(L) Vintage Life Magazine- Generation Gap Issue 5/17/68 (R) Vintage ad Cascade 1955

Like my own mother Betty, Mad Men’s Betty  Draper woke one morning in the late 1960s to the realization she was a square. In a world firmly divided into the “under 30s” and “over 30s” she was no longer part of the “ in” crowd . Isolated at home, the age of Aquarius was dawning but not for her.

Sometimes, she felt as old and out of step as her Victorian House in Rye, N.Y. left behind in a changing world.

Despite her being an anthropology major at Bryn Mawr, this crazy new-counter culture was as confusing to Betty as if they were natives of Samoa.

Things were moving way too fast for this suburban housewife. The much ballyhooed “Generation Gap” had landed firmly in her own home in Westchester.

Generation Gap

(L) Vintage Cartoon Playboy Magazine 1960s (R) Vintage children’s Book Illustration “Stories About Linda and Lee” by Eleanor Thomas1960

Everything was now a battle with her teenage daughter Sally.

Even the simple act of packing her daughters school lunch turned into a battle royale. Wrapping Sally’s sandwich in Saran Wrap, something Betty had done for years ever since this miracle product replaced old-fashioned wax paper, elicited the evil eye from Sally with the same disgust as if Betty were personally napalming a village in Vietnam.

Betty merely rolled her eyes. Sally’s dad Don would drool to land Dow ( the makers of saran wrap and Napalm) as an account, Betty thought to herself, napalm or no napalm!

Tuning in to The Now Generation

One morning as Betty finished her third cup of coffee and nibbled on her second piece of Sara Lee Coffee Crumb Cake, she  picked up a copy of the March 1968 issue of McCall’s hoping to find a hurry-up-recipe for Henry’s favorite dish, Turkey Diva. It wasn’t long before her eye caught the “Under 21 Column” which offered up a Quiz “for parents who want to be modern” to find out how “tuned in” you were to the Now Generation?

 “Do You know the Lovin’ Spoonful from a heapin’ spoonful?”  the headline asked “How ‘in’ are you?”

“It’s a long, long way from the campus to Main Street, from Greenwich Village to Greenwich Connecticut and from  junior to senior.” the article by Sylvie Reice began. “As one sardonic Jr put it”: ‘Like father, like son-like hell.’”

“But time, in its way rushes to fill any gap. Though the generations are still light years apart, the culture of the young is daily making its way into the lives of every one of us. “

“Many of its mores and idols, its language and activities have been taken up by the elders. And properly so. For if we expect the young to learn from us, whats wrong with learning something from them every now and again?”

“In that spirit then, here are 40 multiple choice questions ranging from the obvious to the obscure.”

“Take the quiz,”  the copy teased, “and find out just how swinging you are. If you score over 30 congratulations you talk under 30 language! If you range from 20 to 30 you’re making noble efforts to stay in touch: 10 to 20, you’re obviously only half interested in the other half.”

“And 10 and under- well maybe its time to get tuned in to the now generation.”

Betty buckled down to take the quiz and find out just how swinging she was.

And please feel free to take the quiz along with Betty.

Good Vibes (L) Andy Williams Kraft Mystery Song Contest 1966 vintage ad (R) Beatles “Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album Cover

1. SDS Is…

a) a new drug teens are using

b) a leftish student organization

c)a government anti poverty program

2. RAVI SHANKAR IS….

a) a new Israeli starlet

b) an “in” Indian musician

c)  a teen baseball idol

(L) Vintage Ad Twiggy Lashes Yardley 1967 (R) Vintage Fashion Ad Gay Gibson1968

3. TWIGGIES ARE…

a) pipe-thin legs

b) painted on bottom eye lashes

c) girls who look like twiggy

4. ELECTRIC ROCK IS…

a) a famous landmark in San Francisco

b) amplified rock n roll

c) a teen night club in Greenwich village

5. QUANT IS…

a) a short bang hairdo

b) an English fashion designer

c) a cinchy college course

(L) Vintage Ad Fresh Start from Ponds 1965 (R) Laugh In “Saturday Evening Post” Cover 1968

6. MOD MEANS….

a) modern in teen slanguage

b) an English Hoodlum

c) a style of British fashion

7. SLICKER IS…

a) a marine-type raincoat

b) a paste cover up to keep surfers warm

c) a shiny, natural color lipstick

8. DYLAN IS…

a) a famous Welsh poet

b) an English hairstylist

c) a folk-singing idol

9. THE NEW LEFT IS…

a) an unorganized coalition of student activists

b) Red China

c) a rock n roll group

England Swings (L) Vintage Fashion Ad London 1949 (R) Vintage Teen Fashion Ad 1968

10. CARNABY STREET IS…

a) a comic strip character

b) an English Folk singer

c) a London Street Famed for Fashion

11. SHRIMP IS…

a) the nickname of a famous model

b) another name for LSD

c) a character in “Peanuts”

12. A MICRO SKIRT IS…

a) a special lens for microscopes

b) a very abbreviated skirt

c) a skirt made of fiber glass

(L) Joan Baez (R) Sitar Player 1968 Life Magazine

13. A SITAR IS….

a) a new type of motorbike

b) a Cuban Guitar

c) an Indian lute the Beatles play

14. A LIGHT SHOW IS….

a) a new media mix of photo and light images

b) an exhibit of art employing moving lights

c) an entertainment featuring “light” music

15. HAIGHT ASHBURY IS…

a) an avante garde English photographer

b) a hippie community

a) college protest slogan

(L) Vintage men’s Fashion ad (R) Cartoon Playboy Magazine 1960s By Sokol

16. DuBOIS CLUBS ARE…

a) a chain of teen nightclubs

b) Communist oriented campus clubs

c) a weight watchers club for young people

17. ACID MEANS….

a) Associated Campus Independent Democrats

b) lysergic acid diethylamide

c) folk music with a sardonic message

18.  FRODO IS…

a) a hero in The Hobbits

b) a mystic leader of teens

c) John Lennon’s adorable puppy

19. EAST VILLAGE IS…

a) the Hindu town the Beatles visit

b) the East Coast hippie habitat

c) a home for runaway teens

20. JAMS ARE…

a) sessions where musicians really swing

b) Hawaiian flowered knee-length surfer shorts

c) parties jammed with crashers

Far Out Wheels (L) The Swinging World of Yamaha vintage ad 1966 (R Wouldn’t You Rather have a Cadillac? Vintage Cadillac ad 1958

21. FREAK OUT MEANS…

a) to have a bad drug experience

b) to fall off a motorcycle

c) to take an individual stance

22.VISTA IS…

a) an anti[poverty project for college students

b) a mind expanding drug

c) a new program for drop-outs

23. THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT WAS…

a) a campus revolution at Berkley

b) an anti war college demonstration

c) a demonstration favoring Army Recruiters on Campus

24. LORD OF THE RINGS IS…

a) Ringo Beatle

b) A trilogy by Tolkien

c) A Harvard spoof of Wagner

25. HERMAN HESSE IS…

a) a leader of Herman s Hermits

b) an adorable ski idol

c) the current campus author

(L) The Trip- 1967 movie with Peter Fonda and Susan Strasberg star in Hollywood’s first psychedelic sex freak-out (R) Vintage Travel Ad TWA 1953

26. TRIP IS…

a) a frog like dance

b) a hallucinatory drug experience

c) Teen Representatives International Platform

27. ALLEN GINSBERG IS…

a) a sick comic

b) author of Fiddler on the Roof

c) a poet leader of the hippies

39. COURREGES IS…

a) an expression meaning courage among surfers

b) bouquets given to girls at prom time

c) a French futuristic fashion designer

Far Out! (L) Peter Max cover Life Magazine 9/9/69 (R) Groovy Fashions -Stuffed Shirts Fashion vintage ad 1968

29. PSYCHEDELIC MEANS…

a) a doctor specializing in addicts

b) a mental state produced by drugs

c) a person who’s lost their mind

30. NSA STANDS FOR…

a) Negro Student Aid

b) National Student Association

c) Nonviolent Student Alumni

Tides In! (L) Vintage fashion ad surfer wear Catalina Cotton 1967 (R) Vintage ad Tide Detergent 1950s

31. SURFS UP MEANS….

a) the surfing season is over

b) the tide is in

c) the swells are right for surfing

Dr Spock I presume! (L) Spock Star Treck (R) Dr. Benjamin Spock’s classic book “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” 1946

32. MR SPOCK IS..

a) an antiwar leader

b) a well-known pediatrician

c) the star of TV show Star Treck

33. MARIO SAVIO IS…

a) UCLA quarter back

b) winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions

c) a leader of Berkley campus ruckus

(L) Bob Dylan cover of Saturday Evening Post Magazine 1967 (R) Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi 1968 Life Magazine

34. A GURU IS…

a) a Hindu teacher and mystic

b) a cape young swingers wear

c) a small tambourine

35. SOUL IS…

a) an anti-materialistic campus grouping

b) a kind of rhythm and blues music

c) a style of pop art

Blow Your Mind (L) Vintage Illustration Sex, Drug, Ecstasy, “Playboy Magazine” 1967 (R) Vintage Ad Fleishmans Gin 1960

36. TURNED ON MEANS….

a) an intensified state of consciousness

b) lost in a musical frenzy

c) really dressed up

37.JOAN BAEZ  IS…

a) a figure skater

b) head of a school for non violence

c) guitar playing folk singer

38. POORBOYS ARE…

a) ribbed, tight-fitting sweaters

b) a hip hugging type of pants

c) a San Francisco rock group

39. TIJUANA BRASS IS…

a) a high-placed official from Tijuana

b) a big band style of music

c) a kind of hardware on belts, shoes etc.

40. GRANNY IS…

a) a nickname for Timothy Leary

b) a floor length informal dress

c) an award for best record of the year

The correct answers:

1. (b: Students for a Democratic Party. 2. (b: Sitar player with whom the Beatles studied ) 3. (b) 4. (b) 5. (b: Mary Quant). 6. (c) 7(c) 8. (c: Bob Dylan 9(a) 10. (c: Carnaby Street).

11. (a: Jean Shrimpton) 12. (b) 13. (c) 14. (a) 15 (b: West Coast home of the hippies) 16. (b) 17. ( Commonly referred to as LSD) 18. (a) 19. (b: Off-shoot of Greenwich Village). 20. (b)

21. (a) 22. (a: Volunteers in Service to America). 23. (a) 24. (b). 25. (c: Author of beloved “Siddhartha”). 26. (b) 27 (c). 28. (c) 29. (b) 30. (b)

31. (c). 32. (c: Real name: Leonard Nimroy.) 33. © 34.(a) 35. (b). 36. (a). 37. (b and c). 38. (a). 39. (b) Made famous by Herb Albert) 40. (b).

How did you do on the test?

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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My sweet Grandmother had a sweet tooth.

Whether Bartons, Barricini, or Lofts, chocolate was the common currency of celebration.

But Mothers Day meant only one thing- a Whitman’s Sampler.

Through the years, that gift of chocolate has become more closely associated with America’s Mothers Day than any other.

Remembering  Whitman’s

Every year at the precise moment the azaleas burst open in a blaze of color, my extended family gathered in our suburban backyard to celebrate Mothers Day. Along with a corsage, my grandmother, Nana Sadie, always received a Whitman’s Sampler in honor of the holiday.

Between bites of rich chocolate nougat, Nana Sadie delighted in rhapsodizing about her life long love of chocolate in general and Whitman’s Sampler in particular. It was the same story year after year, relishing the telling as much as the chocolate.

In 1912 when Nana was 12 years old,  Whitman’s launched its famous Sampler.  Nana would explain how she would eye the pretty yellow box in the window display of Gussmans Pharmacy the fanciest Drug Store on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The yellow cross stitched designed box had an aged yet timeless look, as though it had been around for decades.  Imagining the luscious treats that lay hidden in the box, had made her mouth water.

Two year would pass, Nana would continue, when one day in May of 1914 President Wilson declared the first Mothers Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war. “Sadly,” Nana would shake her head commenting, “in just a few years who knew how many thousands of mothers would lose their own sons to The Great War.”

A Woman Never Forgets The Man Who Remembers

It wasn’t long before a marriage of merchandising and holiday heaven was born.

The following May 1915, Nana’s up-to-date father came home with a genuine Whitman’s Sampler box  tucked under his arm and proudly gave it to Sadie’s mother. Squinting at the unfamiliar box, my Great Grandmother’s search for the familiar seal of approval was futile. No union of Rabbis had sanctioned these chocolate nuggets as kosher, so my very observant Jewish Great Grandmother, rolled her eyes and politely offered the box and its  scrumptious contents to her welcoming children. Contrary to Whitman’s popular slogan, in future years my embarrassed  Great Grandfather would remember to forget Whitman’s for his wife.

Sitting on the front steps of their wrap around porch Nana and her 7 brothers and sisters eyed the candy box in wonder.

Such a selection! Piped chocolate whorls, flakes of coconut, round shapes filled with mysterious  somethings,  rectangles shapes hiding everything from nuts to pralines to assorted fillings.

A 15-year-old Sadie was in chocolate heaven. Her mother might  forget the candy but Nana would long remember.

Life is Like a A Box of Chocolates

Decades  later, the sharing of Mothers Day melt-in-your-mouth chocolates became a family ritual as my grandmother would offer sweets to her eager grandchildren gathered around her.

Part of the ritual was the opening of the box itself.

Getting to the goodies themselves was a treasure hunt, leaving us salivating with anticipation until the first perfect square was lifted from the brimming box. Nana would carefully remove the outer cellophane wrapper- the first cellophane ever used in candy packaging she would remind us.

Opening the lid revealed what is known as the “Pillow Puff” liner made out of embossed paper protecting  the chocolates below.

Treasure Hunt

On the bottom of the lid was the  “treasure map” of the contents of the box, that would direct you to your chocolate dream.  Donning her reading glasses, Nana would read aloud to us from the placement chart that would lead you through the maze of 14 varieties of perfect pleasure with names such as toffee chip, cashew cluster, almond nougat, pecan cluster, coconut, chocolate truffle, and cherry cordial

Nana’s first choice was always the Molasses Chew, the most distinctive piece in the box and worthy of the guest of honor. Covered in smooth dark chocolate with fancy white zigzag stripes, it was filled with nougat.

 While cousins fought over chewy caramel squares and the chocolate covered nuts shining with confectioners glaze got scooped up by my brother, I zeroed in on the cherry cordial, its plump maraschino cherry swimming in sugary syrup, encased in milk chocolate.

An incurable pack rat, Nana Sadie loved Whitman’s as much for the iconic yellow box as for the chocolate goodies inside. The candies long gone, the empty box would be saved for all kinds of flotsam and jetsam, objects evocative and sentimental,  mementos never mentioned in a will or bequest, that eventually found their way to her grandchildren.

Among the treasures were the bundles of saved Mothers Day Cards she had saved over decades and never had the heart to throw out.A most appropriate resting place.

Yes there was Brooklyn’s own Bartons for Passover but Mothers Day meant Whitman’s.

A Sampling of Whitman’s Ads

In 1939 Whitman’s launched Samplers most famous advertising campaign “A Woman Never Forgets The Man Who Remembers” the campaign remained popular for 2 decades.

“There’s no hurt like forgetting and no joy like being remembered”. Vintage Mothers Day Whitman’s Candy advertisement 1940

Between 1942 and 1945 Whitman’s sent 6 million pounds of chocolates to overseas servicemen in Land, Sea and Air tins. Women on Whitman’s production lines slipped  notes into boxes to comfort fighting men. Many of these letters resulted in long-term friendships and even some post-war marriages, resulting in future Mother day celebrations.

“Her Day, Her Family, Her Chocolates” Vintage Whitman’s Advertisement  for Mothers Day 1946

“Remember Mothers Day With Whitman’s” Vintage Whitman’s advertisement 1951

Vintage Whitman’s Ad 1947

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

As a young child in the late 1950′s, I shadowed my mother everywhere she went.

 I was her Baba Looey to her Quick Draw McGraw, Boo Boo to her Yogi Bear, Tonto to her Lone Ranger.Within her sphere of influence I was a contented little satellite, spinning in her orbit wherever she went.

 Whether shopping or schlepping, picking up or dropping off, I would follow in her footsteps in the seemingly endless tasks of doing for others. The errand I enjoyed tagging along with the most was her weekly appointment at the Girls-Only-Glam-A-Rama Beauty Parlor, the one thing she did all week just for her.

 Glam-A- Rama-Beauty Parlor

A unique universe unlike any place else, where unfamiliar, strange-looking equipment was being used by familiar neighborhood women looking strange, all dressed alike, their ordinary clothes replaced by identical leopard print smocks.

 A universe with its own uniform. A universe where gossip was as hot and swift as the air blowing through the missile shaped hairdryers, where I was privy to carefully guarded grown up secrets.

 Strange intimacies grew between women who organized carpools and now found themselves sitting, captive under pink hair dryers. It was over the roar of the dryers in the afternoons while casseroles simmered in automatic ovens back home that these women gave full voice to secret whispering fears. Somehow dread words could be spoken and reassurances offered. In the shadow of the hairdryers, as nails were polished, calluses scraped and hair teased, dread words could be safely spoken.

Does She or Doesn’t She?

(L) Vintage Ad Miss Clairol 1962 (R) Vintage Ad 1958 Pin It Home Permanent illustration by Jon Whitcomb

 Despite the fact that the sight of women in pink plastic curlers was becoming more and more common a sight in public and not discounting the legion of devotees of Miss Clairol and Toni Home permanents, beauty parlors were busier than ever.

 This was due in part to the popularity of the most asked for hair ‘do of the year- the bouffant. The perfect ‘do for the world of tomorrow, one in which man is ever striving for new, ever higher horizons. Despite its French origins, it was a concoction that showed Americas might with its height, and was protected by inpenetrateable layers of lacquer.

A Beehive of Activity

 Entering the Beauty Parlor, the Saturday before Mothers Day, you could feel the excitement in the air. A beehive of activity, a festive feeling had been added to the usual rhythmic pulse, as women pampered themselves for their big day.

 Decorated to reflect the miracle of spring time, the room was showered with an assortment of plastic flower arrangements gracing walls and counters. These Forever-Flowers imported all the way from exotic Hong Kong and purchased from the nearby Fancy Goods department at Woolworths would be given to each lucky lady as a final parting gift for Mothers Day.

 The air bristling with Mothers Day plans, was heavy with the cloying sweetness of perfume diluted by the acrid smell of singed hair, nose burning acetone, ammonia, and other chemical combustibles.

A Haze Of Hairspray

1950′s Vintage Ads for Helene Curtis Hair Spray (R) Now even little girls could benefit from the wonders of hair spray in seen in this 1956 ad from Helene Curtis

 Thick with cigarette smoke, the haze of hairspray alone was enough to create its own hole in the ozone layer. Hairspray was a modern-day wonder. Articles marveled at its might: “Not since the invention of the permanent wave had any hair product done so much for so many as todays near miracle-working hairsprays.”

 The sound of “What a Difference a Day Makes” playing on the radio was nearly  drowned out by the constant hum of hairdryers and the constant chattering among the ladies. Even Dinah Washington’s fervent voice was no match for these yentas.

 It was under those missile shaped dryers that sizzling party recipes were hotly debated and exchanged; fondues were scrutinized, zippy dips and dunks dissected, chex party mix gone over with a fine tooth comb and potato chips pondered-with or without ridges. Heavy trading went on, swapping a cherished Kraft TV Theatre clam dip recipe, for a new twist on Rumaki.

 Musical Chairs

Like a game of musical chairs, the rows of turquoise hydraulic styling chairs filled  with chain-smoking Moms, remained stationary with the gals themselves moving slowly from chair to chair progressing from one stage of metamorphosis to the next.

A seamless transition that would have pleased Henry Ford.

One row of post-shampoo ladies, looked like a pack of wet poodles, puffing on their Parliaments, having their nails done as they patiently bided their time for the next step of transformation .

Vintage Ads (L) Du Barry Push Button Hair Color 1963 (R) Miss Clairol Champagne Blonde Hair Color 1957

 Further down the assembly line, another group of adventurous gals- gals who wouldn’t take dull for an answer-sported freshly shorn locks slathered with gobs of goo and eye burning glop, that would turn them into glamorous if-I’ve-only-one- life- to- lead- let –me- live- it –as- a -Blonde.

 Just the thing for the upcoming summer scene, Clairol had popped the cork on new Champagne blondes, vintage 1960. In between, eyebrows were plucked, and lips waxed, until finally scalps were tortured with clips, and curlers, and subjected to searing blasts of heat while seated under hair dryers.

Was it really true Blondes had more fun?

 Sinking into a padded swivel styling chair, I sat next to Mom carefully watching as Miss Blanche, combed and teased, bombarding Mom with hairspray. This was truly a space age hair do with its propulsion accomplished by strenuous backcombing. The ‘do was composed of three major assemblies, the set with curlers, the thrust, or tease, and the fusing device of heavy hair spray. “There isn’t a head of hair that can’t profit in prettiness and manageability from spray,” Miss Blanche was fond of saying.

 Mom would have a party hair do all week-long. It was a hair do with a future

 “Going to the moon, or just getting back?” Dad would smile at Moms hair, the shape of a space helmet.

 The petite, bespeckled, hairdresser wobbled precariously on spindly Lucite spiked heels, her own massively teased confection of taffy colored hair towered over us all, tempting fate and physics that its enormity wouldn’t tip her over.

 It was truly aero dynamic.

 A true artiste‘, Miss Blanche would always try for the exact balance so the coiffure would frame the clients face just right.

 Stepping back from her work like Picasso, she squinted thoughtfully through her iridescent, greenish gold cat- eyes frame glasses, at Moms face in the mirror, as if she were following the progress of a painting. Of course my own myopic Mom stripped of her own blue and silver specs, would squint right back at her.

With the skillful use of fluorescent lighting, the unqualified, belief in hairspray, this world of tomorrow was a world of beauty.

 Holding her hands in front of her, drying on her nails was a fresh coat of frantic red. Because it was Mothers Day Mom treated herself to a professional manicure unlike her normal dash of polish 20 minutes before party guests came.

 Patting her lush brown bouffant coif floating like a gentle cloud above her head, Mom left happy, with a new recipe for cheese Fondue clutched in her hands, a sure-fire ( probably highly flammable) solution for removing stains, and clutching her Mothers Day bouquet of forever your pink plastic flowers, bendable and moveable to arrange just as you like.

Vintage Mothers Day Card to Betty Edelstein

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

The author and her friend Karen campaign for Bobby Kennedy in 1968

In the tumultuous spring of 1968 Bobby Kennedy beckoned the youth of America to join him in his presidential campaign fight.

 “These are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election I need your hand and your help.”

He spoke to the youth of America and explained why their help was vital. “Young Americans made this years election a test of faith. They have taken the deepest beliefs of our country at face value: individual freedom commitment to social justice willingness to examine old ideas and choose new ones. This faith and the energy behind it has turned this election into a confrontation of issues and ideas. Robert Kennedy shares that faith and that energy,”

Mobilized and energized with the earnestness and enthusiasm of a 13-year-old, I responded.

It was about the hope.

He had a sense of outrage and he spoke from his gut. He seemed to care about the outsider traveling to the Mississippi Delta where Blacks were literally going hungry, to Eastern Kentucky where people had been without jobs for years and to the migrant labor camps of California.

He would heal a divided nation.

Campaign Volunteer

Every day after school, my best friend Karen and I rode our Schwinn bicycles to the local Robert Kennedy for President Headquarters where we volunteered. Located in an abandoned suburban storefront, I would spend my afternoons and weekends stuffing envelopes, making phone calls and doing whatever grunt work was needed to help ensure that ensure Bobby would be  the 1968 Democratic presidential candidate.

“How Bobby Plans to Win” June 1, 1968 Saturday Evening Post Cover
“If we come roaring out of California, nothing will stop us in Chicago”

I Wanna Be Bobby’s Girl

Like a star, no last name was needed, even one as magical as Kennedy -he was simply Bobby.

While most 13-year-old girls in 1968 were going gag ga over John, Paul or George, I only had eyes for Bobby, as much a rock star in my mind as any Beatle.

Sequestered in their bedrooms other girls my age were busy clipping photos of the Monkees from Tiger Beat Magazine. I on the other hand, had my nose buried in the NY Times and The Long Island Press scouring the newspapers  in search of anything Bobby Kennedy related.

Stuck On You

Wielding the bell-shaped bottle of mucilage glue in one hand, ( just squeeze and spread) and pointy steel school scissors in the other, I carefully cut and pasted the newsprint clippings into a chipboard scrapbook.

After June 4^th   when Robert Kennedy was assassinated-when all the hopes and dreams ended on the floor of a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles- the scrapbook turned into a memorial.

Still reeling from the horror of the King assassination only 2 months earlier, few will ever forget the shock of that night in June and what it would mean. He was a man who spoke to so many in so many different ways. For 4 full days until his body was lowered to its grave on the green slopes of Arlington near his brother John, the television screens glowed through almost every waking hour, not unlike those 4 days in November 1963.

45 years later my childhood scrapbook remains as a testament to the time.  Though the yellowing pages are brittle now memories are still sharp the loss still painful.

Robert Kennedy- A Teen Remembers

The introduction to the scrapbook -” The following pages of this book will be a memorial to Robert F Kennedy. It is the written account taken from newspapers. It will go day by day from June 5 to June8. Robert Kennedy was to me a great man. The reason for the writing of this is because I loved him very much and I want to pay tribute to my “Uncle Bobby”. So now I will proceed to recount the 4 days of the week of June 5th.”

Death came to Robert Kennedy, 42 years old, just as he was celebrating  the latest victory of his run for Presidency-

With sickening familiarity there was the same fell scene all over again- the crack of the gun the crumpling body, the screams, the kaleidoscope pandemonium, a voice that cried Get a doctor! Get a doctor! and another that wailed in anguish Jesus Christ, Oh Jesus Christ and then trailed off into sobs.

Seriously injured Bobby ay on the floor as his wife Ethel pleaded with bystanders to stand back seconds after her husband was shot down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Thus in 1968 Bobby Kennedy cut down by a bullet in the brain, became the third great US leader to die at an assassin’s hand in less than 5 years.

A Nation Mourns Again

It was déjà vu all over again

Once again the flags slid down to half-staff. Once again a star lit and star-crossed family came together to mourn its fallen. Once again Air Force One streaked homeward across a continent, its cargo the body of a vital young man of unfilled promise and uncompleted destiny.

Once again the crowds wound past the coffin and once again Washington paused in sadness for a state funeral procession wending towards Arlington.

With a terrible symmetry a lone assassin struck down Robert Kennedy and once again a nation was left to watch and grieve and wonder.

When violence shook the world five years earlier in 1963- a secret service agent jumps on the back of the car seconds after President Kennedy was shot in Dallas as a stunned Mrs. Kennedy is seen  crawling on back of car. In 1968 another stunned Mrs Kennedy, Ethel, looks down at her husband as he lies critically injured.

The 2 accused Killers of the Kennedy Brothers (L) Lee Harvey Oswald (R) Sirhan Sirhan

  Grieving Kennedy Widows by their husband’s brothers side. In 1963, Robert Kennedy comforts Mrs John F. Kennedy as she receives the American flag that draped her husbands coffin at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1968 Edward Kennedy escorts Mrs. Robert Kennedy into St Patricks for her husbands funeral.

On the following pages is the account of Robert Kennedy’s death

 Tuesday June 4th -Wednesday  June 5, 1968 -A Night of Triumphs, A Dawn of Tragedy

When Senator Kennedy arrived at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles late on the evening of June 4, 1968 he expected the evening would be a fateful one. Of course he had no idea of the tragedy that was about to strike-instead he anticipated that on that  evening he would score an overwhelming victory in the California Democratic primary making him the leading contender for the nomination.

Jubilantly he thanked his campaign supporters gathered in the ballroom celebrating his California triumph. At 12:13 am Kennedy concluded an acknowledgement speech by saying “So my thanks to all of you and its on to Chicago and lets win there.”

The Senator waved a final time and made a victory sign to the crowd.

Robert Kennedy Assassination

Leaving the platform in the ballroom at the Ambassador hotel where he had just thanked a jubilant crowd Kennedy  entered the kitchen passageway taking that route as a shortcut.

A series of shots were heard.

There were flashes of gunfire.

Seriously injured, Kennedy fell to the floor, blood pooling from a head wound and puddling on the brim of a Styrofoam Kennedy campaign skimmer. There lay Bobby Kennedy, 42 years old flat on his back his eyes shut, then open, and then starring, his collar loosened a rosary pressed into his hand.

Rushed to Hospital of the Good Samaritan where surgery on his critical head wounds lasted 3 hours. As the long day of waiting passed without word of encouragement anxious crowds outside the hospital awaited news of the condition of the wounded candidate .

At home anxious Americans were glued to their radios for any updates until finally word of Kennedy’s death came hours later by press secretary Frank Mankiewicz.

Los Angeles Rams tackle, Rosie Greer helped subdue the accused assassin within minutes of the shooting .The suspect, a man identified as  a Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan was apprehended quickly. He reportedly had vowed to assassinate Kennedy before the June 5^th anniversary of the Israeli Arab War.

A somber President Lyndon Johnson went on national television and declared Sunday to be a national day of mourning for Robert F. Kennedy.

A few hours after the shooting while Kennedy still fought for his life in Los Angeles Good Samaritan Hospital, President Johnson ordered Secret service protection for all presidential candidates.

The body was flown to NYC on Air Force One, where a requiem mass would be held at St Patricks Cathedral

Wife and Family at side casket unloaded from presidential jet as his sons carry fathers coffin into St Patricks Cathedral

A Grieving Nation Mourns

The nation was stunned and bewildered

There was the grief-stricken response of the poor and the humble who wept unashamedly in the streets at the news, who flocked to his bier by the scores of thousands and who saw in his death the loss of their own most compelling and authentic single voice.

At St Patricks Cathedral in NY the line of sorrowful mourners stretched for more than a mile, strung out over 6 and 8 and 10 abreast, as some 150,000 citizens filed past the mahogany coffin on the catafalque. .

 As somber mourners filed through St Patricks, the funeral was brought into our living rooms by live TV coverage of the pomp and pageantry.

 It was an incredible assemblage that brought together the President and 4 candidates, princes of the church, the Chief justice, Cabinet secretaries the cream of Congress, civil rights leaders, old New Frontiersmen, movie stars and poets.

Pallbearers: Robert McNamara Rafer Johnson Arthur Goldberg, Stewart Udall, Sidney Poitier, Arthur Schlesinger JR.

Saturday Funeral

 It was a high requiem Mass presided over by 2 Cardinals and an Archbishop, with Leonard Bernstein conducting a string ensemble and Andy Williams singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in slow funereal measure.

Yet nothing in the service was so painfully affecting as the moment Ted Kennedy looking suddenly so alone and vulnerable left his place at Ethel’s side and stood before the flag draped coffin to speak for the family.

 His voice caught once early on as he called the roll of Kennedy dead. But he steeled himself through a reading of Bobby’s own words.

Then his voice turned thick and tremulous. “My brother,” he said “need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

As he said so many times…”Some men see things as they are and say why, I dream things that never were and say why not?

The  Final Train Ride

The hearse left St Patricks making its way down Fifth Avenue past tens of thousands of waving and weeping mourners, some flinging roses in their path, as the cortege crawled downtown to Penn Station to the train that would carry him to Washington.

Uncounted thousands of mourners came out to stand along the route of the funeral train as it wound its way along the 227 miles of track between NY and Washington’s Union Station, the greatest such demonstration the nation had seen since Franklin Roosevelt’s body was borne from Warm Springs, Georgia to Washington 23 years ago.

Mourners by the thousands stood in the baking sun for hours at every station as the 21 car train carrying RFK traveled jostling for a glimpse of Ethel and Jackie and the flag draped coffin as they passed in the observation car the great throngs slowed the journey, crowd singing the “Battle Hymn”  and “We Shall Overcome” and night had fallen once it reached Washington DC.

On its way to Arlington Cemetery, the caravan rode past places Kennedy had graced The Senate Office Building, the Dept. of Justice and it circled and stopped at the Lincoln Memorial while a choir sang the “Battle Hymn” for Bobby one last time.

Laid to rest near JFK where he had been buried 4 and half years ago.

One Grieves a husband one a son- Widow Mrs Robert Kennedy seen on TV during Mass, his mother on television screen.

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Bidding Bobby Goodbye

I never met Robert Kennedy but I was always grateful I was able to bid Bobby a final goodbye.

On a sweltering Friday in June of 1968, I joined the hundreds of thousands who lined up outside St Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC to pay their final respects to their fallen hero.

Americans were in a state of disbelief.

It could not happen again-yet there it was. With terrible symmetry an assassin had struck down Robert Kennedy early in the morning of June 5^th and once again a nation was left to watch and grieve and wonder.

The awful drama that had played out on TV the past few days had left us all, young and old, feeling lost and helpless. The Kennedy family had flown his body from California to NY where he would lay in state at St Patrick’s Cathedral giving the public an opportunity to pay their respects on Friday.

Like millions of others engulfed by the drama of those past few days, I needed to touch the event myself, to establish even the smallest piece of it as having taken place in my presence, to see it and believer it and lock it in personal recollection. As a 13-year-old who had volunteered my afternoons working on Kennedy’s Campaign for President it seemed essential.

A half hour train ride to Manhattan from my suburban home was all that was necessary.

Friday-A Day Of Mourning

Long before my mother and I boarded the Long Island Railroad that Friday morning, the lines of mourners had already begun forming. By early morning when the St Patrick’s Cathedral doors swung open, the line of mourners was already swelling to well over a hundred thousand waiting in the early morning humidity.

Simmering in the June heat, the crowded city streets were bustling with commerce as Mom and I made our way uptown to St Patrick’s from Penn Station.

 I loved Manhattan with the noise and grime and glitz and especially the kaleidoscope of people.

 Swinging down crowded Madison Avenue lined with skyscrapers and smart shops, girls rushed to their glitzy secretarial job to fetch coffee and type 60 words a minute on their IBM electric typewriters.

Liberated career girls on-the-go in-the-know-letting their now young looks show, with frosted pink lips and frosted hair, dressed in Bobbie Brooks groovy go togethers they were taking dictation by day, yeah yeah yeah, making the scene by night frugging the night away at their favorite discotheque.

Madison Avenue mod fashionistas glided like gazelles sporting their -Vidal Sasoon’s hard-edged geometry hairdos on their way to Conde Nast.

The Real Mad Men of Madison Avenue fresh off the 7:37 from Greenwich were sprinting from Grand Central in giant strides to make their 9:00 meetings.Wrinkle free and fresh in their summer weight Dacron suits,nothing announced to the world that you were a man of discerning taste the way a garment of 100% Acrilan did.

By the time Mom and I arrived at St Patricks, the lines were strung out over 6 and 8 and 10 abreast over 25 blocks of mid-town Manhattan forming a vast chain of sadness. The crush of people was overwhelming.

The vibrance of the crowd belied the sorrow that loomed over us all It was a crazy crush of color happy Celanese separates, vibrant in sun coral, refreshing in turquoise and electric in jubilee orange.

The sun was baking down and the crowds were wilting from the 90 degree heat but their no wilt, wrinkle-free clothes looked as  fresh as the zingy floral prints, popping polka dots and pastel paisleys that decorated them..

A wave of humanity in a sea of synthetics. It was a veritable sea of drip dry, and wrinkle free, a wash n’ wear tribute to Postwar man’s progress over Nature, a cornucopia of the space age convenience of miracle man-made fabrics.

Making the Scene

(L) In the heat, some of the 150,000 mourners were offered water while waiting their turn to view RFK’s casket at St Patrick’s Photo: LIfe Magazine Special Edition The Kennedy’s 1968 (R) Robert Kennedy Memorial Issue M.F. Enterprise 1968

Out of some deep sorrowing patience they stood all day in a wilting sun and through a stifling night- an amalgam of populace from all walks of life.

Heartbroken housewives from Bayridge Brooklyn, a gaggle of amber waves of trouble-free Toni home permanents that had not unfurled in the humidity stood side by side with Park Avenue doyens fresh from their standing Friday hair appointment at Kenneth’s, that flawlessly tailored pet of the set who flocked  to his posh paisley swathed town house at 19 East 54^th Street.

Ladies who lunched,  their red-rimmed sorrowful  eyes hidden behind their Foster Grants who stopped by after a quick run through at Saks Fifth Avenue, shared space with teens with ravaged faces splotched with skin colored clearasil, teens with angry sunburns gotten the weekend before on Memorial Day, teens,who like me had taken the day off from school.

Nuns, shrouded in black in their austere habits, their normally stern moral certitude shattered, mindlessly fingered rosary beads, lined up next to weeping girls in mini skirts and Dynel wigs their Maybelline mascara running copiously down their cheeks.

Middle aged Men in sporty natty Lido telescope straw hats with fancy woven bands rubbed elbows with beefy construction workers in hard hats who stood solemnly next to peace kids in tied dye shirt and beads,  hippies in  pieced together outfits from second-hand stores, attic trunks and funky shops,

Grief stricken ex-GI’s and their blue cheer whiter than white families living the second generation of American subdivision dream, stood shoulder to shoulder with Blacks from Bedford Stuyvesant, that God forsaken urban blight of burned out houses, forgotten by all except Robert Kennedy.

Hundreds of them came from Bed Sty, leaving  the sour stench that permeated the Myrtle Willoughby IND subway station for the rarefied air of Fifth Avenue. To honor the man who had worked so hard for them.

Some were activists and community leaders  from that beleaguered community second generation victims of urban poverty, now mournfully reminiscing for anyone within earshot, of their brief encounters with Kennedy.

Some  had been there that cold day in February 1966 accompanying RFK in his historic walking tour of Bedford Stuyvesant . Kennedy had seen it all, unvarnished, the  burned out buildings, the brownstones in abject decay, plaster falling from walls,,vacant lots teeming with garbage, the  stripped cars rusting on the streets.

One woman standing next to us, resplendent in her Sunday best,  wept openly as she recalled to Mom and me  how only last June Senator Kennedy had been in Bed Sty, and she along with several hundred people had crowded into the courtyard of an abandoned milk bottling plant to listen to among others, Senator Kennedy speak.

The purpose of the gathering was the announcement of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the nations first community development corporation that would try to regenerate Bed Sty. She would never forget that day or the warm handshake  and sense of hope she received from Senator Kennedy. It was the first bit of hope for Bed Sty in decades.

“It’s hard keeping faith when everything’s gong so bad,” she wailed repeatedly.

No, he had not forgotten them. They would never forget him.

(R) Mourners passing the casket of RFK at St Patrick’s Cathedral June 1968
Photos: Life Magazine Special Edition The Kennedy’s 1969

For 6 hours we all stood and waited for a seconds glimpse of the coffin with the white wreath at the feet, the spray of roses at the head, the US Flag and the rosary on the burnished lid.

Some snapped cameras Some touched the wood and crossed themselves.

Scores came out weeping.

Four hundred fainted. A stout black woman collapsed before the coffin sobbing. “Our friend is gone, oh Jesus he is gone, Jesus, Jesus.”

Members of the family appeared only briefly during the day- Ethel in black kneeling at the coffin and touching the flag, her eldest sons Joseph 15 and Robert Jr 14 taking their turns in the honor guard, Teddy pale alone into a fortieth row pew

It was mostly a day for the Bobby people- the young the poor the black, the disenfranchised. It was the day the family gave Robert Kennedy to the public for the last time.

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Related articles

• Robert Kennedy Remembered (envisioningtheamericandream.wordpress.com)

In Your Dreams

Next to Rock Hudson, Liberace was Sue Ellen Wolinski’s absolute dream date. Liberace was just so fabulously different from any other fellows she had ever met. A wonderful pianist, yes. But, OH! so much more.

Come Wednesday night in the 1950s, wild horses couldn’t pull this perky miss away from her Philco when the master entertainer’s hit TV show was on. Along with 30 million other viewers, Sue Ellen sat transfixed, convinced the heart-throb was gayly winking just to her.

With that infectious smile and wavy hair he was just dreamy. Well dream on Sue Ellen, because only in your dreams would Liberace be available to you.

In the 2013 HBO biopic “Behind the Candelabra” the story of Liberace in the 1970s starring Michael Douglas,  focuses on his 6 year relationship with the much younger Scott Thorson.

But in the 1950’s Lee Liberace was the heart-throb of millions of housewives and teenage girls, Receiving 10,000 fan letters per week, he was deep in the closet, albeit one lit by the glow of a candelabra.

No matter what nasty rumors hinted at Liberace’s sexual orientation, one important fact stands out like a sore thumb, or should I say, like a dazzling candelabra: the ladies loved and adored their pianist. To even hint to the girls that “My Liberace” was given to anything but heterosexual hunkiness would be an invitation to have your head handed to you- and not on a silver platter.

Liberace performs  Bumble Boogie

Girl Loves Boy. Boy Loves Boy…Boy, Oh Boy

When Liberace closed his TV show crooning his signature song,“I’ll Be Seeing You,” Sue Ellen took him at his word.

And in fact in the fall of 1954, it came to pass.

That September, Sue Ellen was in seventh heaven when she came face to face with the dreamboat himself. Making an appearance in her hometown of  Miami for the opening ceremonies of a new branch of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association, Liberace was nearly crushed to death by a tidal wave of ten thousand eager women who crowded the bank for a glimpse of there idol.“The women acted like wild animals,” one policeman reported after he had helped fight them off from nine in the morning till 6 at night.

In the midst of the crowd, Sue Ellen locked eyes with Liberace.

The lucky lady, was certain he was  staring intently at her, winking his famous wink …attracted, she was sure, by the shimmering beauty  revealed in her freshly shampooed hair. Closing her eyes she imagined the two of them in the Miami moonlight the handsome hunk, reveling in the fragrant silken softness of her Luster Creme tresses, tenderly touching her smooth glistening locks as he murmured: “Dream Girl, where have you been all my life?”  In her revere she never even noticed  the handsome young man with the long lovely  lashes standing right behind her for whom the wink was surely intended.

Sweet Dreams

Gals like Sue Ellen were helped along by the publicity machine furiously churning out puff pieces on the flamboyant star,  fanning the flames of romantic possibility with the light-in-the-loafers-lothario.

In December 1954 a cover story In TV World Magazine announced- Liberace Tells: What I want in a Woman!”

Mid-Century Housewives, career girls and teenagers alike  pored through the magazine article that like all the other hundreds of fluff pieces fueled their hopes and dreams while fueling Liberace’s career.

What I Want in a Woman

“Its quite obvious how women feel about him,” the article in the magazine begins.”The big question, is how does he feel about them?”

One and only one person could supply the answer: the maestro himself. And so a journalist named Peer Oppenheim paid him a visit at the television studio on Wilshire Boulevard where his television series was filmed.

Liberace, we learn, has been engaged 3 times and out of approximately 2,000 fan letters he gets each week, about a dozen come from hopefuls of all ages who propose to become Mrs Liberace as soon as possible.

“What do I think of women? I think they’re pretty wonderful,” said Liberace, and almost in the same breath confessed how important it is to have them on his side.

“In most instanced directly or indirectly, they have the last word- in politics, in business and particularly as far as music and entertainment is concerned. I have studied the lives of famous composers and musicians pretty thoroughly and found that in each case women have played a prominent part in their success. Did you know that Liszt turned his piano sideways so women could see his profile?”

Still, in the days of Liszt and Chopin women showed their affection a little more subtly than by tearing off buttons, ripping jackets snitching ties as souvenirs or trying to break into the houses of their heroes all hours of the day and night.

“Doesn’t that sort of demonstrativeness ever bother you?”Liberace is asked.

“Oh no. They usually don’t get out of hand too much. I seem to have…well, a restraining influence over them. No matter how wildly they behave before I get to the scene, they usually calm down when I arrive.” he answers coyly.

There are some qualities in women Liberace likes better than others, and a few he can’t stand at all- artificiality, for instance.

“I have nothing against lipstick and powder. But I don’t like false eyelashes and that sort of thing.”

(Clearly he had no problem with a dash of lip stick and rosy rouge applied to his own countenance either)

The reader learns that he got his first disillusioning shock through a girl to whom he was once engaged. She was a performer, and for stage effect, had to use strong make up and bright eye-catching clothes.

For professional purposes Liberace has no objections.

But apparently away from her work, Mr Showmanship thought she should dress in a simpler more conservative, less attention-getting manner.(obviously not to compete with his own sequined spangled outfits)

“When we walked along the street together, people used to stare at her. But they were just gawking at her gaudiness, and there was no admiration in their eyes.”

He tried to change her, and when he didn’t succeed, broke the engagement.

Home and Hearth

He believed women should be domestically inclined, yet not the “hausfrau-type” who feel obliged to slave over a hot stove all day.

“When I get married, if I can afford it, I want my wife to have servants. But at the same time, I want her to take a personal interest in anything that concerns the house, and supervise all domestic activities,” he declared firmly.

(During the 1950s through the 1970s he was the highest paid entertainer in the so we can assume he could well afford a servant …especially a houseboy or two.)

According to Liberace, the biggest trouble with women was “that if they are not married at an early age, they get frantic, for fear of becoming ‘old maids. Most women seem to think that once they turn 30, they start losing their looks and their charm. I feel that they have so much more to offer then,” he says convincingly. “As a matter of fact I think most women are much more attractive in their thirties.”

 (He may prefer mature women but clearly liked his boys young)

Thirty three himself, he claims he wants to marry a woman in her thirties because “She is more mature than a younger girl, has more to talk about, and is more on an equal basis with me.”

He has no sympathy for women who let themselves go once they are married, who no longer care about their appearances or the impression they make.

As a final thought: “I don’t care for glamorizing either.”

(Said the flamboyant Mr. Showmanship known for his excesses to the max)

“Looks are of secondary importance to me. It’s the understanding a woman can show, her kindness, her thoughtfulness. ( Especially understanding when you step out with a man) “Not every woman can be beautiful, but everyone can make herself desirable.”

That’s what Liberace wants, Gals!

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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Locked in the American Dream Closet

Unintentionally Gay Ads- Does He or Doesn’t He?

The Gay Bachelor and the Bride

• Reynolds: We Knew Liberace Was Gay (abcnews.go.com)

Vintage Coca Cola Ads (1953) (R) WWII ad 1944 Coke in New Zealand

During WWII the boys overseas were fighting for Mom, apple pie and a bottle of Coke.

Coca Cola, as much a part of the American Dream as a white picket fence and baseball,  has symbolized the American way of life, no more so than during WWII when Coke aligned itself with blatantly patriotic themed ads.  Coca Cola went to remarkable lengths to make sure their soft drink was never far from the front lines, and the fighting men never forgot.

Years later, long after the boys had returned home triumphant from the war, Memorial Day was a day for remembrance, backyard barbeques and in my family, consuming lots of coca cola.

What better way to honor our fallen heroes than with a patriotic, freedom loving frosty bottle of Coke that sweet elixir that had helped the greatest generation win the war.

Memorial Day Barbecue

Vintage Coca Cola Ad 1949

Like today, Memorial Day in 1961 was the opening salvo for summer in the suburbs. The season’s first barbecue was always a joint operation among my family members, handled with the precision of a war maneuver.

The base of operation was our suburban backyard.

Like clockwork, the convoy of cargo carrying relatives arrived loaded with essential supplies. My Aunt Judy’s peppy whoop-de-doo potato salad was always popular  and Aunt Helen’s picnic perfect double dutch slaw  habitually a hit.

 But the most eagerly anticipated contribution was the cache of Coca Cola courtesy of Moms cousin Milton who schlepped wooden cases of Coke straight from the bottling plant he managed in Maspeth Queens.

Barbecue Brigade

While wives stayed safely behind the lines, the men folk were recruited and deployed to the front, where Dad was CO in charge of the Barbeque Brigade.

 Well fortified to do battle with cokes firmly in hand, they mobilized around the Weber grill in a primal huddle of their own as they anxiously awaited orders.

 Like the infantry sent to do battle, these buttoned down bar-b-que enthusiasts, combat ready in their comfort-in-action-perma- press Bermuda shorts, gathered on all sides of the roaring fire while my older, Great uncles stylishly at ease in their Decoration day best white leather Italian styled slip on shoes, remained safely under the striped awning, offering tactical assistance like battle-scarred retired officers from the comfort of their glider aluminum lawn chairs.

 The torch had indeed been passed to a new generation, our war hero President Kennedy had  informed us, and passed directly into the hands of these bespectacled men in clingy ban-lon, all of whom had served our country in the Second World War.

 Only 15 years earlier, this bunch of balding band of brothers, blissfully barbecuing in my backyard, had returned war-weary but triumphant in their GI issued haircuts, to confetti and parades from that greatest of all wars.

 Strategically wielding the Big Boy barbecue tongs, Dad was ready for any barbecue maneuver. A king size cigaretteYou get a lot to like with a Marrr-boro/  fil-terrr/fla-vvor/flip top box- dangling from his lips, barbecue apron round his regulation plaid Bermuda shorts, his smart masculine styling rated a fashion 21 gun salute.

With the precision used to plan a bombing mission in the south pacific, Dad calculated the wind velocity, temperature and cloud coverage when making the perfect fire, skills learned as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corp while serving in New Guinea.

Hot Diggety Dog (R) Vintage WWII Coke Ad 1942

Eagerly biting into a tongue scalding frankfurter hot off the grill, Moms cousin Milton, a short and stubby man, his GI regulation washboard abs having long gone AWOL leaving his ever-expanding belly stretching the outer limits of his Acrylan shirt, never failed to offer up war stories and his contribution to winning the war. “I have just one word for you-Coca Cola!” he would state firmly, gobbling his hot dog with gusto.

During the war Milton had been a “Coca Cola Colonel” one of 148 Coke employees sent abroad to oversee the installation and management of  makeshift bottling plants to serve the US Army wherever they served. With his US Army uniform and rank of Technical Observer this four-eyed kid from Brooklyn  was treated as an officer, and was deemed as vital as those other TO’s who fixed tanks or airplanes.

The Pause that Refreshes

WWII Coca Cola ad 1944 “Have a Coke =Soldier, refresh yourself, or the way to relax in training camp”

In 1941 Coca Colas president  Robert Woodward made the famous order declaring that “everyman in uniform gets a bottle of Coca Cola for 5 cents wherever and whatever it costs.”

However for many men serving overseas, a soda fountain would be something they could only dream of. The logistical headache was the problem. To reach GI’s overseas in significant numbers the company would have to build bottling plants where the fighting was going on in the combat theaters.

The boys could thank General Eisenhower for getting the ball rolling. In 1943 in an attempt to raise morale, he sent a classified cable from Allied headquarters in North Africa asking for 10 bottling plants and enough syrup to provide his men with 6 million Soft drinks, No wonder the boys “liked Ike.”

The Coca Cola company was more than happy to comply with Eisenhower’s orders.

WWII Coca Cola Ad 1945 Phillipines. The ad shows a Coke jungle dispenser painted green for camouflage

Wherever the American Army went so did Coca Cola. “Anywhere for a nickel,” Milton boasted. “From the jungles of Admiral Islands to the officer clubs in Riviera. There would be a convoy of army trucks carrying a complete bottling plant from Calcutta into  China, on the Burma Road climbing mountains and crossing pontoon bridges. “

In the remote island of New Guinea, the land of C rations, Spam and dehydrated foods, where Coke would remain a distant memory of home for my father.

The South Pacific was one of the more difficult problems for Technical Officers like Milton. After considerable brainstorming, a portable soda fountain that had been used at drugstore conventions was re-commissioned, painted green for camouflage and enlisted to help quench the thirst of jungle bound soldiers like Dad. The army quickly ordered  hundred more of these jungle fountains 

Nearly 1,100 of these units were used in the Pacific. (The Philippines ad shows a jungle dispenser painted green for camouflage

Have A Coke and a Smile

Vintage Coca Cola Advertisements (L) Seventh Inning Stretch (R) WWII ad 1945 Battle seasoned Seabees turning in refreshments on the Admirality Isles

The excitement caused by a coke and its reminders about the local corner drugstore to homesick GI’s on a tropical island halfway across the world from the US  was unparalleled, When the war started the soldiers craved a piece of home to remind them what they were fighting for. Soldiers wanted 4 things from home: mail, cigarettes, chewing gum and coke.

 “For these homesick boys to have a Coke was like having home brought near you” Milton would explain. “Sometimes its just one of the little things of life that really counted, the familiar sweet taste turned it into a poignant reminder of home, instantly bringing back memories of maybe Ebbetts Field and hot dogs or a pretty girlfriend back home in the drugstore over a Coke. I can truthfully say, he would comment wistfully,” I hadn’t t seen smiles on the boys faces as they did when they saw Coke in those Godforsaken places.”

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

• On the Front Lines with Coca Cola Pt II (envisioningtheamericandream.wordpress.com)

 The lyrical sound of Ding Dong… Avon Calling was music to my mid-century mother’s ears. 

 My father may have said he wanted to be a hands on kinda Dad but it was my Mother who had her hands filled especially the year I was born.

 Moms diaper decorated world kept her too busy for words.

 There was no time to flip through a magazine, talk on the phone or even open a newspaper to keep up with the news, let alone get her hair done, or shop.

 Spare time with a new baby in the house? And a toddler? Fuhgeddaboudit!

 Sometimes, she joked, she felt like a contestant on the $64,000 Question, sequestered in one of those isolation booths, cut off from the world.

 Which is why those visits from the Avon Lady were a welcome relief.

Vintage Avon Advertisement 1955

 Time Out For Beauty

 It was Monday morning in early October 1955 and Dawn Logan our Avon Representative was due at our suburban home around 10.

 Glancing up at the small clock on the electric wall oven, Mom noticed she was right on schedule setting up for Dawn who would soon be knocking on the door.

 After doing a quick run of the Bissel carpet sweeper through the house, she put up a big pot of Chock full of nuts in her chrome Mirro-Matic percolator. She knew from experience there was nothing more welcome to a traveling Avon Lady than to have a cup or 2 of piping hot coffee, with plenty of sugar for extra pep, and relax with a soothing cigarette while going over samples.

 Striding into the kitchen briefcase in hand Dad tousled my brother Andy’s hair who was busily engaged on 2 fronts attacking a bowl of sugar smacks with spoon and hands, happily putting as much on the floor as in his mouth while at the same time spreading jelly on a piece of toast, ketchup on another and putting cereal between them. Sitting in my high chair I surveying the scene from a safe distance.

 Dad noted that Mom was as giddy and glowing as he had seen her in a while. The gay floral design on her apron seemed to match the new scrubbable wallpaper perfectly. She hadn’t missed her lipstick either, he noted.

 Snuggling up behind her as she popped a standing rib roast in the wall oven he murmured “hey Good Lookin’…whatcha got cookin?’ patting her backside playfully.

 Mom shooed him out handing him his hat; now that Dad was a Dashing Dan he had to catch the morning train. She turned back to the kitchen, wiped up the trail of milk on the floor drank 2 more cups of coffee and did the dishes laying them on the frosty pink rubber dish drain.

From Housewife to Beauty

Keeping Up Appearances

 Earlier that morning as Mom clipped on the small pearl earrings, she gazed disconsolately into the bathroom mirror. The face was as pretty as ever, she supposed, with the clear ivory skin, but the large baby blue eyes now bloodshot revealed just how very tire she was.

Eyeing a tube of red lipstick, she knew it would be just the ticket to brighten her up.

“French Spice-a plum-luscious scarlet with a lick in it,” was how Dawn had deliciously described the new Avon lipstick a year ago June when she had sold it to Mom.”The color that never was before…but always should have been,” Dawn went on excitedly as Mom listened transfixed. “No. Not another re…but French for red…it’s scarlet on a spree, spiced with a plum-wild tang-to dance on lips that dare to be delicious!”

“It’s the new spice in fashions life” she rhapsodized as she continued. “And when French Spice glows on your fingertips…goes to your toes…who knows what beautiful things it can lead to,” she concluded winking.

Mom smiled to herself. Nine months later from the purchase of that lipstick I was born.

The Avon Lady had been a lifesaver when Mom was pregnant. By her third trimester Mom had blown up like a balloon, and her enormous body encased in a tent size garment called a maternity dress didn’t do much for her self esteem, or her beauty IQ.

She could have hugged Dawn when she had suggested earrings and a new shade of Avon lipstick might keep a young wifes mind-and her husbands eyes off  her ungainly figure during the final months of her pregnancy.

 Pregnant, Moms moods could turn on a dime; she could be fidgety and irritable. Dawn was a strong shoulder; she understood. Her words could be as transformative as the products she sold. “Solving a problem that plagues others is a thrill,” she explained to Mom.

Dawn called herself the listening ear of the community. It was, she confided to mom one of the secrets of a good Avon lady.

 “Put your best face forward,” Dawn was fond of saying and she practiced what she preached.

Good advise to Joan and Peggy as they battle it out for the Avon account on Mad Men.

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Coming Soon: Ding Dong…Avon Calling Pt II

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Disappearing Fairy Tales collage by Sally Edelstein

Collage by Sally Edelstein

Mad Men’s Don and Megan Draper may have been nonplussed about the marriage of Jackie Kennedy to Aristotle Onassis that fall of 1968, but they were clearly in the minority.

In a year filled with unprecedented turbulence,violence and upheaval, Jacqueline Kennedy’s  bombshell wedding announcement one Oct weekend seemed to rock an already shook up  world to the core.

For many the marriage meant the myth of Camelot was now not only shaken, it was shattered. Anti war protests were nearly dimmed by the roar of outrage expressed worldwide by the this unlikely match between Americas favorite First Lady and the Greek Shipping tycoon.

For one weekend presidential campaign hi-jinx were forgotten Vietnam put on the back shelf and all eyes were on Jackie.

October Surprise

Vintage NY Daily News Newspaper 10/18/68 The shocked world learns for the first time that Jackie Kennedy will marry Ari Onassis. The date of the wedding is unknown, but could be as soon as next week.

Friday, October 19 started out as an ordinary fall day for 40-year-old Patty Doyle.  The suburban New Hyde Park housewife had just finished stitching up the last of the Halloween costumes for her 3 children, poured the Rice Krispie treats in the pan to cool, when she heard the startling news on the radio. Stunned, she dropped the package of Brats she was defrosting for Sundays tailgate party right onto her freshly waxed linoleum floor.

Her heart sank.

Mrs John F Kennedy had bade farewell to Camelot to become the 39-year-old bride of a 62-year-old Greek shipping mogul Aristotle Onassis.

Of course there were always rumors of a noble new Prince Charming who would sweep their beautiful Queen off her feet, but this short, old, rudely spoken Greek billionaire was more a toad than a prince, and was now carrying her off to his island like a spoil of war.

Perhaps, Patty thought, it was a practical joke , a bad one and tasteless at that.

Once this well-kept secret was revealed it unleashed a wrath of anger, disbelief, and dumbfoundedness, worldwide, resulting in anything but apathy. “The Reaction Here is Anger, Shock and Dismay,” headlined The N.Y. Times.

Like millions of Americans Patty worried that Jackie had permanently tarnished the image of Camelot.

Queen of Camelot

A Thousand Days of Camelot- Vintage Life Magazines (L) The Kennedy Inauguration 1/27/61 (R) John F Kennedy’s Funeral Life Magazine 12/6/53

For nearly 8 years Jackie Kennedy had reigned over the American Republic as its uncrowned queen.

As first lady of the land she tended the WH with a radiant beauty and cultured taste that seemed to make Americans feel just a bit more beautiful and cultivated themselves. When tragedy struck her husband down in Dallas she helped raise the nation’s spirit with her courageous dignity.

In the years following the Dallas tragedy she lived high on a pedestal of her countrymen’s making. She had been elevated and made a national treasure after Dallas and never left.

To the countless Americans who dogged her footsteps through the public prints, Jackie Kennedy was a special celebrity.

 Watching Jackie

(L) One of hundreds of magazines paying homage to the recent widow Jacqueline Kennedy in an article entitled “Valiant is the Word for Jacqueline”. Look Magazine 1/28/64 (R) One of hundreds of movie and fan magazines that would feature Jackie on the cover “Screenland Magazine” 3/71

The press couldn’t get enough of Jackie. . She was as beautiful as a movie star as regal as a Queen. And now it was no longer just news magazines like Life and Time, her face was splashed across all the movie and gossip magazines too, promising shhh…never before told stories and intimate details.

A Jackie hungry public gobbled them up.

Her every movement was recorded her dinners at Le Pavilion, her visits to Kenneth’s Hair salon or visiting a discotheque where she spent the evening with Mike Nichols doing the watusi at Sybil Burton’s Arthur.

Patty Doyle proudly counted herself one of the legions of so-called “Jackie watchers’ who charted her every move.

The happy housewife knew Jackie lunched regularly at the  Colony, exercised with Dina Merrill on 57th Street and was a constant smoker who took great pains to see that she never held a cigarette within range of a camera, though a long gold holder and a gold mesh cigarette case were nearly always with her in private.

It was no secret she has been to the best of discotheques- Arthur, Ondine, Le Club even a neighborhood bar and Italian restaurant called Elaines where she performed a ladylike swim.

Featured articles ran the gamut from gushing admiration to slightly vulgar bad taste.
(L) Vintage Ladies Home Journal Magazine 2/66 featured articles on Jackies new life in NY (R) Vintage Photoplay Magazine 7/66 one of hundreds of appearances Jackie would make on Photoplay over the years this one ran a tawdry story about an alleged fight Jackie had with Bobby Kennedy about JFK’s legacy.

And of course Peggy knew that Jackie’s apartment was a spacious 15 room duplex decorated by Billy Baldwin, filled with fragile French antiques and was within walking distance of the children’s schools and Mrs Kennedy often rose early to walk with them and their secret service escorts.

But of course Patty had never actually sat outside on a park bench across from Jackie’s home at 1040 Fifth Avenue hoping to catch a glimpse of her as so many other curiosity seekers had.( though a class field trip to the nearby Metropolitan Museum Art as a class mother proved mighty tempting to Patty).

Only once did Patty cross the line when she made an appointment at Kenneth hair Salon hoping to run into Jackie. She had booked an appointment 3 months in advance at the posh East Side salon, but had her hopes dashed when she realized they stuck the VIPs in secluded privacy on “3.”

No, she stuck to the articles and magazine reports, content to get her news second-hand. Besides which there was plenty to be had since the entire magazine industry seemed obsessed with Jackie, none more so than the movie and screen magazines Patty devoured under the hair dryer at her local beauty parlor.

Whats Love Got To Do With It?  

Vintage Motion Magazine 7/67 “Women Without Love”

Headlines blazed speculating about new boyfriends, obsessing over her love life.. Jackie may be seen with eligible men, dining privately with a gentleman in a quiet restaurant only to read snatches of their conversation in the paper the next day.  The question of Mrs. Kennedy’s remarriage came up inevitably and her dating life was well documented and scrutinized.

A year before her stunning marriage announcement, Motion Picture Magazine expressed deep concern about the former First Lady s love life in their July 1967 issue.

The headline promised to answer the burning question: “Women Without Love: Why Jackie and Barbara Stanwyck always date men they can never marry!”

“Women Without Love” article in Motion Picture Magazine July 1967 answers the burning question “Why Jackie and Barbara Stanwyck always date men they can never marry!”

“Jackie Kennedy was dining in one of N.Y.’ s poshest restaurants with a charming distinguished gentlemen” the article reports. “It was food for East coast speculators in the gossip game. But her escort was just an old friend who was entertaining her for a few hours before depositing her at the door of her 15 room apartment.”

The article expressed deep concern for this most glamorous single gal who underneath it all was just a regular girl like you and me who was looking for security:

“In that apartment Jackie is mistress of all she surveys but a mistress without a master. Her possessions may be costly, her home elegant, her wardrobe chic, her life glamorous- but do any of these fill her need as a woman for security? Do any of these make her feel she belongs to someone? “

Ironically only a year later  she would be roundly criticized when it was assumed she married Onassis for the financial security.

Then in an unlikely comparison to Liz Taylor held up as  “a model of matrimony” the article continues: “Do any of these bring to Jackie Kennedy the happiness that Elizabeth Taylor, a woman as famous as she, has found elsewhere”

“The world may find some comfort in having idols like Jackie Kennedy to look up to; but whom do these women have to admire?”

The major question will be where she will find a man willing to be compared to JFK? Willing to pass muster before the world? Will the public allow her to marry him?”

Before the towns gossip mill could start grinding out the latest dirt, her wedding announcement the next  year kicked up a new cloud of controversy.

Next Post: Oh! Jackie! Oh! Pt II – The World Reacts

Copyright (©) 2013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Vintage men’s fashion Ad Hart Shaffner & Marx 1948

Next to the waiter passing the champagne, my confirmed bachelor Great Uncle Harry was the most sought after man at a mid-century wedding.

Vivacious and gay with wavy hair the color of honey, lush black eyelashes shading come hither eyes, those of the female persuasion were drawn to him like bees to honey.

With his manly physique achieved through vigorous exercise taken at NYC’s Westside YMCA, he cut a fine figure of a man.

From the 1920s through the late 1960s, it seemed as if Harry was more prized than the tossed bridal bouquet, as bachelor girls elbowed their way through the guests to feed Harry a piece of the wedding cake,

The single gals wistfully eyed the tiny plaster figurines of the bride and groom atop the cake with envy and hope imagining the day when their own likeness would adorn the top of their own butter cream cake.

After all a wedding cake was as American as apple pie; marriage the first step in achieving the American dream.

Oh, Johnny, Oh!

The thing of it was, Harry’s come hither eyes were not directed at the bevy of beauties beating each other off for his attention….his baby blues batted more often than not at the best man, not the comely bridesmaids.

After a brief, disastrous attempt at marriage in the early 1930s to an older widow who kept him in style and all the Beatrice Lilly Theater tickets he could ever want, he hung up his top hat and vowed never to walk down that aisle again.

Ironically weddings and brides were to occupy a great deal of his time and energy.

He eventually lost track of how many carnations he would wear as an usher, or how many times he stood as best man, as one by one his pals wed, leaving him solo at the altar.

Friends thought him picky at best, an odd man out in a world geared to the married set.

It was chalked up to his artistic temperament.

Vintage Camay Soap Ads (L) 1947 (R) 1949

Always a Bridesmaid, Never A Bride

An accomplished artist, he worked at a large Madison Avenue Ad agency as an illustrator, specializing in painting fresh-faced brides, the kind that graced countless soap and shampoo ads in the 1940s and 1950s.

Financially comfortable, he nonetheless shared his small Central Park West apartment with a roommate for over 40 years, a gentleman he referred to as his “dear friend” to whom he was unusually devoted.

The family rarely saw the roommate, even at family weddings, kept in the shadows of our lives.

We didn’t know enough to ask; Harry knew enough not to tell.

Confused, our family thought the whole arrangement rather queer.

Last Dance

The last time I saw my Uncle Harry was when I danced with him at my own wedding over 20 years ago.

By then his bedroom eyes had gone more droopy, his well-honed physique, shrunken. He barely remembered the over half a century of weddings he had charmed his way through, nor  the hundreds of dances with girls whose hopes he  had dashed.

By now there was a sadness to him, his gay spirit spent, at peace in the dark shadows.

Harry was born too early to witness a wedding cake topped by two grooms or a time when his come hither eyes would be able to gaze more openly to the possibilities that were denied him.

Postscript:

In this last week in June, the chance to be a June Bride may be closing but the window to become a bride or groom just got a whole lot wider. Bringing a breeze of fresh air into the traditional notion of marriage the US Supreme Court finally removed some of the barriers to Gay and Lesbians full participation in the American Dream.

Copyright (©) 20013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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A summer staple at my 1960′s family barbeques was the ritual hot dog competition not in competitive eating but dissecting who made the best toothsome well turned frank.

The mouth-watering aroma of grilling franks wafting through the suburban air sparked the inevitable debate about who made the best hot dog.

There was fierce loyalty and intense competition.

A Hot Dog Makes Them Love Control!
Vintage advertisements (L) Del Monte Catsup 1961 (R) Gleam Toothpaste 1950s

The faithful kosher deli coalition whose Hebrew National dogs were grilled flat on a gas griddle to a crispy puckering finish, scoffed at the sacrilege of the  “dirty water dogs” languishing in a warm water bath sold by the city street vendors, whose devotees swore by the steamed Sabretts, heaped high with rich day-glo orange-colored sweet-tart onion sauce.

Loyalists to NYC’s  West Side Greys Papaya formed an unlikely alliance with their East Side rival Papaya King, both of which thought it blasphemous to  wash down a frank with anything but papaya juice, certainly never an orange drink, even if the frank dressed with mustard relish and nestled in a buttered toasted bun was “Good …like Nediks!”

For some the pontificating took on the seriousness of a rabbinic argument, though in actuality it more closely resembled a bunch of kids arguing over which were the best baseball cards, Topps in the nickel wax pack  or Bazookas cut from panels on the gum boxes, and like both discourses, no one ever won the dispute.

But on one point they agreed.

Vintage Photo Nathans Hot Dog Stand, Coney Island, NY

No one dared tamper with that most sacrosanct of hot dogs the one consumed on Coney Island on Surf and Stillwell Avenues-Nathans.

It’s the Wurst

 With the dexterity and skills of a fencer, Dad nimbly poked and prodded the franks on the grill. Normally the only dogs to sizzle on our Weber were those approved by a Higher Authority, Hebrew National, but as a surprise my grandfather had brought us cartons of gen-u-ine New York Yankee- approved-Stahl Meyer hot dogs direct from their Ridgewood Queens factory.

The boxes of pork and beef frankfurters were more than likely a token of thanks to my pawnbroker grandfather from a Stahl Meyer delivery truck driver with a penchant for poker who had pawned his Timex for the umpteenth time.To show his appreciation for my grandfathers leniency, he had made an unscheduled “delivery” to Edelstein Brothers Pawnshop on his regular route supplying dogs to Yankee stadium

The very mention of a Stahl Meyer hot dog brought boyish grins across generations of Dodger and Giants fans, instantly transporting my curmudgeon great Uncles and their broad beamed sons from the comfort of their webbed aluminum lawn chairs to the hard, gray painted, wood slatted seats of the bleachers of the old Polo Grounds and Ebbitts Field.

Even those observant Jews like my Great Uncle Leo who would never dream of eating a hot dog that wasn’t kosher, crossed a sacred boundary with ease at a baseball game.

Like eating at a Chinese Restaurant, age-old prohibitions were suspended for the day, as he willingly succumbed to the enticing aroma of a steamy Stahl Meyer dog fished out of rapidly cooling water by vendors dressed in white lugging around iron trays shouting “They’re skinless and boneless and harmless  and homeless”  as they bounded up and down the narrow aisles.

Not everyone was so enthralled.

For some members of my family any hot dog that wasn’t a kosher Hebrew
National, might well have been the same as barbecuing bacon.

As Dad casually nudged the plump Hebrew Nationals to one side of the grill, my  great Aunt Rena watched like a hawk making certain that a rogue Stahl Meyer frank did not accidentally defect over to the other side of the barbecue. It wasn’t just that these franks were not sanctified by rabbinic law, no it was far worse.

These dogs had Deutschland written all over them.

As if the factory was on the Rhine and not Ridgewood Queens, Aunt Rena shuddered at the thought of some former Bund Deutscher Madel blue-eyed blonde, meat-packing Fräulein fondling the Fuher’s frankfurters in their natural casings, while lustily humming the Nazi anthem “Horst Wessel song.”

Vintage Ad (L) Skinless Franks 1948 (R) Vintage Saturday Evening Post Cover 7/31/43 illustration Kenneth Stuart

Ridgewood, where the hot dogs were manufactured was a notoriously German neighborhood.

Not surprisingly, Aunt Rena was not the only family member who was convinced its many multi family row houses built-in the 1920s by Germans for Germans , brick by golden-colored Kreischer brick, was still populated by men in brown shirts, black Jack boots and wide Sam Browne Belts, rank and file members of the German American Volksbund who 25 years earlier, believed in Nazi power and strength to conqueror the world who still refused to embrace Aus der traum.

As the Stahl Meyer dogs rolled perilously close to the Hebrew Nationals, a shiver of terror went through some of my relatives, as if Joseph Goebbels himself had cheerfully stuffed those plump terra-cotta tubes with not only pork and spices, but a hefty serving of Nazi propaganda for good measure.

When it came to Germany, a wall had already been built by my family, beating the Russians by a full decade.

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Remembrance of July 4th Parades Past

With the acrid smell of firecrackers lingering in the hot summer air, mid-century memories of July 4th Parades past return.

The 1950s American Dream made manifest, the  annual Independence day parade was    a sugar coated, kodachrome kaleidoscope of  you’re a grand old flag waving boy scout marching, lemonade sippin’, ice cream cone lickin’ firecracker popping, sparklers glowing, ex GI’s and their  new Blue Cheer whiter than white families  living out the second generation American subdivision dream.

“I love a parade, the tramping of feet, I love every beat I hear of a drum…”

The summer air was redolent of barbecues and Roman  candles as  my family and I would make our way towards the big parade in our suburban town.

The elm lined streets in town were a hazy sea of new and improved Norman Rockwell red white and Pabst ribbon blue.

All along the parade route, freckled faced boys with Howdy Doody grins, whizzed by us tossing cherry bombs as they rode their Schwinn Black Phantom bicycles . The red white and blue streamers on the handlebars flapped noisily in the wind while the Topps baseball cards they had strategically placed in the spokes of the bikes fat whitewall tires created loud motor sounds mimicking the rumbling thunder of the motorcycles ridden by the police that were roaring up and down the side of the street in order to keep the swelling crowds back.

“I love a parade a handful of vets a line of cadets…”

We squeezed in between other newly transplanted families indistinguishable from one another but for the different fun to wear easy to care California inspired geometric patterns on their Robert Hall no-iron Dacron clothes.

Their wives were a chatty gaggle of amber waves of trouble – free Toni home permanents that had not unfurled in the humidity.

Their you-dont -know-how- lucky-you- are- to -live -in- the -country children weaved in and out of the crowds a colorful bunch of boisterous backyard buckeroos with cap firing pistols and sputtering sparklers.

…That  rat a tat tat, the blare of a horn a bright uniform…”

Straggling groups of mentally awake and morally straight cub scouts craning their necks in search of their parents hoping for a wave of approval, marched proudly in their sanforized true blue uniforms doing their best to do their duty for God and their country

The sound of crashing cymbals’ and beating drums signaled the appearance of the High School marching band as a tortured rendition of Stars and Stripes was played by a group of earnest, pimply faced teenagers struggling hard to maintain even spacing between each musician. Dressed identically in spotless white gloves and tall satin hats with fancy feather plumes that cunningly concealed summer crew cuts but revealed ravished faces splotched with skin colored Clearasil.

In the distance the familiar ringing of the Good Humor Truck was nearly obliterated by the loud pealing of the church bells coming from St Catherines of Sienna signalling the beginning of the rally.

The cavernous church nearly dwarfed the American Legion hall next door to it where the spectators began assembling to hear the speeches. The theme of our local parade was the celebration of the Four Freedoms.

While some spunky sub-debs dressed in majorette outfits strutted and twirled chrome glitter top batons, others in high luster acetate dresses with gleaming gold crosses that twinkled in the hot sun, carried banners proclaiming “Freedom of Worship- One Nation Under God.”

Looking straight at me with a wholesome wink and a half whispered hello was the envy of every girl in High School, the blue eyed Angelic Halo hair perfect Drum Major.

Her incandescent dazzling Doris Day smile artfully framed by lips outlined in Flame-Glo heavenly pink lipstick was a perfect match for her sunburned don’t be a paleface pink complexion, made you proud to be an American.

“….you’re the emblem of the land I love”

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July 4th Celebration Cold War Style

Vintage American Legion magazine 1948

Truthfully, I would always remember my first July 4th.

It was 1956. The cold war was frozen solid.

Never were American dreams more potent or more seductive than in Cold War America when the USA stood united and confident in our role as leader of the Free World.

It would soon be my first Independence Day and my parents believed it was time for its littlest citizen to be introduced to her Uncle Sam and  “My America.”

What better place to be inculcated with truth, justice and the American way than at an honest to goodness Fourth of July parade.

Like most American  children I would be  inoculated with a strong dose of Americanism which if administered at an early age would build up your immunity to any opposing belief system.

That year, the theme of our local parade was the celebration of The Four Freedoms.

All across Long Island, residents were a buzz over the fact that our towns parade was being co-sponsored  by those Cold war crusaders of truth from “The Crusade For Freedom”.

Cold War Crusaders of Truth

The Crusade, was a privately funded donation drive that raised “truth dollars” to support Radio Free Europe, the radio station that broadcast news and current affairs to the enslaved people behind the Iron Curtain.

In the black and white cold war world of us vs them, we were convinced that the Russians were hell-bent on destroying  freedom and the American way of life and it would be up to us to contain them.

Who Can You Trust

Like so many war born marriages it turned out our grand alliance during WWII  with the Soviets was more a marriage of convenience and our relations had turned frosty.

As if shifting gears between enemy and ally was as effortless as the automatic transmission in your Chevrolet, the considerable fury and fear that had fueled our hatred of those bloodless Nazis had been seamlessly and swiftly rerouted to those Godless Russians Commies, uniting our country once again.

Uncle Sam was certain that the Communists were not only concealing the truth but were waging a campaign of hatred against us and our peaceful, decent motives.

They were weaving fantastic stories and twisted facts about America unlike in our country where the government told us the truth.

Truth as clear and undistorted as the perfect picture you were promised on your new Philco television set.

True picture, no blur, no distortion, that was the American Way.

Truth, Justice and the American Way

By exposing the calculated lies that Communists were spreading, and promoting the American way of Life, Radio Free Europe became a vital strategy in winning the Cold war.

The Crusade For Freedom had aired public service announcements on the radio all week leading up to the parade, as well as advertisements in all the papers.

“Every hour, every day, millions hear no other version but hating America”  Dad read aloud from a full-page ad in the NY Times, paid for by the Crusade and their Truth dollars. “The unfortunate people behind the iron curtain are fed a steady diet of lies and misstatements and the poor people are made to swallow that poison”.

Sugar Coated Goodness

Dad wanted us to realize how vital Radio Free Europe was.

As my brother mindlessly popped fistfuls of sugar crisps into his mouth -for breakfast its dandy, for snacks it’s so handy or eat like candy:  Dad tried to explain :“Just as mom feeds us wholesome good food, we needed to feed the poor people behind the iron curtain the good nourishing truth”.

America was not only the greatest nation in the world it was the very embodiment of freedom, democracy and progress.

With my made- in- the- USA regulation rattle in one hand and my National Dairy Council issued bottle of milk in the other I was ready to brave the fog to be inducted into Uncle Sam’s service and pledge my allegiance to the land of the Free.

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Nothing gave off the glow of good All American health than a deep dark tan, and mid-century teens competed for the fastest tan in the west. After all, our handsome, vigorous young President sported a glamorous tan and who in 1961 was more glamorous and the picture of good health than  JFK?

Some Like it Well Done! (L) Vintage ad Meat Institute 1950 (R) Vintage Ad Solarcaine for sunburn pain

Teens and Tans

The  sixties suburbs were sizzling as back yard grilling was going on up and down the block. But it was more than mere hot dogs and hamburgers and Weber grills.

Next door, our neighbor, 15-year-old Lenny Moscowitz was already char broiling in his yard too, in his futile attempt to achieve a golden tan.

A tall, scrawny, lean-cut-of- a- kid, he stood in stark contrast with his short pudgy well-marbled parents. But like the rest of his family he had an unruly shock of kinky red hair and the pallid skin that accompanied it.

Vintage Coppertone Ad Sandra Dee 1960

A Char-Broiled Tan

Like Don Quixote, this poor pale face was on a hopeless quest for a Coppertone tan that would forever elude him. As if somehow, this yeshiva boy would miraculously morph into a sun-burnished surfer from California, that sun drenched  Promised land and win the heart of the ultimate teenage blonde goddess  Sandra Dee.

Brashly flouting  his fairness, he’d lavishly slather on some oily accelerant , skillfully maneuvering a silver metallic reflector to help make those long summer rays burn deep.

He’d sit out all day on a lawn chair listening to WINS1010 on the radio while his milk-white skin turned the color of a rare steak,  boldly staring danger right in the face until he had achieved a  second degree burn.( At which point his overprotective mother would be giving him the third degree).

Lenny would only come in when he had tested for doneness and was fork tender, poking and pressing the thickest part of his belly with his fingers till it felt squishy.

Like any serious grill-meister he had his secret marinade.   Lenny slow roasted, basting in a pool of viscous Fleets Mineral Oil.

Vintage Coppertone Ad with Paula Prentiss & Jim Hutton 1962

Grilled to a Turn

In the yard directly behind ours, with the sounds of WMCA radio wafting over the wisteria, tiny fourteen year old Trudy Weitzman was grilled to a turn in her itsy- bitsy- teeny- weeny -yellow- polka- dot- come –n’ get-it- folks- bikini.

For that char broiled look  so popular nothing seared in the juices like  Johnsons baby oil the # one hit marinade of the boomers.

Turn on a tan with Johnson’s Baby Oil – This vintage ad from the 1960s boasts: “It has no sunscreen like tanning lotions and creams. So there’s nothing to block out the golden sun. You tn faster and deeper than ever before. And you stay tan longer. Come on. Turn on you great big beautiful baby you!”

Two houses down where the voice of Norm Stevens on WMGM was counting down the hits, a chubby Susan Cornblau was slow roasting like a plump chicken on a rotisserie,  expertly  turning and flipping for even browning .

A true sun aficionado her technique was top secret- she got the extra plus of polyunsaturates by liberally applying a coating of Wesson oil. As the ads said it does more than make light crispy fried foods. Everything may have been better with Blue Bonnet on it, but for tanning, apparently, Wesson couldn’t be beat.

Vintage Ad WWII Jantzen Swim Wear 1943

It was a sweltering summer in 1943 and along with most war-weary Americans, Rosie the Riveter needed a day off.

In the heat and stickiness of summer everybody was tired, dog tired, completely fed up with neckties, girdles, time clocks, cook stoves, typewriters, telephones, ration coupons and endless shortages.

Americans United

There was only one way to win the war and get the job done -each of us had to give everything whether it was on the home front or in a war plant making the ammunition and tools our men needed to win

Vintage Illustration Robert Riggse Saturday Evening Post 1944

WWII Man Shortage

Everyday hundreds of men were leaving civilian jobs to join the armed forces.

In their place marched in women, who were “carrying on” work that had to be done to keep America’s war program going at top speed.

There could be no letting down, no slacking until the peace was signed, until our men returned

At Ease

For overworked Rosie the Riveter, the romance of the beach beckoned.

But what good was the beach without a beau to rub suntan oil on her, admire the curves of her swim suit?

Rosie had learned to live with less butter, eggs, and meat, but it was the darn man shortage that drove her batty.

The absence of an entire generation of men between the ages of 17 and 30 left a lonely void.

Even though she and her crowd of girls enjoyed playing bridge and having hen parties to fill up those lonely weekends, Rosie couldn’t help wondering if they were not rationing love too.

If she were headed for the beach, she needed some ammunition to attract whatever available men were still around.

Vintage Ad WWII- Jantzen Swim Suits 1943 Clearly directed at war weary workers the copy reads “Make something of your day off, your vacation or your leave…get a Jantzen and get out where there’s sea and water and joy.”

Last word in Swim Suits

Luckily the stores still stocked the new curve allure Jantzen swimsuit advertised in Life Magazine that promised not only to give you lines that were thrilling but make you the most radiant star of summers bright stage.

The swim suit ads not only prompted you to be patriotic and “buy war  bonds today to be free to enjoy tomorrow” they reminded you “to make each moment something to remember because this was a different kind of summer”

Like most industries Jantzen had retooled to manufacture military items to support the war effort manufacturing sleeping bags, and gas mask carriers but   thankfully  some swimwear still rolled off their assembly lines.

Vintage 1942 Ads for Jantzen -Hurrell Photograph

Beach Bliss

Empowered by  the uplifting capability  of her new Jantzen bra, the heavenly slimming  fabric magic of Lastex , she was ready to catch the eye of any wacky khaki

With glamor and glow she and her pals hopped into her pre-war De Soto and headed to the beach, having carefully saved her dearly rationed  gas allotment  so she could make the excursion.

The crowded beach was a picture of muscular grace and bulging waistlines, of smooth tans and freckles, of sunburn oil, adhesive plaster and bathing suits which had obviously been in mothballs since the early 1920s

After 3 straight summers of crisis, war-weary Americans needed a little relief. So they undid their stays, let their hair down and dug their toes happily in the sand- without dignity, without care.

Establishing her beachhead among the other brown backs on the  pristine white sand,  Rosie settled in  for a healthy burn.

So long pale face.

Vintage ad Jantzen swim suits 1943 WWII Something to Remember for the boys overseas: “It’s a new kind of summer,” this war time ad begins,”thrilling with new Jantzen swim suits to make a girl lovely for a man on leave…to give a man something to remember”

Hello Soldier

Suddenly out of thin air, looking trim in his tailored trunks appeared  Stanley, a khaki Casanova , who swept her off her feet.

The dream guy she was always talking about had really come to life.

She couldn’t remember very much what they talked about …except when the soldier asked her to go dancing that very evening, “Fate, she thought, “you’ve got a finger in this…and who am I to fight you!”

The evening would reek of romance.

Now that perfume was also very dear due to alcohol shortage, she was glad she used her favorite Cashmere Bouquet, the soap with the fragrance men loved.

A girl had to lure a man with something!

While sharing a conga line together, the sizzling rhythms, the drums and maracas filling her mind, Rosie remembered all the articles she had read, all the movies she had seen, all the songs she had heard, and it all help confirm what she knew in her heart to be true.

This was indeed love!  It all added up…the starry eyes…the fireworks in the bloodstream…this was what the songs sing about…this is what little girls are made for…this is what she washed religiously with Ponds for!

This was why she scrimped and saved to  buy a Jantzen suit !

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Rosie the Riveter Goes to War

How Rosie the Riveters Won Over Her Husband

Rosie the Riveter Gets Her Pink Slip

Vintage Illustration “The Story of Man The Panorama of Human Life and Works” 1960 Illustration by Pierre Leroy

The Temperatures Rising… It Isn’t Surprising…

Poor mankind!

His triumphant march towards progress  is always being blamed for the actions of a hot-headed, fickle Mother Nature whose erratic behavior has recently played havoc with our weather systems.

Panicked cries of global warming by hand wringing I-told -you-so environmentalists fault the recent rash of oppressive  heat waves, ferocious wild fires, and devastating drought  on our decades long dependence on fossil fuels.

It’s hard not to connect the dots.

Wheels Across America 1954 by Terry Shannon, illustration by Charles Payzant

When it comes to weather , it’s certainly not the first time  man’s triumph over nature has been called into question by alarmists .

In the 1950s,  blaming finger-pointing also  turned towards mans  industrial might and scientific prowess.

We’re Having a Heat Wave

As spring turned to summer in 1954, a debate broke out about the unseasonably hot weather.

Summer  turned out to be a real scorcher that year.

A wilted public looking to point the finger of blame on something blamed the spell of unseasonably hot weather on everything from new fangled TV transmissions racing through the sky to the recent spate of atmospheric Atom Bomb tests in Nevada.

Global warming was the farthest thing from our gas-guzzling minds. What was a little greenhouse gas build up when we had radiation in the atmosphere to be worried about.

The government hotly contested the charges insisting that the bomb tests effect on the weather was at most only local  in character.

Vintage Illustration of Weather patterns from Vintage Book “The Wonderful World” 1954 by James Fisher

Mopping his perspiring brow with his handkerchief, my father  shrugged off the potential hazards of the bomb testing, especially the long term danger, laughing it off as pure fantasy. Folks were just hot under the collar and the bomb tests were an easy target.

As he pointed out, “It was the same nervous Nellies who thought we should be concerned about the safety of DDT.”

Radiation was like taxes, not pleasant perhaps but you could learn to live with it.

Fusion Culture collage by Sally Edelstein

He tried to allay any apprehensions my mother had, reassuring her that our own government had guaranteed us of the safety of these testings and, as he was so fond of pointing out, if you can’t trust the word of Uncle Sam, who can you trust?

Godzilla that pre-historic reptile that mutated into a radioactive monster as a result of bomb tests may have cast a foreboding shadow in the far East with his radioactive breath, but the fiery sun was still shining brightly here at home.

Super Sizing the  Bomb

Fusion-Culture collage by Sally Edelstein

The recently developed Super-Bomb was thousands more powerful than the Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

This, Uncle Sam believed was the new kind of power that today’s American wants. A new kind of power for a new kind of people: the growing, restless people of mid-century America.

A Thermonuclear device was still a novelty and was on everybody’s mind, sparked by patriotic fervor and fanned to fascination by the impressionable pictures of the glowing skies and mushroom-shaped clouds presented in Life Magazine.

America’s passion over Bomb tests also flared up.

We’re Having a Heat Wave ….a Tropical Heat Wave….

Some began referring to the current heat wave as a tropical heat wave, igniting the farfetched rumors that attributed the sizzling weather on the even more powerful Hydrogen Bomb tests in the far off South Pacific.

Your Show of Shows

Ever since April 1, 1954 when TV audiences coast to coast watched  an actual broadcast of a Hydrogen Bomb explosion, outlandish allegations from alarmists attributed everything from rising cost of living, to climate changes, birth defects, even throwing the very earth off its axis, to the tests.

The government debunked each of these fears, with Uncle Sam patiently and confidently dismissing every last one.

The recent television broadcast  of Operation Ivy, a once top-secret film that had been  shot in The Marshall Islands in 1952, offered viewers ring side seats in the comfort of their own living room of the first  full-scale test of a thermal nuclear device.

On the morning of April first, my bleary eyed mother got a real jolt with her morning coffee as she was treated to a bird’s-eye view of a nuclear explosion right there on the family Philco.  How about a rasher of radioactive bacon to go with those sunnyside up eggs?

By-The-Bomb’s-Early-Light collage Sally Edelstein

April Fools

Walter Cronkite, congenial host of The CBS Morning Show jumped the gun on the competition, teasing the early riser with sampling of clips from the Operation Ivy film scheduled to be broadcast on all 3 channels later in the day.

That evening, as TV sets warmed up all across the nation, an ominous soundtrack of music could be heard emanating from their sets. As the music built to a crescendo , my parents along with millions of other captivated  TV viewers  heard a metronomic voice counting down -5- 4 -3- 2 -1  and then  got an  eyeful when an awesome blast filled their TV screen with a gigantic billowing fireball.

The announcer triumphantly proclaimed “the Hydrogen Age is upon us”.

Afterwards a disbelieving audience witnessed as an entire atoll disappeared from the face of the earth.

Just to make sure the viewer understood the magnitude of the power wielded by this nuclear device they superimposed the explosion on the skyline of Manhattan, transmuting the devastation of the Marshal Islands into visions of American cities in smoldering ruins

The spectacle, as theatrical as anything on Playhouse 90 was no hoax, no Orson Welles War of the Worlds Halloween prank. My mother, anxiously hoping for Walter Cronkite to utter the words “April Fools”, was cruelly disappointed!

Weather it Does or Whether  it Doesn’t

The Atomic Energy Commission   uniformly denied there was danger from these tests; in fact the danger lay in not doing the tests. Most folks agreed that the ultimate benefit of peace and security that the H-bomb would bring us was more than enough for the potential slight risk.

Mans harnessing of nature for our purposes has been man’s great triumph! The march of progress continues.

“Mans March of Progress” illustration from vintage children’s book “The Story Of Man” 1960

Freedomland Fun Foiled

From Coney Island to Six Flags, amusement parks have long been part of the Great American Summer. And none was more American than Freedomland.

Besides my many visits to El Patio, my grandmothers suburban beach club, my summer staycation in 1960 was to include a visit to the newly opened Freedomland.

Although Disneyland in California remained the holy grail of Amusement parks, for an East coast kid Freedomland seemed a close second.

But because the first week in August 1960 had been an unusually rainy one, our much-anticipated family outing to the amusement park with that improbable name of Freedomland USA, had been postponed a week.

The newly built park, an American history themed extravaganza “where the story of America comes to life” was not only bigger than Disneyland but a whole lot closer- Freedomland was located in the Bronx –“only one half hour by subway from Times Square the heart of NYC”

Even Ed Sullivan himself presented a promotional tour of the park on his Sunday night TV Show , referring to the park as Disneyland’s equal on the East coast.

The parks concept was history based and the layout was cleverly arranged in the shape of a large map of the United states, divided into different themed areas based on the history of the US.

Freedomland in TV Land

The disappointment my older brother and I felt was palpable.

For an impatient nine-year old and a fidgety six-year-old with little sense of time, having to wait a whole week for the chance to visit the park lauded as the most exciting new thing in the world of entertainment,  was unbearable.

Disconsolate and prickly as the oppressive heat, the usually soothing balm that TV offered me, proved useless.

Even the novelty of our new Admiral 19  inch portable TV, allowing us the unrestricted freedom to watch  wobble and flutter-free television anywhere in the entire  house simply by  rolling this fashion slim TV atop  its own cart, lost its luster.

Escaping into the cartoon capers of Casper the Friendly Ghost or Quick Draw McGraw proved futile as there was no escaping those pulse quickening commercials extolling the lure of Freedomland.

Interspersed between the ubiquitous summertime commercials for the pause that refreshes and Palisades- ride the coaster /get cool in the waves of the pool-Amusement Park, were the enthusiastic commercials for  Freedomland that played endlessly on both radio and television, merely exasperating the situation.

 Sure you could swing all day and after dark at Palisades Amusement park, but Jersey kids could keep their old park with the world’s largest salt water pool.

Even if  none other than that defender of truth justice and the American way, Superman, gave his ringing endorsement to the New Jersey park,  his steely visage appearing on billboards, and sides of buses everywhere promising you’ll  have fun, so come on over, it was Freedomland for me.

 “…Mommy and Daddy take my hand Take me out to Freedomland …”

Children having the time of their life, gape with horror in Freedomland ride, Photo Life magazine 8/1/60

A shiver of excitement surged through me watching the rip roarin’ fun that a couple of bucks would buy. “$2.95 is all you pay\For Freedomland all day”

Where else could a kid swaddled in the suburban safety of mid-century America actually witness and experience  firsthand the terrifying devastation of major American cities?

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

For some folks twisting the night away might have been plenty of fun, but who wouldn’t want to experience the tingling shake, rattle and roll of a real tornado twister or the sheer rippling exhilaration of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in a rollicking fun-filled ride?

Imagine the thrill as you were magically transported in a charming antique car through a re-creation of the ruination of the city by the Bay.

The twisted wreckage would appear before your very eyes, as walls and  buildings around you would tremble and crack and tumble-down, surrounded by great heaps of smoking brick, tangled wires and  warped metal girders.

Heightening the thrills,  asphalt streets buckled and melted around you  causing  your car to rock back and forth like a bucking bronco while the trembling earth spasms and convulses opening  up beneath you

Chicago Fire of 1871

If that wasn’t spine tingling entertaining enough you could bask in the warm glow of the great Chicago Fire of 1871.

The calamity of that out of control inferno caused by Mrs O Leary’s cow was cheerfully recreated every half hour as you witnessed  genuine flames  shooting out of burning buildings , the fatal fire roaring down the streets in old-time tinderbox Chicago .

Talk about a hot time summer in the city!

It was one apocalyptic catastrophe after another-all part of the thrill that was as big as America itself.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Stay Tuned for PtII Freedomland

May I make the Introduction, Mother? Vintage ad Anscochrome Film 1959

Here’s Your Hat…Whats Your Hurry?

While the Duchess of Cambridge, like most new Moms today, will get a very un royal speedy exit from the hospital after giving birth to her new little prince, my own mid-century Mom was treated like a Queen with a full 10 day stay in the hospital after giving birth to her own little princess…me.

When I was born in 1955, a hospital stay of at least 10-14 days was a must, although some progressive hospital sent patients home in as little as 7.

 A Womb with a View

9L) Vintage Illustration Baby in Womb (R) Johnson & Johnson Vintage Ad 1949

The stay in the hospital mirrored  the lengthy time I spent in my mother’s womb.

Apparently I was in no rush to be born.

Just as a giant sigh of relief was heard echoing around the world full of royal baby watchers when Kate Middleton finally went into labor, so my own family could relax when, after my own due date came and went, my mother finally went into labor.

Since I had taken up residency for over 9 months in my mothers womb, I felt entitled to squatter’s rights.  However, by late March my lease was nearly up and option for renewal was out of the question.

A creature of comfort I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of relinquishing the premises and would have been happy to stay put indefinitely. Despite the fact that the cozy quarters had become a bit claustrophobic and there wasn’t much of a view, you just couldn’t beat the amenities.

Regardless of my reluctance to leave, Mom was more than happy to serve an eviction notice on me. Could she possibly get any bigger, she despaired. Dad joked that she was expanding as rapidly as the Russians were over Eastern Europe.

Mom was eagerly priming for my big move.

 Separation Anxiety

“Carnation House Formula used in best Hospitals” Vintage Ad Carnation Milk 1945

 Once I was born my ten-day all-inclusive, all expense paid vacation in St Josephs Hospital was about to begin.

After fluffing up Moms pillows, a lovely nurse, who bore a striking resemblance to Nurse Cherry Ames, dressed in a crisp white uniform, her starched white cap perched on bouncing black curls, would bring me to Mom for my feeding. Wrapped in a sterile blanket,a sterile feeding sheet was  spread over the bed-clothes.

Although we were “housemates” sharing the same body  for over nine months, for the entire ten-day stay in the hospital, we were never roommates-my mother was in her room and I was in the nursery. We wouldn’t be formally introduced for several hours, at which time I could look forward to my very first meal.

After months of ordering in -“womb service”- I was looking forward to my first home cooked meal outside the womb.

Any hopes of latching onto a breast and getting me some bone fide mothers milk were quickly dispelled.

“Babies begin life on Dextrose Sugar” Vintage Ad 1941

My Mom knew that most modern babies “begin life on Dextrose.” Being a typical up-to-date-American baby, my very first mouthful of nourishment was a synthetic, sweetened bottle formula, sipped through a-its-so-life-like-just-like-mother-latex-rubber nipple.

Talk about whetting your appetite for future petroleum-based products.

Vintage illustration Mennen Oil for Babies 1943

In fact at the tender age of three minutes, I was baptized in a soothing petroleum product. I could look forward to a cornucopia of baby lotions, potions and potables that came from petroleum. These, their producer Shell oil confidently promised, would start your baby on his way to the 57,805 gallons of oil, they reckoned he’d use in a lifetime. (Lots of it from Shell they hoped.)

Breasts For Success?

Vintage Ad Carnation Evaporated Milk 1954

While Mom was still groggy from the anesthesia, a bouncy candy striper had handed her a colorful pamphlet (thoughtfully distributed by Carnation Milk) discouraging breast-feeding.

Why nurse baby when there were herds of Carnations contented cows more than willing to offer up their services. Breast feeding might be okay for Elsie the Cow, but not for my post war-mom.

To her surprise Moms roommate, who gently tossed the booklet aside, was quietly breast-feeding. Mom was bewildered. Why live in the dark ages when modern science and medical know how could make feeding so easy.

Vintage Illustration from Ad A&P Evaporated Milk 1948

Doctors did little to encourage breast-feeding and why should they.

Concocted by chemists in a lab, scientific baby formula was marketed as being as complicated as nuclear science and just as precise, so unless you had majored in bio-chemistry and physics, you would require detailed instructions from your doctor. Since formula feedings needed the special skills only he could provide, the pediatrician elevated his position in the mother’s life, and in his bank account.

Bottle-feeding formula became increasingly the norm, the relaxing, modern scientific, way. Feeding at fingertip control.

Better for baby, easier for you.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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All American Childbirth- Fit for a Queen… or a King

Royal Baby Watch

A Royal Welcome (L) Vintage children’s book illustration “Bedtime Stories Omnibus” Brimax Books 1979 (R) Vintage ad- Carnation Evaporated Milk for babies 1947

By George, it’s a Boy!

Many in  the media are rhapsodizing over the fact that by delivering a baby boy, Kate Middleton delivered the goods, hitting a home run first time at bat.

Despite the fact that the sex of the first-born royal baby was supposed to be irrelevant in terms of succession and ignoring the fact that the internet often seemed royally disappointed that it was not a girl, an audible sigh of relief could be heard in the media when it was announced the royal couple had a bouncing baby boy.

It’s a Boy! Vintage photo from Swifts Meat for Babies Advertisement 1953

A CNN Royal  commentator  likened it to a major accomplishment, praising Kate’s “brilliance” on delivering a boy “the first time.” Meanwhile Tina Brown, the editor in chief of The Daily Beast and Newsweek tweeted  “#Kate can do no wrong! Now the royals can stop pretending they were fine with a girl 1st.”

Lurking not far beneath the politically correct surface would appear to be the age-old  cultural preference for the favored first-born male.

Royal or not, for centuries the first-born son was deemed a triumph, endowed with special privileges just because of gender.

Royal Treatment

The Homecoming. Vintage illustration by Douglass Crockwell for De Soto car advertisement 1945

In 1952, three years before I was born, when my tiny, premature older brother Andy finally came home from the hospital after his two-week captivity in an incubator, it was to a reception worthy of a prince…which in a sense he was.

This little blue blanketed bundle was the first grandchild and more importantly …it was a boy. It was a blessing, for blue meant there would be a bris, baseball, and a Bar Mitzvah.

Boy Oh Boy, It’s a Boy!

Perhaps as compensation  for forfeiting his foreskin, his birthright allowed him to be the beneficiary of over 5,000 years of  entitlement bestowed on the first-born Jewish male for whom nothing but the best was good enough.

Thoroughly besotted, my indulgent paternal grandmother and grandfather carried on the tradition of preferential treatment, and need only point to their own first-born son, my father as a model of exceptionalism.

Even if my brother’s endowment included circumcision, I would often be the one who felt incomplete.

Sibling Rivalry

Vintage Children’s Schoolbook illustration from “At Home: Living & Learning in First Grade” 1963 by Paul R Hanna, illustration by Beatrice Derwinski

Because my brother was not used to sharing the spotlight, my parents envisioned a bleak landscape of utter chaos with sibling rivalry run amuck, when 3 years later I was born.

The day I came home from the hospital, was an ordinary Sunday morning as far as my brother was concerned,  blissfully unaware of the upheaval that was about to occur on his turf.

There had been no previous mention of a new sister, so this surprise invasion by an unknown outsider would be a rude shock to Andy. It had been decided that Dad stay at home with him to await my arrival hoping to minimize the inevitable outbursts from my tantrum throwing brother.

Homecoming

My much-anticipated arrival was worthy of Marilyn Monroe with great bursts of blue light as Dad stood at the ready with his Argus camera.

As if walking through a minefield, Mom tip toed gingerly thru the piles of spent flashbulbs that now littered our living room floor, bracing herself for the live land mine that lay right ahead-  my small explosive brother who could easily be triggered and once detonated cause quite a disturbance.

The New Baby. Vintage Children’s Schoolbook illustration from “At Home: Living & Learning in First Grade” 1963 by Paul R Hanna, illustration by Beatrice Derwinski

Cradling me tensely in her arms, Mom sighed with great relief when my brother, sporting a new Davy Crockett raccoon hat, took one half-hearted look at this unwelcome intruder, and… ignored me.

I was nothing more than a fast asleep doll, wrapped in a cloud of soft Cela-cloud acetate jersey.

Unlike the baby dolls he saw advertised on Romper Room, silly dolls with names like Yummy and Purty that actually did things, boring old me just lay there like a lump of clay.

He sniffed uninterested, quickly grabbing a rugelach from my doting grandfathers hand before skipping away, his raccoon tail bobbing up and down, basking in a triumphant glow.

Cheerfully he began singing “…Davy… Davy Crockett king of the wild frontier…” secure in the knowledge of his own manifest destiny.

I would prove no threat to my brother’s mighty status.

There would be no relinquishing of his preferential treatment. Nonetheless an interloper had encroached on his family.

Off With her head! Vintage childrens book illustration “New Friends & New Places” by Gates, Huber & Salisbury The Macmillan Co. 1956

Furtively gazing back at his new baby sister out of the corner of his eye, he quietly resolved that in time he would vanquish me, satisfied in the knowledge that this intruder would be repaid in childhood fighting and revenge leading to his total victory.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Bringing Baby Home

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The beleaguered middle class seems to be fading away like a once cherished Kodak snapshot.

The red white and blue American Dream once sparkled in Kodacolor.

Kodak and the American Dream were made for one another. The wholesome images of  All-American family fun portrayed in their long running advertisements would saturate our Kodacolor dreams for decades creating a template for the middle class.

These wholesome, homogenous tableau’s created by Kodak, along with the familiar yellow and red logo, insinuated themselves into the very fabric of American family life.

(L) Vintage Kodak Ad 1952 (R) Vintage Kodak Camera Ad 1950

After WWII Kodak ramped up their already heavily sentimental ads to fit in with the ethos of domestic post-war America, the middle class family idealized as never before.
(L) Vintage Kodak Camera Ad 1948 (R) Vintage Kodak Ad 1955

Kodak Developed Family Memories

Bristling with their box brownies, Americans have  long been hard at work recording the spectacle of the their middle class moments, cameras clicking away at birthday parties, little league games, picnics, communions and graduations.

1900 marked the arrival of the groundbreaking Brownie dollar camera.

For a buck -with film costing 15 cents  for 6 shots -everyone could now archive their life.

Suddenly this  simple  camera and film would  give “you and million others- not camera wizards,  just average everyday folks- the power to make wonderful snapshots of family friends and home.”

That same year the infamous  little box Brownie made its debut, my grandmother Sadie was born and her father, my  Russian born businessman great-grandfather rushed out   and purchased one of the first Brownies, like a “real Yankee.”

Despite it being designed to be “so simple a child could use it”, the family Brownie gathered dust, as my great-grandfather   still preferred the stiff, formal studio portraits so popular at the time.

A studio portrait of my grandmother Sadie (l) and her 2 sisters 1908

All I would see of my grandmother’s childhood were the framed steely toned portraits of her youth that she kept on display on her living room drum table. Much of her privileged carefree childhood was recorded against a staged studio backdrop.

These stilted images in subtle sepia tones with hints of blue matted in thick stock paper with the mysterious name of Sol Young Studios Brooklyn embossed on the back, had left an indelible imprint on me.

Not only were the old-fashioned photos unrecognizable as my silver-haired up-to-date-Cadillac driving-Jack La-Lanne-exercising-grandmother, but they bore little resemblance to any happy-go-lucky mid-century kids I knew.

These staid, solemn photographs stood in stark contrast to the fun-saver snapshots of my own-you push the button we do the rest Kodak moments

You Press The Button-It Does The Rest

“Nobody gets more fun out of making a good snapshot, Kodak assured us,” than a rank beginner- a kid or maybe a woman who was always afraid of a camera!”
(L) Vintage Kodak Camera Ad 1950 (R) Vintage Kodak Ad 1951

Snapshots were the great equalizer, the perfect tool for a democratic society, capturing the quintessential American good life.

Knowledge of technology was unimportant for a Kodak picture. The film was made for all who wanted to get a good picture of their good times…without any bother. No fuss no muss. With its automatic push-button ease Kodak was a precursor to the easy living push-button world that would characterize mid-century America

With Verichrome film, the ads promised, they “get the picture” and that’s that.

Pictures radiated with suburban domestic bliss and abundance.
(L) Vintage Kodak Ad 1962 (R) Vintage Kodak Ad 1950s

It made picture-taking so easy so sure, the ads  promised even a child ( or a woman) with film in his Brownie could take a good picture. Everyman could be his own Norman Rockwell recording and replicating those saccharine filled moments captured so brilliantly in those light drenched ads.

In this bliss no one knew what went on in the darkroom nor did they need too. Like the telephone the camera was this simple magical  black box that could be used without being understood.

Just as we were blissfully ignorant of the shadows of society, we were happy to bask in the sunny Kodacolor optimism the ads promised, that sunny outlook  that fit in so well with our sense of self.

Snapshots caught the middle class moments of our lives.
Vintage Kodak camera ad 1957

The death knell for Eastman Kodak, that very recorder and reinforce of middle class America seems to sadly coincide with the Autumn of that ethos of upward mobility it helped reinforce.

What are your Kodak memories?

Copyright (©) 20013 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

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