What was your favorite Christmas Present? 

I think all of us have a favorite or a series of favorites. In my case some of the favorites on my list included my first English bicycle with narrow tires, a 3 speed Sturmey Archer shifter and hand brakes mounted on the handlebars.  This was a big advantage over the typical Schwinn or Sears American bike with just one speed and a coaster brake. Other favorite Christmas gifts included model airplanes, usually gas engine powered U control models from Cox, Comet, or Wen-Mac. They came ready to fly (and ready to crash).

So what was my all time favorite?


In 1959 Santa delivered a 6 transistor radio to me. It was a blue Magnavox and it ran on a 9-volt battery. Up until that point I had used a variety of old radios in my room that were not very good. I had also used Remco crystal radio sets to bring in local stations. I could not believe my luck when I found the Magnavox under the tree along with two 9-volt Burgess batteries. The Magnavox was a gem to behold. Measuring about 6X3 inches it could fit into my pocket and I carried it everywhere I went.

It was the iPod of its day and the height of miniaturized consumer technology. For an 8 year old kid, it was quite a status symbol in the neighborhood. I found out later that the radio cost about $35 which was a lot of money in 1959. In today's inflated dollars it would be about  $243 today, Oddly enough this is about the cost of the video iPod today.

Inflation Calculator

I was never really allowed to listen to the radio after I went to bed for the night (I was 8 years old) but with the Magnavox I could use the earphone or put the radio under my pillow. No one else in the house even knew it was on.  A real discovery was that at night the radio pulled in stations from all over the eastern seaboard and reaching out to the Midwest. It was kind of like magic. I could listen to rock and roll DJs from New York city, Boston, Hear Dick Biondi at WKBW in Buffalo NY, KMOX in St. Louis, WLW in Cincinnati, CLKW in Windsor Ontario and many more. I was also a big baseball fan and could listen in on most games at night. I often went to sleep with the radio on and running down the battery.

I almost lost the radio during the New York Yankee's - Pittsburgh Pirates World Series in 1960. I had brought it to school and attempted to listen to the series using the earphone. I got caught and the radio was taken away from me. Talk about despair..... I thought I had lost it. When I was ready to board the bus home the Mother Superior of the Catholic school I attended gave it back to me. I listened to the rest of the World Series game on the way home and as I got off the bus I witnessed the winning home run hit by Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates in the late afternoon of October 14, 1960. In many respects my Magnavox opened up new experiences for me. I wish I still had it.

Interested In Local Hopkinsville Nostalgia?
Please Visit My Hopkinsville Nostalgia Site

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Please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is George and I live in Hopkinsville KY and am coming up on 56 years old which makes me a Baby Boomer. Over the last 10 to 15 years I have developed an inordinate interest in the Boomer generation. It is generally accepted that the entry by birth into the boomer generation began in 1946 and ended in 1964 although 1960 as the end is also accepted by some demographers who have studied the boomer generation.

This is my first attempt at doing a blog and I understand that websites like this one seem to be aimed at young people. While I am not a young person now I was at one time and my memories are still fresh. If this blog works out I will be writing about things that in my generation that had common threads for many of us.

Today, it is difficult to imagine that we somehow got along without the things we take for granted today. The list includes CD, DVD, iPod, MP3, home computers, the Internet, instant messaging, Cars without seat belts or air bags, Play Stations, Xbox, Hi Def TV, Cable  or Satellite TV, VCRs, FM radios in cars, and a myriad of other things that we take for granted today.

While we did not have these marvels of technology there was still a lot of things to do. In my case I came to really enjoy flying kites. When I was about 6 years old I watched as a group of kids flew kites in a vacant field just across from our house. This was the first time I had ever seen a kite and it was a wonderful experience to sit on the porch and watch the kites as they soared and danced around the sky.

I asked my father to buy me a kite but he had a better idea. He was going to help me make one. Two straight sticks, some string, tape, and the Sunday cartoons from the newspaper were all we needed to create a colorful diamond kite that flew as well as those I had seen in the field across the street.

Eventually the kite met a bad end in a tree. My next kite was purchased form a drug store for .10 cents. It was a red Hi-Flier Little Boy paper kite. From that time on, I was addicted to kite flying and spending any money I received on kites and string. For a while it seemed like every kid in my neighborhood was flying kites.

The Hi Flier company started making kites just past the turn of the 20th century and although designs
changed over the years, the basic diamond kite structure stayed the same until they stopped making them. I have one of the last paper kites that Hi Flier produced before they went with the plastic delta wing design. It is amazing how many of these paper kites survived and I have put together a collection going back to the 50s.

Here are a few of the designs:





Did you ever fly any of these?

For Hopkinsville Nostalgia check this out.
Please visit my website

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