Showing my age

[CalicoPenn 729]

You wouldn't want Ferris Buehler as your father - as he got older, he got more and more like Principal Rooney. In fact, he took over the Principal's job when Rooney retired and in his first week he instituted a school uniform policy; installed metal detectors at all schools; "improved" the Student ID policy by installing time clocks at all the entrances to the school and to the classrooms and requiring you to swipe in and out every time you entered or exited school, a class, or even the bathrooms; hired ex-cons as truant officers; instituted a closed campus for all grade levels; and marked any absence as unexcused unless you had photographic proof of being hooked up to an IV in a hospital room.

[SSScout 1615]

"Nostalgia has a new name and it is "history""

 

I passed this on to some friends and SOME of them say "it doesn't go back far enough".

[OneHour 11]

I remember that I was my dad's remote control on our White Westinghouse console. In high school, my little brother and I had a Trash (TRS)80 with 60 minutes cassette tape as the storage device to do our Basic programming, whoohoo. Little older ... programming with Fortran 77 on the punch cards and Assembly on Trash 80 ... ah ... the good ole days.

[oldisnewagain1 42]

DANGER...DANGER Will Robinson

 

OK lets see...

 

First computer used teletype terminal with acoustic phone coupler (50 baud?)to a major university who was on a nation wide network. Played Star Trek, got an ASCII print of Spock and leaned "spaghetti" BASIC (10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD", 20 GOTO 10)

 

First owned computer a Trash-80 4k Model I and first software purchase Zork (or maybe it was Haunted House)

 

Television: 3 channels (NBC, CBS, and ABC) in black and white and earliest shows remembered Popeye, Bugs Bunny, and something called Fireball X15 which was a puppet show on TV. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley giving us the daily body counts from the war and news of the astronauts (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo). Then after a few years you could see TV shows in "living Color". I'll never forget Nixon saying "Sock-it to me?".

 

Self server gas stations? Nope, but the gas attendant would pump the gas, wash the windows, and give you some swag (glasses, plastic nick knacks, etc) Exxon was Esso and not merged with Mobil (gas was .25/gallon).

 

Not only did you open oil cans with a can opener but your soda too...

 

Calling the fire department, police, or a friend one town over...dial 0 and ask to be connected

 

Green stamps and Top Value stamps and stores

 

You could not wait for the Sears or JC Penney's catalog Christmas catalog to come in August. Allied Radio Shack sold outboard motors in the catalog. (or how about battery cards)

 

Penny candy that cost a penny, Tang (drank the stuff by the gallon because of the space program), Milk men delivered every day and at school lunch milk was in a bottle. Speaking of school, First and second grade was in the same room with the same teacher. (Three classrooms in total 1st through 6th)

 

OJ played at USC and there was the famous "Heidi Game"

 

Bill Cosby was talking about "Noah ... Right!" when not a side kick to Robert Culp

 

First car driven 59 MGA, first new car owned VW bug

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This message has been edited by oldisnewagain1)

[Stosh 3452]

I learned computer programming on Radio Shack's Color Computer (Coco) It had a C compiler and was great! Way before it's time!

 

Sadly, I still have it and it works just fine.

 

Stosh

[packsaddle 753]

No...here's the really sad truth: It's just as fast as it was the day you bought it. Not something many of us can say about ourselves....

[sbemis1 14]

Learned computing (Fortran) on OMR cards in high school (not many admit to using those). Then regressed to punch cards in college (COBOL, ALC).

[eisely 13]

Gasoline for 14 cents a gallon.

 

Camping as a boy scout with nothing but army surplus pup tents.

 

One's parents going on a wait list to buy a new car in post WWII years.

 

Route 66 was a real highway.

 

Night time navigation aides for airplanes were big beacons with revolving searchlights along Route 40.

 

Floods on the Missouri River before all the upstream reservoirs were constructed.

 

Going to Cardinal baseball games at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, which was actually owned by the St. Louis Browns.

 

Waiting for grandma to arrive on the Missouri Pacific Eagle at Jefferson City.

 

In somewhat later years, pot roast at 16 cents a pound.

 

Howard Johnson 26 flavors of ice cream (may still exist is some parts of the US)

 

Qualifying on the M-1 rifle and M-30 (?) carbine.

 

Slide rules, not calculators.

 

Adding machines, not calculators.

 

Punch cards and teletype machines.

 

[BadenP 93]

 

 

Man some of you guys are "ancient", lol. Still those were simplier times and the last time we were the industrial superpower of the world. We actually made things in this country with American labor, we grew our own food, built our own cars and trucks, made our own steel and the rest of the world really wanted what we produced.

Then the internet technology boom hit and we threw all our resources into it, now all the world has the same technology and doesn't need ours anymore and our economy is slipping into oblivion. Oh for the good old days!

[Stosh 3452]

I remember my dad blowing a piston in the car and going down to the blacksmith shop and having them make him a new one. Try that today... not fixing the piston, but finding a blacksmith shop.

 

Stosh