Tabla de contenidos para September 2018 en Reminisce Extra

TALENT SHOWS These days, America’s Got Talent picks the next big star, but in the past, local church, school or community center talent shows were all the rage. Did you participate? What was your talent? Did you play an amazing rendition of “Amazing Grace”? Did you win? Label your story “Talent Shows.” SKATING & SLEDDING Snowfall calls our inner child outside to build igloos, throw snowballs, lace up skates or grab a saucer sled. Did cold weather find you skating on a pond or at the park rink? Did you fly downhill on a sled or toboggan? Label your story “Skating & Sledding.” GI BILL OF RIGHTS Legislation in 1944 changed working-class America and the postwar economy by providing free education and low-interest home loans for vets. How did it…

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! This strange visitor from another planet first appeared in Action Comics No. 1, published in 1938 by DC Comics. See what you remember about the Man of Steel. 1 What were Superman’s birth name and home planet? 2 What was his secret identity on Earth? 3 Name his adoptive parents and hometown. 4 As an adult, where does Superman live and work? 5 Who is Superman’s love interest? 6 Who voiced the superhero on the 1940s radio show The Adventures of Superman? 7 Who were the newspaper editor and cub reporter introduced on that radio show? 8 What substance lethal only to Superman was introduced on the show? 9 Who played the lead role in the 1950s…

Bike tag, a game we played on the streets of Chicago, Illinois, in 1948, involved two-person teams on bikes. The pilot pedaled and steered the bike; the gunner sat on the handlebars and attacked the opposing teams by throwing stones. Was it safe? No, but we had fun. During one game, my gunner, Andy, and I were chased by another set of fighters. We quickly turned a corner and I ran straight into a parked car. Holding the handlebars, I was able to stop. Poor Andy was looking behind him and never saw what was coming. The laws of physics propelled him forward across the car’s hood and up the windshield. And because he was wearing cleats, the hood of the car was scratched with two long streaks. To the…

Long before smartphones, Emma Nutt made history in 1878 as the first female telephone operator. Hired away from her job at a telegraph office by Alexander Graham Bell, Nutt became the patient, polite voice that customers of the Edwin Holmes Telephone Dispatch Co. heard on the other end of the phone line. Prior to hiring Nutt, Holmes employed teenage boys, who were often boisterous, crude and rude. Nutt was paid $10 a month for 54-hour work weeks. These jobs were held exclusively by women for almost a century.…

My friend and I had front-row seats to see Frank Sinatra at New York’s Paramount Theater in 1956. Before the show, we stopped to buy him a polka-dot bowtie. That night, I hopped onstage to give it to him. Still singing, he took off the tie he was wearing and handed it to me. Yes, he wore our bowtie for his next show. I’ve been a fan ever since.…

Drive-in theaters were all the rage from the 1950s to the mid-’80s. Both my mom and dad had full-time jobs and also worked part time at a local drive-in. I learned how to fix things to help at home. When I turned 16, I got a job at the area’s largest outdoor theater, the Lincoln Drive-In on U.S. Route 1 just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and my fix-it skills came with me. I did whatever my boss asked, tearing tickets, parking cars and repairing speakers and in-car heaters—even breaking up the occasional fistfight on the field. At intermission one night, the manager asked me to leave my post at the snack counter and fix the jammed dime machine in the ladies room. She also handed me a package of the…

BATTLE CREEK, MI, became an incubator for new cereal creations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The grain-based foods were fed to health enthusiasts at spas there called sanitariums. Following in the footsteps of Dr. James Caleb Jackson, who formulated the first ready-to-eat cereal he called Granula, John Kellogg made his own version, called Granola, for the sanitarium he ran. C.W. Post countered with Grape-Nuts and, not long after, the first penny-off food coupon. Meanwhile, John Kellogg and his brother Will developed a flaking process for grains, which led to cereals such as Corn Flakes. Will marketed the flakes in convenient boxes and was the first to add prizes inside. Not to be outdone, Dr. Alexander P. Anderson formulated puffed cereal by heating grains in sealed glass tubes.…

1 The make and model bear the names of celestial bodies, including one of the planets. 2 This special-edition model is named after a strong tropical windstorm. 3 A fleet of five cars of the same make and model completed a high-speed durability run at Daytona International Speedway, going 100,000 miles at an average speed of over 100 mph. 4 Our featured car is equipped with a high-performance engine that became available midway into the model year. 5 The maker ID’d the update by adding a fraction to the model year. HOW’D YOU DO? Check your answer on page 60.…

At 17 in 1957, I decided southern New Mexico was too dull, so I enlisted in the Navy to see the world. My adventure was to start with a bus ride from Alamogordo to Albuquerque, a trip of about 200 miles. I was raring to go when my parents saw me off at the station. I’m leaving home! I’m in the Navy! What excitement! It wasn’t until halfway into the ride, however, that the excitement really began. I happened to be sitting over the left rear tire of the bus when it threw its tread. The heavy rubber slapping the top of the wheel well just inches from me sounded like machine-gun fire. I went on to do a few scary things in the Navy, but nothing matched that! Make…

Picking a favorite decade seems to hinge on having lived through at least part of it. For instance, I can say I love the fashionable ’40s—glamorous gowns, cascading curls—but I wasn’t born then, so when I choose my personal favorite, the 1940s can’t compete. My criteria would start with knowing something about the era—its highs and lows, its movers and shakers. Next, I’d determine whether I felt a connection to the times. And finally, I’d consider what my experiences had taught me. If you were one of the millions of baby boomers born at or near the start of the 1950s, you were a preteen or teen by the decade’s close. Surely those years strike a chord for you. I was 4 at the end of the ’50s, so I…

Ella Fitzgerald was giddy and danced during a 1938 interview with New York Post columnist Earl Wilson about her breakthrough hit, saying, “They’re swingin’ everything else, why not nursery rhymes?” Nursery rhymes indeed. “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” was based on an 1879 children’s singing game called Drop the Glove. Decca Records honchos flinched at Ella’s choice of material, but she and her bandleader Chick Webb were adamant that this catchy, Latin-tinged ditty contained a groove that would guarantee the jazz singer mainstream success. And did it ever! The strain topped the Billboard pop chart for 10 weeks in a row and became Fitzgerald’s signature tune. In contrast, Ella’s early years couldn’t have been more grim. Orphaned at 15, she lived briefly with an aunt in Harlem, left school and ran numbers for…

PAINT-BY-NUMBER kits found a following in the 1950s. After Macy’s tested sales with a marketing campaign, kits flew off the shelves. A few years later, Learn to Draw, a series with Jon Gnagy, was launched on TV. My family was hooked. My older sister painted medieval courts and the Renaissance, complex works that took the steady hand of an artist in the making. My skills were less perfect. At 8, I painted a pair of ballerinas. Mom painted Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, still lifes and garden scenes. Dad made wooden frames, stained to match. Our paintings were hung in sets or solo. It didn’t matter if my finished masterpiece was no match for my sister’s. What mattered was that I had accomplished it. I recently bought a paint-by-numbers kit, but when…

My father grew up in the 1930s and ’40s in a large family consisting of his mother, father, four brothers and two sisters. From the stories he told, I pictured a lively, ragtag group of seven who often scrapped among themselves, ate mountains of pancakes, set the chicken house on fire and then tried to put it out by throwing mud clods at it. Four of the brothers served in the military, one during peacetime and three in World War II. My Uncle Stephen served in the Pacific, my father, Edward, in Europe, and my Uncle Bernard, in Okinawa and Korea. They saw destruction and horrors on the front, and they were thrilled when they finally came home to their family in Jerseyville, Illinois. They got busy putting their lives…

A talker by nature, my mother, Barbara Fleece, worked as a switchboard operator for Michigan Bell Telephone Co. in 1951 when she was 18. It was her first real job and she won an award for her outstanding performance. While there, my mom worked alongside one of her dearest lifelong friends, Jean Bradford. Often between customer service calls during their work shifts, they would connect to each other’s control-board consoles and chat. Their supervisor eventually caught on to their ruse and split them up. As a result, Jean was assigned to a different area servicing long-distance calls and Mom continued to work on local calls.…

When visiting a cemetery for research, be sure to look at all the graves. By examining every stone that shares your surname, or perhaps an ancestor’s, you could find relatives you didn’t know you had. Genealogy societies often publish books and indexes of local county cemeteries. While searching them, remember that other branches of your family may have spelled their last names differently. Families were often buried in groups, so records showing cemetery location are often more useful than alphabetical name lists. Websites to use in your search: AfricanAmerican Cemeteries.com BillionGraves.com CyndisList.com/cemeteries FamilySearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Cemeteries FindAGrave.com Interment.net JewishGen.org NamesInStone.com Searching cemetery records can lead you to a rewarding ending to a story you never imagined. Similar success can be found by doing something I began several years ago. When visiting an ancestor’s…

Elvis Presley was my favorite singer in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until my mother heard Elvis sing a gospel song, “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley,” on the radio that I finally got to watch him on TV.DOT SAUER SANTEE, CA MY HUSBAND AND I WERE MARRIED in August 1954. We spent short stints in Alabama and Utah before moving to Memphis, Tennessee, in the spring of 1955. The Elvis Presley phenomenon was in its early stages then; “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” wouldn’t come out until July of the following year, which was only a few weeks after the birth of our first child, Nora. We were so far from family and friends, my mom suggested sending my sister Beverly, 13, to stay with us to help…

Richard Hollingshead patented his outdoor movie concept so his rather large mother could watch movies outside in comfort. His first drive-in theater opened in Camden, NJ, on June 6, 1933. The following year, Wilson Shankweiler opened a drive-in theater in Pennsylvania. Shankweiler’s is still family-owned and opens seasonally. Today, FM stereo transmitters deliver surround-sound effects to your portable or car radio. You can see double features for one price—adults, $10; children under 12, $6; 2 and under, free.…

1955 ROCKWELL SELLS In the mid-’50s, Norman Rockwell drew a series of delightful portraits of freckled boys and pigtailed girls to promote Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, transforming the venerable brand into a children’s favorite. This ad from Life shows the cereal as a quick meal kids can prepare themselves. 1971 AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL By the 1970s, cold cereals were firmly established as snacks, with brands such as Chex popular for party mixes (see page 48). Hot cereals like Quaker Oats struggled to compete. The solution? That kid staple, chocolate, of course. 1958 KID-SIZED FOR FUN Post answered competitor Kellogg’s Rockwell campaign with ads from another Saturday Evening Post illustrator, Richard “Dick” Sargent, whose style was more obviously tongue-in-cheek. This scene of kids playing grown-ups…

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…

RADIO SHOWS 1. Chase & Sanborn Hour (with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, opposite) 2. The Jell-O Program (starring Jack Benny) 3. The Lux Radio Theatre (Cecil B. DeMille, host) 4. The Kraft Music Hall (Bing Crosby, host) 5. Good News of 1938 (with Fanny Brice) ~ ACADEMY AWARDS ~ BEST MOTION PICTURE The Life of Emile Zola ~ PULITZER PRIZE/DRAMA ~ Our Town Thornton Wilder SONGS 1. “Begin the Beguine” Artie Shaw and His Orchestra 2. “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon” The Andrews Sisters 3. “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” Ella Fitzgerald 4. “Thanks for the Memory” Bob Hope and Shirley Ross 5. “Wabash Cannonball” Roy Acuff ~ SPORTS ~ WORLD SERIES New York Yankees over Chicago Cubs (4-0) WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING CHAMPION Joe Louis…

Growing up during the Depression in the 1930s, my father, John Martin, played baseball at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, New York. He was good enough to be recruited to play on the New York National Guard team in 1938. The country was still struggling and times were tough, so he enlisted with the 212th Coast Artillery and traveled around the Northeast playing baseball while getting paid for it. At a game on Long Island, he met a high school girl named Dorothy from the small town of Baldwin. They started dating and writing letters. In 1941, my dad re-enlisted in the Army with the 355th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion and was sent to California to help guard the coastline. His unit was stationed at Santa Monica Beach, where local movie…

“My sister, Dotty, and I embrace in this 1948 photo. At the time, I’m sure, my momma made me do it, but now we are really close and talk weekly on the phone.”JIM VANCE • TUSTIN, CA Barbie lunch boxes were all the rage in the 1960s when I was 7 and attending James Fallon Elementary School in Wayne, New Jersey. I remember PB&J sandwiches, Hi-C fruit juice and Oreo cookies. If my mother tried to sneak in an olive-loaf sandwich, I drew the line—no one would trade me for that.…

We switchboard operators handled all emergency calls before 911 was available. Once a child called to say his mom had fallen and couldn’t talk. The operator kept the child on the line while our supervisor called the police and ambulance, and the rest of us prayed. I still recall the relief we experienced that night when we learned the woman was OK. Share your stories about work and career: REMINISCE.COM/SUBMIT-A-STORY…

Crooners like Frank Sinatra dominated music in the early 1950s. But once Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” hit No. 1 in June 1955 (and No. 2 for the year), the hot new sound was at or near the top of the annual Billboard chart for the rest of the decade. 1956 #1 “Heartbreak Hotel” Elvis Presley #2 “Don’t Be Cruel” Elvis Presley 1957 #1 “All Shook Up” Elvis Presley #3“Little Darlin’”The Diamonds 1958 #2 “All I Have to Do Is Dream” The Everly Brothers #3 “I Beg of You” Elvis Presley 1959 #2 “Mack the Knife” Bobby Darin…

The United Nations Command returned more than 1,000 Chinese and 5,000 Korean soldiers and about 450 civilians, while the communist side repatriated 684 UNC sick and wounded soldiers during Operation Little Switch, April 20 to May 3, 1953. Operation Big Switch began Aug. 5, 1953, nine days after the armistice, and lasted until Dec. 23, 1953. It saw the repatriation of more than 87,000 POWs—about 12,000 UNC troops from the communists, and 75,000 Korean and Chinese soldiers from the UNC. Some 20,000 captives, many of them Chinese Nationalists who supported exiled leader Chiang Kai-shek, refused to return to communist rule. Prisoners on both sides who didn’t want to go back to their home countries came under the care of a neutral nations commission for a short period. In time, many…

“My mom worked at the Starlite Dude Ranch Drive-In, Maryville, Missouri, in ’64. She loved the job but hated wearing a cowboy hat because it messed up her beehive hairdo.”SHANNON SCHNEIDER WAMEGO, KS Before the 66 Park In Theatre in Crestwood, MO, closed for good in 1992, CECILIA FRANCIS, now living in Ballwin, and a friend from high school took one final snapshot. This was the place where teens 16 to 18 went to kiss, she says, but that was it: Students at Mercy High in University City had a no-touching-whatsoever rule.…

FROM THE TASTE OF HOME COLLECTION Grown-Up Party Snack Mix Party mix is a tradition in our home. I improved on my mom’s recipe by replacing margarine with heart-healthy olive oil. It’s every bit as delicious. MELISSA HANSEN • ROCHESTER, MN PREP: 15 min.• BAKE: 1 hour + cooling MAKES: 31/2 qt. 3 cups Corn Chex 3 cups Rice Chex 3 cups Wheat Chex 3 cups Multi Grain Cheerios 1 cup salted peanuts 11/2 cups pretzel sticks 1/3 cup olive oil 4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp. seasoned salt 1/8 tsp. garlic powder 1. In a large bowl, combine cereals, peanuts and pretzels. 2. In a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients; pour over cereal mixture and toss to coat. Transfer to two 15x10x1-in. baking pans coated…

Mama married Daddy Jack, a sergeant in the Army Air Corps, in 1941, when I was almost 4, and we all moved to a military base near Las Vegas, Nevada. Mornings I liked to sit under the table with my paper dolls while Mama and Daddy Jack talked and drank their coffee. One morning I heard Mama say, “Oh Jack, I don’t know how to make ends meet this week.” Oh no, I thought, Mama doesn’t know how to make insmeat. She’d never made it before, but suddenly I badly wanted to try it. My mouth was watering for delicious insmeat. A few days later some neighbor ladies were over for morning coffee. I was in my usual spot under the table, playing with my paper dolls and still thinking…

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