LIFESTYLE

Gary Brown: Photos from my childhood

Gary Brown
Special to The Canton Repository
Gary Brown

"I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!"

With those words, accompanying a caricature of Wimpy as part of a Facebook posting, I was back in my childhood, watching "Popeye" cartoons on a black-and-white TV in my family's living room.

It wasn't just Wimpy calling me back in television time. A cartoonish drawing of Elsie the cow beckoned me to long-ago broadcast Borden TV commercials. So, did a picture of Mikey, the little boy who surprisingly ate cereal even though he "hates everything." And a "PLEASE STAND BY" television alert warning screen was shown, as well, so for an embarrassing amount of time I sat there holding my phone, waiting. OK, what's crisis? Weather problems?

Many of the images were taken from advertisements that were popular during my childhood. Some I cared about intensely. Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Complete Pizza. A&W Root Beer. Slip'n Slide. Other ads I could care less about, but nevertheless recognized. L'eggs Sheer Energy pantyhose. Dippity-do hair styling gunk and Lilt hair coloring kit. Love's Baby Soft body conditioning stuff. Chiclets Tiny Size Candy Coated Gum. I never bothered with the latter, unless some aged aunt offered it to me. I was a full-mouthed bubble gum kind of guy.

Eating My Past

As might be expected, some of strongest of childhood memories are of things we ate, so many of the pictures in the Facebook posting were of foods. A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. A can of Charles Chips. A tray containing a "TV Dinner." A wrapper surrounding a Fudgsickle, boasting the bright red dots. A string holding solidified sugar in a candy neckless. How many of those little candies broke off the string and rolled across the floor in one kid's lifetime?

Jiffy pop. It wasn't a TV movie without Jiffy pop.

Quite a few of the images, however, depicted items we used--artifacts at my age — that never made a move toward our mouths. Instead, we played with them. A spirograph. A pogo stick. A pack of "Old Maid" cards. A kaleidoscope canister. A hop-scotch marking on a driveway. That puzzle with red and white numbered pieces that slid around in a back frame until they all were back in order. Playing cards, attached to a bicycle so that when they flapped against the spokes of a rotating bike wheel our two wheeler sounded--sort of--like a motorcycle.

One of the pictures was of that four-finger "fortune-telling" device that we used to make out of paper to amaze and astound our younger siblings or neighborhood friends because, well, they didn't know any better than we did when our older brothers pulled that trick on us.

Other photos were of things that our parents "played with" in our young lives. An electric frying pan. Tupperware containers. A Polaroid Land Camera. Microphones from a drive-in theater. My dad and mom always seemed less stressed when the family was at a drive-in movie, just before we kids all fell asleep half-way through a film.

Iconic Images

A few of the other photographs were iconic images from the time I was growing up. A date-stamped library book card. The alphabet banner--both lower and upper case--that teachers extended across the top of a blackboard. Those thin circular erasers with a green bristle brush. Paper with shorthand subjects. A 45 rpm record player. A glue bottle with the orange rubber applicator at the top. Picture disks for photo viewers. A wall phone with a spiral cord. A mood ring.

In a drawing, children in a classroom held their hands over their hearts and pledged allegiance to the American flag. I'm guessing--hoping--that school children still practice this exercise in patriotism, but clothes dated this particular image to the 50s.

All in all, the images provided a pleasant trip down memory lane. Only one really made me cringe.

It was a bottle of that red stuff that mothers of my era spread on wounds as quickly as they would slather Vicks Vapo Rub onto congested chests.

If you still can feel the sting, and see the tell-tale staining of the skin, you know what I'm talking about. You likely endured it.

It was the dreaded mercurochrome. A mother's antiseptic cure-all of choice for lacerations large and small.

Welcome to my young world. Life may have stung then, but it was safe.