Last weeks MMP got me thinking to how lucky I was growing up in the coal fields in northeastern PA in the early 60s. We not only had our own ways of making fun - like crushing rocks in railroad switches and making passable footballs from old newspapers but ----- we also had a lot of culture. Because the mountains made VHF/Network television almost impossible. As a result we had all these little UHF stations that ran - well - just about anything they could get for free. Old reruns of Uncle Milty and the Lone Ranger, the Three Stooges. And when the weather was just the right kind of bad we could get the Cool Ghoul; the one and only John Zacherle (not that idiot wanna-be from Ohio). We even had this local kids show (that showed afternoon B movies and cartoons) hosted by a drunk who hated kids and rarely tried to hide his contempt for his audience. I’ve often thought someone from “Laugh-In” most have been from the Wyoming Valley because the original was “Uncle Al” but with an attitude.
But best of all was all the British shows; mostly from PBS stations. I was shocked to arrive at Pitt in the 70s and learn that not everyone knew Doctor Who. The find out folks in this big city were just finding Monty Python. That not only had my fellow freshmen missed the British version of TW3 (This Is The Week That Was) but most had missed the network US version as well and as a result could not sing “The Vatican Rag” or the theme song for WW III by heart. I had to wait to see one of my “back home buddies” to talk about episodes of UFO, for Gods sake.
OK - none of us saw the original Star Trek or Batman until reruns. But we had a sense of culture our BK Knight’s wearing contemporaries were just finding out about.
So highjack away. But if you have a memory of some early program that you got that most people may have missed, please share it.
We didn’t have a television until I was about 10 years old so never bothered about it much. I don’t think I really missed out on anything, I caught up with Dr Who and Star Trek at some point but it was no hardship to live without them. I also had another period of about 5 years television-free in my early 30s which sent me back to listening to Radio 4 in the UK.
It’s very quiet in the orifice today - the students have gone home for the holiday, most of the academics have bailed out as well so it’s just us in the office. Some people will be finishing this week as they are on school term-time contracts, one of our admins has finished because he’s on uni term-time instead. Nobody here but us chickens, right?
**doggio **- that very same post caught my attention also. **sari **is a wild woman!! :eek: And she seemed so nice and normal when we met…
I know when I was a kid, getting UHF was a delicate task on our TV. While the VHF channels had a definite click as you moved from one to another, the UHF dial was like a radio tuner, and you needed a special touch. I don’t recall when the local PBS station came up and running, but I don’t remember watching it too often. I do remember the excitement when we got a rotating antenna for the roof - if it was aimed just right and the weather was just right, we could get a fuzzy image from all the way in Harrisburg, PA!!! We didn’t try that often, tho, because DC had a lot of better stations and we lived north of Baltimore, so we kept it mostly pointing south.
I do remember watching the Bowery Boys movies in the afternoons, and the Little Rascals, but I don’t think they were on UHF. I also remember many times having Mom turn of the TV and shooing us outside. I expect if I’d grown up with Teh Intrarwebz, we would have had dial-up longer than the rest of the civilized world.
Chores for today:
wash a load of whites
stop by the little store and pick up a check - will it be more than $10 this month??
go to the post office and mail daughter’s gifts and in-laws’ card full of restaurant gift cards
vacuum, again
empty the dishwasher that is running at the moment
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffienatin’. YAWN 'Tis 33 Amurrkin out with a predicted high of 67 for the day. Tomorrow says rain. We shall see.
We got exactly five teevee stations when I was a cub, channels two, three, five, nine, and eleven. Two, five, and eleven were from Etlanner. Three and nine were from Columbus. Then Columbus added another channel we could sometimes get on UHF. We could also get the local PBS station out of Columbus/Warm Springs on UHF and it would be pretty clear. Still never watched Doctor Who though. We watched Bestoink Dooley on an Etlanner teevee station. He showed cheesey horror movies. My personal fave was Officer Don’s Popeye Club out of Etlanner. I was even on it once. I played a game called “Ooey Gooey” where there were like six or eight bags on a lazy susan, with one of the bags bein’ “Ooey Gooey” full of stuff like broken aigs, flour, syrup and the like and the others bein’ goody bags. One was blindfolded, the lazy susan spun and one said when to stop and then put one’s hand in a bag. I got a goody bag! Columbus has a show called “Miss Patsy’s Playhouse” and I was also on there once. I was in a group that danced the hokey pokey. Thus, not only did I have teevee as a cub, I was also a teevee celebrity!
Tonight is men’s night over to the church house. Thus steaks are marinatin’ and beer is chillin’. Lookin’ forward to that as usual.
Now I need more caffiene and rumbly tummy wants sustenance. Then, alas and alack, 'tis Moanday so purtification for irk must commence.
I grew up entirely sans TV; my parents now have a monitor hooked up to a DVD player, but that’s it. They didn’t get that until I was about 17, I think.
I’ve not watched Dr Who, or Star Trek, or quite a lot of other programs ‘everyone’ has seen. It gives me a disadvantage at pub quizzes, but otherwise I don’t really care.I have, however, seen virtually everything Sir David Attenborough has ever been in… One has to be a fangirk for something.
Back to postal irk today, though it might wind up being a 4 day week, 'CIA the sattiday footy has been switched to firday night, and I kinda said I’d be fine to do it. It does pay better than the postie stuff.
I think I may pretend to securitatin’ boss that they say I have to switch to irkin’ sattiday if I want firday off, because the eejit doesn’t understand the concept of ‘days off’’ and I’m going to be spending Sunday driving a few hours away to pick up a box of frogs for my mother (you didn’t see that coming, did ya). It’s a bit much, irkin’ 6 day weeks at that sort of thing- I’m pretty much standing up the whole time, and my feets hurt.
I can honestly put that on a list of things I’ve never heard/seen/read before. That’s one interesting family tradition, tho…
**FCD **has left for work, the dishwasher has run its course, and I really should hop into the shower. I need to haul my laundry basket to the basement and run a load of whites. I won’t do the store/credit union/post office run till 10 when the store opens, especially since it’s the closest of the 3 to home and I’ll pass it en route to the other two.
On the other hand, there’s cake sitting, uneaten, in the kitchen…
I grew up in the 60s in Chicago. Our teevee didn’t go past channel 12. My father bought a teevee when the came out in the 40s and my mother said “what is THAT?” when he brought it home. When my mom felt we were watching too much teevee (we watched MAYBE an hour a day), she would unscrew one of the tubes and tell us the machine was broken.
Out on Lawn Guylindt, before they built the World Trade Center in the late 60s/early 70s, we could get UHF stations from all over the Northeast. Once the towers were completed, we sometimes had trouble getting the NY versions of CBS and ABC, but because we lived on the North Shore, we got the Connecticut ones just fine.
(eta: Thank Og for cable TV)
When I was younger I watched some shows like Mr. Dressup and Friendly Giant. Those are Canadian shows, though, so I don’t know if you folks would’ve heard of them.
Got to get some caffeine somehow and then back to work on the music arrangements.
It’s a cloudy 39 degrees outside.
Looks miserable out there and not much better in here.
Today is make a bunch of unpleasant calls day and I’m not looking forward to it.
I doubt the ones I’m calling are going to be too happy with what I have to say either. However, I will do my best to start out polite and reasonable.
I remember UHF channels from when I was a kid but I don’t remember watching them. None of them were clear.
I’ve got a bad case of the grumpies this morning. I guess because I am not looking forward to all these phone calls I have to make.
FCM Me? Nice and normal? I do get accused of being nice quite a bit, but very few ever accuse me of being normal.
Doggio What would the MMP be without the occasional TMI?
Blurf. Had a rough night from itching AND general insomnia, so I didn’t haul my ass outta bed until 7 AM. Under normal circumstances, at 7 AM I’d normally be an hour into the irk day. That 90 minute period after lunch where I get sleepy is going to be brutal today.
I don’t quite get the UHF distinction. Because of the proximity of the South Bend (IN) TV market to Chicago and Detroit, those two abominations sucked up the VHF spectrum, and little ol’ SB could only have UHF, including networks.
We did have a couple of idiosyncrasies. The NBC station is/was owned by Notre Dame University, and they refused for many years to show Saturday Night Live. We wound up using aluminum foil on the rabbit ear antennas to get the Fort Wayne station instead.
Then there was an independent religious station that apparently had little money for anything besides the salaries of their in-house evangelists. They would brag about their Saturday night Creature Feature, but then showed It Came From Beneath The Sea for about 6 months straight. Must have got their copy from the dollar bin at the syndicator.
I too remember having a dial you had to fine tune, kinda like a safecracker, but I remember nothing about the content.
A couple fo weeks ago I hooked up a TV to the pool kitchen and since we won’t be using it very often instead of UVerse I installed an old antennae I’d kept, the same kind that used to be on top of every house, except I put it in the garage. It was pretty interesting to then let the TV autosearch for channels. I don’t know if it’s VHF or UHF, some of the channels are round numbers and some have a decimal place. Also many are in Spanish and some in Vietnamese. But I figure if a hurricane wipes out the cable broadcasts, which has happened before, I’ve still got the ol’ free airways to get some programming.
Sometimes it’s nice to take a step forward by going backwards.
If you are calling to make a payment please press 1
For all other inquiries please hold
Would you prefer to access your mortgage account via the web?
Ask our representative how
We are currently experiencing a high call volume and extenfed wait times
Please continue to hold for the next representative
This crap should be illegal
Mortgage companies 2, 3 and 4 are all the same company
But I am getting letters/payment coupons under three different names.
So I am upset over nothing, everything is fine.
I’m set up for automatic payments
but I think their system is bullshit.
And here I was going to ask her if she knew my middle name was Thomas; something I highly doubt.
And I’m more the going back to bald-headed and pissed off I started life as. We have cable/wireless with like kazillion channels but mostly what I watch is this one set I have set up with rabbit ears where I can get all the .2 and .3 stations. With all the really old shows and low production value new shows, they just somehow remind me of simpler/happier times.
A semi-serious question; there used to be a Mumper who basically kept track of who was going to start things off. Whatever happened to him/her? Old age and a feeble mind betray me.