BoomerZoo Almanac for February 18-24: Hail to the Chief Sales Event!

Most Boomers will remember that we used to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12—the actual anniversary of that event—and George Washington’s birthday on February 22 (ditto). That was before the retailers and government employees collectively decided they could smoosh these days together to invent a three-day weekend sales event.

Washington’s birthday was a special holiday for those of us who grew up in state. Get it? state, Washington’s birthday. There’s a definite relationship there. So, when I was in junior high, a friend of mine would host a Washington’s birthday party every year. Her parents were trusting souls and frequently let our gang of 12-14 year olds loose in their basement rec room unsupervised. I think the only thing we destroyed were a few reputations, but still! Pretty amazing, even for the mid-1960s.

I was in charge of baking the birthday cake one year, so I made it more or less in the shape of George’s profile, and iced it appropriately. I was so pleased with the result that I started inventing other odd-shaped or colored cakes.

One time I was working on a cake with a round purple base layer and a square orange upper layer (the purpose for using these colors escapes me now), and the icing was too runny, so the top layer kept sliding off to one side or the other. As my frustration level grew—and 13-year-olds can get VERY frustrated, as you know—my older sister began to taunt me. Oh, man, did I ever get mad. I chased her into the living room and gave her a big shove. Oops! Right through the window!

OK, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t a picture window, and it was covered by a fairly heavy drape (I think my mother kept them closed all the time, so the neighbors wouldn’t be too terrified when they saw what was going on inside), and they were double-paned windows, which in those days meant two completely separate windows with about a four-inch space between them. So my sister was fine, but another window was gone.

I gotta say we were fortunate in that my brother’s best friend’s dad owned a glass shop. Wonder if that’s how they got to be friends?