This Nostalgic Life Issue #7

Retro reads, rainy days, and more.

Welcome to this issue of This Nostalgic Life. We thank you for joining us for each issue and want to encourage those of you who only read online to subscribe so you can get each issue delivered straight to your email inbox every week.

In this issue, we’re looking at some of our favorite book series from when we were young, rainy summer days, and more retro nostalgic memories. Enjoy!

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Part 1, by Eric Vardeman

Not long ago, I mentioned a series of books from my childhood to someone and asked if they had ever heard of them. Somewhat surprisingly, they hadn’t. That got me thinking about all the books I enjoyed reading as a child, adolescent and teen and if anyone had heard or read any of those as well. That's where the idea for this two-part series came from. Not only to reminisce over books I enjoyed in my youth but to look at them now with adult eyes.

Hopefully, you remember summer reading programs from your childhood. Before Pizza Hut took over summer reading in 1985 with their "Book It" program (encouraging literacy and reading in exchange for free pizza), my local library, my schools and and another pizza joint in my hometown, Ken's Pizza, had similar type programs where they would give away prizes to kids who read a certain amount over the summer. That's where our title comes from. I won't be giving you any prizes for having read any of the books I'll be talking about this month but I would love to hear from you if you happened to have read some of the more obscure or lesser known books I list off. Are you ready? Here we go...

I wasn't what you would call an avid reader when I was a child but I read quite a bit. Some of the first books I remember reading and enjoying were by the late, great Beverly Cleary. By her own admission, Ms. Cleary wanted her books to focus on and depict the everyday lives of children. I found most of her characters very related but no more so than Henry Huggins. Ms. Cleary, a librarian before she started writing full time, wrote the first Henry Huggins book in 1950, in response to the boys in her library searching for books "about boys like us." I remember identifying with the way Henry thought at times and with the way he acted. When someone didn't like his dog he took that as a personal offense because, in his view, if you didn't like his dog you didn't like Henry. Made perfect sense to me. There are five books in the Henry Huggins series but my three favorites are: Henry Huggins, Henry and the Clubhouse (because several of my friends had clubhouses either in their backyards or near their houses) and Henry and Ribsy.

The other two Cleary books that I loved as a child were The Mouse and The Motorcycle and Runaway Ralph. The two books tell the story of Ralph S. Mouse, a house mouse that is able to speak to children and goes on adventures riding his miniature toy motorcycle. Like most boys my age, I had an abundant collection of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. While it was usually the sports cars that got the most play, I had two matchbox motorcycles that I loved. One happened to be a little roadster much like the one on the cover of The Mouse and The Motorcycle. When Keith (the boy in the book) and Ralph first speak, Ms. Cleary writes, “Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.” I had the joy of re-reading Motorcycle when I was in my 40's and this quote hit me in an entirely different way as an adult. I’ve reread it several times since.

Another set of books I started reading around this same age was the Choose Your Own Adventure series. If you've never seen these, the stories are formatted so that, after a few pages of reading, the reader faces two or three options, each of which leads to further pages and further options, and so on until they arrive at one of the many story endings. According to an article written by Christian Swinehart:

“The number of endings varies from as many as 44 in the early titles to as few as 7 in later adventures. Also, there is no clear pattern among the various titles regarding the number of pages per ending, the ratio of good to bad endings, or the reader's progression backwards and forwards through the pages of the book. This allows for a realistic sense of unpredictability, and leads to the possibility of repeat readings, which is one of the distinguishing features of the books.”

For the most part, I remember them being mindless but extremely entertaining reads. They were big hits at the Scholastic Book Fairs that happened quarterly at my school. My favorite title would have to be The Lost Jewels of Nabooti, wouldn't you agree?

In the summer of 1982. I was twelve and it was the first summer that I was allowed to just ride my bike all over the place. My friends and I would usually take off mid-morning and explore our area of town in a 2-3 mile radius of our neighborhood. One of the places we would go was, at the time, the biggest shopping center on our side of town, Eastland Center. There were several attractions for us there: a two-screen theater, a t-shirt shop (remember those?), a trading card store and a bookstore, Betty’s Book Rack. We spent a good amount of time in those three stores but the one store that seemingly indulged our presence the most was Betty’s Book Rack. It wasn't a large store, semi-multilevel with racks and dark wood shelves full of books that were arranged in such a way that they formed little corner nooks here and there. In one of those little nooks is where I discovered a book series called The Three Investigators.

The Three Investigators were created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first few books and then oversaw and edited the rest of the series. Arthur installed Alfred Hitchcock as the patron of the team made up of Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews. Hitchcock would introduce each case, and often called the boys in to set them off on their latest adventure. The boys, who lived in a small town on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, used their spare time to solve any riddles, enigmas and mysteries that came their way. Their motto was "We Investigate Anything". Pete and Bob lived with their parents while Jupiter lived with his aunt and uncle who owned and operated The Jones Salvage Yard, a fabulous junkyard where one can find almost anything. Headquarters for the team was a damaged mobile home trailer within the salvage yard (which had been cleverly hidden from view by stacks of junk which surrounded it) and was accessible only by several secret passages and hidden entrances.

After I discovered the series, I sat in that corner many times and read an entire book little by little every time we went to the bookstore. One day my friends actually left me behind because I was so enthralled with reading that first book. There were a couple of dozen books in the series and I eventually read all of them. My favorite part of their universe was probably their headquarters hidden in the junkyard. We had a little hideout in a wooded area near our neighborhood. Nothing as elaborate as the one in the books but my buddy, Jeff (who was also hooked on the books), and I dreamed of making it that way. In sixth grade, one of our class projects was about writing a book. We were to write an outline of the book then we eventually wrote the first chapter. My choice, of course, was writing a Three Investigators book. I remember titling it The Mystery of The Wooden Indian but for the life of me I can't remember the outline.

Not long after this, someone gave me a book set of The Chronicles of Narnia. In much the same way that other people my age fell in love with J.R.R. Tolkien's work, I fell in love with Narnia. The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe appealed to me immediately probably because I've always had a fondness for stories centered around a world hidden within our own (which may explain my strange fondness for shows like Fraggle Rock.) My second favorite book in the series is The Horse And His Boy.

I was also playing D&D at the time. I wasn't heavily into it like some of my friends but I played occasionally. Also around this time, the "satanic panic" was gearing up. If you've read other articles I've written you'll remember that I grew up in the evangelical church culture. One Sunday night, some chicken breath preacher came to our church and made his "Satan is in everything your kids are doing" presentation. After that, D&D was off limits but because there were supposed "biblical undertones" in the Narnia series, my youth pastor declared they were still suitable for consumption. While I didn't really catch the Christian undertones until I was well into my adult years, it never made sense that D&D was out but these books weren't. In my mind, they contained the same type of content (strange individuals, magic, anthropomorphic creatures, etc.) and neither compelled me to sacrifice pets or murder my family. I've reread this series several times over the year and still love it so much.

So, do any of those bring back memories? Were any of those your favorites? Later this month, in part two of this series, I’ll dive into books I read as a teenager. Stay tuned!

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Rainy Summer Days

by Mick Lee

As I'm sitting here writing this, it's the day after Independence Day, and it's raining. It's not a hard rain, but it's not a light rain either. I would call it a rain shower, but those typically don't last very long, this has been going for over an hour, and the radar indicates that it's going to continue for several more.

I'm sitting on my covered deck at my outdoor desk watching the rain fall, listening to the sound of distant thunder, and enjoying a glass of homemade hard watermelon cider. To me, it's a beautiful day.

For most people, a rainy day in the summer is a bummer. But for me, there is an aspect of it that I enjoy on occasion. That's because a warm, yet rainy, summer day takes me back in time.

When I was a kid, let's say between the ages of 7 and 10, we lived on a farm, and in the summer I had to spend a lot of the day helping out with the never-ending chores that go along with that life. They were simple tasks since I was young, but watering the horses, putting out hay for the horses, helping in the garden, and working in the tobacco field could certainly cut into a fine summer day. But when it would rain my brother and I got to skip the chores. We would pile up on a couch we had on the carport, and read comic books all day. My brother had a hodge-podge collection, but I enjoyed reading random issues of The Incredible Hulk, THe Unknown Soldier, and Justice League America.

Fast forward a few years to after we had moved from the farm, and my dad had his business next to our home. I worked for him every day in the summer except on rainy days. On those days, my brother and I would crash in the family living room and watch movies.

We had a cable descrambler, so we had access to Viewer's Choice PPV movies, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and The Movie Channel. I can't remember the exact years, but judging from the movies I'm about to mention, it was between 1989 and 1991 when we did this the most.

We'd watch all the new releases on PPV. Movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and JFK. Mixed in with the PPV movies we would hit the other pay channels and I can remember watching The Addams Family, The Body Guard, Dick Tracy, Batman, Teen Witch, Backdraft, Days of Thunder, and countless others many times over. Those were great days as we just spent the day being lazy. It didn't matter that we had seen the movies countless times already, we still relished the opportunity to chill out and just lay around.

So as I sit here writing this, I look back on those lazy rainy summer days with fondness. While nothing really beats a sunny summer day when you can go out and do whatever you want, remember to take advantage of the rainy days sometimes as well. You may look back on them as some of the better days of your summers.

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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.)

• 10 Intriguing Origins of Popular Carnival Rides (Listverse)

• The Failed Video Game Mascots of the 1990s (Den of Geek)

• 16 Valuable ‘80s Collectibles Hiding in Your Home (Wealth of Geeks)

• The Summer of Thunder at Hardee’s (Retro Ramblings)

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By Eric Vardeman

This week in 1984: Duran Duran drops out of the top spot but The Boss is denied #1 yet again by the Purple One and “When Doves Cry” (spoiler alert - Bruce has never had a #1 song. This is as close as he gets). One song that I absolutely did not remember from ‘84 but really dug the first time I heard it several years ago debuts on the chart is “Alibis” by Sergio Mendes. If you look it up on YouTube you’ll find a SPECTACULAR version from the show Solid Gold.

This week in 1990: I’m a huge fan of the New Jack Swing sound that hit it big in the late 80’s/early 90’s and one of my favorite New Jack artists/songs tops out this week at #2, “Poison” from Bell Biv DeVoe. Also topping out this week, the love them from one of 1990’s biggest movies (and one of my favorites) Pretty Woman’s “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette.

One artist that has a song in the top ten in both years is, surprisingly, Billy Idol. In ‘84 he has “Eyes Without A Face” and in ‘90 he’s climbing the chart with “Cradle of Love”. In the video for the latter, Idol is never shown from the waist down because he had been in a motorcycle accident and was in a cast and on crutches.

Playlist: This Week In 1984

Playlist: This Week In 1990

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Thank you for joining us for another issue of This Nostalgic Life. We hope you’re still enjoying it each week, and if you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear them! Take care.