When I grew up in Bellevue, Washington in the ’60s, Tacoma had a vibrant wood pulp/paper industry. We would encounter it on long family drives, and called it “the aroma of Tacoma.”
I haven’t been back to my beloved Pacific Northwest since ’74, and don’t know what Tacoma is like today. (Though I imagine Bellevue is like the town square in the second Back To The Future movie … all holograms and hoverboards.)
We had a Zenith Space Command black & white console – the first to have a remote control. The remote had buttons that vibrated aluminum rods, producing ultrasonic tones that controlled the TV.
That console got us through the Kennedy assassination and the lunar landings. I never saw programs in color until I left home for school in the ’70s … it was a treat to finally see Star Trek in color.
When I first encountered “The Charge of the Light Brigade” at a very early age, I edited the refrain to “… stupid six hundred.”
Pointless, suicidal self-sacrifice in the name of imperialism made no sense to me when I was eight, and even less now that I’m seventy. Stupid six hundred, indeed.
I’m wondering how the “we were blond and pretty” fits into the overall scheme of things.