Sept. 25, 2007 - 20:01 MDT

THOSE WEINER YEARS

Seem like young males of our day were much the same, variations of course, but the insatiable craving for food, lots of it seemed to be a common characteristic of us all when we were young.

My craving for frankfurters was overslaked during the depression, but in that vacancy the desire for all the Rocky Bilt hamburgers and special sauce I could afford to buy filled the gap nicely, second to that was most any hamburger on a bun with a slap of mustard, and a nice juicy slice of Bermuda Onion. To fill in the chinks a malted milk or two seemed to do nicely.

In our group fun was fun and for the most part the more wacky, the more fun. Sometimes bordering on the illegal, such as pulling trolleys, setting sprinklers on the front doors of houses at the appropriate time of year, hooking up tick-tacks on windows and cautiously soaping windows.

Noisy we were normally, and extremely noisy when we were downtown. One of our favorite things was at a movie theater when the show was over, we'd line up and reel our way toward the exit, muttering and staggering a bit, and all fall down on the floor in a line - simultaneously, blocking the aisle. Sound like fun ? Doesn't to me either - now. But we thought it was the height of pure blissful fun then. Guess it was because we knew our parents would deeply frown on such behavior and that we were impeding the flow of folks the age of our parents.

In those days outre was far out for us.

There was a time that the "convict" look was our uniform. Denim cap with a bill, denim shirtjacket, jeans and blunt toed black shoes. And part of the gig was to try to act tough in our talk. Early Goth maybe ? Guess each age group has their own special thing. Some of us had convict hair cuts, others of us wore our hair as long as we could get by with at school and at home. But funny thing, spiked, dyed and decorated hair was something beyond our imagination, and crotch dragging jeans - especially with the belt just above the groin not only would have been physically uncomfortable for us but would have made us the laughingstock of our peers in those days.

Much later came the "Flattop" and "Butch" haircuts, but we were older and smartassier then too.

In junior high we'd ride the street car to town, get downtown and go the the "Greeks" for a malt and a bag of cheap candy, to the tobacco store, each of us buying a pack of our particular favorite cigarettes and head to the movie show. Sometimes if things were okay we'd catch an early show, go out for burgers after and catch an afternoon show, usually coming out after dark to catch a street car home. We felt so grown up to be coming from town in the dark. We usually managed to eat all of our candy and each smoke a whole pack of cigarettes that day.

Bad habits started with us rather early in life, but we did learn how to enjoy life and have oodles of fun along with our gustatory greed and status symbol smoking.

Before we were old enough to go to town we'd sneak onto the back end of the store, kipe empty pop bottles and trade them in for the deposit and buy Twenty Grand cigarettes which were five cigarettes to the pack, each one four cigarettes long. (That was in the days when each pack of cigarettes had a US revenue stamp on it and Twenty Grands stamp was cheaper for the tobacco company as they only paid revenue on five cigarettes). But we little jerks felt so smart and biggie, walking down the street smoking a cigarette that was four cigarettes long. Back then it was hard to tell if the cigarettes were longer than we were tall.

There were many people who didn't like to live that way, but they weren't in our gang either. We didn't pick fights or answer to challenges to fights, that is one good thing I can say about us.

One of the best things I absorbed in those years was the ability to see the humor in a situation and laugh loud and long, even though going through some tough times. Some of us retain that trait, even at a funeral of a friend one of us will remember something of our past, mention it and the group will be laughing over it -- maybe teary eyed a bit. Of course, my buddies most of them didn't come back from World War two, but that way to act seems to be common to my age group.

But they were great and fun THOSE WEINER YEARS . . . . . . . . . . . .

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