Nevertheless

Hello
I'm an "over the hill" alcoholic.
I'm not trying to stir up S&*^. I'm just having a little fun
Remember when we had to "get up" to change channels on the TV.
Or put your finger in the hole on the telephone and spin the dial to (dial a number)
And to stay on topic. Remember when beer cans had pull tabs. The kind you could bend together and make a necklace out of.
Ah the good old days.
Man I wish I would have had the sense to sober up back then.
Fred

barb dwyer

I must be just on top of that hill, then.

I remember those things
but wasn't old enough to drink.

but I *do* remember
when we still believed Gilligan was gonna get off that island.....

wanttolive

I remember when the Brady Bunch clothes were in style.

We had a party line on our phone and one of the other parties was blind so he was always on and we would pick up and listen to his conversations!

jimhere

I remember watching black & white TV and when we got our first color TV.

I wonder how did we live without internet and cellphones?

barb dwyer

We werethe first in our neighborhood
(they don't even carve out decent suburbs any more)

to have color tv.
The whole neighborhood came over
to see it.

my folks were gadget freaks.

we were also the first to havef a dishwasher.

barb dwyer

that wasn't a family member, I mean.

a machine.

jimhere

I remember when my dad brought home the color TV. I was about four, maybe three.

But here's why I remember it. My mom, my two sisters, and I were were all sitting in front of the TV and my dad was trying get it to tune in (remember rabbit ears?). Anyway, it wouldn't hold a picture and my dad got p***ed and hit the side of it and knocked a hole in our new color TV. Then my mom & dad got into an argument and us kids went outside to play.

wanttolive

I remember our first color tv too! And our first microwave was the size of a dishwasher!

Does anyone remember Pong? Our kids would die if they only had to go back to Pong the video game...

Boleo

And I also remember when people opened garage doors with their arms.
Rolled down windows with a crank handle.

It seemed like there were not so many overweight people then.

I wonder why?

Mark75

The tax stamp over the top of bottles of spirits....

speaking of beer tabs... And no, I wasn't legal age either, not that it mattered... Cans of PBR announced proudly ... "No Opener Needed" ... we thought that would be a good name for our rock n roll band

We had three TV channels in southern IL... on a good night... four. And, it wouldn't have mattered if we had a color TV because they still broadcasted Black and White

8 track tapes were a big deal

Kids on the HS rifle team carried their 22's to school on the bus!

The White Album

Mark

Sugah

I remember the first color t.v., too -- had to wake my dad, who was sleeping off his breakfast (he worked the night shift, stopped at the Eagles on the way home) because Sesame Street would no longer come in on the old black and white. We got three channels - PBS and two others, but somebody had to wiggle the ears when changing the channels.

I also remember pull tabs, and though I wasn't old enough to drink, I drank 'em anyway. My sister would take me to parties in her friend's basement, and I'd open everyone's beer & add the tabs to the curtains he made from them. Home-made hippie curtains. And I also remember all bottled beer needing an opener, though the door latch on a car would work, and so would teeth, sort of. I got my first chipped tooth showing off.

I don't know what I'd do without my computer these days, though I have a no-frills cell phone, don't text, don't tweet and after trying to find a payphone to call home when my battery died, I'm thinking about the things I miss. How about a phone with a cord attached to the receiver so we actually sit down and have a conversation? Not do everything on the go - literally, like the woman who entered a bathroom stall next to me yesterday and didn't miss a beat in her conversation, even when the automatic toilet flushed.

*sigh*

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Pinkcuda

I hit my kids up with this kind of stuff and tell them how easy they have it these days with all the luxuries they take for granted.
The 12 year old hit me squarley with a reply that shut me right up and to never breathe a word of this again.
He said "You could ride your motorcycle in anywhere there was a hole in the fence, You could swim in any lake you wanted and tie a rope to any over hanging tree to swing out into the water. You could take your guns to school and keep them in your gun rack in the truck and you could light off firecrackers all you wanted".
Matter of fact my kids have had the cops tell them their snowball fight is illegal , their BB Guns have been outlawed and they have been kicked out of a vacant lot when they were playing baseball. They have been told that riding skateboards on city streets is against the law and that bicycle jumps on the street are just as illegal.
Parents have been persecuted to the letter of the law for letting their kids take public transportation alone and schools have been locked down as a result of someone not signing in at the office.
The adverse list is endless.
If I had my way I would put things back just the way they were even if it means we have no video games, have to dial the telephone manually and get up to surf any one of the 5 channels we had.

chrisinaustin

Huh.

My kitchen sports a 60's-green Western Electric rotary-dial
I watch no more than four really nice HD channels, because that's all I can pull in over the air
But I'm typing this on an iPhone

I may be conflicted...

LovesToTravel

Our microwave was part of the oven which was bigger than the dishwasher! We didn't have color tv or uhf for a long long time. I never understood the big moment during the Wizard of Oz when Dorthy opens the door to her house to see "color". So funny...
When people asked for your telephone number you said MUlberry 9 ... or MU9 ...

barb dwyer

I like the 'over the hill alcoholics' thread

is right next to

"young alcoholics thread'

CarolD

What I like most these days about technology
is my PC and the net. ...
My biggest dislike ...cell phones.


When color TV first came out....my Great Grandmother
called us from her home....30 miles away
She now had color.....Wow!

We drive over...there she sits....staring at her round screen
now covered with a transparent plastic shield.
It was tri colored....top was red...middle blue...bottom yellow.

nolaspiral

To be entirely fair, each successive generation hears that from the last. If I had kids I'm sure I'd be telling them that we couldn't multi-task in Windows 3.1 and that we couldn't just make a phone call anywhere we felt like it. Typing wasn't an ingrained childhood skill. Rather than skip through libraries of thousands of songs at will, we had to physically load only 12 songs at a time in a weird machine with lasers. There was no Netflix, Xbox, or QWERTY data phone.

But unlike modern kids, my parents tossed me out of the house every summer morning and expected me to have a childhood replete with tree-climbing, worm-digging, and bicycles until sundown. I definitely got the better end of the stick, there. I also a young man in arguably the most prosperous decade in American history...so maybe my kids would be worse off.

penny74

Beercans still have pull tabs here.
Used to have trashcans full of them.
How do they open in the US of A then ?

littlefish

I remember the girl next door got the first transistor radio in our neighborhood. About the same time reel to reel tape recorders came out.
Hula hoops. "Surfer shirts". My grade school basement was an official fallout shelter.

concolor1

Well, after taking a cyber-walk through the "Family and Friends" sections; not in the mood to give any advice or share ES&H, and this bit of indulgence looks about right . . .

Looking around my computer room, I keep tropical fish and a few snakes as sobriety hobbies (I've gone through a number of hobbies in nearly thirty years continuous recovery), so . . .

I remember when aquariums had stainless steel frames and cost around $30. The new ones still cost around the same for a ten gallon size . . . Fish cost a little more, but a six pack was around $1.25 in 1971 (the year I started drinking), and neon tetras were 39 cents. Now the beer is $5-$6, and the fish are a better buy at $1.99.

And they certainly last longer . . .

Fill in the blanks . . .

Pete, Linc, and __________

Mattel Fanner ______

Room ______ (hint: my high school writing class actually wrote a script for this one)

Fred Gwynne played Heman Munster. Before that he was in ____________
(No fair Googling on that one)

Daniel Boone's faithful Indian companion was played by _____________

Red Ball ________

Okay, that's enough out of me . . .