I remember when.....

[Coach K]

before I go into having to walk 25 miles to school, up hill, both ways,

Wow! My dad lived only 10 miles from school and he lived in the city!!!

Great thread.

Going to the playground and playing stickball all day. If there were only a couple of kids we would play wall ball or home run derby. Going to a neighbors pool and swimming all day. Kids these days do not get enough exercise or go out enough when they are away from school.

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

I remember having to fuss around with the tv antennas.
I also remember when we got cable. It was AWESOME!!!

The TV antenna was always tricky...and the small cable box you would get when you actually got cable that didn't work in conjunction with the TV, you would have to remember to turn the cable box on and then turn the TV on, or vice versa, or else you were stuck watching the fuzzy PBS channel.

Remember playing with those rabbit ears until it was just perfect. And then sometimes you would take your hand off of it and it would get fuzzy again. We always tried to get my little sister to just stand there holding it.

And my dad would always scream "Don't turn the knob so fast. You'll break the television!" My DH's dad got tired of the boys fighting over the station so he would set the station, yank the knob off and leave the room with it. Fortunately or unfortunately, he trained his boys to be creative. They went to the garage and got a pair of pliars to change the station.

I was wondering if someone was going to bring up the pliers! I swear we had at least one pair behind the tv at all times because the knob wouldn't stay on, and we would get tired of having to find it, put it back and change the station carefully.

Wow! My dad lived only 10 miles from school and he lived in the city!!!

Great thread.

Going to the playground and playing stickball all day. If there were only a couple of kids we would play wall ball or home run derby. Going to a neighbors pool and swimming all day. Kids these days do not get enough exercise or go out enough when they are away from school.

Thanks! I used to laugh at my grandparents when they would give us the lecture about walking to school uphill blah blah blah...and look at me now! It's a good thing they don't read this!

 

[Planogirl]

I remember black and white TV!

I also remember when things weren't quite so expensive though. Technology has probably helped bump the prices of things up a lot.

 

[ckay87]

Phone lines you shared with another person a party line. I always remember when I was little and Id pick up the phone and the old neighbor was still on it for hours, we ask if he could talk later hed say sure and hed hang up. Then you had to listen for your ring if someone called your number.

OMG, I remember party lines!

I also remember when we only had to dial the last 5 digits of a phone number if we were calling within our town. Is that strange or did other people have that also/

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

I remember when they came out with the 8 track tape players for cars.

..and how impressed everyone was when you installed one in your car.

 

[parrotbay]

I remember pre-remote controlled TV's. As a kid, I was the remote. I was also the antenna amplifier. I would to stand there and hold it.

 

[megthewonderful]

My son came home from school one day and told me all about how he learned how to pop popcorn like they did in the old days before there were microwaves. I let him know that I remember getting our first microwave and how much of a big deal it was because we had to find a place for it in our kitchen. At which point, he let me know that I must be older than he thought I was since I apparently had lived in the old days. And now occasionally, I will make popcorn not in the microwave, just the way we did when I was growing up. So, I guess I remember life without microwaves, which wasn't all that long ago if you ask me!

 

[remyandhollandsmommy]

LOL, when I was a kid we had a brown cable box..no remote for US our tv still has that pull out button that you turned for volumn lol. That tv had aluminum foil on the attenna to make it come in good and sometimes one of us had to touch it a certain way to get the CLEAR picture..we took turns cause it made your arm cramp after a while to hold the "position" lol.

But back to the cable box..it had about 30 or so buttons and the Disney channel was #23. You would hear us going, click click click until we got to it..for some odd reason no one just clicked the #23 button..they just kept going in a straight line until they got to it. Annoyed the tar outta my grandma lol!

Sadly this was in the 80s lol..

 

[Squirlz]

LOL I was just going to comment on the day we got cable. It was like a holiday! The trucks came rolling onto our street like a parade and ran the lines for the whole street. Everyone got HBO and Cinemax for free to start out and they showed the same movie ALL day long. I remember watching "Take this Job and Shove It" 10 times in a row Sad, but I think that was the summer I stopped playing outside all day

When I was at Ohio State in '77 we got one of the first cable systems. It was called Qube and and there was a big clunky box wired to your TV to control it. If you wanted pay per view you inserted a key into the box and selected the channel. The key used a magnet to activate it and we discovered that if you placed the control box on a car speaker magnet, without the key in it, you could watch them for free!

 

[Sugardimples]

OK, all you kids who remember getting cable or a remote control TV, I remember getting TV for the first time!!!!! Before that, no TV!!!!!

TV stations did not run 24 hours a day. They would sign off at night and come back on in the morning.

I learned to type on a manual typewriter.

The milkman delivered milk and the breadman delivered bread.

I remember the original Mickey Mouse Club and watching film of the opening of Disneyland. I thought the people who went to Disneyland were the luckiest people on earth.

 

[Pakey]

OMG, I remember party lines!

I also remember when we only had to dial the last 5 digits of a phone number if we were calling within our town. Is that strange or did other people have that also/

I remember party lines and our telephone numbers were only 5 digits also. I was in the 5th grade or so when we got the 7 digit phone numbers.

One of the worst for me was not having a blow dryer, flat iron, curling iron. I used to sleep with hair rollers made out of 1 lb coffee cans as the way to straighten my hair. How different my life would have been if I hadn't had to wait until I was 50 to get a chi.

 

[Frantasmic]

Sears, Penneys, and Monkey Wards all had candy counters or candy with nuts.

Moonlight madness sales where the stores stayed open all the way until 11:00 on a Friday

Your drugstore usually had a soda fountain and a small grill

School lunchs costing under 50 cents

A McDonald's hamburger, fries, and a coke for under a dollar (older folks will remember when each one was about 18 cents)

Penny candy

My first allowance was a quarter a week in 1970 and you could get two hershey candy bars with it

3 game baseball playoffs and a 5 game World Series

12 game football seasons

Saturday mornings where kids' time with the tv because it was the only time cartoons were on

Carrying a dime for emergencies at those old-fangled phone booths

 

[iwrbnd]

All of these posts are bringing back a lot of memories for me! I must not be the only 40ish diser out there!

Oh, does anybody remember betamax? My mom wanted to sell hers the other day and thought she would get a lot of money because it's so old! I tried to explain to her that electronics don't usually become collector's items but she was just mad!

 

[Kathi OD]

OK, all you kids who remember getting cable or a remote control TV, I remember getting TV for the first time!!!!! Before that, no TV!!!!!

TV stations did not run 24 hours a day. They would sign off at night and come back on in the morning.

I learned to type on a manual typewriter.

The milkman delivered milk and the breadman delivered bread.

I remember the original Mickey Mouse Club and watching film of the opening of Disneyland. I thought the people who went to Disneyland were the luckiest people on earth.

I don't remember Disneyland opening, but I do remember the milkman. Ours delivered bread, eggs, butter, and juice as well. In fact, it's only about 10 years that my parents stopped having home delivery.

I also remember that TV went off at night. They played the Star-Spangled Banner and that was that until morning.

Learned to type on a manual typewriter. Got an electric one for college graduation.

I remember working at McDonald's and it was a big deal when the burgers went to 12 cents! 1/4 pounder was 50 cents.

 

[hrh_disney_queen]

Black and White TV


when cable was installed in our very suburban neighborhood

rotary dial phones

no remote controls on anything

Remote controls that clicked

5 digit phone number at my Iowan grandparent's house.

Our phone was considered very "mod" because it was flat and mounted directly into the wall..I remember when we got a push button phone.

Phones were rented from the phone company, no one was allowed to own their own phone.

Exchanging burned out light bulbs at Edison electric comp.

Pong

Cassette players when they first came out-before that 8-tracks ("click...click")

Also learned typing on a manual typewriter. Took shorthand in 9th grade, and used electric typewriters in 10th

Walking to school ALONE at age 6

Walking up to the party store and buying penny candy that was actually a penny.

Our house had a milk chute - a little door through the wall of the exterior of the house. We never used it.

Walking into the side entrance of Sears and being bombarded by the smell of roasting cashews.


Installing those little round speakers in your car doors-the installer would have to cut a hole in the door-mine always leaked.

Disappearing for the entire day at age 8 or more and not coming home until the street lights were on. No one checked up on us at all.

Riding our bikes at age 10 to the city pool with no adults, using our season passes to get in and going home when it closed. Deep end and all.


megthewonderful, your popcorn post reminded me of my trip to Krogers last week. I bought a bag of unpopped popcorn and the very young cashier looked at it and said, "How you make that?" I just about fell over!

 

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Everyone is bringing up some wonderful memories! I love the responses so far.

I remember pre-remote controlled TV's. As a kid, I was the remote. I was also the antenna amplifier. I would to stand there and hold it.

I think that was like a rite of passage as a kid, to hold the antenna until the picture became clear or until the show dad wanted to watch was over.

My son came home from school one day and told me all about how he learned how to pop popcorn like they did in the old days before there were microwaves.

Those "old days" had some good stuff! Now I want real popped popcorn! I used to love to melt butter and pour it all over the big bowl of kernels.

But back to the cable box..it had about 30 or so buttons and the Disney channel was #23. You would hear us going, click click click until we got to it..for some odd reason no one just clicked the #23 button..they just kept going in a straight line until they got to it. Annoyed the tar outta my grandma lol!

Sadly this was in the 80s lol..

Nothing sad about it! I grew up in the 80's and loved it! Are you sure you weren't living in my house? We used to do that at my grandma's too. All the kids would sit in the living room and one of us would get up and change the channel and click through everything, and if you passed it, you would have to go through it all over again until you got there...you couldn't just go down one or enter the actual number.

 

[jensen]

Sorry I haven't read all the responses to this thread, but I just had to jump in here because something related just happened to me... we had a fender bender and our minivan was in the shop for a week. They gave us a loaner minivan and it was so basic that it didn't even have electric locks or electric windows.

My 9YO was complaining about it being hot in there, so I said, "Well, you can roll down the window if you want..." when it occurred to me to ask "do you know how?"

Seriously how many kids that age have ever been in a vehicle without electric everything?

 

[Acklander]

No ATM's. I had to physically go to the bank, during normal banking hours, to withdraw $20.00 from my checking account.
On our first trip to Disney having to go to a travel agent to look at the brochures. I also booked it with them and assumed that what I paid for air/hotel was the exact same amount everyone else paid for air/hotel.
My favorite invention was the microwave (or "Radar Range" as it was called). Not only for the popcorn, but I didn't have to heat the entire oven to cook 1 lean cuisine.

 

[Diznotyzed]

No UPC scanners! I worked retail right out of high school, and had to learn what the million buttons on the cash registers were all for. Grocery stockers had to stamp prices on everything, and the cashiers practically memorized all the prices.

 

[Syrreal]

I remember getting our first nintendo and how incredible the graphics on Super Mario were. I also remember saving up so much of my allowance for my 1st boombox (with double cassette) and then my synthesizer keyboard (which I still remember cost me $264 at Kmart).

While I'm a late 70s baby, I did get to see a lot of what some of you are posting about because in Brazil, they didn't get a lot of what we had until way later. I think I was already a teenager when they got satellite tv/cable and still most homes don't have it. There is no call waiting there either. Most homes don't have airconditioning, although stores tend to have it. There, you buy your phone number and can move throughout your city and keep it. Unless you are in the big city, most shops are still closed on Sundays and you don't pump your own gas ever.