Tabla de contenidos para January 2022 en Reminisce Extra

FAREWELL FOR A GENERATION Born in New York in 1945, Don McLean grew up playing and writing folk songs, and hanging out with such influential music icons as Pete Seeger. In early 1972, a few months after McLean recorded the album American Pie, its title-track single went to No. 1, catapulting him to international stardom. At a 2015 auction, McLean’s original working manuscript for “American Pie” fetched $1.2 million. “American Pie” wasn’t just another hit 45. On the surface, it was a heartfelt tribute to rock pioneer Buddy Holly, whose 1959 plane-crash death shook 13-year-old McLean’s world to its foundation. “Buddy Holly was the first and last person I ever really idolized as a kid,” McLean explained in an interview with Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One…

Many of my friends lived on my street—East Fourth near Prospect Park in Brooklyn—during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Linda Hart and I played in the snow in winter, and in the summertime, Helen Byrnes, Lydia Gaglia and I picked and ate the delicious ripe cherries from a tree growing in Lydia’s father’s front yard. We kids played all the typical games of the era: pick-up sticks, board games and jacks. We played baseball, skated and rode bikes. We loved to visit the work horses, which were kept in a small barn up the street. Our neighborhood also had an abandoned house—we all believed it was haunted. Mrs. Stanfield lived next door to us. Occasionally she let us kids come in and look at her many ancient treasures, such…

Antelmo Lopez, my father, came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was a child, and graduated from high school in Los Angeles in June 1944. The family celebrated with a party, and then Al, as he was called, went straight to boot camp at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, where he got a fresh haircut and a new uniform. All was confusion as a diverse group of young men from around the country began the process of forming a cohesive fighting unit. One morning at the crack of dawn, the sergeant came into the barracks. “Listen up!” he barked. “Garcia, Sanchez, Lopez, Hernandez, Rodriguez! Get up and be on the bus in 10 minutes.” With no idea of where they were headed, Dad and the others jumped out…

“Do you want to go to the arcade?” my grandfather asked one day in the summer of 1960. Pop, as we called him, didn’t need to ask twice. I ran out to his Plymouth Belvedere as fast as my little 5-year-old legs could carry me. It was a short ride to Leon’s Arcade at the Long Branch Boardwalk. My older brother, Glenn, was already there with his friends, having ridden his bike to the pier. Leon’s was always crowded and I stood with Pop at the entrance, drinking it in. What a din! Music from the antique carousel swirled in the background, accompanied by the constant thud from the Skee-Ball machines. Most enticing were the clicking flippers, thumping bumpers, and chiming bells from the many pinball machines. I watched intently…

With a scientist’s curiosity, Edwin H. Land, founder and CEO of Polaroid Corp., sought solutions to everyday problems. A Harvard dropout, he held 535 U.S. patents. His initial quest—to reduce nighttime glare from car headlights—resulted in his synthetic polarizer, which was patented in 1933. But it was in 1943, when his impatient 3-year-old daughter demanded to see vacation snapshots “right now,” that Land conceived of his most transformative product. Within an hour of her request, Land had worked out the problem. Four years later, the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, the first camera that could produce a developed print without sending the film out for processing, went on sale at Boston’s Jordan Marsh department store. The process wasn’t instantaneous and it was messy. You clicked the shutter, cranked out a…

A born and bred New Yorker, growing up in the Bronx, I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else, except for a brief period when Southern California called my name, thanks to the TV show Gidget. The year was 1965 and I was 7. That same year, The Mamas & The Papas released “California Dreamin’” and like that my fantasy life had a soundtrack. I later doubled down on my wish to move to the West Coast when The 4 : 30 Movie, which aired weekday afternoons on Channel 7 WABC-TV, introduced me to more of the beach set, including Sandra Dee in the film version of Gidget and coastal couple Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. That dream life was one where I did nothing but run on the sand to…

LET’S EAT OUT! It’s half-past snow-o’clock, so it must be time to dream about summer meals. We’re planning a story around American makers of outdoor products, including Igloo coolers, Weber grills and Wilson footballs. Share your favorite picnic stories and photos. Label your submission “Picnics.” DEPARTMENTS Submissions for our many standing departments are welcome. Below are a few favorites. Still can’t decide where your story belongs? Send it along and let us figure it out. Growing Up: Joys of childhood and the teenage years. Pictures from the Past: How we lived and looked back when. Is it a fantastic picture? Send it for consideration for our Back Cover. Name That Car: Challenge us to guess your vintage vehicle. At Work: Jobs that earned a place in your memory. Brush with…

Times were simpler when my good friend Herman Fields and I rode our bicycles 7 miles from our homes in Osawatomie to the swimming pool in Paola. One day when I was 14, we arrived to find only one other person in the pool. I had never paid much attention to girls before, but I noticed this one. She was wearing a black swimsuit and had long black hair. Sitting at the top of the slide, she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I didn’t have the courage to talk to her, but I did everything I could to get her to notice me. She didn’t. A year later, I was working at the local drive-in theater. I was friends with the projectionist, and after the show started, I…

SPECIAL DELIVERY We open our archives to show how cards, many with the symbolic stork, conveyed the hopes and ideals of their times. 1. Four-leaf clovers and a stork double the good luck wishes on this 1910 postcard. 2. The stork also represents fertility. This one on an announcement from 1912 carries a baby right into the house. 3. A card from 1940 has the baby waiting in the nest of a bluebird, another symbol of good luck. 4. This birth announcement from 1912 faces the facts of life: A nurse, rather than a bird, holds the newborn. 5. The tot hitching a ride from the stork on this 1910-era card answers the question, “How do babies get here?” 6. By 1968, storks are a general symbol for babies, as…

American Bobby Fischer outmatches Russian Boris Spassky to become top chessman. The International Tennis Federation approves optic yellow for tennis balls, which are easier to see than white ones in color broadcasts. Hewlett-Packard debuts the HP-35, a pocket calculator with scientific functions; slide rule sales take a nosedive. The nation’s first subscription cable service—Home Box Office (HBO)—launches with 365 subscribers. Little kids ride Hot Cycles trikes, while big kids play Pong, Atari’s revolutionary video game. And Merriam-Webster adds these words. AIR HOCKEY: Brunswick Billiards’ new frictionless, air-cushioned table game re-creates a high-contact sport, with paddles in place of hockey sticks, right middle. BAG LADY: To bring attention to society’s neglect of old people, activist Sharon Curtin writes about one who carries everything she owns in shopping bags. CASH COW: Executives…

HELICOPTER USD150263 S INVENTOR: IGOR SIKORSKY PATENT GRANTED: MARCH 19, 1935 ITALY IN 1489. Observing the spinning action of a maple tree seed as it wafted gently to the ground, a man had an idea. What if the little winged whirligigs had their own source of power? Could their spinning motion counteract the force of gravity and thus cause them to rise? At that time, this would have been impossible, beyond the scope of almost anyone on earth. But not for Leonardo da Vinci. In yet another stunningly prescient exercise, da Vinci put his thoughts on paper and designed a human-powered machine which, although impractically heavy, addressed the primary concept of a rotating-wing aircraft. Fast-forward 500 years: Igor Sikorsky, born in Kyiv, Ukraine, was a bright, ambitious young man studying…

Having immigrated to Canada from Scotland in the spring of 1957, when I was 4, we had to adjust to many new things that we were not used to, including our first Canadian winter. Although the winter season in Scotland was about the same length, it wasn’t at all the same weather. Winter there was more damp than anything else. In Canada, we felt temperatures dipping to depths we’d never known. As the crisp fall air turned brisk that year, my mum, Helen, soon realized our outdoor clothing wasn’t going to keep us warm. We were like early pioneers for our family; years later, more of our relatives would follow us to Canada. They would know from our experience how to prepare for the season. Thankfully, Mum was a skilled…

A hobby that took up a lot of my time as a teenager was working on cars. In high school, I bought a Ford Model A for $15; it needed only a little bodywork and a tuneup. Shortly before I retired many years later, I got another one. That Model A was mostly rust when I got it, and restoring it was a long process. Jan, my wife, spent hours redoing the interior—headliner, seats and door panels—until the car was parade-ready. A car buddy in Sabetha wanted to trade me for it, which is how I got this car. After showing Jan a picture of what the restoration would look like, she agreed with me that it was a little more practical than the Model A: We could take it…