I remember:[ul]
[li]the Bicentennial celebrations[/li][li]Evil Knievel’s attempt to “jump over” the Snake River Canyon[/li][li]“Tuna Twist” tuna salad mix - “I’m Sir Celery! I’m Miss Parsley! We are the Onion Twins!”[/li][li]Playing with my neighbor’s Six-Million Dollar Man action figure[/li][li]Time for Timer during Saturday morning cartoons[/li][/ul]
What do you remember?
I also remember Evil Knievel’s Snake River attempt.
Earlier than that, when I was two, my dad woke me up and carried me downstairs. He put me in front of our tiny black-and-white TV, and I remember him saying “you’re very young now, but you will remember this for the rest of your life”. Then we watched Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon.
A really random bizarre memory was seeing a very obscure TV movie when it was first shown in the US: Pray for the Wildcats starring William Shatner.
I was born in 1970. I was too young to know of Evil Knievel’s Snake River jump attempt, which took place right here in my home state.
Other things I remember to some degree:
[ul]
[li] The Bicentennial: We went to a public fireworks show. It was the first time I’d seen the really big fireworks.[/li][li] Three Mile Island: I didn’t know much about this, just that it was some big power plant that blew up.[/li][li] Iranian hostage crisis: This is the first big news item I can clearly remember. Every day I’d watch the opening of the news just to find out if the hostages had been released yet. I didn’t understand why people in some faraway cuontry would be detaining our citizens.[/li][li]The 1980 Winter Olympic Games, Lake Placid, NY: This was the first time I watched Olympic events on TV. While I was old enough to have seen the 1976 games I don’t remember anything about seeing coverage on TV.[/li][li]Mt. St Helens:. This I clearly remember. I was mostly concerned for my relatives who live in Seattle and wanted to make sure they weren’t affected by the volcanic blast.[/li][li]Ronald Reagan’s assassination attempt: I was in the sixth grade. The teacher from the next room came into our room to announce the terrible news. I was shocked and confused, wondering why anyone would want to try killing our President.[/li][li]TV shows: I didn’t watch a lot of TV as a kid, but some of my favorite shows were “The Dukes of Hazzard”, “BJ and the Bear” and “Knight Rider.” In the summertime when I was out of school I liked watching all the daytime game shows (better than the talk shows and court shows they have on these days).[/li][li]Movies: The first movie I saw in the theater was “Freaky Friday.” I wish I could have seen “Star Wars” when it made its big 1977 debut.[/li][li]Music: When I was 6 and my oldest sister was 11 she began buying Kiss records. This is where I got my start in liking rock music. She also exposed my young ears to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Rush, among several others.[/li][/ul]
TV
The Kroft Supershow: Sat AM - ABC? (That would blow your mind away) & Wonderama.
“Music”
Mr. Jaws: My first 45rpm. K-Tel’s Blockbuster 33rpm Compilation.
Film
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Musta been a re-release matinee with my Dad. He took me out by my ear 1/2 way thru the movie because of my incessant nagging question: “When Are They Gonna Show the Ugly Guy?”
Current Events:
One of the Arab / Israeli Conflicts (I guess it was the '73 Lightning War). I don’t know if it was Harold K Smith or Harry Reasnor anchoring - but I distinctly recall thinking guerilla fighters were trained apes in army gear who did the fighting, ala Planet of the Apes.
Commercials:
Lee-E-E-E-vi’s Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha LEeee-Vi’s & The man in the Fig costume singing the praises of Fig Newton - Here’s the tricky part: Rich & Chewy Inside, Golden Flaky tender bakey outside
My grandfather’s Atwater-Kent radio. It was before the days of super heterodyne and had 3 or 4 big dials on the front which tuned each RF amplifier stage separately.
Herbert Hoover election. We went to a neighbor’s house and heard sketchy election news on the radio.
Lindberg’s Atlantic flight.
The Great Depression
The burning of the liner Morro Castle. It had never occurred to me that a ship could burn while surrounded by water.
The Hindenburg crash.
Silent movies.
Tire patching kits and tire irons that were used to disassemble the rim and fix the tire out on the road.
Inner tubes for tires.
Buick cars in which the engine water temperature gauge was a thermometer mounted in the radiator cap.
Running boards on cars.
Horse drawn ice delivery wagons.
Horse drawn everything on farms.
The first all steel auto bodies.
Gasoline stations in which you hand-pumped the fuel into a cylindrical glass tank with half-gallon graduations on it. The fuel then ran by gravity into the car’s tank.
Hand operated windshield wipers.
Cars without sun visors.
I could go on like this for quite a while longer, but your eyes are already glazing over.
I’m a Fifties baby: I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis; Cold War “civic alert” films; black and white TV; our '56 car that looked like a huge saddle shoe.
John Cameron Swazey reading the news on the radio.
The Huntly Brinkley report.
The Beatles playing on the Ed Sullivan show.
The Flintstone on prime time television.
Silent movies.
18¢ per gallon gasoline.
49¢ Matchbox toy cars.
Penny candy counters.
Drug stores with soda fountains.
Metal department store charge plates.
Human operators working a switchboard with cables.
Kennedy’s assassination.
Seeing president Lyndon Johnson dedicate the BART test track.
Man setting foot on the moon.
The first M[sup]c[/sup]Donalds appearing.
Traveling by propeller driven airplane.
My Uncle buying one of the first VW Beetles in the SF bay area.
Don’t get me started, you know how I get.
The first Gemini space mission.
My second grade teacher getting called out in the hallway, then returning to the class to inform us that JFK had been shot.
Watching Lee Oswald get shot as it happened.
Black and white television sets that, when you turned them off, slowly faded down to a point of light at the center.
Gas stations where the first digit of the price of the gas was painted on (a 3) and only the second digit ever changed. The idea of gas over 40 cents a gallon was unthinkable.
New York World’s Fair - 1964. I was 10. I remember seeing the Pieta and “It’s a Small World” and BP’s dinosaur exhibit.
I remember the announcement in school when Pres. Kennedy was shot.
I remember what a big deal it was when Kennedy was elected - the fear that the country would become subservient to the Pope. Even at age 6, I thought that was stupid.
I also remember when streetcars ran in Baltimore. I never rode on one, but I remember seeing them… I think… it’s rather vague, so maybe I projected a movie I saw to the tracks in the street.
Oooohh, lots of folks giving away their ages. OK, I’m game:
Home milk bottle delivery
Nixon’s resignation
Feather earrings
Disco (!!!)
Rotary phones
The Archies cartoons
The Partridge Family
The Bugs Bunny Show on during primetime.
The Three Stooges on in the afternoon. (Bliss)
Pull tab pop tops.
Ham cans and sardine tins that were opened with keys.
Berkeley’s tram line that went across the bay bridge.
Film strips being shown in class.
Room sized computers with the power of a modern calculator.
Eating a nice Mexican lunch for $1.[sup]00[/sup].
Here’s the master list.
I remember Robert F. Kennedy’s assasination.
I remember Walt Disney dying and my dad showing us a picture of a sad Mickey Mouse in the paper and telling us Mickey’s dad died.
I remember my mom going to vote and telling me she voted for President Johnson.
I remember a lot of things, but some things are sort of turning points:
First TV program: Robin Hood in black and white, with a snowy picture on a huge console with a tiny screen. I was instantly hooked.
First airplane ride: on a DC-6 from Juneau, AK to Anchorage, AK
Alaska statehood
JFK assassination
Alaska earthquake in 1964 (yes, I was in it)
Man on the moon
Early stuff:
I remember when the Soviets put Sputnik into space.
I remember when Tom Terriffic made his debut on “Captain Kangaroo.”
I remember when the Sears Christmas catalogue featured pages and pages of electric trains.
Of course, that should be Tom Terrific.
Why don’t misspelled words jump out at you on preview the way they do once you’ve posted?
“Whistle while your work
Nixon is a jerk
Eisenhower has the power
To put him out of work.”
I remember my mom showing me a newspaper that saidSouth Vietnam Surrenders.
Ernie annoyed Bert so much that Bert nearly always fainted at the end of their bit.
Walking to school once gasoline hit a dollar a gallon.
B. 1968, which is feeling older by the minute.
Seeing a neighbor’s Pong game - I was five.
Car radios with mechanical presets for the stations.
My father’s Osborne luggable computer.
“And that’s the way it is.”
The Washington Star
Evening newspapers in general
The Yugo
Every girl in the school getting the Dorothy Hamill wedge
President Ford
RealityChuck; Nitpick:
“Whistle while you work
Stevenson’s a jerk…”
(Nixon was Eisenhower’s running mate, '56 campaign)
Kukla, Fran and Ollie
Crusader Rabbit
Texaco Theatre
Crosley Televisions