(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-29-2015)
They exist.
Like the name of Lord Voldemort, they
are not to be spoken of aloud in my house. But every so often, they
show themselves. Their appearance fills me with unspeakable horror.
Others are thrown into convulsive fits.
Of laughter.
They are...the Leisure Suit Photos.
These horrible prints exist to prove
that I was the epitome of the awkward adolescent. The baby blue
leisure suit was, incomprehensibly, my wardrobe of choice for major
events in my 8th grade year. Thus, the amazing Technicolor
nightmare-coat is captured for posterity in photographs of my church
confirmation and my class trip to the nation's capitol. My round baby
face, bowl haircut and wire-rimmed glasses accentuate a look that can
best be described as Androgynous Math Team Captain. But the topper,
so to speak, was my attempt to complete the stunning hipness of the
leisure suit by donning a newsboy cap adorned with Schlitz logos. I
am not making this up. You will have to trust me because you will
never, ever see those photos.
My only consolation is that I wasn't
the only one suckered into the leisure suit fad during that time
period. But I can't count that as an anomaly. My particular brand of
fashion cluelessness knew no bounds. In fact, the only reason I ever
stopped wearing flare pants was when the stores stopped selling
them.
Fortunately, other photos of me from
four decades ago are a little less embarrassing. And they provide
interesting snapshots, if you will, about what was popular in culture
at the time.
For example, one unearthed picture
shows me sitting in my bedroom chatting on a CB radio. Like so many
others, I jumped with both feet into the CB fad, mesmerized by the
world of truckers and the excitement of the song “Convoy.” My
handle was “The Flying Camel,” a nickname given to me thanks to
my ineptitude on the basketball court. Sometimes you might as well
just embrace the truth.
In retrospect, CB was an electronic
forerunner of Facebook. Like Facebook, your conversations and
proclamations were out there for the world to hear, and often laced
with too much information. And as adults have stolen Facebook from
the college kids, the wave of non-truckers ended up hijacking CB from
the truckers (for a while, anyway).
This is not to say that I was a
complete slave to every fad that came along. Pet rock? Never owned
one. Mood ring? Ditto. Disco music? Ugh. It made me want to run
rather than dance, though neither option was a pretty sight.
But the old photos do reveal the other
fad I was involved in - beer can collecting. Stacked against my
wood-paneled bedroom wall, a pyramid of rusty tin and shiny aluminum
rose up like a shrine. Besides the obvious brands and cans, there
were the collectibles that everyone wanted. The Schmidt cans with all
of the outdoor scenes. The Steel City can with the Pittsburgh
Steelers team photo. The Olde Frothingslosh can with the plus-size
bathing beauty.
Serious collectors like me, however,
had to go the extra step. If you wanted the old, rare cans, you
needed to get your hands dirty. So the teenage me hopped on his
bicycle and rummaged through dumps looking for old beer cans.
There were several little private
dumps in my rural neighborhood, pieces of property where I was
technically trespassing. Without the aid of gloves or cleaning
supplies (yuck), I picked through piles of old cans like an
archaeologist clearing away the soil to reveal the ancient layers of
rock below. Whether it was a Pabst from the age before pull tabs, or
an early version of Lite, or even a much-prized “cone top” can, I
rarely came away empty-handed.
These newly rescued prizes needed to
look as wonderful as possible. So I removed the rust by dipping the
beer cans in a solution of oxalic acid, a compound you could get at
the local drug store. Yes, I even turned beer can collecting into a
junior high science experiment.
Doesn't that sound exactly like
something a geek in a leisure suit would do?
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