Tag Archives: 1973

Wasn’t Me

So a chain of 600 pubs went bankrupt and I know why. If you’re selling beer and you call yourself Thank God its Friday, that will resonate with thirsty tired working people, and you’re going to be popular. If you change your name to Thank Goodness its Friday you’re starting to wimp, and that’s not a good sign. If you then wimp it down to TGI Friday’s (what!!?) you’ve lost the plot IMO. Beer sales will steadily decline over a period of about 58 years and there’ll be financial trouble.

So TGI Friday’s went bust cos they were no longer Thank God its Friday. That, and probably also that apostrophe.

Back in 1973 they very much were Thank God its Friday, and we patronised them because that sounded like a great name. It was a special night for me cos I had been drinking beer illegally for a long time and TONIGHT I was about to have my first legal beer, thus wiping clean all past transgressions like good Catholics do. Or like bad Catholics do? I’d be getting Absolution, anyway.

In the ole Vrystaat where very little is actually vry the legal age to have a pint was 18 and I was 17 when I left for America after a few years of practicing drinking beer under sustained peer pressure. That’s my story anyway. I landed up in Oklahoma where I turned 18, but that didn’t help much. The beer was Coors light, only 3.2%, but the legal drinking age was 21. That summer Katie and family took me to Louisiana which was also 21. I had to (or should have) continue to drink feeling guilty.

Larry then drove down from upstate New York and fetched me from Shreveport in his light grey VW Beetle and we drove north through Arkansas, where we might have enjoyed a beer, but the legal age was still 21, so sadly (right! actually merrily) I was also breaking the law then.

But Missouri! Now Missouri was an 18 state and in Springfield MO we needed a beer after a long day’s drive and so we repaired to Thank God its Friday. I had my passport in my pocket, looking forward to proving I was ‘of age,’ but as always the bouncer just waved me through. I’ve never been skatted younger than I am.

So there I had a pint or two with Larry who had poured beers down my throat (me protesting) when I was an innocent fourteen year old lad back in 1969 when he was sent from wicked New York to corrupt the innocent ous in Harrismith, Vrystaat.

After that they stopped calling it Thank God its Friday and soon after – in 2024 – they went belly-up.

Cause and effect, see?

~~oo0oo~~

Damn, now Hooters has gone bust! The world sure is changing when even showing cleavage to old okes can’t sell beer!

In this case I may carry a bit of guilt. Never did go to Hooters. Felt to me like exploitation. Also, there wasn’t one nearby.

vry – free, mahala

mahala – free

skatted – estimated; collective noun: A bout of estimations (thanks Terry)

ous – young gentlemen

‘My’ Oklahoman Tornado

In Apache Oklahoma in 1973 I lived with the charismatic funeral home owner, fire chief, ambulance driver, hearse driver and tornado alert man, Robert L Crews III. In the funeral home. While I was there we sounded the siren for tornadoes twice and watched them approach. Once we even went down into the basement as it came so close. But both times it went back up into the clouds – didn’t touch ground. The clouds that day:

ApacheOK73 (7).JPG

In May we heard of the Union City disaster. We drove there to look-see. The image that stuck the most in my mind was the main street with many buildings completely gone. One shop had some shelves still standing – with product on the shelves – but the roof and walls were gone.

I found this recently:
Union City Tornado Makes History
NSSL revisits its past as it celebrates 40 years with NOAA – by Rachel Shortt

Tornado Union City 1973   Tornado Union City 1973 Path 17km path

On May 24, 1973, a tornado rated F4 struck the Union City area and was the first tornado widely documented by science as part of storm chasing field research. NSSL out of Norman, Oklahoma placed numerous storm chasers around it to capture the life cycle on film. As the devastating tornado tore through the small town of Union City, no one knew the tremendous impact it would have on the development of weather radar. Researchers from the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory now look back on that day as a significant event in the history of severe weather research and forecasting.

And I was (sorta) there!

For a human interest story, see the New York Times article written on the 20th anniversary (1993):
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/27/us/tornado-veterans-wait-for-next-one.html