Sesame Street Live

Sesame Street, on PBS, had been entertaining children for more than a decade before mine were born. Even the roadshows pre-date my kids, who are now in their mid-thirties.

In January 1986, we took our children to Sesame Street LIVE!  The venue was the Coliseum at Wichita. What I remember is that it was expensive. We couldn't help but notice that most of the adults were grandparents treating the kiddos to the show. 

Our seats were lousy.  They were on the left-hand side of the arena at floor level.  

When it was time for the show, all the performers ran through the audience on their way to the stage. Now our seats were fantastic.  Grover patted my two-year-old daughter on the hand.  WOW!
Daddy didn't have his camera ready.  👎

The theme of the show was Save Our Street.  
Here is a link to the commercial:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqPve_oUmM

The colors faded after 30 years in the scrapbook.

Mr. Meanie was threatening to tear down Sesame Street to make way for a parking lot. An animated sign lit up at the audience response to a vote on the question.









The kids loved Oscar Grouch, and their grandma made a penny bank at ceramics class.
























 


The clothes hamper was the perfect place to pretend to be in the Grouch Can.

Love of all things Sesame Street extended to eating utensils. Now their children think they are fun to eat with when they come to this grandma's house.

HOUSE RULES

My Dad's family was crazy for two things: fishing and card games.  The fishing lure (pun intended) skipped a generation with me. I still enjoy a rousing game of 10 point pitch or Aggravation.

I learned to count and add with Dominos. As soon as my brother and I had learned the rudiments of the game with Double Sixes, Dad graduated us to Double Nines. The only indication we ever got from him that we had accidentally played a tile that scored was if he asked if we wanted that count. When we got older, we learned to watch him like a hawk because he would claim he scored when he hadn't or write down 25 points when he had only made 10 or 15.

When we played Aggravation, which was already a fast-paced game, we discovered it would move a lot faster if every player had his own set of dice, instead of waiting for the preceding player to politely pass them on. 🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲

Here are the House Rules for board games.



 Rule One:  Watch Dad.  He Cheats.

Rule Two: Don't let your playing pieces roll off the table.  All other players may move their pieces at warp speed until you get back to the table.  If your playing piece/s roll/bounce into the floor furnace, you are out of the game.

Rule Three: Don't repeat any words Dad said.





A genius invented 10-point pitch. There are an astronomical number of combinations of hands that can be dealt. The human element of players and their bids increase the combinations to an unfathomable level.

House Rules for card games are a little different.

Rule Four: The object of the game is not to win.  The goal is to keep my dad from winning. Period.

Rule Five: If you are in the hole (have a negative score) and shoot the moon (a bid worth 20), and make the bid, you lack 1 point of getting out of the hole. This is a time-honored tradition dating back to the day my grandfather proclaimed the rule when my Dad and my aunt were kids.
Just FYI, going SET means not making your bid. If you bid 7 and fail to get 7 points, you go SET. 7 points are taken off your running score. That's how you can be IN THE HOLE. 

This looks like a good hand. I'm a cautious player. I'd bid 6 in Spades and hope my partner had some trumps. I know people who would bid the maximum 10 on these cards. Why not go crazy and shoot the moon?

Mom and Dad belonged to a card club for about 50 years. They met once a month at alternating homes. In the early years, the host couple gave out prizes for high, low and the Galloper.  If you bid 7 and made it, you wrote your name on the Galloper prize. Whoever had their name on it the most, took it home at the end of the evening. In case of a tie, they drew for high card. Most of the prizes were white elephants, especially low prize. When the lottery was legalized, $2 tickets became popular prizes. 

My folks taught my kids to play pitch when they got big enough to hold the cards. I think my daughter was about twelve before she caught on to what 'going set' meant. We thought it was odd that she didn't react to losing points. One day it hit her that every time she or her partner went set, they lost that many points.  "WHAT!!" she shrieked. After that, when someone lost a hand, my Dad would mimic her.

I told one of my Dad's friends what a low-down cheat he had been when my brother and I were kids.  
"You learned to pay attention to the game, didn't you?" he said.