Update 11-20-07

Hi,

Ask a couple of questions and get a mess of answers.  First, let me say it's been good hearing from all of you, especially at the beginning of the busy holiday season.  What holiday season?  Where?  Hasn't snucken up on me.
   
    In any case, the answers to Barnet Kellman's questions and mine.  First, Barnet's, in the order received:
   
    From Joanne Shapiro Polner about 4:10 AM EST 11-13-07:  One website says that a fruit loop is the loop at the back of a shirt.  I add that it is found at the center bottom of the shoulder-to-shoulder horizontal cloth piece at the top back of a shirt.  That piece of horizontal cloth is ironed first, before you iron the collar, then the back, then the front panels.  The sleeves would have been ironed before anything else.
   
    More from Joanne, moments later, at 4:19 EST:  I think that maybe one irons the collar first, then that shoulder piece.  Yes, I think that is the correct order.  If that's clearer, you can print this message, instead of my first.
   
    Hey Folks...Moss in Maine here.  After a late start with the fall colors, we ended up having a beautiful autumn with some incredibly warm days.  Well, that's over as the temperature was twenty-eight degrees the other morning.  I purchased a portable generator this weekend as I have this sinking feeling that New England is going to be hit pretty hard with bad weather and power outages this winter.
        In answer to Barnet's trivia question, fruit loops were those small pieces of material, about shoulder blade height, that were sewn into men's shirts as a convenient way, I guess, to hang them up.  It became the hallway sport at South High to stick one of your fingers into a fellow classmates fruit loop as he passed and pull!  At least that's how I got nailed a few times.  Hope everyone is well and has a great Turkey time!
   
    From Lynn Nudleman Villagran:  Fruit loops were little cereal O's, like Cheerios?   I don't know what
    Barnet did with them, but I ate them.
   
    From Robert Fiveson:  Oooh, oooh, I know.  We used to wear Madras shirts, and they has little loops on the back --  for who knows what purpose -- and the game was to rip them off someone else's back.  I believe anthropologists have now determined that this was a social precursor to the wedgie.
   
    From Donald Faber:  In reply to Barnet's question, fruit loops were those narrow loops of material that straddled the box pleats on the back of men's shirts in the mid-60s -- surely missing now if only to save the pennies they probably cost to add.  With luck, a fruit loop could be suddenly grabbed with an index finger and suddenly yanked.  With further luck, they would be removed with the deft flick of a wrist without ripping the shirt.
    From Bernie Scheidt:  Fruit loop -- the loop right below the neck on the outside of men's dress/sport shirts.  When seen, immediately pulled off!
   
    From Linda Tobin Kettering:  If memory serves me right, fruit loops were also called fag tags -- sorry for the very un-politically correct name -- and we would rip them off the back of guys' shirts.
   
    From Peter Rosen:  Of course, they were the loop on shirts right below the back collar, and we used to pull them off or at least try to.
   
    From Alan Finder:  I think the loop Barnet is talking about was on the back of men's -- boys'? -- shirts, in the middle between the shoulders.  And, naturally, the only reasonable response from fifteen-year-old boys was to rip them off, sometimes to the overall detriment of the shirt.  The real question, to me, is why in the world were they called fruit loops?
        And good luck with the new show, Barnet.
   
    From Greg Kaplan:  A quick response to "Shameless Underbelly" -- the fruit loop was the small hoop of fabric sewn into the rear seam of shirts just below the shoulder.  The most valuable ones were from Madras shirts, and what we did with them was ripped them off of the guy walking in front of us!
        Good luck with your new show.
   
    From Steve Gootzeit:  A fruit loop, also known as a fairy loop, was a sewn strip of fabric at the top of the back of a shirt, so that you could hang it on a hook, if desired.
   
    From Peggy Galinger Menaker:  I'll allow someone else to take on Barnet's fruit loops query.  But best to all for a very happy Thanksgiving.
   
    And about the YMCA:
   
    From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  I hate to word it this way, but as the tortured older sister, one of my best summers was the summer my kid brother was shipped off to sleep-away camp.  I recall knowing it was a Y-affiliated camp, but I didn't understand anything more than "why" wasn't he going for the entire year rather than just a few weeks.  It was in Port Jervis, a thankless and eternally long ride to see him, not once but twice.  The camp name was Talcott.  By the way, we have since resolved our sibling differences and are now able to share our toys and play nicely -- thanks, Mom.
   
    From Bernie Scheidt:  I went to a Y in Hempstead one year -- I think it was in a school.  I'm not sure who else went.
   
    From Linda Tobin Kettering:  As for the YMCA, there is still an old house on Grove Street, right before Central Avenue in Cedarhurst, that houses the Five Town Y, though it's a YM/WHA, not a YMCA.  I'm not sure if this is the same one you're referring to, but probably it is.
   
    And perhaps the definitive answer, from Peggy Galinger Menaker:  Maybe the following will help answer your Y question.  I was a counselor for several summers during our high school years at the Five Towns YMCA Day Camp and two-week sleep-away program -- my last summer there was that wonderful year of 1964 heading into 1965.  The camp was run administratively from a house.  According to my mother, who was born in Cedarhurst, went to Lawrence High School, has lived in Hewlett for twenty-one years, and knows her Five Towns' streets, that house was on the northwest corner of Rockaway Turnpike and Central Avenue in Lawrence.  I would not dream of disputing the issue with her.  Campers and staff were brought by school bus to a Five Towns' school playground, and, I believe, to another venue for swimming.  But perhaps the house itself was used to run smaller kinds of programs throughout the year, and that is what your sister recalls.
   
    [Rich -- I thank you all, for both Barnet and me, for the useful information.  As I wrote Peggy, it's nice to know where they Y I went to might have been, but I still have no idea why I was going.  I also checked the website where Joanne may have found her fruit loop information and discovered that the word is also a British synonym for nitwit.  It has a rougher synonym, which made me laugh as I'd never heard it -- fu*kwit -- and I use the asterisk now only to try and avoid spam filters, not out of decorum or modesty.  So thank you, Mr. Kellman, for indirectly teaching me, at sixty, new ways to be obscene.]
   
    Other news from Linda Tobin Kettering:  On November 2nd, I attended a reception at Hofstra University honoring Larry Levy, class of '68, who was just appointed Executive Director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra.  He left his position as editor at Newsday for this job, and he will no doubt be focusing on his hometown of Valley Stream as he mentioned in his speech.  Also in attendance were Freda Wagner '68, Terry Early '68, and Mr. and Mrs. Booker Gibson.  The event was attended by over one-hundred people, including all the Long Island political bigwigs.  There was also a video message from Hillary Clinton, who couldn't attend.
   
    Other news from Bernie Scheidt:  I thought everyone would enjoy this, especially since it's from Newsday!
    http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/opinion/walthandelsman/blog/2007/11/animation_baby_boomers.html
   
    Again, as Peggy Galinger Menaker and Allen Moss have mentioned, "Best wishes to all for a Happy Thanksgiving."