Happy 35th Birthday To...

I want to wish a happy 35th birthday today to two institutions I'm happy to have had at least some association with over the years.

Long before being the fictitious "sideways" school in the books of Louis Sachar, I was one of the first students at the Wayside School in New Jersey when it opened its doors on January 5, 1970. It was a wonderfully modern school plant that's still in existence today and hopefully they did something nice to mark the date. (Hopefully not opening the time capsule buried in the cornerstone and reading the embarrassingly bad poetry inside.)

While we were getting used to our new school, our moms at home (except maybe for my mother, who wouldn't budge from CBS soaps for anything) got their first glimpse of Pine Valley, as ABC premiered a new soap opera entitled "All My Children." The show nominally featured Ruth Warrick, who had been featured in films such as "Citizen Kane", as the matriarch of a family of interesting characters. (Note: Ruth Warrick made her final AMC appearance on the anniversary show; she died on January 15.) Buried somewhere in the melange of people populating any soap was a true daytime original - the vixenish, scheming, and eventually much-married Erica Kane, played to the hilt by Susan Lucci. AMC continues today and Lucci is still there, lovely as ever after 35 years. For a brief time, I was an active AMC viewer and participant on the Usenet discussion groups devoted to the show, and for a time maintained the show's cast listing, tracking the show's regular and semi-regular cast. (On at least three occasions, I noted an actor named Patrick Page in the cast - not knowing that eventually he would marry our beloved Paige Davis in later years.)

So happy birthday to both the Wayside School and AMC!