04 - I Broke Her Heart, She Broke My Arm - Stark Naked and the Fleshtones - 1981  (3:05)

05 - Humpin' Up a Dead Girl - Hatman Williams (Phil LaMarr) - 2000  (1:37)

06 - Computer Love - Lord Manuel and the Neighbor Hoods - 1978  (1:22)

07 - I'll Never Make Fun of Her Mustache Again - The Dellwoods - 1963  (2:14)

08 - Little Ghost - White Stripes - 2005  (2:31)

09 - Answering Machine - The Moderns - 1981  (3:29)

10 - I'm Losing My Lunch Over You - Luchs Brothers - 1978  (1:32)

11 - Undertakin' Daddy - Wayne Raney - 1952  (2:20)

12 - Living China Doll - Moving Parts - 1980  (3:12)

13 - Girl in a Magazine - The Brains - 1980  (3:07)

14 - She Loves Herself - Nuclear Boyz - 1981  (1:45)

15 - Tombstone Number 9 - Murray Scaff and His Aristocrats - 1956  (2:48)

16 - Glendora - Downliners Sect - 1966  (2:43)

17 - Anorexia - God and the State - 1985  (3:44)

18 - Graveyard Tree - Koffin Kats - 2003  (2:52)

19 - Cancel My Order for Love - Rodd Keith - 1972  (2:02)

20 - Schizophrenic Baby - Sheldon Allman - 1960  (1:45)

21 - Ballad of the Caveman - Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo - 1976  (1:30)

22 - The Stalker - Laurie Powell - 2000  (3:18)

23 - Zombie Girl - Dino-Mike - 2013  (3:11)

24 - The Beast with Five Hands - The Groovie Ghoulies - 2006  (2:02)

25 - Karen Ann Quinlan - Vomit Pigs - 1979  (3:00)

26 - She's in Love (with the Rolling Stones) - The Telefones - 1980  (2:56)

27 - Time Warp - John Dowie - 1977  (2:00)

28 - Two Ton Tessie - The Banana Splits - 1968  (2:22)

29 - I Don't Want to Be Your Amputee - John Dowie - 1977  (1:43)

30 - The Moon and Me (from The Addams Family) - Kevin Chamberlin - 2010  (3:02)

31 - (I'm into) Shoes - Wild Horses - 1982  (3:11)

I ain't gonna tell you what to do, but please listen to these songs for entertainment purposes ONLY!

https://www.filefactory.com/file/6jr4ekaiejr4/MA-186.rar

See you on Monday.  Until then, try and find somebody to love!

  

Secret Origins of Superman's Secret Origin!

It's all true, I tell ya!

It's the June 1, 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes.

And Bob Hughes lays out the previous "official" DC roots of the Man of Steel.

See you on Thursday with a new music comp for the month of love!  Then we'll dive into MY SIXTIES VALENTINE!

 

OKC Memories #6: Bought a Videotape Lately?

It's been a while for me too!

But here are receipts from some OKC-area merchants who seem to not be around anymore.

Sight n' Sound had several locations.  This one on South Western Ave is now a tire shop.  This purchase was two blank T-120 VHS tapes on February 25, 1986.

The day after Christmas in 1986, I bought some VHS tapes from the Soundtrak location on S Meridian.

At Crown Movies on the southside, I bought the VHS of Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. as fast as I could!  Feel free to read the list of "Coming Attractions" for a nostalgic rush, assuming you're old enough to recognize any of these movies' titles.

More blank videotapes from the Service Merchandise on the southside, in January 1991.  The space is now occupied by Big Lots.

This receipt from a few months later came from the same place, but now the receipt gives the location as "Walnut Square," the name of the shopping center.

This last, from December 1991 was for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.  This Sound Warehouse was also at I-240 and S Penn, in the building corner now occupied by Vintage Stock.

Hope I stirred some fond memories of media gone by!  See you Monday.

  

Wonders Galore

Yep, while PARD the laptop is being cloned, it's another conglomeration of covers about fascinating mysteries which might divert your questing brain from thinking that existence is boring.

Corliss's books are big on actual citations of publications that report weird things, from old articles in professional journals referring to things transiting the sun, (back when there were no manmade flyers), to OOPARTs (look it up) reported in newspapers.

Cohen has written a few books examining reports of saucers and critters.  Very straight newspaper-like reporting, with a side of speculation on what mundanity might have inspired the witness to interpret a cloud as a UFO (for example).  Lots of his books are written at what was once called high-school reading level, nowadays his prose might tax the so-called instructors.

This one holds a warm place in my heart because it, and Frank Edwards' tomes, were some of the first I read in descriptions of the downright weird.  Godwin writes about blindfolded cyclists, Kaspar Hauser, moving coffins, the abominable snowman, and others.

I think the appeal of books like these to adolescents is severalfold:

• They stretch the imagination
• They help stimulate analytical thinking by comparing hypotheses and/or explanations
• They show us that "rational" explanations which don't solve the problem aren't worth entertaining
• They prove that the grown-ups don't know everything.

I know I gobbled these books up as a youth.  Why don't you search one out?  Until next Thursday, fellow thunkers!

  

More Cosmic Clods

You may think I meant "Cosmic Clouds," but you ain't read as many of these UFO books as I have!

This 1963 book by Robert Charroux explains everything in history as the result of outer-space guys who bred us into sentience.

Andrew Tomas's Beyond the Time Barrier, from 1974, is only one of the books in which he listed old-time monuments or discoveries which imply (to him) that either ancient Man was smarter than we are now, or had help from friendly Space Teachers.

This one by Sachs and Jahn, is from 1977.

If you're a good scholar (as I try to be), you know that the more you learn, the less you know.  But that's pretty fun when learning about weird stuff like this.

(Of course, after a lot of learning, you develop some well-founded opinions as to the sources of some of your learning.)

Thanks for this trip into Celestial Mystery, brought on by the death of an old friend -- PARD the HP laptop, which held most of my blog grist.  We'll have to scrape along for a week or two until PARD's replacement may be found.  Pray for my quest!

  

Poppin’ Off

How many of you fine folks remember returnable pop bottles?  Yep, pop came in glass bottles.  When you bought ’em at the grocery store, you paid a deposit (2 cents in our 1960s town) on each bottle.  When you went back to the store, you took back your empties for the money back, or a one-for-one swap if you got more pop.

That’s because these glass bottles were returned to a regional bottler, washed, sanitized, refilled, and re-capped.  See my memories of working one summer at our local Coke plant here.

But what if you didn’t drink it all at once?

            Why, you used an after-market cap to try and hold in the fizz!  Above are the ones we still have from the storied times of refillable bottles.  Sometimes you’d have ads for grocery stores or filling stations printed on top of the caps.

                                

            And here’s the underside of the same toppers.  The loops apparent on the top row of cappers was to loop over the bottles neck, then curl over to snap the cap onto the lip of the bottle.  These were so fumble-finger types wouldn’t lose the cap after flipping it off!

            In the top left of the group pictures, are rendered in super-high contrast, is one from Tupperware.  The stamped words are:

TUPPERWARE ®

MADE IN U.S.A.

TUPPERWARE

ORLANDO, FLORIDA

198-22

 

See you Thursday, fellow consumers!