Out with the Old, In with the FUTURE

Prepared to watch the New Year's fireworks at Yucca Flats

Happy New Year's Eve my friends, aquaintences, and every body else! Tonight we're watusi-ing at a deadend little grotto I fell upon, Googie's. I suggest you should find time to drop in as well. We'll spin the vinyl on the TeslaTone Plasmatic Music Box featuring a red hot atomic-age selection, with aptly titled tags like 'Radioactive Mama', 'Love Goddess of Venus', 'Fallout Shelter', 'Knocked Out Joint on Mars' and 'Atomic Bomb Blues'. Swingin!

Stay tuned America!

This has been a bulletin from
Atomic Living's Emergency Broadcast System for

Please tune in again - Same Atomic time - same Atomic channel!

Christmas Goes Ultra Modern

Fifty years ago, You could celebrate a Motorola Christmas.

I think I could have handled that quite well ;)

from the flickr collection of x-ray delta one

1961 - Motorola Christmas
Artist- Charles Schridde

One Little Ornament

One little ornament.

It's not very big. It's not fancy. It's not fashioned of blown glass. Nor is it considered to be of much value... except by me. I remember this ornament. It's been a part of every Christmas holiday. For a very long time. As long and as many as I can remember.

The little ornament hung on many real trees and artificial. It hung under the shade of natural green evergreen needles and silver. It was on the tree when carollers came knocking on our front door. And when my Uncle Richard, dressed-up as Santa, scared the daylights out of me so that I hid under the kitchen table and absolutely refused to come back out to claim my gift. In 1968, this little ornament was on the tree as our tiny black and white television transmitted images of astronauts on Christmas Day, orbiting around the moon for the history-making first time.

It was on the family's tree the Christmas I opened my best space toy ever - a Major Matt Mason astronaut action figure and his Star Seeker capsule. It witnessed my first Hot Wheels raceway set, and then a super-charged Sizzlers set. It was already getting old when I received a toy Batmobile all shiny new. And a Houdini magic set. A Cookie Monster hand puppet. And then all those Star Wars toys that came later.

This ornament saw our family temporarily shrink in size after my sister got married and moved out of town, and then grow again with three nieces and a nephew. And it was hanging there for Junior's very first Christmas too.

It hung there, a silent witness through Christmases of both good times and rough. In sickness and in health, 'til death took some away. And since this ornament originally belonged to my Mom, she's in affect still decorating our family Christmas tree.

I wasn't even Five years old. I remember looking at this ornament in wonder at it's simple molded plastic detail. It told a story. Joseph and Mary and the new-born Jesus in the manger. And how well I already knew that story. It's the story of what Christmas is all about.

Yep. She may have not known it, but my Mom sure got her 10 cents worth out of that one little plastic ornament ;)

A Christmas Card for You

Warm Christmas wishes to You
from Junior and your friendly neighborhood Space Commander!

Hoping you take some time to relax and enjoy this special day

Listen to the old favorites of the holidays - Put on the classics

Its okay to let yourself go... and if you can, do it with family and friends
Don't forget, the spirit of Christmas starts within yourself

...and
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

Return of the Christmastime Playlist

Here's my updated retro atomic listening for another holiday season - Enjoy!

Family Christmas Nostalgia

Christmas at B Street, 1950's

Christmas-time at the new house, 1958 or '59 - Bro, Mom, Grandma, Sis & Pepper the dog

Christmas 1969 - Sis & me

The Atomic Christmas in Our House

Junior's home from school sick in bed today, so there's nothing more for me to do than play at a computer in the meantime. Which has one good result -- I can get caught-up on some blogging! Here at the Space Commander residence we're still fixated on creating our Atomic Christmas theme for 2011 and how to bring all that old goodness together with a touch of new. Be warned, today's post might get a bit ranty :)

My color-coordinated tree - aluminum and blue are the swanky colors for this Christmas!

The last time you saw this aluminum tree, it was freshly set-up out of the box. Even without decor these trees are striking. But now it's sprouted ornaments all over! Instead of throwing my usual varied rainbow of vintagey bulbs on the tree, this season it's all gone color-coordinated... more or less... in shades of blue, cobalt, aqua, teal.... whatever. It's all blue to me!

Unfortunately after I had made up my mind to do the coordinated ornaments thing, I was horrified to learn that we barely had a bulb left after sorting out all the non-blues from my accumulated stash. "No problem!" I thought, "I'll run to the store and buy some cheap, plain ornaments to fake out with the real eye-candy!" One by one I'd enter with high hopes and left with broken dreams each store on my shopping list. I had come up empty handed. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to sell me one single, plain lousy bulb that was even remotely blue!

Well, to be fair WalMart had an assortment, but these looked just a bit too post-millenial 2011-ish for my tree. And Menards had a few medium blue ornaments with some dopey graphics that nobody wanted. So naturally I grabbed 'em up to fill out the back of my tree.

But I refuse to compromise any further! Being a somewhat stubborn man who has now become so set in my vision of ideal atomic Christmas tree goodness, I'm now beginning to play around with the idea of using spray paint on some discolored bulbs I had no use for. Hmmmm... that is, if I can only find the right shade of blue paint. Sounds like a plan! :P

Okay, I've done finished my wordy bit now. It's time for the fun part: Space Commander's Show and Tell!

One of the contemporary copies of the classic Atomic Ball Clock hangs over the kitchen entryway

One of Grandma's holiday craft magazines

For the holidays I hauled my Uncle's cedar chest in place of the coffee table to show the family's old nativity. The figures are over 50 years old, they're banged-up, glued and worn (probably due to a very young space commander-in-training) but each and every Christmas they have never failed to take their places.

Always hassling with your greeting cards blown over with each blast of Winter's breath from an open door? Why not try hanging them up instead

My brother rescued this Nativity-themed music box from the trash collection and passed it on to me. It pays to have family with connections!

For some reason Junior thinks we don't have enough stockings hung... just in case Santa is feeling very generous to him this year (yeah, well don't get your hopes up boy!)

Just because it's non-blue doesn't mean it's verboten! I set these ornaments out in a large wooden bowl which Dear Mom had often used for the same purpose.

Have an Aluminum Christmas This Year!

It's the return of Grandma's Regal Sapphire aluminum tree, with the tinsel mechanically attached for that perfect hi-tech look!

Ahhh, all those Christmas seasons that I remember helping Grandma set-up and decorate this very tree. And what a spectacle it was, displayed in the corner of the living room near the kitchen entryway. The color wheel light endlessly casting reflections of red, blue and green, dance on the silvery needles. Soon it would be sheltering a colorful horde of presents, professionally wrapped ones by the retailers too!

When the first aluminum trees burst upon the scene in the 1950's, many people scoffed at the idea, and only treated as a fad by others. But not my Grandma. Unlike the nay-sayers and scoffers who never understood, Grandma "got it." And fortunately for later-comers like me, she still got it well into the 1970's so that I too could honestly claim that I had "gotten it" as well.

Today the Tree made of aluminum tinsel is enjoying renewed acceptance, not so much as a kitschy fad but more and more as trendy stylin'. In fact the trend has been gaining enough momentum that retails have taken notice and have been offering brand new renditions of the metallic icon in a whole host of color variations. What was old is new again!

So here's to you, Grandma and your forward-thinkingness... and thank you for all those memories you made that still keep me going forward today!

25 Days

Twenty-five days 'til Christmas. Less than a month away. Three weeks left.


And I haven't even gotten all the Halloween decorations put away yet.

Ricky Rivets Prepares to Blast Off

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you "Ricky Rivets" the robot. This Halloween my very own Junior is modelling a very vintage trick-or-treating costume, which I happened to win off of eBay earlier this year. And its a perfect fit! "Ricky" is a Collegeville Costume product which from the styling looks typically early 1950's. Junior also models to suit as an optional space ranger uniform. The red "Rocket Patrol Space Police" cap with rotating propellor (for providing maximum thrust during police hover craft chases) is another vintage find. It came from a local antique shop, still with it's original price tag of only 15 cents attached.

I could be slightly biased, but doesn't the little man look all spiffy in his improvised uniform? Enough to make any space commanding Pop proud!

(My apologies for this post coming to you a tad bit late for the holiday.... but better late than never)

Happy All Hallow's Eve

May you have a Happy All Hallow's Eve!

If you'll please pardon me for not staying longer, but I have a date with the very bewitching Miss Veronica Lake... or at least I can dream of it while watching her starring role in 1942's fantasy comedy flick "I Married a Witch", directed by René Clair, with Fredric March,
and Robert Benchley.

Sa-woooon!

Auld Lang Syne

Make it Merry and Happy

1950s_new_years_eve_party_2-1, originally uploaded by ashleyclaire617.

...And Loud!

Mix it, Shake it and Stir it Up

"Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 often sung to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight.

The song's Scots title may be translated into English literally as "old long since", or more idiomatically, "long long ago","days gone by" or "old times". Consequently "For auld lang syne", as it appears in the first line of the chorus, is loosely translated as "for (the sake of) old times", presumably reflecting a common Middle Germanic/low Scots root; " Vor Alte Lange Zeit" (And thanks to Wikipedia for finally answering all my questions of what the term really means).

3... 2... 1... Happy New Year!

Ho Hum... But in a Good Way

It's another anti-climatic day after. For some perhaps Santa delivered the gifts that you wanted, and some of us had to settle instead with new underwear. I can't complain. A year ago we were buried under 10 inches of the white stuff with temps never climbing much higher than Zero. I'm basking in a heat wave of 27 degrees today :D Woohooo!

The holiday verdict for this year is that the oversized live Christmas tree was a winner! You don't need to have the aluminum tinsel or plastic white tree to feel Atomic (though there's nothing wrong with those choices either!).


Sure the live tree dropped needles and dried up to being dangerously combustible. And I don't know what was up with the lights. After all 20 boxes of bulbs were finally hung, one light set blew out. I fixed it, then it went out again. And then it took another string along with it. I'd already bruised a rib from shoving the storage boxes back up in the attic with the extra lights. So our tree stood there with a burnt out middle on Christmas.

Family heirlooms on the tree

And for some reason real honest-to-goodness tinsel is impossible to find around here. I tried the new-fashioned non-toxic plastic which the shops were selling instead - it reminds me more of Easter grass than icicles on the tree. Phooie! Next year I'll buy up all the tinsel in July if I have to! But despite all my decorative shortcomings and dead needles on the floor, our Scotch Pine was a cheerful sight to behold and was indeed the loveliest tree seen in this atomic home in years!

Junior did great in the Sunday School Christmas play (and reminded me just how big he's getting now). He'd gotten off easy though. After all when "I" was a kid, we had to dress up in uncomfortable robes and home-made costumes and recite entire speeches before the audience. There was nothing like the gnawing dread I had leading up to the night of the play. It would be begin the day that my teacher would hand me a strip of paper with about 200 lines and tell me to memorize it all. And as I got older and graduated from a Shepherd to a Wise Man, my part became even bigger, with singing even.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown!!

The night of the Christmas play, the building was all dark except for the stage, and one by one we'd take our turns and stand before the crowd of family and friends and all those strange faces we didn't know stretching back in the pews as far as we could see. I don't remember too much of taking the stage, after I started to open my mouth... it was all a blur. Then suddenly it would be all over, just like that. The organ music would play and I'd feel a tremendous weight lifted. I was FREE! Then we'd scamper off downstairs to dig in to the homemade fudge and sugar cookies and punch. And before we went home we'd each be given a paper bag filled with peanuts in the shell and Christmas candy and more fudge.

After the end of his play, Junior ran off downstairs with his fellow actors and dug into the cookies and fudge and fruit punch in those little white Styrofoam cups. He got his gift bag of peanuts and candy too. And it's kind of comforting to know that despite all the drastic changes made in this world over just a short few decades of my own lifetime, that some things and some traditions remain the same.

Now the Atomic-powered bachelor pad household has made it through another Christmas season. Now lets get ready to bring in a new year.

A Merry Atomic Christmas to You

- to all of You and Your's this joyous time of year!

Finally It's Christmas!

Brother and sis posing with their new toys from Santa. And there's that brand new electric robot I told you so much about before.

Looking Up for Ol' St. Nick

I think he's worried whether Santa's got enough clearance down our chimney...

Under the Christmas Tree - The Gift Pile Grows

Christmas' Long Long Ago

Brother and Sis under a very modest tree back when the family used to rent a small place near downtown, before moving to the suburbs.

And here's a rare Christmastime shot with me, about 15 years later after the fam had moved to the burbs.