BẢN CHÉP ÂM THANH 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:06.080
Welcome back.
00:00:06.160 --> 00:00:07.519
I'm Robin Hendrickson.
00:00:07.679 --> 00:00:13.359
Today's episode is titled The Old Crowd, and it is a song by Leslie Gore.
00:00:13.519 --> 00:00:19.679
And if you get a chance to listen to it, I think you'll be able to see why that connected with my theme today.
00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:29.280
In July, my sister and I and our grandsons made a trip out to Colorado to my friend Joyce's yearly pig roast.
00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:35.520
She has one every year, and in this pig roast, we celebrate our friendships and family.
00:00:35.679 --> 00:00:41.200
But more importantly, we celebrate that Joyce is another year cancer-free.
00:00:41.439 --> 00:00:44.320
And that's a great reason to celebrate.
00:00:44.479 --> 00:00:48.399
In attendance, every year, it's an ebb and flow of friends and family.
00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:54.399
Some years the families can come, and some years the friends can come, and other years they can't make it.
00:00:54.479 --> 00:01:03.679
But this year in attendance, there was Joyce, of course, myself, our sisters, Jinny and Dawn, Carla, Donna, Terry, and Joy.
00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:11.359
And kind of exclusively in the afternoon, we all sat around a table and we did hours of reminiscing.
00:01:11.519 --> 00:01:16.319
We talked about many topics and shared many memories.
00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:21.840
And we found out what we knew, what we thought we knew, and what we never knew.
00:01:22.079 --> 00:01:32.319
In our conversations that afternoon and the topics we discussed, there were probably a few bad memories, but for the most part, those were left way back in our memory.
00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:38.560
And if anything was brought to the conversation, it was in keeping with a conversation.
00:01:38.799 --> 00:01:44.079
What an absolutely wonderful experience to have all of us sitting around the table and sharing.
00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:50.640
It was a beautiful afternoon, and we all, I think, knew we had something special that afternoon.
00:01:50.799 --> 00:01:51.840
It was magical.
00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:53.760
I will just say it was magical.
00:01:54.079 --> 00:02:02.480
I am so very fortunate that we were able to get together and feel like hardly any time had passed.
00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:08.719
So as I stated, I went to Crawford Elementary, North Junior High, and Central High School.
00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:16.400
Now, in my times of going to Crawford, of course, we had to walk, I think it was about six blocks or so.
00:02:16.639 --> 00:02:24.000
You wouldn't believe that so many adventures could take place in that short amount of time, but there were lots of adventures.
00:02:24.159 --> 00:02:35.919
We had conversations on the way to school, we had fights, we had laughs, we had anything that a person could share in that amount of time before we got to school, we did.
00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:52.000
In my walk to school on some of my adventures, there was a pay telephone by a gas station, and every once in a while I would, well, I did it every day, practically pull down the little change receptacle, and every once in a while there was a dime in there.
00:02:52.159 --> 00:02:59.360
And that was my first feeling of what the lottery must have felt like because 10 cents really could do some stuff.
00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:06.080
Like I could go to the 7-Eleven and buy one thing for 10 cents or a couple of things that might have cost a nickel each.
00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:09.680
So I was at least 10 cents richer every so often.
00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:18.400
Plus, on the way to school, you might find somebody had lost a dollar, or you might find somebody had lost a quarter or a nickel or something.
00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:28.639
It didn't happen all the time, but it happened regularly enough to imprint in my head that there were things that were possible to find on the way to school.
00:03:28.800 --> 00:03:39.599
Now, one of the detrimental things about walking to school was that there was a huge amount of properties that had crab apple trees.
00:03:39.759 --> 00:03:48.879
And when, I believe it was probably in the you know, September, October or so, the fruits of those crab apple trees would fall on the ground.
00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:57.680
And those mean boys, and I'm sure there were mean girls too, but it was the boys that I remember starting it, throwing those crab apples at us.
00:03:57.919 --> 00:04:01.520
You know, they're tiny and they don't look very threatening.
00:04:01.599 --> 00:04:11.680
But if you get hit in the back of the head with a crab apple, there is an immediate searing pain to your brain that you have been penetrated with something that is not pleasant.
00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:15.280
And I, for one, hated crab apples.
00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:19.199
Plus, in the winter, the snowballs were terrible too.
00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:23.040
Those boys were so sneaky that they you never saw it coming.
00:04:23.199 --> 00:04:24.879
They would hit you from the back.
00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:29.519
So that equally made it a terrible experience because you never saw it coming.
00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:35.680
That was probably the most exception to the walk home that I had for anything peril related.
00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:41.600
And there thankfully was somebody that might be in their yard and make them stop doing it.
00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:48.079
But otherwise, they were not compelled to stop pelting us with either crab apples or the snowballs.
00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:55.439
So elementary school, we were still in our formative years, and there wasn't too much of going back and forth and going after school.
00:04:55.600 --> 00:05:00.319
I think maybe when we got in the sixth grade, we were able to go to our friends' houses.
00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:05.439
But when we got into junior high, that was a little more freedom that was afforded to us.
00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:08.160
I remember going to North
Load full transcript
Junior High.
00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:11.040
Again, that was a walk to get to school.
00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:18.399
And the same perils that happened in the elementary school would carry over to the junior high walk.
00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:29.519
But there weren't as many moments as I recall being in elementary school because I guess we did get a little bit older and didn't see the necessity to be that mean to people, although they did.
00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:30.800
They did still do it.
00:05:30.959 --> 00:05:52.560
In my memory of my junior high years, I remember that uh we went a couple of times and played around in Sand Creek, and there wasn't in my memory, there wasn't enough water at that time anyway to do anything like swimming, but we did a lot of wading and you know, sitting in the shallower parts of the creek, and it was fun.
00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:56.319
I didn't do it, like I said, only but a couple of times, but it was fun.
00:05:56.480 --> 00:06:05.199
And we had our swimming pool a block away from me was Moorhead Swimming Pool and Park, and many adventures took place in that area.
00:06:05.439 --> 00:06:07.439
The park and the swimming pool both.
00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:18.480
We would go and well, mostly it was just, you know, hanging around, sitting on the picnic tables and talking about any goofy thing that a seventh, eighth, or ninth grader could talk about.
00:06:18.639 --> 00:06:30.800
I would not want to exactly hear any videos and audios of what we talked about, but I remember that there were many pleasant days spent over at Moorhead Park and the swimming pool.
00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:36.240
I also remember that at the time Dark Shadows had premiered on TV.
00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:43.759
And after school, it was a race to get home to watch the next episode of Dark Shadows.
00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:51.199
I watched one of them, but I've never been really a vampire person, so Barnabas Collins did not trip my trigger.
00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:57.759
But my friends, ho ho, they absolutely could not wait to the next episode.
00:06:57.920 --> 00:07:10.160
So for as long as the Dark Shadows episode was on TV, my friends were incommunicado and I had to wait for them to get done with Dark Shadows before we had any after-school adventures.
00:07:10.319 --> 00:07:21.600
But it's a pleasant memory in the sense that although I wasn't a Dark Shadows fan in particular, I do remember my friends enjoying the episodes immensely.
00:07:21.839 --> 00:07:27.040
Also at the time, Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy came into our world.
00:07:27.199 --> 00:07:31.360
And of course, we all had our little famous people crushes.
00:07:31.519 --> 00:07:34.000
Mine was, of course, Ricky Nelson.
00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:38.720
And I also really loved Michael Nesmet from The Monkeys.
00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:48.240
And there were other ones like Michael Burns, who played a lot of episodic, uh, like oh, gunsmoke episodes.
00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:51.759
He was in the tragic
movie Journey to Shiloh.
00:07:51.920 --> 00:07:55.120
And Journey to Shiloh was the seven brothers.
00:07:55.279 --> 00:07:58.720
I believe there were seven, and they went to the Civil War.
00:07:58.879 --> 00:08:07.120
I think only one survived out of the seven brothers, and they were all heartthrob actors at the time that portrayed the characters.
00:08:07.279 --> 00:08:14.000
And Michael Burns was one, James Kahn was one, I think Jan Michael Vincent was one.
00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:20.480
Um, I think Don Stroud was one, and that's about as far as I'll get, so I'm missing a couple.
00:08:20.639 --> 00:08:27.839
But it was, I was so excited when I heard all the names that were gonna be in the movie, but the movie was terribly, terribly sad.
00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:31.279
Um, Michael Burns, I believe he dies in that movie too.
00:08:31.439 --> 00:08:34.720
But anyway, I am going down another rabbit hole.
00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:44.320
We all had our different heart throbs, but I was never on board that much with Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, or even Davy Jones from The Monkeys.
00:08:44.399 --> 00:08:47.440
I just didn't, they were all right, but they were not my cup of tea.
00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:52.960
But my friends, absolutely in my memory, Bobby Sherman was at the top of that list.
00:08:53.200 --> 00:09:06.879
And when I hear the song Julie Do You Love Me by Bobby Sherman, it's kind of tugging to me because it brings me right back to my junior high years and all that was in front of us.
00:09:07.039 --> 00:09:23.279
And each one of our lives took different routes and had different experiences and sadnesses and happiness and some dreams that got redefined, and some dreams that got put to the wayside, and hopefully some dreams that came true.
00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:26.799
I cannot hear that song and not be affected.
00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:34.399
And then we were on to our high school days, and we all kind of shifted a little bit.
00:09:34.559 --> 00:09:44.240
We were all still friends and aware of each other, but we weren't as probably we weren't as close as we were when we were in elementary school and junior high.
00:09:44.399 --> 00:09:47.759
But we were still friends and still had adventures.
00:09:47.919 --> 00:09:55.039
One of the adventures that I had uh was that we, and I'm a little shaky on who was all on this trip.
00:09:55.200 --> 00:10:02.399
I don't remember who drove us there, and I don't remember everybody was there, but it was probably Judy Joy and Joyce and I probably went.
00:10:02.480 --> 00:10:06.399
But we went to Casa Benita in Denver when it first opened.
00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:09.600
And I believe that was about 1974.
00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:12.960
So we went, in my memory, it was spring.
00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:17.840
It was a nice experience, exotic, because they had the cliff divers still at the time.
00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.759
It had its tropical or rainforest feel.
00:10:21.919 --> 00:10:32.320
I think it was like
a cafeteria, like you got a tray and you you went through the line and you ordered what you were getting, and then at the end you were paying, and then you went and sat down and had your supper.
00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:38.799
Now, this visit that we took to Colorado, my grandson and my sister's grandson came with us.
00:10:39.039 --> 00:10:50.480
And they, of course, are big South Park fans, and they wanted to go to, I believe it was Fairplay has a South Park, uh, like big store type thing.
00:10:50.639 --> 00:10:57.679
I'm not really sure what it was, but my sister said she didn't think that we were gonna invest our time to go there because we had other things to do.
00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:07.440
So what we ended up placating the boys with was a trip to Casa Bonita because that's been brought out in at least one of the episodes from South Park.
00:11:07.679 --> 00:11:21.039
And eventually the creators of South Park bought Casa Bonita and remodeled it, refurbished it so that it was back up to probably I would say even exceeded the splendor that it was when it first opened.
00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:23.360
So the boys were okay, that would be good.
00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:36.960
So it was not a cheap meal because we tried to get uh premier seating so that the boys could see the cliff divers, which was not as prominently visible as I would have thought for the money we paid, but that's an adult view.
00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:42.000
I'm only hoping that the boys in their view enjoyed our trip to Casa Bonita.
00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:57.360
When we were there, there was a few of the um employees there that was trying to explain the Casa Bonita to me, and I said in my normal, oh, by the way, yes, I was here the first year that it opened, and they were like, what was it like?
00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:02.240
And I told them my memory of it, but it was an eating place to go.
00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:05.440
It wasn't exceptionally great or exceptionally bad.
00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:16.320
In fact, about that same time in Aurora, the Taco Bell opened, and you could get, it was like a taco meat sloppy joe for 25 cents.
00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:19.679
And I thought that that beat Cosmanita all the way around.
00:12:19.840 --> 00:12:23.919
And so that's my assessment of the experience.
00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:25.120
That's how we'll put it.
00:12:25.279 --> 00:12:26.799
But I'm glad that I did it.
00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:31.600
I remember that they were raving uh about the soapopeas.
00:12:31.840 --> 00:12:34.879
Oh, you've got to have a sopopia, and it sounded so exotic.
00:12:34.960 --> 00:12:36.559
You've gotta have a soapia.
00:12:36.720 --> 00:12:40.080
So we go, and then of course, for dessert we get the soapopea.
00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:42.960
And when it came out, I went, my mom makes this all the time.
00:12:43.039 --> 00:12:44.559
It's it's fried bread.
00:12:44.639 --> 00:12:50.159
And they looked at me and I said, We have this, well, at least once a month, but maybe
a couple more times.
00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:56.320
And so I was not that impressed with the soapopoeia, except for the name, made it a little more exotic.
00:12:56.399 --> 00:12:59.759
But it was like what my mother always made for us at home.
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:09.759
One of the other memories that I have, and I think this was probably in uh junior high, but it might have been in the I I do think it was junior high.
00:13:09.919 --> 00:13:20.559
We went to, I don't know if it was Army surplus or if it was the Salvation Army, but we all got it in our quest to wear military jackets.
00:13:20.799 --> 00:13:24.879
Army jackets and peacoats were the goal.
00:13:25.039 --> 00:13:34.960
And I remember Judy and Joy in particular, they and Joy in particular would get this peacoat, and it fit her so perfectly.
00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:40.000
And with her long, they had long blonde hair, it was so very striking.
00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:49.120
I lament the fact that I did not have a peacoat-shaped body, so I had to get a green army jacket.
00:13:49.279 --> 00:13:55.039
So that's what I wore to uh fulfill my need for military adornment.
00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:59.759
We probably shouldn't have been wearing those jackets, actually, when I reflect on that.
00:13:59.919 --> 00:14:00.639
But we did.
00:14:00.799 --> 00:14:05.440
And it wasn't out of any disrespect because we knew some of us really knew.
00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:15.279
I didn't, but there were other ones that actually knew what those military garments meant and might have been the cost of a loved one.
00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:19.279
But we were kids, we didn't think that way to a huge degree.
00:14:19.519 --> 00:14:25.039
Then, of course, we graduated and we went on to our next level of life.
00:14:25.200 --> 00:14:27.039
I graduated in 1975.
00:14:27.200 --> 00:14:31.840
In 1976, my family moved to Wisconsin.
00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:47.120
The bulk of my friends stayed in the Denver metropolitan area, and I would go home fairly frequently because my grandma still lived there, and I should say grandma still lived there, and other family members that we could visit.
00:14:47.360 --> 00:15:02.799
So going home really was a lot more of a visit than it ended up subsequently being, and the visits got a little fewer in between, and our distances, but we managed to still somehow keep in touch.
00:15:03.039 --> 00:15:04.639
And I said it earlier.
00:15:04.799 --> 00:15:08.000
I am forever grateful that Facebook came into my life.
00:15:08.240 --> 00:15:15.759
There is a lyric from an America song, Sister Goldenhair, that states, I am one poor correspondent.
00:15:15.919 --> 00:15:18.879
And I am one poor correspondent.
00:15:19.039 --> 00:15:30.799
I can't tell you how many letters and Christmas cards that I wrote and I sealed in envelopes and I addressed, and then I had to go to the post office and remember to get stamps.
00:15:30.960 --> 00:15:43.919
That was okay when it was a couple weeks before Christmas, and then it was getting closer to Christmas, and then Christmas would come, and then I'd be looking at those signs sealed, but not delivered Christmas cards.
00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:47.919
And then I'd say, well, you can't send them now because Christmas is over.
00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:54.799
So they, for many years, I didn't throw them away, but I'd pack them up in the Christmas ornaments box.
00:15:54.960 --> 00:16:01.679
And the next year, not because I was going to send them, but I was reminded to send the Christmas cards earlier.
00:16:01.840 --> 00:16:03.200
But that did not happen.
00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:06.159
For many, many, many, many years, that did not happen.
00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:09.360
And then finally I gave up and stopped buying Christmas cards.
00:16:09.519 --> 00:16:19.360
I have my dear friend Debbie sends me a Christmas card every year, and a couple of my other friends, Sandy, Lisa, and Mark, send me Christmas cards.
00:16:19.519 --> 00:16:23.759
And I appreciate getting them in the mail, and they make me happy.
00:16:23.919 --> 00:16:29.039
And I am sorry that I am not as good about returning correspondence.
00:16:29.279 --> 00:16:38.639
Then I discovered Facebook, and lo and behold, the opportunity to reconnect with so many friends from my formative years.
00:16:38.879 --> 00:16:40.879
I will be forever grateful for that.
00:16:41.039 --> 00:16:44.559
There's a lot of things on Facebook that I could do without.
00:16:44.720 --> 00:16:45.679
I'm not gonna lie.
00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:58.080
But the fact that I could reconnect with my friends from my childhood and other parts of my life as I progressed through the years, I will never, ever, ever be disappointed with that.
00:16:58.240 --> 00:17:01.440
Okay, I think that's where we'll leave this episode.
00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:06.480
Thank you for listening to my memories and from my nest tears.
00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:08.079
Tweet, tweet.