I was at Reid Park Zoo last night with friends looking at the festival of lights. I am a member of the Zoo and have always been a real zoo-head. I live near the zoo and often go to the zoo just to walk. As I strolled the zoo last night with the crowds of eager children and families trying to take in all of the lit up eye candy, my memories wandered and got me thinking….

The zoo, which was originally called Randolph Zoo, opened in 1967, and I was 9 years old and fascinated that there was a zoo in our town. After all, rattlesnakes, ground squirrels, and rabbits could only make a 9-year-old happy for so long. I needed things like lions, and tigers, and bears. I could hardly wait for my mother to take me to the zoo. She very rarely took us, maybe once or twice a year. A kid like me required zoo time at least every other week!

The tigers and lions back then were in cages with concrete floors. They paced back and forth and we sat and stared at them. Who knew back then how cruel that was to animals, and indeed I have forgiven myself for participating in that act of cruelty to animals, still, it never stopped me from being fascinated by the zoo.

The zoo was so basic and simple back then, and when I look back, it was a place for some very fond memories. It was simply magical. I recall little machines that sold you peanuts and you could feed the animals. I loved feeding the monkeys peanuts, and I am sure they loved being fed peanuts as well. I do not recall when they took away the vending machines, but I think I was sad.

My favorite attraction back then, and still remains so, was the otters. I loved watching those little otters swim for what seems like forever or until they tucker out.

A lot has changed. No longer do the lions and panthers live on concrete floors. Though it is not the wild, their habitats have improved. More animals have arrived and there seems to be so much improvement. Some animals have come and gone, and some still remain the same. Things have clearly have changed a great deal; they have a new learning center. They now even serve alcohol at the zoo, at least at the festival of lights, people 21 and over can have hot chocolate and liquor.

So if you have not been to the zoo in a few decades come look at the changes for yourself. If you have been recently, keep going, the animals love the energy don’t you know. They are little show offs…and oh yeah please don’t feed the animals, unless of course, it is cookie-feeding time for the giraffes.

What do you remember about the zoo?

I had a complete computer crash this week. Basically lost everything and have to have the computer set to factory settings. I suppose one can say it really sucked, but instead I would like to say that it gave me time to reflect. I enjoy reflecting on most days. I tend to live my life in the now, but reflecting is a great opportunity to dip into that sweet cookie jar I call life and pull from it tasty tidbits of fond memories. Now that my computer is back up and I am writing again, I looked at a response to an article of someone asking me what an 8-track was, and it got me thinking….

 I was the queen of 8-track tapes. I loved the fact that I could put one of these bulky odd shaped tapes into a player, hit play and never have to worry about it. It was designed to loop over and over and over. So the “album” could play all day and you did not have to do anything but listen. I could play the Beatles or Grand funk and listen for hours and not have to worry about doing anything but

 The 8-track was very popular from about 1965 to the mid 70’s. It was an endless loop tape cartridge that was about 3 times the size of a cassette tape. The main focus on this awkward looking tape cartridge really was about endless loop technology. Of course what would we expect from Bill Lear? He was famous for his Learjet business. So in 1965 Bill said he developed a cartridge with eight tracks and with that he promised to lower the price of recorded tapes without any sacrifice in music quality.

 Alas dear Bill it was easier said then done. This was a “fad” that came and went quickly. There were many reasons for this. One, the tape itself was big and bulky. Not only was the tape big, the parts inside of them were cheaply made and they often broke or fell apart quickly. You needed a special player for it. An 8-track player and boy howdy there were a huge variety of them. They too were big and bulky.

 I think the biggest disadvantage of the 8-track player was that there was no fast forward or rewind. It just played tracks. If you didn’t like a song, you could switch the song, but you could not rewind. For some people like me who listened to music to learn how to play music that was important. Finally let’s face it, I had thousands of 8-tracks, but the music quality sucked.

 That’s right you 8-track fans you know and I know that the sound quality was awful. Still, the fact that it played like the ever-ready bunny was what made it all worth while. Well, that is until the cassette player came out with very high quality sound. For portable devices, I have to say nothing can compare to my I-pod, but growing up, we had no idea how awesome music would one day sound. So for many, the 8-tack did the job. I am not sure what I did with my thousands of 8-tracks, I suspect they are in 8-track heaven, and just as well…my ipod does it for me.

This weekend was my family Christmas gathering. It seems to take weeks to prepare for this mandatory gathering that involves my brother and sister and their offspring. In total there are about 20-22 people that come to this gathering.  Mind you, I come from your typical American dysfunctional family, it’s just that when you look up dysfunctional family in wikipedia my family is the example they use because we are simply that dysfunctional. So imagine a house full of this sort of dysfunction. Ah yes indeed it was what the holidays are made of.  However, in preparing for this holiday function, I began to thinking about Christmas when I was a child and it got me thinking….

 I was raised on a ranch. It was me and my sister for the first 12 years then my parents adopted my brother. By then we were older and Christmas didn’t matter much to us. So my childhood memories of Christmas are mainly of me and my sister. Once upon a time, we both believed in Christmas and Santa. My mother who is a dollar store queen made sure us kids had tons of stuff to unwrap. Back then we did not have dollar stores but she sure could get a lot at the dime stores. She would get us lots of silly little gifts that would end up broken within the first five minutes of playing with it, but it was sure fun to unwrap all those presents.

 My mother used to wrap those dime store gifts and then knock on the front door and run to the back door so we did not see her. My sister and I would open the door to see tons of gifts. My mother would act surprised and say ”Oh look Santa’s elf’s dropped off your gifts so he only has to deliver one on Christmas Eve.” My sister and I bought it hook sink and line. We loved to get the gifts under the tree early because it was just what our special tree needed. Our tree was special because we had an aluminum Christmas tree.

 The aluminum Christmas tree was a type of artificial tree that was popular in the United States from 1958 until about the late 60s. The tree was made of aluminum and had foil needles that illuminated via a rotating color wheel. The trees were first manufactured by a Chicago company called Modern Coatings between 1959 and 1969. In fact most of these aluminum Christmas trees were made in Wisconsin by the Aluminum Specialty Company and in a decade they produced more than one million aluminum trees.

My sister and I would spend the night trying to guess what our presents were. We would then stare at the ceiling as the wheel turned green, red, blue and yellow. We would look at all the shadows and the lights and daydream out loud. It is hard to believe today in our lives that what bonded my sister and I as children was a foil tree with a rotating light.

I still love looking at the aluminum trees for nothing more than the memories that it brings to me. For me, Christmas is a great time to reflect of the magic it offered and the aluminum tree was about as magical as Santa. One of these days I am going to track down an aluminum tree and set it up and turn all the lights off except that rotating color wheel, and reflect once again of how enchanting these little trees really were.

So did you have an aluminum Christmas tree? What is your memory?