They always had a strange odor to me...Originally Posted by Jamie
But I do miss phone books. And encyclopedias...
They always had a strange odor to me...
But I do miss phone books. And encyclopedias...
Last edited by 0ddl0t; 01-13-2020 at 05:30 AM.
"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.
"Therefore, since the world has still... Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure, Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good." -- A.E. Housman
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.
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.
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).
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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.
Last edited by Glenn E. Meyer; 01-13-2020 at 12:07 PM.
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
I'll wager you a PF dollar™ 😎
The lunatics are running the asylum
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.If they didn't help, you called "information" at 411.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
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.
Real guns have hammers.
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.
Real guns have hammers.
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