It's so interesting that two brothers could grow up in the exact same environment and yet have divergent perspectives on how they grew up. My brother called me last week and couldn't believe that I compared our family to the Cleavers. Sorry, bro, I couldn't use "Diff'rent Strokes"!
I do vaguely remember a show called "J.T." which was on for only half a season, if I recall correctly. This would have been around the winter of early '71, because if my memory serves me as it should, I was in 4th grade. Kevin Hooks (remember him?) was the star of the show; many remember him later in the decade showing up in the cult classic series "The White Shadow", also starring Ken Howard. I don't think I ever saw Kevin Hooks in anything after that series, maybe because he's mainly a director these days.
Another memory I have from 4th grade is the scare my parents got when my brother had an asthma attack and had to go to the hospital. I probably didn't freak out much because I wasn't aware of how difficult it is to breathe with asthma; on the other hand, my mother was all too aware and the whole world knew it - well, our world, anyway. The song "I'll Be There" by the Jackson 5 always reminds me of sitting in the parking lot at Children's Mercy Hospital on Independence and Woodland in Kansas City, Missouri, waiting for my brother to get out of there.
When we finally got home, the first thing I did was run to our neighbors' house to see if my best friend, Ronnie, could come out to play. Hanging out with Ronnie was a ritual of ours that my brother had to miss out on for a bit while he recovered from his asthma episode. Ronnie's full name was Ronald Dean Sublett but we sometimes called him R. Dean Sublett. Why, you may ask, did we do that? Could it have something to do with the artist of a top 5 hit in the late autumn of 1970, whose name was R. Dean Taylor? One never knows, but...
From last post: the answer is Israel "Popper Stopper" Tolbert; this week's quiz is below the fold. Enjoy!
