Archive for the 'SASTP Nation!' Category
July 26th, 2010 by Mike Redding
We passed 100 but I get the sense there’s a few more good ones out there so I’m not ready to move on just yet. I put the most recent add-ons to our list at the bottom this time because I didn’t feel like renumbering the whole list. I’m sleepy. They’re in RED.
SASTP Nation is compiling a list of things we all grew up with that our kids will likely never see or experience. The age range of those writing in is all over the place. I’ve tried to edit the list down to something, say, people 35-and-up could agree on.
If I dropped one of your suggestions and you think I’m nuts, just suggest it again. I’m slow, but I get there. Usually.
Enjoy…
1. Standard 3 speed transmission in cars with the shifter on the column
2. All businesses closed on Sundays
3. Only 3 channels on the TV (ABC, NBC, CBS), maybe 4 if you could get PBS
4. BBQ grills with real charcoal (No one had a gas grill! Or had ever heard of one!)
5. Matchbooks or wooden stick matches, no butane lighters
6. S&H green stamps.
7. Clipping baseball cards to your bike spokes so it sounded like an engine when you were riding
8. Getting punished by your friends parents if you step out of line.
9. Playing with little green army men in the dirt for hours
10. Drawing out roadways on the driveway with a stone or chalk and playing with matchbox cars
11. Making your Halloween costume from items found in your house (or friends house) instead of buying one at the store
12. Records Players… later the more sophisticated name “turntable” was all the rage
13. Electric football where the players just vibrated around
14. Holly Hobby dolls
15. Boom boxes
16. Sleeping with the windows open
17. Playing outside all day when your Mom didn’t know where you were, but knew you were ok
18. Drinking from the water hose
19. Pulling into the gas station and having someone fill your tank and check the oil as a courtesy
20. Cracker jacks had nice prizes
21. Plastic glasses in oatmeal boxes
22. Dirt roads
23. Milk truck delivering to your house (although they are making a come back)
24. Family farms
25. The Little Rascals on TV
26. Bath night
27. The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour
28. In my grandmother’s neighborhood (in Hamburg, NY) we loved walking the few blocks to go buy some milk in glass jugs from the vending machine
28. For the ladies, remember short hairstyles with “spit curls”
29. Clothespins. I heard someone at Target ask the cashier, “Where would I find clothes pins?” The cashier looked totally blank
30. Using the phone maybe once a day… maybe less than that
31. Getting spanked or paddled by teachers in school
32. Black & White TV
33. Powdered dishwashing detergent
34. Kitchens with NO automatic dishwasher
35. Clothes lines
36. Painting a house with a paint brush
37. Sandwiches wrapped in wax paper
38. Non-electric pencil sharpeners
39. 8 tracks
40. Tape recorders with actual cassette tapes, not digital chips
41. Home heat source was wood fired furnace
42. A big, round, black, vinyl disc you lay on a spinning table and a special “needle” would be placed on it… VOILA! Music!
43. Mix tapes (we spent hours, even days making these. Now kids assemble “playlists” with mouse clicks on a computer in minutes)
44. Flashcube cameras (The four-sided kind you popped on and off)
45. Wax fingers and lips
46. Balsa wood airplanes (some had rubber band powered propellers)
47. Waiting days to see what your pictures looked like
48. Carbon paper
49. Rabbit ears (that’s a TV antenna for the kids reading this)
50. Getting up to change the channel
51. Party lines
51. Tang
52. Betamax tapes (This format lost out to VHS tapes)
53. Pull tabs from soda cans… the type that actually came off
54. Grass trimmers that worked like giant scissors you actually squeezed by hand
55. Lawnmowers that required no gas or electricity… just you pushing
56. Tube radios and TVs that had to “WARM UP” before they worked right
57. Rotary dial phones
58. Garage doors without remotes
59. Houses without AC
60. GameBoys, Atari, Pong,
61. MS-DOS
62. 45’s,
63. PF Flyers
64. Photos in physical albums
65. Newspapers in print
66. Transistor radios
67. Sack lunches
68. Princess telephones
69. Ice cube trays (especially the metal trays that had the lever that you pulled up to break the ice)
70. The small box on your TV that you had to get up and turn the dial to make the antenna on house turn to pick up another channel.
71. Cars without seat belts
72. Seat Belts that were lap only
73. Cars with the high-beam button on the floor you pushed with your left foot
74. My Partridge Family (Metal) lunchbox
75. Free Hotwheel cars and tracks when the service attendant pumped your gas and washed your windshield.
76. Mimeograph machines and the smelly purple ink on mimeographed paper
77. The MovieFone guy/voice that you called to get movie listings
78. Pay Phones
79. Catching lighting bugs at dusk
80. Chatty Cathy or Mrs. Beasley dolls
81. Real Crayola Crayons (not the waxy ones out now)
82. Reading an actual book
83. Camping… in a tent… and a huge rock or tree for a bathroom
84. 10 cent ice cream cones
85. Playing outside in the summer from dawn ‘til dusk
86. Playing house with dirt for a floor and trees for a roof
87. Dippity Do (for your hair)
88. Making mudpies after it rains and having to be hosed off before being let back in the house
89. Saturday morning cartoons…. from 7 a.m. until noon
90. AM radio
91. Bee hive hairdo
92. Cut out paper dolls with full cut out wardrobe
93. Playing Spud
94. Flashlight tag
95. Tetherball
96. Walking on stilts your dad made for you
97. Pogo sticks
98. Playing neighborhood ‘kick the can’
99. The great art on LP record covers
100. Knowing all your friends’ phone numbers! (Now we just push a button on speed dial.)
101. Stretch Armstrong
102. Cabbage Patch Dolls
103. Fuller Brush Man
104. Jelly jar glasses
105. Penny candy
106. Candy cigarettes (these truly seem like a bad idea to me now… but then it was cool. Stupid… but cool.)
107. Bands releasing a new LP every year, sometimes more often!
June 19th, 2010 by Mike Redding
I get a lot of e-mail from you. I read them all. I usually reply to them all as well. Sometimes I don’t. I’ll read one and think, “I really need make this reply thoughtful and I’m tired so I’ll do it tomorrow.” Tomorrow rolls around and I open my e-mail and that one is no longer bold and voila! I don’t look at it. Poof!
I haven’t posted any e-mails in a heck of a log time. Mostly because there is already a “Comment” section on the website which has created a fun back-and-forth between us. (By the way, if you follow the comments -there have been nearly 3000- you’ll notice my mother has recently purchased her first computer and has graced SASTP Nation with a comment this week. I can die happy now. My mom means the universe to me. To have her reading my website and interacting at her age is special to me. She’s 39.)
My mom, Giovanna...
Anyway, I’m posting an e-mail today. Partly because I’m terribly vain. And partly because this one hit a nerve. You never know what people around you are going through. And you may not even realize who you are touching just by being available.
The world is a little short on kindness these days. If we could bottle and sell meanness, or run our cars on it, all of our troubles would be over.
So here’s a little kindness for us all…
“You are very missed in NC, Mike, but things happen for a reason. You would not have your website if you were still in Charlotte and I don’t know what shape mentally I would be in without it.
Since May 8th (my birthday) I have been taking care of my 94 yr old father. I am on Family Leave (no pay) so my mental health is not the best. But your website has brought smiles to me that I would not have had during this time. My father (a Normandy veteran) has been recovering from double pneumonia and has made a tremendous comeback (that generation has a will no other generation has or will have!). I hope to have him settle at the VA facility in Salisbury by the end of this month.
I just wanted to say thank you…even the smiling pictures of you and your beautiful Anna at the top of this page brightens my day.
God Bless you and your family, Mike, and again thank you very much.
Carol Smith
Salisbury, NC”
Carol, I have to be honest: Lately I’ve been a little adrift. I don’t sleep enough. I don’t get enough time with Anna and Crowley.
I haven’t spent any time simply being. I’m just doing. Doing and more doing. Doing gets empty when you’re not being.
So your e-mail touched me at just the right time. You’re being. And being there for the most important person in your life. It made me stop and think. I do too much and I’m not being much at all. The fact that you felt like I was here for you helped me. It encouraged me. It made me less tired. Less adrift.
I owe you one. Thanks from my whole heart… MR
May 26th, 2010 by Mike Redding
Anna with baby Crowley one year ago... when we launched SASTP
Born one year ago today, the brilliant idea to start “Stop and Smell the People” was completely and totally NOT mine. I’m just along for the ride. My wife suggested it as a way to stay involved with you all as I left my on-air TV job. She deserves all the credit for that.
I could spend this whole entry talking about circumstance. It’s been a weird year for that… Newborn son, out of work, sold house, left reporting behind, went on the road, moved to Virginia, joined management, exhale. Feels like 10 years, not one.
But I don’t want to talk about circumstance. Circumstance is irrelevant. It’s the lead-in to a story. It’s not the story. The story is the lessons learned.
And not the routine lessons: Politicians, right or left, are politicians; Republicans are fiscally conservative… but only when they are NOT in power; Democrats are better at running for office than governing from office; Wall Street geniuses are free market capitalists to the death… or until they go broke. Then they become poor little facists begging us to redistribute our wealth to them.
Those lessons will make for typical boring newsroom conversations. But these are not the lessons of which I speak.
What I learned from the last 12 months will, I hope, guide me the rest of my life.
Peace, people. Peace.
Life, from birth to death, is nothing more or nothing less than an opportunity to live in peace.
Life is one long classroom where the answer to every test question is the same: peace. Win the lottery? Can you live in peace? Lose your job? Can you live in peace? Lose a loved one? Get divorced? Child diagnosed with disease? Car falling apart? Can’t pay the bills? No health insurance? Neighbor is a jerk? Can’t change any of it? Control the one thing God gave you… you. Choose peace. SERENITY NOW! Sounds silly, I know. But it is what Gandhi was talking about. It is what Jesus was living. It’s how Martin Luther King Jr. changed his country.
You can have internal peace regardless of external circumstance. That is the goal. Of course I fail the goal 10 times a day, but at least I now have the correct goal in my sights.
For a long time I was making my circumstances my goal. I wanted to change the circumstances of my life so I could live in peace. I had it backward.
A number of you wrote in and told me what your last 12 months have been like. It hasn’t been pretty… circumstantially. But each of you mentioned how you have looked for the good in the midst of the darkness. You sought peace in the middle of chaos. That is the heart of this website. I’m not the best example of the lifestyle I seek. But Anna and I are committed to getting up every day and looking for the peace inside us and bringing that to each other, to our families and you.
It’s a start.
Thanks for walking with us… MR
February 13th, 2010 by Mike Redding
THE LAST UPDATE… probably.
HUGE thanks to everyone who sent in their snow pics. I couldn’t post them all. But I enjoyed seeing them all!
From Phil Werz... a lovely jog on Myrtle Beach. Whaaaaaat?
From Phil Werz... very cool bike! Very.
MY PEOPLE! The Mast family in Fort Mill, SC, left to right... JJ, Lisa, Kayla, Joshua (Joey took the picture).
Charlie and Henry Hooper build their first ever snowman! Charlotte, NC.
Herman Towe's gorgeous pups, Kanga and Roue! Charlotte, NC.
Debbi Grosch took this shot of her front yard just off Park Road in Charlotte, NC.
Mystery woman revealed! Walter Burk's girlfriend, Heather Garland, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.
UPDATE #6 & 7: East Carolina University, Greenville & Charlotte, NC
Who doesn’t love snow angels? Satan perhaps. But I bet he just acts as if he hates them to his friends and secretly he makes ash angels when no one is looking. he’s a slave to peer pressure.
The college student in the bottom snow angel photo is a young man I did a story with probably 8 years ago. He was a preteen or barely a teen at that point. I have more snow photos from around the Carolinas I’ll be posting later.
Remember to send your photos to me at mike@stopandsmellthepeople.com… make sure to include your name and the location of the picture.
Also, you can click on any of these photos to see them full size…
Justin Mullis in Charlotte photographed by Jennifer Mullis.
Walter Burks at East Carolina University photographed by a mystery woman. Walter, do your parents know you have a girlfriend?
UPDATE #5: Hickory, NC
This one is from Scott Anderson of the Hickory, NC Fire Dept. I really hope there are no fires until the roads are clear. Really really hope.
Remember to send your photos to me at mike@stopandsmellthepeople.com… make sure to include you name and the location of the picture. Also, click on any picture to see it full size…
Scott says there is 4 inches on the ground in Hickory, NC.
UPDATE 3 & 4: Iron Station, NC and Cherry Grove Beach, SC
Remember to send your photos to me at mike@stopandsmellthepeople.com… make sure to include you name and the location of the picture.
Surfs up! Snowabunga! From Michelle Jones at Cherry Grove Beach, SC.
I suspect there will be no snowplow coming anytime soon for Allan & Lynne Melby in Iron Station, NC.
UPDATE 2: Snow pictures from Myrtle Beach!
These were sent in from the best PR man on earth, Phil Werz. Here’s a couple for now. Phil sent more and I’ll post more later today. Click on a photo to see it full size… send you photos to me at mike@stopandsmellthepeople.com
Snowman on Myrtle Beach! Never seen anything like this before.
Please don't tread on the snow dunes!
UPDATE 1: 1st pictures are in!
These were sent in by Brian Christiansen (Brian is SASTPUE#5… he’s our primary photojournalist). Brian’s wife Melissa and little boy Jacob enjoying a rare Charlotte snow! Click on each photo to see it full size!
Jacob Christiansen in Buffalo, I mean Charlotte.
Snowy hugs for mommy!
“Wait, dad, was that yellow? No. Okay, I’m good.”
Those of you down in the Carolinas need to send us some pictures of the snow. We’ll post them here at SASTP.
It’s kind of nice to be the ones the storm missed! This is our first weekend in a while we didn’t have to come up with a “Snow Plan” at work. It’s Saturday morning and I’m sipping coffee and watching Crowley crawl around like a blur. Anna’s at the gym. (I married well…. reeeeeeeally well. Yes, I’m shallow.)
So send some pictures along. Would love to see the snowy Carolinas!
My e-mail address is mike@stopandsmellthepeople.com.
Shovel on… MR
PS. Got any good Valentine’s ideas? What are you doing for Valentine’s? Anna and I drew a blank. We’re such losers. Our plan is to stay in and watch the Olympics. Woo.
January 11th, 2010 by Mike Redding
Okay, I’m winding down my second “What did I eat at the Chinese restaurant?” food poisoning vomitpalooza in six months. Can feel my strength coming back. Haven’t “tossed” since Sunday. Was able to keep down a peanut butter sandwich. All positive signs. I should be an absolute delight at work today.
On the fun news front: The winner of the “Reader #140,000″ contest is a man who came to my house every Thursday for five years. He was my milkman when I lived in Baxter Village in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
“Don the Milkman” is what I called him. It’s how I stored his phone number in my cell. But he became a friend over the years. I met him on a story shoot for Carolina Traveler. Did a story about him… a throwback to the 1940s delivering milk to people’s front porches. On the shoot I tried the bottled milk Don was delivering and quickly ordered to have it delivered to my front stoop.
Ironically, they got their milk back then from a farm here in Virginia, where I now live. And I have a new milkman who delivers “Homestead Creamery” milk to my front porch right here in Roanoke! Small world. He’s no Don, but the milk is outrageous! I digress.
Anyway, Don’s story will arrive shortly. Hopefully after Nic’s. Nic is “Reader 130,000.” For the record, I called Nic Sunday evening. No answer. I e-mailed. No reply. I’ll track him down this week.
Have some great “people” stories coming up just for SASTP Nation this week. 4000 of our bravest are coming home! We’ve been praying for them. We’ve done two “Wave of Gratitudes” for them… and they are (knock on wood) close to home! Freakin’ exciting is all I can say.
Enjoy your Monday, folks. Try to put a smile on someone’s face… MR
December 27th, 2009 by Mike Redding
I’m a smidge late. That’s a lie. I’m so late I should be pregnant. I’m so late I’ve mourned the loss of my time and have reached the “acceptance” stage of grief.
I didn’t finish all my Christmas cards. Half my family didn’t get one. And I’m not even sure where I left off alphabetically. I’ll have to call them all to figure it out. It also means half my friends didn’t get a card. I was writing cards, and then a snowstorm hit and, well, we work a lot in big news events. That one ended and some guy takes four guns into a Post Office and starts shooting. Three hostages later it’s Christmas eve and I haven’t purchased all my gifts.
I haven’t even called the winner of the “Reader 130,000″ contest yet. Sorry, Nic. I’ll get there.
Me and my boys, Crowley and Trevor, Christmas 2009.
On the up side, I’m sitting on the couch watching football with my #1 Son, Trevor. And the cards and calls will have to wait until he leaves in a few days.
Trevor hasn’t seen Crowley (my #2 son) since his little brother was 3 weeks old! Now Crowley is almost 10 months. When Trevor last saw Crowley, Crowley had three basic tricks: he ate, he slept, he pooped. That’s it. Now he crawls, jabbers on an on in a magical language, hugs, giggles, plays peek-a-boo, shuffles along behind his push car (picture an old person with a walker), loves to eat meatballs and gives high-fives. Coincidentally, those are all things I like to do.
I’ll catch up around President’s Day. Maybe.
Peace… MR
December 24th, 2009 by Anna Redding
Welcome to a long overdue installment of Anna’s “Baby Diaries.” Here’s how these work: Anna writes them and I get to add my 2-cents wherever I like. My thoughts will be in [brackets and bold]. Enjoy…
Baby Diaries: Preggo decorates for the holidays!
You don’t often realize you are a lunatic in the moment, especially when you are six months pregnant. Just ask my friend Liz. Last year she was pregnant too. Not only did she address all of 2008’s Christmas cards, but she also addressed 2009’s! (Because, duh! Obviously she would be too busy with a baby and everything that had to be done before the baby was born!) [Welcome to my world.] As for me, this time last year, I could only think about one thing and one thing only! It wasn’t Christmas cards. [Again? Sweetie, a man my age has to pace himself. This is how we got pregnant in the first place!]
But, the thought antagonized me every time I went up and down the stairs… [She just can't resist me.] It’s the banister. It’s so bare. [Oh.] It needs a garland. [Crap. This is not going to be the night I was hoping for.] Not just any garland, but a magnolia garland. And not just any magnolia garland but a home made magnolia garland.
Only problem? We don’t have any magnolia trees in our yard.
I use the word ‘problem’ loosely because for Preggos, there are no problems…. I mean seriously, these are just things to add to Mike’s ‘To Do’ list! [Wait. Here’s where I say, “Welcome to my world.”]
“Hon?” Surely he knows what’s coming. This is how all of my requests begin with one word ‘Hon.’ [Requests? The question mark at the end of her sentences is merely formality.]
“Yes?” he replies. I don’t even know why he answers. He should really just run for his life! [Thanks for the tip.]
“Um… well… I want to make a magnolia garland for the staircase banister.”
“That sounds beautiful.” He wouldn’t say that if he knew where this was headed. [I knew. I was lying.]… Continue reading ‘Baby Diaries: Preggo decorates for the holidays!’
December 12th, 2009 by Mike Redding
And the winner is?
Wait.
And the winners are? (Drumroll) Nic and Donna! (You clapping.) They tied at 10:58 this morning. I’ve e-mailed them and will soon be chatting with each by phone, provided my coverage map allows that.
I’ve actually met one of the winners several years ago in Shelby, NC. So it’ll be fun to finally tell her story.
Okay, I’m all over my Saturday “to do” list. I have three leaky faucets. Christmas gifts to buy and send to my family. A company Christmas party and contest winners to call!
Anna is working on a new installment of “The baby Diaries.” At least she tells me she is. If you make some comments imploring her to write more she;ll buckle under the guilt.
Sometimes guilt is a good thing… MR
December 11th, 2009 by Mike Redding
I somehow missed the hits counter nearing 120k. So I woke up one morning and we had a winner to a contest I never announced! Oops! A couple readers gave me a heads up as we started approaching 130k. So big hugs to them.
For any newbies reading along… we are entering the “Reader Contest” zone. Each time we click over a ten thousandth mark I write a story in this column about the winner. Here’s how it works: The first person to make a comment after the hits counter reaches 130,000 will get a phone call from me and a subsequent article. Cool beans?
So you know, the comments are all time stamped with the exact minute they reach the website. Some comments are held for approval but that doesn’t change the time stamp. That makes it easy to see who the winner is.
Everyone good? Good.
Let the games begin… MR
November 28th, 2009 by Mike Redding
Anna and I are taking a few days off. Friends from Charlotte were up for Thanksgiving and some of my Ohio family will be in town over the weekend. Plus I need to take a few days to prep for my new gig with WDBJ-7. Perhaps I’ll actually iron a shirt or two (insert your punch line here).
By the way, we’ve been living in Roanoke, Virginia, now for just 10 days and we’re exhausted but having fun. Do me a favor… remind me next time I plan a “Gratitude Wave” to NOT do that in the middle of a major move.
Anyway, before we enjoy some downtime we wanted to express our thanks to the faithful readers of this website. I have a lot to be thankful for… I always have. But this year I also have you. This website is young… just 6-months-old. Actually, Thanksgiving Day was exactly six months! But if you asked me six months ago if this SASTP would still be around by Thanksgiving I would have laughed my way through the answer, “No ha ha ha ha way! Six months from now? Ha ha ah you kill me.”
So six months from now might as well be another lifetime. Thus in my never ending quest to live in this moment and no other, I wanted to say thanks to you all for these six months. It’s been a completely unexpected thrill ride. I still shake my head when people ask me what I think of SASTP. I have no idea what to think. I just know I’m grateful for what what I… we have.
On the 187th day of this website this is entry #240. I hope on each of those 187 days the words of this site have given you some relief from the cynical world all around.
I leave you with my biggest reason to give thanks… some photos of me and my little boy Crowley playing with a candy bucket leftover from Halloween. Living in this moment… MR
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Bucketheads Pt. 1
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Bucketheads Pt.2
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Bucketheads Pt. 3
