Those metal slides in 110F Phoenix summer heat…

Sammy Davis Jr. – Rhythm Of Life (1969)

Hey…it was the late 70s and all of us of a certain age have photos like this hidden away. Don’t deny it!

Anyway, I was listening to this while I was getting ready this morning, and what struck me most was the fun embodied in the songs, especially the first track. While the late 70s were not without their problems, there’s no doubt that in comparison to 2025, it was a much simpler, more joyful time in this country.

Take a moment. Sit down. Close your eyes. Think of all the places you’ve lived over the course of your life. Which of them made you feel the safest, the most loved? A place where, when you think of it brings a spontaneous grin to your face. In other words, Home with a capital H?

For me, it was the house my family lived in during my high school and college years. We moved in the day I started high school in September 1972. That morning I left the house we’d lived in since 1964 as an 8th grade graduate and came back to a totally new abode a high school freshman.

It was brand new construction in a new subdivision, “Bethany Heights,” located about a half mile south of where we’d lived for my grade school years.

It was also quite probably haunted. (Hard to explain with new construction, but there you go.)

My bedroom was downstairs. To this day I can close my eyes and see the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window. It was quiet, safe, and felt like a private sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the house. Ironic, considering the main gathering space in our house, the family room, occupied the same floor.

My dad had big plans for that house, only a few of which actually came to pass. He built a pair of floor to ceiling bookcases, dividing the living room from the dining room. He also built a wall of bookcases framing the window in my bedroom. He wanted to have a fireplace sunk and built in the family room as well as digging a secondary exit through the sewing room and putting in concrete stairs back to surface level, but neither of those ever happened. We did finally get an in-ground pool, but it happened only as I was getting ready to move out on my own.

My soon-to-be best friend lived across the street. We met shortly after my family moved in. Ken got me turned on to hi-fi equipment and rock-n-roll. As I’ve mentioned before, we’d sit in his room after he got back from CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Chicago every summer and pour over the bags of brochures he’d brought back, dreaming of someday owning the equipment ourselves. When it came time to upgrade my childhood bicycle for my new commute to the high school, I followed his lead and got a yellow Schwinn Continental. Did parents really let their kids bicycle nearly three miles to school on these Phoenix streets on their own back then? Apparently so. Furthermore, it was expected. I got a ride to and from school only under extraordinary circumstances.

During my senior year, I had a crush on Daniel, a boy whose family had moved into the newly built part of the neighborood on the same street about a block to the west. When I say crush, I mean crush. We became friends. We hung out. We liked the same music. I liked taking long drives with him in his pink mustang. And keep in mind this was 1975. I wasn’t out, and profoundly frightened to profess my undying love, especially since he’d given no hints the feelings were mutual. (I’d tried that with a boy three years earlier only to destroy a friendship.) Anyhow, after my parents and sister would go to bed, I’d go out the side garage door, climb up the fence and onto the roof, and walk to the highest point of the roof that gave me an unobstructed view of the entire neighborhood—including Daniel’s house. I couldn’t see into his room, but I could see when the light was on and he was home. Crazy, huh? It’s not like today, where kids can call or text each other’s personal phones at any hour. I just wanted to make sure he was home and safe. I could’ve slipped and broken my neck countless times, but thankfully I was sure enough on my feet that it never happened—and no one called the police to report a boy on the roof of the house. But it was the 70s and a very quiet neighborhood.

This is also the house from my youth that still appears most often in my dreams.

I could never really afford LaCoste; in the early 80s, they were $25 a pop, well beyond what my budget would allow at the time. I did have a rainbow of colors from Brittania, however.

At one point I did manage to buy the real deal. It was red, and I never wore it much because I got a size too small and was too naive to realize I could take it back and exchange it—even after I’d washed it.

In much later years I have been able to snag a few gently used alligators from eBay. Terribly out of fashion these days, but I still love them. Put one on, dab some Halston Z-14 behind my ears and I’m 25 years old with a 31-inch waist again.

…is close my eyes and I can taste the cheeseburgers.