Once, as kids, the family car had died. It was fixed but we needed something that wasn’t a money pit. My mother had the L.A. Thomas Guide, a thick spiral bound book of maps for Los Angeles, that was in everybody’s car along with the AAA maps that were wedged into a decaying blue vinyl envelope. Our parents went from dealership to dealership as we sung out out jingles. We didn’t get a car, or free dinners (my father believed it was stealing if we didn’t buy a car), and it cost us a bundle.
To keep us quiet as we went all over the L.A. area, we wore our Radio Shack Realistic radio headsets, giant blocky headphone radios. The bench seat in the car was unbearably hot every time we got back in the car, searing the exposed flesh even though terrycloth shorts. Driving around L.A. at this time was a bizarre memory engin. All around were the locations from T.V. shows like CHiPs, The A-Team, T.J. Hooker, and BattleStar Galactica. It was truly odd, as one had knowledge of a place long before one saw it. All of it, was ingrained in my head. Every spot in L.A., still today, has links to some media. Those links are often stronger than the real world associations that I should have for those places. That includes all of these adverts. Media memories blurred into other memories. Listening to Casey Kasem’s countdown on the radio lead to Mark’s voice from G-Force (Battle of the Planets) that lead to 7-Zark-7 also sharing the voice of Wilbur from Mr. Ed. and Scrooge McDuck. At any time one could catch a glimpse of one of these or other actors on some press junket, or getting groceries. Reality and fiction blended into a weird living city where advertisements were more real than actual physical experiences.
All of this has lead me to start teaching media literacy to my kids, as soon as they can consume media. (In addition to limiting some kinds of media for now.) I’ll never need to know the location of Pete Ellis Dodge, but it’s address is more indelibly written in my head than any address that I lived in.
I leave you with a set of commercials from the Western U.S. for Federated…“Federated ah haa, uh ha, un ha, uh ha, Federated…”
