Remember when ....

[Magicman]

We never had a TV nor a telephone when I was growing up.  It was sorta funny that I had never had a telephone and went to work for the telephone company. 

[barbender]

 Haha Don, I didn't have you figured for the brawlin' type😁 

 That's a really bad feeling when you administer the kill shot and they don't even flinch. In wilder times, I gave a guy a good flurry of fists to the face while he told me, "you better hit me harder than that!" So I know the sinking feeling...😂

[Southside]

And we would go to school with the gun in the rack.

I can remember setting my rifle in the corner of the cafeteria one morning as I was running late and didn't have time to put it into my buddies truck and still get breakfast.  I would park my truck down the road from the school and hunt through the woods to get there, never got a deer that way but sure tried plenty of times.  

[SawyerTed]

In 1972 gas was $0.38 a gallon.  I had an old metal turpentine can I would carry on my bike to get gas.  Fifty cents would get a gallon of gas and 3 pieces of Double Bubble bubble gum.  I usually made the trip twice a week. 

A gallon of gas would fill the lawn mower tank a couple of times which would be enough to earn $3 or $4 mowing yards.  Or a gallon of gas would power the Banshee mini bike for a week.  

We could ride mini bikes on the road to the trails "in the woods."   The police didn't really care as long as we were going between our houses and the trails.  

I also remember when pedal bikes had banana seats and sissy bars.  I could ride a wheelie as far as the road or cars would permit.  I never could ride a unicycle, go figure.  Now I'm disturbed if I have to stand on the pedals of my fat tire beach cruiser to climb a hill. 

[Peter Drouin]

Our phone was a party one, pick it up and someone was talking. Had to wait your turn.

[SawyerTed]

And if someone was calling on the party line, you only picked it up if you heard your ring.  The first ringtone...

[WV Sawmiller]

Bill.

   We had three channels where I grew up but one of them was pretty grainy most of the time. Our TV antenna was on a long metal pole and had to be turned as you describe. If we had a thunderstorm we had to unplug the TV and disconnect the little clothespin on the back to the antenna to keep lightening from running in on it. We also were not allowed to talk on the phone. For many years I'd call my mom and she would quickly say "We're having a thunderstorm and I've got to hang up. Click." Even though she was using a cordless phone.

    We had a black and white TV but one time Mom found a conversion kit to make it color. It was a tri-colored film you put over the front of the TV screen. The top third was blue, the bottom third was green. I don't remember if the middle was yellow or what color it was. 

[Chuck White]

I can remember when I was just starting High School, and in late September, Grouse Season started!

I "of course" didn't have much money, but I could go to the local Hardware Store and buy 12 gauge shells, 4 or 5 at a time, the keeper would open a box right on the counter and count them out, whatever amount you had money for!

Ah, back to the simple life!  

[Larry]

I miss seeing folks age on the left side, especially when reading some of the tales on this thread!

[Peter Drouin]

I miss seeing folks age on the left side,  

??? I don't get it??

[thecfarm]

I think our age use to show below our user name. 

[Magicman]

Yes, I agree Larry, I miss it too.

[twar]

I also remember when pedal bikes had banana seats and sissy bars....

Before we turned 16, bicycles were the way to get around--to everything. In my teen years, I lived in a development that was just inside the city limits. A short bike trip through the neighborhood then across a "main road" and you were no longer in the city. You were in the county, in corn and millet fields.

We--a bunch of 14-15-year olds--would hunt doves in these fields, and we got there on our Schwinns, shotgun in hand and with a vest full of shells. Neither we nor our parents were ever questioned about us riding through the neighborhood with shotguns. I don't think that would go over well today.

[SwampDonkey]

Mom remembers her mother using flour sacks for aprons and pillow cases. White rose flour company. That was a flour company started by one of Canada's rail road tycoons. There is still an old sign for it at an abandoned store beside a big rail road turn table yard (long gone). That was steam engine days. We found a bunch of them aprons in an old trunk in the attic. That old trunk belonged to the first white settler on the Tobique. Probably got there by train as it was the old homestead of great great grandfather. Train track went by the front porch of the house he built. Back then that particular train was like a bus, stop and pick you up to go to and from town. My grandmother called it 'the old Tobique' train. Was steam engine.

Heck I remember you could get your cheese cut off a big round in the store, they weighed and wrapped it for you. I remember porcelain figurines in Red Rose tea boxes. I remember those green stamps in Maine, that was in the 70's. My grandmother was American, her parents were Canadian born. The old man was a railroader. He is buried in NB, died in his 50's. I remember when Sussex ginger ale was the real deal, when Cadbury took it over they changed the recipe, never liked it. Heck I remember when all soda pop was in glass bottles. Heck glass can be recycled for ever. Now look at all the plastic. I remember paper grocery bags, they have actually made a comeback. No one here uses plastic grocery bags any more. Outright ban on them. I remember when towels and cloths were mostly made on this continent. Now you have to buy it online and not at the big stores. I can remember computers were made on this continent, but soon shifted to Asia in the late 80's. I remember a local dairyman delivering his milk in glass bottles and they were washed and reused. This was before marketing boards controlled milk production and drove cost of production sky high with regs. Two levels of government have to be paid from that milk. I also remember when cereal cream or whipping cream weren't full of carrageenan and sulphites. I don't touch the stuff. I can also remember when we had local news, now it's regional. Not worth my time.

Well here was hand pump, until dad put in a line to the house and new pump. Every old farm house here had a cistern and house on rock walls and big woodsheds and the outhouse on the back. These were not original homesteaders, all they had was cabins. Anyone in an old farmhouse was next generation, because all them old land grant names were gone or in the graveyard in my days. Was no bath tub here until late 70's, was wash basin baths back then. I was surprised about not even seeing an old iron tub the ads in old 100 year old catalogs showed. No money for that I guess. People only bathed once a week to.

[SwampDonkey]

I miss seeing folks age on the left side, 

??? I don't get it??

Think a little harder on it. ;)

[Peter Drouin]

If it's a political thing. The right side would be better for all.
I don't know.

[Ianab]

We never had a TV nor a telephone when I was growing up.  It was sorta funny that I had never had a telephone and went to work for the telephone company. 

I remember not having a TV, and a party line phone. My Grandparents that lived across the road from us got one of the first TVs in the province. Because of where we lived, we had a line of sight out to one of the early TV repeaters ~100 miles away. BIG aerial up on the chimney and they got signal. The TV had channels, but only one worked. ~12 months later we got a local repeater tower, and TV was less of a novelty.

I remember we had a party line, but at least we were on an automatic exchange. At the time my other grandmother was still on an manual exchange. Her phone didn't have a dial, you clicked it to get the operator's attention, and then told them who you wanted to talk to. They would then either plug you into that line, or dial out to the automatic exchange, or heaven forbid, place a toll call for you....

Now explain that to Ms Taylor who gets her first cellphone for her birthday this weekend, and it can basically video call anyone, anywhere in the World, for so cheap you don't count it.


As for land lines and lighting... MM probably has a few stories there, and I've seen some carnage from working in the dial-up modem / fax machine days. But I think the worst was when our neighbour's house took a hit. They were about 1/4 mile from us, but a strike hit the reinforced concrete pole beside the house. Wrecked the concrete pole as the hot steel cracked it, vaporised the phone cables that were strung off the pole. Their phone handset actually exploded, and their whole power main board had to be replaced. Appliances that were off at the wall still got melted. At our place any light that was on exploded, and the big old ceramic fuses for our phone didn't just blow, they exploded and took out their fuse box.  And 99% of that bolt probably just went to ground through the steel reinforced pole it first hit.

[Ianab]

If it's a political thing. The right side would be better for all.
I don't know.

Don't overthink it. It will be the default settings on the new version of the forum software. I haven't checked but it's probably an option  to turn on, just Jeff's been fighting more serious fires.

[aigheadish]

I'm not as old or young as some of y'all but I do remember the good ol' days when we'd play outside and/or ride our bikes all over God's creation without supervision and the experiences we had.

For some reason I have a vivid memory of walking a couple blocks to the gas station to get a can of Coke, from the pop machine, when I happened to have a quarter, then I also remember that it went up to 50 cents and I was appalled. I would've been around 8 years old or so. 

[beenthere]

If it's a political thing. The right side would be better for all.
I don't know.

Peter
The age shown in the profile used to show up when posting, if that was your original concern. Comes when the birthdate is shown in our profile. Yours is same as mine, showing NA (i.e. not entered).
I've made a few attempts to add birthdate to my profile, but have yet to figure how to update that feature. Someday it may happen, but no rush.

[Peter Drouin]

No, Just don't know what it means is all. I'm 69 1/2. Going back out to grab some more green lumber.  after lunch. 

[thecfarm]

My age shows up in my profile. 
There is a place that I can put my birth date and year.

[Don P]

And if someone was calling on the party line, you only picked it up if you heard your ring.  The first ringtone...

Now where's the fun in that? 
There were 3 forms of communication at Granny Barnes, telephone, telegraph and tell Sue. It was usually her breathing in the background   .

Today I was wearing a respirator again, removing insulation, God knows what all and then some under the balcony framing in the old theater. Under the insulation poofing dust like y'all cannot imagine there was an old poster. The Osborne Brothers, JD Higgens "Mr Country Gold" and the Alleghany Cloggers put on a show April 26th, year unknown. Seems like yesterday JD was hosting the local Saturday radio show after retiring from the Opry. He signed off about 5 years ago and had a co-host the last few years to keep things on track as his memory had its moments. In the pic he was young and in sideburns, I'd guess 60's- early 70's. I did find something cool yesterday, a date on the sprinkler triggers. If you zoom, 1956. Notice the melting, the fuse almost blew.

[Old Greenhorn]

Man the Osbourne Brothers, and that was right in their hey day. Sonny just passed last year. I never met him, but I have a good friend in KY who was close to him especially in his last decade.  Man I'd love to see that poster, I hope you do something nice with it, that a little piece of history right there, a true wall hanger.

[SwampDonkey]

Viking on the cast, could be Viking Water Tech out of Youngstown, Ohio.  est. 1977