Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2019 i Reminisce

As we go through the touching submissions you send us each month, we’re drawn to tales that speak to as large an audience as possible. Names and details differ, but the feelings are familiar and will, we hope, stir happy memories from your own past. This is the essence of Reminisce and no story captures it better than Nell Johnson’s exuberant recollections of growing up in Kentucky, hanging out with her pals, tearing up the streets on her beloved bike. You can read her smile in every line on page 22. Yet now and then a submission is so unique, it stands alone. When longtime reader Judy Sikorski sent us images of babies in ornately decorated strollers from the Victorian era and later, we knew we had to share them…

Millions of baby boomers are born into a decade that promises prosperity and peace. Instead, the U.S. enters the Korean War. Cold War tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union intensifies. And Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin delivers a blistering speech declaring war on Communists at home. Still, creative minds flourish. America enters the Golden Age of Television. Yakity-Yak chattering-teeth toys and cinnamonflavored Hot Tamales are a hit. And future rebel heartthrob James Dean gets his first paid acting gig: a Pepsi commercial. JAN. 17 Thieves in Halloween masks steal more than $2 million from Brink’s in Boston. JAN. 31 President Harry Truman announces U.S. plans to develop the hydrogen bomb. FEB. 15 Heavily in debt, Walt Disney releases Cinderella (right). Profits from the movie help his company to…

Soon after Michael Leon Stocki, whom I later married, graduated from high school in 1953, he entered the Army and trained as an advanced mechanic in track vehicle repair. He was sent overseas and stationed with an ammunition company near a tiny village south of Seoul, South Korea. It was soon after the war, and everything was either rubble or burned out. His first day there, Mike noticed a tank parked in an unused area of the base. It had a 90 mm cannon mounted on the top and a dozer blade on the front. It probably had been used during the war to clear debris from roads, then abandoned after the fighting ended. Mike put new batteries in it and gassed it up, and, to his surprise, the tank…

My family tree is complicated by the fact that both of my grandfathers had the same first and last names—and both of their wives had the same last names, though none of them were directly related as far as we know. Our history was so unique, it appeared in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not column shortly after I was born in December 1935. The similarity of my ancestors’ names seems to have come about by coincidence. My paternal grandfather was Archie Eugene Hilton, who was born in Barry County, Missouri, in 1889. As a young man, he moved to Aurora, where he had a grocery store on Porter Street. There, he met and married my grandmother Cora Elizabeth Wilson, third of 21 children. My father, Joseph Wayne Hilton, was…

ACROSS 1 She played “Hot Lips,” 2 words 8 Mountain in The Sound of Music 10 Sushi order 11 Command, for short 12 Cub opponent 13 First word of the M*A*S*H theme song 16 Tarzan extra 18 Golden State (abbr.) 19 Italian actress Sophia 20 Capt. Benjamin Pierce’s nickname 24 Reverberate 26 Two-way prefix 27 Where _____ Dare (1968), Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton movie 29 Taking another country by force 33 Louisville Slugger wood 34 Start of three John Wayne movie titles 35 Margaret “Hot Lips” 37 Location indicator 39 Yogi in baseball 40 Ostrich relative 41 Chocolate snack rolls 43 Unit of electricity 44 Fairytale creature 46 Capt. John McIntyre’s nickname 48 Doll 49 Pontiac Grand _____ 50 Honky-tonk country singer Joe 51 Hockey legend Orr 52 M*A*S*H star first name…

Contributor Guidelines 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)…

BONBON BONANZA Inspired by ice cream novelties of old and wrapped in a nostalgic 1970s design, Brothers treats are made with all-natural ingredients. $4, Walmart; see brothersdesserts.com for other locations GRILLER CHILLER Don’t let the heat keep you from your picnic party. Fire up this Honeywell outdoor portable evaporative cooler to enjoy a moist, cool breeze on your patio. Works best in dry conditions to reduce ambient air temperature. $480, amazon.com FRESH FACE Revitalize skin on hot days with a quick mist from Colorescience’s Hydrating Mist. Bonus: It prevents makeup melt, too. $39, colorescience.com REST AND REFRESH Nothing’s cooler than the flip side of a pillow. Brooklyn Bedding’s Luxury Cooling Pillow features special ventilation and a cooling gel infused with copper and graphite to draw heat out and away from…

Hedy Lamarr famously cursed her looks, but they were hard to ignore. Called “the most beautiful woman in the world,” Lamarr made the overblown epic Samson and Delilah (1949) a must-see hit through 1950. It would delight her to know her co-invention of a form of frequency hopping, a precursor to Wi-Fi—and not her pretty face—makes her a hero in today’s tech community. Harvard grad Natalie Portman is Lamarr’s equal in beauty and brains: In high school, she was a semifinalist for the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search.…

Each year, to celebrate the anniversary of the Navy Construction Battalion (Seabees), our Seabee center at Port Hueneme held a contest to crown a young lady as the queen of the military ball. In the weeks leading up to the gala, each contestant was escorted to various functions at the base, by either an enlisted person or an officer, and one of the functions involved appearing on a television show filmed in Santa Barbara. These events gave everyone who’d be selecting the queen an opportunity to see the contestants before casting their votes. As an instructor on the base in 1956, I was rarely asked to be an escort. The organizers did their best to match up the young women with escorts who were close to their age and had…

STREET SCENES A TEACHER IN EUCLID, OH, for more than 40 years, Virginia Thurtle was also well-traveled and an expert photographer. In dozens of trips from the late ’40s through the early ’80s, she captured the local sights in loving detail. In the July Reminisce Extra, we featured her adventures inside the U.S.; here, we highlight a few of her foreign travels. Her niece Mary Palmer of Vineyard Haven, MA, sent us the slides. COMING UP: Leisure Suits Post your photos: REMINISCE.COM/SUBMIT-A-STORY…

For so many people of my generation, the late 1960s was a time of extremes: Woodstock, Vietnam, the moon landing. Even the cars were extreme. Half a year’s pay would buy you a high-performance Mustang fastback, a Pontiac GTO, or a Dodge Super Bee. I was working as an apprentice pipe fitter for Goodyear in Akron when I heard about some limitedproduction muscle cars at a nearby dealership. They were said to be equipped with 427-cubic-inch engines rated at 425 horsepower. Less than an hour after arriving at the dealership, I bought one. I made a few improvements to what was already one of the fiercest street-legal cars ever produced. Then it was time to race. There was a lot of street racing in Akron back then. Friday and Saturday…

Let’s understand this from the start: I like football, basketball, soccer, golf and a lot of other sports. But baseball is special. I grew up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the 1950s. The Washington Senators were my guys. I’m sure everyone has heard the old saw: Washington—first in war, first in peace and last in the American League. No matter, that was the team I loved. As a kid, I collected baseball cards, as did most of my friends. We prized Senators over Yankees every time. Trading my Yogi Berra for a Yo-Yo Davalillo might not make sense to a lot of people. After all, Yo-Yo played only 19 Major League games. But they were all with the Senators. I remember watching him in a pregame warmup…

Bowling Green, Kentucky, where I was born in the summer of 1929, was a little town where you could leave the windows up and the doors open. There were at least 30 children on my street, making the neighborhood a wonderful playground. I was a tomboy who loved to skate, climb trees and be one of the gang. Hide-and-seek, kick-the-can and building clubhouses out of loose rocks and gathered materials were great fun. Back then, poodle skirts, saddle Oxfords and crinoline petticoats were all the rage, but my heart was set on earning enough for a bicycle. With World War II underway, new bikes were scarce and costly. Babysitting for 25 cents an hour was a slow route to savings. I’ll never forget the birthday when my dear mother added…

The guys from Trevose Fire Company in Pennsylvania were headed home from a fire and rescue competition when we stopped off at a fireworks shop called South of the Border to stock up on cherry bombs, strings of twenty 2-inchers, bottle rockets—the works. Known as pranksters, we spent the next few months finding ways to use the fireworks to surprise the older guys in the firehouse. They never saw the humor in our fun and were glad when our supply began to dwindle. But one fall day, with my last stash of 2-inchers beside me on the front seat of my 1956 Ford Fairlane Victoria, I drove to the firehouse. My car, only 3 years old, was in mint condition and super quiet, so no one turned around when I…

Everyone loves a parade—and showing off baby. Back in Victorian times, babies and their buggies were star attractions. Well-to-do mommies would don fine attire and promenade about neighborhoods to show off little ones in ornately decorated carriages. The more over-the-top the fashion, the more affluent people presumed the families were. One of the first carriage parades in America included both adult and baby carriages. Called the Battle of the Flowers, it took place in San Antonio, Texas, in 1891, and began as a commemoration of the battles of the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto. The Battle of the Flowers parade continues today, but without the baby conveyances. You can see examples of past parade showpieces at the Victorian Perambulator Museum & Art Gallery in Jefferson, Ohio, which boasts a collection…

My name is Jim. This I know. I’ve known it for years. But for an instant in the summer of 1969, that basic fact eluded me. It started in New York state at Syracuse University, at the start of my junior year. My roommate, Karl, and I were settling into our dorm room in Marion Hall when our friend Bill propped himself against the door frame. Bill looked like a tall elf, with a perpetual twinkle of mischief in his eye. “You guys wanna take a field trip?” he asked. Karl and I didn’t reply, but we had an idea what Bill was talking about. We’d heard rumors of the huge rock festival in Bethel, New York, starting that very afternoon. “I’ll take that for a yes,” Bill said, holding…

After spending three years in Fort Worth, Texas, at Bible college, my wife, Norma, and I moved to Longwood, Florida, in 1973. We needed a car and heard about a woman who had a 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider 1300 that she wanted to give away. When I saw it, I discovered the reason it was free: the motor was in pieces, with parts in the trunk and behind the seats. The owner then handed me three pieces of paper, which turned out to be the only pages she had of a repair manual. The car was a beautiful red convertible, so I decided to take it and work on putting it back together. It took me about three months, but I finally got it running. A few months later,…