How life has changed

[Paul B]

I just read a thread I started in 2006 and I would like to start it again and see how other people's life has changed in a few decades.
I myself was born in the 40s. The very late 40s. :tired:
Television was invented two years before I was born and there were only 2 shows on. We were lucky to have a phone, and the cord was straight, not coiled. The dial was rotary. There was no airconditioning, cell phones, computers, color TV, Microwaves, Birth control pills, SUVs, PayPal, Texting, Viagra, 10 speed bilkes, powerheads, High def, MH, VHO or PC lights, Nikes, foreign cars, lipo suction, 4 wheel drive, (except Willys Jeep, which I had) Reality shows, dance shows Oprah or the biggest loser, water filters, 747 or SST planes, FM radios, GFCIs, reef tanks, SpongeBob, credit cards, Blue Ray, Botox, hair plugs, Sattelite radio, MP3 players, Styrofoam, radial tires, IPods or fake boobs. We had record players, but, debit cards, space shuttles, knee replacements, fans and one speed bicycles, the speed was how fast you pedeled. We also got drafted. (that has nothing to do with wind) or sloppy looking kids in school.
We also had jobs that we got ourselves and cars that we bought ourselves and if we got married we paid for that ourselves.
Of course when we got beat up, we did that ourselves.
If it snowed 2' or more, they still kept the school open but they let you get there lateSpeaking of snow, when it snowed we would take the hood off an abandoned car and use that for a sled for everyone. :biggrin:

 

[Brando457]

Wow!!! No Viagra!?!

 

[Paul B]

Wow!!! No Viagra!?!

Well I wouldn't know, but I heard. :tongue1:

 

[IamRobG]

Being born in the early 80's and being a 90's child all i can say is Paul B, i wish i could've lived when you did. The 60's was when i was supposed to live. The best cars, best music, it just looked like the best time to be in your late teens, early 20's and then settle down for the boring 70's. I hate this technology even though i have a buttload of it. The only thing i would really need, air conditioning which was commercialized not too long after your birth. The rest of this useless social interaction and pop culture i could do without. I hate my generation and the generations after me, they're annoying and whiny babies that feel entitled to everything. Music is terrible, people are terrible, we have a few nice cars around but for the most part everything looks like a carved bubble with wheels. I can't even imagine how much crap we're gonna have in 10 years from now. The only thing i enjoyed from my generation was some of the 90's era music...mostly before 96-97

 

[Paul B]

only thing i would really need, air conditioning which was commercialized not too long after your birth.

It may have been invented, but we didn't have it until way later. I think I was in high school but I don't really remember.
We just sweat like people did from the beginning of time. When I was in Viet Nam it was always hot, we had a hat. That was our roof, air conditioner and everything else. You get used to it.

 

[boozeman]

A few weeks ago we were cleaning out the attic and I came across a stack of VHS tapes. My 8yo son looks at them with curiosity and asks 'daddy what are these?' I tell him those are movies you can watch on tv. He studies it intently and exclaims 'but daddy how does the DVD disk fit into it?'

 

[masterswimmer]

Paul, great memories.

My grandfather went on a vacation just after I was born. He went to Cuba. Try that now!

Banking, in my day banking was done between 9am and 3pm Monday through Friday. That was it. If you were out of cash after 3:01pm on Friday then you were without cash until Monday.

Contact Lenses became commercially available in 1971, many years after I started wearing glasses. As a matter of fact, the full cycle of fashion has caught up to me. My very first pair of glasses were black horn rimmed frames......the exact same type that are now in style. :banghead:

In my early years my parents had to schedule time every month to defrost their freezer. If they didn't, the ice would continually grow and shrink the freezer to virtually nothing.

As a kid I went to a barbershop for men. No hair salons or 'beauty parlors' for guys. The barbers chair reclined back and the barber would put shaving cream on my sideburns and take a straight razor to trim them.

GI Joe wasn't born until I was 5. Barbie was born the same year as me. Michael Jackson was only 11 months old when I was born.

When I was in 3rd and 4th grade going to school in Manhattan, PS 98, I would walk about 9 blocks to school by myself (9 years old). Not too many parents would be so 'irresponsible' today.

My father earned a whopping $95/week to support a family of 4. And we lived in Manhattan on that staggering income.

Needless to say, things have changed a bit since my youth.

Good thread Paul. Thanks for the memories.

Russ

 

[Paul B]

The only thing on TV for kids was Ding Dong School which was a chubby lady talking about something, but I can't remember, then we had Kukla Fran and Ollie which were sock puppets then of course Howdy Doody.
Channel 13 was all cartoons and they didn't have talking cartoons, there was just wierd music. The only cartoon was Farmer Grey who had a farm that had mice all over the place. When he turned on the faucet mice would come out, they came out from the oven, the "ice box" the truck, the entire cartoon was nothing but mice running out of things with music.
The Mickey Mouse Club came out in the 50s I think.
in the 60s when the TV got to where you could not make out the picture anymore you took out the tubes and brought them to the drug store where they had a machine where you plugged them in and it told you what tubes you needed. They sold tubes there.
TVs like just about everything else were made out of wood. The same thing we make trees out of. Some cars had wood inserts on the dashboard, and it was real wood, not contact paper like today. Chrome was also metal and not plastic, nothing was plastic, toys were metal, or wood. Radial tires did not exist so we had to buy tires every year or two. But they were warranted against blowouts so I would search through the lots for tires with big slices in them. If they didn't have big slices in them, I would slice them and bring them back to the Firestone or Goodyear dealer and get a new tire for half the price. Then I would sell it and make a few bucks.
When your shoes got a hole in them you found an old abandoned house and found linoleum which is the stuff everyone had on the floor. You ripped a piece of linoleum and put it in your shoe, it would last a week or twy then you replaced it. After a while you needed new shoes, so you waited until your Brother's shoes wore out and you put linoleum in those and used them.
The only thing in the medicine cabinet were band aids, Alka Seltzer and aspirin.
I always had a bicycle. I would go to a lot and find a wheel, chain, handlebars etc. and make a bike. When it wore out, I built another one.
The rich kids had new bikes and some even went to college. Not me, that was never going to happen, but I was street smart and that is much more important.

 

[Paul B]

I didn't have a new car until I was about 26 and married. I could never scrape together the $3,000.00 or $4,000.00 that they cost so I always had an older car. I was a mechanic so I would fix them. In 1960 a new Chevrolet cost $999.00, but no one had $999.00. In 1966 I was making about 55 cents an hour so I don't know how long it would take me to save enough to buy a car.
I just bought a new car an hour ago and it was easy. I walked into the showroom and said "I want that car" I will have in in a couple of days. Cars in the 60s and 70s you had to pick out everything and the process took all day. You could pick the tires, seats, radio, wheels, cigarette lighter, engine, rear view mirrors, color, heater, sun visors, and roof racks,(Oh wait, they didn't have roof racks) Now you get trim packages and you have to take whatever comes with that package.
The sticker price now is the price of the car, give or take $100.00. In those days the sticker price didn't mean anything and you could negotiate all over the place because the sticker price was 50% inflated so you thought you got a bargain. But gas cost 22 cents so economy was not a concern. Of course I rarely had more than two bucks for gas but for that I could get almost 10 gallons.

 

[TimberTDI]

The 60's was when i was supposed to live. The best cars, best music, it just looked like the best time to be in your late teens, early 20's and then settle down for the boring 70's. 7

History has a way of making itself look pretty. The same way an ugly person will look like a supermodel if you sit at the bar long enough.

Look at the crime rate from the 60s until 2010
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

That cooler car of yours had 4x a greater chance of being stolen in 1968 than 2010. Maybe you would have been drafted and sent to Vietnam and not come back like so many unfortunate sons.

Any era looks grand if you only look at the good things.

 

[Frank@Wall]

Hey old timers keep it coming. I love this. All my grandparents past away so I dont hear stiries anymore. You guys are putting tears in my eyes but thank you.

Sent from my LG G2X using Reefs

 

[Og Drogon]

I only go back to when a cable box was just "THE HBO BOX" ;-) flip the switch and waaaalla channel 3-4 became HBO. lol

 

[tosiek]

U know, in 50 years all us youngins are going to be most likely not typing on a forum the same thing your doing now Paul =0)

We'll say a bunch of stuff that wasn't around now and how its all changed.

 

[Brando457]

Man I was thinking the other day when my parents were 20 they didn't have cell phones or text messaging! Then I think of how when I was growing up I remember my older brother having an Atari and then we got a Nintendo. We also had an old
Apple computer with the big green screen that took 5" floppy for programs and the computer was built in the keyboard. Man I remember printing l33t banners with that thing!!! Then I remember getting our first computer running windows 3.1! Then finally we got a windows 95 machine with a dial-up modem connecting to Bell Atlantic Internet. I think this was right around the time AOL was version 3.0 and the only way to communicate with friends was to get AOL and use IM to constantly message.

Then next thing you known I'm in high school and we have dsl and computers are powerful to run half life 2!!! I turn 16 and get my first cell phone that was black and white with the game snake on it. I could call people and that's it! Then these things called two way messengers came out!!! What!!!!! And a t mobile sidekick o m g!!!

Jeez I'm only 24 and even in that short span the advancement!!

Oh and almost forgot when genesis was awesome then 3dfx was awesome then SNES!! Then comes along play station/dreamxast/n64 and play station 2 to change it all.

Oy I'm getting old

 

[FMF0331]

All i remember is having my atari with the fast eddie cartridge game. Getting my first beeper ( thought it was the coolest thing ever ) watching the "electric company" tv. Who was that guy on tv singing "kids are people too..wakka doo wakka doo .." some morning time kid show. Going to department stores jc penny - mays - corvette. And what about woolworths five and dime store. Waking up to kung fu saturday morning. Five deadly venom, shao lin monks and the 36 chambers..etc
my parents buying our first house, and english tudor with 3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms, dining room living room fireplace and a finish basement for $65.000.00 - the good old days

 

[Paul B]

That cooler car of yours had 4x a greater chance of being stolen in 1968 than 2010.

That is very true but it is because in 1968 we all knew how to work on a car (or steal it if we wanted to) Today, no young person even knows how to open a hood or realize it opens.

Maybe you would have been drafted and sent to Vietnam and not come back like so many unfortunate sons.

I was drafted and sent to Viet Nam like almost everyone else who could not afford college or went to Canada. I lived in a jungle for a year with no walls, ceiling, electricity or running water except the monsoons. I also got blown up and crashed twice in a helocopter, and lost many friends. There has always been wars and always be as there still are today.

 

[jerl77]

what about 1 cent gum?

 

[Paul B]

We would take an abandoned hood of a car to go sleigh riding.
The car hoods from the 50s were the best. You couldn't bend them and they weighed a ton, you also had to remove the hood ornament.
we used to sled in the Golf course on a large hill. The only problem was that there was trees and a fence at the bottom of the hill so you all had to jump off before you hit the fence.
In the summer of course we built a rope swing in some lots. Here in Queens NY which is part of the City we didn't have forests, we had lots. The rope swings and car hood sledding into a fence were not that safe and we broke some bones but no one died and we had fun.
At about 15 or 16 we built a large underground fort in a large lot. When we got a little older we forgot about it and it became all overgrown. When they built a supermarket there, the bulldozer drove over where our fort was and fell in backwards. Just the blade was sticking out and they had to get a crane to remove it.

 

[masterswimmer]

As a kid, 3am was when broadcast television would stop transmitting. They showed a picture of the American flag, played the Star Spangled Banner, and then the screen turned into a static snow until the next day broadcast started.

The very first video game, Pong, came out during my freshman year in college. Soon after was Space Invaders. I must have spent the equivalent of a years tuition on that game.

Money, ahhhh, the days of real silver dimes, quarters & half dollars.

My very first cell phone was the Motorola Bag Phone. Man that was cool. :lol:

Russ

 

[IamRobG]

Regardless of what the stat's say, look at quality of life now vs then. We're still in a war, only difference is not being drafted. Crime is still through the roof in NY and always will be. Look at the 80's and early 90's when i was kid. Some of those crimes on that list were probably me but thats what dumb kids do. The only reason more cars were stolen was the simplicity of it like Paul said. Everyone knew how to fix cars. Not today, all kids know how to do is play xbox and text. You're not looking at the whole picture either. Look at violent crimes. Big deal someone's car gets stolen, insurance pays for it life goes on. People getting raped, assaulted and killed is a little more important than a car theft. Those are the crimes that matter the most and we have more of it. Either way, in my opinon, the 60's seemed to be the best time.

History has a way of making itself look pretty. The same way an ugly person will look like a supermodel if you sit at the bar long enough.

Look at the crime rate from the 60s until 2010
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

That cooler car of yours had 4x a greater chance of being stolen in 1968 than 2010. Maybe you would have been drafted and sent to Vietnam and not come back like so many unfortunate sons.

Any era looks grand if you only look at the good things.