Regarding Dylan, I was in High School in 1982 and fortunate to attend the Peace Sunday concert at the Rose Bowl. He performed with Joan Baez. It was amazing. There we a lot of incredible performers that day including Bette Midler who sang The Rose accapella. But at the age of 15, both my guy friend and I knew we were watching history in the making with that concert with Dylan and Baez. Oh Crosby Stills and Nash were there too.
I came across a PostSecret online today that I think most of us would appreciate:
- "I spent less money on your Xmas gift this year because you voted for Trump!!"
@Lovendures, you were fifteen when you saw Dylan?! Me too, when I saw Dylan. Although it was 1964 in Boston Symphony Hall and I didn't understand him yet. He was a skinny scruffy kid with wild hair, sitting in the middle of a bare stage on simple stool, playing his guitar and harmonica and singing or more like yelling in an unmelodic voice. I didn't get him until later, but I am glad I saw him. I was into Simon and Garfunkel who I also saw in a small setting at Tufts university. But I came to love and sing all of Dylan's early songs. He was asked how he ever came up with those amazing lyrics, and he said he didn't know. I think he just channeled them.
And the Beatles, who I saw on September 12, 1964 in the Boston Garden that is now torn down. I carried ticket stub for the Beatles concert in my wallet for about 8 years so that date is seared in my memory.
I also saw Janis Joplin up close when an undergrad in Amherst Ma. And when she went a cappella you could hear a pin drop, even though there were 3000 stoned undergrads listening.
So when I was 3 or 4 I remember watching The Little Rascals on tv and there was this episode with goldfish where they (maybe Spanky, not sure who else) took them out of the goldfish bowl and they flopped around.
Well, I had a goldfish bowl in my room. Being the little scientist that I was, I decided to do my own fish out of water experiment. Yes, I discovered they do indeed flop around when out of water. I also discovered it was difficult to grab ahold of them and put them back into the bowl once they were out. I also discovered that if they slowed their flopping, you had to hurry and put them back in quickly. No fish were killed in my science experiment but I can't say they were not briefly terrified. I remember my parents being rather unpleased with my actions.
I also had cats and they LOVED trying to hook the goldfish out of the glass fishbowl. They would stare at them for hours watching them swim around in their water home. The cats were not to successful but I believe it wasn't long before my grandparents but me a fish aquarium with a lid.
Those fish were won at a carnival and lived to a ripe old age of at least 7. The 2 tiny baby toads I found in a river bed one spring...not as lucky. They accidentally went down the drain when I was cleaning their habitat. I was about 8 and felt really badly for them being swooshed away to the sewer.
Oh, I also used to put little balls of Playdough on my cat's whiskers, including the the whiskers above his eyes. They would dangle around his eyes and he would bat at them until I look them off. That cat was an awesome cat. He tolerated my efforts to dress him in baby doll clothes (including a doll bonnet) and take him for strolls in my backyard. He always knew when I was sick and wouldn't leave my bed until I was better. He would frequently bring me "presents" of birds and lizards he had caught in our neighborhood. Leave them right on the doorstep or sometimes bring them right into the house. Some "gifts" are better off left un-given.
Both of us were 15! Wow! He has written so many songs which speak to the times we have lived. They are not easy to understand when he actually sings them but they do have a great deal to say.
I would have loved to have seen the Beatles.
I do not have any photos but I do remember the day well.
I have a lot I should be (and need to be) doing but I spent the whole evening doing online window shopping for bowls, dishes and stuff like that. I have a small obsession with both decorative and functional glass, ceramics, and porcelain. Its an obsession that has been handed down through generations in my family. My great grandmother always had her farmhouse kitchen filled with whimsical collections of milk glass and depression era too. My grandmother owned a small florist shop that featured some beautiful glass vases, glass baskets and so on. I have some pieces from them as well as porcelain figurines. And now that HBO Max and Roku are joined together, I am starting to binge the Great Pottery Throw down (which is a lot like the Great British Baking show).
I saw Dylan with Phil Lesh and friends(basically the Grateful Dead with Joe Satriani instead of Jerry Garcia) when I was in my early 20s at Alpine Valley music theater. I went with my mother and I'll never forget how high she got because everyone around us was smoking weed. She was very much against drugs of any kind so it was extra funny for me being young. Very memorable moment.
Now for my daily confession that I think will get as many cringes as laughs. My wife is the only other person who knows but the memory is burned into my skull forever.
I was 6 or 7 and rummaging thru the bathroom cabinet under the sink, knowing I wasn't supposed to be down there, when I came upon the coolest thing I'd ever seen at that point. It was a huge red rubber square with a white hose attached to it. It obviously had to be some kind of really special balloon that my parents were holding out on me. I took that hose and inflated it. Took a lot of work since it held a lot of air but after a good 5 mins of blowing into that hose, I got it inflated. After playing with my newfound balloon for a few more mins I deflated it so I didnt get caught. When I came back for it a few days later, it had been moved so I assume mom found out I played with it.
For those who aren't gagging and laughing yet, fast forward about 10 years, I finally figured out what the glorious balloon was........it was my mother's douche.
@mas1581.Big laugh from that one. You triggered a memory of my own. When I was 10 I was having a sleepover with my best friend who had a famous father from WWII. He'd been on the cover Life Magazine, had been given a ticker tape parade in NYC, and the femme fatal film legend Marlene Dietrich had allegedly proclaimed him to be one of the two the sexiest men alive.
It was years after Dietrich that his daughter and I found those funny rubber balloons in her father's top dresser drawer.
We knew they weren't balloons and were forbidden, but were clueless about the specifics. I got a hint from my friend's rolling eyes and giggles. I didn't know what to ask her, or even if she knew, but wondered to myself what the hell these weird little balloons were for? And what would the sexiest man alive be doing with them?
I got a hint of an answer later that night when I decided to get out of bed and go pee in the bathroom. I didn't turn on the light, just sat there in the dark. The bathroom had two entrances, one from the hallway, which I entered from, and one from the master bedroom. As I was sitting on the pot in my nighty, my friend's dad entered from the master bedroom, butt naked.
It was dark and it took him a second to realize a child was there. He did not turn on the light, so for me he was like an apparition. He turned and left without a word. It was the first time I'd ever seen a naked man, albeit in the dark, and even though I still didn't know about sex, I knew intuitively that this midnight nakedness of the sexiest man alive had something to do with those balloons.
Thats one heck of a story and a good laugh. Also, thank you. Knowing me, I'm going to be up tonight trying to figure out who it is instead of laying in bed trying not to think about covid.
@mas1581 Go for it! It is not Patton. For an American living through the war, it would be obvious. But not today. My mother-in-law, born in 2025, was aware that we were dining with him near the end of his life and she was gaga. He was a democrat, a dove, not a hawk, a true military hero who grew up poor and was the youngest American general in WWII. During the late 1950's he parted ways with the military because he was a dove, and adamantly against use of nuclear weapons. He had been on the shortlist to run the CIA under Kennedy, but his dovishness made him unpopular among the Generals. He was a true military hero, though.
My first thoughts were Ike, Nimitz, and Gavin. Your 2nd round of clues eliminated Ike and Nimitz and made it easy. Its Jumping Jim Gavin.
Your knowledge of history is impressive. How did you figure it out?
I like history but WWII and Negro League baseball are my 2 favorite subjects. WWII because when I was a kid about 8, I found my grandfather's photo album from his time in Italy and N. Africa and he told me he wasn't in the war, and just took pictures from the sideline(lol). That got me interested because I wasn't getting the answers I wanted. Negro league baseball because I heard about some of the greats in gradeschool and went to the library looking for books on them and found nothing. If I was denied knowledge, I got hyperfocused on learning all I could about it
I didnt know if Gavin was youngest but knew he was really young and loved. 82nd airborne was really interesting to me as well. Also, from photos, he was a really good looking guy.
Well, Since you are talking about a hero, I'd like to tell you about one of mine. This episode in my life involves what today would be a huge piece of history, and I am proud to have witness it. It meant nothing for me at the time. I was only 12 years old.
It was the summer of 1971. My Mom had just sent my sister and I to our aunt’s house in Alexandria, Virginia. The trip had two simple objectives, to visit with the family and to improve our English Language skills. We had fun that summer. But I remember one day in July when my uncle came back from work. Boy, he was very excited. He said to my aunt, “We finally got it.”
My aunt was not in the best of moods that day, so she grumbled, “What did you get?” He said, “The phone. Remember that I told you that we were working on a phone that you would be able to talk and see the person on the other side at the same time?” Still, my aunt seemed unimpressed. So, instead of congratulate him or say something nice, she muttered, “Why do I want it for? What about if I am in the bathroom? People are going to see me naked.” My uncle, sensing her mood, lowered his voice and replied, “Well, it will have a button to block the other person from seeing you, if you don’t want to be seen… besides, it will be available for the general public in about thirty years… but the Pentagon has it already.”
My uncle is long gone now and never saw his creation in the hands of the general public. He was an engineer who worked in the Pentagon and was able to develop this technology with five other colleagues who were working in this project. He was a simple brilliant man, who was born and raised in the poorest slum in Puerto Rico and through hard work and perseverance graduated from college. His desire to improve his life is what makes him a hero to me.
This COVID-19 virus made me realized the importance of that day in my life. I am a professor, and thanks to my long gone uncle, I have been able to earn my living through the magic of Zoom. Who would have ever imagined?...
What an amazing story, simply amazing!
Your uncle changed the world that day. That invention not only made things so much easier today for the workforce, but it allowed kids to get a proper education, people to get safe healthcare, saved numerous people from isolation depression, and saved countless lives. He probably had no clue what he had done at the time but for you to be a bystander at that moment was amazing. That has recently become the single most important invention of my lifetime in my opinion.
He was aware that the general public would be able to have it in thirty years, and that's what happened. But at the time, my uncle and his team developed it for space communication. Man arrived to the Moon in 1969, they finished the "phone" in '71. But as you said, he never knew how a basic necessity his invention was going to be fifty years later.
I've been thinking a lot about him lately. He was the kind of uncle not afraid to stuff up his station wagon, full to the brim, with his kids and all the cousins ('The Tribe" he used to say) for a day at the beach, or the zoo, or camping, or the movies... He died suddenly at 54.
@mas1581. Good for you for finding time to recharge your batteries. We need such alone time with no guilt.