Christmas in Milwaukee - 1967

Back in 2008, I offered my recollections of how my family celebrated Christmas as I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.

Now I have some videos to illustrate those memories.

I have transferred some ancient home movies, filmed with a Super-8 millimeter camera, to digital format. Through them, one can follow the holiday celebrations of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the year 1967.

Yes, 44 years ago. Almost half a century. I was eight years old. I don't remember what it was like to be eight years old, but at least I can see myself then again.

First, the early evening of Christmas Eve. On this occasion, the rotating responsibility of hosting the Czuta family and its branches by marriage (Benkert, Geilenfeldt, Jaeger, Michalak, and Sincere) fell to my parents, so the party was held at our house in Wauwatosa.

Can you believe that one acceptable Christmas present in those days was a decorative ashtray? (Watch carefully and you'll see it.)

Next, my family took to the road -- no doubt leaving the wrapping paper on the floor and half-empty highball glasses on the bar -- to visit with the Sincere family. The first sequence is at my grandparents' home on North 49th Street, with most of my dad's brothers and sisters (especially those who were not yet married) finding their way there as well.

The later sequence is at the home of my Uncle Bill and Aunt Lucy. Note the several pre-teen boys dressed in tacky Batman costumes. (Adam West would appreciate the gesture if not the execution.) Christmas Eve was about the only time that we kids were allowed to stay up well past midnight. My guess is that this footage was shot around 2:00 a.m., even as Santa Claus was gliding up above to deliver his presents to all the good girls and boys.

I'm sure if I uploaded just the 30 seconds or so of the Batman boys, that video would go viral.

Finally, Christmas morning arrives and it is time to open up those presents left behind by St. Nick.

The first 3'30" of this video takes place at the foot of the artificial Christmas tree at my own family's home on West Derby Avenue in Wauwatosa. The gifts that I open up, as toy poodle Tabitha bounds through the discarded wrapping paper, include a toy called "Incredible Edibles" and a "GI Joe Official Space Capsule," commemorating NASA's Gemini program. I also received a bowling ball (it weighed eight pounds, one pound for each year of my age, and did not yet have finger holes drilled into it).

Later, we traveled to the home of my grandparents, Chester and Josephine Michalak, on Spring Drive in Brookfield. Santa left behind a big haul for me and my cousins, Julie and Sheri (my sister, Cathy, and their sister, Jennifer, had not yet been born; our other cousins, Jason and Chris, were more than a decade in the future). Apparently I really liked that tacky Batman costume, since I wore it Christmas morning.

Whether this was a history lesson or simply an exercise in nostalgia, I don't know.

In any case, I wish you a Merry Christmas (1967!) and a Happy New Year!

Remembering 'New Coke' 25 Years Later

Next week marks the 25th anniversary of one of history's most infamously boneheaded marketing strategems.

On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola introduced "New Coke" to -- not acclaim, as its top executives expected --  near universal disdain.  So poorly received was the new flavor formula that within months, "Coke Classic" appeared on store shelves alongside the New Coke, eventually replacing New Coke entirely.

Within days of the product's introduction, I wrote an article decrying the decision, assuming, as did most people at the time, that the original Coke formula would disappear forever.

This article appeared originally in the New York City Tribune on Monday, May 6, 1985, about two weeks after “New Coke” was introduced.

RICHARD SINCERE
Coca-Cola, where is thy sting? Tradition, where is thy victory?

American culture has some perennial certainties. Just as sure as the sun will rise there will be firecrackers on the Fourth of July, there will be heavy beach traffic on summer weekends — and the flavor of Coke will always be the same.

The flavor of Coke? I misspeak. Tuesday on the plaza in front of the National Theatre here in Washington several thousand people were treated to free samples of the “new” Coca-Cola, a bland, wimpy version of the venerable old Coke. Lacking the snap and vigor of the original 99-year-old recipe, this “new” Coke is unworthy of the name. It does not live up to the slogan “The Real Thing?” The preferred beverage of presidents and kings is no more.

Words can barely express the deep pain I felt when I heard the Coca-Cola Company’s announcement that it is changing the formula for Coke for the first time in nearly a century. Their decision shakes the timbers of American society.

In a bold move designed to offset a creeping approach by Pepsi-Cola in the national soft drink market, Coke has used the results of the research that produced Diet Coke and has introduced a drink described by company chairman Roberto Goizueta as “smoother, rounder, yet bolder. It’s a more harmonious flavor.”

A journalist interviewed on NBC News the day of the announcement used a different description: “flat” She said, “It tastes like the can was left open in the refrigerator all night.” A bold move, indeed.

For nearly 100 years, nothing has been quite so certain in American consumer society as the basic flavor of Coca-Cola. Some have argued that there are regional variations due to different sources of water, Coke’s major ingredient, but these variations have been minimal, if indeed they have ever existed. The closest consumer good, in terms of uniformity, familiarity, and certainty has been the recognizable friendliness and responsible service at McDonald’s -- which, of course, serves Coke in all 5,500 of its restaurants nationwide.


Little old lady from Appalachia
E.J. Kahn, in his “biography” of Coca-Cola written about 2 decades ago, The Big Drink, noted that of 100 people tested for their familiarity with consumer products at the New York World’s Fair, only one — an elderly lady from Appalachia on her first trip to a city — could not recognize Coke’s logo or bottle. No other product — including Bic pens, Crest toothpaste, and, yes, Pepsi — came close to that near-universal familiarity.

Similarly, within 24 hours after Coke’s announcement of the new formula, two-thirds of all Americans knew about the change — a level of recognition most politicians spend a lifetime seeking.

Kahn also tells of the importance of Coke to “our boys overseas.” In the days before aluminum cans became the preferred vessel for soft drinks, local Coca-Cola bottlers around the country imprinted their towns’ names on the bottom of the bottle.

Like coins, Coke bottles would circulate far from their place of minting. Several bases in Europe and the Pacific during World War II would display empty Coke bottles, bottoms-up in a rack, never failing to bring nostalgic tears to the eyes of American servicemen looking through the bottles for a familiar place.

After the war, Coke became known as an agent of American imperialism, because no sooner would U.S. troops liberate Nazi- or Japanese-held territory than a Coke truck would arrive. Coca-Cola bottling plants, at least in the 1950s and ‘60s, were erected in more Third World countries than any other American industry.

To millions of people around the globe, Coke is synonymous with free enterprise and human liberty — at least to those who look upon the American flag with as much favor as they view Coke. Coca-Cola’s corporate system of decentralization, granting substantial autonomy to local bottlers while providing the secret-formula syrup from corporate headquarters in Atlanta, has been a model for multinational industrial development. Coke is a source of pride for the American spirit of enterprise — and it is thus scorned by the Kremlin and its dupes around the world.

Pepsi’s new television commercial gives us a teenage girl who asks, “Why is Coke doing this?” Indeed, why? What is Coke’s goal in changing the flavor of the world’s best-known carbonated beverage (if not the world’s favorite beverage, period)?

Coca-Cola products predominate in the U.S market — 35 percent of all soft drinks sold are made by Coke. Twenty-two percent of sales are for regular Coke, 5 percent for Diet Coke, about 1 percent each for Sprite and Tab. Basically, Diet Coke’s astounding popularity in the 2 years it has been on the market has narrowed the gap between non-diet Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s 18 percent market share.

Coca-Cola risks losing many loyal customers if they perceive its sweeter flavor as too different. Coke drinkers [drink] Coke qua Coke; if they wanted Pepsi, they would buy Pepsi. Already, the Wall Street Journal reports, loyalists are stockpiling bottles and cans from the last batch made with the secret formula, Merchandise 7X, kept in an Atlanta bank vault since 1886. (I confess to be one of the hoarders.)

Tradition, loyalty, steadfastness, pride in work, and good taste seem to matter not a whit to Coca-Cola Co. executives. Reducing American values to their most materialistic and mocking our spirit of enterprise, Coke’s President Donald Keough said: “The American way is to want more, and we want more,” meaning profits, not good will.

And so a tradition fades, like family squabbles about Milton Berle vs. Bishop Sheen, like barn-raisings, like knickers giving way to long pants, and like Saturday matinees with neighborhood pals — sharing popcorn, a Coke and a smile.


Richard Sincere writes from Washington on national affairs.

Snow Blast from the Past

We seem to have dodged a bullet tonight.  Early forecasts predicted that Charlottesville might be facing six to ten inches of snow on top of the 15 or so inches that walloped us last weekend.  A changeover to sleet and freezing drizzle seems to have thrown a blanket over those predictions, and we're likely to wake up in the morning with no more than an inch or two of the wet, white stuff on the ground.  Morning rush hour might be slower, but not disrupted.

Apparently the storm tracked northward, so Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., will still suffer multi-centimeters of snow in addition to the two feet or so that capital area residents have been trying to dig their way out of since Saturday.

All this snow -- a record seasonal snowfall for Charlottesville -- reminded me of one of the "big ones":  the 1979 Presidents' Day snowstorm that hit Washington while I was a sophomore at Georgetown University.  Records show that National Airport recorded an official total of 18.7 inches the weekend of February 19-20, 1979, but as an article in Tuesday's Washington Post explains, this number probably underestimates what fell on other Washington-area neighborhoods.

Paul Farhi wrote in the Style section:

National Airport became the official NWS reporting station for the District in 1941 and has recorded the most precise and voluminous weather data in the region since then, said Chris Strong, a Weather Service meteorologist. The city had its own official station in Georgetown dating back to the Civil War, but that was closed as the Weather Service moved to serve the meteorological needs of the growing aviation industry, he said. Dozens of weather "spotters" provide readings from around the city, but none as frequently as the office at National Airport.

What's more, the lower snowfall totals recorded there aren't really surprising, given the airport's location along the Potomac, Strong said. The river and sea-level location moderate the direction and influence of winds in the area.

Bob Ryan, WRC-TV's chief meteorologist, points out, too, that the construction of Crystal City immediately to the airport's west further affected wind patterns, making the airport's microclimate somewhat more benign than elsewhere.

In all, "precipitation levels can vary quite wildly" over a relative small area, Strong said. In fact, Alexandria -- a short jog south of the airport -- recorded 28.9 inches during the storm.

My memory of that 1979 storm jibes with that explanation. I remember snow much deeper than a foot and a half -- and home movies I took in the storm's aftermath seem to confirm my memories. I dug up -- no pun intended -- this two-minute clip of brief shots in Georgetown, including one really quick flash of Wisconsin Avenue right at the beginning, with most of the pictures taken on the main campus and East Campus of Georgetown University. Alert to Georgetown alumni who were frolicking in the snow over Presidents' Day weekend in 1979: you might see yourself in this video. (That includes you, Roger Theis, Leonard MacKenzie, Joe Banno, and Rick Peete, inter alia.)

Here's the clip, which I posted to YouTube on Monday evening, just before that popular web site went into maintenance mode for several hours:

(The music accompanying the pictures is an instrumental version of Georgetown's alma mater, known in 1979 as "Sons of Georgetown" and now called "Hail, Oh Georgetown," sung to the traditional Welsh anthem, "Men of Harlech.")

Just to bring things up to date, last Sunday, in the bright sunlight that inevitably follows a major snow storm, I took a few photos on the grounds of another renowned institution, the University of Virginia. Here's a sample; the rest can be found on Facebook.

 

  

  

  

Thinking back on that video -- made on a Super-8 movie camera with a zoom lens -- those kids you see throwing snowballs at Sugar's are now in their 30s or 40s, probably with kids of their own.  Time flies as fast as the jet stream brings an Arctic blast to the mid-Atlantic region.

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Community Theatre - Part Three

About fourteen months ago, I posted video and photographs from my first experience in community theatre, a production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man at St. Bernard's Studio Theatre in my hometown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

After going off to Georgetown University, where I performed in my first college theatre show (Stephen Sondheim and Larry Gelbart's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and working backstage on several other productions, I returned to Milwaukee the following summer and had my first experience of performing in repertory.

In the summer of 1978, St. Bernard's Studio Theatre for the first time (but not the last) produced two shows and performed them on alternate nights. While my expectations at auditions were not particularly high -- I was just looking forward to joining my friends in the joy of putting on a show -- it turned out that I was cast in major roles in both plays. It was the first time in my (short) career on stage that I was able to play the romantic lead, the male ingenue and title role in Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, and also the first chance I had to play a character role, The Old Actor in Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's long-running off-Broadway gem, The Fantasticks.

(Back at Georgetown in subsequent years, this would turn out to be a pattern: playing naive boys and eccentric characters in such shows as Lanford Wilson's The Hot l Baltimore and Neil Simon's The Good Doctor.)

Around the same time that I found and edited the Super-8mm film-to-video transfer of scenes from The Music Man, I also found archival film of The Boy Friend and The Fantasticks. I posted the scenes from The Fantasticks over a year ago on YouTube, where it has had a trickle of traffic, and I posted The Boy Friend footage a few weeks ago.

I recently discovered, however, that I also had a live audio recording of a performance of The Fantasticks. (I also found another audio recording of just Act II from a rehearsal some months later; read on for the explanation. The Act I tape must exist somewhere, but it was not kept with its counterpart.) So I decided to re-edit the old footage, add a few photos, and superimpose the live audio -- as best I could, given the non-professional editing software I use -- onto the video.

Considering that I had to digitize excerpts from deteriorated 30-year-old audio cassette tapes without the benefit of high-end hardware, the result is pretty good. In fact, I was able to match the movements to the sound almost precisely in the "Episode" sequence that begins at marker 00:38 on the video playback. (The last few minutes of the audio track have some distortions, but those should not be too distracting -- I hope.)

I wonder if this effort indicates that I have an unseemly fetish for historical preservation of documents and artifacts? Or does it offer justification for my being a lifelong packrat, to the consternation -- and sometimes exasperation -- of my friends?

Here, then, is the newly re-edited video of The Fantasticks, as presented by St. Bernard's Studio Theatre in July 1978. (The audio was recorded at a special performance on Wednesday, July 19, in that year.)

The Boy Friend had more official performances in July 1978 than The Fantasticks (4 vs. 3) and it also had a considerably larger cast, which meant more friends and family enticed to see the show. (This was my sister's first performance on a public stage; those who know her will recognize her, at 7 years of age, in the "Sur la Plage" sequence.) Considering that both shows were performed in the gymnasium of a Catholic parish school, with much of the cast emerging from the same parish's members, drawing an audience from extended families was an easy expectation.

For those who don't know it, The Boy Friend is a pastiche of 1920s musicals. It uses every cliche from that era: an exotic setting (the French Riviera), aristocratic characters (including mine, who was pretending to be working-class to escape his overbearing parents), a lonely rich girl, a randy French maid, a flirtatious secondary female lead, and an older man with an eye for younger ladies. The music echoes Gershwin, Berlin, Rodgers, Porter, and other composers of the era. The lyrics work for what they're meant to do, but none of the songs are particularly memorable in their own right in the way the compositions of those giants being aped were. Wilson later went on to write something of a sequel, a pastiche of 1930s musicals called Divorce Me, Darling!, which did not have the same staying power or appeal that The Boy Friend has enjoyed. (There is, however, a recording that has developed a cult following.)

Perhaps it was unusually precocious discernment on the part of my 19-year-old theatre maven's brain, with the (correct) judgment that The Fantasticks is a superior musical play, or perhaps I was just neglectful, but I failed to make an audio recording of any performance or rehearsal of The Boy Friend that summer. Consequently, this video has as its soundtrack excerpts from the Broadway OCR, featuring Julie Andrews in her first New York role (preceding My Fair Lady by one season).

In any case, here is what may be the only archival video of the 1978 production of The Boy Friend at St. Bernard's Studio Theatre:

Both shows had something of an afterlife.

A couple of weeks after we closed, we had an opportunity to perform a handful of songs from The Boy Friend at an enclosed shopping mall in suburban Milwaukee. (To be truthful, I don't remember which mall it was; perhaps someone from the cast may remember and post the information in the comments section, below.)

What I do remember is how disorienting the experience was. (She wasn't around then, but I imagine it must be how Tiffany must have felt years later.) The acoustics were atrocious; we could barely hear the people singing five feet away from us, much less hear the piano next to the stage. While a few shoppers stopped to see what was happening, most went about their business, chattering more loudly than they usually would in order to be heard above our music.

Still, it was fun to get back together with fellow cast members in August, before people dispersed to go to school or on last-minute vacations. It might have been the last time I wore that red jacket and white Gatsbyish hat.

Months later, St. Bernard's Studio Theatre was given an opportunity to put on a benefit performance for the Wauwatosa Junior Women's Club. Rozeann Campbell, our director, choreographer, and producer, decided that revisiting The Fantasticks would be best.

Although the benefit, to be performed at Wauwatosa West High School, was scheduled for February 24, in the middle of the school year, I could not pass up the opportunity to do a "revival." So I flew home from Washington in time to do one rehearsal and the performance. We had to do some reblocking, because the Tosa West auditorium had a proscenium stage and our original production had been done on a thrust stage, but the adaptation was relatively seamless.

The rest is something of a blur. The auditorium was full, there were friends and family in the audience, and we had a terrific cast party afterwards. And I flew back to Georgetown feeling a bit puffed up and prematurely professional.

A bit of a backtrack here: Over Thanksgiving Weekend in 1978, I made my first-ever trip to New York City. At the top of my list of things to do was to see the original production of The Fantasticks at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. At that time, it had been playing continuously for more than 18 years; there were still more than 22 years left in its original run of 17,162 performances. It was a stirring event for me, as it would be for any musical theatre geek.

Ironically, the other show I saw during that trip was the musical version of the cult movie, King of Hearts, which only managed 48 performances, another flop by Joseph Stein.

Speaking of Joseph Stein, come back a year from now and I'll tell the story of St. Bernard's Fiddler on the Roof. If you can't wait, you can see the video on YouTube now. (It's more of a slide show with authentic performance audio, however.)

Those Aluminum Christmas Trees

One of the first posts on this blog, nearly three years ago, was called "Return of Aluminum Christmas Trees?" and cited a then-recent article from the Washington Times reporting that "current marketers of the once-all-the-rage, later-repudiated-and-mocked decorations" ought to

heed the advice from "Conny of Alcoa," the official home-design hostess of the Aluminum Company of America, circa 1961.

"Decorated with plain ornaments and inexpensive spotlights, aluminum trees develop a spectacular ethereal beauty," Conny counseled in a booklet boasting photos of bouffant-haired women in shirtwaist dresses and stiletto heels, earnestly intent on their aluminum trees.

I added:

I remember aluminum Christmas trees. Conny was right: they did possess "ethereal beauty." More than that, they were a respectable replacement for "live" trees, which had a tendency to shed needles and become fire hazards (especially in the days of big, bulky bulbs on frayed electrical wires). At the time, artificial trees that could "pass" as real trees were rare and expensive, if available at all. Developments in plastics manufacturing didn't make realistic fake trees possible and economical until the 1970s.

Aluminum Christmas trees are again the object of attention -- this time as sought-after items on online auction sites like eBay. Writes "Boomer Angst" columnist Marli Murphy in the Kansas City Star:

Blame Mom: If only she hadn’t trashed the family’s aluminum Christmas tree, circa 1965, you’d be making quick bucks on eBay.

Oh sure, its dilapidated box was coated with decades of attic dust, and she’d been trying for 40 years to get one of you kids to take it (and the rest of that stuff up there!). Start boo-hooing if your fake tree was pink or gold, because then you really could’ve cashed in this holiday season.

Kitschy as it seems today, the aluminum tree in all its artificial glory was the proud centerpiece of many a baby boomer Christmas celebration. The standard version stood 6 feet tall, perfect for a 1960s ranch-style home. The coolest feature was the electric color wheel that magically changed the tree’s silver hue to blue, red, green and orange-gold.

Emma Martin explains in the American Chronicle:

The vintage aluminum Christmas trees sought by collectors today were introduced in 1959 by Christmas tree manufacturers, Aluminum Specialty Company. Soon after their debut, aluminum Christmas trees were rapidly introduced by a variety of other firms and they became one of the staples of the modern American home during Yuletide throughout the 1960s and well into the Seventies.

Aluminum Christmas trees have been characterized as having a design, look and feel of sophistication. In fact, when the trees were launched, many observers and the manufacturer itself called them the 'Space Age Christmas trees'. The silvery color and the unique structure and appearance made the aluminum trees different and more appealing to many people.

Murphy relates that

the industry leader was the “Evergleam” made by the Aluminum Specialty Co. in Manitowoc, Wis. From 1959 to 1969, the company sold more than 1 million Evergleam trees throughout the U.S., and this amazing number doesn’t reflect the tens of thousands sold by dozens of smaller manufacturers.

Complete with color wheel, the artificial trees required no potentially dangerous lights and therefore could be marketed as “safer.” In reality, the aluminum trees were extremely flammable, made of foil-covered paper with heavy cardboard skeletons.
The standard Evergleam was brilliant silver, but they were also fashioned in brassy gold, stylish pink and groovy candy-cane colors, in dimensions varying from tabletop size to 8-foot giants. Deluxe models featured branches finished with end-pieces resembling half a maraschino cherry and were designed with motorized stands that allowed the tree to revolve slowly, circling every one to two minutes.

While going through some boxes of old photographs and archival material earlier this evening, I came across two Polaroid pictures of a 5-year-old me and the aluminum tree my mother erected soon after we moved into a new home just days before Christmas. Note the blue balls.




To be perfectly truthful, there is some "ethereal beauty" in those Jetsons-era Christmas decorations. I'm not sure I'd lay out big bucks on eBay to buy one, but if one fell into my lap (metaphorically speaking), I would be happy to put it in my living room for the holiday season.