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BBHQ Boomer Essays: |
| Our Boomer-In-Charge here at BBHQ, Hershel Chicowitz, writes frequently about current events... from a boomer perspective. He is sometimes funny, sometimes provocative, sometimes a little of each. We hope you get a kick out of our Boomer Essays. |
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I don't want to spend too much time on our recent vacation, but I would
like to share some pictures and stories... hopefully some amusing
stories. There are few things funnier than watching people on
vacation... with their guard down. Princess and I went camping again
this year; we had a great time! Before I left I had six, large plastic bags of crushed aluminum cans in the garage. I decided to recycle them and drive the first day as far as their cash value would take me. Looks can be deceiving. Six bags equated to $4.85; we camped that night in Palatka, Florida. Now, I hope I won't be insulting the fine residents of Palatka when I suggest that while it may be a wonderful place to live, Palatka is not much of a place to visit. We were out of there early the next morning. I have no pictures of Palatka; you're not missing much. I bought a new tent for our trip this year. I had hung the one we used last year over a fence to dry out, and I was never able to get it back into the original storage sack. We got more than got our money's worth out of the old one, so I didn't feel bad. Anyway, the salesman tried to get me to buy a more expensive one this time;
 God must really loooove mosquitoes; he makes so many of them! As it turned out, we visited the outer banks of North Carolina after hurricane Dennis and before Floyd. The damage from the storm was mostly due to water. There were flooded streets and huge puddles everywhere. And what happens three days after new puddles appear? Mosquitoes, that's what. You'd think that the folks at S.C. Johnson would be able to figure it out and might send an extra shipment or two of insect repellant to the outer banks, wouldn't you? We were there two weeks after Dennis, and there was not a single can to be found in any store along 60 miles of road - not one! We think we have mosquitoes here in Florida. Ha!! Getting targeted by these guys felt like one of those Apache helicopters landing on your forearm. I'll tell you a secret, though. In a pinch, Lysol Spray makes a pretty good bug killer - if you use enough of it. As a Boy Scout, I learned to be creative and make the most of the resources available. (Mennen Speed Stick works OK, too; but it's a little messy.) I admit, I must have missed the lesson in the Boy Scouts on "be prepared."
This shows the shoreline from a damaged pier on the outer banks. Mother Nature makes her presence known:
We could not get close to the lighthouse. The park service said that three feet of water in the lighthouse and dozens of water moccasin snakes around it made it unsafe. We were willing to take their word for it. I took this from the beach on the far side of the old location. The ocean is over my shoulder to the left. A huge puddle covers the path the lighthouse took to its new location:
Remember the last time you walked down the hallway at a motel? Dry, dull, boring, isn't it? I guess it is supposed to be that way. Walking down the road at a campground is an entirely different experience! Princess and I took a late night walk almost every day. Tents to the right of us, RVs to the left of us; and each one with a story to tell - some much louder than others. One guy that could have been a double for the Bluto character in the Popeye comics camped in a small tent barely big enough for him. Not surprisingly, he was quite a snorer; his trademark sound was like a foghorn in the night... come to think of it, exactly like a foghorn in the night. No chance we would get lost with his endless homing signal. As we walked past his tent, I swear the tent expanded and contracted to the beat of his snoring. Last year, there was a guy with a camper who mounted a satellite dish outside his RV, went inside, and disappeared for four days. This year, in the same spot, we saw a family try to bring the indoors outside. They set up a string of lights around their site. Inside the perimeter, they had a 6-speaker sound system powered by a Bose Acoustic Wave Machine, a Sony big screen TV, a full-size refrigerator, and two living-room sofas. I honestly wondered whether they were camping, or if they had just been evicted. Well, to each his own. Some lady staying in a small, pop-up camper had a generator running all night. No lights; just the generator going full-speed. One can only wonder... Down the road, a large group of boomers had two fires burning at their campsite, probably in an attempt to drown out that strange, distinctively familiar odor of the 60s that permeated the area despite their efforts. This 90s version of the Manson family sang chants and danced to their own brand of music... music like I had never heard before. Maybe you can go back...
There is an outdoor amphitheater at the campground we visited in Cleveland. One night, they showed one of those pig movies.... "Babe In the City," or something like that. It was neat watching the movie with Princess under the stars on a full-size, theater screen. We had to leave early, though. The life-size images of pigs, goats, sheep, chimpanzees and other barnyard animals was more than Princess could stand. Still, it was nice; but it did ruin my appetite for ham, bacon, and eggs for a couple days.
We spent one night camping in the Poconos in southern New York state. It's a beautiful part of the state... so many trees! The Poconos used to be the area where vaudeville comedians performed to New York area audiences. Some of the clubs are still around. I was able to get Princess into a place called Woody's Weekend Speakeasy by putting on a pair of sunglasses and claiming she was my seeing-eye dog. It was dark and crowded inside; we had to sit in a corner on a stool next to a piano. And if I had a nickel for every time a waiter said, "Can I help you, sir?" and a patron replied, "Take my wife... please!".... Once or twice was cute; but hey folks, Henny Youngman is dead, and so is that line! Give it a rest! Around 11 p.m. a couple walked past us and the lady said to her husband, "Oh look, honey, there's Ray Charles." I simply had to reply, "You got the right one, baby!" I told you it was dark in there. It was time to go home.
Before I got Princess, I rarely took a vacation. But I've come to realize that thirty years from now, I won't have the slightest idea what I did in May of 1999... or June... or July. But I will forever remember our encounter with the coyote, the ride on the ferry boat, the lonely lighthouse on Cape Hatteras, and the speakeasy in the Poconos... the things I did with my family (such as it is). These are the things that matter. These are the times of your life. Life is short. What will you remember about 1999 thirty years from now... the Y2K bug? Just a thought.
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Exploring My Roots: A Chicowitz History
Membership details here.
Terrific boomer memorabilia!!
Remember this?
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If you like what we're doing here at BBHQ, please help us by buying stuff through our link to Amazon.com:
| The BBHQ Album of the Month is "Old Friends Live on Stage (Deluxe Edition) (2 CD/1 DVD)," by Simon & Garfunkel. If you were fortunate enough to see them in concert last year, I do not have to sell you. The concert was terrific! This album collection includes 55 songs, plus their new recording, "Citizen of the Planet," and one of the songs sung by the Everly Brothers during the concert. The DVD was recorded during their concert in Madison Square Garden in 2003. For any S&G fan, this is a must have! But then, you knew that already, didn't you? |
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The BBHQ Book of the Month is
"Vinyl Highway," by
Dee Dee Phelps. You remember her as Dee Dee, of Dick and Dee Dee.
Together, they took a decade long ride on the rock and roll roller
coaster. It was a heck of a ride! Dick Clark, Quincy Jones, the Beach
Boys, Glenn Campbell, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Vinton... Dick and Dee Dee
rubbed shoulders with all of them. This is her "behind the scenes" story.
It's pretty cool.
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