January 30, 2004
NOSTALGIA
It's been quite a while since I bored everyone shitless with a trip down the badger hole of my youth for a little nostalgia. Humor me, or buy me no-load funds. I is flexible.
Goofy hats: these were incredibly asinine, and popular around 1969. Some kind of 4-panel cloth hats that resembled a bell, and you actually wore the damned things to proudly proclaim you would never get laid in your beaten-meat sad, sad life. One doomed oneself to Spasticus Autisticus status at the age of 11 or 12. Paisley was the motif de rigeur. What triggered this memory? I actually saw a kid driving a four-wheel mud-bogger in Savannah a couple of months ago. He was wearing a Confederate flag goofy hat (where'd he get it?!?), had the back window adorned in a Confederate flag piece of tint, and had a bumper sticker that said "I Have A Dream", and showed the Confederate flag flying over the White House. Precisely the potential voter Howard Dean wants to woo and suck to the polls.
Beatlemania! My older sisters had Beatle everything, from lunch boxes to wallpaper. Just the sort of thing a 13 year old girl would use to titillate her budding libido. And these were my sisters, so I can carry that thought no farther. I was seven when the Fabs hit America, but it was a real deal. You felt it, especially coming three months after the vicarious thrill of Presidential Assassination. And was I the only seven-year-old who found national mayhem exciting? I was hoping more people would get whacked. Seeing adults piss themselves is pretty rare for a young one, and I liked that feeling.
Kentucky Fried Chicken: the Holy Grail. The only fast food I was to see for years. The boxes were pink and white then, not red and white. My dad used to make us go inside to buy it, and if the "colored folks" didn't serve us promptly The Senator would barge inside and go into Perry Mason closing arguments mode, although I don't recall Perry using "nappy-headed fuckers" in any episode I watched. Yes. Drop by sometime and let me show you my closet full of Issues. About once a month I pull one out and exorcise it.
I think that's all the nostalgia I can handle for one Friday. And perhaps I shall rename this weekly excursion "Catharsis".