Longing for the Past - Avon Moon Flight Game

Do you remember the Avon Lady? I guess they're still around, every once in a while I find an Avon catalog in the break room at work, but I get the feeling there aren't any Avon Ladies anymore. I remember seeing the little old lady with her two-wheel shopping cart filled with beauty necessities trudging through our neighborhood regardless of the weather. She wore sensible shoes, a plastic rain bonnet, smelled of cheap perfume, and always was a nice as pie.

My mother was one of her regular stops. They'd gossip over nail polish and ode de cologne and occasionally my mom would hand the catalog, which actually had a children's section, over to me and tell me I could choose something for myself. Usually I went for bubble bath, and that's how I came to possess the Avon Moon Flight Game.

Avon's Moon Flight Game in all its glory!

The package shown above is exactly how I remember the game. The white command capsule and lander were a bottle of bubble bath that I used up as quickly as possible. When the nose of the lander was inserted into the command capsule, it could be slammed on the floor, compressing the accordion bellows, and launching the lander into the air. Each side of the lander had a number imprinted on it, indicating how many spaces to move. The bag contained a folded, plastic board depicting (if I remember correctly) a figure-eight track starting at the Earth, going around the moon, and then returning to the pacific for splashdown.

The game was another race track affair, like just about every other board game I played in my youth, with the objective being to move your poker chip-like game piece from home (the Earth) to the moon and then back again. Each space along the way was marked with instructions which helped or hindered you reaching your goal, all phrased in the lingo of the lunar program (it seems I remember "system failure, move back three spaces", but nowhere was there a "catastrophic fire which incinerates your astronauts, game over").

We played with Moon Flight until the novelty of shooting the capsule into the air wore off, then the game disappeared. I seem to remember the lander remaining around in a box of toys, the feet hopelessly chewed by a pet. Now I wish I had the thing again, though I can't imagine it being fun for more than a single evening. Then again, who knows, I could reawaken that part of me that thought he'd have walked on an alien planet by the time he got old enough to be nostalgic.

Longing for the Past - Green Ghost

I know I’m getting old. The first sign was a strong desire to roll my eyes at the younger generation’s version of pop-culture. Even though I own an iPod, I can’t manage to say iAnything without sarcasm coloring my voice and a strong urge to explain how things were “when I was your age.” I've resigned myself to the constant battle against becoming the old man with a cane, chasing delinquent kids off his lawn. To distract myself, I’m writing about the first sign of my impending decrepitude, nostalgia.

I remember a lot of things from my childhood with what's probably, I admit, undeserved fondness. I mean, come on, I come from the era of parachute pants, Poison, and the Cabbage Patch Kids. The seventies and eighties were filled with, well, crap that I'd sooner deny any connection with than defend. But there are those odd-ball markers that I can't think of without a deep, longing sigh. Sure, I could go on about all the easy, cultural markers. It'd be safe to wax on about Star Wars, GI Joe, and the pre-Michael Bay Transformers, but there’s more than enough chatter about them. Instead I thought I'd wax nostalgic over the outliers, the things time has almost obliterated from cultural memory.

In 2015 I'll be visiting the toy box of the ages and dragging out a few things that'll I hope with bring back a few memories for you too. Either that or they'll prove that I'm not only turning into an old crank, but possibly teetering on the edge of my generation's norms. Only one way to find out, I guess, and that's kick this thing into gear with the first of the toys from the past: The Green Ghost. 

I remember my mother bringing the Green Ghost home after one of her frequent garage sale trips. It was released by TransoGram Company in 1965, two years I was born. The box pretty much looked like this picture, 1950's nuclear family gathered around the soft, radium glow of the game board with looks that don't occur in nature plastered on their doughy faces. Unpacking the box, it was a simple racetrack board with a few plastic pieces for atmosphere and a gelatinous-looking ghost spinner with a rubberized finger pointer.

My brother and I would retreat to the garage and turn out the lights, then play would begin. I don't know if we ever finished a game, but if we did it must not have been very impressive because I don't remember the rules. I do remember the creepiness of sitting in the dark, with only the poisonous glow of the spinner to read by. With each spin we became more and more convinced there really was a green ghost and that it probably was inside the house just waiting for a chance to spring. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's why I don't remember the rules - we never finished a game.

Back to the box, I'm not exactly sure what the mystery was, you moved your pieces around the board and drew cards that either helped or impeded your getting to the end goal. Never really thought of that at the time though, because that damned green ghost was lurking out there somewhere, oozing along the ceiling, getting ready to drop on your head at any moment...yeah, I better put the game up now. I mean shouldn't we be playing outside in the sun, the healthy, bright, sun?

Nostalgia

This past weekend I had an opportunity to revisit some of the haunts of my misspent youth. Those of you familiar with Indianapolis might recognize Talbott Street as the avant-garde, bohemian neighborhood associated closely with artists, poets, poverty, and alternate lifestyles. I spent much of my twenties lounging about the living rooms of friends who rented the unkempt and decaying Victorians that had been ruthlessly subdivided by slumlords. Much of who I am today grew out of those shabby rooms, my appreciation for Victoriana, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco all rose from the splendor-come-squalor of Talbott Street. The friends have long moved on and though I still am in touch with some of them, the past always has a luminous quality akin to St. Elmo's Fire. The days seemed brighter, the spirits higher, the laughs louder, and the days carefree, but truth is the good ol' days never were all that good.

On Friday we paid a visit to the Talbott Street Nightclub to take in Indianapolis' equivalent of The Birdcage. Two acts in drag with lip-syncing to the pop hits of today and yesterday, cheap drinks, and the human sideshow that is uninhibited youth. When the curtain came down and the MC bid us goodnight, I stepped out into the chill of early November and had a look around.

There comes a time when you must face time's onslaught, honor those things that are lost, and move forward with as brave a face as you can muster. So, with a nostalgic smile I say farewell to friends who've moved on. So many people I thought would always be an integral part of my life have moved on to jobs and families far away, others have gone from this world all too soon. I miss them all and in the quiet hours before another feeble autumn dawn I can't help but wonder where they are and what they're doing.

Life is an ever-flowing stream of moments, not a condition, and if we don't live each we're carried haplessly downstream to our end. So I swim, sometimes with and sometimes against the current, but nonetheless I swim. The me who played football in the February mud and ice of twenty years ago in the empty lot on Talbott Street wouldn't recognize the me of today, and that's not a bad thing.

Welcome to Summer

Today kicks off a season that meant a lot more in the days before year-round school, summer internships, and making up every snow day. I remember the run up to the end of school and the fluttering of lightning bugs in my stomach as I looked out the window. Summer seemed to stretch out as an endless series of possibilities. Maybe some of you went to summer camp or your parents had a summer house somewhere near the beach – or maybe you played the Cruel Summer role and stayed home while everyone else went away. Summer was an event, even in the life of a kid summer stood as a sign that the great wheel of the year was slow turning.

I have a vague memory of canoeing at Chain of Lakes state park. I must have been seven or eight, all I remember is seeing lily pads for the first time and the fields of aquatic weeds wafting in the current just below the surface. It seems like there was some falling in the water, but I’m not sure. Early in my childhood we frequented state parks and would spend a week at a time baking on the beach or fishing. I brought back a lot of memories; the ones that are most vivid are the mosquito bites, poison ivy, sunburn, and raccoon raids on our supply of Hostess snack cakes. There were good times too: hikes, thunderstorms rolling across the lake, fishing with my grandfather and listening to his stories, riding bicycles faster than seemed humanly possible down the rolling hills of southern Indiana (and winding up with skinned knees), and lying in a canvas tent listening to katydids scratching their summer love songs to the night.

I hope you’ve got plans to make better memories than these this summer and that those memories won’t simply be the periodic table. Everything school can teach you is written in a book, but learning how to tie a clench-knot from your dad or that your old grandpa was a little bit of a hell-raiser in his youth can only be learned one way and during such a small window of time. Go out and roast a weenie, make s’mores, and tell a tale or two around the camp fire.  Have a happy summer, the kind that will stay with you long enough that you’ll tell your grandchildren about it.