School kicked off last week for the majority of Austin’s kids and teens. Man, that one snuck up on me like it did 30 years ago. I guess my brother and me foolishly thought Summer break would never end or we figured we had another week like we used to have in Champaign-Urbana.
It was no big deal though, by then we were pretty well adjusted to our new lives in Springfield; new friends Eric, Chet, Chris and Jeff readily come to mind; Mom and Dad let us ride our bikes to Washington Park with minimal permission; and we really enjoyed going to White Oaks mall because we hardly went to Champaign’s Market Place. We had fully recovered from the trauma of the move earlier that year.
The major event I will always remember was seeing The Muppet Movie on Dad’s birthday. Being a child during the Seventies, I was very familiar with the Muppets through Sesame Street, their syndicated show on channel 17 and brief appearance on SNL. We have the DVD and it still holds up despite some elements being very dated with contemporary audiences. The number of cameos in it would be an impossible task today because money has become more important than story telling. It went on to catapult Jim Henson and Frank Oz to a greater status, especially the latter in his directing career: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Little Shop of Horrors and (sadly) Bowfinger. I just realized I named all of the Oz movies with Steve Martin, must be from me listening to Martin’s new banjo-music CD. I think Muppet was also the first movie I sat through the closing credits on too.
The other memory of the Summer winding down was the day before school resumed. Our parents took us bowling (another leisure-time activity altered by computers and technology). Being kids we didn’t know it was a last-day-of-Summer celebration. I figured Mom and Dad were being nice, not high-fiving each other behind my back. While leaving the alley, someone spotted a flyer for a Saturday-morning kid league. How we cajoled the parents for several days only to regret it a couple months later because it transformed into an obligation that lasted until Spring. It was like attending a mandatory gym class, thus the school week went from five days to five and a half!
Meanwhile (in the background), the fallout from the Iranian revolution was starting to take hold in the US and this would affect my family indirectly as it intensified the first recession I was consciously aware of.