Dream On

Could there have been a better time to be a teenager than when Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic album came out?  The Nuge wasn’t far behind with Stranglehold and ballads by Elton John killed the charts.  Candle in the Wind…they don’t write them like that anymore.  Then there was the Zeppelin movie.  Robert Plant sang and Jimmy Page played.  Mix in a little Jimmi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.  Boy, was I lucky to see these standard artists when they were up and coming.

We were the generation after the 50′s fins, when stripes and powerful engines ruled the streets.  My boyfriend had a Mustang Cobra and it was the bomb.   I smoked cigarettes, drank Boone’s Farm Strawberry wine, skitched behind cars in the winter, and cussed like a sailor.  I was 17, young and dumb and full of fun.

Memories are what makes getting older worth it.   What I wouldn’t give to go back and see a Farrah Faucet poster hanging inside a boy’s school locker or mood rings for sale on a gas station counter,  or (too much) blue eye shadow.  Yes.  I said it.  Blue eye shadow.  We were all too cool for school.   Smoking in the boys’ room, ditching classes, and drag racing was about as naughty as it got.  We wore bell bottoms and skin tight tops that snapped together at the crotch.  Our hair was big, our dreams were big, and Elvis was still in the building while John Travolta made the white polyester suit famous.

Archie Bunker ruled the airwaves, microwave ovens were given away by banks as incentives to open savings accounts, and the pill was new on the market.  Dolly Parton was a regular on the Johnny Carson Show and Saturday Night Live premiered.  Starsky and Hutch solved crimes, Fantasy Island was on every Friday night, and long distance phone calls were still expensive and rare.

This past weekend my mom came over from Chicago, with my two aunts and cousins.  We sat around the table, talking about family, old times, and shared grandma stories about grandmas who left us too soon.

I’m feeling nastalgic and grateful to have these women to share my life and memories with!