Thanks to Lou Z for reminding us of the Good Old Days.
In The Beginning When We Were Young
Found one of
those rants from some youngster. You
know someone born in the ‘80’s who is complaining that their children don’t
know how good they have it now over being a kid in the ‘80’s. Being a grandparent a number of times over,
the oldest serving on a nuclear submarine, I thought it was time to add my two
“copper” pennies worth.
Starting
with telephones. Just for fun, ask
someone under 40 what why they have letters by the numbers on the key pad. Texting?
Remembering 800 phone numbers?
Then tell them about telephone exchanges, e.g. BAldwin or SHerwood. Forget about dialing the phone. In the Kevin Kline movie In & Out there
is a scene where Matt Dillon’s character leaves his girlfriend in a motel room
with a dial telephone and she freaks out because she doesn’t know how to use
it. Remember when a mobile phone was
either a long wall cord or handset cord on a wall phone. Just be careful you
didn’t clothesline anybody. As Apple
advertises the small size of the new iphone, remember the princess phone. Remember when social Networking was talking
with the other people on the party line.
Voice Mail was your parents or siblings giving you a message, if they
remembered. And don’t forget running
through several rooms to answer the phone because there were no answering
machines.
Computers,
the first rule and all you had to remember was “Do not bend, fold, spindle, or
mutilate.”
Remember
when your only television choice were ABC, CBS, NBC, and pay tv, i.e. Channel
18. In the
beginning the first fear of televisions was getting bad eyesight because you
were watching in the dark. You needed a
“TV light”, especially one that looked like an art deco panther. In the beginning were rabbit ears. You had to do the electronic version of
fengshui adjusting the rabbit ears to get a picture. Then if you got luck you had a roof mounted
antenna and with luck it had a motor connected to a box on top of the set so
you could change the direction the antenna pointed. TV repairmen actually came to your
house. Later your parents would send you
down to Axelrod’s on Broad St. so you could test the tubes and replace them
yourself. Interactive TV was Winky Dink
and You. If you can remember that far
back, you had to purchase a cling on piece of vinyl to put on your TV
screen. You then helped Winky by doing a
drawing on the vinyl. And before Sesame Street who
can remember Miss Frances
and Ding Dong School. I have frequently asked mature individuals I
have met whether they were Ding
Dong School
or Romper Room kids. A guy I worked with
did stop me short though when he said he didn’t have a TV as a kid.
Then for a
Cineplex you had the Falcon, Embassy, the Palace, and the Strand
where it was 20 degrees cooler inside.
The Forbidden Planet (1956) was the first movie I remember seeing in a
theater. Drive-In Theaters were great so
long as it didn’t rain and you could stay awake to see the whole picture.
