Board Games

When you go to toy store today, you will find myriads of board games.  Many of the games we played as kids in the 60's are still out there.

The first game I remember playing was "Candy Land".  It has changed now, but is basically still the same idea.  You pick up a card from the pile and move your marker to the next space on the board that has that sweet treat pictured on it.  The first one to the end wins.  We must have played that game for hours!  It was easy to understand and lasted a nice amount of time.

We also played "Trouble" very often.  Did you have that game?  It featured a board with a die in the middle of a pop-up bubble.  You had four markers, and could choose whichever of your four "guys" you wanted to move.  In order to get started, you had to "pop" a one or a six.  You could send an opponent back to start all over if you landed on the space he/she was on.  Up to four people could play.

Very similar, but a little bit more complex, was "Aggravation".  This game was set up much like "Trouble", but you could take short-cuts across the board.  We enjoyed playing this quite a bit, and our parents would also play it when we went to visit friends.  "Aggravation" felt like a grown-up, sophisticated game to us!

When I was eight-years-old we had a neighbor friend who owned "Mystery Date".  Did you ever play that?  I can't remember much about it, as far as the board was played.  Every once in awhile you landed on a space where you were allowed to open the door and see who your "date" was.  There was a door flat down in the middle of the board, and you turned the knob and lifted the door.  All of the guys were handsome and sweet, except the "dud".  No one wanted to get the dud as a date!  Looking back, it was all luck and we treated it as silly as eight-year-old girls would!

My sister and I spent time playing card games as well.  We played "Old Maid", "Go Fish", "Rummy", "War" and "Slap Jack".  We even learned some gambling games.  Our family at one point decided to buy a used travel trailer and a station wagon, and we went camping for a weekend.  We went to a lovely campground, and hardly got out of the trailer the whole weekend because it was cold and pouring down rain--this was western Washington, after all.  We had four people trapped inside a 16-foot travel trailer all weekend, so my dad decided to teach us how to play "21", using wooden match sticks as money.  As I recall, Mom was a little reluctant for him to teach us such a game, but she joined in.  Whether we won a hand or lost, all the match sticks went back into their box at the end of the game, so we never really gambled a thing.  I guess you could have called that a "bored" game!

Later in the 60's we got "Operation".  What a startling, loud, obnoxious game!  There were several holes in the board, which was painted as the general idea of a man's body.  In the holes were tiny plastic pieces you had to remove with attached tweezers.  But you couldn't touch the sides of the holes at all, or a very loud buzzer would buzz and your opponent would get a chance to take out the part and move on to the next part.  I can't say I ever liked this game, but my sister did, so I played it with her.

I can think of other games we played as we were growing up.  We never had "Chutes and Ladders", but friends did, and we played with them.  We played "Clue" and "Parcheesi".  We liked checkers and dominoes.

Thinking back, we spent a lot of time playing board games.  It was a much better way to spend your time than watching TV.  It was relaxing and gave us a chance to talk and be goofy.  My son now loves playing board games and would probably be happy if we all played one every night.  I think I should indulge him a little more.  How about you?  Do you have kids who would jump for joy at the thought of a family game night?  Think of it as bonding time, giggling time, maybe even educational time.  Time well spent, at any rate.

Heyday of the Variety Show!

What the reality show genre is to the 2000's, the variety show was to the 1960's.  It seemed that no matter what channel you turned to, there was a variety show on.  Keep in mind that we had only a few channels to choose from.  The whole television industry was so limited in those days.  We didn't have Tivo's.  If you wanted to watch a particular show, you had to be home to watch it when it aired.  This was also a time when we didn't have other ways of seeing our favorite entertainers.  There was no YouTube then.  You couldn't just get on your computer and pull up a performance to enjoy on the spot.There were only three networks that had programming other than educational, and they each had these wonderful shows. 

To be honest, the variety show was an acquired taste.  They were often over-the-top in the singing and dancing, and I didn't know who so many of the entertainers were at the time.  As I got older I started appreciating variety shows.  They cheered me up.  They were upbeat, brightly colored, the hosts were welcoming, and they truly offered a great deal of variety. 

One show that was a Saturday night staple in our house was "Lawrence Welk".  I loved Larry Hooper's bass voice, and the bubbles that floated around the bandstand.  I first heard a wonderful song called "The Baby Elephant Walk" on that show, I believe.  They had musical skits and people dancing in the audience.  There was tap dancing and musical- instrument-playing all over the place.  Truly, my parents watched this show religiously, and since it was on in the evening I was always nearby.  I could pretend to hate it, but I think that deep-down I enjoyed it immensely.  Part of my enjoyment came from my parents' enjoyment.

We also always watched the "Ed Sullivan Show" on Sunday nights.  He had a great variety of entertainers, some regulars and some special stars.  Everyone knows about the Beatles and Elvis Presley being on with Ed Sullivan, but he had many other entertainers as well.  An evening watching Ed Sullivan was an evening well spent!  My favorite performer was the plate spinner.  That fascinated and inspired me--but it didn't inspire my mom!  When I wanted to spin plates on my finger, she put a quick end to the idea!

Maybe my favorite variety show was "Hollywood Palace".  I don't hear that particular show mentioned very often, but it took variety to new heights.  Literally!  There were sometimes circus performers on this show--trapeze artists, high wire acts, animal acrobats.  There were singers and musicians of all kinds.  Almost every Saturday when we went grocery shopping Mom would buy a box a glazed donuts, or maple bars, and we'd enjoy a big glass of milk and donuts with "Hollywood Palace".  It never failed to entertain!

"The Carol Burnett Show" lasted into the 70's, but was also on in the 60's.  I think everyone knows Carol's humor and the uproariously funny cast she had.  We also watched "The Smothers Brothers".  I was too young to care about politics, so anything that had to do with that went over my head.  But I enjoyed Tommy's sly humor and Dick's straight man, as well as many musical guests they had.  "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" was also on every week in our house.  That was a crazy show, probably known most for "sock it to me", "ver-r-r-y IN-ter-es-ting", "you bet your sweet bippy", and other iconic sayings, as well as the little doors the cast members and guests opened at the end of the show to talk to each other and us.

There were many other variety shows over the course of the decade.  What were your favorites?  Do you have special memories of enjoying variety shows in a certain way, or with certain people?  Today, there doesn't seem to be such a need for variety shows, but I do miss them.  I would love to see that genre come back, with clean jokes and great entertainment.  Maybe when reality shows finally die out!

Modern Conveniences

Most of us live pretty hectic lives these days, don't we?  We seem to be running around like chickens with our heads cut off most of the time.  Can you remember when the conveniences weren't quite so modern as they are now, and we were forced to live our lives more slowly and sanely?

It doesn't take long to look around my home and note the huge differences. Let's start in the kitchen.

In the 60's dishwashers did exist.  I don't remember knowing anyone who had one though.  If a housewife was lucky enough to own one, it was usually a portable model that had a hose you would attach to your sink, and you'd roll the dishwasher out of its usual cubbyhole so it could be close enough to the sink for the hose to reach and also to let it drain.  Instead of having a dishwasher, we WERE the dishwashers!  Children routinely took turns, one washing the dishes in the sudsy water, and the other drying them with a towel.  The dryer usually put the dishes away.  We all learned how to do dishes, and it involved time and effort.

We had a nice oven while I was growing up.  One of the back burners consisted of a big hole, and a huge pot could fit into that hole.  There was a heating element in the bottom of it.  My mom made gigantic pots of spaghetti, navy bean soup, or stew, and dinner would be whatever that pot made for three nights in a row.  The controls were at the back of the stove top, and they were push buttons.

Every warm thing we ate was heated with that oven in one way or another, either inside it or on the stove top.  We didn't have microwave ovens in the 60's.  It's hard to imagine now!  Dinner almost always took a long time to make, and as I'm writing this I think I understand why Mom made those big pots of food.  If you had a few days' dinner already made, you wouldn't have to slave away every single night.  No, you still couldn't "nuke" it in the microwave to warm it up the next night, but you could put a portion into a skillet or pan and heat it on a burner.  That took much less time than making it the first night.

In the 60's, refrigerators didn't have water in the door, and our ice came from ice cube trays we stored in our freezer.  There was no digital display to tell you what temperature your refrigerator or freezer was operating on.  The freezer was almost always a fairly small compartment on the top--not the bottom.  Refrigerators were pretty basic, but our freezer almost always had ice cream in it, and that was all we cared about!

Maybe the biggest change has come about in the office arena.  Computers were just being heard about when I was growing up.  They were huge, room-size things.  Consequently, no one had a computer in their house.  No one would know how to operate one, even if they did have one!  We either wrote our correspondence in longhand, or used a typewriter.  There was no backspace key.  If you made a mistake, and wanted a perfect page, you had to start over.  Have you seen the old movies where someone is sitting at a desk typing, then looking over their work, and finally wadding up the paper in consternation and throwing it into the trash can?  That is no exaggeration--typing was often a frustrating experience if you wanted to be neat and tidy, without any mistakes.  Typing was also horrible when it came to composition.  If you were composing what you wanted to say right then, you would often change your mind about how you wanted to say it.  Again, a lot of paper was thrown into the trash.

We didn't recycle in the 1960's.  I think for most of us who were raised during those times, it has taken a little longer to get used to the idea of separating everything we want to get rid of.  Soda cans, coffee grounds, catalogs--where does it all go?  We ARE teachable, but we just didn't do that kind of thing as children. 

I think I will leave entertainment convenience for another post.  It's a big area, deserving of more discussion!  I hope you have had fun thinking back on your "modern" conveniences in the 1960's.  Did you have something that you loved, and wish it would come back in style again?  Did you have something you detested, and bid it good riddance long ago?  One thing we can be sure of is that modern conveniences will continue to get more modern as long as people keep inventing new ways of doing things.

Local Kids' Shows

When I talk with people who grew up in different areas of the country, it seems that every television market had shows for kids in the 1960's.  They were mostly aired after school.  You could get home from school, grab a snack, and settle down in the living room in front of the one television set in the house, and enjoy a half hour or hour of cartoons and humor, served up by a lovable host.  This was in the days before Sesame Street and 24/7 cartoons and kids' programming.  We all have our memories of these shows.  Let me share mine.

In the Seattle market, we had a few shows that really stood out.  One was J.P. Patches.  J.P. was a clown who lived in the city dump.  His set was a shack with all kinds of interesting things on the walls.  He had the world's ugliest girlfriend, Gertrude.  Gertrude was played by a man, and entirely for laughs.  I think they must have ad-libbed a lot of their material.  Sometimes it was funny, sometimes not so much.  There were cartoons interspersed with the live humor.  Every day J.P. would have a few kids in the studio, and he'd ask them a few questions and somewhat gently pull the girls' ponytails.  It was considered greatness to be able to tell people you had been on his show (no, I never was).

J.P. Patches and Gertrude

J.P. Patches was a Seattle icon.  In his later years he performed at county fairs around the area.  He was such a celebrity to me, I was completely in awe when I got to meet him after a performance and have him sign a picture for my husband, who couldn't be there.  A few years later he was again performing at our local fair.  We watched the performance, then wandered off to do other things.  We didn't go far from the venue.  Soon we noticed that our son, who was about 3 or 4 at the time, was a little way away from us, talking with J.P. Patches like he was an old friend!  We never had any idea how they came to meet each other, and our son never had any idea that he was talking to such a big celebrity!  We told him, but he wasn't impressed.  J.P. was such a huge part of both his mom's and dad's lives while we were growing up, and he had no way of knowing how much that meant.

Chris Wedes, also known as J.P. Patches, passed away in July of 2012.  He was just as beloved when he died as he was all those many years ago.

Nomo and Stan Boreson

The other kids' show we watched without fail was Stan Boreson.  Stan was a Norwegian American, and many of his jokes reflected his heritage.  He had a basset hound named Nomo always on the set by his side.  Nomo would just sit or lie on the counter, doing what basset hounds do, which isn't much.  Every once in awhile the camera would show a close-up of his face, and it would never change.  My research tells me that Nomo was short for No Motion.  That sounds about right!

Stan had cartoons on his show as well.  He played the accordion and sang goofy songs, often with Norwegian-sounding lyrics.

As far as I can see, Stan is still with us and even performing around the world.

Wunda Wunda

No discussion of 1960's kids' shows in Seattle is complete without "Wunda Wunda".  Ruth Prins played this pixie-like lady.  Strangely, this show aired at about noon every weekday, probably because of its appeal to the under-school-age crowd.  When I was very young I remember watching "Wunda Wunda" every day.  After I started school, one of the best things about having a sick day (and my mom, a nurse, was very, very strict about having sick days--no playing hooky for us!) was sitting on the couch, eating soup and a sandwich for lunch, and watching "Wunda Wunda".

I hope this brings back some of your favorite memories of times you watched your favorite kids' shows, wherever you grew up.  And if you have children, sit down sometimes with them and watch THEIR favorite shows with them!  You'll make memories that will last a lifetime.

Road Trip!

Few modern inventions have appealed to Americans more than the automobile.  By the 1960's, we had expanded our national road system to include fast and efficient freeways, and what was once THE route to take to anywhere, became the back road.

When I was growing up, one of our family's favorite things to do was to get in the car and go.  Most of the time our trips were short explorations of our surrounding area in western Washington.  We were treated to lush forests, full of shady maples and ever-steady Douglas firs.  In between the woods were fields of berries, hops, and various vegetables, along with a cattle ranch here and there.  Traffic was pretty non-existent on the back roads, since everyone else wanted to take the fast and easy way to where they were going.

I always enjoyed going through the small towns along the way.  Whether the houses were neat and trim, or dingy and falling apart, each one had a story to tell.  So did the people I saw on the sidewalks.  To this day, I find myself making up stories in my head about what I see on the back roads.

My dad was a Volkswagen Beetle enthusiast.  We had a few Bugs over the years, and it seems like they were all beige.  My dad would spend hours in our driveway, tinkering on the engine in the back-end of the car.  Then he would declare that we had to test it out, so into the car we'd go, all four of us.  More than once we'd smell a sickening oil-burning smell, and soon after that the car would putter out and die, right out there in the boonies.  We females would panic and wonder how we'd ever get home, but Dad always stayed cool and collected.  He'd go to the back of the car and tinker, right alongside the road  He always got it going again, on his own, with just the tools he had on hand.

There were two things in the 60's that we didn't have a use for.  Cell phones didn't exist at all.  We likely wouldn't have had one if they did!   Who wanted to be tethered to the normal world when you were on an adventure?  The other thing that no one used was seat belts.  Some cars had lap belts, but that was it.  There were no shoulder belts at all.  Our lap belts were usually tucked behind the cushions of our seats, simply because that's where they ended up after being shoved aside.  I can't say how many times my sister and I heard my dad's "no scuffling back there!" as we giggled and wrestled around in the back seat.  It's a wonder Dad could keep the car on the road with all the roughhousing!

We were lucky to have an AM radio in our car, and sometimes our cars were without even that small luxury. Radio stations were much harder to come by back then, so there were times out on the road that there wasn't any music to be had.  My sister and I developed the habit of singing in the car.  We had a "repertoire" of songs, and we'd keep at it for most of any trip.  Looking back, I guess we probably just about drove Mom and Dad crazy!  But I don't remember them ever stopping us or telling us to be quiet.  Sometimes they'd even make requests.  If Mom knew the song, she'd sing along.

Back then, when gasoline cost less than a dollar a gallon, taking drives was a wonderful way to spend some time, keeping up with each other and bonding in a way that seems to be nearly unknown now.  If your kids are like mine, they would roll their eyes at me if I told them to put down their technology, let's go for a ride!  Then again, maybe they'd forget and enjoy themselves...

The Town Playground

It's a typical summer Saturday.  The sky is deep blue, there are a few wispy clouds in the sky.  Lots of Cesna-type planes flying over, just like they always do on a clear day.  You're in your yard, playing with the neighbor kids, when all of a sudden your mom calls you in and tells your friends you can't play anymore, they can go home now.  Dad has decided to go visit Uncle George and Aunt Winnie.  There was no phone call made, no texting, no communication at all.  In the 60's, you just went to visit and took your chances that they would be home.  They usually were.

Uncle George is Dad's brother, and when those two get together they can gab up a storm!  But you don't mind going to their house, because it is a beautiful day and you can go outside and explore their back yard while the grown-ups talk.  It's a win-win situation!

I used to love going to visit my nearest and dearest aunt and uncle.  Looking back, they didn't live that far away from us.  It seemed a lot farther when I was young.  I loved the ride through the forests of western Washington, always looking to see how high the river was as we passed it.  The town playground was right beside my aunt and uncle's house, so after the hello's and how-are-you's were done, my sister and I would run over to the playground.  Though we didn't go to school with any of the kids there, or even live near them, we knew most of them and it was always fun to see who was playing on any given day.

The playground was well stocked with all the best equipment--rings, slides, swings of all sorts, tether ball, jungle gym, teeter totters, merry-go-round.  It was hard to choose which to go on first!  My favorite was the rings, and I would go across them for hours, to the point of getting blood blisters on my hands.

In the 60's girls wore dresses to school, almost without exception.  If we were to have any fun at recess, we learned to wear shorts under our dresses so the naughty boys couldn't see our underwear when we were in the upper reaches of the jungle gym or hanging on the rings.  That was weekdays.  But on the weekends we wore pants.  And we could freely enjoy any piece of playground equipment we desired!  We would run from slide to swing to teeter totter and back again.  We would play until we were called back to my aunt and uncle's house, either for barbecue or just to drive home.  No matter how long we had been at the playground, we always wanted to be there longer.  We would get home tired and worn out, but always feeling like we had had a great day.  As the sun slowly went down and the birds sang their good-night songs, we would go to bed, protesting all the way, and fall asleep five minutes later.