By Mike Olszewski
It has been a very rewarding (and swift) five years, working with the terrific people at Northeast Ohio Boomer and Beyond, not to mention all the folks we meet at the Boomer Bashes. We still have so many stories to share and the next five years look to be very busy, as well.
In the last issue, I mentioned how we are doing a deep spring/summer cleaning and once we started, we couldn’t stop. We had time to kill with the quarantine and I suspect the neighbors think we’re ready to move because our tree lawn has plenty to offer on garbage day. We’re still at it. The guys working the truck think there’s no way two people can generate this much stuff, week after week. I heard them swearing so much, they were making up words.
The house is like a portal to another dimension, where boxes of memories and stuff you really thought you’d need end up on the curb. We’re not turning into minimalists but when you find Eagle Stamp Savings Books, Instamatic cameras, VHS tapes and on and on, you wonder, “Why did we keep this stuff?”
Not Junk, History
I’m still transferring audio and video files to hard drives, mostly radio airchecks, and it struck me there’s probably plenty of stuff out there, sitting in people’s closets. If you do have some old Cleveland radio shows you need transferred, contact me at the email address at the end of the column… not just the music you taped but the whole shows. I want to hear the disc jockeys and commercials. It’s a part of our history that should be preserved.
Do you have a bunch of old records? With vinyl making its big return, you could be sitting on a gold mine if you have the right discs. Looks like we’ll be hitting the record shows once the all-clear sounds.
I read an article saying that vinyl doesn’t actually sound better; it’s the sound of your old records that make them special. You recognize every click and pop and how it got there. The memories lie between the music. Smell can do the same thing.
Here’s what I mean: in junior high, most boys took industrial arts classes, better known as shop. Those were the days when you could still land solid blue-collar work, and Moody Jr. High had wood, electrical, metal and plastic shop courses.
A few of my classmates ended up making license plates in later years, but that’s another story. The projects they gave us in the intro classes seemed silly. In the plastic shop we had to make a keychain, and that’s what your grade was based on. That didn’t seem like a viable career path for me, but I went along with it.
I made a keychain with a silver dollar inside, and a few years later when the price of precious metals went through the roof, I thought I would cash in. The weird thing is, when I started hacking away with a saw, the smell of that plastic took me back to junior high.
I had to step back for a minute and think about what year it was. As far as I was concerned, the plastic was now worth more than the silver. The dollar was set free, and I keep it with the plastic in my security box.
Holiday Prep
Another thing we started early… Christmas shopping! We figured with quarantine, etc., that mail-order shops are going to be overwhelmed once the season begins, so we’ve been picking up items here and there. What a weird year.
Boomer Trivia – Last issue, I asked for the name of the Cleveland-born actor best remembered for roles as a secret agent and a police lieutenant. That actor was Greg Morris, who portrayed Barney Collier on ”Mission: Impossible” and Lt. David Nelson on ”Vega$.”
Have you been watching a lot of reruns? I’ve been watching shows that were old when I was a kid, but I noticed something odd. For next time, name the only main character on “I Love Lucy” that wasn’t seen on “The Lucy Show.” I’ll have the answer in the next issue.
Mike Olszewski is a veteran award-winning radio, TV and print journalist and college instructor. Contact him at [email protected].
