Blast From the Past

Masters Miata Club 2004 Pool Party

Because I’m being lazy (see today’s Instagram post) here is the Club’s newsletter report and photos from the titular event:

Pool Party

Saturday, July 10th

We held our annual pool party at the Creer’s this afternoon, where we have done it every year for the last 5 or so. Because the Jim & Judy are pulling up stakes and moving to the Sunshine State soon, next year we will have to drive to Spring Hill, FL to have it at their house.

There were plenty of grilled brats and dogs to be eaten, along with the usual assortment of side summer type salads. Then there were a couple of delicious homemade desserts to finish off the meal.

We called it a pool party, but a majority of those who came didn’t go in the pool. Only Donna and I and the hostess floated and bobbed around a bit. It was a heck of a lot cooler in the water, than sitting around it, even if you were in the shade. Jim didn’t even get in the water. Too bad too, as usually he and I make fools of ourselves by having a big-splash contest off the diving board.

Jim did make a fool of himself in a slightly different manner. He climbed a couple of ladders up a couple of levels of his house to get to the top of the roof so he could take a group picture…

56 Years Ago

Apollo 11 reached the moon and the following day man first stepped on the lunar surface. Like every kid born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties, I wanted to be an astronaut. Turns out doing that involved a lot of smarts and a lot of hard work and as it turned out I didn’t have either of those qualities. Apollo 11 happened on my and my siblings annual visit to our grandmother’s house and at the age of 14 I was allowed to stay up past bedtime to watch those blurry black and white images from nearly a quarter million miles away.

So yesterday when those memories resurfaced I decided to watch some space media to sort of honor those days fifty-six years ago. I didn’t search out documentaries, which I probably should have, but instead I watched some fluff on Apple TV+, first, the movie starring Scarlett Johansen and Channing Tatum, Fly Me To The Moon. Followed by the first 2 episodes of For All Mankind. I don’t know how long I’ll stick around for this one, I’m barely hanging on and there are 38 more episodes to go, plus 10 more for the 5th season yet to be released.

Maybe I’ll try some documentaries…

Halfway

Yesterday I mentioned 1989 briefly and 1999 a little longer; today we go back to a year about halfway between those two: 1995.

Back row: Mary, Scott, and Me. Front: Paul, Lynn, My mom, Donna, and her mom.

In May of ’95 we gathered some family and headed off to Las Vegas for a weekend because it was Donna’s mom Barbara’s 65th birthday. Donna and I flew in from South Carolina. Mom came from the state of Washington with her youngest son, Scott. Barbara’s best friend and sister-in-law, Mary, came from New Jersey with her youngest daughter, Lynn. And my mom came from Connecticut with her youngest son, Paul.

We all stayed at Circus Circus. During the day we all went our separate ways, but we all met back at the hotel for dinner together. One day Donna and I walked into every casino on the strip so I could look for just the right polo shirt for my souvenir. We all went together one afternoon to the downtown area; one stop was to try our luck to win a million and buy the $20 photo of all of us; see above. This is where all the below photos came from; the area, while revitalized with the Fremont Street Canopy, still had that slightly downtrodden old Vegas look.

Miata World ’99 Revisited

Getting the Shot at Miata World ’99 in Dallas


Back in February of this year I took a photo album from 1989 off the shelf and scanned the photos I liked. I then used them to create five separate posts of content out of it.

Today I jumped ahead a decade to 1999 and scanned some images from the photo album of our trip to Dallas to a national Miata event. Most of these photos aren’t nearly as scenic as the 1989 ones. If you are new around here you might assume that all that Roadside America stuff from the recent April-May-June trip was something new, au contraire, I’ve been making road trips “meaningful” that way since the end of the last century. Postcards also played a crucial roll in this trip as well. See the – Slow Miata to Texas Tour

It Was 50 Years Ago This Weekend

Donna and I had been paling around for a few months, watching movies at the base theater, going out for meals, etc. But for the Fourth of July weekend we planned a getaway trip to Pennsylvania to stay with Bob Brown, my old Class Leader at ‘B’ School, back in Millington, TN who was then stationed at Willow Grove. Bob and his wife Joanne had two teenaged daughters, so I slept on the couch and Donna bunked in with the girls.

I want to say it was on Saturday that all of us went out to see a movie. They have theorized that if you want to put your arm around a girl you would like to get closer to, just take her to a scary movie. That theorem proved true that day, because the movie we saw was Jaws. When Richard Dreyfuss’ character went down underwater to check on the boat he and Roy Scheider find and that dead guy’s head popped out, BINGO, she grabbed my hand.

We both credit seeing this movie with cementing what was to become an almost 50 year long love affair. We might have watched it a couple of times over the years, but it never was an annual thing. So today, it being the 50th anniversary and all, I rewatched it. I did kind of miss that hand though.

Oh, on a side note, a dozen years later we both ended up working at the place that supplied the solenoid valves that operated the shark’s jaws, Automatic Switch Co.

25 Years Ago – Volume 11, Issue 3

The Four Truths Of Youth

– Barbara Beach

Having just returned from Chicago attending our daughters’ high school graduation and a friend’s 5Oth birthday party, I found myself in an introspective moment. Exhausted after flying into San Diego from Chicago via Minneapolis-St. Paul, I was elated at the prospect of climbing into my 1990 Miata for the 30-mile coastal ride back home. Even after a full decade, I never tire at the prospect of a topless-sun-in-my-face-wind-in-my-hair ride to anywhere. While so many things in my life have changed. (remember, I am feeling reflective and introspective at this moment), the one thing that has remained the same is the car that set the stage for the last decade of my life. Six Miatas, two RX7’s and eleven years later I have a husband of 10 years, 5 adult children, none of whom were adults when I purchased my first MX5, one is starting college, and another is finishing high school. The child of 9 who was known to steal my RX-7 is now 21, and doing autocross. The child of 11 who would wear pillow case veils on her head has now donned the real thing as a June 2000 bride. As for the older kids…well we now have 4 grandchildren and a baby of our own…Miata Magazine. It seems as though our Miatas and Miata friends are one of the few elements that have remained constant.

As I mused over the activities of my Chicago trip, especially the 50th birthday celebration, I reflected upon the many friends that attended this party. 1 thought to myself, (again, I am having an introspective moment) as I’m driving north on the coast highway. I ask myself the question: If I been walking down the street today, and encountered anyone of the folks who were my close friends 25 years ago, would I have recognized any of them? I concluded, all of them with the exception of myself had aged excessively. As a group they looked middle aged, bald, financially comfortable, and generally 50 plus. The parking area was filled with Lexus coupes, Mercedes SUV’s, and the occasional Ford Taurus. Once again, I pondered upon the phenomena of having maintained my own youthful appearance and perpetual good nature while everyone else at the party had so ungracefully aged, to put it politely. I concluded that it must have had something to do with my love of sports cars, and my intimate relationship with my Miatas.

I have clearly come to recognize over the course of time, that there are four primary truths associated with youth:

1. Youth is wasted on the young……but, we never realize it until it’s too late. Try to explain that to a twenty year old.

2. Youth is relative depending upon your age…..My Miata driving Mom and infamous back issue lady Gwen is almost 80 and thinks I am still an adolescent.

3. God is kind to us by not allowing us to see ourselves as we may appear to others when we attend long time reunions.

4. Youth is closely correlated to fun……sports cars are made for fun, and the Miata is the embodiment of freedom and joy that every modern sports car has tried to emulate.

Pulling into my driveway, astounded that I had already arrived, I found my parking spot in-between our three other Miatas and reflected for just a moment more. I happily walked into my house feeling young again and again.

Copyright 2000, Miata Magazine. Reprinted without permission.

 

April Fools

Because I’ll be on the road June 1st I needed to set up a post with an article from the 3rd issue of the Miata Club of America magazine that I have doing doing on the first day of the even numbered months. When I reach on the top of the stack to get the June/July issue I came up with the April/May issue. Ooops, I forgot to do one on April Fools Day. What a fool I am.

I reached down and grabbed the June/July issue too. I picked an article from each, scanned the pages and went online to OCR the images. I formatted them both and I set the June/July post to publish on 6/1/25 and backdated the April/May post to have been published on 4/1/25. So go back and read it.