This past month, the Turner Classic Movie Channel has been playing "31 days of Oscar." The geezers in the 'hood were excited. So many of the movies were older than them. That's pretty old! They could remember when they first saw a movie and of course they could remember what it was about. We talked about the movies with smiles on our faces. Those were the "good old days." Needless to say, the geezers could not remember what they had for breakfast the day before, but that's another issue.
In my house, we are not looking at the movies live, but on that magical invention called a DVR. That means the movies are "on demand" and it's better that way. Since most geezers have a hard time staying up past 9:30 at night, by recording movies on DVR we can watch them during our waking hours.
I did not tape all of the old Oscar winning movies, but I did a fair few. Anchors Aweigh, I talked about earlier. There was also Going My Way with Bing Crosby. Cat Ballou with Lee Marvin, Stagecoach with John Wayne, It Happened One Night with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, the Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Bogart, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with a cast of thousands, Naughty Marietta with Jeannette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, Blithe Spirt with Rex Harrison, Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn, and a host of others. Tonight we viewed Around the World in 80 Days with David Niven, Shirley MacLaine and Cantinflas.
I remember going to the theater downtown to see this movie when my age was still in the single digits. I remember getting dressed up in my best Sunday dress, patent leather shoes, white socks with lace on the cuffs, a matching sweater but no hat...we were going to the theater after all and a hat would spoil the view for folks in back of us. I vaguely remember getting a program for the movie--but I don't remember anything about the program. My parents thought the movie was wonderful and marveled at all the faraway and foreign locations. Geezers, do you have memories of a time long ago? Sometimes it's fun to take a walk down memory lane. ATW80D was a fun walk. Both geezers in my home were laughing at the fantasy--something I do not remember doing when I was little. It was serious business back then.
As we were looking at the movie, we recognized many locations. Mt. Fuji, Paris, the hills of Southern California and the Silverton RR in Colorado. Some of the movie was filmed on the backlot of the studio too. We looked at this big Technicolor marvel on our super-large flat screen TV and we could get an idea how "big" the picture was in 1956. I don't remember thinking about the "big screen" when I saw the movie as a kid. I just remember they were traveling and I would like to do that one day.
The geezers in our house have traveled. One year we went around the world in 32 days by plane and ship, starting and ending in San Francisco with stops in Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, Oman, Alexandria, Rome, Munich, and the list goes on. All the time we were humming the song "Around the World in 80 Days." To date, we've stepped foot on over 140 countries including all 50 US States, and all Canadian Provinces and one Territory (we are missing the Northwest Territories and Nunavut). We sailed past Pitcairn Island (between Tahiti and Easter Island) but could not step foot on it...there's no place to dock a ship...instead the locals from Pitcairn boarded our ship. (There's a website called "Traveler's Century Club" and to count a country, you have to put feet on the ground...so Pitcairn Island is NOT one of the places we have visited). We did stop in Tahiti and Easter Island.
Geezers, it's funny what can jar a memory loose from the brain...one thing leads to another, and "Bob's your uncle" you have another story to tell. We've lived a long time, and we have a wealth of stories that are triggered by the strangest things. That's part of being a geezer...remembering the good times. We've had many of them, and hope to have many more. Seeing Around the World jogged some fun memories for me. What will jog those fun memories for you? In the meantime, remember, we're in this together.
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