Cheap thrills in high school
Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 12:27 PM

Cheap thrills

When WE were your age …

Didn’t we get tired of hearing that from our parents/elders when we were young?   Especially when what followed was usually a description of how our Midwesterner or Yankee parents had to wade courageously through two miles of snowdrifts to even reach the bus stop to go to school …?  And now I find myself saying the same thing more than I would like, though it is kind of fun today to describe the nuclear bomb drills we used to do in elementary school  to a wide-eyed student audience at my school.  They just can’t imagine it.  Or getting the mattresses and canned goods ready for the nuclear fall-out in case Castro had decided to launch his missiles at us.

It is true that the world is a different place today than it was when we were young.  It is better in some ways, but not better in others.

I do miss the almost unbelievable freedoms that we had.  When I was ten and my brother was twelve, our mother would drop us off at that “petrified wood”  bus stop (we called it the “toadstool”) across from the Broadway Theatre and we would catch a bus downtown to see a movie.  My brother was in charge of getting us on the right bus and off at the right stop.  He would lead us down to the Majestic Theatre, we would see our movie, catch our bus back, and cross four lanes of traffic on Broadway  to the Luby’s cafeteria with a pay phone in the lobby and call our mother to pick us up.

It was a routine thing. 

Today, not only would I have had a coronary emergency if my daughter had done such a thing as a child, but she probably would have disappeared and never been heard from again.  It is almost unimaginable that it was safe back then to put children by themselves on a bus and they could go downtown in a major city, stay, and come back without incident.

Most forms of entertainment were also simpler and cheaper in the “good old days.”  Some examples of what we used to do for cheap thrills:

Driving down Salado Creek on a Friday night and honking at the parkers.  This was really lame, but we did it, flashing our headlights and honking at the cars pulled over at the side of the road with the desperate necking couples inside.  If you were in one of those cars, my apologies.  Needless to say, we didn’t have any dates, so that was how we entertained ourselves.  Sometimes afterwards we would hit every Dunkin’ Donuts store we saw as we drove around other areas, stopping and stuffing our faces with three or more jelly filled delights.  It was a wonder we didn’t toss our cookies.  One of my friends was forced to drive an older car with major compression problems and she would leave a fog of smoke at every stoplight, at least 20 feet high and 20 feet wide.  Pretty embarrassing, but hey, it was transportation.

Hanging out at Jim’s Coffee shop.  My brother and his crowd hung out a lot in the evenings at the Jim’s on Austin Highway at Vandiver.  We would often drop by to annoy and disgust them.  They rarely allowed us to sit with them.  We would hit Jim’s after the football game or other nocturnal activities.  Once we used napkins and managed to turn the full water glasses upside down, slide the napkins out, and leave the glasses  innocently on the table.  When the waiter came to clear, did he get a surprise.  We were watching from the parking lot before tearing out of there.

 

Go to the airport and watch the airplanes take off and land.  There was an observation deck at the airport and we were thrilled to just sit there and watch planes for an hour or more.  The place was also air-conditioned, so that was a big draw too.  There was even a restaurant there that was really considered “uptown.”  Sometimes we even went out and wandered around those huge hangers and looked at all the private airplanes.  No one ran us off or cared.  We actually spent quite a bit of time in those hangers as my father knew a lot of professional pilots who flew for the young oil companies.  Sometimes we got to go up in those planes, but not very often

Wade the creek behind the Alamo Drive In.  There was a very small creek that ran behind the steel fence at the back of the parking lot of the Alamo Drive In on the Austin Highway.  You had to maneuver your way down a fairly steep little cliff off Sumner drive for about 20 yards to get down to it.  Not the safest thing to do, but we did it all the time.  Sometimes we would have a huge piece of cardboard and just slide our way down.  The creek was full of interesting little creatures such as tadpoles and minnows that we would try to net and carry home in glass jars.  Once we found the head of a water moccasin.  Did that stop us from returning?  Of course not. 

Watching the same movie over and over.  My brother was obsessed with the movie “Swiss Family Robinson.”  Seems like it played for years at the Broadway theatre.  My mother would drop us off a few minutes before the first showing of the day, and we would stay and watch it three times in a row.  We never got tired of it.

Walking and walking … in the summers, we had our morning TV routine, had lunch, and then set out and walked, often with our ecstatic little dog.  These were not just walks, they were WALKS.  We often covered up to 5-6 miles just walking the neighborhood, crossing into the next neighborhood and walking that one.  When we got tired of the streets, we would start down the alleys.  We were little voyeurs looking into everyone’s back yard.  Ninety percent of the fences were chain link, so we had a clear view plus it was cooler and more comfortable to walk down the grass of the alleyway.  You could also open up the water meter tops and check for frogs.  When my brother got a Vespa motor scooter at the age of 14, we RODE everywhere, endlessly through Terrell Hills, even up the long, long driveways of the estates until the gardeners came running to shoo us away.

Cruising the malls.  We went to both the North Star Mall and Wonderland and spent hours wandering and not buying a thing.  When the North Star Mall was first built, you entered through the east end at the Old Wolff & Marx store, went on through and came to the mynah bird cage.  Very noisy.  The soldiers  on weekend pass were often there and would teach the mynahs to wolf whistle and cuss.  There was a marvelous pet store at the other end of the mall with this HUGE scarlet macaw just sitting on a perch in the middle of the store, looking at everyone.  That bird fascinated me but I never had to courage to touch him.  It was a good thing.  When I finally did handle a parrot as an adult, it bit the *%#t out of me.  As teenagers, we would dress in our finest, get dropped off at the mall and go from store to store trying on practically every dress in the junior department and then on to the next store and doing the same thing, never buying a single garment.  I am sure we disgusted the help.  Wonderland was not as interesting as the North Star Mall and SUCH a long drive around 410, but we never missed the candy counter at Montgomery Ward where we would treat ourselves to a bag of white chocolate stars.  It would cost us about 40 cents.  Rhodes at the opposite end of Wonderland had the most marvelous glass elevator you would catch in the parking lot below the store and ride up and down. 

Robber Barons’ cave.  Now I was never here or even heard of it until recently, but apparently there is a HUGE cave at the end of Cave Lane in Northwood (hence “Cave Lane” !!!)  The entrance is now on private property, and is supposed to be sealed up by an iron grate.  But back in the day it was a destination, especially since it was “forbidden” fruit and of course drew in youngsters like a magnet after their parents forbid them to go near it.  Cheap thrills.