Boomer Support Thread

[RJ]

Are younguns always running around your cart at WalMart?

Do they make fun of you when you clear jams in your 1911 at a USPSA match?

People ignoring your sage advice on ammunition and reloading threads?

THIS IS THE THREAD FOR YOU!!

Here you can get advice on all these issues, and more!

We’ll help you find a replacement pair of White Velcro sneakers like they used to make!!

We’ll suggest ways to make whippersnappers respect you in discussion threads!!

We’ll be here when you get up more than 7 times a night to pee!!

We’ll give you tips to smugly bring key “Tide Pods”, mention student debt and “your generation couldn’t start a lawnmower” catchphrases into any conversation with millennials!!

We’ll help your 1911 run like a Glock!! (Sorry, we can’t do that one).

...ALL THIS AND MORE!!

Post your question here for immediate support!!

Our operators are standing by.

Void where prohibited.

No purchase necessary.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200111/7e8fd269b8b631aea1f3d77da45fdbb0.jpg

[NH Shooter]

Subscribed.

[revchuck38]

Subscribed.

Ditto. I bet Stephanie B looks in here expecting to find stuff pertaining to nuclear-powered subs. :)

[mtnbkr]

Awesome. I'm a GenXer so I'm only here for the Lulz and to steal ya'lls personal data, stick it in a database, and sell it...cause that's what we do. :D

Chris

[Stephanie B]

Ditto. I bet Stephanie B looks in here expecting to find stuff pertaining to nuclear-powered subs. :)

FBM support would be rather classified.

Missing is a mention that those whippersnappers couldn't actually dial a phone or run a TV without a remote....

[mtnbkr]

run a TV without a remote....
It's virtually impossible to run a modern TV without the remote. First, only a few basic buttons exist on the TV. Second, they're tiny, black, and hidden so you can't see the labels and actually use them. Third, 3/4 of the functions aren't supported by those buttons and must be accessed via the remote.

Chris

[olstyn]

It's virtually impossible to run a modern TV without the remote. First, only a few basic buttons exist on the TV. Second, they're tiny, black, and hidden so you can't see the labels and actually use them. Third, 3/4 of the functions aren't supported by those buttons and must be accessed via the remote.

Chris

True, but as a fellow member of Gen X, surely you at least remember using a TV which did not even have a remote at some point in your childhood. Millenials, on the other hand, may never even have seen such a thing. :)

[mtnbkr]

True, but as a fellow member of Gen X, surely you at least remember using a TV which did not even have a remote at some point in your childhood. Millenials, on the other hand, may never even have seen such a thing. :)

Absolutely. I've even adjusted the color mix, vertical hold, horizontal hold, etc on a few. Sometimes to the detriment of proper operation. :rolleyes:

Chris

[RoyGBiv]

FBM support would be rather classified.

Missing is a mention that those whippersnappers couldn't actually dial a phone or run a TV without a remote....

Or remember a phone number.!
My daughter left her phone at a friends the other day. She had to log on to Snapchat on her laptop to reach out, because she didn't know the (close) friends phone number. LOL.

[Cheap Shot]

It's virtually impossible to run a modern TV without the remote. First, only a few basic buttons exist on the TV. Second, they're tiny, black, and hidden so you can't see the labels and actually use them. Third, 3/4 of the functions aren't supported by those buttons and must be accessed via the remote.

Chris

Are you sure? Have you tried adjusting the rabbit ear antennas?

If that doesn't work smack the side of the wooden cabinet.

[Kanye Wyoming]

FBM support would be rather classified.

Missing is a mention that those whippersnappers couldn't actually dial a phone or run a TV without a remote....
I remember, as a small child growing up in the frontier country of suburban Philadelphia, having to get up, walk (uphill) to the TV to change the channel, and then walk back (also uphill) to my chair.

Every. Single. Time. I. Wanted. To. Change. The. Channel.

[blues]

I thought the only support we Boomers needed were to keep our testicles from dragging on the ground. (And ways to combat unwanted ear and back hair.)


https://youtu.be/gmHf_1kqJc0

[SeriousStudent]

I remember, as a small child growing up in the frontier country of suburban Philadelphia, having to get up, walk (uphill) to the TV to change the channel, and then walk back (also uphill) to my chair.

Every. Single. Time. I. Wanted. To. Change. The. Channel.

I was about to say, when I was a child, I WAS the remote control.

[Robinson]

RJ, you can't bait me with your vile unpatriotic 1911 bashing in this or any or thread. I simply won't fall for... waitaminute... dammit!

[Cypher]

I remember when the M in MTV stood for "Music" I also remember the first video ever played on MTV, The Buggles Video Killed The Radio Star

[Kanye Wyoming]

I thought the only support we Boomers needed were to keep our testicles from dragging on the ground. (And ways to combat unwanted ear and back hair.)


https://youtu.be/gmHf_1kqJc0
Do your testicles drag on the ground? Fear not. It's the Testicuzzi!

47049

[BehindBlueI's]

True, but as a fellow member of Gen X, surely you at least remember using a TV which did not even have a remote at some point in your childhood.

I remember *being* the remote. Voice activated as well.

Adjusting rabbit ears was no big deal. Going outside to spin the aerial, that was a good time.

[Redhat]

- How to write in cursive
- How to dial a rotary phone
- Heck, how to just sit still in peace and quiet and ponder life

[blues]

I remember *being* the remote. Voice activated as well.

Adjusting rabbit ears was no big deal. Going outside to spin the aerial, that was a good time.

Especially in winter.

My dad would yell out the window to tell me to turn it a little more to the left or right on the roof of our apartment building. Or knock the snow off.

My late father-in-law wouldn't let anyone else in the family adjust his TV or the antenna on the roof. I seemed to be the only one that could tune to the Italian language stations on the UHF band.

Old TV's were like old cars. There was room to work inside the cabinet and parts you could replace.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

What is 'streaming' ?

[BehindBlueI's]

What is 'streaming' ?

What fancy people call going outside to play in the creek.

[blues]

What is 'streaming' ?

It's what your doctor asks you about when he checks your prostate and you tell him that when you take a leak you have three steams coming out.

(I don't have that problem since I don't go to doctors.)

[ranger]

47050

[mmc45414]

Sights you can see after cataract surgery, go:

[BehindBlueI's]

When are you guys going to start bitching about "them" not making your favorite childhood candies any longer?

[Caballoflaco]

I’m a millennial, but still had the joy of also being a remote control when I was growing up. We had one of these on a console tv in the living room for a quite a while.

47051

It’s also where I learned “you make a better door than you do a window boy” if I stood in front of the tv rather than to the side while I was changing channels.

[blues]

47050

Anti-theft device.

[mtnbkr]

Old TV's were like old cars. There was room to work inside the cabinet and parts you could replace.

My wife's grandfather, who recently passed away at 98, had a TV repair business until he retired. My FIL also did TV repair until he got through school and got an accounting job. Over Christmas, he gave my wife a sheath of papers related to her grandfather's business, which sparked a lengthy conversation about TV repair and such.

Chris

[mtnbkr]

Anti-theft device.

Not for my kid. 2/3 of our vehicles are manual. The one that has an automatic is a minivan (though it's likely to be replaced with an SUV in the next couple years).

I told Thing 1 that she's not likely to be hampered by not being able to drive a stick, but it's a good skill to have just in case.

Chris

[blues]

My wife's grandfather, who recently passed away at 98, had a TV repair business until he retired. My FIL also did TV repair until he got through school and got an accounting job. Over Christmas, he gave my wife a sheath of papers related to her grandfather's business, which sparked a lengthy conversation about TV repair and such.

Chris

https://derpicdn.net/img/2017/3/6/1380404/large.png

[BN]

I had a young whippersnapper make fun of the large font on my I-Phone. I called him a young whippersnapper and told him that he would be old some day, need large font and remember me. ;)

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Turn the TV off and reboot the modem. Don't you know anything?

What was my joke in our thread about getting old?

You know you are old when the bill count you take every morning exceeds the numbers of rounds that you EDC.

I'm pretty close to that and I'm not talking J frames.

[blues]

I had a young whippersnapper make fun of the large font on my I-Phone. I called him a young whippersnapper and told him that he would be old some day, need large font and remember me. ;)

He'll probably have Alzheimer's by then and won't remember a thing you told him. ;)

[trailrunner]

Old TV's were like old cars. There was room to work inside the cabinet and parts you could replace.

I remember taking tubes to the grocery store to test them on the machine. When my dad and I figured out which tube was bad, we would open the cabinet beneath the tester and get the replacement we needed.

[BN]

He'll probably have Alzheimer's by then and won't remember a thing you told him. ;)

After that, young whippersnapper was at my house and I let him shoot my Vudoo. After that he looked at me with a different degree of awe and respect. :)

[Robinson]

When are you guys going to start bitching about "them" not making your favorite childhood candies any longer?

When I was a kid, a Reece's cup tasted like real chocolate and peanut butter. Not like pure sugar and wax like today. Hershey bars aren't the same either. Hmmph.

[willie]

TV repair businesses usually worked on radios including car sets. Before the era of throw away appliances, there were shops that would repair toasters, electric mixers, and vacuum cleaners. Hardware offered nuts and boots and nails in big open bins. The customer could buy just one item, but in most cases, just one washer or nail was free. The clerk was usually the owner who was well versed in plumbing and electrical needs. I grew up in a country grocery store that also sold ammo, animal feed, kerosene, plow line, well buckets, lamp globes, and animal traps. Across the street was a hardware store. The owner at one time had been an undertaker. He made caskets. Then many funerals were in the deceased homes. Mr. Joe embalmed his clients at home. During a yellow fever and flu epidemic he buried people at midnight in an effort to reduce exposure.

Not long ago a young man stopped me at WalMart. He was driving an older truck. He said the lights were stuck on bright. I pointed out that the dimmer switch was on the upper left floor board.

[Caballoflaco]

Speaking of support for boomers.



https://youtu.be/YL4Sl6oVuyk

[blues]

When I was a kid, a Reece's cup tasted like real chocolate and peanut butter. Not like pure sugar and wax like today. Hershey bars aren't the same either. Hmmph.

And if you were lucky enough to have a pocket full of change you could buy enough candy for you and your friends, plus a couple of comic books.

(Are there still candy stores in NYC like back in the day?)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/17/5d/4d/175d4d0d59379fbfbbd43e66240290f3.jpg

[HeavyDuty]

I thought the only support we Boomers needed were to keep our testicles from dragging on the ground. (And ways to combat unwanted ear and back hair.)


https://youtu.be/gmHf_1kqJc0

When you have to decide to either adjust the toilet float to drop the water level or get a thicker toilet seat...

[farscott]

47050

That picture made me laugh. When my daughter started driving in 2010, I had a 2001 Ranger with a five-speed manual. She never wanted to learn to drive it. One day when we were shopping for a vehicle for my wife, our local Ford dealer had a Shelby Mustang on the showroom floor. It was a nice car and I was tempted. It got really funny when my daughter asked me if I would buy the car for it. I told her if she could drive it off the floor, it would be hers. She got excited, hopped in the driver' seat, and noticed the gear box lever.

The comment, "No freaking way!! A manual!!! I can learn to drive it. Please!!!" Needless to say, no Shelby for her. She is definitely her mother's daughter as my wife's daily driver is a GT Premium with the Performance Package.

[luckyman]

I remember, as a small child growing up in the frontier country of suburban Philadelphia, having to get up, walk (uphill) to the TV to change the channel, and then walk back (also uphill) to my chair.

Every. Single. Time. I. Wanted. To. Change. The. Channel.

Yeah, but with only 3 networks, that probably only happened once a night. Especially since we had the TV on for two hours a night max.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

OK, we moved and need new doctors. So I get the list of recommended folks (paper copy). The print so damn small, I have to look for my magnifying class to see the damn little letters. Is the list on line - of course, not.

[trailrunner]

And if you were lucky enough to have a pocket full of change you could buy enough candy for you and your friends, plus a couple of comic books.


My mom used to give me $1 to buy candy at the store before a movie. It wasn't a candy store, but it was some sort of a drugstore or hardware store or five-and-dime store with a nice selection candy. I think a dollar would buy 4 candy bars, or two candy bars and 10 jolly ranchers, or, or, or....

Related to comic books - I also remember learning the trick of putting one magazine inside another one while browsing the magazine rack in public place, say a Playboy inside a Road and Track magazine.

[SeriousStudent]

Not for my kid. 2/3 of our vehicles are manual. The one that has an automatic is a minivan (though it's likely to be replaced with an SUV in the next couple years).

I told Thing 1 that she's not likely to be hampered by not being able to drive a stick, but it's a good skill to have just in case.

Chris

Indeed. Like the Heinlein quote, there are things every adult should be able to do.

[Totem Polar]

Apropos of bupkis, but the candy thing reminds me of a story.

The parents of a guy in my graduating class owned the main bakery/coffeeshop/candy/gift store in town.

Time comes for the start of 6th grade. In my smallish town, there were 4 tiny elementary schools that all fed into a single middle school. So I”m in class, with 5-6 buddies I’ve known for years, and the rest are new kids (including coffeeshop guy). So everyone is a bit squirrely, as we try to sort out all the new relationships.

So, this kid is sitting in the back, quietly munching on some jelly beans from this little 1/4 lb ziplock bag.

"Scott ____!" Yells the teacher, in a bid to take control, "I hope you brought enough for everyone, young man." (Classic teacher line, right there)

"Well, actually..." starts my guy, pulling apart the two-way zipper on his large back pack

"I did!!!"

And with that, he starts throwing dozens of bags of jelly beans around the room to all the other students.

Pandemonium ensued.

I didn’t see Scott in class again until the following week, at which point he took me and 3 of my buddies down to his folks’ place after school and got us hooked on cafe mochas. I still drink those things.

[olstyn]

When I was a kid, a Reece's cup tasted like real chocolate and peanut butter. Not like pure sugar and wax like today. Hershey bars aren't the same either. Hmmph.

Skittles are different, too. Somewhere along the way (in the 2000s somewhere?), they changed the green ones from lime to apple. They're not exactly bad, per se, but it's wrong. :(

[blues]

Nobody wanted the green Chuckles...

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0387/2401/products/chuckles-jelly-candy-24_large.jpg?v=1473880084

[ralph]

One of the last jobs I worked on, we had a 19yr old apprentice, one day at lunch, he’s listening to oldies on his I-phone, and was listening to a song (who’s title eludes me at the moment) but the lyrics that confused him, went like this..”And the operator said 30cents more for the next 3 minutes” What’s that mean? He asks.. That led into a 20 minute conversation explaining what a phone booth was, and how a pay phone operated...

[0ddl0t]

We had one of these on a console tv in the living room for a quite a while.

47051

More GenX than boomer - back when kids had to use their imaginations when watching scrambled Cinemax late at night...

[blues]

One of the last jobs I worked on, we had a 19yr old apprentice, one day at lunch, he’s listening to oldies on his I-phone, and was listening to a song (who’s title eludes me at the moment) but the lyrics that confused him, went like this..”And the operator said 30cents more for the next 3 minutes” What’s that mean? He asks.. That led into a 20 minute conversation explaining what a phone booth was, and how a pay phone operated...

Classic...


https://youtu.be/7LXpnNKNxJI

[0ddl0t]

One of the last jobs I worked on, we had a 19yr old apprentice, one day at lunch, he’s listening to oldies on his I-phone, and was listening to a song (who’s title eludes me at the moment) but the lyrics that confused him, went like this..”And the operator said 30cents more for the next 3 minutes” What’s that mean? He asks.. That led into a 20 minute conversation explaining what a phone booth was, and how a pay phone operated...

Lol yeah. I had a similar conversation about "roll up the window"

[Arbninftry]

You guys miss those 4 channels you would get on the Tube, before you had to adjust rabbit ears. Errr..... wait a minute this was what my TV looked like when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s.47071

[ralph]

Classic...


https://youtu.be/7LXpnNKNxJI

Thank you!!!

[blues]

You're welcome. Didn't take a nanosecond to know which song it was...now if I could only remember what I did ten minutes ago...;)

[JAD]

Anti-theft device.

Also like the automotive version of a glass ceiling.

[Coyotesfan97]

Nobody wanted the green Chuckles...

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0387/2401/products/chuckles-jelly-candy-24_large.jpg?v=1473880084

One of my favorites growing up. I always save the red Chuckle for last.

And who took my Pong?

[blues]

This is what TVs looked like in 1955 or so...

47072


(That was our little basement apartment in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn.)

[Caballoflaco]

Also like the automotive version of a glass ceiling.

I thought that was t-tops

[Stephanie B]

Old TV's were like old cars. There was room to work inside the cabinet and parts you could replace.

Remember the tube testers in the stores? We had a TV that would blow a certain tube every nine months. Dad kept a spare on hand.

[Joe in PNG]

Then there was the essential need for the TV Guide, especially during summer reruns.

[Redhat]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

[revchuck38]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

'63 Impala with a 327 and a 4V. Got me my first two speeding tickets. :rolleyes:

[Blades]

You know you are old when the bill count you take every morning exceeds the numbers of rounds that you EDC.

I'm pretty close to that and I'm not talking J frames.

I'm Gen-X so I'm not an old Boomer like some of you. But I'm old, after my heart attack last year my daily pill count is 9. 8 in the morning. :(
(I used a larger font for you Boomers)

[BobM]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

I learned to drive in my parents 72 LTD. My own first car was a 79 Chevette.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

1969 Pontiac Tempest Custom S, with 350 Cubic Inch engine.

47073

Paid for it myself. My parents said they would buy me a car but I thought it was right for me to buy my own. Silly, should have taken the money and invested it to be a millionaire today!

[Redhat]

1976 Mustang II Coupe...4cyl w/ manual trans

....in beige!

I learned to drive in Mom's Maverick

[blues]

'67 Fury III. First family car was a '53 Plymouth.

[Joe in PNG]

X'er here, but my first car was a '66 Mustang (base model with V6), shared with my sister.

It was a 25 year old car when we had it, and was classic and cool.

Project back 25 years from the current year, and none of the basic cars from 1995 are classic or cool. Just old.

[Redhat]

I don't know how the current generation can get through basic training without their cell phones.

[ranger]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

1969 Ford Mustang Fastback, 250 ci straight six, 3 speed manual - the begging of a long line of Mustangs!

[trailrunner]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

1968 Datsun pickup truck with a 1300cc engine. It was geared low so it could haul a good load, but top speed was about 60mph. If I was going down a hill and wanted to go faster, I took it out of gear and coasted.

[Redhat]

1969 Ford Mustang Fastback, 250 ci straight six, 3 speed manual - the begging of a long line of Mustangs!

My 2nd car was a '66 Mustang GT Box-top.

[revchuck38]

When I went through BCT (Ft. Dix, NJ, Oct-Dec 74) I was either training, eating or sleeping. Any downtime was spent doing police call. Getting put on KP was considered a break because you could take your time to eat...and eat all you wanted.

[Redhat]

Anybody still have records or 8 tracks?

[William B.]

8 pages in and nobody has mentioned rotary phones? You guys are slacking.

[Shoresy]

When I was a kid, a Reece's cup tasted like real chocolate and peanut butter. Not like pure sugar and wax like today. Hershey bars aren't the same either. Hmmph.

I'm a millennial (technically) and that drives me f***ing crazy. I'm more a fan of the pieces than the cups, and I still like them.... but for the love of everything that doesn't suck, why does there need to be a disconnect between the flavors at all? For some flavors it makes sense; destroying chocolate and peanut butter boggles the mind.

blues - solid boomer move to share pictures of your kids. :D

[Cheap Shot]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

1970 Camaro SS 350, 4 spd. Drag racing and cruising were popular after school events as well as sports and chasing girls. Work was a given.

[Redhat]

Dixie cups (with jokes)

Dingo Boots

My Schwinn Stingray with rear slick

[Redhat]

8 pages in and nobody has mentioned rotary phones? You guys are slacking.

Yea with a super long cord. When we got a push button I thought that was really something

[HeavyDuty]

You're welcome. Didn't take a nanosecond to know which song it was...now if I could only remember what I did ten minutes ago...;)

My first thought was Sugarloaf, but it didn’t quite seem right.

[HeavyDuty]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

‘65 Skylark.

[William B.]

Yea with a super long cord. When we got a push button I thought that was really something

I remember my mom teaching me to dial 911 on the rotary and the touch tone phone when I was a kid. Kind of makes me want to go buy a rotary phone just for nostalgia... :confused:

[RoyGBiv]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

'72 Chevelle. 72s were POS. First year for emission control. Hated that glorious chariot of freedom. :cool:

[trailrunner]

When we raised our two girls, my wife and I recalled how we were raised in the 60s and 70s. I have fond memories of wandering around my neighborhood, playing Army with my friends, or inventing modified football or baseball rules. When I raised my girls, we tried to keep some of the same philosophy, and let them wander (responsibly, of course) through the stream beds around our house, and play in the dirt around our house. My daughters were good friends with our neighbors, and we treated those kids like our own. Since their parents weren't around much, they spent a lot of time with us and my daughters.

Earlier this year, the neighbor girl (who is now 34) posted a thank you to me and my wife on our FB page, thanking us for partially raising her along our slightly free-spirited lines. She referenced this article, which I thought was great:

What Would My 1970s Mom Do? (https://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/what-would-my-mom-do-drink-tab-and-lock-us-outside?cid=sm_npd_td_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR1dvBHKIzG-yKhGPB5ICwGwR2EuGAP7nntXhcxynAlksMK6Dm_zepAanv0)

[Hambo]

blues - solid boomer move to share pictures of your kids. :D

;)

I'm an early model Gen X. I just sit back and watch the world burn.

[HeavyDuty]

I remember my mom teaching me to dial 911 on the rotary and the touch tone phone when I was a kid. Kind of makes me want to go buy a rotary phone just for nostalgia... :confused:

I don’t think 911 was introduced here until I was in my late teens.

[AKDoug]

47050

Not in this house. Not teaching your kid to shift a manual is akin to not teaching them to shoot.

19 y.o. .. 15sp Road Rangerhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200111/0ba35590ad40e3096e93bafdce0442cb.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RoyGBiv]

Yea with a super long cord. When we got a push button I thought that was really something

Mom with a cig, cooking dinner, talking to grandma (for hours).
Me having to mind the spiral cord on the way to the basement to wind up the Evil Knevil and jump stuff.

[Joe in PNG]

Can't forget about the everpresent haze of cigarette smoke in most locations.

[FNFAN]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

66 Dodge Coronet 500. 383 glorious cubic inches!

[trailrunner]

Speaking of phones, remember: "Will you accept a collect call from xxx?"

[trailrunner]

Remember when planes had smoking and non-smoking sections? Ashtrays on the armrests. Sometimes you'd get stuck in a smoking section. That was hell.

When I started my first real job (1987), smoking was still allowed inside offices.

[RoyGBiv]

Can't forget about the everpresent haze of cigarette smoke in most locations.

Like on airplanes! :mad:

[Redhat]

Thought we were cool if we drank Tang and later on, Gatorade, which only came in one flavor.

[HeavyDuty]

Can't forget about the everpresent haze of cigarette smoke in most locations.

Shopping for clothes with a cigarette in hand, and always checking stuff for cigarette burns before you bought it.

[blues]

blues - solid boomer move to share pictures of your kids. :D

That's cold dude. I'm tellin' my mom.

[Joe in PNG]

One wonders if the oil embargoes would have been less severe if most petroleum wasn't being used to make horrifically uncomfortable & ugly polyester clothing and feces colored plastic kitchenware?

[beenalongtime]

Gen xer.
Two room school house, to start, then transferred into the newly built building and they tore down the old thing.
Clotheslines and drying dishes.
Party lines, and a reel mower.
Screw in fuses, somewhat color tv, with V hold, etc. (and being lucky enough to be in a big area with 5 channels)
Back window of a bug/beatle was where I sat, or the rear of a stationwagon.
Pre Adam alerts or 911 (since I was abducted as a kid)
Being told to go play in the toy section of a store, or basically go away (which is why/where I met one of our local serial killers, not connected with the abduction above).
My parents old forty fives (Chubby Checker, Fat's Domino, etc). While I/we had an FM radio earlier, I didn't really know what that was until 79 at the earliest.
Fixing/listening to the tube radio in the basement, or the old ham radio.
Various toys, one (the treasure map), turned out to be a roll of asbestos.
Houses/cars, no a/c. (miss vent windows and rain gutters)
Pop machines of different kinds (bottled pop, fill your own pop), returnable bottles (both pop and milk).
Pong, Atari, model rockets, until we were told we couldn't use that field anymore (they were starting to build houses)
Toys and pets I don't see anymore (hermit crab anyone)

I typed this slow, for slow readers.

[Wondering Beard]

Did I miss mentions of black and white TV?

The whole family went to the living room to watch the first channel to show color.

[Robinson]

Speaking of phones, remember: "Will you accept a collect call from xxx?"

Yeah, and party lines?

[blues]

Toys?

I had a drum stick that was everything from a sword to a rifle.

An old x-acto knife, (sans blade, which I was smart enough to remove), in a metal tubular handle with adjustable metal protective collar served as the "Man From Uncle" communicator pen. My younger sisters were really disappointed I'd never let them use it. Especially the youngest, she was always the one picked to die in all of our games.

[BehindBlueI's]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

Gen X here, but a 1970 Ford LTD.

[randyho]

Ok people, so what was your first car?
'69 beetle. Next was a '66 which made suspension geometry something I needed to study, do too, "WTF just happened!?" That swing axle was evil. Also made me competitive re: engine swap times.

[Redhat]

'69 beetle. Next was a '66 which made suspension geometry something I needed to study, do too, "WTF just happened!?" That swing axle was evil. Also made me competitive re: engine swap times.

My Mom had a beetle when I was a young kid

[BobM]

Anybody still have records or 8 tracks?

My dad still has 8 tracks and a working player. I still have records.

[BobM]

8 pages in and nobody has mentioned rotary phones? You guys are slacking.

My dad and my aunt still have working rotary phones on their walls.

[ranger]

Anybody still have records or 8 tracks?

Still have an 8 track player in my 1970 Boss 302 Mustang. Box of records in the attic

[BN]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

My first car that was mine was a 55 Chevy 2 door with a 265, 4 barrel, a solid lifter cam and a 3 speed on the floor with a Foxcraft shifter. Paid $200 for it. I learned to drive in a 39 Ford coupe that my parents inherited from an old maid aunt.

[0ddl0t]

Typewriters... before correction tape!

[jtcarm]

First color TV: my brother & I were thrilled when our viewing options were doubled by UHF. We heard from several reliable sources that somewhere on that huge range of UHF channels naked women could be found, but apparently our antenna wasn’t set properly.
Remember fine-tuning knobs?

AM radio. Ash trays. Cigarette ads in TV. Paper grocer sacks. Returning Coke bottles for the deposit.

National Anthem played when the stations signed off after the late news. Saturday’s were the best. Cartoons in the morning and TV all the way to 11:30, with wrestling & roller derby ending the day.

First car: 1975 Camaro. After “Smokey And The Bandit” a Trans-Am was all the boys dream car. Learned on a 1970 C10 with 3 on the tree.

Remember when teens worked to buy their first car? Remember when owners worked on their cars?

No seat belt laws. When my older sisters took the whole neighborhood swimming in the summer, we jammed four in the back seat, one or two more of the lighter kids sitting in laps, and one or two sitting in the floor board.

Buying gas: an attendant pumped, washed your windshield & checked your oil. Far from today’s convenience store/gas stations, there might be a coke machine outside and maybe candy bars behind the counter.

Where I grew up, there was no fast food and really few restaurants. The eateries there were independent. I was 17 when I first tasted pizza.

We visited Mexican border towns regularly with no concerns about safety.

Ask someone for directions.
Boomer: Hold on while a get the map out of my glove compartment.
GenX: Hold on, I’m checking MapQuest
Millennial: Siri...

Great times! I miss them. Except liver night.

[Malamute]

47050

Or 13 speed Road Ranger, and hand shift, foot clutch motorcycles.

47081

Jay Leno riding his 1936 H-D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGS9OMWh4hU


Ok people, so what was your first car?

An old farm truck.


Not in this house. Not teaching your kid to shift a manual is akin to not teaching them to shoot.

19 y.o. .. 15sp Road Rangerhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200111/0ba35590ad40e3096e93bafdce0442cb.jpg

Excellent plan. :D


Gen xer.

Houses/cars, no a/c. (miss vent windows and rain gutters).

Wing windows are a true loss.

[revchuck38]

Typewriters... before correction tape!

Yeah, when I was in college, the rich kids had electric typewriters.

[willie]

And if you were lucky enough to have a pocket full of change you could buy enough candy for you and your friends, plus a couple of comic books.

(Are there still candy stores in NYC like back in the day?)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/17/5d/4d/175d4d0d59379fbfbbd43e66240290f3.jpg

A few years ago I ventured across the Mason Dixon line expecting to see people with horns. When in NYC I met some of the nicest people. I saw a few mom and pop shops reminiscent of those from my rural Mississippi rearing. My wife and I visited a small business selling collectible items like antique china in addition to just some really nice stuff. There were three generations present. The grandmother, her son, and her grandson. They were Jewish. We bought $400 worth of goodies, and I asked if they would ship them to Texas. They said yes. I took a card, shook hands, and started to leave. In an accent, the grandmother told me not to worry about the items being shipped. I replied that when I saw that she was in charge, I had no concern. The box arrived home before we did. Today the fine old lady has most likely passed away. But I feel certain that the family is still conducting business in the same manner.

[Drang]

I still have records.
If you have and use a turntable, that makes you a modern hipster.

[jtcarm]

My dad still has 8 tracks and a working player. I still have records.

Speaking of recorded music, remember when you bought 45s at a record store?

[Malamute]

...I feel certain that the family is still conducting business in the same manner.

One of the regular stops I make when driving cross country is a mom and pop motel. I call, say my name and town, they ask how I am and if I need a dog room that night. Ive gotten a late start on the days drive a couple times, they told me the office would be closed when I got in so they left my usual room unlocked, light on, and said to stop by the office in the morning to pay for it.

[revchuck38]

If you have and use a turntable, that makes you a modern hipster.

I keep threatening to buy a turntable to hook up to my laptop to record some albums that are out of print. The first one up will be Buckingham Nicks, recorded right before they joined Fleetwood Mac. It never made it to CD, though someone recorded their copy of the album and is selling copies.

[BobM]

Someone mentioned AM radio. That reminded me that I installed FM converters in the 72 LTD and the 79 Chevette.

[Tom Duffy]

Ah, phones. The first phone I remember in our kitchen had a mouthpiece on the wall unit and a separate ear piece to listen to. I remember when my sister got a Princess phone for her room. It was stylish and had a lighted rotary dial and... it wasn't black. Talk about pushing the technology envelope! I also remember my grandmother's instructions to my mother, "When you get home, call my phone and let it ring twice. That way, I'll know you're home." Thereby gipping Ma Bell out of like 8 cents for a answered toll call. (Typing this I also noticed that there is no "cent" key on my keyboard. When did they disappear?)

My first car was a hand me down '61 Ford Galaxie with a 6 cylinder and 3 speed column shifter. When I blew the clutch a new one installed cost $54. First car I bought on my own was a '73 Ford Torino. It cost me $3,800.

[Stephanie B]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

Learned to drive on a '64 Chevy II and learned to drive a manual on a '64 Chevy Greenbrier (Corvair minivan). First car was a '72 RX-2 with an engine that lasted another 5,000 miles before the apex seals gave out.

[deputyG23]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

65 VW “Notchback Sedan”
Bought it used in ‘75 for $250.
This model was not sold in US.
A man brought it to NC from France.
1500 cc VW flat engine with two one barrel carbs that used premium gas.
Could beat anything off the line in first gear but that was it.

[revchuck38]

Learned to drive on a '64 Chevy II and learned to drive a manual on a '64 Chevy Greenbrier (Corvair minivan). First car was a '72 RX-2 with an engine that lasted another 5,000 miles before the apex seals gave out.

They made a pickup version too:

47086

[jtcarm]

RJ, you can't bait me with your vile unpatriotic 1911 bashing in this or any or thread. I simply won't fall for... waitaminute... dammit!

I remember when a “nineteen eleven” was known simply as a “forty five”.

No elaboration was needed.

[Stephanie B]

They made a pickup version too:

47086

With a side-loading ramp, too.

[blues]

First car I ever drove was my uncle's 60 something blue Corvair.

[momano]

In the early 70's, I learned to drive a '56 Ford Ranch wagon with a "3 on the tree". In the small town we lived in we had 3 digit phone numbers and live operators (this was in the late 60's).

[BehindBlueI's]

In the small town we lived in we had 3 digit phone numbers and live operators (this was in the late 60's).

When going through my grandmother's stuff I found a phone book with Henryville-8118 type phone numbers. We didn't have a phone ourselves until until 1986 when they finally ran phone lines out by our property.

My other grandparents had a party line. They ended up being the last ones on it, so basically a private line at that point but with a bonus. You could call yourself. There were three phones on the property, the old original farmhouse, the new house, and the barn. You could call the others by dialing your own number and then hanging up. The phone would then ring until you picked your own receiver up. There was no way to know if someone answered the other phone or not as it'd keep ringing even if they picked it up, so you'd just let it ring six times then pick up on your end and see if they were there.

[Drang]

I remember when a “nineteen eleven” was known simply as a “forty five”.

No elaboration was needed.

Back when "automatic" or "automatic pistol" meant a pistol that automatically loaded another round after you fired, as distinguished from fully automatic.

[0ddl0t]

I also remember my grandmother's instructions to my mother, "When you get home, call my phone and let it ring twice. That way, I'll know you're home." Thereby gipping Ma Bell out of like 8 cents for a answered toll call.

When they got rid of human telephone operators and just recorded your name for collect calls you could do this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bh-G4-qU

[Bart Carter]

My 1st car was a '57 Triumph TR3. Bought in '64 for $500. Drove that car through 5 years of college and two years of Army. (Vietnam draftee). Started first with Rallys and then auto-X. Did all my own work, modifying it for competition. That car took me to two auto-X championships. :D

[Shoresy]

When they got rid of human telephone operators and just recorded your name for collect calls you could do this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bh-G4-qU

That was a common one when we had a payphone at school. Lotta rejected charges for "Imdonepickmeup".

[Duelist]

If you have and use a turntable, that makes you a modern hipster.

He said that he *still* has records, not that he buys new ones and scrounged up his parent/grandparent’s hifi system.

First car I was allowed to drive on the road was dad’s ‘69 Coronet 440, which actually had a 318 V8. Later, I had a ‘74 Duster with the same engine.

[Arbninftry]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

Gen Xer here, but a 3/4ton 1975 Chevy. 454 with a Holley 750 Double Pumper, Hooker Headers, Posi-Rear End. 4-6 MPGs maybe 8 or 9, if I stayed out of it. But, I was 16, so it would pass everything but a gas station. But it was OKLAHOMA so gas was cheap.:cool:

[Drang]

He said that he *still* has records, not that he buys new ones and scrounged up his parent/grandparent’s hifi system.
1) That's why I said "if".
2) More LPs sold last year than CDs. Vinyl is back, man!

My first car was a '67 Mustang, 289. Mostly rust colored...

[Olim9]

https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Energy-Zero-Ultra-Sugar/dp/B00ADYXY7E?th=1&psc=1

47097

[delphidoc]

Did I miss mentions of black and white TV?

The whole family went to the living room to watch the first channel to show color.

Our neighbors had the first color TV on the block we knew about. We kids all piled over there in 1969 to watch the moon landing. Reception was bad that night, the video feed was lousy, and the TV itself wasn't all that good anyway. We ended up going home and watched the moon walk on our black and white TV. Reception was marginally better.

Our cat Stripey used to paw at outfielders on that TV screen on Sunday afternoons. Lastros, Disastros, whatever you cared to call them. Perennial cellar dwellers.

[0ddl0t]

http://bigjoeonthego.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/driveinSPEAKER2.jpg

[delphidoc]

47099

[Arbninftry]

8 pages in and nobody has mentioned rotary phones? You guys are slacking.

Beta Max and Laser Discs too along with my apple IIe that literally sucked for an 8 year old

[Joe in PNG]

http://bigjoeonthego.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/driveinSPEAKER2.jpg

It's how I first saw Smokey & the Bandit.

[Duelist]

It's how I first saw Smokey & the Bandit.

Mary Poppins, from the folded down back seats turned into a bed of a Grand Torino station wagon in my footed PJs, wrapped up in quilts with my brothers and sisters.

[Shoresy]

https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Energy-Zero-Ultra-Sugar/dp/B00ADYXY7E?th=1&psc=1

47097

I haven't seen a reference to Helloween in at least a decade. Underrated band.

[mtnbkr]

There's a drive in theater (http://www.thefamilydriveintheatre.com/) here that shows new release movies. We go multiple times a year.

We take food, chairs, etc and make an event of it.


http://bigjoeonthego.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/driveinSPEAKER2.jpg

Chris

[mtnbkr]

My first car, the one K had through high school, college, and for a while after I got my first job, was a '72 Beetle (not Super). I gave it up when a mysterious engine issue prevented it from starting one morning (after running fine the night before). It had everything it needed (gas, spark, compression), it simply wouldn't fire up. It didn't help that I had to wear suits 4 days a week and NoVA summers are insanely hot and humid and the Vdub has no AC. I had my parents tow it back home with the intention of restoring it, but sold it a few years later on the eve of my wedding.

47101

47102

Chris

[blues]

I thought this thread was for and about Boomers! ? !

All I'm seeing is a bunch of posers and wannabes. ;)


(I feel better now. What kinda self-respecting boomer thread you expect to have without some sort of curmudgeonly outburst?)

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Went to the supermarket last night. It was cold and raining. Exited the market and have one question:

Where is my car?

[farscott]

My first car was a two-door metallic green 1972 Ford Gran Torino with the 351 Windsor V8, three-speed automatic transmission, and no power assist steering. It was not well suited for the snow belt area east of Cleveland, OH, and I had to learn how to not slide all over the road in inclement weather.

[mtnbkr]

I thought this thread was for and about Boomers! ? !

All I'm seeing is a bunch of posers and wannabes. ;)


(I feel better now. What kinda self-respecting boomer thread you expect to have without some sort of curmudgeonly outburst?)

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/skrtipuN7wo/maxresdefault.jpg

:D :D :D

Chris

[Oldherkpilot]

8 pages in and nobody has mentioned rotary phones? You guys are slacking.

I grew up with a rotary phone on a party line. Maybe that's why I dislike my wife's Alexa listening to everything I say!

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I remember my dad wearing a hat. Anyone remember when men wore hats that weren't baseball caps?

[jtcarm]

Someone mentioned AM radio. That reminded me that I installed FM converters in the 72 LTD and the 79 Chevette.

Our 70 C10 was bare bones.

I remember dad & I installing an AM radio someone gave us when they upgraded.

Then a so-so DIY AC. I think the wing vents did more.

Finally an FM converter.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

By chance I turned on the AM channels in my car and came across a cigar show (young people, what are cigars?). The guy was promoting Trump to roll back an FDA attack on artisanal big old cigars. What happened to pipes for tobacco?

[jtcarm]

Or remember a phone number.!
My daughter left her phone at a friends the other day. She had to log on to Snapchat on her laptop to reach out, because she didn't know the (close) friends phone number. LOL.

Yeah, but we only had to remember seven digits.

[mtnbkr]

Yeah, but we only had to remember seven digits.

When I was in operations and working with network devices around the world, I was able to remember all sorts of IPs (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX format for those not familiar). The length of the number is not an issue, it's not having to read/input the number on a regular basis.

I'm guilty of not remembering phone numbers myself. I used to know all my important numbers by heart, especially back before cellphones and when your numbers were written by hand in an address book. Now I don't. The only phone number I can rattle off from memory is my wife's.

Chris

[blues]

Yeah, but we only had to remember seven digits.

It used to be letters and digits...like LI4-5027 or BO3-7500

It was mind boggling when it went to seven digits and no letters.

[olstyn]

When I was in operations and working with network devices around the world, I was able to remember all sorts of IPs (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX format for those not familiar). The length of the number is not an issue, it's not having to read/input the number on a regular basis.

I'm guilty of not remembering phone numbers myself. I used to know all my important numbers by heart, especially back before cellphones and when your numbers were written by hand in an address book. Now I don't. The only phone number I can rattle off from memory is my wife's.

Chris

^
This. I often surprise my coworkers by remembering the equipment control numbers of various computers that I've semi-recently had to remote into in order to fix issues, etc., but there are very few phone numbers that are firmly in my memory because I never have to actually dial them.

It's the same way with passwords. Every site out there makes you create an account, but they all remember your login in a cookie, so you never actually need to use the password until the cookie expires, and then it's password recovery time because it never made it into long-term memory.

[Erik]

X'er here, but my first car was a '66 Mustang (base model with V6), shared with my sister.

It was a 25 year old car when we had it, and was classic and cool.

Project back 25 years from the current year, and none of the basic cars from 1995 are classic or cool. Just old.

47108

[Caballoflaco]

I thought this thread was for and about Boomers! ? !

All I'm seeing is a bunch of posers and wannabes. ;)


(I feel better now. What kinda self-respecting boomer thread you expect to have without some sort of curmudgeonly outburst?)

Memories of us stealing your thread are all that will keep us warm when we’re in our dotage and there’s no social security money left to keep the heat on in the winter ;)

[MistWolf]

47108

As Joe was saying "...none of the basic cars from 1995 are classic or cool. Just old."

[Erik]

Oh man. Them's fightin' words.

[BobM]

I remember my dad wearing a hat. Anyone remember when men wore hats that weren't baseball caps?

My grandpa was a hat guy.

I must’ve inherited that gene. I have a selection of Filson Packer hats that I wear.

[blues]

Memories of us stealing your thread are all that will keep us warm when we’re in our dotage and there’s no social security money left to keep the heat on in the winter ;)

I don't know what you're talking about. How did you get in here? Where's the ketchup?

[BehindBlueI's]

I remember my dad wearing a hat. Anyone remember when men wore hats that weren't baseball caps?

I don't have to remember that far back for that. I know we're an odd breed anyway, but a lot of us wore hats in Investigations. I still bust one out on occasion. The Stetson Stratoliner is my favorite.

[blues]

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7JbZyFZ7-p4/hqdefault.jpg

"BBI? He's just a poor man's reincarnation of The Hat Squad (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103436/). It's just the facts..."


;)

[BobM]

I thought this thread was for and about Boomers! ? !

All I'm seeing is a bunch of posers and wannabes. ;)


(I feel better now. What kinda self-respecting boomer thread you expect to have without some sort of curmudgeonly outburst?)

Just realized I don’t really qualify having been born in 65. I was conceived in 64, close enough?

[blues]

Just realized I don’t really qualify having been born in 65. I was conceived in 64, close enough?

https://prayingmedic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/referee-huddle-small.jpg


https://media3.giphy.com/media/2siBCzFMNsySRMJfuM/giphy.gif

[Coyotesfan97]

That was a common one when we had a payphone at school. Lotta rejected charges for "Imdonepickmeup".

Before it was recorded if I had to stay late at school I’d just collect call home. When folks heard it was me they’d say no and drive to the school to pick me up.

[MistWolf]

1976 Mustang II Coupe...4cyl w/ manual trans

....in beige!

I learned to drive in Mom's Maverick
I'm amazed you didn't get disgusted and give up driving!



X'er here, but my first car was a '66 Mustang (base model with V6)...
Hey, X- Man! Ford didn't have a V-6 in 1966!

For the record, I don't consider myself a Boomer or Gen-X. I'm a little bit of both, yet neither one. I fall into the cracks in between.

[Cheap Shot]

It seems meaningful to me now, in a way I don't understand, that when I was growing up most adult males were WWI, WWII, or Korean war vets.

Now, get off my lawn!

[revchuck38]

47108

I'd love to have one of those. It'd be an awesome road trip car, far better than my '16 Ford Focus. Then again, the Focus gets 38 mpg on a trip.

[SeriousStudent]

When I was in operations and working with network devices around the world, I was able to remember all sorts of IPs (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX format for those not familiar). The length of the number is not an issue, it's not having to read/input the number on a regular basis.

......

Chris

Yeah, when you have the IP addresses of all the root DNS servers memorized - (A through M), along with their owners and locations but can't recall your next door neighbor's cell number......

My daughter told me last month "Dad, you can remember a 32-character firewall password, but won't go to the grocery store without a shopping list!"

Because that firewall shit is important, dearie.

[Redhat]

I'm amazed you didn't get disgusted and give up driving!



Hey, X- Man! Ford didn't have a V-6 in 1966!

For the record, I don't consider myself a Boomer or Gen-X. I'm a little bit of both, yet neither one. I fall into the cracks in between.

Had to down-shift to go up hill (88hp) but I was 16, it had wheels and went from A to B...freedom!

2nd car was a '66 Mustang GT, huge change!

[SeriousStudent]

47108

Man, I so want one of those bad boys! I'd be blasting the Peter Gunn theme from the stereo, and smoking a cigar big enough to give an entire Latin American country emphysema.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oysMt8iL9UE

With a blued steel and walnut pump shotgun in the gun rack, natch.

[jeep45238]

Are younguns always running around your cart at WalMart?

Do they make fun of you when you clear jams in your 1911 at a USPSA match?

People ignoring your sage advice on ammunition and reloading threads?

THIS IS THE THREAD FOR YOU!!

Here you can get advice on all these issues, and more!

We’ll help you find a replacement pair of White Velcro sneakers like they used to make!!

We’ll suggest ways to make whippersnappers respect you in discussion threads!!

We’ll be here when you get up more than 7 times a night to pee!!

We’ll give you tips to smugly bring key “Tide Pods”, mention student debt and “your generation couldn’t start a lawnmower” catchphrases into any conversation with millennials!!

We’ll help your 1911 run like a Glock!! (Sorry, we can’t do that one).

...ALL THIS AND MORE!!

Post your question here for immediate support!!

Our operators are standing by.

Void where prohibited.

No purchase necessary.


I do pretty much all of this as is - it took me over 2 months to convince a friend that his reload issues of not chambering was being a hair too long in OAL (someone else set it up for him), and shortened .015 and no more issues. He still won't case gauge because "i like to see the primers". I also really like 2 stroke motors with pull starts, and FJR/Goldwing motorcycles over naked liter bikes. I prefer J frames and 1911's. I still don't know what the right click on a mouse does.

My two 9mm 1911's do run like most people's Glock's (at least around here).








I'm 35.

[BobM]

I don't have to remember that far back for that. I know we're an odd breed anyway, but a lot of us wore hats in Investigations. I still bust one out on occasion. The Stetson Stratoliner is my favorite.

I have a Stratoliner that belonged to my grandpa. He told me he donated blood for a guy (in the 40s or 50s I think). He said the guy took him to a hat shop in Dayton and told the clerk to give him the best hat in the store.

[willie]

It used to be letters and digits...like LI4-5027 or BO3-7500

It was mind boggling when it went to seven digits and no letters.

Or like Fleetwood 4551 which was flw 4551.

For decades Mississippi had only one area code. So you could call anybody else in the state by dialing 1 and then their number. Before area codes and associated technology, you dialed the operator and told her the city and state and then the phone number. All operators were female. In a small city, the operator knew everybody. Mary might dial 0 and ask Jane to ring Mabel. There was a good reason not to say certain things on the telephone.

[blues]

Or like Fleetwood 4551 which was flw 4551.



Boomer stuff:

Beechwood 4-5789


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us18AUBM2RI

[willie]

When I was growing up the McColgan Hotel was a whorehouse located on the main street near two churches and the police station. As a joke we would might say that somebody's phone number was MCG xxx. One night a Baptist preacher fell dead on top of a prostitute at the Hotel. I was called upon to help carry him across town so he could be found elsewhere. I had one end. A cop had the other.

[blues]

We would call "Chicken Delight" and order a dinner to be delivered to some hapless soul. Funny, how when we were kids we didn't realize how much the things we did and thought were funny would not be funny once we were older.

Laying on the hoods of cars, (sometimes taking emblems! :o), and a bunch of other stuff I prefer not to remember since becoming somewhat more respectable.

[delphidoc]

Mary Poppins, from the folded down back seats turned into a bed of a Grand Torino station wagon in my footed PJs, wrapped up in quilts with my brothers and sisters.


I remember us all piling into our Olds Dynamic 88 to the drive-in to see McHale's Navy in 1964. We brought a big bowl of popcorn and bottled cokes. I was 5, my sister was 7, my brother was 9. I remember having to wait for a stupid Elvis movie to play first so we could see the feature film. It was probably Viva Las Vegas.

My grandmother was a huge baseball fan in general, Micky Mantle in particular. She worked at Sakowitz in Houston and got us all tickets for the first ball game in the Astrodome- an Astros vs Yankees exhibition. Of course she got seats in the outfield so we would be closer to Mantle. He hit the first homerun in the Dome.

The Astrodome played a big part in our lives growing up. We saw UofH beat UCLA during the regular season in 1968- The Game of The Century. My birthday is on Texas Independence Day (March 2) so early on we got a school holiday on it. We usually went to the Rodeo and Livestock Show at the dome. My sister eventually decided Elvis was cool so we saw him do one of his performances there. I would get free Astros tickets from the Chronicle for making straight A's and remember going to the Dome with my grandmother several times with them. Our high school band got to perform at a halftime show for an Oilers-Bears game when I was a freshman.

My grandmother was also a huge JFK fan. He rode in a motorcade up the Gulf Freeway the day before his assassination to go to the airport to fly to FW. We stood in a parking lot along the way to see the motorcade go by. I remember looking for his car but didn't see it on the overpass.

[Poconnor]

Hats should make a bigger come back. Some times I think our society has gotten too casual. Hardly anybody knows how to dress correct. The last few years I have been interested in things from my grandfathers day. He was born in 1903. Straight razors, safety razors, fedoras and grandpa sweaters all have appeal now.

My first car was a 68 mustang fastback GT. J code 302 and a 4 spd. I still have it. Now I just have to get back to work on it. I paid for it with my first job I started at 12 years old. I worked under the table at a local bar after school. I filled beer coolers, took out the trash, cleaned the bathrooms and mopped the floor for 1 dollar an hour- 12 bucks a week. It was so smoky you couldn’t see the ceiling and the walls were stained brown. I would come in on Saturday mornings to clean up. I often made more money finding quarters on the floor by the pool table and the juke box. I got paid extra to clean up blood. The owners wife would make me a free lunch. It’s probably why I still like lunch bars. She would make a ham and a beef roast to slice up for the weekend. Pickled eggs and hot bologna from a jar. I learned a lot from the old bar flies. Mainly don’t hang out in bars.

The first thing I saved up for was a 13” black and white TV with an antennae so I didn’t have to watch Lawrence Welk with my parents and my grandfather. I was the remote for the only TV we had when I was young. I liked our antennae attached to the side of the house. It made a convenient ladder to the roof.
My 17 year old son has taken to calling me boomer even though he knows I’m not a boomer. I was born in 66. I returned to college after active duty army at 26. I was a curiosity to some of the girls because of my age. I will never forget the looks I got when a gaggle of females wanted to know how old I was. One said I was old. I told them I wasn’t old; I was experienced and if they didn’t understand the difference to ask their mom. Now I feel that It’s not the years; it’s the miles. I am broken enough to get two disability pensions but I am thankful every day to be alive. I remember comrades who are gone and I miss them. I am a “Get Off My Lawn” salty old fuck. I might not be a boomer but I can speak and understand boomer along with a little Pennsylvania Dutch , German , Arabic , Spanish and Albanian. Very little actually. Sorry I went all Forrest Gump.

[blues]

I remember us all piling into our Olds Dynamic 88 to the drive-in to see McHale's Navy in 1964. We brought a big bowl of popcorn and bottled cokes. I was 5, my sister was 7, my brother was 9. I remember having to wait for a stupid Elvis movie to play first so we could see the feature film. It was probably Viva Las Vegas.

My grandmother was a huge baseball fan in general, Micky Mantle in particular. She worked at Sakowitz in Houston and got us all tickets for the first ball game in the Astrodome- an Astros vs Yankees exhibition. Of course she got seats in the outfield so we would be closer to Mantle. He hit the first homerun in the Dome.

The Astrodome played a big part in our lives growing up. We saw UofH beat UCLA during the regular season in 1968- The Game of The Century. My birthday is on Texas Independence Day (March 2) so early on we got a school holiday on it. We usually went to the Rodeo and Livestock Show at the dome. My sister eventually decided Elvis was cool so we saw him do one of his performances there. I would get free Astros tickets from the Chronicle for making straight A's and remember going to the Dome with my grandmother several times with them. Our high school band got to perform at a halftime show for an Oilers-Bears game when I was a freshman.

My grandmother was also a huge JFK fan. He rode in a motorcade up the Gulf Freeway the day before his assassination to go to the airport to fly to FW. We stood in a parking lot along the way to see the motorcade go by. I remember looking for his car but didn't see it on the overpass.

The crew from McHale's Navy came around to movie theaters in the NYC metropolitan area to promote the movie. My wife and I each saw them at our local theaters many years before we would meet.

I used to go to Yankee Stadium with my dad who was a die-hard Yankees fan, so much so that when I was three I asked him who the "Yogi" was for the other team. I didn't realize it was a name and not the position. I can remember seeing Mantle and Berra hitting consecutive home runs at game I would go to back then. It was beyond a thrill. That was when Yankee stadium still had the support pillars in the seating area that you had to peer around.


https://ak2.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/4299302/thumb/8.jpg

[Erik]

I'd love to have one of those. It'd be an awesome road trip car, far better than my '16 Ford Focus. Then again, the Focus gets 38 mpg on a trip.

You'd be surprised how well you can do in a stock Impala SS. Of course, nobody keeps them stock so...


Man, I so want one of those bad boys! I'd be blasting the Peter Gunn theme from the stereo, and smoking a cigar big enough to give an entire Latin American country emphysema.


With a blued steel and walnut pump shotgun in the gun rack, natch.

LOL That's how I drive mine, natch.

If anybody's really interested, there's a club (https://issca.org/), a now pretty dead Impala SS forum (https://www.impalassforum.com/) and a couple of more active FB pages, if you do FB. Nice examples do come up for sale.

In the spirit of the thread, yes, I had a rotary phone in the kitchen with a cord that reached to the basement door, friends with local numbers you didn't have to dial a damn area code for (and that I remembered!) and a TV that got like 4 channels AND I had to get up to change them.

[blues]

In the spirit of the thread, yes, I had a rotary phone in the kitchen with a cord that reached to the basement door, friends with local numbers you didn't have to dial a damn area code for (and that I remembered!) and a TV that got like 4 channels AND I had to get up to change them.

My wife, when we were dating, had a cord on the hall wall mounted phone that allowed her to take the handset into the bathroom where she could talk privately.

I used to crack up when I'd call, my future mother-in-law, (rest her soul), would get my wife up out of bed and then I'd have to wait for her to drag the pone to the bathroom.

Also remember when things would go wonky with the phones back then we'd disconnect the little phone boxes on the wall above the floor and reconnect the wires inside until a good dial tone was obtained.

[RevolverRob]

The jokes in this thread - I get them, that's what happens when you're a "Millennial" but you were raised by two "Boomers".

In my case, I'm barely Millennial anyways, having been born in that weird period between Gen X and Millennials, where the first 15'ish years of my life we didn't have cellphones and high speed internet, but the Dotcom boom and 24-hour news cycles were actual things.

In my house, we had a rotary dial telephone, a TV with rabbit ears, an older 13" black and white TV with KNOBS, and an honest to goodness HiFi stereo with an 8-track built in. We had video games, but we also got up and went outside. And I wrote my first papers for school long hand in cursive. When I went to college, people still took notes in notebooks, by hand. Now I have to ban laptops and tablets if I want people to write things down.

My oldest nephew was lamenting about not being able to stream his favorite TV episodes the other day. When my sister and I explained that when we were kids you used to have to wait for your show to air - once a week - and if you missed it - tough shit. He nearly shit a brick.

Kids this days, I tell ya.

Old people too.

My mother was complaining about not being able to stream a show and when my sister and I told her how when we were kids we used to have to wait for the show to air once a week, she got mad at us and started yelling.

[blues]

Growing up in the 50's I remember hearing about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and being just a kid, thinking it was something like from Jungle Jim, Tarzan or Ramar of the Jungle...

...only to find out later it was much uglier than that. Colonialism really isn't all that romantic.


https://youtu.be/eOiIf-mLiQc

[ralph]

Remember the tube testers in the stores? We had a TV that would blow a certain tube every nine months. Dad kept a spare on hand.

I remember those, in the same vein, last summer a local appliance store went out of business, they had been at the same location since 1954-1955 until 2019, anyway, they auctioned off the inventory, and in that inventory was several thousand new old stock vacuum tubes for televisions... They didn’t have any trouble getting rid of them...

[Joe in PNG]

Hey, X- Man! Ford didn't have a V-6 in 1966!

For the record, I don't consider myself a Boomer or Gen-X. I'm a little bit of both, yet neither one. I fall into the cracks in between.

Doh! You're right- must have had a senior moment there.

[olstyn]

In my case, I'm barely Millennial anyways, having been born in that weird period between Gen X and Millennials, where the first 15'ish years of my life we didn't have cellphones and high speed internet, but the Dotcom boom and 24-hour news cycles were actual things.

You must be just about my younger brother's age. I'm the absolute tail end of Gen X, and he doesn't really fit into Gen X, but is too old to be a Millenial.

[trailrunner]

My first car was a 68 mustang fastback GT. J code 302 and a 4 spd. I still have it. Now I just have to get back to work on it. I paid for it with my first job I started at 12 years old.

The first thing I remember buying with my own money was a hand-held calculator. These were just becoming consumer items. It was about $100 in the Sears catalog, and I remember paying extra for the model that had a memory. I had a paper route then and made about $40 a month, so it took me a few months to save enough money. I'm guessing I was 12 or 13, and in retrospect it was a huge indicator of my future career choice.

[blues]

The first thing I remember buying with my own money was a hand-held calculator. These were just becoming consumer items. It was about $100 in the Sears catalog, and I remember paying extra for the model that had a memory. I had a paper route then and made about $40 a month, so it took me a few months to save enough money. I'm guessing I was 12 or 13, and in retrospect it was a huge indicator of my future career choice.

Who paid for the slide rule? ;)

[trailrunner]

Who paid for the slide rule? ;)

In some ways, the timing of my life was perfect. By the time I got to college, slide rules had been pretty much phased out, and calculators were accepted and usually allowed during exams. On the other hand, in my first programming class I had to use punch cards.

[delphidoc]

In some ways, the timing of my life was perfect. By the time I got to college, slide rules had been pretty much phased out, and calculators were accepted and usually allowed during exams. On the other hand, in my first programming class I had to use punch cards.


My first calculator did the four main functions and square root. Foley's had a sale on them in 1976 for $19.76.

I went to A&M 1977-82. I didn't take any CS classes. The folks that did had a certain amount of computer time allotted to them per month or semester or whatever. They routinely ran out of computer time and had to use "Happy Hour" on Thursday evenings. There would always be a line of CS students out the door of the CS building, full of CS students waiting to run their punch card programs on the main frame.

[Pacioli]

47108

We had a fleet of these as company cars in the early '90s. I always thought Chevy should have been honest and bolted an outboard motor to the the trunk lid.

[Erik]

LOL That's the Fleetwood!

[SeriousStudent]

Who paid for the slide rule? ;)

Some of use still have our trusty K&E slide rule.

Needs no battery, and is faster than a calculator if you understand logarithms.

[blues]

Some of use still have our trusty K&E slide rule.

Needs no battery, and is faster than a calculator if you understand logarithms.

Have abacus, will travel, reads the card of a man...

A nerd without humor in a savage land.

:p

[trailrunner]

I went to A&M 1977-82. I didn't take any CS classes. The folks that did had a certain amount of computer time allotted to them per month or semester or whatever. They routinely ran out of computer time and had to use "Happy Hour" on Thursday evenings. There would always be a line of CS students out the door of the CS building, full of CS students waiting to run their punch card programs on the main frame.

I was engineering, not CS, but we still had similar issues. Right before a big project was due, the mainframe would bog down, and we'd have to wait a couple of hours just to discover we had made a typing mistake that resulted in a syntax error.

The computer time they gave to us was never enough, so we had to be creative. I was pretty good in my class, so I would trade some "focused tutoring" for some computer time that a guy had accumulated from students who had dropped the class.

[SeriousStudent]

Have abacus, will travel, reads the card of a man...

A nerd without humor in a savage land.

:p

Wire Serious
DFW



And there are a fair number of people who would agree with you regarding the lack of humor. They are usually the people who disturb my slumbers with unneeded phone calls during the wee hours.

[Stephanie B]

Speaking of phones, remember: "Will you accept a collect call from xxx?"

Making a person-to-person call.

[Stephanie B]

Typewriters... before correction tape!

Yes, but they had red lower ribbons.

[Stephanie B]

I remember my dad wearing a hat. Anyone remember when men wore hats that weren't baseball caps?
And hat check girls.

[Stephanie B]

In some ways, the timing of my life was perfect. By the time I got to college, slide rules had been pretty much phased out, and calculators were accepted and usually allowed during exams. On the other hand, in my first programming class I had to use punch cards.
I was in about the last freshman class that routinely used slide rules. I bought a 12" steel Pickett from the bookstore for $6.

Funny note: I took Astronomy my senior year. We seniors used slide rules. The freshmen all had calculators. The seniors routinely cleaned their clocks on the exams, because we had to write out our steps and, if something didn't make sense, we could see the mistake. The kids just punched in the numbers and if it was wrong, they didn't notice.

[revchuck38]

And hat check girls.

And cigarette girls. :)

[RoyGBiv]

And cigarette girls. :)

Golf cart girls are still a thing, fwiw :cool:

[revchuck38]

Golf cart girls are still a thing, fwiw :cool:

Yabbut do they wear fishnet stockings?

[Cheap Shot]

[QUOTE=blues;979768]Growing up in the 50's I remember hearing about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and being just a kid, thinking it was something like from Jungle Jim, Tarzan or Ramar of the Jungle...

...only to find out later it was much uglier than that. Colonialism really isn't all that romantic.

Step 1

https://www.johnnyweissmuller.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/T1.jpg

Step 2

https://www.johnnyweissmuller.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/T9.jpg

Step 3

47155

[BehindBlueI's]

I remember cigarette vending machines in restaurants. The incessant exposure to cigarette smoke is one thing I don't miss about "the good ol' days". I recall going in for my tonsillectomy and the doctor walking at the head of my cot with a cigarette in his mouth as we got in the elevator. I was probably 6 or 7, young enough to not think twice and tell him he shouldn't smoke. He agreed.

[blues]

I remember cigarette vending machines in restaurants. The incessant exposure to cigarette smoke is one thing I don't miss about "the good ol' days". I recall going in for my tonsillectomy and the doctor walking at the head of my cot with a cigarette in his mouth as we got in the elevator. I was probably 6 or 7, young enough to not think twice and tell him he shouldn't smoke. He agreed.

Well, speaking of Tarzan and tonsils...

When I was three I had my tonsils out. At the time, the only black people I had seen were on TV...on shows like the aforementioned Jungle Jim, Tarzan, etc.

When the orderly came to wheel my gurney into the O.R., I started yelling to my mother not to let the native take me. (Yes, she was mortified. But I thought I was going to be put in a big pot and cannibalized.) She apologized, I got my tonsils out and probably drove that poor man into the arms of Malcolm X. True story. But I knew no better.

Just to show that I wasn't raised to be a racist douche nozzle...when we moved to Queens, (I was 4), we lived in a series of low rise apartment buildings. The handymen who performed maintenance were all black and they basically adopted me. I'd hang out with them all day in the garage they used for working on equipment. Go on rounds with them and even go home with one of them to his basement apartment where I'd play with his kids and eat with him and his family. My mother and father trusted him and that trust was warranted.

I still think of Abbott (and the other members of the crew) regularly. They were some of the best adult friends that a young kid could have. They taught me about repairing electric appliances, old watches etc. I've since forgotten most of their lessons. But never the kindness.

By the time I got to school, which was integrated, as was the neighborhood we lived in, it was never an issue again. But I can still remember that day I got my tonsils out, and the fear I felt that morning. It's a funny story now, but I'll always feel bad about what that poor orderly must've felt and that I never could go back and apologize.

[Borderland]

In some ways, the timing of my life was perfect. By the time I got to college, slide rules had been pretty much phased out, and calculators were accepted and usually allowed during exams. On the other hand, in my first programming class I had to use punch cards.

We're running in about the same time frame. Programming was still punch cards when I took my first programming class, Probably around 77. As soon as the HP35 hit the market I was on it. Purchased just about every HP handheld calculator upgrade that came out after that, 45, 67, 47 etc. Damn expensive but if you had to crunch numbers all day they were worth every dime. When I first broke into the surveying business the guy I worked for had a 4 lb book for trig functions for angles to the nearest second of arc. He did his calculations using his brain and a pencil. He had some math skills unlike HS grads today. They can hardly make change without the register telling them what it is.

OK boomer.:D

[Chain]

I didn't go through all 22 pages but did someone post some of the meme pics?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ACeQjDPOdDY/maxresdefault.jpg

https://i.redd.it/n0dn7l21w3l11.png

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/660/843/eca.png

[Borderland]

Ok people, so what was your first car?

65 Ford Ranchero. 289 with 3 on the tree.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

When I was in grad school, we used mechanical calculators. When the first electronic ones that came out, they were as big as a old TV (with a CRT), had 4 functions and square roots. We thought we had seen God in stat class.

I took the first computer science class on an IMB 1620 with 16K of a weird memory that was gizmo'ed up to pretend its machine language was in decimal notation rather than some binary or octal. I took it pass/fail as folks said it was the hardest course ever. Started with machine language, then assembly, then Fortran. Pissed me off as I ran a straight A on everything.

Also lived through two full bore school, police vs. students Viet Nam war riots. Tear gas, clubs, etc. I was taken a grad course in Computer Architecture. Running a straight A. The final project was to write a compiler for a Reverse Polish Notation Algebraic language in assembly language. Not a trivial exercise. Well, the Cambodia riots hit and the school shut down. I recall seeing more state troopers than I had ever seen getting ready to march on campus. The prof said - Well, if you like your average, take it. Only do the project if you want to raise your grade. Whoopee for that!

About Viet Nam, on my intermediate project I was teamed with a vet who had just come back and was in grad CS. He looked like a wild ass, neck bearded, army jacket, mountain of man - Mike. We got along fine. So, we can't get our X to do Y. We go to the prof to ask and there is a geek CS grad student sitting in the prof's office too. We explain our problem and geek says: Well, you call yourself CS students (with a sneer). Mike grabs him by the shirt, slams him up against the wall and says: I did not walk point in the jungle to take crap from the likes of you (more color though).

I say to him: Mike - the prof says he will help us. Good idea. Mike drops geek and the prof says that we did a memory call into some restricted memory area. Problem solved.

As we leave the office, Mike turns to geek and says - I will find your car and blow you up.

[BehindBlueI's]

As we leave the office, Mike turns to geek and says - I will find your car and blow you up.

I like Mike.

[Borderland]

'67 Fury III. First family car was a '53 Plymouth.

I remember my uncle who had a 383 Polaris 2 door coupe with Torqueflite trans. Probably 65 or so. You could burn the tires right off of that thing in 30 seconds. Tires weren't that good back in those days. :D

[blues]

I remember my uncle who had a 383 Polaris 2 door coupe with Torqueflite trans. Probably 65 or so. You could burn the tires right off of that thing in 30 seconds. Tires weren't that good back in those days. :D

Yep. 383 and 2 barrel carb, not the 4. Torqueflite tranny. Was a great car until some drunk t-boned me in 1976 and sent it to an early grave.

It was named the "blue streak" by my father.

[delphidoc]

When I was in grad school, we used mechanical calculators.



Dad had one of these in his home office. He probably still has it. Pretty cool gizmo.

47171


He's a retired electrical engineer. He mainly worked in Instrumentation in chemical plants along the Houston Ship Channel. He taught himself computers and programming. Pretty smart guy.

When I was a freshman in college in 77-78 he became the proud owner of this beast. Northstar Horizon. 16K RAM, running CP/M. He had a cassette player hooked up to it for storage that exceeded the capacity of a 360 KB 5.25" floppy disk. It was eventually handed down to me as my first computer. I remember the monitor-keyboard unit being much larger than what's in this picture.

47172



He later got this slick "luggable" Kaypro II. He upgraded it to a whopping 20MB hard drive. Still ran CP/M. It was my second hand me down computer. I actually used it for a while when I went back to school in 1986. The keyboard was incorporated into the lid that clamped shut over the monitor. Weighed 26 pounds. Like I said, a luggable.


47173

[RevolverRob]

About Viet Nam, on my intermediate project I was teamed with a vet who had just come back and was in grad CS. He looked like a wild ass, neck bearded, army jacket, mountain of man - Mike. We got along fine. So, we can't get our X to do Y. We go to the prof to ask and there is a geek CS grad student sitting in the prof's office too. We explain our problem and geek says: Well, you call yourself CS students (with a sneer). Mike grabs him by the shirt, slams him up against the wall and says: I did not walk point in the jungle to take crap from the likes of you (more color though).

I say to him: Mike - the prof says he will help us. Good idea. Mike drops geek and the prof says that we did a memory call into some restricted memory area. Problem solved.

As we leave the office, Mike turns to geek and says - I will find your car and blow you up.

Mike didn't happen to go into CS and then decide later to become a contractor, did he?

Because I knew a Mike, who served in Vietnam, got out, went and got a PhD in Computer Science, worked as a programmer for a few years until the...late 70s/early 80s and then decided to quit programming and became a contractor. Built some truly beautiful homes and specialized in custom cabinetry himself, but also did a lot of general contracting.

[Jamie]

I didn't see phone booths specifically mentioned. I miss Phone Booths! The kind with doors that closed so I don't have to hear your self important flippin' conversations! :mad:

I was in the service '73-'82 (active then reserve) and I drove all over the U.S. using a paper map and stopping maybe once or twice on a 3 day drive to check in with family and let them know I was still alive. The 55 MPH National Interstate speed limit sucked btw...

Did any of you folks ever get the opportunity to listen to Clyde Clifford on KAAY out of Little Rock and Beaker Street or Beaker Theater? Great "underground" rock and the likes of Dr. Demento and Firesign Theatre. The station was AM and if the atmospheric conditions were favorable I could pick up the station is South West MS or New Orleans. This was around 1971.

My first car was one my father won in a drunken card game in 1968 (I don't know the details but it was a frequent occurrence). It was a 1961 near purple Cadillac. I bought it from him for $500.00. I needed it to get back and forth to work as I was tired of getting soaked in the rain on one of my motorcycles. (It rains a lot in SW MS) I kept a case of re-refined oil and 2 spare wheels/tires in the truck. That thing was a tank. Fortunately 2 years later I sold it and bought a 1968 442, Hurst 4 speed T-shift. Unfortunately I totaled it about a year later. Young, stupid and too much car for me. I went back to motorcycles (I'm not saying I made good decisions...).

I'm an RN. I was in the 2nd BS Nursing class at the University of Central Florida and graduated in '82. UCF was FTU (Florida Technological University) when I transferred over from Valencia Community College. I had to take a class in Basic Computer language as a prerequisite. All I can remember is page after page of "If Then, Go to", aced the class but can say the information has never been helpful in the ER or ICU. ;)

Thanks for starting this thread, as a 66 year old Card Carrying Certified Boomer I approve!

You guys have brought back a lot of memories...thankfully I'll forget again soon...

[0ddl0t]

I didn't see phone booths specifically mentioned. I miss Phone Booths!
They always had a strange odor to me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3dRH9RMZDY

But I do miss phone books. And encyclopedias...

[SAWBONES]

"White pages" phone books;
"Yellow pages" phone books;
If they didn't help, you called "information" at 411.

Local calls (free) and "long distance" (an extra fee on the monthly AT&T phone bill).
No area code needed for anything but "long distance" calls.

Wall phone in the kitchen with the extra-long coil cord that always tangled and "inverted" several of its loops.
One landline, maybe with "extension" phones elsewhere in the house.

Regular mail went out on a 5 cent stamp, "air mail" on a 7 cent stamp, post cards were 2 cents in the 1950s.
No such thing as "zip codes", not even for sending things internationally (like the "care packages" we sent to my father's relatives in East Germany).

In high school computer science (circa '68-69), we had a UNIVAC in an air conditioned enclosure, and we learned to make flow charts, do elementary programming in COBOL and Fortran, and typed our commands onto punch cards and sorted them with a (mechanical) collator.

Of course we used slide rules in high school physics (AP "Chem-Phys").

I remember all that stuff.

The advent and rapid burgeoning of the "digital age", with instantaneous information availability and the almost universal ownership of personal electronics such as cell phones, PCs and other gadgets, has altered nothing about human character, nor has any of it improved the faculty of conscience.

Modern conveniences have made so many tasks quicker and easier, but no one should imagine that modern kids are "better off" in any fundamental sense because of it.

It's been my observation with too many of them that they're far less knowledgeable about or even interested in such important things as history, literature, grammar, spelling and vocabulary, not to mention lacking reasonable facility with even simple mental mathematics.

Being a "boomer" permits a significant personal perspective on the 1950s through the new century's advent that will too soon no longer exist when the generation has died out.

[Robinson]

I grew up with a rotary phone on a party line. Maybe that's why I dislike my wife's Alexa listening to everything I say!

Hey, how close are you to Newton Falls? My mom grew up there and we used to visit our grandparents a couple times a year.

And yeah I grew up with a party line too.

[vcdgrips]

Rotary Phones

Pay Phones out in the world that you could pull up to and talk from the car.

B/W TV to Color TV to Color TV with Remote (changing the channel with a shake of keys on a big keychain)

Saying go put it in the "Icebox" and getting quizzical looks from people.

First Car in 1983-1967 Dodge Dart came with bias ply tires. I put some radials on and thought I was the Man.

[ccmdfd]

For some reason I remember with fondness the first TV remote controls. They had 4, maybe 5, buttons total each an inch long and stuck up about an inch also. They made a distinct click when pressed.

Also real station wagons with the fold up back seat where us kids would go (without seat belts).

cc

[Glenn E. Meyer]

My grandma had one. I think they worked on sound and had some kind of set tuning fork inside them. I should look that up.

Cap guns and mock gun battles in the street with them. My favorite were two Colt SAAs that were chromed and you stuck a cap on each fake round.

[UNK]

They always had a strange odor to me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3dRH9RMZDY

But I do miss phone books. And encyclopedias...

I like the True Romance phone booth scene better 😉 Not sure if i can post the video here so Ill leave the link.
https://dai.ly/x61ste

[Borderland]

If they didn't help, you called "information" at 411.

An those operators were always in a bad mood. I always got the feeling they hated their jobs and wanted me to just stop calling them.:D

[Tom Duffy]

The first thing I remember buying with my own money was a hand-held calculator. These were just becoming consumer items. It was about $100 in the Sears catalog, and I remember paying extra for the model that had a memory. I had a paper route then and made about $40 a month, so it took me a few months to save enough money. I'm guessing I was 12 or 13, and in retrospect it was a huge indicator of my future career choice.

I still have two slide rules. One is an aluminum Pickett with 34 scales. There was a time I could brag that I could use all of them. I don't even think I know what an ArcTan is anymore. My fraternity decided to spend house funds to buy a calculator. They weren't yet hand-held. We spent $895 on a Wang calculator. Ten years later they were giving them away free with a gas fill up.

[Tom Duffy]

Maybe this whole Boomer thread idea is a plot by Rich and LL to identify old people on the forum and kick them off to change the demographics of pistol-forum. Nicely done.

[blues]

Maybe this whole Boomer thread idea is a plot by Rich and LL to identify old people on the forum and kick them off to change the demographics of pistol-forum. Nicely done.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTEwNzUxMjMtOWIzOS00OTQ0LTk0MmQtMTIzYzJmNTVhYT I2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTAyODkwOQ@@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,66 6,1000_AL_.jpg

[blues]

https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/qctimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/71/37128f14-834e-51e4-b48a-c3b784d0014c/5978093b17305.image.jpg



https://youtu.be/yqpyBjkElRI

[trailrunner]

I heard some sweet music earlier in this thread: HP calculators and RPN. That’s just sexy talk, and the equivalent of a stick shift to a millennial engineer.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[wvincent]

[QUOTE=blues;980294]https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/qctimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/71/37128f14-834e-51e4-b48a-c3b784d0014c/5978093b17305.image.jpg


blues, I didn't know you liked Bud Light!!
Nice range day pic, glad to see your'e staying active!!

ETA: Oh, and put some damn pants on.

[blues]

[QUOTE=blues;980294]https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/qctimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/71/37128f14-834e-51e4-b48a-c3b784d0014c/5978093b17305.image.jpg


blues, I didn't know you liked Bud Light!!
Nice range day pic, glad to see your'e staying active!!

ETA: Oh, and put some damn pants on.

Why, I wouldn't drink Bud Light if...well...anyway, I don't have any pants on because...you know...that thing about sisters we talked about. ;)

[SAWBONES]

I heard some sweet music earlier in this thread: HP calculators and RPN. That’s just sexy talk, and the equivalent of a stick shift to a millennial engineer.

Yeah! HP calculators using RPN: the only way to go.
I was a devotee since 1976.

[RoyGBiv]

Yeah! HP calculators using RPN: the only way to go.
I was a devotee since 1976.

What is "Reverse Polish Notation" for $500 Alex?
I have 2... Scientific and Financial. Old but awesome.

First computer I ever tried to program was a VAX with punch cards... Circa '82. Programming in WatFiv (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WATFIV)
Did some work (not programming) that was controlled by a Data general somethingor other. Data was stored on these giant floppy drives. I remember them being about 2 feet in diameter, but maybe they were a bit less... Held a few megabytes.
Second time programming was on an HP RTE 1000 using 1/4" tape. Monochromatic terminals and keyboards... Big step up!
First laptop was a HP 110, followed by a Zenith Supersport (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/7112/Zenith-Supersport-SX/).

Here's the HP.

47200

[BobM]

Yeah! HP calculators using RPN: the only way to go.
I was a devotee since 1976.

I still have one I had to have for a stats class in college in the mid 80s. Now I just use it for my checkbook

[Darth_Uno]

[QUOTE=blues;980294]https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/qctimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/71/37128f14-834e-51e4-b48a-c3b784d0014c/5978093b17305.image.jpg

Wow, it's like every sporting clays match I've been to.

[BN]

Cap guns and mock gun battles in the street with them. My favorite were two Colt SAAs that were chromed and you stuck a cap on each fake round.

47206

[TGS]

I still have one I had to have for a stats class in college in the mid 80s. Now I just use it for my checkbook

Jesus Christ, I didn't know people still use check books...

[BehindBlueI's]

Jesus Christ, I didn't know people still use check books...

I just wrote a check to a contractor for replacing some windows last week. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the grocery, buy a single banana, and slowly count pennies at the register to pay for it.

[Greg]

I just wrote a check to a contractor for replacing some windows last week. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the grocery, buy a single banana, and slowly count pennies at the register to pay for it.

What? No coupons?

[TGS]

I just wrote a check to a contractor for replacing some windows last week. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the grocery, buy a single banana, and slowly count pennies at the register to pay for it.

YOU'RE NOT EVEN A BOOMER!

[Borderland]

Maybe this whole Boomer thread idea is a plot by Rich and LL to identify old people on the forum and kick them off to change the demographics of pistol-forum. Nicely done.

They've exposed us for sure. I'll just wait for the axe to fall. Boomers are resilient, mostly because we have most of the money.

[BehindBlueI's]

What? No coupons?

I save those for double coupon days. Amateur.


YOU'RE NOT EVEN A BOOMER!

I blame it on being raised by my grandparents and in the backwoods for most of my formative years, which is basically like growing up in a generation behind in many ways.

[blues]

I still use a checkbook. I don't want financial info on the phone and it takes more time to type it in on the laptop.

[BehindBlueI's]

I still use a checkbook.

https://i.imgflip.com/1rhgsd.jpg

#shocked (https://pistol-forum.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=shocked)

[blues]

https://i.imgflip.com/1rhgsd.jpg

#shocked (https://pistol-forum.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=shocked)

I'm probably more technologically savvy with electronics, especially audio, than most of the younguns. I just like what I like.

[revchuck38]

Jesus Christ, I didn't know people still use check books...

I still pay my water and gas bills with checks. I could pay by card, but each place charges $5 for the privilege, no direct debit from my account allowed. Eff that.