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Saturday Night Retro

Last Saturday night we flashed back 35 years ago to 1973. This week I’m taking you even further back – on a trip to 1969.

As the year began I was 18 months old and beginning to walk alone – without braces (apparently due to pigeon toe / curved feet). I started the year in Selma Alabama (where I was born), but then we moved to Greenbelt Maryland (very near NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center). We lived in the brand new Chelsea Wood rental apartment complex on Greenbelt Road. 40 years later that apartment complex still stands, but they are now condominiums (privately owned). It looks exactly the same today (at least on the outside) as it did all of those years ago.

Chelsea Wood, Greenbelt Maryland
Chelsea Wood, Greenbelt Maryland

We lived in a first-floor unit, and I remember an early birthday party for me with a bunch of the local toddlers that was held right out front of our apartment building in the lush grassy area.

One of my lifelong wishes before it’s too late is to return to the Prince Georges County Maryland region of the Washington D.C. area for a few days. I’d like to spend some quality time retracing the early years of my life through the various neighbourhoods and communities that I lived in and spent a lot of time in for 11 years in Greenbelt, Bowie, Glenn Dale, Lanham, Seabrook, New Carrollton, and Riverdale. After all it was there where the trunk of my life was developed.

I’ve stated before that my childhood was for the most part forgettable and downright miserable; however, it wasn’t all a blur, and it wasn’t all bad either. There were a lot of good times that I experienced during those early years of my life, and I remember much of them to this day. Perhaps it was the good times that I have purposely chosen to remember after all of these years. 

As a curious two-year-old toddler living in my apartment with my Mom and Dad I remember getting bathed in the kitchen sink. I also remember watching and enjoying “Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In” every Monday night at 8 PM on NBC-TV. That was family night in front of the tube. The entire nation was watching.

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Saturday Night Retro

The year was 1995 and I was 28-years-old. I moved from a house in Naranja to my current home in Homestead. I’ve been here ever since then. Homestead was still a sleepy small town back then with mostly narrow two-lane roads. It was struggling to recover from the overwhelming destruction of Hurricane Andrew just 3 years earlier. U.S. gas prices remained rather steady (between $1.10 and $1.20 per gallon). The entire nation stayed home on Thursday nights to watch Friends, Seinfeld, and ER on NBC-TV. I enjoyed listening to ‘Bobby & Footy’ in the morning on Y-100. I only saw two movies at the box office during the entire year – “The Brady Bunch Movie” and “Tommy Boy”.

This song and video was all of the rage on television, on the radio, and at the clubs. It would go on to become a runaway International sensation – and one of the most successful singles in the entire history of the modern rock era. It spent a record-shattering 14 months on the Billboard HOT 100. It’s what I was doing every few months up in Orlando’s nightclub scene:

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Life

Bedtime Stories

TOMORROW is National Grandparents Day all across the U.S.A. In fact it’s the 30TH anniversary of the holiday that we celebrate every year on the first Sunday after Labor Day.

My (paternal) Granddad died in November 1994 at the age of 82. My Grandmom died in May 2004 at the age of 88. Most of my greatest childhood memories throughout the 1970s occurred with the two of them at their longtime house in Lanham Maryland. I feel like I grew up at their house. The Grandparents that I knew from back then were actually younger than my parents are today. That seems weird.

I will always look back fondly at those precious times that I spent with my Grandmom and Granddad. They were together as husband and wife for over 60 years. After nearly a decade apart from each other she joined him up in Heaven a few years ago. Together again.

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Life

The Third Day Of School

In November 1980 my family moved from Lanham Maryland to McLean Virginia (on the other side of the Capital Beltway surrounding Washington D.C.). I attended James Fenimore Cooper Intermediate School for the 7TH and 8TH grades from November 1980 through June 1982. Back then we had either ‘Junior High Schools’ or ‘Intermediate Schools’ in-between ‘Elementary Schools’ and ‘Senior High Schools’. Nowadays ‘Middle Schools’ are pretty much universal.

I don’t remember much about those two years at Cooper Intermediate other than the fact that I got below average grades, and I had to attend Summer School as a result of that. I also learned Español for the first time in the 8TH grade. As it turned out it would become one of the most beneficial subjects in school for use later on in life (aqui en el Sur de Florida).

Those two years in the 7TH and 8TH grades were quite forgettable. I did not have any friends. I did not enjoy my stay.

It did not get any better in High School …

… To Be Continued …