Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2017 i Reminisce

My earliest memories always involve my older brother. He was my best friend. We fought like cats and dogs, but we were thick as thieves. Then one day, my mother and I walked him to school. He got to stay and I didn’t. I was devastated! I always thought of myself as the smarter one; I knew my ABCs, my address, my phone number (both ways, too—Commodore 4-0241 and CO-4-0241). I don’t remember what I did without him. Then he joined Boy Scouts, and of course they wouldn’t let me in. No fair! But I sure got a kick out of reading his Boys’ Life magazines. I wanted so badly to attend one of those faraway summer camps listed in the back. Well, believe it or not, one of our…

The “British Invasion,” a musical charge led by the Beatles, brought a boatload of English artists to America—19 musicians found fame here in 1964 alone. Yet most American fans fail to recognize Texan Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly’s influence on the scene. As Liverpool teenagers, Paul McCartney and John Lennon spent afternoons dissecting Holly’s songs, strumming guitars and rearranging his chord structures while swapping his trademark hiccups. From those sessions emerged dozens of tunes. “At least the first 40 songs we wrote were Buddy Holly-influenced,” says McCartney. Starting as the Quarrymen in 1957, they became the Beatles in 1960, their insect-inspired name a twist on Holly’s band, the Crickets. Holly’s influence extended to other English groups as well. The Rolling Stones’ first American hit, “Not Fade Away,” was a cover of…

After I graduated from high school in the late ’60s, I became a mover. As I learned the trade and gained knowledge of the industry, I relocated from Chicago, Illinois, to Southern California, where I worked for a United Van Lines agency. On a beautiful day in July 1970, I was assigned to pack the belongings of a pretty important person: Claire Trevor, the movie star. And what a beautiful, amazing lady she was. She sat with me and showed me backstage photos of stars such as Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Howard Hughes and the Duke, John Wayne. Then I did something that I’ll cherish to the grave, and that not many people can say they’ve done. I held an Oscar in one hand and an Emmy in…

Elizabeth Taylor’s stormy fifth marriage, to Richard Burton, started with a quiet ceremony in Montreal, Quebec, in 1964. It was another in a line of romantic entanglements that helped to make Taylor an audience magnet. For a period in the 1960s, her name was all a movie needed to make money—a position 26-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, the world’s highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016, enjoys today.…

HEDY LAMARR The Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr was sometimes called THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN FILMS, but she just as easily could have been called The Smartest Woman in Films. A math prodigy, Lamarr co-invented a radio communications method that created an unbreakable code through manipulated frequencies, later known as spread spectrum technology. Lamarr’s invention is widely credited with leading to today’s dominance of wireless technology. BETTY GRABLE Betty Grable earned her nickname, THE PINUP GIRL, from a 1940s publicity still by photographer Frank Powolny, featuring the young actress in a bathing suit, her blond locks in a fabulous updo, looking over her shoulder to show off her spectacular dancer’s legs. One in five servicemen had a copy of the image, including Hugh Hefner, who later said it was the…

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 12, my Aunt Florence and Uncle Steve retired from their Evanston, Illinois, home to a small cottage in Green Lake, Wisconsin. Nothing was more pleasing to me than spending time up there with them during my summer vacations. Fishing was the mainstay of my visits. I’d go out nearly every morning with Uncle Steve and Uncle Homer, who also lived nearby, in Homer’s boat, dangling worms in the warm sunshine. We almost always caught something. I recall a time when Uncle Steve brought up a huge catfish, the first one I had ever seen, and it fascinated me. He tossed it back, though, explaining that catfish weren’t keepers, at least not in that part of the country. What we were after, he said, were perch or…

TELL US HOW TO FIND YOU Whether you send your submission via mail or email or post it online, include your full name, daytime phone number, email address and mailing address. If you have a post office box, tell us your street address too. HELP US SORT THINGS OUT Include the name of the department your submission is for (Motoring Memories, Growing Up, etc.) on the first page of your submission or in the email subject line. For any photos you submit, please identify the people, city, state and year the photo was taken. We reserve the right to use submissions in any section of our magazine, or elsewhere. We do not return unsolicited materials. Send quality photo reprints or email high-resolution JPEG files (300 dpi at 8x10) so you…

“Be wary when you ask us old-timers about events in our lives. Most reminiscence is spiced with a little fiction.” “There’s something presumptuous about describing oneself as a writer or a painter, or musician, or what have you. I write poetry; it is up to the reader to decide if I am a poet.” “Never get discouraged by what others tell you about yourself. If someone had told me I was tone-deaf, I’d have written a musical composition just for spite.”…

COMMUNITY COOKING Bake sales, fish fries, pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners. Do you remember the big church gatherings? Picnics? Potlucks? Did you cook, prep or clean up? Share your tale with us. Label your story “Community Cooking.” PRIZED COLLECTIONS What starts as a single purchase can evolve quickly into a roomful of tchotchkes. Collections are a true passion. Tell us about yours. Label your story “Prized Collections.” GIRL SCOUT COOKIES The Girl Scouts have been selling cookies to foster the entrepreneurial spirit in youngsters for 100 years. We can’t decide which was better: buying or selling them. What do you think? And did you have a favorite flavor? Thin Mints? Do-si-dos? Label your story “Girl Scout Cookies.” HEROES AT HOME What makes a hero? Maybe it’s a military vet who lives…

BEST PICTURE OSCAR Tom Jones TOP TV DRAMA EMMY The Defenders, CBS TOP TV COMEDY EMMY The Dick Van Dyke Show, CBS SONG OF THE YEAR GRAMMY “Days of Wine and Roses,” Johnny Mercer, Henry Mancini NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER, FICTION The Centaur by John Updike CALDECOTT MEDAL WINNER Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (Harper) BEST-SELLING ALBUM Hello, Dolly! (Original Broadway Cast) TOP FICTION BEST-SELLER The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré MOST POPULAR TOY G.I. Joe, $4, by Hasbro…

SUDDENLY I HEARD MY MOTHER SCREAM, AND I STARTED TO CRY. “IS MAMA DYING?” I ASKED. Friday, Sept. 13, 1935, will always be a most memorable day for me. All was well in my sleepy hometown of Wegdahl, Minnesota. That’s where I lived with my parents, Gustav and Mildred Nyheim, and my brother, Ordell, 9. I was 7 and delighted that Grandmother Baxter was staying for a two-week visit. Around dusk, the adults told my brother and me to go outside to play. This time of day, we usually were called home, so it seemed odd. But I was having fun with a playmate in her yard, so I paid no mind until I noticed the shiny black car in our driveway. I thought it must be my Great-Aunt Helena…

We were at war in 1942 when I graduated from Burbank High School in California. So instead of going to college, I went to work as an expediter at Lockheed Aircraft Corp. near the airport in Burbank, where P-38 Lightning fighters and other warplanes were assembled. Here’s how the job worked: Every morning I received a list of parts needed on the assembly line. My job was to find the parts and deliver them where needed. The parts were in either of two plants. To get between locations, I rode a bicycle with a large basket. Sometimes the basket was so heavy, someone had to hold the bike as I got on, and give me a push to get started. I don’t recall how I stopped. If I couldn’t find…

Sitting at the old upright piano in my bedroom, I’m about to play one of the few simple pieces I have mastered—barely a cut above “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” I have my best blue dress on and ribbons in my pigtails. Sprawled on the rug keeping an eye on things are our cocker spaniel Rusty and her black-furred son and sidekick, Dusty. It’s cocktail hour in 1950s St. Francisville, Louisiana, and several musicians and guests of the board of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra mingle in our living room. Daddy, highball in hand, leans against the door of my room, smiling with pride. “You can do it, Annie,” he says, with his usual fatherly deaf ear to my flaws. His favorite music at the time was Broadway show tunes, judging…

As NASA got closer to sending a man to the moon, Vietnam rumbled in Asia. American families escaped to television, watching new comedies such as Bewitched, The Addams Family and Gilligan’s Island. (For those who wanted military lite, there was Gomer Pyle: USMC—the Marine Corps-theme show that never mentioned Vietnam.) The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits and other U.K. acts took America by storm. And companies brought Diet Pepsi, Sharpie markers, G.I. Joe action figures and eight-track tapes to the marketplace. JAN. 1 Time Magazine recognizes President Lyndon B. Johnson as its Man of the Year. JAN. 11 The Surgeon General reports for the first time that smoking cigarettes may be hazardous to health. JAN. 20 Sports Illustrated releases its first swimsuit edition featuring model Babette March on the…

For music fans, 1964 stands out as the year the Beatles landed on American soil and opened the door to an influx of rock and pop acts from across the pond in the phenomenon known as the British Invasion. How many of these U.K. bands and their chart-topping songs from 1964’s Billboard Hot 100 do you recall? 1 Written by Paul McCartney, the poignant song “A World Without Love” became a No. 1 hit for this British duo on June 27. 2 They laughed all the way to the bank when “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” reached No. 4 on July 4. 3 The Animals were said to have recorded this venerable tune (which hit No. 1 on Sept. 5) in one take. Some say the song is…

ONE YEAR, MOTHER made up a batch of homemade ketchup. She sterilized the bottles, filled them with sauce, corked them, sealed them with red wax and set them on the wooden dish drainer to cool. After dinner, we sat around the kitchen table waiting for the bottles to cool so we could do the dishes. All of a sudden the first ketchup bottle blew its cork. There followed a succession of explosions that spewed red ketchup all over the ceiling, walls and kitchen sink. Mom, it seems, had put too much sugar into her ketchup mixture, causing it to ferment and gas to form, blowing the corks out. What a mess, and what a cleanup job it was. Got a story to share? Go to: REMINISCE.COM/  SUBMIT-A-STORY…

My path to becoming a butcher was a bit unassuming. I was 16, in high school and in need of a part-time job. There was a market near our home, so I thought I’d start there. The owner, Mr. Hale, was very kind and asked only one question: “Can you draw a chicken?” I was no artist, but I badly needed the job, so I said yes. How was I to know that what he meant was to clean a chicken with its head and feet on?! I reported to the market the next afternoon at 4. They gave me a white apron and a knife, showed me a pile of chickens and told me to get to work. This was not at all what I thought I’d be doing.…

Before my sophomore year of high school in 1965, I had an opportunity to attend Leadership Week at Camp Quinipet on Shelter Island at the end of Long Island, New York. I was a bit of a prankster in those days. Waking the girls in their dorm house at 6 a.m. with a boisterous rendition of “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” was just standard operating procedure. The one standout prank of that year occurred on a late-night raid that I wound up pulling off alone. I couldn’t rouse any of my sleeping cabinmates, who were supposed to help me. With an old towel and some spare rope I’d found at the beach, I slipped out silently to accomplish the nefarious shenanigan. Cue the Mission Impossible theme. My target was a big…

THE SCREWBALL QUEEN CAROLE LOMBARD Also known as The Hoosier Tornado and The Profane Angel, Carole Lombard (left) grew up a tomboy—a Hollywood scout discovered her at 12 playing baseball with the neighborhood boys—and was known for her impeccable timing, physical comedy and charming on-screen manner, a magical blend of ditzy and sexy. “Personally, I resent being tagged ‘glamour girl,’ ” she once said. “It implies so much that I’m not.” “AUDREY HEPBURN STOOD OUT FROM ALL THE REST FOR HER HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS. SHE LEFT HER MARK AS AN EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN BEING.” MICHAEL AUGUSTA X MATAWAN, NJ THE STYLE ICON AUDREY HEPBURN BORN IN BELGIUM to a British banker and a Dutch baroness, Audrey Hepburn went to an English boarding school at age 5. When Britain declared war on Germany…

1 Who said the famous line “Play it again, Sam” in the 1942 classic film? A. Ingrid Bergman B. Humphrey Bogart C. Sydney Greenstreet D. No one 2 Who wrote “As Time Goes By” and when? A. The film’s composer Max Steiner in 1942 B. Hoagy Carmichael in 1938 C. Tin Pan Alley’s Herman Hupfeld in 1931 D. Irving Berlin in 1925 3 Which of these actresses was under consideration, or rumored to be, for the role of Ilsa Lund? A. Hedy Lamarr B. Ann Sheridan C. Michele Morgan D. All of them 4 Which of these actors was under consideration, or rumored to be, for the role of Rick Blaine? A. Ronald Reagan B. Clark Gable C. Joel McCrea D. All of them 5 Paul Henreid, who played Czechoslovakian…