jimsjournal
Welcome to 1950 or so -- 03/05/04

This week's topic is... What was...

1. ...your first grade teacher's name?
Miss Sullivan. She was a friendly cheerful woman, elderly woman. [Okay, damnit, so she was probably a few years younger than I am now back when she taught me. Okay? Satisfied? But older people were a lot older back then. Honest. They really were. If you don't believe me, just wait a few years. you'll see...] Short, gray-haired, energetic. (She was usually so very pleasant that I can remember being quite startled when she did speak sternly to a misbehaving student.) I was in her first grade class for the 1949-1950 school year; she had taught my parents in the same school many years earlier. When eventually the public school system forced her into retirement, she became a teacher in a Catholic elementary school. I loved Miss Sullivan and remember her fondly.

2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?
I'm a radio child. My favorite Saturday morning program was not a television cartoon -- it was a radio program, the Big Jon and Sparky show. Then, when we finally got television -- probably late in 1951 -- the kinds of cartoon shows that are on today didn't exist. (Also, there were very few stations.) We watched The Big Top Circus, Ramar of the Jungle, old movie serials (like Commando Cody--Sky Marshall of the Universe), Smilin' Ed's Gang/Andy's Gang (with Froggy the Gremlin -- "Pluck your magic twanger, Froggy!" bwoing! "Hi ya, kids, hi ya!" -- if you remember that you must be somewhere around my age -- and Midnight the Cat and Buster Brown (and his dog Tige).

3. ...the name of your very first best friend?
There were three of us who grew up together -- a regular triumvirate -- me and Mike and Louie -- all around the same age, Mike and I just weeks apart, Louie several months our senior -- there was one house between my house and Louie's house and Mike was across the street from Louie. We were playmates from babyhood and friends until our later teen years sent us in different directions (they dropped out of school at 16 -- fairly standard for boys in the blue collar ethnic neighborhood I grew up in -- and I went on not just to graduate from high school, but went away to college as well -- Mike became a hair stylist but died in his twenties -- Louie became a barber, eventually a very successful barber with a large shop in a great location)

4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal?
Cheerios. No question about it. When I was a kid I loved Cheerios. Oh, sometimes I'd eat Kellog's Corn Flakes, etc., but I ate many boxes of Cheerios during my childhood... yes, and cut off and collected the boxtops to send in for cool stuff..

5. ...your favorite thing to do after school?
Play. Indoors, outdoors, whatever... just wanted to get out with my friends and play. (There was a while when Big Jon and Sparky had a late afternoon show as well as the Saturday morning one and I would frequently leave off playing and come in to listen to it -- seems to me it was also getting pretty close to dinnertime then.)



Went for a run a lunch time -- mid-40's (around 7°C), thick gray clouds, always seemed on the verge of rain without actually raining -- had a wonderful run. Well, not exactly wonderful, you know, but wonderful that I did it -- the first real run outdoors since Jill and I did that New Year's Day run. There's a race coming up on Sunday, a three-miler, so I figured that if I could survive three and a half miles today I'd be able to struggle through on Sunday.

Wrote most of this entry before dinner but then Nancy was using this computer to check her e-mail and then she started to check out sites from my list of journals I like, reading family sites, like a nephew's site and his girlfriend's site and their dog's site -- Nancy doesn't read Jill's pages, she prefers to have me summarize them for her -- and I pointed out a few of the journal sites I read that are not by people connected to us in one way or another -- and she got hooked on Wilma's Word and hogged my computer for a long time <*grin*> -- and then Jill and her friend Joe were dismantling Jill's laptop -- her fan had stopped working several weeks ago -- and then she was using my computer to shop for a new fan -- and I went to bed without having posted. Reading a book, feeling very sleepy, put my glasses on nightstand and turn out my light..... drifting off to sleep... and suddenly I get a cramp in my left foot.

Wide awake. Hobbling around. Ouch. Remember this entry, come downstairs to finish and post it. Okay, finished writing, now to upload it and link it in and send a notify e-mail... my foot only hurts a little now... hope I can then get to sleep.



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