Grateful Dead

My cousin is renovating the farm. Can't be sold except to the N.S.R.
G-pa's Rexall store was right on the river in Van Buren. (pop. 723)
Bob the black lab sat in a rocker on the porch "counting cars".
The side of the family that had bootleggers. I'm so proud!
Cheers

Ha,1stShow, I canoed the Current and the Buffalo several times ca. early '70s with my scout troop out of the Chicago suburbs. What gorgeous water. Like you say, so incredibly clear. For the record, you could see a whole lot of beer cans on the bottom back then! It's a strong memory. Like good scouts we were wondering if any them were full! And then all the cool caves, including one you could canoe into.
A blue Ford Country Squire wagon was the family vehicle in the late 60s into early 70s. Some raucous cross country trips with the siblings in the back of that beast.. No memory of the radio though.

The smell of a freshly lit Parliament cigarette is good.
Not so much after the parents exhaled that first puff.
AM radio only in our cars then, and it was never on.
Same trip every year. Always on or near July 4. Virtually all fireworks were legal then, even M-80s. St. Louis to the Ozarks, then to Van Buren, MO where the other G-pa lived. Big Spring State Park was cool. And floating on the Current River (now part of the Mark Twain Nat'l. Riverway), very clear water and you could see to the bottom. Now all you can see is beer cans down there.
Cheers

I was around for the poorer part of family life and never went on vacations.

My younger brother and sister went every year. (at some point mom said they were going away every year no matter what!,,,, I was 16 and working so I didn't go.

Years later my sister was singing along to some of the Polish Prince (Bobby Vinton), and I was like how you know this shit. Turned out the old man made a 6 or so 8 track tapes with a recorder I bought him. On these road trips they would listen to those tapes over and over and over. Sorry NO FM radio!!!

Reminds me of childhood vacations

The rents and four kids in an old station wagon on a cross country trip...

We never made it out of the neighborhood before somebody would fart, then immediately got punched in the arm.. Mayhem would always ensue and with either end with a parent reaching his/her arm to be back seat and smacking the crap out of someone or god forbid pull over. .... and that's how it would usually begin....

Let's not even get into the tunes... FM radio at it's finest.

Don’t make me come down there!

Once while home with pops before he went into assisted living…usually after I’d get him his dinner/meds etc, and he’d go to bed early. That was my time to make a fire in the basement family room, put on some dead, spark up, and finally be able let it all go and relax.
Well one day just as I’m getting ready to fire up, I hear this huge crash and then hear all this yelling and banging etc. Turns out he got up for some reason and the rug slipped out off the hardwood floor and he fell and split the top of his head open. Needless to say we called 911, which sucked, but would have been a whole lot worse if I’d just fired up and had tunes playing lol.
Besides making him wait in ER all night, he just needed a few stitches and he was fine. The upshot was that it lead him to decide to go to assisted living. He Being a safety consultant, I’d been trying to work the whole “it’s not safe being alone anymore” and “what if I hadn’t been here” angle on him. This unfortunate incident finally, literally, knocked some sense into him ; )

I spent the last week and a half with my parents.. at one point I had to pull out a Garcia quote from, I think, Harpur College, 1970..

"Now, now kids, don't fight." It worked perfectly until one of them asked for their allowance.

Once they turn out lights and everybody leaves.. it's so much easier to fire up a fattie. Just saying.

The lights are supposed to be out in this room.

It's a good thing there is a new thread to comment on. I was not going to let that disrespect of the Second Set of Augusta slide. Tragedy narrowly averted.

Senator..

I'm rarely critical, but I believe you omitted the second freaking set.

edit: I love the first set too.

As you were......