Category: Life

Saturday Night Retro

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date January 17, 2009

1998 – What a crazy year it was (for me anyway). It was a party year. It’s the year that I went from 30 to 31-years-old. I was living in my current home. I was working at the place that I still work at today. I had my young and healthy feline buddy Boots running energetically all throughout my home. When I wasn’t at home or at work I was probably driving around in my dark green 1997 Saturn SL1 that looked just like this:

I was a loyal Y-100 listener in 1998, and some of the hottest pop and rock bands on the radio back then included ‘N Sync, Fastball, Matchbox Twenty, The Goo Goo Dolls, and Aerosmith.

Here’s a track that was particularly big all around the world (aside from here in the U.S.). It’s a modern 1998 Eurodance update to a 1974 U.S. Disco smash. You probably know the original version, and some of you can even perform the dance moves to it as well. It’s “Kung Fu Fighting”, and Carl Douglas performed it originally while the British dance crew Bus Stop modernized it in 1998. It went a little something like this:

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Driving History Life Music Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date January 10, 2009

1989 – I started off the year in January by buying a brand new car for the first time in my entire life. I was tired of riding my 10-speed bike all over Homestead Air Force Base, so I bought a bright and shiny new red 1989 Geo Spectrum. It would go on to become my longest-tenure car. I had it for over 8 years – driving it for 96,745 miles. Since the purchase of that first car exactly 20 years ago this weekend I’ve driven just over 230,000 miles ! That’s an overall average of exactly 11,500 miles per year – just below the national driving average.

I bought that car when I was 21-years-old and living in one of the many dormitories on base. That car gave me the freedom that I wanted at the time to explore the South Florida all around me. It took me through 8 crazy years of my life – through the remainder of my turbulent 20s. It took me on countless road trips up north. It sat idle for a couple of months while I was in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. It survived the Category 4 hurricane winds of Andrew on the morning of August 24TH 1992. It moved me back up to the Washington D.C. area a week after the hurricane destroyed Homestead, and it returned me back to (Central) Florida about 6 months later. It eventually brought me back down to Homestead and the air base in March of 1994. It moved a lot of my possessions to my current home here in Homestead in June of 1995 – including my little feline buddy Boots.

What a cool little car that was – chock-full of a lot of great memories of my life at the time. No other Saturn since then has even come close.

This song reminds me so much of that year of 1989. I bought it on cassette single (that was the hot music medium at the time), and I played it over and over again. This is one of those few songs that I consider to be a pivotal theme song of the autobiographical soundtrack of my life. It’s from the legendary rock band Poco. They’ve been in existence as a group for the past 40 years – virtually my entire life ! Here’s their huge pop radio smash from 1989 – “Call It Love”:

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Bedtime Stories

TONIGHT I stumbled across an inch-and-a-half stack of colour pictures that were taken of me – as well as pictures that I apparently took myself – back during the wild and crazy late-1994 to mid-1995 time-frame. I hadn’t seen those pictures since way back then. They represent a lot of great memories for me, but some of the pictures are from the aftermath of when my former house (in Naranja near the air base) was broken into and ransacked by vandals. They of course brought back bad memories of that time, but life is all about the good and the bad. You can’t have it all good all of the time. Life has its bright and sunny days – as well as its dark and stormy nights.

I may share some of those retro pictures with you here on this blog in the future. I won’t be sharing any of the pictures of me partying / drinking at a bar. Those pictures represent a previous version of me that has since died, for I’ve been rescued, saved, and reborn by my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. AMEN !

One of the pictures brought some tears to my eyes. It’s a picture of me and a noticeably young and healthy Boots (my former cat) sitting together on my living room couch watching television at my former house just a few weeks after I adopted the cool cat.

The following picture that I will share with you right now is that of me from nearly 30 years ago. I actually cropped myself out of a formal family portrait (to protect the innocent). I believe this picture was taken in 1980. I look 13-years-old. Actually I look like a dork. One thing is certain though. I’m jealous of all of that gorgeous hair ! Where have you gone ?

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History Home Life Music Television Travel

Saturday Night Retro

Last Saturday night on the ‘Retro’ I presented to you for your review the 1996 smash “1979” from The Smashing Pumpkins. This week I take you back to 1979. It was exactly 30 years ago, and it closed out a crazy decade of decadence.

I entered 1979 as an 11½-year-old 6TH grader at Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland – located right in the middle of my neighbourhood at the time. Later in the year in September I moved on to Robert H. Goddard Junior High School several miles away. I was also a Boy Scout at the time. We had meetings weekly, and we went on hiking and camping trips monthly – mostly up to the mountains of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. They were ancient history editions of ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ ! 😀

During my spare time (after school and on weekends) I enjoyed riding my bike up and down Red Wing Lane, Wood Thrush Drive, Nightingale Drive, Kingfisher Lane, Wren Lane, and Brae Brooke Drive. I can see recent images of all of those roads (and my old house of over 5½-years) right now online via the use of Google Street View. My old neighbourhood has aged quite a bit over the past 30 years – and so have I. Back then it was brand new (built from around 1973 to 1975). That’s how I remember it. It doesn’t look like that anymore.

On the hit music radio stations nationwide disco music was still alive and kicking – at least during the first-half of 1979. It started dying out during that Summer. Here’s one of the last big disco hits of the era. It managed to sneak up the Billboard HOT 100 to # 11 in September of 1979. It’s Bonnie Pointer making a LIVE July 1979 appearance on ‘The Midnight Special’ on a Friday night on NBC-TV. Here’s her disco smash “Heaven Must Have Sent You”. Check out the way that we used to control the dance floor back then !