Night On The River

Night On The River

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con-gli-occhi-sulle-stelle:

“Fallo.
Sciogli i capelli.
Alzati e balla.
Trova ragioni per ridere.
Fai l'amore.
Crea qualcosa di bello.
Parla.
Riconosci il tuo valore.
Non scusarti più per la tua magia e smetti di nascondere la tua luce.
Amati.
Perdonati.
Fai spazio all'imprevisto.
Smetti di aspettare il momento giusto, fallo ora.
Ignora quello che la gente pensa di te.
Perchè alla fine sarai tu a dover rispondere per tutte le cose che non hai detto, le persone che non hai amato, le cose che non hai fatto ed i luoghi dove non sei andata.
Fallo, adesso.
Fallo e Basta. Viviti”-

Brooke Hampton

Vivi.

Ok, so here’s the thing, for some reason ProQuest doesn’t have any issues of my local newspaper for the tail end of 1983. So I’ll have to go back and cover 1983 in January.  Maybe this was a good mistake – November 1, 1984 was a beast of a newspaper, full of ads, and the food section and the neighbors section! 

The Bowditch Ford logo always annoyed me from a design perspective. It looks like someone’s 12 year old kid drew the logo, and an adult drew the king. 

I can’t help but wonder if Zola retired so quickly after the 1984 Olympics because of the bumping incident with Mary Decker. I mentioned it before in one of my Favorite Commercial posts (of all places!). However, her retirement was short lived, she returned to the Olympics, competing for South Africa in 1992. 

aw, wedding hat! 

Maybe because I watch Adam-12 every day after work, but I’m getting big Adam-12 vibes from this troupe of “Angels” who watched over a neighborhood in Newport News on Halloween. 

The Dalkon Shield was a IUD like device that was discontinued due to harmful side effects from bacteria getting into the string. It looks like a scary ladybug attached to a string. 

A&N’s ads looked pretty much like this up until the time they shut down in 2008. 

I didn’t know we had Bradlees in Hampton back in 1984! Bradlees is just a store I don’t remember, because it left the Hampton Roads area back around 1989 when I was only six. It wasn’t a store my family frequented, like Sears of Kmart. I like that our local bus company, Pentran makes a special stop at Bradlees on Mondays through Saturdays. 

‘Yall know Company Man on Youtube? He needs to do a vid on the rise and fall of GNC. If you’ve been to a dead mall in the last 20 years, you know GNC because its the only store there along with Bath & Body Works. Walls and walls of protein powder and supplements that haven’t been touched in 5 years. The GNC of 1984 actually had real food like Tuna and raisins, yogurt and prunes. It’s kinda funny to think about going to the mall to buy tuna and peanut butter. 

I hope Jim Fuhs the lasagna making fireman is still with us today. 

I’m thinking that Farm Fresh used to be a lot larger back in the day, or they sold a lot less food. The Mr. T doll and Montgomery Moose! 

There has to be a catch on that $99 computer. 

Fae, the baby with the baboon heart died a couple of weeks after this article. 

This was back when we flew too close to the sun and thought we could cook anything including roast, cakes, and muffins in the microwave. 

 Here is the commercial for the E.T. Vitamins. Mr. Big reminds me of that episode of King of the Hill where Hank and the boys kidnap Dale’s new lawnmower.It wasn’t that episode, oops.  Yall know the scene. 

~Mr. Big~

well…i investigated where the Shoney’s once was in Hampton. It’s some dump for construction vehicles– I think the restaurant was long torn down, but look: 

they kept the sign! You can see the “S” a little. 

There was a York Steak House at Newmarket North Mall?! 

Ok, Beautyland. Good thing people didn’t care too much about copyright back in 1984. 

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October 1st’s paper started with something I covered way in the beginning, the Tylenol Murders. 

You don’t hear too many stories about women killing police officers, let alone someone stabbing a police officer. Also I can’t imagine the phrase “gone berserk” used in a newspaper today. I can’t find anything about Addie Hardy. 

omg, the rod that won employee of the month at the Springfield Nuclear Plant was on the loose. 

I wonder where the coffee shop was at JCPenney in the old Coliseum Mall. I saw that JCPenney still operates a (modern) coffee shop at one location in Hurst, Texas. 

Before we started using the term “ATM Machine”, ATM’s used to be called all sorts of cutsey names. Ours was called “Beacon”, and I still remember my dad going to the one on Woodland Road and I would wait in the car and watch him.

I didn’t know that Thalhimers sold electronics. That clock radio was originally $55! And we complain about the prices of things now!

Just posting because I love that little Western Store logo.

Yeah, newspaper, tell all the creeps what subdivision the little girl lives in.

Man,Golden Goat. There’s something I haven’t thought of since I was like, six. My family never used it, but I remember seeing them when I was really little.

This ad was amazing — until I saw they spelled JCPenney wrong. 

The Village Shops at Kingsmill in Williamsburg is apparently nearly all vacant and looking for new development. That place was a poop hole when I went to community college down the street from here like, 18 years ago. 

I can’t tell if the illustrations for this Lou Smith’s grocery store are charming or disturbing. Much like the “Kroger People” of today. 

Big fail over at Circuit City. 

wowow, look at all the movies. Yes, Giorgio was a movie that the How Did This Get Made? podcast covered, but I missed the episode and now it’s scrubbed off the internet. 

ooof, the King James was the ~scary motel~ by the time my memories start. Surprisingly, the Fox Den was still open as late as 1994!

…a gorilla gathering. 

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(August, 1980)

September wasn’t nearly as exciting as August, 1980 was. Then I remembered that it was a Tuesday after a holiday, and the kids were going back to school, so no wonder it was a slow news day. 

I love the “the surprising thing is that when you get these people off the ship, we’re still getting the same amount of work done” quote. I feeelthat so much. We’ve all worked with thatperson.

RIP. 

well, knock on wood, a plane has never crashed at Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach. Here’s WAVY’s news archive of the grand opening, and the ribbon cutting. 

I forgot that Elizabeth Taylor was still married to Senator John Warner at this point. They had about a year left. 

okay, I love that Hoover Portable. Just throw that lil guy in the closet when you’re done. 

huck-a-poo

That filler paper seems expensive for the time. y/n. Its .99 at Target right now. 

The Muppet Lunchbox!! 

sooooo they noticed that drug dealers liked malt liqour, so they dressed an officer up like the bull from the Schlitz Malt Liquor commercials to make arrests. And their badges were made from malt liquor cans?? okay.

b u t t e r b e a n s 

(Dean & Dons over on Warwick is still going)

Me on social media. 

I keep forgetting that Nermal the Kitten is a boy cat. Because on Garfield and Friends Nermal had a female voice. Right?

I wanna know why the train stopped for the guy who flagged it down. 

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