Tag: 1985

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Saturday Night Retro

On this 92ND edition of my ‘Saturday Night Retro’ I’m looking back at the Spring of 1985 – just a few months before I turned 18-years-old, graduated from high school, left home, and joined the Air Force – all within a single week !

At home I enjoyed hangin’ out with my 10-year-old brother Danny and our young Manx cat Fluffy. We watched Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and “Saturday Night Live” that I taped overnight on our Betamax videocassette recorder downstairs in our family room. I also enjoyed driving around Langley, McLean, and Tysons Corner Virginia in my beige 1980 Chevy Citation (my first car). It was equipped with a high-quality AM radio !

Back at home (where I actually had an FM stereo) I listened to the Washington D.C. area’s two big Top 40 radio stations – ‘All-Hit-105-WAVA’ and ‘Q-107’. One of the big smash hits during this memorable time of my life as I approached adulthood was this electronic dance smash. It was HUGE all around the world, and I think that they played it at my high school prom. I really don’t know for sure because I never attended my high school prom because I was such an outcast at the time. I was the original ‘All-American Reject’ !

Here’s Animotion – as I kick-off 6 fun-filled weeks of ‘The Awesome ’80s In August International Dance Party’. It’s my “Obsession”:

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Career History Life Music Travel

Saturday Night Retro

TODAY – the fifth of June of 2010 – is my 43RD birthday. You know you try to keep these events a secret from everyone, and yet word still manages to leak out about it. Go figure. LOL !

Perhaps the most memorable birthday of my entire lifetime was exactly 25 years ago on this date in 1985. It’s when I turned 18-years-old. Back then I knew what I was going to do on the following day. I was going to graduate from high school and receive my diploma. And so I did – on June 06TH 1985 at historic DAR Constitution Hall in Washington D.C.

On my 18TH birthday I also knew what I was going to do exactly a week later. I was going to leave home, make my way from suburban Northern Virginia to San Antonio Texas via planes, trains, shuttles, and automobiles, and enter a whole new world. And so I did – on June 12TH 1985 when I arrived at Lackland Air Force Base for Air Force Basic Military Training. It was the most hectic week of my lifetime – turning 18, graduating from high school, and joining the Air Force.

I never imagined 25 years ago that I’d be celebrating my 25TH anniversary with the Air Force this week in 2010, but here I am. I served 8 years on active duty (1985-1993), 2 years on active reserves (1993-1995), 4 years on inactive reserves (1995-1999), and 17 years as a Department Of Defense civilian working for the USAF (1993-now). It’s been a great and rewarding career, and retirement is about 15 years away. I can almost see it from here !

Back during that hectic second week of June of 1985 this memorable song from Tears For Fears was the # 1 pop and rock smash all across the free nation. It’s “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”, and I present it as my 25TH anniversary ‘Retro’ classic flashback:

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Career History Life Music People Television

Saturday Night Retro

It’s a special Friday night edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ !

Back in November and December of 1985 I spent my first two months overseas in The United Kingdom at my first active duty Air Force permanent duty station. As a newly-assigned Airman I lived in one of the old post World War 2 era dormitories on base – rambler style with centralized community bathrooms. In other words you had to leave your room and walk down the hallway to use the toilet, take a shower, shave, wash your hands, and brush your teeth. There was no plumbing within the actual dorm rooms.

In the military a ‘day room’ is essentially a community living room with assorted furniture and a television. Our ‘day room’ in our particular dorm was damaged / unusable / off-limits, so we ‘dorm rats’ gathered together and took over an adjacent dorm’s day room. We met nightly after work to hang out, eat junk food, smoke cigarettes, drink beer (not me), watch British television, play Uno, and pretty much party like it was 1985 (sometimes all night long). Those are some of the greatest memories of my entire military career – from nearly 25 years ago. One of the biggest mistakes that I made early on was to buy my own television set for my dorm room because once I did that I unintentionally removed myself from that day room camaraderie. A few months later I went back over there, and it was never the same as it once was during those first two months. All of my old buddies had moved on – just as I had done.

One of the great Thursday night traditions that began in that day room and continued on during the entire time that I lived in the U.K. (the next two years) was watching “Top Of The Pops” on BBC-1. It aired weekly for over 40 years, and it was essentially their version of our “American Bandstand”. Here’s how a mid-December 1985 episode started at 7 PM GMT. It was one of those episodes that I watched alongside my day room buddies. On that week’s show Amazulu (an all-female British pop band) were in the Top 20 with their vivacious hit at the time “Don’t You Just Know It”.