Nostalgia Nirvana in Daydreaming on the Porch

I found it: Nostalgia Road: The place to go for all my 50s through 80s nostalgia needs. This site is amazing, and it keeps adding new videos about iconic and very familiar pop culture institutions from when I was a teenager in the Sixties to my forative years in the 70s and 80s.

When the World Wide Web came along in the mid 90’s, I recall being fascinsted by all the popular culture Websites, something I have been intetested in, whether I called it that or not, since I was old enough to know what the word “nostalgia” meant.

This site illustrates exactly what I’m talking about.

https://libguides.timberlane.net/c.php?g=464885

Nostalgia is defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” That describes me perfectly. Back in the mid 70s I was all sentimental about the songs I loved in the 60s, and even 50s Top 100 Billbosrd hits I never had listened to much except later when I could really appreciate how good they were.

So it is with immense delight thst I came across Recollection Road on YouTube not too long ago.

Recollection Road on YouTube
https://youtube.com/c/RecollectionRoad

Here’s a quick summary of some of my favorite places and cultural icons from the 50s - 70s:

My mom’s favotire grocery store for awhile after we moved to out new house in suburbia in 1961 was the A&P. I remember going shopping with her and how long it took.

My favorite dime store was TG&Y where I would spend my allowance money, and later some of my lawn mowing earnings.

But, I also loved Woolworth’s wherever they were located. The huge store on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans was always packed in the Sixties. I enjoyed eating at their luncheonette where I can recall getting a dinner plate with roast chicken, mashed potatoes and string beans, if that was the special of the day. Other times it would be the hamburger platter. I loved the crinkle cut French fries.

Back when I was 17 my favorite burger was the Burger King Whopper, hands down. I’d be ravenous during my short break as a movie theater usher and rush next door for a huge, juicy broiled Whopper, exta mayo, please.

I don’t know what I would have done without Swanson TV dinners back in the day. I clearly remember some of the early ones in aluminum trays that contained an entree such as fried chicken, salisbury steak or meatloaf, potatoes and a vegetable, usually corn or mixed vegetables. Convenient, but they took much longer to cook than today’s 5-10 microwave dinners. It was 30 minutes at 350 degrees in the oven.

When I was traveling around the country in the 80s, I was always on a budget as I didnt have much money back then. Motel rooms in general were pretty reasonable back then, averaging around $35 a night. But the rates at Motel 6, which had simple, barebones rooms and were clean and comfortable, could not be beat at prices ranging from 16.95 to 23.95 a night.

If we had to stop for the night on our 800-mile drive to my aunt’s house where we spent summer vacations when I was a kid, Mom and Dad usually chose a nice Holiday Inn. This was exciting for a 12-year-old kid, especially trips to the ice machine. I loved those small bars of motel soap, too. Holiday Inn’s also had pretty good restaurants. Now they’re called Holiday Inn Express.

My favorite restaurant in the 70s and 80s was Shoney’s, with Denny’s as a close second, mainly because of their unbeatable Grand Slam breakfasts, which I’d have on many special mornings at 5 am when I was traveling.

But Shoney’s has the best memories for me because my best friends and I during the 70s would head there for dinner, followed by one of their very special desserts, either the strawberry pie or the hot fudge cake. I’d often get the Quarter Pounder Sirloin dinner with fries and a salad. Delicious. But the best thing about Shoney’s, by far, was the huge breakfast buffet. It had every imaginable breakfast item, and was a buffet-glutton’s paradise. At this buffet I can confess that I truly overdid it, but who could help that? Muffins, scrambled eggs, French toast, biscuits, ham, sausage links and patties, hash browns, pancakes, fresh friit, bagels, cinnamon buns. Was their nothing this buffet didn’t have?

In the 50s and 60s I remember with much fondness Howard Johnson’s restaurants, they of the 28 flavors of ice cream. My favorite was coffee or maybe it was pistacio. There was a HoJo in Tallahassee, Fla., that my dad always stopped at for lunch on our way to summer vacation in South Carolina. We three kids were stiff and tired from five hours of driving, stuffed in the back seat of our reliable Oldsmobile Delta 88. After stretching, we headed through the doors of the restaurant with the famous orange roofs. We relished the chance to have a nice meal at a restaurant, something we rarely ever did back in my childhood. My favorite food, of course, was their world-famous fried clams, which I would dunk in tartar sauce. So fine!

Let’s see. After all this it’s time to settle in and watch another nostalgic video from Recollection Road. I’ve already ordered their t-shirt.

Last updated June 03, 2021