Old timers corner

OK, here may be a place to reminisce of days gone by… Flars said in a different thread to start one about things we didn’t want to remember, well, one thing I’d like to remember was no-one had cell phones at work… Yup you youngsters… NO ONE! So, nothing better to do than work… Old push button radio’s in the car… Sneezles61

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Haha. I remember being about 12 years old and mom and dad bought a tv that had a game of “pong” on it you could play. We thought we had hit the tech lottery!! Just a dot on the screen moving back and forth!!Great fun.
Can you imagine if someone had told you 4o years ago that you’d be spending up to a week’s pay or better per month for a portable phone and cable tv today, you’d have thought they were crazy. Plus, having only 3 tv channels to choose from? And occasionally if you turned the antenna just right you could pick up the public station-the UHF channel.
If you look at the “rules” today, it’s a wonder any of us survived. No bicycle helmets, homemade go carts, tree houses that you got to by climbing on little pieces of 2x4 with a nail in them, and my absolute favorite: the little wall heater beside the bathtub that you could flick water into and watch it sizzle on the red coils!!

Ok, enough. I’m really old. Or at least I feel like it!

Cheers,

Ron

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Back in the days before instant communication, yeah it’s convenient but everyone expects an immediate answer, especially in my line of work. I miss the days where you could check voicemail at your desk and get back to people at the end of the day. Now if you don’t respond within 5 minutes it’s an issue. :joy:

:beers:
Rad

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You had a radio? I had to sing to myself.

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You got 3 channels?

Voice mail? We’re talking party lines kid.

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This radio was the entertainment system in the farm house. I can remember being able to get the Lone Ranger on some station once in a while. Might still work but haven’t plugged it in for about 50 years.

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Man when we were kids we loved picking up my grandparents’ phone and listening to the neighbors on the “party line.”

I remember my grandfather yelling at one neighbor a couple times for tying up the phone gossiping when he needed to make a call.

Kind of crazy when you consider how much technology has evolved just since the 80s when the first “personal computers” came out. DOS and floppy discs…haha.

Buddy of mine bought his grandson a drone for xmas and couldn’t resist playing with it first, got it stuck in a tree and had to go buy another one for the kid. We got talking about those “remote control” gas planes we had as kids. You stood in one place and controlled the plane on a set of strings and it flew around you in a circle. We thought they were so freakin’ cool!

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Never had one at our house but I actually did 8 to 4 party conversions in a rural area while working for NY Telephone. After going to 4 people did not get one of their neighbors ring. Talk about a tech upgrade.

When I was a kid we had channels 3, 5 and 9. I also had one of those Cox airplanes with the handle and two strings. After that Esta rockets.

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I had one also. I got dizzy and crashed it

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Estes rockets were awesome! Did Indian Guides with my Dad growing up and we had a rocketry campout every year at a local YMCA camp where we’d build up all kind of crazy different rockets and see who’s lasted longest. The best was when we found out rocket engines went above a D. You needed to launch them off a car battery. I’m not old enough to remember Pong as my first exposure to video games was Pole Position on Atari.

:beers:
Rad

I would get up in the morning and watch the “test patterns” on TV… Waiting for Gene Autry, or perhaps it was Roy Rogers… Lone Ranger was in the afternoons… Flars, that old radio you have, is similar to the one my Grandfather gave me… which became my first guitar amp… For some reason, that old Zenith had something of an auxiliary input… I wonder if it was to be used for a PA to call out Bingo at the Grange halls… hhhmmm… Sneezles61

@sneezles61 You must be the youngest here. It was 1955 or 1956 Dad brought a TV into the house. Us kids had to go to bed just before Gunsmoke came on. Saturday nights neighbors would come over to watch boxing. We had to be in bed before Gillette presented the matches.

Ok old timers Mansfield or Monroe.

Mansfield!

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Perhaps Flars… but I still had alot of the old stuff all around me… I still have shovels that I use that have wooden D handles… Old coffee thermos, not threads, smooth opening for cork stopper… Yada yada… I really enjoy stuff from yesterday! :sunglasses: Now we need some old timer emoticons too! Sneezles61

:wheelchair:

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:older_man: Found this? Sneezles61

Dont forget play out side now they do sit in their houses. Play. Their game stations. No cell phone. So when you made a apointment. They did show up. My best thing i do miss. A record store. Buy metal records. Talk to the owner about new releases. Still of my fav things. I do buy. Cd and vibyl

Haha. Now I’m feeling younger. For us it was Mary tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas!

Ron