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Jewish World Review
Sept. 22, 2008
/ 22 Elul 5768
A slide down memory lane reminds me I got burned
By
Dave Barry
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Recently, my little brother Phil (he's only 50) gave me a box that wound up with him some years ago, when our mom died and a bunch of family flotsam drifted down one generation.
The box contains slides. For you young digital readers, I should explain that slides are transparencies made from photographs. They used to be very popular. When you wanted to look at big, bright images of your vacation, you'd get out your slides, spend a few seconds thinking about what a pain it was to set up the projector and screen, then put your slides back away, unviewed. This saved a LOT of time. I'd forgotten about these slides. I took them in March 1963 when I was 15, a sophomore at Pleasantville (N.Y.) High School. The slides are of a trip I took with a friend, Evan Thompson. Somehow, we persuaded our parents to let us spend our spring break on our own, in West Palm Beach, Fla.
You may be surprised that my parents - who were not insane - agreed to this plan. I mean, today, many parents are nervous about letting 15-year-olds go to SCHOOL, let alone on unchaperoned trips to a place 1,200 miles away. But that was an innocent era. Nobody had heard of Lee Harvey Oswald, or Vietnam. On TV, married people slept in separate beds and reproduced via mitosis.
I'm not saying we lived without worry. A singing group called The Angels - three women sporting beehive hairdos the height of Clint Eastwood - had an alarming hit record, called "My Boyfriend's Back," about what their boyfriend was going to do to a guy who had been besmirching their virtue ("HEY, he knows I wasn't cheating! NOW, you're gonna get a beating!").
But generally, 1963 felt safer than today. And so my parents let me go to Florida, as long as I paid for the trip from my paper-route savings, which amounted to around $160. If you're wondering how I managed to afford a Florida trip on so little money, I can answer in three words: Greyhound Bus Lines (motto: "We Stop For Some Damn Thing About Every 200 Yards").
We boarded our bus in New York City and were on it for about two days - or, in Bus Time, 17 months.
Finally we crossed the Florida state line, and the bus, in keeping with tradition, stopped. I got out and took a picture of a palm tree. Most of my slides from this trip feature palm trees. If any botanists out there want to know what palm trees looked like in 1963, I have photographic proof that they looked remarkably alike.
Evan and I knew nothing about our destination, West Palm Beach; we chose it solely because of the word "Palm." We stayed, for something like $10 a day, in a space that some guy had made by converting his garage into, basically, a garage with beds in it. We lived on peanut butter and fresh oranges, which cost like a dollar per million. We rented bicycles ($3 a day) and rode them across the bridge to Palm Beach, to the ocean (free), where we lay on the sand until we were the color of traffic cones.
I'm looking at a slide: It shows me standing on the beach in my bathing suit, displaying a degree of musculature rarely found outside the asparagus family. My face has an expression that conveys the emotion: "I cannot see a thing." I had removed my thick, Soviet-style eyeglasses in the foolish hope that this would make me attractive to girls, which it did not, and even if it had, I would have been unable, without sonar, to locate them.
For souvenirs, we each bought a tiny potted palm tree (50 cents). On the bus ride home, at a stop, somebody stole Evan's wallet, and we had to make it the rest of the way on my two or three remaining dollars, eating exclusively from the Tootsie Roll food group. When we got home, we were hungry and tired, and our skin was peeling off in vast sheets. Pretty soon our palm trees died.
That was a GREAT time.
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Previously:
This latest research is enough to drive you nuts
Wrestling with night critters gives me butterflies
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Overweight? I'm in training for the next Ice Age
The bleu plate special proves just ducky on this trip
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Better to light a single gift candle than to curse your wife
These camping tips will make for some happy trails I'm shooting the rapids with eyes wide shut
People's bad grammar is enough to make me sic
Toilet water as a weapon? That idea really stinks
The carefree days of summer begin with the ants in my pants
Heartland's moovers & shakers are an udder disgrace
I've found a guy who can do this better than I can
If you really love Dad, give him a big box of nothing
Graduates, the world is your oyster and it's shut
How to look good in a swimsuit no ifs, ands or butts
Trip proves I'm the king of my own castle
The writer vs. the writher beats the Hil & Obama fight
Complain about gridlock? That's just a dead end
New phone tactics help me develop new hangups
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How to speak English very much better
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Fixing your home can truly be a bonding experience The lies about this mammal just drive me batty
In spin cycle of love, hard to be delicate
It's just not the time to thumb our nose at bagels
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MR. LANGUAGE PERSON: WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!
Feeding your worst fears
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On calamities (in the sky and on your head)
Modern medical mysteries
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Dave's Field of Nightmares
Lewis and Clark stepped here!
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Mr. Language Person: Some words of wisdomality
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All bets are off
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Sour grapes and mud
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Guard-dog vigilance is nothing to sniff at
Warm and fuzzy Cold War memories
The funny side of Beowulf
HOLY HEAT WAVE, BATMAN!
Abs-olute madness
Beware of brainy bugs
I'm in a sorry state
The frog plague: The inside story
If she had a hammer….
Keeping an eye on crime
Camping and Lewis and Clark
When in Iowa, don't forget to duck
Junior takes the wheel
Growing old with Dave
Sites for sore eyes
Beware of sheep droppings
Ireland, land of bad Elvis
Mr. Peabrain's misadventures
When they're out to get you, keep cool
Mothers of invention
Kill 'em with kindness
© 2006, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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