Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Sept. 17, 2012

That was the year that was



Today may not mean a lot to you, but is a very important day for me. It is the day after Marilyn's and my wedding anniversary. In forty-five years I have never once forgotten our anniversary, because loving, sensitive husbands understand just how important these things are to their wives, and also because years ago I read of a man in Topeka, Kansas, who forgot his anniversary and was repaid for this slight oversight when his wife super glued his nostrils together while he was sleeping.

Marilyn and I were married on September 16, 1967, in the First Baptist Church of Troy, Michigan. My dad performed the ceremony, and wished Marilyn “good luck” afterward. She was not sure what he meant by that, but she did appreciate the sentiment. That was back before throwing bird seed became fashionable, so we got rice. Four pounds of Uncle Ben's Converted Rice, still in the boxes. After the reception we headed off on our great honeymoon adventure, which involved driving some 25 miles to Windsor, Ontario, and spending the night in a motel. I don't remember much about the motel, except that it was not far from the Windsor Regional Airport, and there was a NO PETS sign in the lobby. The next day we drove back to Michigan. Three years later we celebrated our anniversary by returning to Windsor (we were still on a very tight budget). This time, however, we visited the renowned Elmwood Casino, and enjoyed a spectacular show by that fabulous singer who was kind of a combination of Elvis, Boy George, and Ethel Merman–Tiny Tim. For those of you who don't remember him, Tiny Tim was a scraggly-haired ukulele player whose high falsetto voice gave younger audience members a good laugh, and gave the oldsters serious bladder problems. To his credit, Tiny put on an excellent show that night. That could have been because “Miss Vicki,” whom he'd recently married on The Tonight Show, was in the audience. She was seated a few tables away from us, and appeared to have something in her eye. It may have been her cocktail umbrella.

But I digress. 1967 was the year Marilyn and I got married, and it was also the year for some other notable events. For example:

• The very first Super Bowl, known, oddly enough, as Super Bowl I, was played by the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs on January 15. The winner was the Budweiser commercial, with a 93 percent approval rating and a 14 percent gain in sales.

• The Detroit riots broke out in July of that year, due to the fact that Detroit was long overdue for some riots and it was high time they had some. They were not particularly successful riots, so they adjourned and reconvened the following year in places like Washington, D.C. and Chicago, where a good time was had by all.
• In 1967, the average price of a gallon of gas was 33 cents. Many service stations in larger cities had what we used to call “gas wars,” competitively dropping prices. At one point, the Clark station where I worked dropped their price to 2 cents a gallon and gave away a ceiling fan and a book of S&H Green Stamps with each twenty-gallon purchase. I did not work there for long, due to bankruptcy. Mine. They were charging me a dollar an hour to work there.

• There were some great movies out in 1967, including "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Graduate", "Cool Hand Luke", and "In the Heat of the Night". There were also fourteen or fifteen Elvis movies, with names like "Clam Chowder Elvis", "Wiener Roast Elvis", "Ride the Wild Elvis", and "Beach Blanket Elvis". Not to be outdone, Roy Orbison actually made a movie that year called "The Fastest Guitar Alive'. I think it was a Western. There was also "Mars Needs Women", "Hot Rods to Hell", and an early biker flick called "Hells Angels on Wheels", starring Jack Nicholson.

• On TV there was perhaps the very worst TV show ever, "The Flying Nun", starring Sally Field as Sister Betrille of the Sisters of Perpetual Motion. Unlike the other sisters in the convent who were regulation-sized sisters, Sister Betrille could fly like a pelican due to her diminutive size and her starched nun headpiece. I believe she was also fitted with a tail rudder, that allowed her to catch a breeze and swoop down onto the beach when she spotted an unsightly beer can or a dead carp and put it into her luggage compartment. At least I think that's what it was about.

• Music in 1967 would strike most kids today as hilarious, although if you were young at the time you took it very seriously. There were some great songs, like "Penny Lane" by the Beatles, "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie, and "Funky Broadway" by Wilson Pickett. And then again there were groups with goofy names like Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Blues Magoos, The Electric Prunes, The Troggs, and The Cowsills. And there were songs with names like "Groovin'", which was something cool cats all did back then, even when they weren't sure what it was they were doing. And then there was "Ode to Billie Joe", about a girl and her boyfriend who tossed something off a bridge after church one night, and shortly thereafter Billie Joe jumped in to retrieve it and drowned. The rest of the song was about the whole family having a very meaningful discussion around the table about questions like “What do you reckon got into that boy, anyhow?” and “Kin ye pass the biscuits, Mirandy?” By the winter of '67, everyone was speculating about whether what they tossed off that bridge was a sack full of cats, a radio, or a lyricist. This song remained the single most annoying song of all time until MacArthur Park, a two hour song about a soggy sponge cake, came out in the spring of 1968.


Marilyn and I even had our own song back then. OUR song was "Brown Eyed Girl", by Van Morrison. I think it had something or other to do with slipping and sliding around a water fountain after an old man with a transistor radio, but I was never real clear on the lyrics. Regardless, it was our song because she said so, and who am I to argue with a woman who carries super glue in her purse?