Dumbo and me
Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with some thing referred to as a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an occasion where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the equal day. The subject matter for this spherical of the Blog Off is "What one factor did you actually need whilst you have been a child?"
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When I was a wee lad, my most prized possession was an LP and an accompanying story book of Disney's Dumbo. I played that LP to the point of wearing it out on a portable RCA record player. I would listen to the story (it was essentially the soundtrack to Disney's 1941 movie) and read along in my story book and be transported.
Here's a replica of my vintage LP I found on eBay.
What got me more than some thing became the introduction to the Disney story e book. One of the primary illustrations in it was this map of Florida.
It appeared so distinct and peaceful. Palm bushes had been something my Pennsylvania young self may want to best see in books and I longed to live in an area wherein they grew. Even as a kid I loathed iciness and I ached to stay in an area where it did not exist.
The house I grew up in became no longer a TV sort of area. In reality, we failed to get our first coloration set till I became heading into high faculty. I become a very cherished and really valued member of a huge family. We had a huge house and a large backyard, something my brothers and I have been charged with preserving. Between all of the stuff we did outdoor, homework and the tomfoolery inherent while there are six boys under one roof, watching TV by no means truly figured into our lives very a good deal.
However, the entirety else we have been doing stopped on Sunday nights at seven o'clock. A lot of humans analyzing this can be too younger to keep in mind what Sundays at seven on NBC meant. But to the ones of us of a certain age, Sunday nights supposed this:
(The actual intro starts at :20) That's right, The Wonderful World of Disney. In a time before DVDs and DVRs, most of us saw the classic Disney films on The Wonderful World of Disney. They never failed to enthrall me, even though I saw them on a black and white TV.
I observed the intro to Dumbo. Watch it earlier than Disney yanks it off of YouTube.
At one factor in the ones years somewhere inside the Sixties and 1970s Old Walt himself delivered the arena to his imaginative and prescient of Disney World on a Sunday night time all through a telecast of The Wonderful World of Disney, some thing he was making plans to construct in in which else however Florida.
I somehow knew better than to want to go to Disney World when I was a kid. We took our vacations in rural Canada, something I loved as much as I loved life itself and to miss that was unthinkable. Even at six or seven or eight, I knew that the Florida thing was going to have to wait.
However the die was cast some time around 40 years ago. Even then, I knew that some day I would call Florida home. As exasperating as life and times can be in this banana republic sometimes, every time I walk out the front door I see palm trees that I grow myself. It doesn't matter what our ridiculous governor is doing, I sink my feet in the sand and watch the sun setting over the Gulf of Mexico any time I think to walk on the beach at the end of the day. So what that our grandstanding legislature practically insists the world is flat, I have palms and parrots and geckos and 75 degree January afternoons.
Every time I hear the wild parrots squawking or hear the thump of a ripe coconut falling I remember back to a time when all of this was unthinkably exotic. I remember back to a childhood lived out in the rolling farmlands of Pennsylvania and I just smile to myself because when it's all said and done, I got what I wanted.
So to speak to this week's Blog Off topic, what I desired extra than something after I was a child become to steer the lifestyles I lead nowadays as a middle-aged guy. I toy with leaving this part of the arena all of the time. Some small part of me stays essentially attached to the northeast US. However the fingers, the sand, the parrots and the geckos make me want to stick around for just a little at the same time as longer.
And there you have it. My adolescence myth, found out. What about you?
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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's posts. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here .
As the day progresses, a list of participating bloggers will appear here. Check out how everybody participating tackled this topic.