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.

Happy Holidays!

Michael Casher is taking a break from blogging until after the new year. He wishes everyone a safe and happy holiday season.

Big Wheels

Being ambivalent about most things allows me the freedom to sit on the fence for a spell and see both sides of the pasture. Then I don't have to jump off unprepared and step in the manure. That's the way I like it.

When I look back on America’s love affair with the automobile in the mid-20th Century, what I remember most about it was that it was both a wonderful thing and a ridiculous social phenomenon at the same time. But it was a great time to be alive and your car was as much a part of who and what you were as anything else and most Americans wouldn't have it any other way.

Cars in the 1950s and 1960s were very distinctive looking and there was a lot to look at. Not like the clones today, which are first designed in the wind tunnel for fuel efficiency and then copycat designed for style, with that cowardly fear of losing a particular market share as the second driving force. Back then, however, no one gave a damn about gas mileage and, back in the Fifties and Sixties, being different was an automaker’s key to marketing success.

Fins were in, especially on Cadillacs, Chryslers and Plymouths, despite the fact that they served no aerodynamic function whatsoever. But they looked really cool to me, as a kid growing up at that time, like fins on a rocket ship. Today they would look nothing but ridiculous but I’d love to see them make a comeback. Along with the fender. And, while they’re at it, they might as well throw in the running board. It made a great step for kids and older people.

And, man, did these big, boxy babies have real power steering and power brakes or what? You could literally stop on a dime if you touched that big-ass brake with anything more than just your toe. And you could steer a 1962 Pontiac Catalina (pictured) with only one finger. I once saw a man steer his 1962 Dodge Coronet with just his nose.

A lot of the cars in the 1950s and 1960s also rode like Cadillacs. Hell, just about all of them. They had big, sixteen-inch, bias-ply tires, a massive chassis and thick-rolled bodies that made some of these cars weigh in at two tons or more. I could lay down in the back seat of the 1968 Buick Wildcat I bought in 1980 as a grown man. And my head and feet never touched either door.

I miss the bench seat in front and the shifter on the steering column. That’s back in the days when the ignition key went into a slot on the dashboard. Right next to the Delco radio and the glove compartment with a lock on the door and a light inside. It was big enough to hold your lunch.

I think about those cars a lot these days and I pine away for one every time I squeeze into my aging 2000 Daewoo Lanos and bump my head on the rearview mirror and skin my knee on the door handle. But at least it still hasn’t rusted in the seven years I’ve been driving it. And that’s worth an awful lot to me.

“Leave it to Beaver” in 25 Words or Less

This was a 1950's TV sitcom about a brainless boy repeatedly getting into trouble and exasperating his clueless, micro-managing parents and his too-perfect-to-be-real older brother.

The Frisbee in 25 Words or Less

Playing catch with a little, plastic, flying saucer replaced baseball as the national pastime for youngsters in the 1960s and 1970s. Now dogs could play.

The In Crowd Through The Peephole

I’m going to take a big stab in the dark and suggest that the first idolized members of the American “In Crowd” were quite possibly those who disdained the boredom and responsibility of middle-class life back in the 1920s. These were the devil-may-care folks who ran with one another in a futile quest for rebellious fun that would somehow prove to be worth all the effort of deliberately trying not to fit into the everyday social landscape.

These were the people for whom the prohibition of alcohol meant very little, or nothing at all, and to whom listening and dancing to “devil music” was a freedom they felt they somehow had to earn. Most of the older folks back then, who had to stay home and keep up appearances, were Jazz Era wannabes, moms and dads who would have dropped that broom and apron and abandoned that pipe and those slippers in a New York minute (how I hate that phrase and that’s why I just had to use it here) for a chance to imbibe bathtub gin and cut a rug with someone other than their spouses.

For my money, this is where and when the “In Crowd” cut its teeth. In the “Speakeasy” world of Prohibition. And had I lived back then, I, too, would have been one of them. For me, it would have been mainly for the jazz but also for the beer and Canadian whiskey the holier-than-thou feds should have kept their stupid paws off in the first place. But, for me, it wouldn't have been an effort on my part to be “in” or to “be cool”. For my money, that’s always been a low priority, if not a total waste of time.

Before the Keepers of the Cool were alluded to as “The In Crowd”, they began cutting their wisdom teeth in the basement nightclubs of New York and Los Angeles as part of the 1950's “too cool to care” Beat generation. That would be those goatee-sporting wannabe poets and the long-haired mavens who played flute that they ran with, all wearing trademark black clothing, including the omnipresent black French beret. These rebels were more about being rebellious, in my opinion, than the Jazz Era fun junkies of the Roaring Twenties. But the Beatniks didn’t need to sneak out of the house to act "cool" and be deliberately unfathomable. They were like that at home, too.

Then along came the infamous Sixties where youths, like me, decided that it was high time to turn the world upside down and inside out under the guise of political and social responsibility. Yeah, right. The truth of the matter was that college students of that decade simply wanted to have fun with alcohol, drugs, sex, and loud music while just pretending to have a socially-responsible bone in their bodies. What the hippies and yippies and "freaks" of the 1960s inadvertently caused, however, was the birth of the most famous “In Crowd” of all time. That was the phenomenon called the “Jet Set”.

The "Jet Set" were people (mostly from Beverly Hills, Aspen and The Hamptons) who had so much money and so little time for continued observance of those damn boring American values that the USA was built on that they flew all around the world repeatedly without a mental flight plan just to prove that they could. These people were the parings that were left after the Big Apple was carved up by television and publishing movers-and-shakers who at least did something tangible with their time and money. The unwritten code of the new “In Crowd” was to spend money like it was water and hope that those who were merely middle-class and who lived in the “fly-over country” between New York and L.A. would dare to idolize you instead of wanting you dead.

The “In Crowd” in the 1980s did their bogeying in hotspots like Xenon in New York and their chomping at trendy troughs like Spago in Los Angeles, again in the hopes that their “being cool” was being noticed and worth the all the effort of getting “dressed up” or “dressed down” and spending all that money on door covers, expensive cocktails and food with European names that looked like art on their dinner plates. The “In Crowd” of the 1980s took shallowness to a new level. Their turned-up collars, pushed-up jacket sleeves, glitter makeup and shocking hairdos were part of their visual trademark of not wanting to be like everyone else. Unfortunately, when half the world thinks you’re cool as hell and copies everything you do and say, your coolness begins to wear thin, especially when the “In Crowd” moved to the high schools and shopping malls of the 1990s, where everyone was equal.

This blog is not about the 21st Century but I’ll venture to guess that members of “The In Crowd” in the new millennium are youths comprising the "inked" generation who flock to tattoo parlors the way their great-grandparents flocked to speakeasy nightclubs during Prohibition. These are the sons and daughters who have turned the movie-going experience into a confusing battle between Surround Sound and the high-contrast nano-second images of bellybuttons and butt cracks, a digital vying for what’s left of your caffeine-kicked and sugar-laden mind.

“The In Crowd” somehow grew and grew during the latter portion of the 20th Century until it's now the bigger part of who we are as Americans. That’s the part of us that rebels against just about everything we were once taught and told. How this can be any degree of “cool” is a mystery I, myself, may never fathom.

The First Great Big War

Before the world started numbering its global conflicts, the war in Europe that began on August 1, 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, was called ‘The Great War” by the many hapless soldiers who fought in it, not World War I. Of course, the word “great” meant “on a grand scale” or “bigger than normal” back then. That kind of thing. Not “wonderful”, as the word “great” is often misused today.

The underlying cause of this so-called “Great War” was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the presumed heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire. This touchy, rich and spoiled prick was shot and killed by a Serbian assassin in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia on June 28th, 1914. Apparently, this royal jerk had slapped some touchy and defensive Serbian prick beforehand with his royal gloves, an act which, naturally, demanded retribution in the archaic, Old World tradition of vengeance. Of course, this cause-and-effect has never been verified. But it sure sounds like a good reason for Neanderthal thinkers to start a great big war.

What ensued after the declaration of war against Serbia by Austria-Hungary was a war on a scale the world had never seen before. And that was because Germany saw an opportunity to turn this local European conflict into wartime prosperity. Hell, nothing boosts a country’s economy like a long, dragged out war. And World War I was certainly that.

Costing $186 billion (don’t forget, this was between 1914 and 1918, when a dollar was worth 100 cents and not 2 cents) and eventually involving 32 nations, the lives of over 8.5 million people, with 22 million more people wounded, “The Great War” may have been stylish as hell for the British and German officers who fought in this grand exhibition of nationalism (called “patriotism” today) but it was a four-year hell for the rest of the world.

Germany — a nation that needed to be squashed like a bug for its deadly, evil opportunism — would pull a similar stunt in 1939 when it would invade Poland and start World War II, an even greater war that would leave over 52 million people dead worldwide.

Say, is there an Act Three in this great big show?

The Cold War in 25 Words or Less

After World War Two Russia and the United States pretended they were now enemies instead of the allies who helped put Hitler out of business.

Disco’s 15 Minutes

Future Past
Disco  Link

By the late 1970s a lot of people had gotten pretty tired of what had been left of the American pop music scene after the British Rock invasion in the mid-1960s. Rockers were a dime a dozen by 1977 even though their music was still very popular with the beer-drinking and pot-smoking counterculture that had spawned on the heels of head-banging American rock-and-roll. Southern Boogie bands and Heavy Metal bands and even Glitter Rock were about to be upstaged by a pop music phenomenon that had less to do with rebellion and more to do with celebration.

Disco had arrived.

Disco music was much more than just another wave of night crawlers who had come out of the American nocturnal woodwork to act up, act out and carry on until three in the morning. It meant people could now dress up again when they went out. It mean that there were more musical instruments in the world than the electric guitar, harmonica and drums. There were brass horns, electronic keyboards, electronic percussion instruments now. Violins and flutes were making a comeback, only they weren’t playing stiff-necked, watered-down versions of old worn-out rock songs for elevators or mood music for a new generation of Beatniks or Hippies with no place to go as 1980 rapidly approached. Disco bands played upbeat dance music for couples to dance to while touching one another once again.

It wasn’t Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey but Disco was certainly something to celebrate in its own right. It’s just too damn bad that the new counterculture that invariably attached itself to Disco music eventually turned out to be twice as socially rebellious, drug-related and lascivious as the previous rock-and-roll and just plain rock culture. Beer and pot were quickly replaced by cocktails, cocaine and an unflagging desire to be bad when the world so desperately needed people to start being good again.

By 1980, all the counterculture freaks had arrived, as they always do whenever creative minds give the world something new and wonderful, and by 1982 Disco's death rattle was heard around the world. And, yes, Disco may have “died”, as its retractors are always fond of saying, but the Punk Rock, New Wave, “Grunge” Rock and other flash-in-the-pan musical fads that eventually replaced it unfortunately played host to the same counterculture of predictable moral decay and wanton behavior, just like a mutating virus that simply moves on once its host is sucked dry and all washed up.

Israel in 25 Words or Less

In 1948 Jewish Holocaust survivors declared that their new nation of Israel would replace ancient Palestine, not caring that Palestinian Arabs already called it “home”.

Hippies Through the Keyhole

"Hippies" were often Baby Boomer malcontents who passed themselves off as the Peace & Love “flower children” of the 1960s, replacing the “too cool to care” Beatniks of the 1950s.

The label "hippie" was welcomed by a few youths but disdained by most. "Hippie" meant "hip", or "cool" but it also meant "in-the-know" about, not just the latest fashions and fads, but about important issues overlooked or ignored by many older people.

Some "hippies" were just regular kids who entered college as unfocused youths and exited college as vengeful movers and shakers without any real plans for their future or anyone else’s. They gave the rest of us long-haired college students a bad, undeserved name.

Being a "hippie" meant more than just having long hair, wearing beads and listening to sitar music. Being a "hippie" also meant taking a role in the cultural evolution of our country and our world. But, far too often, being a "hippie" was simply a cover for your intense hatred of everything that came before you.

Author's Note: I personally loathed the word "hippie" in the late Sixties and early Seventies because I, too, was a college student with long hair and opinions about many social issues. But I also had realistic goals about my future, a respect for American traditions and a natural affection and loyalty for my parents, grandparents and family. I was also a dedicated student and a hard worker with a part-time job, like many so-called "hippies". Just so you know.

The Kool-Aid Stand

After the second world war a new type of business sprang up all over America. The Kool-Aid stand. This was a seasonal business run by kids trying to earn their own bubble gum money as soon as school let out for the summer.

I ran a Kool-Aid stand in front of my own house one summer before I even entered school. Mom let me make the cherry Kool-Aid all by myself. After an hour or so with no customers, I spotted a man going down into a manhole on the corner and I hastened toward him with a paper cup of the refreshing summer kid’s beverage. But I was too late. He had disappeared into the subterranean world of public utilities. But that was fine with me. I’d simply wait until the unknown man came up for air and then I’d give him my best sales pitch.

My patience paid off. About five minutes later a man stuck his head out of the manhole. It was my grandfather, working for the highway department. Undeterred, I quickly explained to him the beneficial cooling effects of cherry Kool-Aid and, after he laughed, he produced a nickel. We made the exchange and he slugged down the red drink like a prospector in the desert, dying of thirst. Afterward, he made a face and told me it had “hit the spot”. Then his head was swallowed up again by the dark hole and I went back to my Kool-Aid stand.

After that, I was pretty hot myself, so I pilfered a small drink from my own stock and tasted it. I had forgotten to add the sugar. But, according to my one and only customer that day, my very first business had been an undisputed success.

Yuppies Through the Keyhole

Yuppies were the Young Upwardly-mobile Professionals in the 1980s and 1990s who basically used to be the hippies of the late 1960s. At some point in time, these incredibly shallow and restless folks decided to give up their pot and beads for cocaine and Rolexes.

The main purpose of being a Yuppie was to cover up your own embarrassing acts of discrimination with discriminating taste. It is suspected that many Yuppies had parents who were the freaky, pre-flower children of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. The main purpose of being a Beatnik was to wear black, listen to flute music and be inscrutable.

By the year 2000, the word Yuppie was simply replaced by the phrase “fat old fool”. The word Beatnik was, in turn, replaced by the phrase “dead fat old fool”.

NASCAR in 25 Words or Less

The National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing, founded in 1947 at Daytona Beach, became the biggest commercial carnival outside of Las Vegas by 1999.

The Jointure Bandwagon

When the Korean War ended it seemed that Americans had crossed another domestic threshold. It appeared that no one wanted their kids to attend high school in their own hometown. The same post-World War Two, home front introspection that had built GI Tract housing and put women back in the kitchen had reared its head again after Korean Vets returned stateside. Only this time visionary Americans were determined to tear down all those ugly two-story hometown high schools and build “Jointures”. After all, this was a new age. Milton Berle was the new American icon. TV dinners were on their way. MacArthur had "faded away", Truman was out and most of America was already liking Ike. We had helicopters and jets now.

Jointures were super high schools that combined the student populations of several small school districts under one big, single-story roof. They were the academic shopping malls of the future, where grammar school was sold as Junior High School, with high school freshmen being reduced to the same ranks. The new Senior High School became an exclusive hangout for Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors only. There was new tax money for big lawns with lots of athletic fields and a football team backed up by a shiny new band and cheerleaders from several different towns and rural areas. All rolled into one. The wave of the future.

Unfortunately, these new academic visionaries forgot about the fact that hardly anyone could walk to school now. Most would have to be bused and that meant that seventh graders would have to rise and shine before the sun did and wait for school buses in the freezing cold and then travel ten to twenty miles or more to school whereas, before the Korean War, they just got up an hour before school, ate a leisurely and healthy breakfast and walked to school with their siblings and friends. But now they were called students and not pupils. Apparently none of the forward-looking parents and administrators had bothered to look up either word in the dictionary for its true meaning.

Before Jointures, students got to attend classes with kids they grew up with and already knew. Kids they had already made their bones with on the school playground. But no one seemed to care about that back in the 1950s. I’ve often wondered just how many visionaries on the new American school boards also snared the school bus contracts for transporting kids out of their neighborhoods and into the unknown.

“Elevator Music” in 25 Words or Less

The tacky, watered-down, string orchestra versions of mostly old Beatles hits that got piped into elevators and doctors' offices, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s.