Holy crap, I’d forgotten about those. I don’t think I ever BROKE a record, but that may be because I was so frightened that I’d do so that I was Extra Careful.
I hated 8 tracks, especially when a song crossed tracks (on studio-made 8 tracks). The song would fade out, then click and fade back in. Drove me crazy.
I remember when that horrible scratching noise the needle made when it skipped across your record was a bad thing. Now everyone’s doing it on purpose.
I used my Royal typewriter in college to write papers instead of those newfangled word processor things they had in our library, and my mom’s 500 lb IBM Selectric when I had to type at home. I learned to type on a manual typewriter and it took me forever to get used to not pulling the lever to get to the next line. You mean you can just hit that button? And it goes to the next line? Really? And there are no keys to stick together when you type too fast? Wow.
Sign me up!
::raises hand::
Uhm, Mister or Madame Charman/Chairwoman, I have a couple of questions. Do we have a membership list yet? And a formal, codified list of requirements for membership? I hate to be a mensch (seeing as how I’m already an Episcopalian) but I’d like a little more order and organization here.
OK, who’s all for the early bird special? I’m drivin’.
No, you want to be a mensch, a good guy. You may be thinking of putz, a, er…which you do not want to be.
Right, a putz (I always confused those in Yiddish 101, back in Episcopal school.) Maybe a nuedge, or noodge or however you spell it.
Oh my god, I had blocked out typing on typewriters and needing to re-do the entire freaking document because you made a typo in the last paragraph on the last page. I wasn’t working in offices yet, but I remember doing typing assignments for typing class in high school and doing that. We didn’t have Liquid Paper yet, either - that stuff was sent straight from heaven when it was finally invented.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. If he actually watched the Lawrence Welk show as a kid, paid attention instead of reading a comic book like the rest of us, and I think we will need eighteen witnesses to that, than he is a Super Fogey, the Uber Fogey, and we should all shake our canes where he points, drive him to the cafeteria and be at his beck and call to run kids out of his yard.
Well seeing as how Wile E was the OP I think it only fair that he be nominated as chairperson and as such the responsibility for drawing up a list of requirements for membership falls firmly on his shoulders.
As to a membership list, well I guess you could put me down as not only a member but I also nominate myself as treasurer, quite obviously we’ll need to have a responsible person to take care of fees, fines and the like
Perhaps those [del]inferior[/del] Canadian pennies were lightweight enough for this job, or perhaps inflation (or was it stagflation?) got down to this level, but we used dimes on the turntable arm, not pennies.
I think that another requirement of FOGI is that all statements must be qualified with “back in the day” or “back in my day”. So helpful to gain perspective from the wisdom of the ages and all…
Surely you mean “In days of Yore”
BTW British (old) pennies weighed a hellova lot, we used groats to weigh the arm of our phonograph down.
Either that or half turnips, which in days of yore were our staple diet along with mangel wurzels and rotten cabbage
One small nitpik (let’s face it: our posts are the only info these whelps will ever see on the fine art of mimeography): the typewriter (usually) did not punch through the stencil, just shoved aside the waxy coating on the mesh backing material.
If you caught your typo when you made it and weren’t at the bottom of the stencil you could scroll down a few lines, do the correction fluid thing, then scroll back up and retype it without the registration problems. I always laugh my creaky arse off when some conspiracy-theorist type looks at an old mimeographed document and finds something sinister in what are obviously mere typo corrections.
Was the spirit duplicator the thing that produced copies in that hard-to-read purplish-blue ink? I remember they had a “funny” smell, but didn’t think it particularly pleasant. Gad, I hated taking exams printed that way.
I’d forgotten about carbon paper. Perhaps we should add familiarity with that (and with manual typewriters) to the list of FOGI prerequisites.
I learned to type on a manuel typewriter. I remember typewriter erasers–round with a brush at the end. I remember typewriters with moving carriages. The IBM selectric was a miracle (and I still own one).
I have a lot of mind tricks to do arithmatic in my head, cause I was born before the age of calculators. I remember the first calculators costing about $100.
The first time I felt like an old fogey was getting off the bus at a stop on the highway where I had to walk down an incline to get to the street. It was winter, I stepped off the bus and went down on my ass. The Young Black Dude waiting for a bus insisted on walking me down the incline like I was…well, old dammit.
Okay, first off, I’m a chick. Secondly, I may well BE the Uber Fogey, because Bobby and Cissy (the dancers) were my favorites, followed by the beautiful hispanic girl whose name I don’t recall who sang Que Sera, Sera, and then by whatever song they did at the end of the show where they had all the guys and all the girls in color-cordinating dresses and suits. So there.
chowder, I thank you all, and I’ll swear any allegiance you want. 
Well, if you’re a girl… :rolleyes:
Really? Ignorance (or inattention, or nearsightedness) fought!
Yep. That’d be them. The smell faded as the ink on the copies dried.
Oh yes. Not just carbon paper, but also that flimsy paper that was sometimes used for the copy. It had C O P Y printed on it, red letters, usually diagonally across the page. I’d forgotten about that stuff.
While we’re in the ancient office, who has used those big adding machines? Rows of buttons with numbers on them and a lever on the side? Not much of a leap from the abacus to those.
You’re either with us or against us; if you’re not part of the problem, then you’re part of the------oh, never mind. I might bend on the car part, but not the pickup truck. The 48 Ford pickup will forever be a thing of beauty and far superior to any damn pickup being built today.
…and you did not to use smeary, eraseable bond… or chew up your paper with the little-brush-on-top “ink” erasers.
$400 when I first saw them. LED, to match your new digital LED watch. I still have the one I used in college, and I still have and can use my ol’ slide rule. Isn’t anyone impressed?
Onion skin. Amazing stuff.
My first digital watch was not much smaller than my hand and was OFF until I pushed the button to display the time (in green). I wore that thing out from pressing the button all the time. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
He died in 399 BC. In 338 BC Athens was conquered by Philip II of Macedon.
Coincidence? I think not.