A couple of tidbits from the Shibblets this weekend:
We were discussing, since I have two brothers and two sisters, how we got about when we needed to go somewhere. Did we have to take two cars? No, we would load everyone into the station wagon. Oldest Shibblet: “Daddy, what’s a station wagon?”
In a different conversation, the eldest asked did I ever get the chicken pox and if so what was it like? I told her that it was mostly just boring. We stayed home from school and couldn’t go out. “Did you get to watch videos all day?” No, there weren’t videos. Or cable television. Or Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. In the morning there was news, then game shows. In the afternoon they showed Soap Operas, except for one channel (UHF) which showed reruns of old shows, like Hazel, Father Knows Best, I Love Lucy, Topper, Family Affair, etc. Of course they hadn’t heard of any of the shows, but they were more intrigued of a world without cable TV or DVDs. But the part that really drew an awed hush, “…and there were no remote controls. You had to get up and change the channels by hand.”
My daughter was aghast when I explained black and white TV to her. I don’t think I ever told her the trials and tribulations of living in a house with only 1 set, where on a really good day, we would get not only the 3 channels in Baltimore, but we might actually get a couple of the DC channels, too. Sure, they were fuzzy, but if you squinted just right…
I once tried to convince my children that the whole world was in Black & White prior to 1940 and that we only achieved the process of color gradually. I point to the Wizard of Oz as the turning point and explain that it was an early experimentation with color, which is why there is b&w at the beginning, then color, before the color loses hold and the black & white comes back. Even a few years ago they were too smart for that, but it was a valiant effort.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to a younger coworker that SkipMagic and I were going that night to see Average White Band, Michael McDonald, and Hall & Oates in concert.
She looked at me like I had 3 heads and said, “I don’t know who any of those people are.”
The first time I remember feeling old was when I was pulled up by a cop for speeding and he addressed me as “Sir”. My previous conversation with a cop I had been “asshole”.
auntie em, you reminded me of another that happened some years back. We were in a record store (back when they still sold records) and overheard this gem. One kid was showing another a Beatles album, and the second one said, in amazement: “You mean Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings??”
Then there was the time at work I was showing a new hire where we go to get engineering drawings. I always look at the dates in the signature block, and I commented how the drawing I’d had printed out was done in 1967, further commenting that I’d been in the 7th grade.
The new hire had to say it: “I wasn’t even born then.”
Actually twickster you may be able to help me out. I am trying to dig up stuff by Philly “country” band Frog Holler but can’t find anything here in Oz. Are you familiar with the band?
Not only that…you probably only had one set in the house and it was a black and white set. :eek:
Reminded me of when I had scarlet fever as a kid. I was isolated to a bedroom for a week and had only a radio for company. As I recall, Amos and Andy were still broadcasting then.
I recall once stopping the conversation among a group of people more or less my age by noting that Ringo Staff had just become a grandfather, a major body blow to the boomers’ sense of shared youth.
I’ve heard the name, but can’t do any better than that. Being (ahem) of a certain age, I’m not necessarily up on all the hip and happening groups, though. Let me ask around.
I work at a radio station. I am the only person outside of the Chief Engineer and his assistant who knows how to operate an open-reel tape machine and edit tape with a razor blade and sticky tape. Granted, we never have to do it anymore, but several people have asked me how it worked. A kid there went to recording arts school and never saw a tape machine in his whole time there. Same kid also had no idea how to operate a turntable. Once, when transcribing a record for the first time, he pushed the tonearm across the record to get to the track he wanted - ruining the irreplaceable record and breaking off the stylus on the $300 cartridge.
We went from B&W to color sometime when I was younger, between 5-10, but I really don’t remember. Probably younger because I remember Batman, Get Smart and the The Monkees in color.
BTW, did you have a velveteen rabbit as a child?
This is a very interesting thread, because it shows me how growing up and growing older is a continuous process…and not just a generational one.
I’m only 22, and I remember realizing I wasn’t just a kid anymore when I was talking with a friend who was 17 at the time about video games, when it dawned on me that by the phrase ‘vintage games’, he was thinking of Super Nintendo when I was thinking of Atari and Coleco. Some of you would probably think of Pong and Space Invaders.
I went to broadcasting school a couple years ago (I’m currently 28, by the way), and not only did they teach us how to edit reel-to-reel, but the “proper” method to cue up an album track. Most of the people in my class were in the 25-35 age range, and knew perfectly well how to operate a turntable. The one 18-year-old in the class had never even seen one in his life. He went last in the practical “exam”, and watched very intently as each of us old folks took our turn and cued up a track.
And a couple weeks ago, I had to explain to a friend’s 10-year-old son what people did to get cash before ATM machines. sigh
A big sign you’re getting old (you, not me) is when you (not me) make that noise when you get up out of your (not my) comfy chair. (Again, I don’t make that noise.)
My wife has a part time job in the day care center of a local health club. The employees are pretty well split between moms who work there for the free membership and teenagers on their first job. She was talking with a girl who had just started who was a sophomore at the same high school my wife attended. My wife says, yeah, I graduated in 1988. The girl kinda laughs and replies, gosh that’s the year I was born!
I like telling my 17 yo nephew that I remember when MTV played vidoes. he hasn’t laughed once at it, but I still keep trying!
