I was thinking about the historical detail in Mad Men and Swingtown, and tripping down memory lane myself. Thinking about the props one might procure if making a period drama about my childhood and adolescence.
Twinpoles. Paper one-dollar notes. Vinyl singles of Adam Ant and Split Enz and Mondo Rock. Flavoured lipgloss. Coconut Reef Oil. Pop Rocks. Pong. Swatch. White rollerskates with translucent red wheels and rainbow laces. (OK, maybe we’re edging into Wardrobe, not Props.) These are the things I remember.
All the little details of everyday life, the details that locate my youth in a particular time and place. If I close my eyes, I can smell the mustiness of the paper money passed through hundreds of hands. I can taste the waxy fake-fruit sweetness of the strawberry Lipsmackers. I can hear the hiss of the single played on a cheap plastic turntable. I can feel the schlick-schlick of the skates on not-quite-smooth concrete.
What reminds you of your childhood? What can you see in the TV show of your youth? What senses transport you back?
96th Down Under Feminists Carnival 
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25 years of the WWW 
Hoyden About Town 
Oh yes, I remember the smell of paper money, even though I was in my tweens/early teens when it was phased out. And rollerskates too, I spent a lot of time on those, in our garage or out front of the shop that my mother owned and ran for a few years.
Even though we had a lot of drought when I was growing up, I powerfully remember the smell of fresh, wet mud, and the way the wet dirt road would feel between my toes. I remember Cabbage Patch dolls and ninja turtles action figures, The Baby-Sitters’ Club, the first season of The Simpsons when Bart kissed his teacher, and being the first generation of teens to buy singles on CD rather than tape or vinyl. I remember buying Smash Hits and TV Week to get the Lois and Clark posters, and I remember when I stopped caring about that, really. I remember studying the Roman Emperors for the HSC and hearing Bill Clinton on the radio in the background, confessing his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and I remember the chirping of our first modem, as I connected to the internet in my dad’s musty-smelling office.
Orange lifesavers and Tracey Belden mysteries. The Goodies at 6pm, Dr Who at 6.30 each evening Monday to Thursday and hour long Blakes’ 7 episodes on Saturday nights.
Wow, good post.
I think of the snowball stand by the pool, where they had an ice shaver and a block of ice with a towel draped over it. The taste of the lime syrup, both sweet and tangy. I think of the way it felt to come in from the pool, walking up the hill on the hot asphalt street or hot concrete sidewalk, then get to the house, go into the air-conditioned living room, and flop on the floor.
I think of the crayons at school the first year I went. What they smelled like, what the yellow one looked like, thinking about the word “yellow”. What the paper smelled like. The big brown clunky pencils and the roughish paper we learned to write on, with the top and bottom lines and a middle dashed line. Fall leaves in brilliant color, collecting them and Mom ironing them between two sheets of wax paper. Trick-or-treating for miles, until you can’t walk any longer. Sledding on a hill near the house, on a hand-me-down wooden sled with steel runners. Looking under rocks to see the bugs underneath.
When I was a teen, the oscilloscope I hooked up to the amplifier so I could see as well as hear the music. The 1953 DuMont cabinet TV we got for 15 bucks at a yard sale. Tigress cologne.
I remember being given 10c to go to the local shop and get lollies. You could get quite a lot for 10c.
In fourth form (year 10 in NZ, 9 in Australia), my two best friends and I used to sit in the back of English classes sucking aniseed balls. You could get 4 for 1c. The smell of aniseed still takes me back to those classes.
Dreadlock Holiday takes me back to a particular family holiday, summer of 1978 / 79, travelling around the East Cape of the North Island (New Zealand), free-camping beside creeks and rivers and at beaches.
Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. Fireworks and throwdowns. Finding that my grandmother had kept a heap of Bobbsey twins and Enid Blyton books. Fluoro, leg warmers, and Wham. Countdown. The Goodies on at 6pm on ABC, and buying our first colour TV. Discovering that you could buy singles (on record) and getting my first stereo. Madonna Like a Virgin.
Oh, wow.
For me it’s the smells of fuel, leather in the sun and cracking vinyl car seats. My parents had one of these.
Pinball machines in every corner store and trying to creep unnoticed past the scary boys playing them. The enormous Castanopermum trees at the front of our primary school. The sound of cyclone alerts. Packs of bubble gum that contained monster stickers spelling out your name. Mad magazine, yoyos and Go-Go bikes. Metal seatbelt clips that burned your fingers in summer and bench seats in cars. Stinger nets.
Kraft Cheese and Macaroni. Ecto Cooler. Snap bracelets and the ensuing ban. Having to play Irma instead of April O’Neill because I had glasses, and under the climbing frame inside was the sewer. Glasses that looked like Sally Jessy Raphael’s. Garfield and Friends and bacon-flavored pork sausages for Saturday breakfast.
I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile.
My father’s car phone, complete with little antenna. A car that smelled like Town House crackers or so I thought. ‘Kiddie cocktails’ that were simply 7Up with grenadine and a cherry. Chelsea Clinton’s hair. Side ponytails that were entirely too much like Blossom. Book presentations at the library; going to the library and getting more books being almost better than getting a present. Hating that my birthstone is topaz in a little ring, but liking the ring. Steve Miller Band and Bob Uecker on the radio in summer with the sprinkler on.
A whole lot of misguided, ‘electric’ colored dreams.
Musk sticks. Devon and sauce (!). Those blue chew tablets for tooth brushing (was I the only one?). A mountain of hot chips at the local (well-chlorinated) pool with my brothers and neighbourhood playmates. Monkey Magic on the telly (or ‘Cities of Gold’). Elastics. Throwdowns! (Great one Mindy.) Madonna’s True Blue. The smell of ground cinnamon being heated in a pan to disperse cooking aromas that my mum always did (and which still works a treat).
Coca Cola yo yos, Star Wars, the prime minister getting the sack, Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, Class of 74, Glenview High.
Punk, the Sex Pistols, Siouxxie & The Banshees, The Birthday Party, piercing people’s ears with a hot needle, piercing my own ears with a hot needle. Going to parties wearing a garbage bag, dyeing my hair with food colouring…
Monkey, Astro Boy, Inspector Gadget.
Little sun dresses with the material sewn in such a way that it became wavy. (Smocked? not sure)
Going to Royal Show with $20 to spend on showbags and coming home with about 6 of them.
Purrdence: sewn that way it would likely be smocking, but do you mean seersucker fabric?
Ooh, a few random ones:
Compulsory sewing lessons in primary school for girls only. The first year we embroidered a tray cloth (!), second year started on dressmaking. My halterneck maxi dress was very fetching–in fact I bought something similar recently! I think boys were herded off to do something appropriately gender stereotypical. I also think this practice was abandoned soon after.
The Young Doctors and the excitement of Countdown on a Sunday evening.
Practically living at the beach. Coconut oil tanning/ burning and trying to bleach our hair with lemon juice.
Whiz Fizz, musk sticks, those chalky lolly ‘necklaces’. Ham Steaks with pineapple.
My parents’ dinner parties–adults drinking martinis and listening to Herb Alpert.
The navy crimpelene bell bottoms and red white and blue clogs I had when I was seven–I felt so cool …
Falling in the creek when camping, twist bread and marshmallows toasted over the open fire, swimming out beyond the breakers.
Going to church and school fetes and coming home with bags of secondhand books.
The whole family sitting together to watch All Creatures Great and Small, Mother and Son, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life. Listening to The Goon Show on the car radio, we often seemed to be in the car at that time. Being jealous of my cousins’ car because they had a tape deck and we didn’t.
Countdown and Smash Hits magazine. My bedroom walls covered in posters (Duran Duran and Wham! featured heavily). Recording songs from the radio, sitting with finger poised over the pause button ready to jump in at the beginning and end of the songs I wanted. Piracy was damn hard work back in the day.
Riding my bike down the street to hurtle around the cul-de-sac on the corner risking loose gravel under the wheels on the tight bends.
Walking to school, book in hand, unwilling to waste even a minute of precious reading time.
Hot evenings waiting for the southerly.
Doing swimming for sport in year 11, we had to swim 2 laps of the 25m pool and then were allowed to sun bake or jump on the trampolines.
The Love Boat/Fantasy Island block on Saturday nights. The lo-cal personality of Mr. Cartoon (a memory I share with parachutist Bob C. on another mailing list far far away). The Muppet Show. Racing my brother to get to the tv first on Saturday mornings, to stake out Scooby Doo before he could start Bugs Bunny. (I learned later that he was right — Bugs was better.) Starting every school year from second to 8th by checking out the same books from the school library — Treasure Island and Who Comes to Kings Mountain.
Eight track tapes, Kung Fu fighting, The Streak, Big Bad John, Sunday Morning Coming Down.
The smell of the chlorine from the swimming pool in our hair, and the hot asphalt of the parking lot as we ran back to the car. Sleeping in late during the summer and waking up to the sound of the lawn mower, the smell of fresh cut grass on a hot hot hot day. Sweet William blooming in purple swathes across the hillside.
Catching the bus before daylight, my two baby sisters in the seat next to me, Bethany leaning on Selena to sleep, Selena leaning on me. A vivid vivid memory of Selena as a three-year-old, wearing a sundress, looking for Easter eggs. The tang of the vinegar from the dye. Fear.
Spaaace Ghossst!
The feeling of steam off the road wafting past my body, still damp from the swimming pool, the smell of wet, hot tarmac after a thunderstorm. Garbage Pail Kids cards. Cabbage Patch dolls. Watching the road through the holes in the floor of my mother’s little bomb car, as she drove. Icees. Warheads – competitions to see who could suck theirs the longest without spitting it out. Hypercolour t-shirts.
And I too remember the smell of paper money, and buying lollies with the hoard of 1 and 2 cent coins I had at the end of two weeks saving.
Getting chased around a Mackay picnic table by a Cassowary that was after my chocolate popsicle.
Being dragged through every Mater Prize Home by my mother for almost fifteen years.
Lauredhel, more like the bodice on this dress: http://www.paulinaquintana.com/shop/images/attributes/smk3.jpg
Ah yes, that’s smocking all right. Itchy stuff, but some people love it.