B
BUDDINGGEEZER
Guest
Black and White TV (Under age 40? You won't understand.)
You could hardly see for all the static/snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, 'Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet.'
The big 3 TV stations went off the air shortly after midnight and played the National Anthem while the American flag waved in the wind. After thatit was all static/snow until the morning.
The TV had channels 2-13 and UHF all of which were controlled with 2 knobs. There was NO remote control.
The TV repair man came to the house with a huge suitcase filled with vacuum tubes which were used to replace the burned out ones in the TV.
My Mom had her ÔÇ£Christmas ClubÔÇØ at the local bank where she deposited $5 each week with a coupon and at the end of the year she purchased a room FULL of Christmas gifts for 3 children and had money left over.
Central heating and A/C was only for ÔÇ£richÔÇØ people. Everyone else had to carry window mounted air conditioners up from the basement every spring and install them in each room of the house. Every fall, we carried them back downstairs for the winter.
We would go outside after school, ride our bikes and play with our friends until mom opened the back door and yelled our names at the top of her lungs. Then we all came running home for dinner.
We would play outside in the woods or fields and ride bikes all over the neighborhood until the street lights came on. ThatÔÇÖs how we knew it was time to come home. There was never a fear of being kidnapped, molested, raped, or murdered.
Everyone came running when The Bookmobile stopped by in the neighborhood.
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE .. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said pray ers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.=2 0Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T; SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.
Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.
The only thing in life you regret are the risks you do not take...........Marilyn Monroe
Ralph Sims
You could hardly see for all the static/snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, 'Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet.'
The big 3 TV stations went off the air shortly after midnight and played the National Anthem while the American flag waved in the wind. After thatit was all static/snow until the morning.
The TV had channels 2-13 and UHF all of which were controlled with 2 knobs. There was NO remote control.
The TV repair man came to the house with a huge suitcase filled with vacuum tubes which were used to replace the burned out ones in the TV.
My Mom had her ÔÇ£Christmas ClubÔÇØ at the local bank where she deposited $5 each week with a coupon and at the end of the year she purchased a room FULL of Christmas gifts for 3 children and had money left over.
Central heating and A/C was only for ÔÇ£richÔÇØ people. Everyone else had to carry window mounted air conditioners up from the basement every spring and install them in each room of the house. Every fall, we carried them back downstairs for the winter.
We would go outside after school, ride our bikes and play with our friends until mom opened the back door and yelled our names at the top of her lungs. Then we all came running home for dinner.
We would play outside in the woods or fields and ride bikes all over the neighborhood until the street lights came on. ThatÔÇÖs how we knew it was time to come home. There was never a fear of being kidnapped, molested, raped, or murdered.
Everyone came running when The Bookmobile stopped by in the neighborhood.
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE .. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said pray ers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.=2 0Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T; SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.
Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.
The only thing in life you regret are the risks you do not take...........Marilyn Monroe
Ralph Sims