When you had a weird rash or a strange itch or something, you would haul out the Reader’s Digest Family Health Guide (or something to that effect) and use their little flowchart to try to determine whether you should go to the emergency room, or just put calamine lotion on it, or what.
I still make plans this way. I have been burned too many times by finding that a particular area has bad cell coverage. This is especially true during large-crowd events like July 4 fireworks.
In high school, whenever the teacher wanted to show a movie, some poor schmuck would have to go to the A/V room to get the projector, push it on its wheeled cart back to the class room, mount the reel and thread the film into the projector and then sit by it incase something went wrong while it was running. After the movie, the film would need to be rewound onto the original reels and the the projector returned to the A/V room. Guess who was the schmuck?
Now days, the teacher just emails youtube links for my kid to watch on his own computer in the comfort of his own room.
Yeah, ditto machine, I think. And, just to be clear, the extra copies came from turning the crank; one master would be good for maybe 100 copies (Or not that many?). Purple was the main color I remember, but masters also came in others like red and green, maybe black.
Since you want stories, here’s a long one. It’s a minor hardship, indeed, but watch for the changes over time.
When I was nine, I first read the novel that has remained my favorite for decades. There was only problem: the story didn’t end. All the local plotlines were wrapped up, but it was clear that the arc was meant to continue–and it did, in fact. The next book in the series was published three years later…but I had no way of knowing that, or of knowing its title.
The nearest bookstore was over fifty miles away; despite being a family of bibliophiles, we didn’t make the trip very often, and never had much time to browse. I always looked for anything by the author when we did, but never found anything–not even another copy of the first novel. I didn’t find out about the sequel until I got my driver’s license, and could make the trip alone, with all the time I wanted. I got the manager of the bookstore to let me go through their microfiche catalog. After combing several years worth of book lists, I found the author’s name on another book. After six years, I had the title of the sequel…but the manager apologetically told me that it was out of print, and they couldn’t get it anymore. He suggested a company that did used book searches, and I wrote down their mailing address.
The next step was a trip to the library. Obviously, the one in my little one-horse town didn’t have the book, or I would have found it, so I filled out an inter-library loan request. The librarian sent it in for me, and a few weeks later informed me that there were no copies of the book in any library in the state. Not long after, I got a letter from the book search firm…they wanted almost $100 to perform the search. I couldn’t afford it; I would have to continue on my own.
Fast-forward a few years. I headed off to college, but my quest was not forgotten. I was soon haunting the college library, where they had begun the task of computerizing their catalog. I stood in line for nearly an hour behind students urgently searching for that key reference book on underwater batiking, then finally got access to a terminal; alas, the letters that slowly appeared in green phosphor were not kind. No reference to the book or author was in the system. Undaunted, I ventured into the basement, where contents of the card catalog were being typed into the system and flicked through index cards until I was convinced that the book was not to be found.
A year later, my world had broadened, and I had begun to see the first embryonic stirrings of what would become the internet. I was on several BBSes, and on Usenet well before the September That Never Ended. I tentatively asked this new digital community for word of my quarry, but to no avail…until one kind soul who had graduated from my school mentioned an odd little shop in a neighboring town, a seller of used books. A call to directory assistance with the shop’s name and town got me their number, and the proprietor–wonder of wonders–remembered hearing of the author and thought she might possibly have the book. She wasn’t sure; I would have to come and look.
I did, and quickly saw the reason for her uncertainty. The shop was a maze. Books were not so much sorted as arrayed in strata; a researcher might have learned much of the process by which authors and styles declined in popularity over the course of decades, but such abstractions did not interest me. I edged past teetering piles of romances and stacks of yellowing magazines to peer at tables piled indiscriminately with books. Eventually, under the glassy glares of several poorly stuffed animals, I found a table that appeared to be occupied by approximately the right genre. Surrounded by the miasma of old books, I began sifting through the pile. After some indeterminate time, I glimpsed a battered spine deep in the pile, a few letters of a name as familiar as that of an old friend. After ten years, for a mere dollar, I bore away my Grail.
That book didn’t finish the story either.
In fact, the story is still going on. It’s been nearly thirty years since child-Balance first read that book. I sometimes discuss it with the author, and I keep up with her doings in her online journal. When she finishes a new book in the series, I know when it is being proofread and when it goes to the publisher. I know the publication date months in advance, and I can go directly to the publisher’s website and download it in seconds to a handheld device that holds more books than my old hometown library had.
OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WHAT’S THE BOOK?!?
It’s been a long week, man. Don’t leave us hanging.
That copying thing is “mimeographing”. I remember in grade school we got mimeographed pictures on holidays, to color or decorate.
Back in caveman days, if you wanted to know the words to a song so that you could, I dunno, sing along, you’d go to the corner drugstore and look in the magazine section for a thin magazine (I seem to remember it was printed on yellow paper) of song lyrics. I remember doing this a few times, but of course it was hit or miss as to whether there would even be any new issue there, much less finding the words to the song you wanted in it. (and you’d look up those lyrics as fast as you could before the drugstore manager came over and informed you that you were not in a library and either buy the thing or get out)…And it was not uncommon for, when the collar and cuffs of a shirt got frayed, your mom would nonchalantly put it in the mending basket. No, the mending basket didn’t miraculously fix the shirt like in Harry Potter world, but later that night Mom would take the frayed part off, turn it, and sew it back onto the body of the shirt while you all watched Bonanza or Ed Sullivan. In fact, department stores used to sell collars and cuffs in an actual Notions Department, along with needles, thread, and other small items. The elevator operator would take you there, drop you off on the mezzanine!
Typing my Master’s thesis on a typewriter. Computers existed when I was doing it (1989), but hard to come by and not practical for most people. It was torture for me and I’m jealous of those who can write theirs on computers today; that would have made things SO different.
Getting up and walking over to the TV to change the channel.
I used to be a book editor, and we’d get the manuscripts by mail, in big envelopes or boxes. As soon as I was assigned a project I’d make two copies of the manuscript (most at least 300 pages, and I was making copies myself; it was a small publishing company, since bought by Penguin Putnam) so I could have at least one intact copy, because we’d literally cut some of them apart. At the end of my time there we did sometimes get manuscripts on floppy disks and we had one or two computers, but didn’t use them much–this was also in the late 80s.
Long conversations and arguments trying to recall something but never being able to come up with a definitive answer because there was no internet. There are few unsolved mysteries of that type nowadays.
:eek:
OR, like my dad, you had an early “remote control”. Children. 
I remember when I was 12 or 13 our “family” Christmas gift was…CABLE! Yay. 13 glorious channels, including PBS all the way from Dallas.:eek:
The next year we got a Pong game. All the neighborhood kids were at our house every day for months.
Year after that…a truly, truly amazing thing. HBO. Movies. In. Your. House. How much better could it get? 
Oh, and I was one of “those kids” who had my own phone line. Mom was a real estate agent and couldn’t have a teenager tying up the line. We had 3…yeah, THREE phone lines at home. The two lines in the kitchen came through one phone with a flip switch and slightly different rings. My line only rang in my room. Heaven. My friends were waaay jealous.
ETA: cable, pong, HBO. All on a HUGE 23" Zenith console TV.
Looking up articles that pertained to whatever subject you were interested in learning about. Anyone else remember “The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature”? I used to spend a lot of time poring over those volumes, and if I got one good article reference a day it was a good day.
My husband just reminded me that in addition to this, cashiers in department stores had a big, phone-book-sized* book of “bad” credit card numbers. The cashier had to check to be sure that your number wasn’t in the book before allowing you to use the card (I think only for purchases above a certain limit?).
I’m so old that I remember when “technology” didn’t necessarily mean “computers” or “internet”. It meant “rockets” and “machines”. 
Why not? I had to wait six years to find out a title.
The first book was God Stalk, and the one I spent years looking for was Dark of the Moon. The series is up to five novels and an anthology now, with a sixth novel coming out this year. (She’s been writing faster since she retired.) The rest have been easier to find, though I originally had to order a couple of them from a specialty publisher.
I was just thinking about that book last night. I loved that thing. "does it itch? go to page 397. On page 397, you would follow the arrows, and halfway down the page you would get… "go to page 18. Then back to 250, then to page 96. Final answer? “Consult a physician”.
I also remember the “check float”, the ability to write a Wednesday check for groceries with 0 funds in your account, knowing full well it wouldn’t “clear” until Monday, well after your Friday paycheck was deposited.
Not that I EVER took advantage of this situation! :eek:
You also had the ability to get away from people without being hassled as to why they couldn’t contact you for hours and hours on end.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LEFT HOME WITHOUT YOUR CELL PHONE?!? WHAT IF IT WAS AN EMERGENCY!!!”
We had to put water in metal trays and put the trays in the freezer to make ice. The trays had a built in lever to pry the cubes out.
I was living in Houston and planning to move to Atlanta and find a job there. First, I had to subscribe to the Atlanta newspaper in order to get the help wanted section. Just to get the address to the Atlanta newspaper I had to go to the large public library and find a copy of the paper and copy down the address. Then I mailed a check and a request to subscribe to their newspaper.
A few weeks later the papers started coming. They came by mail so they were always about a week old by the time they got to me. Then I poured over the classified listing and typed up my cover letter and resume (yes on a typewriter) and mailed it to the company It was probably two weeks since posting the ad by the time my resume got there, so finding any still-open jobs was tough!
This was 1990.
It was similar with me at Göttingen when I spent my junior year there (1977-78). We just had one phone for, IIRC, 48 students living in that wing of the dorm. To make a collect call to the family back home you had to go to the post office.
When I went to college, it was about 4-5 hours away from my hometown. My mother wrote me letters and I never talked with any of my friends because it was long-distance. I wrote them letters too, except for one friend who had email. I also had email, but the only computers I could write email on were in the basement of the math building on campus. That area was called the WEB (for Workstation Evans Basement). It was fancy and new, with teal tiles on the walls and amber or greenscreen UNIX computers.
My mom had a moral objection to cable, so we never had it. We had three channels. Then our city decided to just make everyone have cable, and you’d have to apply to have it taken away. My mom applied, but they never got around to actually doing it, so we had free cable and I could watch MTV–this was my senior year of HS. But I was never allowed to watch TV after 8.30 pm (because my younger siblings would insist on watching too) so it was kind of pointless.
I work at a college now and see loads of young’uns with large headphones instead of earbuds. I guess it’s supposed to block out noise? But I’m not used to it yet and I keep wondering why they’re wearing my dad’s earphones.
I was on the projection crew for a semester or two as well.
Of course, younger people don’t realize how great it was to be shown actual “films” in class. If the teacher ran films on the same afternoon each week, it was something to look forward to, just because it was a break in the routine. And it didn’t matter if the actual film was totally lame, because then you just needed a sense of humor.
After the era of films, but before everybody had computers, they used VCR tapes, exhibited on a TV that was usually way too small. It was no comparison to the old way of showing films.