Our Past Taints

Barbara Eden. Late 1960's. In those days bowling alleys were manned by brown boys who were picking up the pins, arranging them and sending the balls back. Often white boys would make sport of trying to crack the boy's ankles with a bowling ball while they hurried to set the pins up. Those of us with melanin were stunned in our silence, but brutality was a common virtue of white boys. They were protected from consequences. We all knew it. But, if their strange humor touched us physically it was a fight, a fist fight. I know history books and documentaries about Jim Crow in the South are aglow with stories of Colored men and boys submissive and scared of resisting white men or their sons.

That was true. But, there were a lot of fist fights between white and Black boys. Even Indian boys would fight them white boys. I did. Had some hard fights. As skinny as I was I fought 'em because their humor is always on the brink of violence and you had to make sure it didn't trickle down to your siblings. It is why I never liked Saturday NIght Live! 

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 7.5.15

Wish It'd Been My Story

Barbara Eden's '69 Ford Mustang

Keith Fairchild said, he'd read an article about this car, a guy was driving in California when he saw a kid driving a Mustang and he got next to him in traffic and asked if he wanted to sell the car, kid said it was his mom's but he could follow him home and talk to her. When they got to the kids house, it was Barbara Eden. He bought this Mach 1 from here.

Thoughts & DREAMS

murder

"We must learn to think good things. Often I wonder, and sometimes I 'see' how thoughts travel and affect a person prone to disaster, or destruction, or killing. With such an overload of bad thoughts racing around the globe is it any wonder killers can find easy expression among us?" - Gregory E. Woods 2.22.13

Barbara Eden

BARBARA EDEN: A CLASSIC BEAUTY, A CLASS ACT

Barbara Eden's classic images

I DREAM OF JEANIE

Barbara Eden was the most woman on TV in the 1960's. You could not find anyone not mesmerized by her character on the show ‘I Dream of Jeanie’. The nation watched TV as a collective whole, and everyone was party to the same stimuli feeling connections with strangers through the medium of television. The reporting of news had a different standard mostly because the generation that gave us the news came from a higher standard of primary education that stimulated more of the intellect. Math, Writing, English and Play were important primal elements to one's education.

The hippie movement was a rebellion against the rigid demand of White America to insist on playing a stoic role for men, and for women a dutiful housewife who was first a virgin, not given to sexual liaisons before marriage, and modest in appearance, and behavior. The disconnect for the young whites of the 1950’s & 1960’s spurred a rebellion from the Beatniks to the hippies, and America was never to be the same.

In those days people expected news reports to connect the dots, and took great personal stock in being able to see the relationships to things. A strong work ethic came from Eastern European immigrants, Negro field hands, and an assortment of people who saw themselves as part of a nation under a banner of superiority. The images of white people as the best of our lot was under attack among Black folks, but Barbara Eden had the knack for killing those notions for half of an hour, and everyone sat down enjoying the show imaging life with a Jeanie, or if you were a man, have a Jeanie who was Barbara Eden at your beck and call. – Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories