The tourists are sailing in on cruise ships down by Canada Place, experiencing the amazing water-front view of Vancouver. The north shore mountains, an incredible clear blue, and the spectacular architecture across the bough on the north.
What a feeling for the first time that must be, seeing this city, named after a captain. No doubt some of us immigrants as kids felt something similar after sliding under the Lions Gate Bridge, many moons ago. On that occasion, likely, the only skyscraper was the Marine Building, built, if memory serves correctly, during the depression era or there-abouts.
I remember, perhaps two decades ago, standing on a rooftop of, I believe, the luxurious Park Place on Burrard, totally, but fortunately not literally, blown away, with a camera trying to record a good postcard view on Kodak Ektachrome slide film. The only building that seemed familiar from that vantage point was the rooftop that once housed the Vancouver Sun newspaper, way, way down below. That dwarfed structure is still standing and reminds me of the Daily Planet and that mild-mannered character known as Clark Kent who would turn into Superman in a tele-phone booth.
Today, when was the last time you saw a telephone booth? Some of us seniors still relish those days of comic books and watching that new innovation called ‘television’. Today some of us have to ‘cut the mustard’ watching grandchildren glued to their iPhones. Thus, the following rhyme and song.
I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best.
Eve Arden in Our Miss Brooks.
When, with plenty of derision in his voice would say, “Miss Brooks!”
The actor who played the school principal, Conklin, that’s right, you guessed.
Us kids also loved to read all those great comic books like Donald Duck, Gene Autry, and Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu, the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy.
If your folks owned a twenty-four inch black and white tv screen, wow, that was huge!
Some of us seniors still have the capacity remembering the “Hawaya, Hawaya,” of Arthur Godfrey and up here as Ed Sullivan used to say, “Tonight way up in ‘Canader’,” the comedy team of Wayne and Schuster, and anybody still recall on their tube radios enjoying the Happy Gang on CBC.
“Well, come on in,” and “Yup” as Gary Cooper used to say, down in Hollywood South, ‘Thems’ the way, I reckon, the way things were.
Meanwhile, here’s some more local nostalgia and ‘pun-ishment’, through rhyme.
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