When deviled ham made me feel so fancy

I was scrolling on my phone the other day and came across a BuzzFeed article. The title was: “I asked 29 people what they considered ‘fancy’ as a kid, and you NEED to see their answers.”

Well, I tried to remember what I thought was “fancy” as a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, and here’s what I came up with.

› Cars with air conditioning.

I remember once driving from Middle Tennessee to Miami, Florida, alone with no radio and no AC. I’m trying to decide how much someone would have to pay me now to do that again. I’m thinking $10,000.

› Color TVs. I remember when we visited friends of my parents who rented a color TV to watch the first Super Bowl in 1967.

› Salad (and/or breakfast) bars. The idea of all-you-can-eat of any food seemed extremely extravagant in my childhood. Shoney’s breakfast bar, for example, seemed fit for a king. I even thought it was extravagant to upgrade from a cheeseburger to a Big Mac at McDonald’s.

› Compact discs. I remember telling a girl in 1985 that I had 10 CDs. She thought I was rich, believing I had 10 bank certificates of deposit.

› Deviled ham. For some reason I thought deviled ham was a fancier version of potted meat. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but neither would make the list of “fancy fare” these days.

› London Fog raincoats. I

was probably in my 30s before I understood that a London Fog synthetic-blend raincoat was not a fancy overcoat. Then, I bought a used cashmere overcoat at the unclaimed baggage place in Scottsboro, Alabama, and it changed my life.

› Cadillacs and Lincolns. I was in high school before I ever rode in a Mercedes-Benz. In my memory, the Cadillac driven by my mother’s cousin, a Teamsters Union official named Johnny Walker, was the fanciest car I knew. Today — having driven just about everything — I would say a Mercedes-Benz S-Class is the fanciest non-exotic car I have driven, although a self-driving Cadillac I “drove” hands-free around Moccasin Bend is a close second. › Personalized

Bibles. When I was a kid, having your name embossed in gold on your personal Bible was a sign of being somebody.

› Men’s shoes with buckles. OK, it was a fashion phase, but for about 10 minutes in the 1970s, men’s shoes with buckles seemed as fancy as heck.

› Four-speaker car stereos. In the 1970s, having two speakers in the front of a car and two in the back was considered fancy. In recent years, I’ve ridden in two passenger cars that have up to 20 speakers. Why?

› Houses with garages. In the neighborhood where I grew up, we didn’t have garages. In fact, I didn’t own a house with a garage until I was over 40 years old. Sure, it’s nice not to have to scrape frost from a car windshield in January, but it ranks fairly low on a list of life’s top pleasures. On the other hand, heated car seats are the bomb. › Vacations that didn’t involve staying with family. When I was growing up, going on vacation meant picking a place where you had friends or relatives with a spare bedroom. On the rare occasions we stayed in motels, there was quite a bit of price shopping, which was maddening for kids who had been riding in the back seat of an automobile for 12 hours.

› Seiko watches. Please don’t laugh. If you are over 60, with a lower-middle-class upbringing, you know what I mean. When I was a kid, there were two kinds of watches: Seikos for welloff people and Timex watches for everyone else. We were Timex people.

I upgraded to an Apple Watch about a year ago, and I so wish I could go back and show it to my 12-year-old self. I’d say, “Look kid, I made it!”

So what did you consider “fancy” as a kid? Please send me your examples at the email (or phone number) below to be published in a possible follow-up column.