Share Your Nostalgia – Round 3

A while back, I asked some blogger friends if they’d want to write a piece for my Share Your Nostalgia feature. In the past we have looked at Favorite Childhood Toy and Favorite Childhood Book. We continue to visit Saturday mornings. This was when we sat in front of the TV with our favorite cereal and watched hours of cartoons. So I asked my guests to write about their favorite cartoon or cartoon character growing up.

My next guest blogger is my pal, Christian from Christian’s Music Musings. Christian features music from every era on his site. My favorite feature is his “Sunday Six,” where he features six random songs. The songs are often a mix of various genres and various eras. He grew up in Germany, so let’s see if that has any influence over his choice….

Childhood Nostalgia: My Favorite Animated Show

Share Your Nostalgia hosted by fellow blogger Keith (Nostalgic Italian) is in its third round, and I’m happy to be back with another contribution. This time, the ask was to write about our favorite animated show or favorite animated character while growing up.

While I loved watching Peanuts cartoons on TV while growing up back in Germany, I figured it might be more interesting to talk about a German animated program: Die Sendung mit der Maus (“the showing starring the mouse”), one of the most successful German children’s programs. In fact, after some 54 years and more than 2,500 episodes, it’s still on!

Launched in 1971, the program airs on Sunday mornings. The subtitle is Lach- und Sachgeschichten (“funny stories and educational stories”), which are presented in the form of short cartoons and short educational films.

The key protagonist of the cartoons is the mouse. To solve problems the mouse encounters, she has some supernatural powers, e.g., open her belly to grab a tool or rip off her tail to use it as a rope.

Die Sending mit der Maus also features a blue elephant who is smaller than the mouse. He is portrayed as curious, pretty strong, spontaneous and loyal, and likes to laugh when the mouse has a mishap.

There is also a yellow duck, which is smaller than the mouse but bigger than the elephant. She is mischievous and generally causes some chaos when showing up, which happens more rarely than the elephant.

Seeing is believing. Here’s a clip of a short funny cartoon starring the mouse and the elephant.

And here’s a clip of a short educational film around the essential question whether ducks get cold feet when walking on ice! 😊

While as a small kid admittedly I mainly enjoyed the cartoons with the mouse and her two friends, looking at program footage today, I find combining short funny cartoons with educational films a great concept for kids to learn.

Since I’m a music blogger, I’d be amiss not to mention there is a song about the mouse titled Hier kommt die Maus (“Here comes the mouse”). Written and produced by German TV entertainer Stefan Raab, together with Hans Posegga and Lars Dietrich, Hier kommt die Maus was released in February 1996 to coincide with the show’s 25^th anniversary.

And, yes, Hier kommt die Maus even enjoyed some chart success. In Germany, it peaked at no. 2 for one week and remained in the charts for 19 weeks. The song was also popular in Switzerland, climbing to no. 12 and remaining in the charts there for 12 weeks.

In case you’d like to see more of the lovely mouse, I’m leaving you with a longer clip. And don’t feel funny. While the target audience for the show is kids in kindergarten and elementary school, Wikipedia notes the average viewer age is about 40 years, since parents and grandparents oftentimes join children in front of the TV – who could blame them!

Sources: Wikipedia; YouTube

Share Your Nostalgia – Round 2

Back in November, I did a feature I called “Share Your Nostalgia.” I asked some of my blogger friends to write up a piece that focused on their favorite toy from childhood. The response was positive and it was suggested to do another round. So this time around, I asked for them to tell us about their Favorite Childhood Book.

Their book could be something that was read to them by their parents or grandparents. It could also be a book that was read to them in school at story time. I also suggested that their book might be one that they read to their own children. I wanted each of them to have as much freedom as necessary.

We’ll kick things off with my pal, Christian from Christian’s Music Musings. Christian features music from every era on his site. My favorite feature is his “Sunday Six,” where he features six random songs. It’s always a good mix.

Christian was raised in Germany. Perhaps he’ll get us started with a German author? Let’s find out!

My Childhood Admiration of Karl May’s Winnetou and Old Shatterhand

A few weeks ago, Keith (Nostalgic Italian) put out another call to fellow bloggers to contribute to his new recurring feature Share Your Nostalgia. This time, he asked participants to write about their favorite book from childhood.

The topic reminded me that sadly I haven’t read a book in ages. My lame excuse is I do a lot of reading as part of my job, so I don’t want to spend my spare time doing the same thing. I hate to admit it, I think my real problem is short attention span. I no longer have the patience to read an entire book. That said, ironically, my blogging involves quite a bit of background reading, though I’m relying on Wikipedia and other Internet sources, not books.

A short attention span or lack of patience, however, never prevented me from reading books when I was a child. Perhaps, there were fewer distractions back then while I was growing up in Germany. Usually, I read in the evening in bed prior to sleeping. Among my favorite books were the Western novels by Karl May, featuring the characters of Winnetou, the Apache, and his friend and blood brother Old Shatterhand.

At age 8 or 9, I didn’t question May’s distorted portrayal of the American West and representation of Native Americans. It wasn’t until 1908 the German author took his only trip to America, visiting New York, Albany, Buffalo, Lawrence and Boston. At that time, he had already published many of his famous novels featuring Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. Despite all of this, May is one of the best-selling German writers of all time, with about 200,000,000 copies sold worldwide, according to Wikipedia.

*Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, as depicted by actors Pierre Brice and*
*Lex Barker in a popular German movie series*

While I still recall titles of some May novels I read as a child, such as Winnetou I, Winnetou II, Winnetou III and Der Schatz im Silbersee (“The Treasure of the Silver Lake”), the details are gone. In a nutshell, Old Shatterhand was a young German who had come to America and initially was working as a surveyor for a railroad company expanding across the American West. He first meets Winnetou under hostile circumstances, but the two men not only become friends but also blood brothers. Together, they fight for justice and against villains who often seek to exploit tensions between settlers of the American West and Native Americans. Eventually and tragically, Winnetou is killed.

At the time I was reading Karl May novels, his stories and characters were pretty popular in Germany. I loved watching movie adaptations that featured Winnetou, Old Shatterhand and other recurring characters in the novels. There were also Karl May theatrical open air festivals in various German towns like Bad Segeberg and Elspe, which continue to this day. I’ve never been to any of the performances. In 1985, German scholar Hartmut Lutz came up with a term to describe the fascination in German popular culture with the Indigenous peoples of North America: Deutsche Indianertümelei (“German Indian Enthusiasm”).

In the aforementioned movies, Winnetou was portrayed by French actor Pierre Brice, while Old Shatterhand was played by American actor Lex Barker. Not surprisingly, they were among my favorite actors as a child. These movies were produced during the 1960s in Germany and largely filmed in the former Yugoslavia, which not only offered cost-effective locations but spectacular landscapes that had some resemblance of the American West.

The characters of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand were also part of daily playing with my best friend. I was Winnetou and he was Old Shatterhand. Every day, we came up with our own stories and amazingly never got bored. At some point, we even had toy versions of their rifles, Winnetou’s Silberbüchse (“The Silver Gun”) and Old Shatterhand’s Bärentöter (“Bear Killer”) and Henrystutzen (“Henry carbine”), and ran around in costumes.

I’m leaving you with a short clip of the intro to the film Der Schatz im Silbersee. Unfortunately, it’s in German, but I guess you can still get an idea why an 8-year-old would be excited about it!😊 The clip also features the main musical theme written by German composer Martin Böttcher, which I loved at the time. Admittedly, writing the above, as well as watching and listening the clip gives me nostalgic feelings about my childhood. I guess this means mission accomplished!

Share Your Nostalgia

After seven days of great toys, I suppose it is my turn to wrap things up in my Toy of Your Life topic. Before I begin, I want to extend my gratitude to those seven writers who said, “Yeah, Keith. I’ll write up something for your silly feature.” Nancy, Colin, Christian, Randy, Max, Dave, and Stewart – I thank you for each contributing and making this trial run successful. I really enjoyed reading your pieces and so did my readers.

When I was approached to host this topic based feature, I was really unsure if it would work. First, I didn’t think anyone would be interested enough to write for it. I knew it had to be a topic that would be relatable to the writers as well as the readers. I think that this was accomplished. What I loved about this was that despite the diverseness of the choices, I could relate to all of them.

Right from the start, I had a turntable that was much like the one Nancy wrote about. I played my Beatles albums and my 45’s on my red one.

Colin’s Subbuteo table soccer game was completely unknown to me. However, it jogged my memory as to the electric football game I used to have.

When Christian picked Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars, I connected immediately. I had hundreds of them. As I mentioned in a comment, we spent hours outside building cities and roads for ours.

Max chose a couple. First, the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. I was reminded my a school buddy that they not only had the cycle, but some other Evel vehicles.

He also picked Pong. We had it, too! It was the Atari 2600 that took things to a whole new level for us.

Who doesn’t love Legos (when they are not being stepped on)? Dave’s choice was another universal love for me and the readers of this blog. I have fond memories of putting things together myself, and watching my kids build things.

Randy spoke of his Roy Rogers action figures and Stewart’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures needed their very own van. I had my own action figures … more on that in a moment.

I thought long and hard about what toy to choose. At first, I thought about how everyone in my neighborhood had a Big Wheel. However, in 1978, when I saw the ad for The Green Machine, I had to have it. It was a blast and a lot of the kids were envious of mine. But, I couldn’t pick this one, because it wasn’t THE toy of my life.

The other toy I begged for was called the Sound Gizmo. I loved this thing. It made all kinds of sounds and you could change the speed and pitch to make them sound different. I used this when my buddy and I would be playing outside. We’d be spies, or treasure hunters, or something. If we needed a “tool” to cut through a padlock, I’d use this thing with a laser sound and an explosion. It enhanced the imagination.

I truly believe this was one of those toys that my folks regretted getting for me as soon as I opened it!

No, when I had to chose THE toy (toys, in this case) of my life, it would have to be Star Wars action figures. My brother and I bugged my grandparents for them as soon as we knew they were available. There were plenty of commercials on TV for the figures and the various vehicles and sets.

My brother and I each had a complete set of figures, thanks to my grandparents. Grandma made sure we knew how hard she looked for those things, too. She told us how difficult it was to find Yoda or the Jawa figures. She went to great lengths not to disappoint (and spoil) us!

I don’t even know how she did it, but she got them all! I mean there were like 100 of those things! That means 200 figures at whatever they cost back in the 70’s. It was insane.

Star Wars toys were on our list from 1977 through the early 80’s! You couldn’t go wrong with Star Wars stuff. Some years it was vehicles, other years we got 12 inch Star Wars dolls.

My brother and I used to play with those figures constantly. I think he had this small three shelf thing that he turned into a three floor apartment house for his figures. We used all kinds of things with our figures. The one thing I remember most is taking those old McDonald’s Styrofoam containers and making cars or spaceships out of them.

We’d cut holes in the top of them and bingo, it was a spaceship. Need a bed for them to sleep in? Cut off the top! We used those things for everything.

There were times our front lawn was full of Star Wars ships, animals, and parts of a space station. Not to mention 200+ figures. We spent summer days playing out front. It was such a blast.

Whenever we’d spend the night at my grandparent’s house, we’d lug over boxes and bags with figures and vehicles. They went with us everywhere! They were truly the Toy of our Lives.

As we got older, characters became other people. Ben Kenobi was an old drunk guy, one of the Tuscan Raiders was always annoying people, and a Princess Leia figure became “Aunt Carol.” We don’t even have an Aunt Carol, so don’t ask me how that came about.

I could kick myself for what ended up happening to most of those figures. We cut horns off some of them. Others we put over a candle to see if they would melt. Some would get tied to a firecracker to see if we could blow them up. The lucky ones got tied to bottle rockets and took a ride down our street.

Today, when I walk into a store with vintage toys, I see how much some of those figures are selling for and I shake my head. I suppose I wish I had taken better care of them so I could pass them down to my kids. Other times I wish I still had them in the package they came in, because those are worth more money. But then I think about it. What kind of memories would I have today if they never came out of the package?!

Hours and hours my brother and I played with those figures. We had so much fun with them. It was an amazing time where we could create our own scenarios and fire up the imagination. There was an empty script and we got to write it. Darth Vader didn’t have to be a bad guy if we didn’t want him to be. Chewbacca could have bad gas if we wanted him to. Jabba the Hut could join Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers. Han Solo could be a door to door Amway salesman!

Those days were so special. Those figures led to thousands of stories, hundreds of laughs, and a memory strong enough to cause me to seek out other folks to share their favorite toy memories with you and me.

I hope you enjoyed the posts from the last week. Thank you again to those bloggers who participated. If you haven’t visited their blogs, please do. Maybe I can find another topic and we can do this again? Suggestions? Let me know.

Thanks for reading!

Share Your Nostalgia

We continue with my trial run of Share Your Nostalgia, an idea suggested to me by some fellow bloggers. The topic for this feature is “The Toy of Your Life.” Was there one toy that you considered the “best?” When you think of yourself as a child, what is the toy that immediately pops into your mind? What was the toy that you brought to Show and Tell or took with you everywhere?

Today, we shine the spotlight on Christian. Christian is another one of the great music lovers I’ve connected with here on WordPress. His blog is loaded with all kinds of musical writings. He has a love for 1960’s and 1970’s music, but his blog is far from just those decades. You can check him out at Christian’s Music Musings: https://christiansmusicmusings.wordpress.com/

Take it away, Christian –

When fellow blogger Keith (Nostalgic Italian) reached out to me the other day to see whether I’d like to participate in his call for contributions about the “Toy of Your Life,” I immediately accepted. Then I thought, ‘oh, oh, what am I going to write about?’ After all, I really can’t point to one specific object that was THE toy. As such, I decided to take a bit of liberty and write about my (childhood) obsession with toy cars.

I remember my mom often told me that when I was a toddler back in Germany, I would always walk around carrying stuff in my hands. This included all kinds of pens in different colors and a Tonka-type plastic toy truck. At some point, I guess by the time of first grade, I had discovered Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. I couldn’t get enough of them. And I found an ingenious way to increase my supply!

During much of my early childhood, I had blood anemia and needed to take iron in liquid form – yuck, not a medicine I can recommend! The condition also required frequent blood

monitoring. This meant my mom had to take me our primary care doctor where they always stuck my finger to collect blood.

I was very afraid of the little needles the assistant used to take my blood and always made a big scene. On one such occasion, out of despair, my mom once told me if I would be brave, she would reward me with a Matchbox car after the doctor’s visit. While I still dreaded the needles, that sounded good to me!

And so I began accumulating Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. I played with them all the time, alone and with my best friend who I met in second grade and who I’m still fortunate to call my best friend to this day. At some point, we began building roads in the sandbox that was in the backyard of his house and taking our cars there – safe to assume a few of them got buried forever!

At some point as I grew bigger, so did the toy cars. Matchbox and Hot Wheels were out, and I started collecting cars that were about twice the size of a Matchbox car. I remember one of the brands was called Siku. One of the cars was a BMW 630CSI like the one pictured below, though I believe mine was silver.

During my early teenage years, I started collecting even bigger toy cars (1:18 scale) by Schuco and other toy car makers. Those cars had many more details and looked way more sophisticated. One, a red Mercedes 280SL convertible even had a working steering wheel. I also had a red Porsche 911 (still my favorite sports car to this day!) that looked similar to the below model, though it wasn’t a Targa.

While I kept my bigger cars on display in my room well into my late teens, once I started getting my first guitar and taking lessons, guitars became my new toy of interest, and the toy cars on the shelves started collecting dust.

While I’m older now (at least on paper!), I will say my fascination for toy cars has never entirely disappeared. When my son was a toddler and the Pixar movie Cars came out, it didn’t take much to convince papi (as he usually called me) to start collecting die-cast models of Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater, Doc Hudson or Sally Carrera. In fact, oftentimes it felt papi was more excited than his son!

Even to this day when I happen to spot toy cars in the pharmacy, I sometimes stop and glance to see what kind of makes and models they have. If I were a kid, I’m sure I’d like some them, especially muscle cars.

Since I’m a music blogger, I can’t wrap up this post without some music. As such, I’m leaving you with three car/driving songs, including one titled Matchbox Cars, though it’s not about toy cars but real cars looking like Matchbox cars from the 52nd floor of a skyscraper – but, hey, close enough!

Deep Purple/Highway Star (1972) – perhaps the ultimate driving song!

Golden Earring/Radar Love (1973) – another contender for best driving song!

Coot/Matchbox Cars (2012) – from the eponymous debut album of this New Orleans-based rock band who are completely new to me – I guess they passed the audition!

Turntable Talk – “Shock Rock”

Welcome to another edition of Turntable Talk hosted by Dave over at A Sound Day. Check out his site here: https://soundday.wordpress.com/

His topics have ranged from very easy to thought provoking. This time around, I find it truly thought provoking.

Here are the instructions that Dave sent to each of the participants describing what this edition was to be about:

This time around I’m calling it ‘Shock rock’… but wait, it’s not about Marilyn Manson and Megadeath…unless you want it to be. The subject basically will be pick a record that you love that would surprise people… something that runs afar from your regular favorite listening. Maybe you like hard rock but love something by the Carpenters. Or are a huge ’60s fan who can’t get enough Bruno Mars. Or maybe it’s a little Tchaikovsky to wind down after a night full of Stones or Springsteen. Let us know what it is that makes that ‘oddball’ selection so appealing to you.

What Could Possibly “Surprise” You?

I have almost 5000 songs on my iPod. I have a CD collection that fills at least three storage totes, and 4 carrying cases. My external hard drive is loaded up with almost half a terabyte of songs. What ONE song would surprise you? This was my dilemma.

I had three songs immediately jump out at me when I first read Dave’s e-mail. The more I thought on them, I just wasn’t sure which one to pick. As I am writing this, I still question the one that I chose. I will stick with it because it isn’t something I would normally post, and it is more of a personal song. So how in the world did I narrow it down?

Grab my iPod and there is just about every genre of music on there. There is pop music from every decade from the 1930’s to the 2010’s. There is country music – classic and modern. There is a fair amount of R&B, Soul and Motown. I’m not ashamed to admit there are some disco favorites, too. You will also find Big Band and Swing music, Jazz, standards, and plenty of Classical music. There is Christian music and plenty of oldies. There are some favorite Christmas songs on the play list and songs that I played when I was in high school band that I downloaded from YouTube and other sources.

Going through the iPod, there were songs that I thought were “oddball” that I could write about. For example, I have almost every Weird Al Polka Medley on there. I also have music from the Shrek soundtrack, music from The Muppets, and music from the cartoon Phineas and Ferb. There are also plenty of songs that are on there that my kids used to listen to when we would be in the car from some of their favorite kid shows. Oddball, indeed.

All that being said, anyone who knows me or has read my blog before knows that I have a wide range of musical tastes. It would be easy to feature any one of the “oddball” songs mentioned in the above paragraph. Instead, there was one song that stood out for me. It is a song that I never skip when it comes on the iPod (there are only a few of those). It is also a song that I have debated posting on my blog as part of a “music Monday” or some music feature. I kept holding back, probably because it is such a personal song for me. Will you find it “shocking?” I doubt it.

Untitled Hymn – Chris Rice

Readers of my blog know that I am a Christian. While I don’t care for much of the “modern” Christian music, I do like many songs. I cannot recall when I first heard Chris Rice’s “Untitled Hymn,” but it hit me immediately. It was a song that I shared with one of the guys at church, who worked it up and sang it on more than one occasion.

To those who are not of the Christian faith, there will be no connection whatsoever to the song. To me, however, it hits me deep every time I hear it. I am reminded of who I was before and who I am now. It also reminds me that when my life is over – it isn’t over. I am aware that not everyone believes what I do, and that is ok. I’m ok if you just scroll on by this blog.

The song begins with a lone piano and then the vocal. The lyrics of this song speak of the journey of a Christian. From sinner to saved. Singing praise. New life in Christ and life’s struggles and looking to Him in those struggles. Feeling the love and joy that comes in this new life. Finally, the “end” of life on earth for the Christian and the beginning of the afterlife.

The vocal and the piano blend so perfectly. The inflection of the vocal through the dynamics of the song conveys the lyrics exactly how they need to be conveyed. Rice rerecorded the song for “A Collection of Hymns” with a more up-tempo piano and more instrumentation (strings, guitar, etc…) and vocal harmony. Personally, I prefer the original recording over the newer version. I feel it is more powerful.

Here is the original and the lyrics:

Weak and wounded sinner
Lost and left to die
Oh, raise your head for Love is passing by

Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus and live

Now your burden’s lifted
And carried far away
And precious blood has washed away the stain

So, sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus and live

And like a newborn baby
Don’t be afraid to crawl
And remember when you walk sometimes we fall

So, fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus and live

Sometimes the way is lonely
And steep and filled with pain
So if your sky is dark and pours the rain

Then cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus and live

Oh and when the love splills over
And music fills the night
And when you can’t contain your joy inside

Then dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus and live

With your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye
Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory’s side

And fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live

Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live

In Closing

Does it shock you that I picked this song? I guess it is a bit different than the songs I have posted in the past. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do? At any rate, Dave asked us to explain what makes this song so “appealing.” All I can say is that it appeals to me because I relate to it. Outside of the last verse, I have lived it. It is a song that strikes a chord (pun intended) every time I hear it. Depending on what is going on in my life, I either smile and sing along or cry and sing along. To me, that makes it one powerful song.

Thanks for allowing me to participate, Dave. I look forward to the next edition.