It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

 

 

     I could wax poetic about Charlie Brown all day. When I was in 2nd Grade our teacher suggested we tell our parents that we should be allowed to stay up until 8:00pm to watch the premier of "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." This was the follow-up to the hit "A Charlie Brown Christmas" which premiered the year before (1965). Being that it was a simple request and one honestly presented, my parents agreed that if I went to bed at 7:30 PM and managed to keep my eyes closed until 8 PM, I could then watch the show. To make a long story short, I complied with the request as best I could and fell in love with Peanuts. I marvel to this day at how naive we were in this age before video games and Reality TV. As Linus so aptly said, "There was nothing but sincerity for as far as the eye could see."

Raking Leaves

      Before there were leave blowers and the ubiquitous landscaping companies, we raked leaves. We would rake them until our hands had callouses and all the leaves had been deposited neatly at the curb for the town to pick up. I also remember burning leaves. This was much more fun than raking and we would even do it for free! It would fill the neighborhood with a scent which screamed out that autumn was here. It would also fill the neighborhood with smoke, which is probably why they passed a long banning it. Being a city dweller these days I don't have to rake leaves anymore. I don't miss it and prefer to honor the season by admiring leaves instead. As kids growing up in Ridgewood, we would admire the leaves as they initially changed colors. But this was always before it had occurred to us that it would soon be time to rake them. Children growing up in Ridgewood these days are mostly deprived of rituals like leave raking and mowing the lawn. These jobs are now usually contracted out to landscaping companies who swoop in like a swarm of locusts and finish the job in a fraction of the time it took us. It's too bad because these jobs taught us to recognize that work is difficult, strenuous, and sometimes it's done without adequate compensation. Hard work also made us slowly realize that without an education we might end up working in a similar type of job all of our lives.

Looking Backwards and Asking Why

     This blog is about returning to a place in my mind (Ridgewood in the 1960s and 1970s), and commenting upon how it seems some 30+ years later. The poem cited below by Joyce Sutphen describes this process and alludes to one of the best poems of a Romantic period poet to illustrate the point. You don't have to know the poem to understand what she is saying about returning to place which you once regarded as being larger than life, and seeing it now as being much more manageable than you previously believed. I guess that is what's called being a grown up. The Wordsworth Effect by Joyce Sutphen Is when you return to a place and it's not nearly as amazing as you once thought it was, or when you remember how you felt about something (or someone) but you know you'll never feel that way again. It's when you notice someone has turned down the volume, and you realize it was you; when you have the suspicion that you've met the enemy and you are it, or when you get your best ideas from your sister's journal. Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables you to walk for miles and miles chanting to yourself in iambic pentameter and to travel through Europe with only a clean shirt, a change of underwear, a notebook and a pen. And yes: is when you stretch out on your couch and summon up ten thousand daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

Bob Lefsetz on 1960s Music

     If I happen to quote a fellow blogger you all will have to understand that this is the nature of the medium. I regularly read Bob Lefsetz because his observations on the music scene strike a cord with Baby Boomers. I will take the liberty of quoting him here: "Will we ever revisit an era where acts as diverse as Louis Armstrong, the Four Tops and the Beatles can coexist on the airwaves, the music of all emanating from the same station, so dominant that everyone knows the licks? I don't think so. That's a bygone era. We don't even have a new "Bonanza", and there are many more records than TV shows." Subscribe to his email list and you will regularly receive his analysis of the current music scene and how it contrasts with the era which this blog seeks to explain and better understand. If all this makes me sound like an old fogie who likes to say it was better in the good old days, then I am fine with it. In the case of popular music, to me, there is no question as to how far our tastes have degenerated. Where is the harmony in Rap? I try to be open minded about Rap and all the tripe which passes for popular music, but it seems a little contrived to me and lacking in the reflection which I hold to be important to all art. I realize this makes me sound like the people during the 60s and 70s who couldn't understand the long hair and bell bottom jeans of people who listened to the music I seek to immortalize here. I am fine with this and am proud to be as old as I am.

Election Day 2008

     No partisan politics in this blog, just a simple reminder that all votes are meaningful because they are proof of your citizenship and your commitment to the commonweal. I always liked Election Day during my days in Ridgewood. This mostly had to do with the bake sales which usually accompanied the voting, and my sweet tooth. Even with my stay-at-home-Mom always was baking for us, the Election Day bake sale gave me one more chance to indulge my passion for sweets. To this day I cannot walk by an election polling place without wondering if they are having a bake sale, and if there is anything that might tempt my palate.