Category Archives: Nostalgia

Beware the Ides of March

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Mom and me in the 1990s.
My mom and me in the 1990s.

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. The Ides of March. (Mom died New Year’s Day.) Today I’m going to my brother’s house and we will reminisce and have dinner with family including my mom’s little sister who is 13 years younger than mom.

My mom often told me that she raised her little sister.

My cousin wrote me a loving sympathy letter that included a funny story I had never heard before about Mom, my aunt (my cousin’s mom) and red squares.

My aunt had a friend over and my mom, as the older sister, had them in a competition to earn red cloth squares. I’m not sure what ages they were, but Mom had them busy doing chores. They would earn a red cloth square for finishing their chore first.

I talked to my aunt about it and she said whoever earned the most red squares won the grand prize. She said she wanted the grand prize more than anything!

She won — and the grand prize turned out to be a bigger red cloth square.

Mom was a strong Christian and I have memories of her giving us a Bible verse each morning. She typed hundreds of them on 3 1/2 by 2″ cards.

She was big on chores and that’s one thing I despised the most coming home from school. We’d come home to an empty house, as latch key kids when Mom was earning her degree in Music at the University of Washington. She already had a degree in Home-Ec Education. Mom would leave a legal-sized yellow sheet of college-ruled paper with both sides filled with chores to be done before she got home. She had an ineligible scrawl that was hard to read.

I realize now, she not only wanted dinner cooked, the dishes done, the house vacuumed, the garage swept (you get the idea) — she was keeping my brother and I out of trouble. She was keeping us busy.

Tomorrow we spread her ashes at our riverfront property.

Here’s a photo of her in her teens or early twenties at the river.

What chores did you have growing up? Did you have your children do chores too?

A funny memory

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bobcat
A bobcat in our backyard. I’ve seen this one lately, but haven’t gotten a new photo.

When I was first married and moved to the Palm Springs area, I worked for a Public Relations agency.

We were housed in a small building named for Bob Hope on a hospital campus that has President Eisenhower’s name. A number of rich and famous were associated with the hospital including Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope.

One of the accounts we worked on was the Bob Hope Classic, a golf tournament that raised millions for local charities.

The first year I was working the Classic, I answered the phone and got a request from Rick Dee’s secretary that he’d like to play in the tournament. At the time, Rick Dees was a local Los Angeles DJ. It was before he went national. I had moved from Washington state and never heard of him. I told the woman on the other end of the phone, “No.”

We were well into organizing the tournament and I didn’t think we could allow more players.

Next, I got a call from Rick Dees himself. I told him no. He called back two more times and I hung up on him!

One of my co-workers overheard and asked, “Who were you talking to?”

“Some guy named Rick Dees. He wants to play in the Classic and he called me three times!”

“You hung up on Rick Dees?”

The boss immediately found Rick Dees number and called him back and apologized. Guess what? He was allowed to play in the tournament.

Fast forward six or seven years, and I was at the Classic with my husband, who had our one- year-old son on his shoulders. We walked along the golf course and I spotted Rick Dees.

I walked up to him and said “I’m the woman who hung up on you years ago.”

He laughed and said he remembered. My husband asked for his autograph. Rick Dees was friendly and signed my son’s baseball cap.

What are some of your funny memories during your early working years?

Seriously?

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No, I didn’t watch the Grammy’s. In fact, I didn’t know they were on. I was glancing at news on my laptop yesterday morning and the headline above jumped out at me.

Here’s the song of the year. Warning, it is a tear jerker but a beautiful song.

I’ve been a Bonnie Raitt fan for as long as I can remember! Her first album debuted in 1971. Here’s a LINK to her website with her bio. She’s been inducted into the Hall of Fame and won her 14th Grammy this year.

I wonder if the headline writer who called her an “unknown blues singer” was fired or will be embarrassed for the rest of his or her life?

Here are two songs of hers I like. Yes I owned these albums and played them over and over.

Are you a Bonnie Raitt fan? What are your thoughts about calling her an “unknown blues singer?”

The end of AM radio?

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boy tuning transistor radio
Photo by Victoria Akvarel on Pexels.com

Did you know that EVs interfere with AM Radio waves?

I read yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that Teslas have already gotten rid of AM.

Here’s an excerpt from “Sadness and Static as AM Stations Fade–Space aliens, UFOs, the supernatural—all grist for radio shows” by Peter Funt.

Several European car makers, including Audi, BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Volvo, have stopped putting AM radios in certain models. Trendy EVs and hybrids have electrical systems that interfere with AM audio. But rather than moving a few parts around, or shielding the equipment better, manufacturers are cutting out AM.

American automakers are taking a more cautious approach, but Tesla has already eliminated AM radios, and Ford plans to drop AM from its electric pickup trucks. It’s no small matter, since about 47 million Americans still listen to programming on the AM dial, according to Nielsen data.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sadness-and-static-as-am-stations-fade-electric-car-airwaves-radio-host-ufo-media-auto-drive-soundtrack-11675023531?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

The article also said that those of us who grew up with AM radio view it as the soundtrack of our lives. I grew up on the west coast of Washington State. KJR AM radio was the top 40 station. One of my best friends signed up our high school for a competition where we saved our Wrigley’s gum wrappers and made a chain with them. The school that built the longest chain won a concert downtown Seattle for the band WAR — free for the entire school.

We won. I always wondered if we really won, or if it was my friend dating a DJ at the radio station?

I used to listen to the wacky Art Bell at night when I couldn’t sleep. People would call in with tall tales of UFOs and abductions, mysterious discoveries of crystal skulls and assorted weirdness. I found it entertaining.

I’d also tune into talk and news shows while I drove. It sort of was a soundtrack of my life.

Now with Sirius in the car, we rarely tune in AM. We listen to music of our preferred decades.

Do you think that AM will fade away? What AM stations have you listened to and what was their format?

Vinyl is hot again

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Album cover of Rubber Soul.
My favorite Beatles album.

In a Wall Street Journal article called “Why Millennials Want Their Parents’ Vinyl Records” by Marc Myers, he states “Sales of LPs soared during the pandemic as younger listeners discovered their nostalgic and sensory appeal.”

After reading the story, I regret getting rid of my vinyl collection. When I was in high school and college I spent a small fortune on albums. I had a pretty impressive stereo system thanks to my parents’ graduation present. I hauled my collection of albums that included Rod Stewart, George Harrison, Elton John, Beatles and David Bowie all over the country.

It was after my son was in college that I cleaned out a book case that held all my albums. I decided to get rid of them. I had no way to play them anymore. My son asked for a record player with built-in speakers for Christmas at that time, so I let him take what he wanted from my collection and gave the rest to the thrift store Angel View, a few blocks from our house.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

In December, I bought my 32-year-old daughter the gift she truly wanted—an easy-to-use turntable and amp with built-in speakers. She asked if I still had my David Bowie LPs, and I happily handed them over. Then, as an afterthought, she wondered if my Steely Dan and George Harrison albums were still around.

It turns out that several of my baby boomer friends are getting similar requests and have found themselves hauling heavy boxes of LPs out of storage at the behest of their adult children. The vinyl revival began more than a decade ago, with budget turntables and a limited selection of albums sold in trendy clothing stores. But last year, the format’s popularity surged in the U.S., selling 41.7 million units, up from 21.5 million in 2020. LPs outsold CDs for the first time in 30 years, as well as digital albums, according to a report from MRC Data-Billboard.

The spike has been driven, in part, by younger listeners nostalgic for an era when music—and maybe life in general—seemed more hands-on and fun. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, young people have been forced to postpone many of the things they looked forward to most—campus life, parties, travel, weddings, even having children. During this period, records became a nostalgic lifeline. In 2021, 87 new albums sold more than 50,000 vinyl copies, up from 51 new albums in 2020. Adele, a millennial favorite, topped the list, selling 318,000 vinyl copies of her album “30,” despite a price tag of nearly $40.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-millennials-want-their-parents-vinyl-records-11647061260?mod=life_work_minor_pos4

I loved listening to albums and reading the album covers. I’d play the same records over and over. I have memories of listening to certain records with my closest friends. Then the casette tapes came into play.

Album Madman Across the Water.
I loved the song “Tiny Dancer” from Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water.”

Do you still have your albums? What artists were your favorites? Do your kids like vinyl too?

Benefits of Old Friends

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friends reunited wearing face masks
Me and my best friend from college, showing off our masks at Pike Place Market, during a visit a few months ago.

I read an article today in the Wall Street Journal that made me feel good. It was about the power of friendships. It stated that reconnecting with friends from our past helps our mood. I looked back on my visits with college friends and I agree. I do feel better after connecting with my close friends. It gives me a lift that is more powerful than getting together with new friends. According to the article, we feel that someone from our past understands us, knows us better. I have a few people in my life that fit that bill including two friends from college and a couple from our early married lives. Whenever I get together with any of them, I feel warmth and peace.

My husband has a few friends like that, too. We reconnected with his best friend from grade school through high school when we visited our daughter while she went to college in Utah. Their laughter and fun stories are contagious when they are together. It was such a joy.

Here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Article by Elizabeth Bernstein:

The Secret Power of Reconnecting With Old Friends
There’s a special boost that only old friends can give us. Here’s why we need it now. Missing old friends? You’re not alone. Pals from our past can give us a sense of stability in turbulent times.

Research shows that psychological distress often causes nostalgia. People tend to experience this sentimental longing for the past when they are feeling sad, lonely, anxious or disconnected, or when life feels meaningless or uncertain.

“Covid represents a big sense of discontinuity in our lives. We’ve lost a sense of who we are,” says Clay Routledge, a psychologist and professor of business at North Dakota State University, who has studied nostalgia for 20 years. “Recalling cherished experiences from our past can remind us who we want to be, who we want to be around, and what we feel is important in life.”

Nostalgia increases positive mood, self-esteem and self-confidence, according to studies conducted by Dr. Routledge and others. It makes us feel more socially connected and optimistic. It helps us feel that life has more meaning. And it’s highly motivating, pushing us to pursue goals, reconnect with people who were once important to us, and make new relationships.

We can become nostalgic about any period in our life. But it’s most common to feel a longing for our adolescence or early adulthood, likely because that’s when we developed our sense of identity and forged our own relationships.

Dr. Routledge says that most people feel nostalgic about social experiences, typically with family or friends. We may long for their support or feel we can trust them. Old friends—especially ones from our youth, who may also know our family—are often the people we believe truly understand us.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-secret-power-of-reconnecting-with-old-friends-11637069401?mod=hp_listc_pos3

Do you have people from your past that make you feel good when you reconnect? What do your old friends mean to you?

college friends reunited
Reunited with a college roommate.