A 20th-Century Holiday Greeting

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

"Candid Camera" in 25 Words or Less

1960's black-and-white reality show where Alan Funt secretly filmed unsuspecting people and made fun of them without getting arrested, sued, slapped, beaten, or shot.

The Clinton Administration in 50 Words or Less

With Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House, the last eight years of the 20th Century were banner years for the U.S. There were no wars, gasoline and housing was affordable and there were plenty of jobs to go around. These are facts that most Americans have completely forgotten.

Author's Note: 3-23-14: So what? Even a baby boomer like me can be fooled.

"Nash Bridges" in More Words Than It Deserves

This was a pathetic 1990's television crime drama that even ran into the 21st Century before viewers finally realized that this stupid, sleazy series portrayed The San Francisco Police Department as a bunch of liberal freaks who couldn't keep it zipped long enough to arrest anyone, especially if the suspects represented the city's GLBT "community".

Star Don Johnson, almost but not quite reinventing his Miami Vice role as Detective Sonny Crockett, portrayed Nash Bridges, a skirt chaser whose misplaced priorities made him love everyone just so damn much that the fine line between right and wrong, and good and evil, seemed to get in the way of his hooking up with yet another woman. An unconventional woman, of course, by looks and trade, who'd fall for the expensive, offbeat ensembles he sported and that annoying, raspy laugh and agree to a mutually anticipated one-night-stand. Quite often, she was also the criminal he was investigating. No conflict of interest there, of course, according to the 1990's "anything goes" rules. More often than not, she wised up and skedaddled like someone who had a brain. So, Nash, persistent as a dog with two erections, simply rubbed out that line and never looked back.

Nash Bridges had a partner and side-kick, naturally. Character Joe Dominguez was played by veteran cheesy comic actor Cheech Marin who gave up his quest for the ultimate marijuana high to portray an aging Hispanic-American Yuppie who worshiped the shallow and artificial world of Yuppie things. Like wearing over-priced, hideous-looking suits, driving top-of-the-line European automobiles and making money hand-over-fist off other unsuspecting Yuppies, whether they were members of San Francisco's GLBT "community" or not. Before "Nash Bridges" aired, Cheech Marin made you laugh as a lazy, unambitious lover of life. But, as part of the "Nash Bridges" cast, he made you want to puke.

Nash ran the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) of the SFPD where Joe was his next-in-command. This unit evolved over time as people came and went from the show. Some of them were good investigators (characters Harvey Leek, Bryn Carson and Michelle Chan, portrayed by Jeff Perry, Mary Mara and Kelly Hu) and some of them were nothing more than walking erections, like Inspector Evan Cortez, portrayed by Jaime Gomez, and Rick Bettina, played by Daniel Roebuck. Evan's round-the-clock, skirt-chasing exploits made Nash's nocturnal prowling look innocent by comparison. Evan Cortez and his string of female targets, including the first ex-wife and daughter of his boss, Nash Bridges, almost single-handedly transformed "Nash Bridges" from a TV crime drama into yet another predictable, sordid, formulaic soap.

One of the soapiest (and creepiest) things about "Nash Bridges" was Nash's father, Nick Bridges, portrayed by James Gammon. This was the seediest and most aggravating part of the show for me. Nash's two ex-wives couldn't hold a candle to Nash's raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking, skirt-chasing father for making lots of soapy trouble. Instead of being an old man with Alzheimer's, aging gracefully and enjoying what family and time he had left, Nick Bridges was the old man from hell and any old woman's worst nightmare. Nick Bridges couldn't keep it zipped, either, and this seemed to be a feature of this sleazy series that apparently attracted a lot of sick fans. Instead of being a grandfather who smoked a pipe in his slippers and easy chair, Nick Bridges was a dirty old man whose addiction to women, cards, cigars, and the ponies made him the perfect anti-flyover grandfather. Just the kind of dad and granddad that makes San Franciscans so proud and so cutting edge, while the rest of America is stuck with upholding the traditional values and virtues of grandfatherhood. No wonder Nash called his father "Nick" instead of "Dad". Apparently, "Dad" is no longer cool in America the Beautiful.

This ludicrous show almost seemed to go out of its way to convince American viewers that it was perfectly all right to let the good times roll and to hell with the consequences. But, every now and then, they would have Nash actually put a bad guy in the slammer temporarily and the bad guy was usually a white heterosexual man who spent an awful lot of money on clothing and fine dining. And that seemed to be the real purpose, albeit underlying, for airing "Nash Bridges". To showcase San Francisco as the jewel of the West Coast and San Franciscans as super-educated and super-cool Yuppies who wore the best labels and frequented all the best restaurants. As if any of that crap ever mattered in life. "Nash Bridges" was a deliberate snub to regular Americans in the fly-over states but no one seemed to get it.

And any stupid, redneck hillbilly from Appalachia could have told you that.

Y2K Through the Keyhole

The year 2000 was called Y2K in the last decade of the 20th Century by people who had an unhealthy, shameless fascination with it as well as an unfounded and ridiculous fear of it. These were the hi-tech freaks who were so in love with their personal computers and the Internet that they couldn’t imagine a new millennium or a new century or a new decade or even a new year without them.

In the average person's earthbound mind, the year 2000 was mistaken for the first year of a new decade, new century and new millennium, not the last year of the last decade of the 20th Century. So, instead of just being the year 2000, it was magically transformed into the infamous Y2K, where everything in cyberland would suddenly break down because supposedly short-sighted 20th-Century computer programmers had not allowed for the advent of the year 2000 in their programs.

So, the catalyst for all the Y2K hype was the misconception that the year 2000 was not the last year of the 20th Century but the first year of the 21st Century. Most people had no clue that the year 2001 would fit that bill like a glove. It was the number "2" that mesmerized everybody. A year starting with a "2" instead of a "1" could not possibly be part of the 20th Century. 2000 just had to be the super-cool first year of the hi-tech, space-bound new millennium. Even though it wasn't. Turning a blind eye to the truth, they called it Y2K instead of 2000 and didn't look back. Y2K belonged to the 21st Century and there was nothing that anybody with a brain could do to change that.

The great World Wide Web, only five-years-old, would die a swift and sudden death at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1999, Greenwich Time, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Hospital machines would stop dispensing medicine, computerized manufacturing would grind to a halt, governments would fail, missiles would fire and Armageddon would arrive as predicted. And all because of the Y2K “bug”.

But none of that stuff happened.

And any so-called stupid, redneck hillbilly from Appalachia could have told you that.

Free Lunch

I used to wonder why white-collar workers in America jumped at every opportunity to attend a conference somewhere. But I finally figured out the real reason why office workers flocked to conferences like flies took to shit way before conferences were even called conferences. I was in the know and even hip about the secret world of conferences and the underground cult of conference goers when most conferences were still called “conventions”.

A convention was an overnight conference held in a hotel in some far away town. Convention goers were bored office workers and frustrated white-collar middle managers who needed a little break from their daily paper-pushing routine and a lot of eagerly anticipated, devilish diversion in someone else’s back yard. Have fun and let someone else clean up the mess afterward became America’s new service-industry corporate motto. This went hand-in-hand with America’s new white-collar corporate mission: Don’t get caught.

When paper-pushing was tossed out the service industry door in the 1990s, along with the single-tasking “pencil necks” who earned their living via telephones and filing cabinets, a new age of multi-tasking “computer keyboarders” and e-mail processors took over. Still, they got just as bored and frustrated as anyone else and needed a night or two on the town. Somebody else’s town, that is, and at the company’s expense. So, they invented "conferences" because the word sounded more progressive and high-end. After all, pencil necks went to conventions to skip convention meetings and to play poker all night long, if a tawdry one-night stand or a schoolboy shaving cream battle wasn’t in the offing. Computer keyboarders, on the other hand, would attend conferences mainly to “eat free food”. As Y2K approached, the all-you-can-eat buffet replaced lascivious carousing and unfettered mischief in white-collar corporate America.

When America’s service industry discovered that its over-tasked office staffs were signing up in droves for free food, managers stopped planning so many big-budget conferences and started offering conferences on the other side of town. Lavish business conferences became simple day-trips to a prepaid food trough.

Windows 95, therefore, spawned the biggest service industry perk of all time. White-collar workers had finally found their gastro G-spot. And no one ever looked back.

Like Disco, the “Free Lunch” had arrived.

Quest For Chocolate

Way back in elementary school I’d often stop in at one of three places in town where you could buy candy and one of my favorite confections back then was a chocolate bar. Back in 1950's Appalachia there wasn’t much of a selection to choose from. You had your Hershey Bar and your Nestle bar and then in the 1960s the chocolate wizards came out with the blocky chocolate bar they called a Chunky. Still, I’d found Nirvana at an early age and it was wrapped in foil and paper and it melted quickly in the sun.

As I grew older and started getting off the school bus, I still had chocolate fever, but I was grooming my taste buds for the more exotic candy bars like Mallo Cup with the vanilla cream center, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Three Musketeers and Snickers. Then, when I was totally hooked on nuts with my chocolate, I discovered Almond Joy, Fifth Avenue, Mars Bar and Hershey’s With Almonds. I never looked back. Well, almost.

Of course, that’s when I liked a chocolate candy bar with a soda. Now, as a grown man, I wouldn’t even think about washing down a mouthful of masticated chocolate with a bubbly soft drink. Now it’s either cold milk or hot coffee, the latter of which can cause certain unwanted side effects that will make you wish you’d had the milk instead. Or even a caffeine-free soda.

It wasn’t until I reached my forties that I discovered that I hadn’t really been enjoying chocolate all along. I’d been eating “milk chocolate”. The snobby experts on TV food shows told us that milk chocolate wasn’t even chocolate, as far as they were concerned. Real chocolate, they said, was “dark chocolate”, which contained more cocoa and less milk. I had to remind myself that these were the same people who looked down their noses at yellow mustard and who took great pains to hold their wine glass by the stem at all times.

Later, in the 21st Century, more experts explained on TV and in magazines and health pamphlets that cocoa contained “bioflavonoids” that had health benefits and could even prevent cancer. But, still, I thought, dark chocolate was bitter and tasted like a candy bar that someone had forgotten to add the rest of the ingredients to. Like sugar and milk.

By now, at age 56, I have the answer to it all. I’ll just eat two or three times as much milk chocolate and wash it down with twice as much milk. And, once in a great while, I’ll eat a little piece of Hershey’s Dark with a cup of coffee, just to be health conscious. Gain weight? Get fat? Well, yeah, there is that. Still, I’ll be better off than most Appalachian men who mellow out with Jack Daniels and Budweiser. Plus, after I’ve had my chocolate fix, I can still get behind the wheel of a car with a clear conscience.

There you go. Who says you can’t teach and ol’ dawg new tricks?

Dust Bowl Parade

America’s Great Depression began in 1929, right after the great big Stock Market Crash that same year, and it was economic hard times on a grand scale, partly caused by the Crash itself. The other reason for the Great Depression, which lasted a full decade, was the unequal distribution of wealth in America during the 1920s, which was basically a non-distribution of wealth.

In the Twenties 58% of America’s total wealth was owned by the top 1% of the population. That would be the Fords and the Carnegies and the Mellons and the Rockefellers and all the other big movers and shakers, including all the barons of oil, coal, lumber, railroading and manufacturing.

Henry Ford’s personal annual income was more than $14 million in 1929 while the average American made a mere $750 that same year. In other words, Henry Ford made as much money in 1929 as 18,000 Americans combined, which drastically illustrates the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States at that time. Industry controlled most of the wealth in America the Beautiful and the farmers – the real producers of America’s great bounty – controlled zilch, nada, nothing. Although they fed everyone. And no one in America thought this gross inequity would cause any problems for them down the road. Boy, were they wrong.

Basically, there was no middle class in the United States during the 1920s, which was America’s biggest banner decade for making money and lots of it. The only trouble was that only 1% of the country’s people were making it and we already know who they were. It gets worse.

Not only did the rich and famous and powerful have just about all the money, they wanted it all for themselves. That’s why the people who worked for the rich didn’t earn enough to do much of anything with their pittances except buy things from the rich. Often at company stores owned and operated by their employers. The U.S. didn’t want Europe selling its goods to Americans, either, and to ensure that they put such an outrageous tariff on anything coming into America that nobody in Europe could afford to ship anything over. If the rich Yanks wanted anything from Europe, hell, they’d just go over there and get it for themselves.

The American rich also liked to play with their money and their favorite game was Wall Street. They traded over a billion shares in 1928 and artificially drove the stock prices up so high that the prices of stocks no longer reflected the actual economic and fiscal performance of the companies they represented. The stock market soared. It flew high on a wave of pure confidence in American big business. But that all came to a head in October 1929 when the moneylenders and the money tenders wised up and became afraid of what they’d been doing for the past decade. That fear drove the prices of stocks back down so fast that even the ticker tape couldn’t keep up. A nation built on confidence had suddenly gone belly up due to fear. Fear of being wiped out. A self-fulfilling prophecy, indeed.

Suddenly there was no money for investment and none for paying America’s mortgages. Farmers were kicked off their farms. Folks lost their homes. People were laid off. The only real money to be made was in crime.

But the real criminals were America’s moguls and magnates, the rich who always got richer by the sweat of someone else’s brow. And these barons of bullshit never did a single day of time in a federal pen and they were all just as guilty as Al Capone. Maybe even guiltier.

The only thing “great” about the Great Depression was that it was somehow a great big surprise to everyone when they should have heard it knocking on their front door all along. Then they could have booted it the hell out before it ever had a chance to enter.

The Korean War in 100 Words or Less

This was the big retirement party President Harry Truman threw for General Douglas MacArthur in June 1950 on the Korean peninsula between mainland China and Japan. This military bash lasted clear until July 1953, long after Truman departed the White House and a grateful America put Dwight Eisenhower at the helm.

It even lasted after Truman booted MacArthur out of his own retirement party in April 1951 for being a spoiled, bad boy by trying to invite China and Russia to join the festivities. And that was because the food, lodging and fireworks had already been bought and paid for.

“Hanoi Jane” in 25 Words or Less

Jane Fonda, spoiled American actress, Jet Setter and “peace activist”, betrayed her own country with impunity as a Vietnam-War-Era traitor, anarchist and Viet Cong spy.

Always on Sunday

Back in the 20th Century, and especially before 1970 when the American family as an American institution began its fateful journey toward extinction, Moms and Dads all over America loaded up the kids into the family car and went on a Sunday drive.

The Sunday drive was as much a part of American family life in that part of the last century as the Saturday shopping trip into town and a big Sunday dinner the day after that. When both parents of many American families had to go to work in the 1960s because a dragon called inflation began burning up their pocketbooks, the weekend was the only real time for family activities.

A drive into the countryside was the most popular kind of Sunday drive in the Pennsylvania Appalachians, even though most of us here already lived out in the country. But it was great to get out of the house and out of town and on the road, to nowhere in particular. That’s what the Sunday drive was all about. Having no destination other than arriving back home after spotting as many deer as you could and listening to Mom and Dad remark about the budding trees or the mountain laurel or the fall foliage. Some Sunday drives, however, took place in the early evening and with the kiddies already in their pajamas or otherwise dressed for bed. The purpose? To put the kids to sleep and carry them out of the car afterward and directly to bed. Then Mom and Dad would have a rare evening all to themselves.

I don’t think many people go on Sunday drives anymore. If they do, it’s probably to get to Walmart and back as fast as possible. Or to get to work. That’s sad, because some of my fondest memories of childhood are being in the back seat of our Chevy Bel Air and hearing Mom suddenly exclaim, “Oh, look at all the deer!”

“The Twist” in 25 Words or Less

This early 1960's dance style, made famous by Chubby Checker, was basically just dancing with yourself and looking like you had to pee really bad.

Slam or Be Slammed

As I look back on them from the vantage point of almost forty years later, I can see why the faculty and administration at my high school disapproved of "slam books". Any grownup with any decency about him or her would have done the same. But, as juniors and seniors doing time in a penal colony as punishment for the crime of being a teenager, we prisoners needed a little diversion. And one of those diversions in 1968 and 1969 was creating and/or signing a "slam book".

What the hell was a "slam book"? It was a tablet that you had converted into a guest book of sorts so that other students could sign it. But there was a sick twist to that. A "slam book" was a way to "slam" or to get back at other kids whom you hated or disliked. Here’s how a "slam book" worked:

1) On the inside cardboard back of the tablet was a vertical list of numbers, such as 1 to 25. Beside each number, a fellow classmate would sign his or her real name or initials.

2) On each page within the tablet was the same vertical list of numbers, 1 to 25.

3) At the top of each page was a question. Some of them were quite innocent, such as "What is your favorite meal?", but most questions were loaded guns just waiting for someone to pull the trigger. Those kinds of questions made up the bulk of the "slam book" and read like this: "Who is the stupidest guy in our class?" or “What do you think of so-and-so?” or "Do you think so-and-so is ugly or cute?" and "Who do you hate the most in our class?" And so on and so forth.

4) Students answered these questions by writing on the numbered line that corresponded to the name or initials inside the back flap. Of course, you weren’t supposed to look back there. Unh, hunh.

Personally, I didn’t like "slam books". Like the faculty and staff, I thought they were a waste of paper, terribly bad behavior and very cruel to others. But I’d occasionally sign one, and I’d only answer the innocuous questions like "What is your favorite meal?". Where most other students had answered "pizza and Pepsi" or "burger, fries and Coke", I’d write "filet mignon and a nice hearty Burgundy" or something aloof and high-brow, just for the hell of it. Just to be different.

I never heard of "slam books" from any kids in the next generation that followed me. They probably had their own version of hurtful snobbery. And the kids in high school nowadays are probably text-messaging each other the same insults and nastiness, without leaving a paper trail that can get you in really deep do-do with the warden.

“Fairy Loops”

A “fairy loop” was an American slang term for the little fabric hook on the back of men’s and boys' shirts in the 1960s and they were put there by the manufacturers to hang these shirts on a locker hook or whenever a hanger wasn’t available.

These nifty little clothing hooks were not intended to show that you were a homosexual, daring bullies to call you a “fairy” while ripping them off your shirts — often tearing the shirt — as you walked down the corridor in high school. Bullies back then liked to call any male student a "fairy" if that student was better looking, well groomed, got better grades or was better liked by the girls. Go figure.

I was as "girl crazy" as the next guy in junior high and especially in senior high school. I had serious crushes on several girls in my class and carried a torch for at least one of those girls throughout my freshman year in college. None of us regular students (actually we were "pupils" because we didn't pay tuition) were fully prepared for the onslaught of hillbilly, farmboy and "greaser" redneck hatred regarding these so-called "fairy loops". The same bunch of fairy loop hunters, who were either serious "fairy phobes" or just seriously mean and hateful, even went so far as to declare that any boy who wore a red shirt on Friday was "queer".

By my senior year of incarceration for being a teenager, the incredibly stupid and nasty boys with "queers on the brain" added the warning that wearing yellow shirts on Wednesday and pink shirts on Thursday was also proof that you were "queer". This extended bully-ass manifesto gave these white-trash freaks access to a lot more "fairy loops" and the chance opportunity to destroy more personal property belonging to the smarter, friendlier and better groomed boys in the process. These guys were so stupid they didn't even realize that their ridiculous queer criteria made most of our class "queer" and the rest "queer phobes".

Now, don't jump to conclusions. I wasn't for or against anyone's "personal lifestyle choice" back then and that wasn't because I was so opened minded. No. It was because that shit wasn't even an issue back then and also because I just didn't give a shit, one way or another. I was more concerned about getting good grades to get into college and about the girls I had crushes on. For several years, I secretly imagined the "deaths" of these Nazi  fairy loop hunters and I vowed to never return to those "hallowed (hallowed, my ass) halls" ever again or, worse yet, to attend a class reunion, once I was finally set free of them and that place on graduation day. And that was a promise I never broke.

And I made that promise to myself and kept it because, unfortunately, in my 1960's high school experience, hostile redneck hillbilly asshole students were on a continual quest for “fairy loops”.

Talk about queer.

Post updated 11-9-13 for image link and for clarity.