The Summer of '71

Girls

I was reading my copy of AARP magazine today and saw a reader commented about the fun he had the summer of 1971 when he and a friend rode their motorcycles across the U.S.

It reminded me of part of my summer of 1971. My friends Scott (Rasico) and Steve (McCoy) and I drove my 1961 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 to Atlanta for a week to stay with my mom and sister Jean. The summer before, dad and I went down for a visit and Jean and I went to a concert at the Atlanta Auditorium and saw Jefferson Airplane. 

So, this summer we wondered who we might get to see while we were there. After we arrived, we headed to a local head shop/record store to check out their album selections and see what groups were in town that week and bought some tickets while there. On back-to-back nights we saw Humble Pie (featuring a young Peter Frampton), Rod Stewart and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. We had heard of Humble Pie and Rod Stewart before, although both were just emerging as big stars. We had never heard of ELP before so we bought their album to listen to before heading to the concert later that week. I think there was a 4th headliner but I've forgotten who it was. 

Scott took in a tape recorder and recorded some of the Humble Pie concert. A few months/years later I listened to a 'live' album they recorded at the Fillmore East and it was basically the same concert we saw in Atlanta. If you ever hear that album, "Humble Pie, Live at the Fillmore" you'll hear some great rock-and-roll. And ELP put on a fantastic show. It was a great concert week for us.

We also spent a day at Six Flags, played cards until the wee hours every night and ate some good cooking from my mom.

We had a dynamite week, and either Scott or Steve came up with the idea that we should pool some of our remaining money and leave it under the rug in our room for Jean to find after we left. Since neither of the 3 of us ever had much money, it probably wasn't much, but I'm sure the intent was appreciated. 

Unknown to us at the time, mom would soon be diagnosed with breast cancer. She and Jean made a trip to Indiana that fall for Thanksgiving at aunt Joan's and mom died a few months later in January. 

I had a lot of fun with Scott and Steve over the years of high school, and the summer of  '71 was one of them.

Be talkin' to ya.

Dad   

My Greatest Christmas Gift

Girls

I may have told you this story before but I'm going to repeat it, as it is fresh in my mind. Mainly because as I write this, it is Christmas Eve 2021 and I'm watching Christmas Story on TV for maybe the 100th time...maybe 200th...but I so enjoy watching it. 

So many events that happen in the movie remind me of my days as a little boy in Owensville. Just like in the movie, we too had a coal furnace at our house. I can still see dad going down the stairs to shovel coal in this humongous monster of a furnace with arms reaching up through the floor (the heating ducts leading up to the rooms in the house). There is a smell from that burning coal that I can still imagine smelling to this day. 

We also had an old car like so many of them that they show in the movie. Also like the movie, the downtown of Owensville was the active part of town, even though it was much smaller. The hardware store where dad worked was right on the square and was a busy place. Even the old school building in the movie looked just like the school that we walked to from our house about 6 blocks away.

And just like the movie, when I was 6 or 7 years old, I got the present that I still remember as one of my favorite presents to this day. It too was a rifle. Different from Ralphi's B-B gun, my gun only used caps that I could load in the gun and when I fired it, it gave the sound of a bullet firing. In those days in the early 1960s, there was a cowboy show on TV called The Rifleman that we watched when it was on. It was based in the 1800's and was about a single parent farmer raising his young son out on the prairie. The dad had a rifle that he'd rigged up with a special handle that made it a rapid-fire rifle. The gun that dad got me that Christmas was a replica of that rifle and from that day I was the king of the cowboys in the neighborhood. Even before I got that rifle, I wore a cowboy hat all the time and our neighbors, the Presnell's, always called me 'Cowboy'. I'm guessing that new rifle only reinforced my nickname in those days.

Like Ralphie says at the end of Christmas Story...that gun was one of the greatest Christmas gifts I had ever received or would ever receive.  

I hope you have Christmas stories in your memories that remind you of happy times.

Be talkin' to ya.

Dad

Life Insurance Policies

Girls

I've decided to dedicate this site to you, telling stories or events that come to mind that you can read some day. If someone else reads them...oh well...but it will be meant for you.

As we've probably told you recently, mom and I have updated our will, POA and associated documents. Since we're closer to 70 than not...we wanted to get some of those things in place so you wouldn't have so much to worry about years from now. In the process of looking through our file cabinets and safe, I found a couple of old life insurance policies that mom and dad took out on me when I was little. After some research I found out some interesting info.

One policy was taken out on January 11, 1954, when I was 10 days old. The value of the policy appeared to be $176 and the premiums cost mom and dad 10 cents per week. I found out that back in those days, insurance guys would come by the house, knocking on your door, trying to sell policies and if they did, they'd come by every week or so to pick up the premium. I suppose back in the '50s, $176 was enough to bury a child if they died. A second policy was taken out in 1964 when I was 10 years old with a value of $400. Both of them were taken out with Western-Southern Life, a company that is still around today, in fact there is an office down the street near the IGLOO. I stopped by last week to have the agent see if the policies were still good and had any value to them. It took them awhile to look back in records that were 60+ years old but they found it at last. 

For some reason, one of them had been turned into the Ohio unclaimed funds in 2013. I later called them about it and was told that I would be getting a check for $365 for the policy what had a value of $176. I guess all those pennies in interest over the years added up. The other policy did even better and has a value of over $1000 with a current cash value of $884.93. 

To keep you guys from having to mess with all the paperwork of trying to get the $1000 after I was gone, I decided to cash it in so I will also be getting a check for that in a few weeks. 

I hope that mom and I can use the $1000 from the two combined policies to help pay for the motor home we'd like to rent this spring or summer to do some traveling with friends.

Hopefully, mom and dad will travel with us in spirit as we spend their money on foolish things (ha!) 

Be talkin' to ya.

Dad