Arts, Crafts, Music, & Events of Breckinridge County Issue 2, July 2015 | Page 57

My generation is the product of skates that had keys to
change the size for all siblings so one pair could be shared,
Cupid and Troll dolls, hopscotch, drop the handkerchief, and
scooters we pushed ourselves with one foot on the ground.
We are the result of a newfangled invention known as the
television that was to many a miracle to behold. Our
generation had only 3 channels, and kids like me watched
shows like“Roy and Dale Rogers”, “Sky King”, and “Lassie”
with first Jeff and later Timmy owning the collie (I never could
understand that as a child). During the day our moms
watched game shows like “Concentration”, or a program
known as “Queen of the Day”, where some woman who told
her sad story and related what she needed, was picked from
the group appearing that show, by an object known as an
“applause meter”. This meter supposedly measured the noise
from the handclaps of support each woman received from
the studio audience. I have to this day always remembered
one sad woman who appeared on the show wearing a head
scarf and crying. When she was interviewed by the master of
ceremonies, Jack Bailey, she told the story of doing her
family’s washing in every old wringer washing machine. As
the old wringer was operating to remove the water from the
clothes, she leaned over too far and her hair was caught by
the wringer,which promptly pulled out huge hanks of hair
from the front and side of her head. I was only four or five
years old, but that story has stuck in my head all these many