The Seventies!?? Mere infants! How about the Thirties?

My main form of transportation was my little red wagon. My two sisters traveled on roller skates (remember skate keys?). Some kids had bicycles. My dad drove a 1930 Packard. One helluva car! But not only did it not have an automatic transmission, if I remember right, it didn't even have synchro-mesh. I don't think it had occurred to anyone to put a radio in an automobile yet. Going for a Sunday drive was real entertainment (not that much traffic, and touring around looking at things you hadn't seen before was fun).

Speaking of entertainment, there was the big Zenith console radio with the "Magic Eye" tuner (keep twisting the dial until the little green line is as narrow as you can get it). For those who don't know what a radio is, it was sort of like television, but without pictures. You made the pictures in your head. There were certain advantages to this: I knew that behind his mask, the Lone Ranger looked like me. So did the Green Hornet. On Sunday evening, October 30, 1938 (the evening before Hallowe'en, and I was seven years old), we heard the famous "Mercury Theater on the Air" broadcast of The War of the Words by H. G. Wells. We listened to the Mercury Theater every Sunday evening and we knew it was just Orson Welles doing his thing again. Surprised the heck out of us and amused us no end when the morning papers arrived and we learned that huge numbers of people had come unglued and panicked! Orson Welles had scared the crap out of the whole country!

Sunday morning funnies were greatly anticipated. I was hooked on Buck Rogers (James T. Kirk was pretty pale compared to this guy! The late Seventies TV "Buck Rogers" series with Gil Girard got it all wrong. Girard was a smug twit compared to the real steely-eyed, firm-jawed Buck Rogers). I sent in 25¢ and a stack of bubble-gum wrappers and got a Buck Rogers atomic disintegrator pistol (this was long before the Manhattan Project, and only theoretical physicists, science fiction writers, and fans of Buck Rogers were familiar with the word "atomic"). Put a flashlight battery in it and it flashed a light and buzzed whenever you pulled the trigger. If any Martian Tiger-Men invaded the neighborhood, I was ready for 'em! I also remember the first appearance of Prince Valiant, one of the best drawn comic strips of all time.

You could go to a drug store, sit at the counter (soda fountain), and order a milk shake or malted milk. They didn't extrude flavored plastic into a paper cup back in those Glorious Days of Yesteryear. The soda jerk would put big scoops of real ice cream into a large stainless steel can, followed by real milk, followed by a couple of big squirts of syrup, then he or she would attach the can to a mixer and mix the whole thing up. They'd pour the mixture into a 16 oz. glass, give you a big straw, and leave the can on the counter with you. Sometimes the shake was so thick it was hard to get thought the straw, but there was no law that said you couldn't just pick it up and drink it. But drinking it through the straw was a sort of a test. The rude noises you made with the straw when you hit bottom were a particularly bitter-sweet pleasure. It meant that the glass was almost empty, but the taste was marvelous and you wanted to get it all! But you weren't through yet. You could almost refill the 16 oz. glass with what was left in the can. Mmmmmmmm Good!! Burp! Waddle out of the drugstore with a beatific smile on your face.

Hamburgers came with an 8 oz. patty of real ground beef (not a "quarter pound" of ground miscellaneous animal parts mixed with wet cardboard) served on what we now call an "oversized bun," and you could get it with mustard, ketchup, lettuce, sliced tomato, sliced onion, and pickle, or any combination thereof—tailor made before your very eyes. They didn't start throwing hamburgers out the window at passing cars until decades later. A particular favorite of mine (still is) is the chiliburger. Served on a platter, the above described 8 oz. patty is place on the bottom half of the bun with the top half sliced in two and set on either side, like parentheses. Then a bowl of chili is poured over the whole thing, and it's topped with shredded cheese or chopped onion or both. I loved 'em with a passion, but I haven't seen one in years. Can't find 'em on the menu. Definitely not served from a drive-thru window   Throwing a chiliburger out a window at a passing car might by kinda messy.

Comic books were 10¢. I had a copy of Action Comics—the very first appearance of Superman. Many months later it went out with a stack of other comic books to be replaced by new ones. That issue of Action Comics is now worth thousands!

Anybody remember Big-Little books? About 3 3/4 by 4 1/2 inches (approx.) and about 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick, hard cover, printed on pulp paper, with text on the left page and an illustration on the right, running maybe 300 pages. Sort of half-book, half comic book. Great titles, like Batman and The Cheetah Caper, Buck Rogers and The Moons of Saturn, Dick Tracy and the Racketeer Gang, Mandrake the Magician, Red Ryder and The Fighting Westerner, Tarzan and The Mark of The Red Hyena, Terry and the Pirates and Mountain Stronghold, The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger and the Black Shirt Highwayman, and Tiny Tim and Mechanical Men. I had a bunch of 'em. Collectors' items now.

My weekly allowance was 25¢.

I've got lots more, but maybe later. All that nostalgia about chiliburgers got me thinking about lunch. . . .

Don Firth