How things were

Sandra Cox just gave me a laugh over at her blog http://sandracox.blogspot.com about how hard we had it when we were kids. Pop over and enjoy a few giggles. She sounds like one of my contemporaries, maybe even a bit younger. I was a kid in the 60s, a teenager in the 70s, and a young married wife and mom in the 80s. There was NO cable. Perish the thought. Most towns had 3 TV stations, NBC, ABC, and CBS. Maybe one local station. We were lucky. My dad put up a rotating antenna and we lived high on a hill so we were able to pick up several other stations, too. So we had about 10 stations and counted ourselves fortunate. The TV stations went off at 11 pm or midnight. On weekends, some of the stations stayed on till 1 or 2 in the morning. That was it. There were no VCRs or DVDs or Tivo. If we weren't home to watch a TV show, we missed it. HBO didn't come into existence until after I was married. Toaster ovens were all the rage in the 70s. My aunt bought one for us for our wedding gift. Gas was about 50 cents a gallon when I started driving. There were NO video games. We had pinball games and Skeet. I first saw Pac Man when I was an Air Man in the Air Force. Electronic ping pong, too. Fun fun fun. (not) I played 45s and LPs. When I was a teen, cassette tapes became popular. We had a brief flirtation with 8 track tapes. Did you ever have those tapes unwind and get all ruined? Not pretty. My first camera was a Brownie. Polaroids were invented around the late 60s, I think. I thought McDonald's was the new place across from the mall with the cheap, nasty hamburgers. White Castles were preferable although we made fun of them. Skyline Chili was also popular in my town. We walked a mile down the road to the Pony Keg to buy penny candy when it really cost only a penny. My grandma was scandalized that my older cousin Connie wore hot pants or when I wore a halter top. Movie theaters had only one cinema but movies only cost a couple bucks. On the real plus side, we had a lot of great drive ins. Those were GREAT! I miss them, even though we have the Thunderbird/Swap Shop Drive In where I live now. But now they've taken out the radios and so everybody races through the parking lot and its not safe so I rarely go. My mom drove a station wagon. Vans were only for construction workers. We didn't have computers. My dad designed one of the first. My cousin took one of the first computer classes in our high school when the computers stood floor to ceiling, and stretched wall to wall with huge tape disks and binary cards. Phones were all rotary and attached to the wall. Walmart didn't exist. Kmart was the popular discount store. Most stores were closed on Sundays. None of the stores stayed open all night. We didn't have central AC. I had a window air conditioner in my room. That was okay for Cincinnati, but I'd have died with only that in Florida. Sandra mentions a lot more and her wit's a lot more biting than mine. I'm sure I've forgotten a ton of things. But I didn't suffer for missing these things. I was having too much fun rollerskating, bowling, water skiing, bicycling, swimming, dancing, reading, listening to music, and playing outside. I twirled flags. I had FUN.