Uncategorized

45 – RACIAL NOMENCLATURE

On the day I was born, my parents would have respectfully given the same answer to describe the race of Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Ralph Bunche.

Negroes.

The three people named would likely have said the same thing. That was the preferred word for Black people up until the mid-1960s. If you listen to speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, two pivotal figures in the push for civil rights, that’s the word they use, too. 

Describing a race of people, particularly in the United States, has been awkward – in part because this country has the awkward problem of having enslaved or discriminated against that race for most of its history.

Why awkward? Consider this: For much of the first years of my life, older people would consider “black” offensive and preferred to be called Negroes.

“Black” came into vogue during the tumultuous years of the 1960s, as many of the more outspoken leaders came to see Negro as somehow submissive.

Among those leading the way on this was someone who would have seemed a surprise to my Italian-American parents: a recently paroled thief from Nebraska who was born Malcolm Little.

Like many Black people disillusioned by bigots’ invocation of Christianity to promote racism, Malcolm X turned to Islam as a source of guidance and a way to defy norms.

But converting to Islam was not new for Black people. Some of the jazz greats of the era – McCoy Tyner and Art Blakey among them – had either briefly or permanently changed religions.

In the ’60s and ’70s, the conversions became more prominent. Heavyweight boxing champ Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali. Basketball star Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

By the late ’60s, Black was the more acceptable word to describe the race. But Malcolm was also pivotal in the next shift in nomenclature, referring to himself as “Afro-American.” 

The term “African American” became the norm in the ’80s, particularly during the presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. At the Associated Press, it became the preferred term – although the style was changed to allow a person being written about to be called by the term he or she preferred.

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the subsequent protests across America, the term “Black” came back into more common usage, including the capitalization of the B, which had been missing before.

It all would have been a little head spinning to someone hearing about it in 1954. But the one word that would be the common theme would be respect. 

Respecting others is the first step in getting it all right.

Standard
Uncategorized

46 – CHECK, OUT

When was the last time you wrote a check?

In 1954, the answer was “this week,” “last week” or “just now.” 

The only other way at the time to pay your bills or for goods and services was cash – credit cards, something we’ll discuss in the weeks ahead, were not yet in vogue.

As a kid, I was fascinated by check writing. One time, when my Dad fixed a toy of mine, my mother gave me an old blank check that I wrote out to pay him – he had that check into the 21st century.

But the last check I remember writing was at the beginning of last month. The town where I live penalizes homeowners with a surcharge for electronic payments. And given that I pay enough for its lousy delivery of services, I wrote a check and schlepped to Town Hall to put it in a box for property tax collection.

The fact is the way we pay bills today would be a wonder to adults of 1954. On a computer. On your phone. Using Zelle or some other surrogate service. Instantly.

Banks want it that way. Checks are more expensive to process than electronic payments – wading through all that paper is extremely costly just by itself. So they’ve encouraged us to bag the check and find another way to pay.

I don’t especially miss check writing, despite my early interest in it. I’ll describe one reason next Tuesday.

Standard
Uncategorized

47 – GOLDEN ARCHES

Sometime in the year I was born, milkshake machine salesman Ray Kroc traveled to San Bernardino, California, to visit a restaurant that had purchased eight devices. 

Kroc was enamored by the place…yada yada yada… billions and billions of burgers served.

It might seem hard to believe that those of us born in 1954 predate McDonald’s – in fact, predate what we know as fast-food places.

But that’s what happened. If you told my parents there was a burger place they could go to anywhere in the United States – in fact, almost anywhere in the world – and get the exact same burger in every one, they would have been surprised.

And it wouldn’t just be McDonald’s, which really didn’t arrive in the New York metropolitan area until the mid-1970s. Chains of burger places sprang up from coast to coast. There were chains of chicken places, chains of sandwich places, chains of fish places, chains of taco places. 

There would be whole strips of highways with fast-food places along both sides. And when parking the car and getting a mostly premade meal wasn’t fast enough for you, you could drive in a special lane alongside the establishment and pick up your food at a window called a drivethru.

None of this existed when I was born. There were White Castles scattered in selected areas, and that’s about it.

Franchised food consisted of sit-down restaurants. Most prominent was Howard Johnson’s, a Boston-based chain famous for its ice cream, its fried clams and its notoriously slow service.

Howard Johnson’s dotted the nation’s service areas. You would pull off the New Jersey Turnpike or some other toll road and stop at HoJo’s to eat. Your kids – that would have been me – would nag you to take them there in order to get the comic book or the menu that turned into a paper hat.

McDonald’s and its fast-food brethren stole all that. They provided what people on a trip wanted more than a peppermint stick ice cream cone – a fast meal that got you back on the road pronto. And the kids kept demanding to go in order to get the toy inside a Happy Meal, often some incarnation of Ronald McDonald and other characters created to sell more burgers.

There certainly has been argument about whether fast food is a blessing – quick, easy and fun – or a curse – fattening, salty, banal. Adults couldn’t imagine those arguments in 1954.

Standard
Uncategorized

48 – BODY MODIFICATION

For thousands of years, people have stuck holes in their bodies and put some kind of object in them.

And, while they’ve been at it, they’ve found a way to use their bodies as canvases or writing pads.

The term, I understand, is body modification. Or body art.

The year I was born, 1954, was not a high water mark for tattoos and piercings. My parents didn’t have any – my mother never pierced her ears. 

My father’s father had a tattoo – I know I must have asked him about it when I was little – but I seem to remember he changed the subject. He had been in the Italian navy and apparently that’s what sailors did.

But, starting in the ’70s, body art came back into vogue. There were less than 100 tattoo artists in the United States when the decade began; when it ended, there were thousands. Tattoos went from being a sign of being less than savory to a form of expression.

If you have any doubt, go back to Sunday’s Super Bowl pregame and get a look at singer Post Malone, whose solid rendition of “America the Beautiful” came with all kinds of tattooed writing on his face.

There are folks with no real estate left to draw on, thanks to “arm sleeves” and other totally tatted body parts.

As for piercings, other than women’s ears, they were generally unheard of in this country (there are certainly cultures throughout the world in which they’ve always been common) until the early 1980s. The punk movement spurred people began to pierce more than just their ears. Tongues, eyebrows, lips, navels, genitals. 

If you can think of a part of a body, it appears it can be pierced.

Yes, the idea of that would have shocked my parents when I was born. If you had told them that, I would have gotten the first lecture about not doing it right then.

Standard
Uncategorized

49 – T-MINUS

Walking through the Phoenix airport last week, I was struck by one of the many large video screens overhead. Phoenix will be hosting the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four this year, and the screen showed how many days, hours and minutes (no seconds) until tipoff of the first semifinal game.

Counting down to a big event is hardly new. A little more than three months before I was born, my parents most likely watched the Times Square crowd shouting out the final 10 seconds of 1953.

More analoggy, advent calendars were a form of counting down the final 24 days until Christmas.

But countdown clocks, the 00:00:00 format that has become ubiquitous, really came into vogue in the early 1960s with the telecasts of the first manned space missions, Project Mercury.

A clock on the screen would show the minutes and seconds until the scheduled launch. When the clock was ticking down the numbers, there was nervous anticipation. 

And then, just as you were thinking you’d be seeing a launch, the clock would stop. That happened often in the early days, especially in the leadup to John Glenn’s first U.S. orbital flight.

Then the voice of the NASA, Shorty Powers, would explain what was going on. The hold was at T-minus 6:00 because of some warning light.

Those countdown clocks survived the early space buzz. There are digital countdown clocks everywhere. TV news networks use them to hype big events. Chambers of commerce love to count the days:hours:minutes;seconds to some festival or sporting event.

And people who write things love to use the countdown to tick off the days until, say, their 70th birthday.

Standard
Uncategorized

50 – A THIRD-RATE SCANDAL

Richard Nixon eventually becoming President of the United States wouldn’t have surprised any adult in 1954.

He was President Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president and only 41 years old. And, obviously, very ambitious.

It would have a mild surprise that Nixon didn’t become president until 1969 – and a little more surprising that he won after losing in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and in 1962 when he ran for governor of California against Edmund “Pat” Brown.

So, would Watergate have been a shock to anyone had you explained it to them in 1954?

I think the answer is no and yes.

No, Nixon displayed some nasty tendencies even before he became Ike’s running mate. His Red-baiting campaigns for Congress in California displayed his bare-knuckles style. His shameless invocation of his daughters’ pet dog, Checkers, to avoid being thrown off the ticket for a potential conflict of interest showed his cunning.

But you have to think Watergate was among the dumbest scandals of all time.

Nixon’s path to re-election was pretty clear in 1972. While his people sabotaged the early Democratic front runner, Edmund Muskie, it would have been difficult for the Democrats to take back the White House. 

And by the time the break-in at the Watergate Hotel took place, the Democrats were weeks away from nominating George McGovern – maybe the best presidential candidate I’ve ever vote for, but a doomed candidate who couldn’t carry his home state of South Dakota.

However, here’s the thing that secures Watergate’s spot on this list:

It’s surprising that this is not close to being the worst political scandal of our lifetime.

That’s all I’ll say for now. Except, look around.

Standard
Uncategorized

51 – SUPER BOWL minus XIII

The biggest one-day sporting event in 1954 was any of:

— the Kentucky Derby; won by Determined on May 1;

— the Indianapolis 500, won by Bill Vukovich on May 31;

— Rocky Marciano’s two defenses of his heavyweight boxing title against Ezzard Charles on June 17 and September 17;

— or game one of the World Series, on September 29, won by the New York Giants with the help of a spectacular catch by center fielder Willie Mays.

The National Football League champion was the Detroit Lions. But they won their title on December 27, 1953, edging the Cleveland Browns 17-16. The season was only 12 games long; they didn’t play NFL games in January until the mid-1960s; in February until 2001.

There was a full house at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, where the game was played. But the game was broadcast on the DuMont Network, a network that would cease to exist by the end of 1956. The other three networks weren’t interested. 

So, yeah, the idea that more than 100 million Americans will watch today’s 58th Super Bowl – sorry, Super Bowl LVIII – between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers would blow the minds of adult Americans in 1954.

For one thing, the Chiefs – who played in the first Super Bowl in 1967 – didn’t exist. In fact, the American Football League, from which the Chiefs (nee Dallas Texans) emerged, began play in 1960. For another, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas holds more people than the entire population of the city in 1954.

What else would amaze them? Probably everything.

That the buildup for the game would last two weeks. That major companies would use the ads during the game to make a big splash – so big that some people watch the game for the commercials alone. That CBS will use 165 cameras – on drones, on cranes, in people’s hands on the field – to show the action. 

That billions of dollars will be bet legally on the game and almost every aspect of it. That perhaps you and most of the people you know will spend the day ordering chicken wings, making nachos and guzzling beer. That, in some places, the water pressure will drop just before the halftime show.

That one of the big names in entertainment will curtail their act to about 15 minutes in order to perform for his, her or their largest audience ever at halftime. That the streets of your town will be deserted for 4 hours. That the game is so dramatized that it’s numbered in Roman numerals.

That the total gross receipts of that 1953 game between Detroit and Cleveland, about $359,000, would buy you about one second of a commercial during today’s game.

How the National Football League surpassed other sports to hold such sway over the American public is a matter for another time. How Taylor Swift became part of the 2024 narrative is not my problem.

For now, happy Super Sunday for those who celebrate! (And, tomorrow, happy first day of the baseball season for the rest of us.)

Standard
Uncategorized

52 – DRAGON ROLL

If you said the words “Asian food” to my parents – or any adult – in 1954, their response would have been “You mean Chinese food?”

Certainly there were other Asian ethnic groups represented in the U.S. population – Japanese immigrants notoriously were detained in internment camps during World War II. But the predominant one for most Americans were the Chinese.

The Chinese had come in big numbers during the late 19th century as they basically built the transcontinental railroad. But after that, immigration from China was held in tight check by the racist exclusion acts.

That racism wasn’t just meant for the Chinese. Immigration laws passed in the 19th and 20th century were stacked so that there were lots more openings for western Europeans and fewer for anyone from anywhere else. From elementary school through high school, the only Asians I knew were Chinese kids whose families ran local restaurants.

In Flushing, Queens, where we lived, there were two Chinese restaurants – Lum’s in the heart of the community and a place whose name I don’t remember but had a big green sign that said “CHOW MEIN” over the sidewalk.

My parents, who were married in Flushing and lived there for the first 12 years of their marriage, would – by the late 1980s – no longer recognize the place as immigrants from Asia took over.

The main catalyst for the change was the Immigration Act of 1965, which loosened the quotas from outside Europe. And it was not just Chinese immigrants – Koreans fleeing hard times and hostility, Thais fleeing political unrest and the Vietnamese, who endured hardship to escape when the Vietcong and North Vietnamese took over their country.

There were other influences as well. Japan’s rise as an economic power led to interest in its culture and food.

Sushi was an idea that made Americans (including this one) cringe when it started showing up in the 1970s. Now, there is almost no place that you can’t get it – even at gas station convenience stores (Caveat ficedular!).

Other Asian concepts were adapted by Americans just about everywhere. Yoga. Pad Thai. Bahn Mi. K-Pop. Acupuncture. Chai. Taekwondo. 

And the Lunar New Year, which is not only a holiday in the countries of East Asia, but is becoming a day off in U.S. school districts.

Which is, by the way, today. So Happy New Year! Or, as we say in my family, Goong Hay Fat Choy!

Standard
Uncategorized

53 – BIG WEED

On the corner of Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. and North Greenway Hayden Loop in Scottsdale, Arizona, within walking distance of this weekend’s Phoenix Open golf tournament, is a former bank building. All the old drivethru structure is there, save for the machines, tubes and signs.

But the parking lot is pretty busy from the time the establishment opens at 8 a.m. every day – except 6 a.m. on Saturday – until it closes at 10 p.m. every night.

The establishment is the Scottsdale location of Curaleaf, the nation’s largest retailer of cannibis, a.k.a. marijuana.

At this point in telling my parents about this nearly 70 years ago, I’d like to gauge how far their jaws would have dropped. Because it gets wilder, from their point of view.

Curaleaf has locations – the word used is dispensaries – in 14 states. You can choose the THC and CBD levels of your cannibis, which can be smoked, inhaled, rubbed on, drank or eaten. There’s plenty of knowledgeable sales help and a base of steady, otherwise sober customers ranging from age 21 to senior citizen.

My parents grew up at a time when the federal government had successfully completed the demonization of marijuana. As a result, they believed that it was totally and irretrievably evil.

While not a user myself, my college years were filled with the aroma of smoked reefer. It didn’t seem any more of a problem than when I tended to dormmates getting over a failed romance with rotgut booze.

I thought marijuana would be legal by the time I was 30. But like so many things about my generation, we talked a good game but didn’t deliver. It took this generation of 20- and 30-year-olds to make the push to legalize cannibis.

Twenty-four states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories have either legalized marijuana or are in the process of doing so. Many of these states – New York among them – actually promote locally grown weed.

President Biden has pardoned those convicted of federal charges of simple possession and his administration has downgraded its status among drugs perceived to be dangerous.

And Curaleaf, based in New York but traded in Toronto, recently reported 2023 revenue of nearly $1.4 billion.

Far out.

Standard
Uncategorized

54 – YEAH, YEAH, YEAH

Ten days after and 13.5 miles west of where I was born, a 28-year-old singer from Michigan walked into a Manhattan recording studio.

He was about to help launch a genre of music that would be a point of contention between a baby boy in Flushing and his parents.

The singer was Bill Haley, and on April 12, 1954, he and His Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock,” the first really popular rock-and-roll song. Until then, genres such as country, blues and jazz were picking around the edges of what would become the dominant form of popular music in the late 20th century.

As Haley was recording “Rock Around the Clock”:

— 19-year-old recent high school graduate Elvis Presley was trying to get Sun Records in Memphis to use him in recording sessions

— 10-year-old Mick Jagger was moving with his parents away from his childhood buddy, Keith Richards

— 12-year-old Carol Klein of Brooklyn was in junior high, years after she skipped first grade and years before she changed her name to Carole King to perform with her friend, Paul Simon.

— and, in the British port city of Liverpool, four tweens and early teens were beginning to get interested in a musical world that they would revolutionize a decade later.

None of this was remotely imaginable in 1954, where band singers like Patti Page and Perry Como still topped the charts. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were still active stars, although both were getting more involved with movies: Sinatra won an Oscar for best supporting actor for “From Here to Eternity” eight days before I was born.

My parents, who loved singers like Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald, were not totally antagonistic toward rock. My Dad bought me the “Meet the Beatles” album shortly after the group’s famed appearance, 60 years ago this week, on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I think Mom came around to realize that Lennon and McCartney were amazing song writers.

But, perhaps like I am with a lot of what I hear now from younger people, they didn’t really have the patience for rock and roll. So I was late to discover a lot of the great music of the ’60s and ’70s – I found a lot of it in college and my early adulthood, thankfully.

And, truth be told, neither I nor my parents really liked Elvis.

Standard