Browsing with Burton

Some local school lunch ladies made me some of those fudge-y oatmeal no-bake cookies a while back. JUST like the one I got in grade school. Unreal how good those things are. Reminded me of George Washington Elementary near my house on East Center Street. It seemed like such a long walk to school, like an hour? It was three or four blocks away. Hmm.. A small grocery store was on the way to school - Hull's Market. Wood floors and a glass case with fresh cuts of meat. Two brothers ran the place and they delivered groceries to their customers using this wonderful classic black panel truck. Mom would get emergency grocery items there and order custom meats too. The one brother always had a bloody apron on, all messed from cutting veal chops, steaks and grinding fresh hamburger meat. Scary! Penny candy was really a penny then. Little root beer barrels, Sour Apple Gum, Boston Baked Beans, Nik L Nip bottles of coloured something or other, Gold Mine bubble gum, Sugar Babies, Pixy Stix....and candy cigarettes! Heck we even got bubble gum cigars we would smoke and puff on. How cool was that? No wonder my generation has lung cancer all over that place. They also had all those good Hostess offerings like Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Sno Balls.

Once I stole $5.00 from my mom (she had left it out for the trash man), went to Hull's and bought, like, a thousand packs of baseball cards. More freakin' gum than a kid could EVER eat, so I gave much of it away to friends. I also tossed most of the baseball cards, as they were duplicates of what I had. I kept the good ones like Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle. One of the Hull brothers ratted me out to Mom and I caught serious hell when I got home.

We used to flip the baseball cards for keeps. Sort of like 10 yr olds playing dice in the alley. Some kids actually got to stay home and watch the world series on TV. Pissed me off! I was never a big baseball fan, I played a lot of sandlot football. But my dad, of all people, bought me a BASEBALL record. My first record, a vinyl LP from the local Phillips 66 gas station (circa 1963). The album was called "Stan the Man's Hit Record". Get this - Stan Musial teaches you how to swing a bat and become a "major league hitter". This isn’t a video, mind you - its a record, played on a turntable. Stan's "hit record" was apparently a list of his hitting records as told by Joe Garagiola. Sheesh!



I would stack that record on the spindle with 4 or 5 other of Dad's records, like Sergio Mendez and Brasil 66, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass or some such pop. I liked the music better than Musial. I later met Stan in Florida and he was nice enough, although somewhat subdued by age. I wish I had that Stan the Man LP with me to have him sign. That was the same night I played Rocky Mountain Way on stage with Joe Walsh. That’s another story, but I gotta tell yah - I dig Joe much more than Stan.



(me and joe in st. pete)