40 and Over Club Meeting

[marksound]

There used to be a Sambo's restaurant here when I was a kid. As I remember, the food was much better than Denny's. I never made the "racist" connection until it was all over the news much later, and the company shut down.

Who knows what the intent was? I don't.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I remember my mother trying to explain the Black and White Minstrel Show to me as a child. I couldn't understand why white men were made to look like black men when they could have got real black men like Louis Armstrong to sing the songs.

I also had a golliwog as a child. Still have it because it was given to me by Auntie Elsie who was more than 90 years old and not my real aunt but an old lady that my Dad used to help out with her garden. She was a lovely old dear with a beautiful garden and an interesting house. She was a wonderful storyteller and I loved visiting her. I was so pleased when she gave me the knitted golliwog. I thought that Elsie had knitted it especially for me but my sister later said that wasn't so. It is the only keepsake I have of Elsie.

Golliwogs are still sold in Australian stores. i don't think Australians are really aware of the Minstrel stereotype. Even though I saw the Black and White Minstrels I didn't make the connection to my golliwog who I thought was some sort of gnome.

 

[marksound]

I had to Google "golliwog." That's a new one to me.

Reminds of the "lawn jockeys" that I used to see around town when I was a kid. Some of those really freaked me out when I was throwing papers in the dark hours of the morning.

Saturday Night Live did a lawn jockey sketch in the 70s with Garrett Morris in the whole jockey getup. It's probably not PC enough for public consumption these days.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Golliwogs and known as 'gollies' nowadays in Australia.

We used to have Aboriginal garden statues in Australia. They become known as Nevilles after Ted Bullpit named his statue Neville in the Austalian comedy series "Kingswood Country".

Here is Neville

They quickly went out of favour after that as no-one wanted to be like Ted Bullpit.

 

[Nerys Myk]

My mother was somehow ignorant of the segregation practices when she was growing up in the American South of the 1950s. She was visiting some friends and they were getting on the bus to go somewhere. Looking around, she didn't any seats except in the back. So she proceeds to the back of the bus to sit down, to the shock of the black and white passengers.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

My american relatives nearly died of shock when they saw golliwogs for sale at the post office as cute gifts to send your friends overseas. Then they saw hand made golliwogs for sale at a crafts store. Then they saw super expensive golliwogs for sale at boutique in a posh city arcade. Everywhere we turned there seemed to be these things that I had never noticed until the american relatives were gaping at them

 

[marksound]

I grew up with a bunch of kids of different backgrounds and ethnicities. It never occurred to me that we were different because we were all kids, just playing and learning together.

My family is a mix of Native American and several western European immigrants.

My dad grew up in a "mixed" neighborhood, and my grandmother lived there for years after I was born. All the kids in that neighborhood played together, no problem.

People in my family are various shades of color, from dark to lily white. My dad and his family are darker skinned with dark/black hair, mom is light skinned with light hair, and my siblings and I are light skinned with blond hair and blue eyes. I guess it just wasn't a big deal to us.

Racial divides in the US are, in my opinion, perpetuated by people who have based their careers on keeping the old prejudices alive while pretending to work for eliminating them.

But that's just me.

 

[Miss Chicken]

My american relatives nearly died of shock when they saw golliwogs for sale at the post office as cute gifts to send your friends overseas. Then they saw hand made golliwogs for sale at a crafts store. Then they saw super expensive golliwogs for sale at boutique in a posh city arcade. Everywhere we turned there seemed to be these things that I had never noticed until the american relatives were gaping at them.

I didn't realise how common there were until there was a fuss about a store being asked to remove one by Oprah Winfrey's handlers just before her visit to Australia. Now I see actually notice them and quite a few shops sell them.

One of my friends collects gollies. I collect African-made dolls and my friend can't see the difference between the two.

These are my Ugandan dolls, my Batsiranai dolls from Zimbabwe, and my Little Travellers from South Africa. All my dolls are made by pmothers of children with disabilities or else by women who are affected by HIV.

 

[marksound]

People who are offended by things like this are people who are looking for reasons to be offended.

Personally, I'm offended by those people.

 

[C. Cole-Chakotay]

I remember Looney Tunes, Road Runner, and such. I also enjoyed politically incorrect shows. It's amazing the things we saw and did (riding bicycles without helmets) and are still alive to tell the tale.

 

[marksound]

Those things we did as kids made us tough. Resilient. Able to adapt.

Now they give out Darwin awards.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

we also developed common sense, something I sorely miss in kids nowadays (and in quite a lot of their parents, too).

What both shocks and infuriates me is that racism is suddenly becoming modern again. I had thought mankind to finally be beyond this state of idiocy, but apparently I was wrong

A decade ago, a dark-skinned friend who is single parent of a son, told me that his son had asked him "dad, why do you get treated differently by the traffic cops than the white drivers?"
How do you as a parent explain to a 10 year old what racism is and that he will be a victim of it one day, too? When my friend told me about it I could have killed those cops!
Sadly, in my own country there are strong racist and xenophobic tendencies developing again. A handfull of people try to fight against that but the xenophobe scum appear to be breeding like rabbits.

 

[scotpens]

TMy parents didn't smoke, but one of my grandpas did. When I was a little kid in the early '70s, my mom had some green glass ashtrays in a drawer, and when grandpa would come she'd get them out and he'd sit right there in our living room and puff the room so full of smoke that my eyes burned. And we didn't think anything of it! It almost doesn't seem believable, now.

My parents didn't smoke, but a lot of my friends' parents and my parents' friends did. When I was growing up, a perpetual haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air in many homes and most indoor public spaces. My generation breathed in "secondhand smoke" (a phrase that had yet to be coined) all the time. And we Boomers are the healthiest and longest-living generation in our country's history. So there!

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I still remember being 6 and being sent up the street with a note (in itself not done these days) to give my mother's friend. She smirked, stuck a few cigarettes in an envelope and gave them to me to give my mother who was "quitting".

 

[scotpens]

It's amazing the things we saw and did (riding bicycles without helmets) and are still alive to tell the tale.

Today, California law requires cyclists under the age of 18 to wear helmets. There was no such thing as a bicycle helmet when I was a kid, and I see no reason to wear one now. Those things are just geeky looking.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Where I live everyone is required by law to wear a helmet. I rode up my street once without one and my neighbour hasn't stopped talking about it since, brings it up every time he sees me on a bike. "Glad to see you're being safe today" "Now don't go taking that helmet off!" You would think he had stepped out onto his porch and found me on his lawn with a needle in my arm.

 

[scotpens]

Where I live everyone is required by law to wear a helmet.

Even adults? You're in Australia, I presume. Is that a local, state or nationwide law?

A bicycle is not a motorcycle. Usually it's a lot slower, for one thing. And if you have a mishap and fall, you're more likely to fracture a wrist bone than to slam your head against the pavement. I know because I've had my share of bicycle accidents.

Just more nanny-state meddling, IMHO. Next thing they'll require all pedestrians to wear elbow and knee pads.

 

[publiusr]

Where I live everyone is required by law to wear a helmet. I rode up my street once without one and my neighbour hasn't stopped talking about it since, brings it up every time he sees me on a bike. "Glad to see you're being safe today" "Now don't go taking that helmet off!" You would think he had stepped out onto his porch and found me on his lawn with a needle in my arm.

There is always a busybody.

Both my parents smoked. I dreaded Sundays. Being dragged to church. My Mom fussing at me about my hair--using half a can of Aqua-Net on it to fight stick-ups. She used jagged tooth upholstering shears to cut (I mean pull) it.

We had a 1974 Ford LTD.

My Mom smoked Winston 100s, my Dad Chesterfield Kings.

But let me try to roll the window down so's I can breathe

ROLL THAT WINDOW UP! IT'LL MESS UP YOUR HAIR!!

She'd offer to roll her's down a half inch. I'd try to breathe out of the crack--and doubtless a hot ash would fly into my eyeball every time.

Ow!

"Shut up."

 

[auntiehill]

Hell, I remember my parents driving us to the beach on a winding California road---we'd slide around on the backseat like it was a roller coaster and squeal with delight. When we got to the busier roads, Mom made us put seat belts on.

We had metal slides, we walked to school, we skinned our knees on the pavement and we fell off our bicycles and SURVIVED!

Now, everything is padded, gated off, off limits. I don't think it really helps kids any. You need to hurt yourself a little bit so you develop the common sense not to eventually do something moronic and hurt yourself A LOT.

 

[sojourner]

Got that beat. My parents had only a pickup truck with a camper top on it. We rode in back on a bed made of plywood. On cross country trips. Seatbelts? hehe, at least you had seats.