Tankers

I posted awhile back about recess at school. There was something that was unique to our school because of where it was located, and it meant that every recess held the possibility of having a very cool event occur – if the timing was just right and a random truck driver was in the mood to oblige a playground full of kids.

I lived in North Seattle in an area called Richmond Beach. My grade school was on the main route up from Puget Sound, and was only about a half a mile up from the water. There was a Standard Oil Refinery not far north of that where ships would off-load oil and then tanker trucks would haul gas/oil up out of Richmond Beach to deliver to various locations around the area.

These tanker trucks or just tankers, as we called them, came right up a long hill right next to the grade school playground. The playground was level with road at the top end, but had a huge built up wall that overlooked that hill at the other end nearer the water. There were always a few kids who seemed to be listening intently for the sound of the trucks chugging up the hill. The shout would ring out across the playground “TANKER!!!”, and instantly every kid out there would make for the fence that overlooked the road and clamor for a front row spot. And then, in an incredible unanimous uproar of children’s voices, the shouting would begin, and we would all start pumping our fists in an action to simulate the pulling of the air horn.

This would go on for what seemed – to us – an eternity before the driver would hopefully finally succumb to our insistent pleas and let go a long, loud blast. This was rewarded with a huge chorus of screams and cheers from the entire playground, and some happy “thank you” waves to the driver. It was so cool! We had all banded together and rallied for a common cause and made something happen! Yeah!

You know how when you’re a kid, you always think that when you grow up, you’ll become a teacher, and be a cool teacher that all the kids like? Or that you’ll be a bus driver and be a cool bus driver that everyone likes? Well, I added to that childhood fantasy the dream of becoming a tanker driver and being a cool tanker driver that everyone would like because I would always honk my air horn for kids on playgrounds whenever they asked.

Halloween's a-comin'

It’s coming up in only a couple of weeks – one of every kids most favorite days - Halloween. I’m sure that it’s as much of an exciting time today as it was when I was growing up. There was nothing that caused us such anticipated joy and excitement as trick-or-treating on Halloween.

When I tried to figure out why it was such a big deal, I think it’s because we realized that WE were in control of our destiny! All that was required was that we spend a little bit of time planning and we could make an incredible haul. I remember sitting down with my friends and trying to draw a map of the neighborhood, and even the adjacent neighborhoods… we had big plans to hit as many house as we possibly could.

There were a few places we had to make sure to hit, since we knew from previous years that there were good treats to be had there – one house even used to give away full-size candy bars! We had to work fast, but we also had to maximize our time out in the streets. We would negotiate with our moms as to how soon we could start, and how late we could stay out. The older we got, the longer we got to be collecting free candy. It was great!

When we were really young, we had plenty of fun fancy costumes (remember that face-mask smell?) and were the pride of our moms as we went door to door and received many an “Awww, aren’t you cute! Who are you tonight?” By the time we reached our tweens and early teens, it was just a matter of putting on some ragged clothes, scribbling a beard on your face with mom’s or your sister’s mascara, and “ta-dah” you were a bum! Grab the biggest pillowcase you could find and make for the road, there was candy to haul in tonight!

We had fun! There wasn’t the fear unknown people, or harm from candy that may have been tampered with that kids might be faced with today. It was basically a good, clean, fun type of experience and one that brings back plenty of pleasant memories still today.

Do you have some favorite memories or stories from your youth as a trick-or-treater?

The wonderful world of macrame'

Growing up in the ‘70s, I pursued a lot of the things that were popular during those years. It seems like everyone back then had house plants. Spider plants, Wandering Jews and lots of different types of ivy were very popular. All of us kids even had them. There were all sorts of cool clay pots and old rusty metal pots and wood box holders that we would plant them in. We even used Miracle Grow (in its early years, I believe) to help them along… a few drops from the little eye dropper, stir it up and water the plants with it.

Displaying our plants was a thing of pride, and macramé plant hangers were a very popular way to do this. You could buy them in all the great colors of the era – gold, burnt orange, avocado green, dark reds, etc. but the best was using natural jute. Being a creative type of guy, this eventually led to me wanting to make my own plant hangers. So – I bought a big roll of jute and some magazines that had patterns to follow and began my Macramé creating forays.

I was able to make hangers for friends and family members as gifts. I also found a pattern that made a nice wine bottle holder, a total of 8 bottles, cork down, attractively displayed. I actually ended up selling a bunch of these to friends of my mom and grandma. I made a little money and had a fun time doing it. Yup – did my part to contribute to the various bric-a-brac and decorations that helped to define the decade.

…I still have a box with all the jute, patterns, even my records from the ones I sold. I don’t think I’ll ever get back into making macramé hangers, but if I do, I guess I still equipped and ready to go.

Comic Books

Comic books were a big part of my childhood. They may still be big, but I’m not in to them anymore, so I don’t know. From what exposure I have had to modern day comic books, I know that many of them are much more graphic (violence, sex, language) than anything I ever read when I was a kid.

My sisters, brother and I had a lot of comic books. There was Superman, (who can forget Bizzaro World, Mr. Mxyztplk, and of course Lex Luthor) Supergirl, The Legion of Super Heros, Batman, Archie and I’m sure many others. We had stacks and stacks of them in our closets and I remember that we seemed to have read them all a few times, even though there were a lot of them.

They were very good, well written, well drawn and very entertaining. Many a rainy afternoon, sun-soaked lazy day and/or – dare I say it – bathroom visit were regular fare for reading the latest purchased comic.

Two questions come to mind: 1) Where are all of those comic books now? And, 2) are any of them worth big bucks? As I mentioned before, we certainly read them all plenty of times. Only if they are really rare and condition doesn’t matter will we be retiring and building our dream homes from any proceeds that we might receive if we were to sell these to some crazy collector.

Did you grow up with a pile of comics that helped you wile away the hours of your youth?