by jcbetty
on 2/3/2008 @ 12:34pm | by the way, the ski trip (well, okay, as expenses rose, the mate and I decided to board it)? Fabulous. Boatloads of new snow, a brave, warm kid, and some runs I want to tattoo on my grey matter forever and ever.
And some really fun, reflective conversations on my experiences in ski school, back when I was a Lakewood student. (not all my young life sucked, I just have to remember that sometimes.)
And we get to go back on my birthday, when we get half-off tickets for our military involvement! Whee! |
by AP
on 2/3/2008 @ 1:01pm | I am of your people! I am also John-Hughes era Hudtloff. To make things weirder, The Smiths' How Soon Is Now? just started playing on the Super Bowl pregame show as I began this entry.
What was more fun than a Villa Plaza carnival circa 1979? Bob's Big Boy or the big, old, yellow bowling alley in the Villa Plaza?
And the ski bus... oh, bliss be the memories. Did you ride the ski bus before it picked up by the movie theaters? Back when it was in the Lakewood Recreation Center parking lot?
I must know you both.. |
by jcbetty
on 2/3/2008 @ 3:17pm | heh. This is crazy degree-and-a-half-of-separation stuff (one forgets how small the Tacoma/Lakewood connection is)! I'm pretty certain the ski bus was in front of the lakewood recreation center, but it was so bloomin' early in the morning that the details are foggy (ski-bus time was pre-caffeinated me time) I think I was in the fifth grade at the time... or maybe the eighth?... not one of the cool kids in the back of the bus or one of the good skiers boasting a powdery mogul day in Green Valley.
Do you remember the skating rink (now condos) at the bottom of Phillips Road, beside Lk Steilacoom? That was more our fun-- our parents were somewhat nasty about letting us go bowling or to carnivals; if we did bowl it was always on McChord. But I think that might have happened... like... twice.
Mostly, we would go swimming on Post in the summer (I can remember riding on the wheel well in the back of our Datsun Pickup) and then we'd have a soft-serve cone at the Dairy Dell, and in the winter, we'd skate.
Where'd you go to elementary? Were you at CP for HS? I bet, if we didn't know each other, we probably knew of people who knew people we knew...
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by HD
on 2/3/2008 @ 8:57pm | Hmm... ice arena licorice and arcade games not to be outdone by a dillybar. |
by AP
on 2/3/2008 @ 9:46pm | Ice arena licorice. Yes, Friday nights at Lakewood Ice Arena were the big payoff for a little guy who did all his chores and cleaned his room properly during the week.
Oakbrook Eagles. Hudtloff Indians. Clover Park Warriors. You know it's Hudtloff Hurricanes now? I'm sure we know scores of people in common. Small world indeed. |
by FunkomaVintage
on 2/3/2008 @ 11:06pm | mr. funkoma's youngest son goes to Hudtloff where mr. funkoma volunteers....dee dee dee dee (creepy music) ......lakewood just makes me nervous....you never really know where you are. But the cameras do. |
by AP
on 2/4/2008 @ 8:56am | Yeah, present day Lakewood is indeed much different than the "old" Lakewood, once known as "Tacoma". We did our best to thwart the incorporation back in the day, but it just wasn't enough.
Now identity thieves run the place, or so I'm told. |
by jcbetty
on 2/4/2008 @ 12:39pm | heh. Oakbrook, me. Lakes, me. Yeah, Hurricanes, so as not to be offensive, I guess. Whatev. My mom still lives on Phillips Rd, in the same house where we'd have geese in the side yard. And yes, I was the only kid in a country-club neighborhood to have geese as watchdogs. It was great.
HD-- also a reformed Lakewoodite? Mmmmm, licorice.
Funk--What does Mr Funkoma think about the place? Is Mrs Hooker still there? She was my favorite teacher on the planet. Ever. (and yes... Lakewood is a scosche nerve-wraching in "streets have repeating names and never go straight through in a grid" kind of way...)
AP- I have to chuckle at people getting all "253!!" excited, because I was Tacoma when 253 was 206... but then, yeah, Lakewood was Tacoma so I guess I wasn't Tacoma by today's Tacoma standards? (it could make ones head spin.) --I don't know that my parents tried to thwart the incorporation, but I remember how much they bitched and moaned when the sewers went in...
ahhh, me-e-em-rieeeeeees.... |
by HD
on 2/4/2008 @ 3:28pm | Along with sewers came increased prop taxes and county hookup fees, monthly bills, blah,blah,blah.
Sounds like someone grew up with the game farm across the street.Pheasants in the road and peacocks on peoples roofs ring a bell.
Vintage Oakbrook showing it's face around here, very nice. |
by AP
on 2/4/2008 @ 3:42pm | I remember playing in the giant trenches they dug for replacing the sewers. We were even "escorted" out of the sewer trenches by police one fine afternoon. Vintage Oakbrook indeed. |
by jcbetty
on 2/4/2008 @ 6:52pm | heh. This is rockin' rad. Actually, we lived with the game farm as our (sort of) back yard (the duplex behind us had the game farm as their back yard.)(we lost a few cats to the game farm, a couple of bunnies to god knows what, and a couple of dogs to bad driving on the curve of Phillips Road. -- I lived in fear of falling into the sewer trenches, and remember how the winter that they were there was, like, the coldest winter, ever. Not the snowiest-- that would have been, like, 1977? When I felt like I lived in the little house on the prairie because snow piled so high on our eaves and up the side of our house.
I remember the coldest winter, though, because I got a pair of pleather sneaker-quad skates and I would skate loop-de-loops around my driveway pretending I was an ice skating princess, while the dirt was so hard it had weird, hollow ice bubbles in it.
aak. This is feeling like some kind of weird memory purge for me. Crazy. Cool, too. |
by AP
on 2/4/2008 @ 11:39pm | You lived above the field once known as "Maine" that is now a fancy cul-de-sac of new homes, right? All of Oakbrook's great places to hang out were destroyed one by one. The creek at the end of Phillips is all that remains. The gravel pit, the woods, the water tower, the back road... all gone. So sad. |
by jcbetty
on 2/5/2008 @ 5:36pm | yep--seems to me the homes are condos (we used to pick pounds of blackberrries down there, and I'd be pissed off about it, as blackberry thorns are not gentle little things.)
The woods were my happy-kid place, I used to walk through them (at the tender age of 6!) to get to my best friend's house, and pretend I was Gretel of Hansel and Gretel, as was the creek... another friend and I used to take shower curtains and "innertube" down the creek, at the road that now looks like it ends in a private mini-golf park-- but that was well before the building started, though that proved a financial boon for me, as one of the builders hired me to help clean a few of his newly-built homes... and then, I would hang out with a boy named Russell, on whom I had a crush in the 6th grade, at the site where his dad was building a house. We would do this weird teeter-totter/balance beam/trampoline thing with planks of wood spanning a center point of unstable building materials... in hindsight, almost everything I did would cause me apoplexy, if my kid did them... but it's a different time, now.
Most all these play spaces are gone, it's true... Thank god for playstation and xbox? (a wee bit of sarcasm, there.) |
by Fitz
on 2/7/2008 @ 2:16pm | You came out to the slums again without contacting me? It is definitely not the same place I grew up in. I couldn't imagine my kid riding a bike to all the places I used to go, or even going to the library by herself when she would normally be old enough. Yet I still live here year after year without a completely better option for our current situation, but I'm sure I'll end up in the North End or downtown at some point. We have no Parkway, Rosewood, or Satellite in Lakewood, worst of all.
PS- Don't be a stranger. |
by jcbetty
on 2/7/2008 @ 2:28pm | I didn't know you lived in Lakewood!!!!!????? I woulda' asked for a beer after my run, had I known that! (I've been a stranger, huh.) (and you do have both a a hot chick-a-latte *and* a hot hut-- what more could you need, O greedy one?)
--oooh, another memory: riding my single-speed Schwinn wanna-be to my friend's house for a sleepover, from Phillips Rd down...Onyx? (what are the odds, there are, like, 16 Onyx-es) to the condominiums behind Oakbrook. I was a thinker, and managed to pack all my gear, which must have included makeup for make-overs, clothes, pajamas, maybe a couple of records, maybe several pairs of shoes and a sleeping bag into a plastic trash bag, and schlepped the whole thing over my shoulder. I made it as far as the Oakbrook Golf Course maintenance shack before the thing fell off my shoulder, and then fell through the fork, got caught up in a spoke, and pitched me in a somersaulting arc over the handlebars. Magically deliciously, I landed on the sleeping bag portion of the bag.
To date, I have never broken a bone. |
by AP
on 2/7/2008 @ 2:57pm | That particular Onyx that goes from Phillips to the maintenance shack is a very long, narrow road, with a lot of speeding cars piloted by careless teenagers. It sounds like you were pretty lucky not to have been run over.
I remember I got something caught in my front wheel on Sapphire and went all the way over the bars onto asphalt. I never let that happen again. From that point forward, I refused to superman over the bars unless it was onto dirt or grass. Just another very important lesson I learned during my childhood travels through Oakbrook.
jcb: I bet your parents offered you a ride, but you insisted on riding your bike for some unknown reason? Just a hunch. |
by jcbetty
on 2/7/2008 @ 3:35pm | nope, parents were working. Actually, probably dad was out of the country, mom was working. The condition of the sleepover was, if you want to go, you have to get there on your own. Yep, it was very very lucky that I managed to fly without any four wheel vehicles coming by to flatten me. It's funny to think that such a "posh" 'hood had NO sidewalks... I laugh at 60 & 70s-era developmental planning, that was all done with vehicular travel in mind; pedestrians were an unknown entity, apparently? |
by Fitz
on 2/7/2008 @ 3:41pm | I used to ride to the bike shop on Bridgeport and Steilacoom Blvd when I was 10 or less. That would be suicide for anyone under 15-16, or anybody these days, except for those skateheads without helmets at Kiwanis Park!
Yes, live in Lakewood! near the casino. Oh, wait everyone in Lakewood lives near a casino! I'm near CP High. And beer? I wouldn't have any beer! |
by Fitz
on 2/7/2008 @ 3:47pm | What more do I need? Doyle's, Metropolitan Market, Pt Defiance, Harmon, Asado, Posh Home, Freighthouse Square, Swiss, Top of Tacoma, Blackwater......catch my drift? |
by AP
on 2/7/2008 @ 3:59pm | Remember Thriftco? The grocery store in Villa Plaza with the drive-up bag-loading service, free donuts and cookies for kids and the ultimate Betamax rental & vinyl record sections? My Quiet Riot record came from there. I also remember Hall & Oates' H20 being on that shelf for years. Guess nobody bought it. |
by Fitz
on 2/7/2008 @ 4:11pm | I worked at the Thriftco for a few years. I remember that and Woolworth's, Grant's, the original Ram with the open fire hazard grill, the Polynesian Tiki bar and Trident Imports! I bought my first Eric Clapton record at Thriftco. I remember the records were back by the meat dept. |
by jcbetty
on 2/7/2008 @ 4:21pm | heh. casinos? Lakewood? (My mom had a fiance near CP, off by the tennis thing
--Um. Okay, let's see. For Doyles, they have the former McDonald's --Cloverleaf? Tavern, and Ft Steilacoom Park, and Sunnyside Beach, and ....um. Pier One. Bed Bath and Beyond.
My sister made me walk to Woolworth's with her to buy Michael Jackson's Off The Wall, back when he was still black. Thriftco, ahhh, how I remember wishing we had a VCR...or cable... --Wasn't there a tatami room Japanese Restaurant back behind Montgomery Ward's? Seems like we ate there a couple of times... |
by Fitz
on 2/7/2008 @ 6:00pm | Speaking of Lakewood, I'm getting out of here for lunch with Teresa C and maybe a couple other folks tomorrow if you're interested. Do you know how to find me? |
by HD
on 2/7/2008 @ 6:05pm | AP) careless speeding teenagers, a referance to your younger years?
Trident = Giant plastic pixi sticks sure to feed young boys sugar fix
Let's not forget Clover Park Pharmacy" cheeseburgers |
by Fitz
on 2/7/2008 @ 6:46pm | The CP Pharmacy was in my 'Hood! Green Rivers & Cheeseburgers! |
by AP
on 2/7/2008 @ 8:10pm | Trident = Bamboo Papasan Chair with the wooden disc and pillow thing that slid and swiveled around in the base.
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by jcbetty
on 2/7/2008 @ 9:02pm | Fitz--I'm game--I only know you on myspace, which I've been absent from as it takes too long to load... and I've gone all impatient in my old age. ---email me-- jcbetty@mac.com :)
Trident: rice candies that had, basically, edible plastic. MMmmmmm. And I owned one of those papasans, only I think it was post Trident Pier One, prior to current chain Pier One incarnation. The Papasan made a damn fine dog bed, though it pitched me a time or two when I tried to sit in it after one too many... teh futon seemed safer... then I moved to England for a while and got rid of both of those pcs of furniture...
Most of my other Lakewood candy came from the drug store that was near Crane's Creations (now it's a True Value? I think?) |
by AP
on 2/7/2008 @ 11:37pm | Ludwig's! |
by AP
on 2/7/2008 @ 11:38pm | Next to Manley's. |
by jcbetty
on 2/8/2008 @ 8:49am | YES!!!!!!! I remember both! I was so sad when they both kicked the bucket. But then, I was sad when they put McDs into a new building... |
by HD
on 2/8/2008 @ 11:56am | I love it!! 20 to midnight and APs got Manley's spinning through his head. |
by AP
on 2/8/2008 @ 12:26pm | How many of my mom's quarters were spent on Donkey Kong and Dragon's Lair at Manley's? That was my FAVORITE place for mom to go shopping. I think for awhile I asked her daily if we needed anything from Manley's. As if the video games weren't enough, they also left adult reading material on the normal magazine racks next to People & Sports Illustrated back in those days... right by the video games. |
by jcbetty
on 2/8/2008 @ 2:47pm | Sweet!! |
by tacomachickadee
on 2/8/2008 @ 6:19pm | There was a Manley's in Lakewood? That's what I get for being a re-plant. |
by HD
on 2/8/2008 @ 8:31pm | Sweet about the quarters or sweet about the child height racks of porn.
Personally, i'm leaning towards the latter. |
by jcbetty
on 2/8/2008 @ 9:49pm | definitely the latter, and definitely the fact that your mom *paid* you to look at porn!!
Chickadee-- later, that site became a sort of granola-styled food co-op (sad that it couldn't make it), and then a dollar store. |
by tacomachickadee
on 2/8/2008 @ 9:50pm | jcbetty: did I mention my maiden name is Manley? |
by jcbetty
on 2/8/2008 @ 11:27pm | Heh-- no, no you didn't! Did your family own a string of grocery stores without your knowledge? --Rad coincidence. (aak. I used the word rad. Must be tired...) |
by AP
on 2/9/2008 @ 6:57am | Oui. |
by tacomachickadee
on 2/9/2008 @ 7:35am | Dude, betty said rad ...
And I knew about the grocery stores (grandpa's cousin or somesuch thing), just didn't know there was one in Lakewood. |
by jcbetty
on 2/9/2008 @ 10:06am | Ohmigod! THAT is SO degree and a half of separation, Tacoma-style!! |
by FunkomaVintage
on 2/20/2008 @ 12:58pm | hey ! going way back to the Hudtloff question and the little boy.....mr funkoma like H jr hi mostly. He appreciates that there are a lot of "social" programs since a lot of the student body needs the help...It's good to have the extra programs, but an admission that they are needed....Tjey do seem to run a tight ship.....the little boy just has the usual complaints so far.....Jr Hi being what it is. He is concerned about the constant bully presence. Bummer that chess club is on hiatus....so Papa Bear and the little boy play every Tuesday afternoon....somewhere in Lakewood..... the little boy is obsessed with candy and video games....none of which he gets when he is with Papa Bear and Step-Mama-Bear. |
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