That 70s Beau - May 7, 2017
That Seventies Beau
On Sunday, Laur and I celebrated our 40th Anniversary. On Wednesday, we biked around for five hours (64 km) checking out some of our old haunts in Hamilton. (Actually, my hubs and I met in St. Catharines. Never dawned on us to revisit the locations where we first met and hung out. Oh well, there is always our 41st.)
We met in the 70s - the days of carrot juice and “toe sandals,” and many other things.
Toe sandals were all the rage the year I went to Brock University (1973) and met my hubs-to-be Laurence (1974.) Now, you have to know, toe sandals were cheap, ugly, they hurt to wear, and they smelled somewhat like a dead animal. Given that they were made from leather (cow skin,) I guess that makes sense.
It also made sense to my then boyfriend to wear them the first time he met my mother. It was May 1974 and Laurence was arriving in Belleville from Chatham, Ontario. From his perspective, he was dressed to the nines. He’d trimmed his beard and was wearing a second-hand corduroy suit jacket. What my mother saw was a guy with longish hair – which she could forgive because Jesus likely had longish hair. But sandals?! A man wearing sandals?! This represented a serious character deficit.
It took a few years, and Laur buying second hand sandals from the Salvation Army – oh, and marrying me – but my mother finally came around. OK, maybe it was after the birth of Anna who she adored and called Rosebud. Or maybe it was after Tommy who she called her little Turtle. (Tom wasn’t the cutest newborn, but he “handsomated” very quickly.)
Anyway, in time, my mother actually started buying sandals for Laurence - from Sears! No more toe-sandals for this lad. These were genuine middle age to old age sandals for a lad who even as a tenured professor couldn’t quite fathom the idea that you could buy shoes from a store, not the Salvation army. And jackets. Well, they were still things to be collected as you found them. A story in itself.
Times change, and so does skin. Laurence can no longer wear sandals without wearing socks or his feet develop blisters. And wearing socks in your sandals?! There are depths to which even Laurence cannot plummet. And he did eventually buy two NEW suit jackets. One he got married in, and one he’ll get buried in.
And carrot juice? We no longer drink carrot juice. It has a habit of making your skin turn orange. At our age our doc will think we have liver disease and will order a zillion tests. (We love Dr. R., but I’ve haven’t been this tested since high school.) Though we buy “baby carrots” by the vanload at our local Costco. Why? My hubs has become very weight conscious, and carrots, according to Weight Watchers, are a “free” food.
Are there other things we HAVE held on to since the 70s? Well, there are granola bars. I remember buying “home-made” versions of these at the local health food store. They were the size of hockey pucks and were just about as hazardous for the teeth. Laur and I continue to eat them – the miniature, individually packaged, soft bar versions, available by the box at the regular grocery store. We always bring these on our bike rides for those frequent occasions when our ride lasts longer than our lunch.
And, of course, there are our bikes. We still ride Canadian Tire specials, as we did in the 70s. Not the exact same ones – those have long since rusted out. But we do have our 2006 vintage Raleigh hybrids which we love. The cost of getting them serviced every year costs more than we paid for them originally, and the bike technician just shakes his head at us. We don’t care. We can ride over any kind of terrain with them and the chances of them getting stolen are minimal – any respectable bike thief would be too embarrassed to ride off on our clunkers.
Back in our student days, our bikes were our main source of transportation. We had no car. When we were first married, and lived in our apartment just off Pelham Rd., Laur rode his bike to work at Brock University. He was a summer student on the Grounds Crew. He was pleased that he could speed down and up the other side of the 12-mile Creek dip and bridge on Glendale, and then cycle all the way up the escarpment on Glenridge Ave – in 15 minutes! And then work an 8-hour day outdoors. And then zoom home downhill in 7 minutes!
I think it would be grand, for our 41st anniversary, to retrace those steps on our bikes – minus the eight hours working outside – just to see if we can still do it. Or on the next sunny day. Mind you with all the rain we are having here in St. Catharines, that might very well be April 2018.
On Sunday, Laur and I celebrated our 40th Anniversary. On Wednesday, we biked around for five hours (64 km) checking out some of our old haunts in Hamilton. (Actually, my hubs and I met in St. Catharines. Never dawned on us to revisit the locations where we first met and hung out. Oh well, there is always our 41st.)
We met in the 70s - the days of carrot juice and “toe sandals,” and many other things.
Toe sandals were all the rage the year I went to Brock University (1973) and met my hubs-to-be Laurence (1974.) Now, you have to know, toe sandals were cheap, ugly, they hurt to wear, and they smelled somewhat like a dead animal. Given that they were made from leather (cow skin,) I guess that makes sense.
It also made sense to my then boyfriend to wear them the first time he met my mother. It was May 1974 and Laurence was arriving in Belleville from Chatham, Ontario. From his perspective, he was dressed to the nines. He’d trimmed his beard and was wearing a second-hand corduroy suit jacket. What my mother saw was a guy with longish hair – which she could forgive because Jesus likely had longish hair. But sandals?! A man wearing sandals?! This represented a serious character deficit.
It took a few years, and Laur buying second hand sandals from the Salvation Army – oh, and marrying me – but my mother finally came around. OK, maybe it was after the birth of Anna who she adored and called Rosebud. Or maybe it was after Tommy who she called her little Turtle. (Tom wasn’t the cutest newborn, but he “handsomated” very quickly.)
Anyway, in time, my mother actually started buying sandals for Laurence - from Sears! No more toe-sandals for this lad. These were genuine middle age to old age sandals for a lad who even as a tenured professor couldn’t quite fathom the idea that you could buy shoes from a store, not the Salvation army. And jackets. Well, they were still things to be collected as you found them. A story in itself.
Times change, and so does skin. Laurence can no longer wear sandals without wearing socks or his feet develop blisters. And wearing socks in your sandals?! There are depths to which even Laurence cannot plummet. And he did eventually buy two NEW suit jackets. One he got married in, and one he’ll get buried in.
And carrot juice? We no longer drink carrot juice. It has a habit of making your skin turn orange. At our age our doc will think we have liver disease and will order a zillion tests. (We love Dr. R., but I’ve haven’t been this tested since high school.) Though we buy “baby carrots” by the vanload at our local Costco. Why? My hubs has become very weight conscious, and carrots, according to Weight Watchers, are a “free” food.
Are there other things we HAVE held on to since the 70s? Well, there are granola bars. I remember buying “home-made” versions of these at the local health food store. They were the size of hockey pucks and were just about as hazardous for the teeth. Laur and I continue to eat them – the miniature, individually packaged, soft bar versions, available by the box at the regular grocery store. We always bring these on our bike rides for those frequent occasions when our ride lasts longer than our lunch.
And, of course, there are our bikes. We still ride Canadian Tire specials, as we did in the 70s. Not the exact same ones – those have long since rusted out. But we do have our 2006 vintage Raleigh hybrids which we love. The cost of getting them serviced every year costs more than we paid for them originally, and the bike technician just shakes his head at us. We don’t care. We can ride over any kind of terrain with them and the chances of them getting stolen are minimal – any respectable bike thief would be too embarrassed to ride off on our clunkers.
Back in our student days, our bikes were our main source of transportation. We had no car. When we were first married, and lived in our apartment just off Pelham Rd., Laur rode his bike to work at Brock University. He was a summer student on the Grounds Crew. He was pleased that he could speed down and up the other side of the 12-mile Creek dip and bridge on Glendale, and then cycle all the way up the escarpment on Glenridge Ave – in 15 minutes! And then work an 8-hour day outdoors. And then zoom home downhill in 7 minutes!
I think it would be grand, for our 41st anniversary, to retrace those steps on our bikes – minus the eight hours working outside – just to see if we can still do it. Or on the next sunny day. Mind you with all the rain we are having here in St. Catharines, that might very well be April 2018.