This Nostalgic Life Issue #3
Long Summers, Live Aid, Goonies, Taco Bell, and more!
This Nostalgic Life is a free weekly publication rich with nostalgia brought to you by co-creators Eric Vardeman and Mick Lee. If this is your first time reading, you can subscribe using the button below so you don’t miss receiving any future issues delivered straight to your inbox.
Welcome to another nostalgia-packed edition of This Nostalgic Life. In this issue, we’ve got a fun special feature as Eric thinks back to the longest summer of his life, a look at a short-lived Taco Bell menu item, and a whole host of recommended reading links for you to enjoy. There are a lot of memories in this one, so let’s get to it!
I Spent Three Years In Dumas, Texas, One Summer.
by Eric Vardeman
June, 1985. It's a boiling hot day in the Texas panhandle. I ride my Huffy 10-speed up to a stop sign intersection that greets me like the gates of Hades. Beyond the intersection, the street I'm on looks like it extends on out in front of me until it disappears into the panhandle flatlands.
As I stare into the distance, all I see is dirt. All around me. This town is dirty. There's a livestock slaughter yard at the other end of town and when what little wind there is blows just right you can smell it. It's so hot, holy hell it's hot. And flat. I can actually see the heat rising up off the earth into the cloudless Texas sky. Exasperated, I huff, curse under my breath, and turn around to ride back home.
Welcome to Dumas, Texas.
It's not hell but I could probably see it from that intersection if I squint hard enough. It's the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in high school and, due to circumstances beyond my control, my family had to move here right after school ended in May. We moved from our house in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, into a little three bedroom apartment. Our house wasn't palatial, by any means, but my bedroom in this apartment was half the size of my room back home. There are plenty of kids my sister's age in this little complex. There are also adults for my parent's to socialize with. Me? I'm alone. There's no internet, no email, and no texting. If I want to stay in touch with my friends back home in Oklahoma I have to use the phone (long-distance charges are outrageous) or write and mail letters (it's called snail mail for a reason). It's incredibly isolating. What I don't know as I sit at that intersection is that, by some good fortune, my family is able to move back to my hometown at the end of the summer. But right now, I'm fifteen, friendless, and bitter.
In what is probably a peace offering to make up for the fact that we had to move, my dad springs for cable TV and HBO. He also buys us our first VCR. You know the kind with the "remote" that had the 20 ft. cord? Yeah, one of those. As I am the only one who sits down and figures out how it works, I'm the only one who ultimately uses it all summer. Two of the first things I remember recording are Purple Rain and Live Aid. Purple Rain debuted on HBO that month so not only did I watch it just about every time it aired but I recorded it as well. The movie and soundtrack had been out for at least a year and of course, I had heard all the singles on the radio but I had never seen the movie because it was rated "R". Watching the movie gave me a new love and appreciation for the soundtrack and I end up listening to it all summer (last week would have been The Purple One’s 66th birthday. RIP).
Live Aid was amazing. The day it aired we had a family trip planned to the metropolis of Amarillo, Texas, the location of the nearest mall. Before we left, though, I popped a tape in the VCR, set it on the slowest speed, and recorded eight straight hours. Then, I recorded another four hours on top of that! I dragged the VCR to my room that night and watched on my little 12" television into the wee hours of the night. I was initially excited about watching Queen and Duran Duran but ended up loving it all.
This is the summer I fell in love with music. If I'm at home, I'm in my room listening to the radio or cassettes but mostly watching MTV. The VJ's were my friends and I knew when each of them signed on and signed off. (side note: as I write this, it suddenly makes sense why I latched on the 80's XM station during the pandemic. Isolation once again led me to befriend my old friends - the original MTV VJ's - who are all now on that station every day). In addition to Purple Rain, I spend the summer listening to 7 Wishes from Night Ranger, The Power Station, and No Jacket Required. The top 40 charts are really good this summer as well, so much good music. I also discover an AOR radio station in Amarillo that features "full album Friday" where they would play an album from beginning to end with no interruptions. I recorded several albums straight from the radio that summer. I also figured out a way to attach my Walkman to the handlebars of my bike so now I have music with me all the time. The danger in that is not only can I not hear cars around me but the cord of my headphones is so short I can't turn my head easily. Best Buy isn't nation-wide yet and there isn't a Radio Shack around to buy a headphone extension cord. In a moment of technical brilliance, I sacrifice an old pair of headphones and splice some of its cord into my current headphones, and viola! problem solved. It's janky looking but it serves its purpose perfectly.
It doesn't take me long to figure out there is truly nothing to do in Dumas, Texas. There's a newly built YMCA just up the road but there's never anyone there my age. There's a public pool but it looks like animals bathe there on a regular basis. My parents try to get me involved in a church youth group but I walk in the first night wearing a Stryper concert shirt and people stare at me like Ren McCormack on the first day of school. (but if we're being honest I wore the shirt for that exact shock value).
There is, however, a little two-screen movie house - The Evelyn Theater - that also doubles as the town's movie rental establishment but their movie selection is severely limited. So much so that you're only allowed to rent two movies at a time. I remember renting The Empire Strikes Back and E.T., as well as The Last Starfighter and Night of The Comet. As far as the actual theater goes, don't let that picture fool you. Those screens were TINY. I did, however, see three of the greatest movies to come out of the '80s in those little sardine cans: Weird Science, Back To The Future, and The Goonies (last week was the 40th anniversary of its release). Since I only went to the matinee showings those theaters were never full. Popcorn was served up in little paper sacks and soft drinks came in Styrofoam cups.
I got to go home to see my friends once that summer. Early in August my parents let my sister and I know that we were moving back home to Oklahoma so some would say that all's well that end's well. I've never been back there and doubt I ever will. I've used Google Earth to look up parts of town to see what it looks like now and, unsurprisingly, it hasn't changed much. For years though, one of my favorite quips has been "I spent three years in Dumas, Texas, one summer." I still believe that. It was and still is the longest summer of my life.
The Short Life of Taco Bell’s Texas Taco Sandwich
by Mick Lee
Taco Bell’s Texas Taco Sandwich hit the market in 1995 with a fun commercial starring Jack Palance. Palance was coming off a resurgence thanks to the movies City Slickers and City Slickers II, so he lent credibility to Taco Bell’s latest offering with a Texas flair. I was driving by the time this came out, so as soon as I saw the first commercials, I was making my run for the border to try one.
It featured Taco Bell’s traditional taco profile of seasoned ground beef or chicken, lettuce, and cheese, but also added diced tomatoes and a “special southwest sauce”. Some folks say they remember, and others theorize, that the southwest sauce on this was the same sauce used on the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito that was also released in 1995 as part of another promotion. The real focal point of the Texas Taco Sandwich though was the shell. It was advertised as “Texas flatbread”, which was unique for the time since it was thicker than a tortilla shell. I personally can’t confirm this, but I believe it was an early version of the Gordita shell they would debut in 1998. I do seem to remember it being larger than the later Gordita, but it probably had to be since it was marketed as being associated with Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas I hear.
The Texas Taco Sandwich was a unique item that captured my attention, as well as my taste buds while it was on the menu. I was making that run for the border on an almost daily basis. Our local Taco Bell was a 15-minute drive each way, and I was going four to five times a week before work to get one. While some summers can feel extremely long, the summer of 1995 felt short to me as the Texas Taco Sandwich came and went in a flash that year, never to be seen or eaten again.
In every edition of This Nostalgic Life, we like to share a curated list of nostalgia-themed articles, stories, and posts that we’ve come across recently. It gives you a chance to discover great content and remember things from your past that you may have forgotten. With that in mind, here are some things we wanted to share with you this week. (All links will open in a new tab.)
Five Fun Facts About the Goonies (The Retro Network)
70s and 80s Memories of Eating at McDonalds (The Retro Dad)
When Breakdancing Crashed the Box Office of 1984 (Mental Floss)
Our Favorite Discontinued Taco Bell Item Was Unlike Anything on the Menu (Mashed)
Betamax vs. VHS: The Videotape Format War (Legacy Box)
The Tick is the Other Great Fox Superhero Cartoon From the ‘90s (Den of Geek)
This Month in YesterYear History - June (YesterYear Retro)
How Bob’s Big Boy Restaurants Became the Stuff of Legend (Click Americana)
A History of Flintstones Vitamins (Retroist)
The Pop Culture of 1989 (The Retro Network)
ODD AND ENDS
We want to say welcome to all of our new subscribers this week, and we hope you’ve enjoyed your first subscription issue. We also want to remind you that you can always visit past issues on the homepage. Be sure to go back and catch up on the issues you’ve missed thus far.
Our good friend Kevin recently wrote a great piece for Retrofied Magazine looking at comic book stories that touched on very real life issues called The Real World Outside Your Window. I highly recommend you go and check out the article. And by the way, Retrofied Magazine is also a Substack publication that you should consider subscribing to as well. Go check it out here.
And finally, over at The Retro Network, Gary is viewing and reviewing 84 movies released in 1984. It’s quite a task he has burdened himself with, but we love him for it. Show some love by checking out his #84from84 project.
That’s going to do it for this issue of This Nostalgic Life. We had fun going back in time and sharing these memories while putting this issue together.
We’d like to encourage you to leave a comment on this post if you found a memory that you connected with. We love hearing other’s stories as much as we like sharing our own!
And if you enjoy This Nostalgic Life, please consider telling your friends on social media about us. The more people who get to read these stories, the more interaction we get, and we love hearing from everyone about their own memories.
Until next week, don’t take any trips to Dumas Texas. You may be there longer than you want to be.