1) When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves.
2) There was no email, we had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen and paper! Then we had to walk walk to the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there. Stamps were 10 cents.
3) Child Protective Services didn't care if my mom beat me. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends and my teachers could "discipline" me too.
4) There were no such things as MP3's or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to go to the record store and steal the 45 yourself.
5) Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and totally screw it all up! There were no CD players! I had an FM converter in my first car, and after saving a few dollars moved up to an 8 track player.
6) We didn't have fancy shmancy things like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it! When I was REAL young we had a party line (which meant our neighbors and us shared the same line), two short rings and the call was for us, one long ring meant it was for our neighbor and at any time folks could pick up the phone and listen to your neighbors call.
7) There weren't any cell phones either (only on Star Trek). If you left the house, you were actually out of touch with your "friends". If you REALLY had to reach someone you could go to the nearest corner and slide in a dime inot the pay phone to make a call.
8) No Caller ID either/ When the phone rang it was a crap shoot, you had no idea who it was.
9) You weren't even allowed to own a phone, you had to rent them monthly for Ma Bell.
10) Our big technology break through was the Atari 2600 with a game called "Pong". Your screen avatar was a little green square!
11) You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! We had just three channels/stations. We actually had to walk over to the TV to change the channel or adjust the volume.
12) There was no Cartoon Network, you could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning and Davey and Goliath on Sunday morning.
13) Microwaves? If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove.
14) Seatbelts and car seats? I don't think so.
15) In grade school we would have "duck and cover" drills that included going to the fallout shelter (in case of nuclear attack)
Some interesting fact from the mid 1960's:
Cost of a new home: $16,500.00
Cost of a gallon of regular gas: 31 cents
Cost of a gallon of Milk: 49 cents
Americas Top TV Shows
1 ) Bonanza
2 ) Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
3 ) The Lucy Show
4 ) The Red Skelton Hour
5 ) Batman
6 ) The Andy Griffith Show
7 ) Bewitched
8 ) The Beverly Hillbillies
9 ) Hogan's Heroes
10 ) Green Acres
11 ) Get Smart
OMG! I am suddenly feeling old... really, really old.
9 comments:
Hey
You're still young. You don't even mention that for those of us who grew up in the 50s there was now such thing as color on TV. If you wanted to see it in color you had to go there. And in those days color film was still a rare thing too.
I'm only 33 and everything but 13, and 15 apply to my childhood. I guess technology is "advancing" exponentially.
Well in my house in Argyllshire Scotland we can currently get 4 channels on TV (satellite is behind a hill -- no cable), and back then we had 2 channels. You've still got very cheap gas though --- it's $9/gallon here (err that's $7.3/U.S.gallon)
I remember those too! I also remember being able to stay outside playing kick the can in the street until after dark (and no worries about predators). Also the way my mother "called" us to come in was to blow a whistle in a short pattern. That way we knew whose Mom was calling.
I'm 75 and I remember the first time I saw tv. My dad carried me into a hotel bar for just a minute so I could see very blinky picture
I am 65 and definitely feel your pain! We all need this kind of reminder every now and then!
It’s not that I look back and long for “the good old days”, it’s just soooo amazing to me how far things have advanced in such a short period of time.
The other amazing thing to me is how fast time flies… the older I get the more I understand the “blink of an eye” thing.
I'm with you! Makes me wonder what it'll be like in another 20 years!
Those were the good old days...when life just seemed a bit simplier!
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