I Witnessed the First Moonwalk!

I still remember the day I heard Michael Jackson sing Billie Jean for the first time. My Dad and I were on our way to Wild Mountain (a ski resort) for an excellent day of skiing when his song came on the radio. What was this strange new song and why did it sound like he was hiccupping during it? What did it mean when he said, “The CHAD is not my son”? It was very weird and very intriguing! I admit that I didn’t particularly care for it then, and it still is one of my least favorite songs of his, but that changed when I saw his live performance of it. 

The year was 1983 and it was the Motown Records 25^th Anniversary special. Michael Jackson, who was well known as the lead singer in the band The Jackson Five, came on stage to sing Billie Jean for the first time in public. He wore black pants, leather penny loafers, a black sequined jacket, white sequined socks, shorter black dress pants and a single white rhinestone glove. To begin his performance, Jackson snapped a fedora to his head and struck a pose—his right hand on his hat and his left leg bent. It was already the coolest thing I’d seen all night!  Then he started to dance while he sang and it was so different than anything I’d ever seen before. During the song, Michael glided backwards to perform the moonwalk, before he spun on his heels and landed up on his toes! In the video of that first performance you can hear an audible gasp as the crowd witnessed the first Moonwalk on a stage! It was the beginning of a legend in the making. Everyone was talking about it the next day. He was already a superstar since the age of 5 but he literally soared to the galaxy after this single performance! 

Eventually, I found out that he made videos for MTV and I was obsessed! We didn’t have cable when I was growing up, no matter how much I begged my parents to get it, so how in the world was I supposed to watch MJ on TV if we didn’t have MTV? The answer: My cousin, Dana! I would go over to her house and we would watch Billie Jean, Beat it and Thriller and try to learn the dance moves! It was so cool! It was the first time I had ever seen music videos and they changed my life. I spent hours learning and perfecting the moonwalk and other dance moves I had seen from MJ. I can also do a mean slap-my-knee move from MJ’s Beat It video! Thriller is a 14-minute horror-themed music video and it was voted as the most influential video of all time! No wonder we spent so much time trying to learn it! It has been copied over the years by many famous people and in many movies. My favorite copy is 13 Going on 30! So cute!

Michael Jackson was a babe! He was very talented in singing, dance and style. I know there was a lot of controversy regarding him in later years, but I prefer to see the best in him and not to believe all the hearsay. I am reminded of his songs such as Heal the World and We are the World and his desire to make the world a better place one person at a time. I loved his beautiful performance at the Super Bowl with people in the stands holding up pieces of paper that, from a distance, made it look like a bunch of children of different races, holding hands. I like to remember the version of We are the World he created with Lionel Ritchie and many of the famous musicians of the time. They recorded this song with the hope that they could raise money for Africa. “Since its release, "We Are the World" has raised over $63 million (equivalent to $138 million today) for humanitarian causes.” Source/ Wikipedia. What a beautiful legacy and there is so much more! If you want to read more about him, check out Wikipedia for yourself!

He was iconic.

He was a legend.

He was a global figure for four decades.

He was the greatest entertainer of all time.

He was the King of Pop.

He invented the Moonwalk.

And I was his biggest fan!

Hot Dish or Casserole?

I grew up in the Midwest in a fairly small town. I now live about 5 miles from my childhood home in an area we called "the boonies" back then. It was pure forest, trees and farmland with very little civilization in my mind. I never knew that the world was so large and that there was such a diversity of people and ideas and opinions out there. As far as I knew everyone talked like me, sounded like me and thought just like me.

When I went out West for college, I was told right away that I had an accent! An accent, ME? I did not have an accent, they had an accent! I was told that I said bEg instead of bAAg for the word bag (they sounded like they were gagging!) and pEn instead of pIn (like a pin to hold a baby's diaper!) for the word pen. Even as they said those words to me, trying to correct me, they sounded weird. It was crazy! So I decided that I agree that I have an accent when I am out in the West, but when I am in the Midwest and other people come to visit, they are the ones with the accent!

I was then told that I called things the wrong names. How was that possible? All the sudden the POP that I'd been drinking for years was called SODA, who knew? I didn't realize that this was such an issue for some people since the full word for them according to the cans is SODA POP. And that the one dish dinners my Mom had lovingly made me all these years were called Casseroles and not Hot Dishes! I had no idea that some people took this so seriously!

There are a few Hot Dishes that truly are Hot Dishes and they are the ones that truly come from the Midwest, namely Tater Tot Hot Dish, Wild Rice Hot Dish and Pizza Hot Dish, all the others I will gladly call casseroles. I grew up on all three of these, along with the typical hearty meat and potatoes meals. All I can say is that you can take the girl out of the Midwest but you can't take the Midwest out of the girl! Here are a few of the truly Midwest dishes that I grew up on:

Tater Tot Hot Dish

1 lb. ground beef

1 can cream of chicken soup or cheddar cheese soup

Tater Tots

Lawry’s Seasoning salt

Garlic salt

Fry beef and put in a cake pan and season with Lawry’s Seasoning salt. Spread soup on top and arrange Tater Tots tightly on top. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or better. Can broil for a couple minutes to brown tots, watch carefully.

Wild Rice Hot Dish

1 lb. hamburger, browned

1 c. cooked wild rice, I like to use cans or packets

1 c. celery, finely chopped

1 sm. onion, very finely chopped (optional) or use onion powder

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 can milk or water

4 tsp. soy sauce

Brown hamburger with onion and celery. Combine soup, water, and soy sauce. Mix in hamburger mixture and rice and bake for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees. Serve with chow mein noodles.

Pizza Hot Dish 

1 lb. hamburger

1 pkg. Sloppy Joe mix (Richard tries to substitute this for Manwich, but that is just wrong!)

15 oz. can tomato sauce

1 tsp. oregano

2 tubes crescent rolls

1 pkg. cheddar cheese, grated

1 pkg. mozzarella cheese, grated

Brown hamburger, then add Sloppy Joe mix, tomato sauce and oregano. Place 1 package rolls in 9 x 13 pan to cover bottom. Put hamburger mixture on top, then sprinkle with cheeses. Place remaining rolls on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Italian Sausage Soup

This is a recipe given to me by a good friend, Vickie White. I have made it many times for my family and for church functions and it seems to be very popular. I think it's a good idea for my children to have the recipes I made for them, as they get older!

1 - 1.24-pound package Italian sausage,( I used mild) no casings
2 carrots, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 - 32-ounce boxes low-sodium chicken broth
1 - 15-ounce can tomato sauce
2 medium zucchini, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon dried crushed rosemary,
1 - 20-ounce package refrigerated three-cheese tortellini
Garnish: chopped fresh parsley optional

In a large Dutch oven, combine sausage, carrots, onion, bell pepper, and garlic; cook over medium heat until sausage is browned and crumbles. Drain well!!!!! (I drain it and then put a paper towel in there to soak up the rest then throw it away.)

Stir in chicken broth and tomato sauce; bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Add zucchini and rosemary; simmer 20 minutes. Add tortellini; simmer 5 minutes, or until tender. Serve immediately. Garnish with chopped fresh parsley, if desired. Makes 10 to 12 servings.

I hope my children remember the dinner times we spent together as a family and the love and care I put into making them the things they loved to eat!

We Didn't Have to Walk Uphill Both Ways in the Snow Like my Parents Did

Back in Laura Ingalls Wilder days, they travelled by horse and buggy. When reading the love story between Laura and Almanzo, it seemed so romantic to tuck themselves into the horse drawn sleigh with blankets and furs and ride over the meadow and through the woods on a date! When I was about 14, my mom and I went horseback riding for the first (and only) time. We rode in a line on a skinny trail, with her in front of me, in a group; her horse kept stopping to eat the grass and leaves. We were laughing and trying to get the horse to hurry along to keep up with the rest of the group. Then her horse stopped abruptly while mine kept going and ran into hers right as it lifted its tail and made a huge, green, grass poop that ran all down the side of my horse! It smelled terrible and made for a very long rest-of-the-trail ride. It makes me wonder how romantic it was for Laura and Almanzo to have to sit and wait for the horse to do his business and then ride along behind him the rest of the way?

Times have changed drastically for the Ingalls over the years, thankfully. My first mode of transportation was a yellow Rabbit. Still pretty small, but faster and smelled a lot better. I was taught, by my Dad, to drive a stick shift. It was hard at first, but so much fun! One time I stalled the car as I was attempted to cross Hwy 10 and just about gave my Mom a heart attack! I loved that little car and it was great to always be able to find it in a parking lot! Do you notice these days that most cars are tan, silver, black, or red? Not all of them are, but it is the majority. Sad that there aren't the fun vibrant colors anymore.

The next car I drove was a station wagon. Props to my parents for letting their 16-17 year old daughter drive around in a station wagon all the time! Maybe they thought the nerdiness of it would repel the teenage guys, but I assure you, that was not the case! It would have been better for my Mom to make me keep the Dorothy Hamill haircut! Haha I was a pretty good girl and they were very trusting, I guess.Also, just as a side note: I never paid more than 99 cents a gallon for gas!

I've had nicer and more expensive cars since then but I loved the freedom of having a car at that age and I totally loved driving a stick-shift car! It sure beat riding around in a horse and buggy or a sleigh, too!

What Was My Mother Thinking?

When I was still in Elementary school, my mom thought I should get the Dorothy Hamill haircut. It was the new thing and everyone was embracing the style.  I had no idea who she was, but came to learn that she was a famous figure skater. Everyone thought my hair was so cute and I felt so glamorous. I look back at pictures of me and I am so embarrassed! I actually hate that hairstyle and am mortified to show the pictures to anyone! I laugh that it was ever popular.

This was the last time I let my mom choose my hairstyle, but in hindsight, my choices weren’t any better! Isn’t it funny how we think we look so great at the time and years later, we look back and laugh at our hair, clothes, and eyewear? I remember laughing at my grandparents’ great big, black framed glasses and thinking they were ridiculous and now they are very popular again. Lots of colors and styles, the crazier the better!

Actually, my mom is a very talented hairdresser! She could do whatever I wanted, but I was a teenager and had a mind of my own at this point. I had her color my hair bleach blonde the summer before middle school and have been “blonde” ever since. I don’t really know what color my natural hair is to be truthful. I used to ask her to give me a “poodle perm”, meaning, as curly as it could get. The style in much of my school years was frizzy with half my bangs curled under and the rest teased to great heights on top. I was never super extreme in this but I could definitely get some height! I remember laughing at pictures of people from the 60’s and 70’s who had long, straight hair with no bangs and a part down the center and thinking how ridiculous it looked! Funny thing is, that is pretty much what my hair looks like now and I love it!

  

This was the age of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson and we all followed their trends. I wore Forenza sweaters (with a long pearl necklace), United Colors of Bennetton clothing, Swatch watches, mini skirt sets (where the top and bottom matched) and leggings. We used to tuck our jeans in from the knee to ankle and safety pin them that way and wear ballet shoes with them. Not ballet-style flats, but real ballet shoes. Skinny jeans didn’t come around until 20+ years later! One day I tried to leave the house wearing a shirt and real long johns (the thermal ones with a flap in the front) as pants and I only made it as far as the door before I was asked to turn around and change!

  Forenza Sweater

Prom was the height of fashion back then and it was popular to have a huge dress. They were so huge that you had to wear a hoop under it like Scarlett O’Hara in order just to walk in it. We looked like wedding cake toppers with great, big off-the-shoulder puffy sleeves, a gathered layer on top of the skirt and often bows, ruffles and lots of lace. They were very beautiful and made us look like Disney princesses, but that sure was a lot of dress! We went bowling after Prom my senior year and it was pretty challenging in a dress that large, but oh, so fun! My date wore a white long-tailed tuxedo with a white top hat (that I thought looked ridiculous!) and ended up sliding on the bowling alley on his stomach and got his tuxedo filthy! Good times!

This is a very similar look to what we wore!

My mom found out that I needed glasses when I was in third grade. My eyes were already pretty bad, she just didn’t realize how bad they were until we were driving home from the eye doctor after I had just received my new glasses and I was noticing that Billboards had words and pictures on them and that trees had tons of individual leaves! I also could see the wrinkles on my knuckles and my fingernails for the first time. I kept lifting my glasses up and then putting them back down to compare what I could see with and without them. My poor Mom felt terrible to realize how bad my vision truly was! I tried to hide it for as long as I could and cheat at the grade school eye tests because I didn’t want to be called a “four eyes” at school. My first pair of glasses were really thick and very large and they only got worse over time (until I had Lasik surgery in my 30’s). I’ve been known to jokingly say that even my cheeks could see better because my glasses were so big!

 Like this!

We had some pretty crazy trends in hair, fashion and eyewear and we make fun of them now, but who knows? Maybe five, ten or fifteen years down the road, we may be going back to them. All I know is that my Mom let me develop my own personal style and sometimes had to put her foot down too! After all, isn’t that what Moms are for?

I was in the Guinness Book of World Records!

     On Monday October 15, 1979, I joined a group of 1800+ tap dancers and danced my way down Hennepin Avenue to the song, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" to help celebrate the opening of the Hennepin Center for the Arts. “Sounds like a herd of buffalo,” said an observer. “Nah, it sounds more like a herd of buffalo wearing tap shoes,” said the observer’s friend. We all wore red, white and blue dance costumes and tapped our way into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people tap dancing to a single piece of music at one time. I was so amazed at how many tap dancers there were all in one place and I remember it being really loud and so much fun! Here's the video if you want to see it! It's kid of long but you can skip ahead to the dancing part!
                                       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY712_hK6CE
     Going totally off topic--for those that know me, it’s not unusual--it is dance-related, however. When I was in High School, I tried out for and made the All-Stars Just for Kix Dance Team that met in San Diego and danced in the Holiday Bowl halftime show! This was a huge deal because I was one of only five girls in my state to make this team and I had never been away from home by myself before. We learned the dance in the week we were there and performed in a Hawaiian bathing suit and sarong with a beach ball for part of it and it was a blast! One thing they weren’t thinking about in choreographing our dance was that the field would be all tore up from the football players. There were a couple moves that put us on the ground so we ended up getting kind of muddy! Halfway through the dance, we were supposed to throw the beach ball into the crowd and I was so bummed that I didn’t get to keep it. Some girls kept them anyway, but it was fun watching all those balls bouncing around up in the stands. I bought a video of the performance, but one of my parents accidentally videotaped one of my brother's football games over a part of it.
     Anyway, these are the two times in my life where I was almost famous!

I Didn't Die in the Back of a Station Wagon!

     Family vacations were always fun. Our family owned a station wagon, the kind where the far back seat actually faced backward. Yes, you heard me, it was backward! The window rolled down and we loved to wave and stick our tongues out to the people in the cars behind us. We never wore seatbelts and half the time barely stayed seated!
     The far back seat was the best because it didn’t have the “hump” on the floor that the middle back seat had. No one wanted to sit in the middle back seat because the two people on the sides wouldn’t let you put your feet on their side so you had to keep your feet up on the hump the whole time. This was a major source of contention in the car when I was growing up, especially since I was the smallest of the three kids. I wasn’t the youngest, just the smallest, so it was totally unfair!
     You could also put all the seats down so you could lay down in the back and that is exactly what we did. No seat belts or car seats just a big open area and we kids jumping around back there. Those were good times! All of us could lay down in the back seat at the same time and read books or take naps. The car rides were a lot more fun and would seem to go much faster not being confined to a seat and a seatbelt. Car seats were used but often just as a place for the baby to sit but they were not buckled in for safety.

This is not me or my siblings!

     We took a trip to New Jersey in the station wagon when I was a kid and we stayed in an oceanside beach house which was pretty cool. We kids all stretched out in the back, comfortable and reading good books; life was never better. This was the first time I was introduced to an adult book. Up until that time, I mostly read Judy Blume books, Sweet Valley High and Little House on the Prairie series-type books. It was a V.C. Andrews book called Flowers in the Attic and it was really intense for my age. I read several of her other books and, finally, decided they weren’t for me. It was also the first time I had ever seen the ocean. For my whole life, I have been fascinated and terrified of the ocean with its monstrous waves, ships, submarines, and all the ocean animals, such as whales, dolphins, sharks, octopus and more. I remember being both thrilled and scared to go into the ocean and never really went in past my knees. My sister and I were more interested in looking for boys. My brother, John, on the other hand, was in it up to his head, and would bob along with the waves that would crash over him.
     One car trip we took was most notable because my brother, John threw up on the floor in the middle back seat just a short time before we made it home. That was awful! You just couldn’t get away from the smell.
     We took a trip to Paul Bunyan Land in Brainerd when I was a kid. There is a picture of me looking up at him, he was HUGE! I think there are a couple of pictures of us with Babe the Blue Ox as well. That was quite memorable because he was so large and I was so small.

     I know that I will not remember all the trips I went on as a youth but going to Wisconsin Dells was one I would never forget! We stayed at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Park campground and it was cool because it had a bunch of statues from the Yogi Bear cartoon (on a side note, I ended up marrying a man that can quote and imitate Yogi Bear and Snagglepuss perfectly! Ask him to do it sometime!) This campground had a pool! We visited The Wonder spot, a “mysterious cabin where people can’t stand up straight, water runs uphill and chairs balance on two legs”. They describe the place as a Gravity vortex “where the laws of natural gravity seem to be repealed”. It’s sad to know that this place is no more and a highway took its place. We also had day passes for the Noah’s Ark Waterpark and I had never seen anything more glorious in my life! I always was a water-loving girl and it had everything I needed to have fun forever. I was so sad when we had to leave.

     I’m sure there were other trips we took when I was a kid, but I won’t bore you with any more of them. The important part is that we did things together as a family to build a strong bond together even though we were a his, mine, and ours family; we got there in a trusty old station wagon either seated forward or backward, probably laying down and never once did we wear seatbelts! And we didn’t die!