As you may or may not know, the Boston Bruins are playing the Vancouver Canucks in the playoffs. Of course the B’s will win – I can’t imagine otherwise.
You see, I grew up in a hockey household, watching the Big Bad Bruins. Gerry Cheever, Phil Esposito, Derek Sanderson, and, of course, Bobby Orr. There was no escaping hockey-fever. I remember when I was young once asking my dad, “Dad, I’ll bet you don’t know where Bobby Orr was born.” I thought I’d stump him. His response: “Pffft. There are two birthplaces you remember. Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, and Bobby Orr was born in Parry Sound.”
Tonight I watched team captain Zdeno Chara take a hit that would pulverize any normal human, and it occurred to me that players used to actually play without helmets. Can you imagine?
No helmets, no plexiglass face shields, no cages, no teeth guards. If they got hit in the face with the puck, they shook it off, skated to the sidelines to get stitched up, and hurried back into play. If you don’t believe me, check out Slapshot, a great film with Paul Newman, where (if memory serves) a player gets stitched up IN the penalty box without Novacaine! Ah, the good old days.
But it also got me thinking about all the other things we used to do in the good old days. Some things I remember:
Waiting for food to heat up on the stove or in the oven – there were no microwaves.
Playing outside and never wanting to go home, not even when the streetlights came on – now I can’t wait to get home and to bed. The clock hits 9:00 and I ask myself, Is it a little sad if I go to bed now?
Watching TV until the test pattern came on – programming actually ended sometime around midnight. The National Anthem would play and then the screen would turn to snow.
Roll up car windows, manual steering, and non-power brakes – talk about a workout!
Busy signals and never knowing who was on the phone until I picked up – no caller ID meant it was always a surprise (sometimes good, sometimes bad).
I also remember the banners being lifted into the rafters of the Boston Garden. Some memories are sweeter than others.
Those are just a few of the things I remember. What do you remember? What do you miss?
misty water color...
ReplyDelete- Bobby Orr goes horizontal. I'm watching in my friend Chuck's bedroom, the neighborhood mothers are down on the lot in lawn chairs having a chatfest. We rush to the window and the screaming ensues.
- 45 RPM singles, forget ITunes, I would go to United Burner Service or Mammoth Mart each week and check out the Billboard top 100 for new tunes, especially new ones "with a bullet". Two singles a week, sometimes "back to back" hits, slowly building the soundtrack of my youth.
- The Weekly Reader. All summer vacation I'd wait for the mailman to deliver the next issue of this children's periodical.
- Flipping cards. Don't know if I choose to remember since I would always lose, quite often by cheating (I was very gullible) Be it Baseball cards, Monkees cards, black and white Beatles cards with "blue ink" signatures or Wacky Packages cards, you would flip your doubles and don't like/don't wants for new cards, or like me, lose them all and cry all the way home.
Gee, sometimes memories aren't a good thing, thanks a lot.