I Know Something Good About You

I Know Something Good About You

Wouldn't this old world be better
If the folks we meet would say, "I know something good about you!"
And then treat us just that way?

Wouldn't it be fine and dandy If each handclasp warm and true
Carried with it this assurance, "I know something good about you!"

Wouldn't life be lots more happy, if the good that's in us all
Were the only thing about us' that folks bothered to recall?

Wouldn't life be lots more happy, If we praised the good we see? -
For there's such a lot of goodness in the worst of you and me.

Wouldn't it be nice to practice that fine way of thinking, too?-
You know something good about me! I know something good about you!

-Author Unknown

I found this poem and thought what a classic and positive way to view Life.

Enjoy

Your Classic Guy

A Tribute to Etta James

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that. ~Etta James~


• NAME: Etta James
• OCCUPATION: Singer
• BIRTH DATE: January 25, 1938
• DEATH DATE: January 20, 2012
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Los Angeles, California





Etta James was singer who crossed many genres of music including blues, R&B, rock and roll, soul gospel and jazz.

For me she captured the blues with all the melancholy and sadness that comes from deep down in all of us at some time in life. Even her signature song At Last has to go down as one of the greatest vocals ever. At Last always struck me to be kind of a paradox. It is a love song; a romantic song but it has that blues undertone. It is magical and many a sweethearts danced to this song and a spell was cast over them. Maybe it was because it touched that place where the blues and hope meet.

I encourage every one to listen to more of Etta James and her song style and see for yourself how it moves you. She was a great singer. She will be missed. She was a classic woman.

Bowling in the 50's Part I

Bowling in the Fifties

Going to a bowling alley is a fun experience. It's an auditory experience as the spinning ball hits the wooden floor of the alley and moments later you hear that thunder sound of the pin exploding apart when the ball strikes them.

Or that dead sound of a gutter ball. There are the lights and the cheers when someone gets a strike. It’s about family and it’s about dates and couples, bowling leagues and friends. Today bowling alleys have incorporated more high tech gadgetry to entertain us which reflects our modern world.

Let’s go back to The Fabulous Fifties when bowling really took off as a sport and a place to socialize. A bowling alley or bowling center played a roll whether it was in the city or a rural area or new suburban towns that grew out of the post-World War II housing boom for the returning vets.

The post-World War II housing boom created a new kind of a neighborhood where people could go with shared interests. What grew out of those neighborhoods were bowling leagues and even more casual bowling evenings out with neighbors

It was a gathering place where parents knew there children would be safe.

Neighbors could get together weekly to get a night out and be adults. I think the unions had an influence on the popularity of bowling leagues. It became a place for men to go to have fun together instead of just work together

Bowling alleys were much different prior to the 1951 and the game was revolutionized when the new AMF Pinspotters came out. To a little boy in the early fifties they must have looked like robots from the science fiction magazines of the day.

But to understand the impact of that machine on a little boy of that time let’s go back a bit further to the Fabulous Forties.

If you had been on the north side of Chicago at that time for example, you might have walked into a bowling alley and waited while they woke up the ‘pinboy’ to set the pins up for you to play.

Bowling wasn't as popular and might have had only one pinboy in the place. It would have cost you 25 cents per game and 10 cents for the shoes. The bowling alley might have been a place for men to get together to drink and bet on how many pins might be knocked down. It was a different atmosphere not your family atmosphere as you might think of in the 50’s or even today.

Here’s a little bit of business history. In 1951 AMC introduced a pinsetter. AMF stands for the American Machine Foundry Co. In the 1940’s the company manufactured automated cigarette machine and baking, and stitching machines After World War II ended, the son of the founder Mr. Patterson decided that in order for the company to grow he had to search for new products. He came across a crude prototype of an automatic bowling-pin setter. He purchased the patent rights and with work and modification AMF perfected the AMF Pinspotter, and brought it to the market in 1951/52. No longer did an owner of a bowling alley have to rely on "pinboys.". This invention helped turn bowling into one of the most popular American sports to participate in and to compete competitively too.
Now organized, with agreed-upon standards, the game grew in popularity.
In the 1950’s that new medium television embraced bowling and the game's popularity grew even more. NBC's was the first network to cover bowling with "Championship Bowling". Coverage proliferated with shows like "Make That Spare,", "Celebrity Bowling", and "Bowling for Dollars."

ABC in 1961 began to telecast bowling competition of the Pro Bowlers Association and it became one of ABC sports most popular watched shows. I remember my father watching that weekly.

Today bowling has fallen victim to the competition and promotions of other sports conglomerates the most popular is football. And there is the internet, activities such as on-line gaming, social networks that now compete for our time and have diminished the popularity of bowling.

The 1950’s also brought a futuristic and exotic themed architecture to the bowling centers of that time and it added to the whole appeal of bowling’s popularity.

The bowling alley is another part of vanishing Americana that has fallen on hard times in recent years In Southern California with skyrocketing land values the large parcels land have become attractive to developers and many of these centers have been torn down and replaced with malls or parking lots or more speculative developments. These classic centers are threatened with

extinction. Luckily there are community groups and preservationist groups that are trying to save these gathering disappearing from our landscape and our collective memory.

Bowling was part of the Fabulous Fifties that spoke to the growth of suburban American. It was connected to the new broadcast medium called television. It was about community and having fun with friends, neighbors and family. It’s still a great activity that way today. Give it a try. Maybe have a 50’s bowling party. What fun it could be.

It's A Wonderful Life

Well the holidays are done. Before we say goodbye to them I’d like to write about one of my holiday favorite movies; It’s A Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra. This story which can be taken on so many levels seems to speak also about today’s world.

If you have never seen this film it is a bittersweet post-WWII war tale of an earnest and good man George Bailey (James Stewart) who lives in a small town Bedford Falls. George wants to get out of that small town and makes his fortune in the world. Well through a series of events out of his control George does the better thing for others including taking over his fathers Building and Loan which is for the good of a whole town. George struggles against Potter (Lionel Barrymore) a greedy banker and business man. Potter controls real estate, the Bank, stores the whole town and keeps the towns people without a way to better themselves.

George eventually marries Mary (Donna Reed) a loving and stand-behind-your-man kind of woman and has several children. He manages to keep the Building and Loan afloat, even through the harrowing days of the Depression. By the conniving hand and manipulation of Potter, George is wrongfully accused of mishandling funds and faces bankruptcy, scandal and even possible imprisonment. Despondent, he is about to take his own life, but the people who love him have been praying for him, so God sends an angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), to prevent his fatal act. When George states, "I wish I was never born," Clarence shows him what life in the town and elsewhere would be like had that been the case.

The ending is better seen than words can do but George learns that his life has had a purpose and his efforts have made the lives of others better. The town rallies around George supporting him collectively with their small and big donations and by extension supporting their own town and themselves and Clarence the angel earns his angel wings.

There are lots of themes and morals that underscore this movie. But I thought Generation X and Y and even the Baby Boomers could use a brief history on the importance of the Savings and Loan and what it meant for the average American because Potter represents one kind of American and George represents another kind.

Building and Loans.

You now live in an American where only one-third of the Americans owned a home and they were the wealthy. Your annual income might be $1500, maybe up to $2,200.00 if you were a white collar accountant. You are paying rent to live in marginal housing so you borrow the money to buy your own house which might be about $7000.00.

The situation you face is that you are only paying interest on the money and in five years you have to pay back the entire loan amount. As such, many people were either perpetually in debt in a continuous cycle of refinancing their home purchase, or they lost their home through foreclosure when they were unable to make the balloon payment at the end of the term of that loan.

Now a man like George Bailey has a Building and Loan Association and they specialize in accepting savings deposit and then taking the money and lending it back to the people in the community. You have an association of people who live and work in the same place lending money to the same people. They are often called mutual savings banks meaning the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights and have the ability to direct the financial AND managerial goals of the Building and Loan.

So you have an organization run locally for the benefit of the local community and not to make profits for a faceless corporation and bring large bonuses for executives that live elsewhere - not a bad concept.

Now at last you have a chance of ownership and knowing if you are consistent and pay your mortgage at sometime in the future you will not have to pay rent to anyone.

The 1950’s were the hay days of the building and loan associations using their 3-6-3 policy. The idea was to pay 3% interest for deposits and charge 6% on a thirty year mortgage with monthly amortization payments and be out playing golf by three o’clock every day.

The 1950’s saw a building boom to meet the new demand for housing cause by the swell in new families.

The building and loans of George Bailey helped create the stability for what would become the halcyon days that were the 1950’s.

In the movie George represent one kind of America where people could prosper, raise a family, and build a nest egg for their retirement years while Potter’s America people lived in debt, families and individuals lived pay check to pay check with nothing for their later years.

Yes I know this is a simple view of the economy. The point is It’s A Wonderful Life does give us a slice of the economic times of the 30’s, 40’s which became the Fabulous 50’s. The movie is more than a story about hard economic times but next time you watch the scene where there is a run a the local town bank and then on George’s building and loan, listen to how George explains what he does and how it benefits the whole town of Bedford Falls. It’s brief but entertaining economic lesson that we might learn some lesson for ourselves today.

If you want to read more about Building and Loans try these links:

http://www.answers.com/topic/building-and-loan-associations#ixzz1hxRGM0bn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_association