Before VCRs, my dad had a Super-8 movie projector and a modest selection of commercial (as well as home) movies, one of which was a few scenes from Star Wars.
(And yes, in those days “Star Wars” referred to one specific movie.)
When I was a kid, the public library used to have a 8mm Magi-Cartridge projector with an allotment of about 100 cartridges. You could plug a cartridge into the projector and watch the movie on a screen at the desk. The films were silent so it didn’t bother other patrons. Most were nature or travel documentaries with intertitles, and a few were extremely condensed (down to 3-4 minutes) feature films.
One was a documentary on the Kennedy assassination, but it had footage I don’t remember seeing anywhere else. Part was what I now recognize as the Zapruder film, but there was a title card saying the shots came from the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository followed by a shot of a rifle barrel being pulled back inside the window. I have no idea if that was a re-creation or was from some other person’s home movie footage. Haven’t thought about that in a long time.
Yeah, I saw it when I was still in high school, so, in or after 1969. I might have seen it at UCLA. And, yeah, it was absolutely terrifying. Soul-freezingly terrifying. As a little kid, I was certain I was going to die in an atomic bomb explosion. It was the background noise of my childhood.
KTLA 5 and tom Hatten… he was the only artist that was legally cleared to draw popeye characters by king features outside of the strip and tv shows…
Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.
My mom likes to remind me that I once called up, probably aged 8 or 9, and pledged $100. Apparently, they mailed you a postcard with instructions on how to pay that arrived a few days later.
When I was a kid, in the 2000s, this is also how I and everyone I knew used phones. Unless the person I was calling happened to be the one that picked up.
I remember my Dad had a pager. Doubt many kids today would recognize such a device or guess at its purpose.
~Max
We talked about various aspects of telephones - but not this one. When i was a kid, if the phone rang, you answered it - regardless of almost any other circumstance.
I remember it was an honor to answer the telephone for the house, because calls were important. There was also proper form, not just “hello” but “S. residence, Max speaking”.
~Max
Yep. If you were a big kid, you might be allowed to answer the phone
Not one of my students got my joke today. It’s not from my childhood, but still. I feel really old.
I put a pine & holly ring on the inside of my classroom door. Framed in the middle is a picture of Ricardo Montalban and his pecs - a still from ST2. Other than a few enquiring as to who the old lady was, nothing. Even my geek class didn’t have a clue.
It’s the Wreath of Khan.
He will forever be the old guy from Spy Kids to me, although I did finally watch ST2 this year.
~Max
Someone at work had a cartoon on his door - about a tape cassette surgeon asking the nurse for a pencil. I doubt many people understood it, since when I mentioned a Walkman to a colleague, she said “Oh those old-fashioned things you wrote on your belt that played a CD?”
For some people, maybe.
Yeah, there were a few years way back when I used a pager. What a pain in the ass!!!
Get a page…….find a pay phone……,find a working pay phone…….get change from a store……make the call.
I remember when telephones actually rang a bell for an incoming call. Sure, now you can use a digital sound of a bell for your ring tone, but a synthetic bell just isn’t the same
Before Pam (non-stick spray) came out, my mom’s can of Crisco always had a piece of waxed paper in it. We’d use that to grease pans for baking…and then put it back in the can! 
I had a Skilcraft set but couldn’t do anything really interesting with it. The alcohol lamp was confiscated by my parents as soon as I opened the box.
Oh yeah. And it rang and rang and rang if you didn’t. No voice mail or answering machines. You’d never know who was calling if you didn’t pick up. Also, if you were on the phone, you’d never know you missed a call. The caller would get a “busy signal,” until one day they invented “call waiting.”
I remember the “urban legand” (?) that the telephone company encouraged everyone to answer their phones quickly. Because their lines were tied up from the moment the call was connected, but they only charged from the time that the person picked up the phone.
Probably encouraged by describing telephone manners - especially business telephone manners.