The good old days?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Hrmph. Nothing wrong with calling a CD an album - the word has nothing to do with the medium. The term started way back when the only recorded music available was on 78rpm disks. Recording time per disk was short, so a symphony or other long piece of music would be recorded on several disks. These could be kept together by putting them into a book of record sleeves - an album - and after a while were often sold in such a book. My father has a bunch of them, although he no longer has a 78 player, and many of them have spines that look for all the world like old-fashioned photograph albums! When 78s fell out of favor, people still used the term “album” to mean a group of pieces of recorded music that were packaged and sold as a unit… which is exactly what the average music CD is.

Flodjunior, who’s 7, was fascinated at the sight of an adding machine. I remember my mother using one to double-check her math when she balanced the checkbook. Also, he came across a Peanuts strip in which Snoopy is pretending to be “the world-famous grocery store clerk”. I had to explain to him that Snoopy was entering the prices into the cash register by hand, rather than scanning them, before the running monologue made any sense to him. And then he found his father’s old 8" floppy discs…

22

Riding in the “way-back” of the station wagon, slamming each other against the windows on the turns. It doesn’t seem fair that that’s agains the law now.

23

Further to carrying cash/how about just knowing what a bank teller looks like. I can recall my folks having to leave work before a long weekend to get to the bank if we were going to do anything on that weekend, due to having to have a little extra money. Once that door of the bank closed you were SOL until it opened again after the weekend. No machines to get cash 24/7. Now I go months without setting a foot inside my branch, just do it all at the ATM or online.

24

Further to carrying cash/how about just knowing what a bank teller looks like. I can recall my folks having to leave work before a long weekend to get to the bank if we were going to do anything on that weekend, due to having to have a little extra money. Once that door of the bank closed you were SOL until it opened again after the weekend. No machines to get cash 24/7. Now I go months without setting a foot inside my branch, just do it all at the ATM or online.

One more thing, when I was younger, we probably took something ready to eat,from the freezer once in 6 months, now it is ready prepared meals at least three times a week from the freezer (it is just easier)

But I do miss the days when lives seemed slower and there seemed to be time to talk. Now I send email across and office instead of walking over and talking to a person. Is it better??? I think we have lost something very important, and it shows up in a lack of ability to communicate person to person.

25

Forget the kids. There’s lots of stuff that I forgot all by myself.

What are 5¼" diskettes for :confused:
How do you turn on the car’s lights if someone turned off Automatic mode :confused:
How do I work the non-microwave oven :confused:
How can I bank by phone when the website is down :confused:

26

Telegrams, iorn lungs, whites only public swimming pools in the mid-west, memorizing the 23d Psalm in first grade in public school, crank up party line telephones, air raid drills, John Camron Swaizy(sp) with the news and commentary by Fulton Lewis, Jr., CAPTAIN VIDEO, Tom Corbit and the Space Cadets, coal strikes, regular railroad passanger service, the draft and volunteering for the draft, no womens athletics in high school or college, manditory collage ROTC and chappel, pre-Elvis rock and roll with a full string section (for the love of God), the Red Menace and the Yellow Peril, comic books at 10 cents for 52 pages, farm horses shot and left for hog feed because the tractor had come and the was no market for horses, Blue Sunoco with that magic ingredient-Boron, bring your shotgun to high school for the noon opening of the pheasant season, rumatic feaver, mumps, whooping cough, German measles, town pump with tin cup attached, school with oiled wood floors and the smell of vomit, Miss Yoder supervising the lower elementry boys’ restroom by looking over your shoulder. God, I miss the early '50’s.

27

Girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school until I was in the ninth grade.

Dippity-Doo. GeeYourHairSmellsTerrific. HaiKarate. Breck girls. Captain Kangaroo. Beanie and Cecil. Moddess.

I still remember our first color television. It was all green, all blue, or red. You had to have a family member stand by at the bunny ears!

Wrapping leftovers in Pyrex, covered with tin foil. Exxon used to put a tiger in your tank. Having to ask your parents for permission to use the phone.

Lucky Strikes: “I’d rather fight than switch!” OK, that’s a good thing to have gone by the wayside…

But I sure miss penny candy.

28

The last two VCR’s I bought required a remote control to use all their functions. I shopped around but you can’t buy a VCR anymore that works without a remote control.

29

Measles?
Chicken Pox?
Mumps?
Every Mother would drag her kid to the infected one.
Get 'em sick and give 'em immunity.

30
  1. BankAmericard and Master Charge (now Visa and you know).
  2. Exxon was Esso in the tiger-tanking days.
  3. H.O.!
  4. Cartoons on Saturday mornings ONLY. (Corollary: getting up early to watch the “Indian” test-pattern screen until the station signed-on).
  5. Bomb shelters.
31

Checking out the TV listings Saturday afternoon to see what came on the late night horror movie (which started at 11:30).

Waiting all day to see one of those great Hammer films.

At 10:45 you would plug in the electric corn popper, (if you were lucky enough to have one, instead of the big sauce pan & lid combo) One of those fancy electric jobs that stirred the popcorn around in the half a stick of butter so it wouldn’t burn.

Then at 11:15 you would turn on the TV so it would have time to WARM UP, which took a couple of minutes, (remember TVs with tubes?)

Then spending the next 10 minutes fussing around with the rotor box trying to get the reception just right.

That way you made sure that everything was just right when the movie finally came on and you could be sure of being able to sit down and watch Peter Cushing, et al do their thing.

Seeing a movie was much more of an adventure then.

I can’t relate as well to the whole record thing since I collect 78’s and do have a player. I also have an 8 track player and a number of tapes. (on the same unit as the 33/45/78 turntable).

Remember getting gifts for using a particular gas station? I think we had an entire set of glassware that came from there. Of course they all had the local football team logo on them, but hey.

Remember S&H green stamps and thumbing through those catalogs figuring out what you were going to do once you got five full books? Would it be the plastic ?? milimeter camera or maybe the transister radio? What was that format that used to be between 35 and 110?

That’s all for now.

32

There’s a huge, multi-page thread of this already out there somewhere but, being the lazy bastard I am, I’m not going to go searching for it. Instead, I’ll add:

  1. My mother going to the service station (remember them) and the attendant coming 'round to the driver’s side. “Fill 'er up with premium, please.” Cost, about $10.00 (1965 Pontiac Bonneville - I used to sleep in the package shelf under the rear windshield). While he was at it he’d check the oil, radiator, tire pressure, and wash the windshield. “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.”

  2. Going to the A&P and having the checkout lady enter everything into the register by hand and without looking at the damn thing. Ten-key-by-touch? Hell, she was working on 100 keys at a time.

  3. “This program is brought to you in living color.”

  4. Having to use a church key to open a can of soda or beer. No pull tabs.

  5. The laundry truck came to the house on Wed. and delivered my dad’s shirts, picking up the dirty ones at the same time.

  6. “This news, just in from Dallas…”

  7. Making a pallet on the cool, linoleum floor in the summer. No AC.

  8. The Marlboro Man when he was on TV. Was “I’d rather fight than switch” the slogan for Lucky Strikes? That doesn’t sound right…I thought it was another brand. Also, the Kool penguin, “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.”

  9. “Good night, David. Good night, Chet.”

  10. Walking along the road in the heat of summer, picking up soda bottles from the ditch, cleaning them out with the hose, taking them to “the store” (I grew up about a mile from the quintessential country store - it was simply called “the store”)and getting the deposit money.

33

A bit more recent than all of these…

My son (13) didn’t understand why I was so blown away by the music in Diablo II, so I bought him the Atari games CD for Christmas. Asteroids, Space Invaders, Centipede, Missile Command, a couple others.

After just a few minutes of boop BOOP boop BOOP boop BOOP boop BOOP boop BOOP boop BOOP boop squawk BREEEEEEEEE boop BOOP boop BOOP… now he understands.

34

“You’re looking more like your father every day, now that you’re getting grey hair”
Yeah?.. well I’m starting to ACT like him too!
<growls at “the kids these days”>

Yeesh!

-How about penmanship?! If you can’t “keyboard” it, or run it through the scanner, how does it end up on paper?!
-Carbon paper
-Esperanto
-Leaded gas
-99 octane
-carbeurators
-STANDING beside dad while he’s driving.
-reel mowers… although, they’re making a bit of a comeback
-brace-and-bits
-typing class
-Jarts (lawn darts)
-butterfly handlebars and banana seats
-sonic booms (I grew up near an Air Force Base)
-PF Flyers

…and, personally, the greatest tragedy…

-Converse Chuck Taylors (TWO color choices! Black or White)
I mention Chucks because I learned that they’re the only athletic shoe made in the USA, and they’ll soon close the US factory that makes them. I own 13 pair of Chucks. That’s the only brand of sneaker/tennis shoe that I wear.
<sigh>

35

“Run faster and jump higher in PF Flyers!”
“(insert show)-IN COLOR!!”

36

Gas stations where a squad of 3-5 people would come out on the run to check the air in your tires, wipe the front and back windshield, check the oil and pump the gas.

Gas station giveaways “Collect the whole set!”

Requisite Opal mention.

Sending in boxtops to Battle Creek, Michigan.

Sugar Jets cereal and Sugar Corn Pops and Sugar Smacks. (Try to find a cereal today with the word “sugar” in the name!)

Keds, when “tennis shoes” meant black with white soles and a big circle on top of the ankle bone.

The J.C. Penney store in our small town that had a wonderful pnuematic to deliver your payment to a cashier on the mezzanine. The clerk would put your bucks in a big brass tube with rubber bumpers on each end, open a flap into the pipe and whoosh away it would go, only to return in a few minutes with your change.

That same store, instead of bagging things, would wrap them in brown paper from a 3 or 4 foot wide roll and tie it up with string.

Heck, not having any plastic sacks at all.

19¢ hamburgers.

32¢ a gallong gasoline.

Mumbley-peg.

Saturday mornings glued to the old Magnavox TV with wonderous adventure shows: Tales of the Texas Rangers; Wild Bill Hickock (with Andy Devine as Jingles “Wait for me, Wild Bill!”); Fury (“The Story of a horse, and the boy who loved him.”); Sky King (“Out of the blue of the western sky…::whirling triangular Nabisco label:: it’s Sky King!”); Sargeant Preston of the Yukon; Range Rider; Cisco Kid; Circus Boy, etc. etc.

Way, way before Star Trek and even Twilight Zone: Science Fiction Theater and Rocky Jones.

Kiddie records, often in bright yellow or red vinyl: Tubby the Tuba; The Little Engine That Could; Gerald McBoing Boing and others, with the little inexpensive boxy record players even kids could operate.

And nobody striding into schools with guns to shoot up the place. Every time somebody lays that “people back in ancient Rome were complaining about the next generation” I remind them that kids weren’t in mortal danger at the schoolhouse. Some progress isn’t.

37

I watch Adam-12 for one reason. I always drool when I see shots of those old gas stations with 102 octaine for $25 cetns. (Drool) Mom had a 68 Olds with a Police Interceptor (455?), ran like hell.

Oh yeah, and why they call it a clicker. First TV we had with a remote actually “Clicked”.

38

*Originally posted by Barbarian *

Hmmm… can’t quote signatures. Still, Barbarian, I am understandably curious about your sig. I don’t think I have ever owned pants made from any part of a cow at all. Care to elaborate?

As I am not really reading this thread, you can always email me at badastro@badastronomy.com. I really am curious!

39

Having standard mean stick. I got into a “who’s on first?” type conversation with my work study student, asking him if he could drive standard, when I meant stick and he meant automatic. I’m not sure if the meaning of the word has actually changed (regarding cars), or if the kid just assumed I meant like 100% of the cars his family owned in his lifetime when I said standard.

When you couldn’t say things like “ass” and “bitch” on TV. It still shocks me, everytime. Not because the words shock me, because they’re on TV.

Kids today (don’t ya love things that start with “kids today”?) who have seen the Star Wars movies so many times on TV since early childhood that they never had a time when they didn’t know who Luke’s father is. I mean really. When I was sitting there in the theater, watching Empire, I had to take a moment and completely re-adjust my entire world view in order to emotionally cope with that moment.

Good lord, what are they called? The table top hockey games with the players attached to the ends of those metal rods, and the “rink” itself was made of nice, sharp tin. It came with a little plastic Stanley Cup. (This was the home version of the game recently featured in some beer commercial.) These are so much better than any computer hockey games.

Actually enjoying watching the home movies from previous Christmas and birthday celebrations, because there was a limit to how long they could be (and that film wasn’t cheap). Just long enough to get a shot of everyone waving, one kid crying, and then ending with the cat knocking over the Christmas tree and Dad putting down the camera to go beat the cat with a giant plastic candy cane.* Perfect for nostalgia. 3+ hours of video footage of the same events just isn’t enjoyable for anyone.

*silly, he could never catch the cat.

40

Dolores Claiborne: You really took me back! Back in the day…I remember absolutely every item you mentioned, vividly. Especially the stinky purple mimeo fluid! We sniffed that in high school before anyone knew that huffing wasn’t such a good idea.
And I still have my 45s! And a turntable to play them on!

I have no kids, but I do have nieces and little second cousins. 6-year-old cousin already knows how to page her mom; and the nieces have probably never seen a vinyl record, though their dad used to have an 8-track player in his car.