BOOM! Pop Culture Chronicles by Mike Olszewski
With the holidays coming up, you can’t help but think back on all the time-tested customs that stayed with your family for no other reason than you always did them.
We were probably luckier than most growing up. Grandpa Olszewski had a full-sized manger outside his house on the east side of Cleveland with life-size figures. Cattle, the three kings, shepherds, everyone. He also had religious music piped outside and it was lit up all night. People thought it was a roadside shrine; they would stop by and pray.
One day, I noticed something odd. My grandfather was sitting at the kitchen table having a smoke and I asked why he had a Coca-Cola Santa Claus standing in the back of the manger.
“You got a problem with that?” he asked. “Get your own manger and put whoever you want in there!”
Tree Topping
We lived with our other grandmother and she stuck pretty close to normal decorations. But when we moved to a new neighborhood, my parents went off the rail. It was a split-level house and they had the crackpot idea to have two Christmas trees.
The one in the family room was a live tree; those were the days when you hung tons of tinsel off the branches. When the tree finally came down, you were picking up needles for months. And if you had a dog that ate everything on the floor, you were picking up tinsel in some creative ways. But the real head-scratcher was in the living room; an aluminum tree.
The tree was a silver stick holding more sticks with aluminum plumes. You hung red fuzzy ornaments on it with rotating colored light wheels on either side. Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree had more dignity. My parents had it right in the front window. That monstrosity went up every year for at least a decade until it mercifully found its way to the curb. I saw one in an antique store not long ago, going for $400.
Things could have been worse. The guy two doors down was a labor organizer who drank up the family gift money. He told his kids there wouldn’t be a Christmas that year because one of Santa’s union-busting goons roughed up an elf pretty bad on the picket line.
There are other traditions that are fun for the kids. “The Elf on the Shelf” and the “Mensch on the Bench” watching over everyone, and then there’s the pickle. Some families had a pickle ornament they would hide on the tree and the kid who found it got an extra gift. In larger families, this would lead to screaming and shoving, but hey… it’s the holidays.
One question: I’ve got my own front yard. Anyone know where I can get a full-size Santa Claus sipping a Coke?
I Need Some Help! My blushing bride and I write books about local pop culture and our last outing concerned Cleveland kid show hosts. I was contacted by a reader in Illinois whose late mother-in-law lived as a child in Lake County. Her name then was Susan Stapel and she appeared on early TV here as one of the “Rhythm Tots,” an all-girl trio — not the Polka Tots; they were a different group. If anyone has any information on Susan Stapel from Leroy Township or the Rhythm Tots, please let me know and I’ll pass it on.
Boomer Trivia: Last issue, I mentioned the 1976 Halloween special hosted by comedian Paul Lynde with KISS as the musical guests and three people from Greater Cleveland playing key roles. They were guest Tim Conway, announcer Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson, and actress Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, who came from Cleveland and Painesville.
For the next time, this actress told NBC’s Al Roker she used to watch him swim laps when she worked at the Shaker Heights Municipal Pool.
