The "Back in my day" Thread

Bill said:
Under dash stuff. Had a used old Dodge pickup in highschool. FM converter and Radio Shack cassette player mounted under the dash, I couldn’t afford to replace the AM radio with a real head unit.
Click to expand...
Did the same thing in many cars when CD players first came out. The tape deck adapter was very common and came with most Sony Discman portable CD players. FM transmitters were another good solution but suffered from more interference.
 
Bill said:
Under dash stuff. Had a used old Dodge pickup in highschool. FM converter and Radio Shack cassette player mounted under the dash, I couldn’t afford to replace the AM radio with a real head unit.
Click to expand...
For sure, Still have my under the dash pioneer super tuner with a 8 track tape. It is mounted in my garage with a removable mount so it didn't get stolen out of your car.
909289a5-1761-4966-bb25-4ac70f524f69.jpg
 
Walboy said:
In my day, to see women with tattoos you went to the carnival side show, now you go to the grocery store.
Click to expand...
I was watching the Blue Angel Imax special earlier this year and I noticed it’s pretty common for the ground crew (men & women) to have tats. Not really criticizing. It’s just an observation in the differences in culture today from when I was enlisted during the 90s.
 
Velocity173 said:
I was watching the Blue Angel Imax special earlier this year and I noticed it’s pretty common for the ground crew (men & women) to have tats. Not really criticizing. It’s just an observation in the differences in culture today from when I was enlisted during the 90s.
Click to expand...
Heck, *I've* got one, now. Not something I ever would have considered, in the '70s.
1732028074674.png

Ron Wanttaja
 
Chip Sylverne said:
All that collection needs is a CB radio to be complete.
Click to expand...
Funny....The kid's vehicle, a 1976 Ford Lariat long bed/extended cab, had a CB base station on the front seat transmission hump. This was thought to be a great way for my parents to keep track of us as we roamed the countryside. They weren't counting on how far we roamed. ;) Thank God cell phones were 20 years out at that time.
 
Milk delivered to the house. Watching the vacuum tubes on the TV slowly brighten in the ~1 minute it took the B&W TV to warm up. Pong being a game changer. Hotel rooms with rotary phones w/o the rotor as the operator would dial the number for you (this is actually my very first memory when I was a little over two).
 
In the golden age of turntables, you could spend several thousands of dollars for a top of the line unit with the best audio quality, with precisely engineered tracker arms and needle cartridges. Same could be said with tape and cassette decks.

Then CD's came out and a $50 player completely blew those away.
 
Half Fast said:
Or a geek with a bad memory.... :)
Click to expand...
That's why it's actually tattooed in mirror image. :)

It was inspired by an older friend back in the '80s, who had the lift equation tattooed on his arm. Turns out this was a "thing" for aerodynamicists. Dana nailed what the equation is; the rocket ship is from the mission patch for a program where I was Systems Engineering lead.

The experience was kind of a surprise. I expected a dark, smoky dive with a bunch of characters from "Clutch Cargo." Instead, the parlor was bright and airy, in a former bank, trimmed in chrome and brass like an upscale restaurant. The staff was mostly young, tattooed, of course. My guy used the name "Toxic."

Did it in two parts, the equation first, then a month later, the rocket. Did it that way because, basically, I didn't know how I was going to react. Figured I'd at least have the equation.

Each session was 45 minutes. Pain was trivial; was tense until the first couple of pokes, then completely relaxed. Apparently, the discomfort builds over time; a friend with "sleeves" on both arms says six hours at a stretch is about as much as he can stand.

No infection or post-tattoo irritation; was just a bit red for a day or two. The parlor recommended a skin-care regime using over-the-counter treatment, that seemed to go take care of everything.

I had it done on my upper arm so that it'd only be visible when I pulled up a short sleeve or went swimming. I kind of regret that, now...would like to "show it off" more often. For the first time in my life, I bought tank tops so I could occasionally show it off in normal life. One has the Space Force logo, the other has an NRO mission patch (not any mission I was involved in, though).

I do get asked if I'm going to have another spacecraft put on my other arm. I answer, "I already have one," and pull up my sleeve to show a blank arm. I then tell them, "It's a Klingon Bird of Prey." :)

Actually, recently I have thought of another design I'd like to add. A skull with two satellites orbiting around it, and the caption, "Death before Deorbit".....


Ron Wanttaja
 
Cashing a 2 party check at the bank.

Pumping gas then going inside to pay for it.

Being allowed to stay up past 9pm to watch pop make a long distance call and wondering why he yelled into the phone.
 
Sac Arrow said:
In the golden age of turntables, you could spend several thousands of dollars for a top of the line unit with the best audio quality, with precisely engineered tracker arms and needle cartridges. Same could be said with tape and cassette decks.

Then CD's came out and a $50 player completely blew those away.
Click to expand...
My first CD player was around $300. Early adopter.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
"Mimeograph" purple copies of everything in school.
Click to expand...
Remember the fresh copies? Still moist, and with that mimeogaph ink smell.

Odors. Every time I see a package of Crayola crayons I pick it up and sniff it. Takes me all the way back to pre-school childhood.
flyingcheesehead said:
Catalogs as entertainment. I remember reading all about lawn tractors, boats, and other stuff and dreaming about owning them when I grew up. Also had the Estes model rocket catalog and Tower Hobbies catalog to spend my money with.
Click to expand...
My favorite catalogs were the Radio Shack and Lafayette electronics supply catalogs. I couldn't afford much out of them, but I sure was fascinated by electronics and fixed a lot of old radios and TVs. Got lots of shocks doing it. 350 volts on the vacuum tube plate caps, 20K volts on the picture tube anode. That hurts.
ateamer said:
Every time this type of conversation comes up, what is missing from the nostalgia for the low prices of 50-60-70 years ago is nostalgia for the wages back then.
Click to expand...
Yup. When I started flying lessons in 1973, an hour of dual in the (six-year-old!) 172 was $24. I was making about $3 an hour, which meant that an hour's dual was a whole day's gross pay.
 
Long before string trimmers were common, mom had one of thse and would send us outside to trim the grass along the sidewalk, driveway, and street. It took forever, on your hands and knees trimming.

1732035878618.jpeg

This lady is smiling, probably because she just started. Give it a few hours, that smile will be upside down!

1732035990525.jpeg
 
Dan Thomas said:
Odors. Every time I see a package of Crayola crayons I pick it up and sniff it. Takes me all the way back to pre-school childhood.
Click to expand...
The makers of Crayola crayons and Play-doh (and no doubt others as well) go to great lengths to make sure that whatever else changes, the smell of the products is unchanged.
Dan Thomas said:
My favorite catalogs were the Radio Shack and Lafayette electronics supply catalogs.
Click to expand...
And Edmund Scientific! Which unlike the others, is still alive and well.

And going to Radio Shack for the free battery every month.
 
Gary Ward said:
For sure, Still have my under the dash pioneer super tuner with a 8 track tape. It is mounted in my garage with a removable mount so it didn't get stolen out of your car.
909289a5-1761-4966-bb25-4ac70f524f69.jpg
Click to expand...
Pulled a very similar Pioneer cassette deck (same knobs and tuner dial) out of my 1976 ski boat a few years back. Still worked just fine, but I was upgrading to something with a bit more power and Bluetooth/CD capability.

1732036699488.png
 
Bill said:
Long before string trimmers were common, mom had one of thse and would send us outside to trim the grass along the sidewalk, driveway, and street. It took forever, on your hands and knees trimming.

View attachment 135384

This lady is smiling, probably because she just started. Give it a few hours, that smile will be upside down!

View attachment 135385
Click to expand...
Frown upside down made me think of another “back in the day.” We used to have huge toy stores including the one I used to work at.

 
ateamer said:
Every time this type of conversation comes up, what is missing from the nostalgia for the low prices of 50-60-70 years ago is nostalgia for the wages back then.
Click to expand...
I don’t remember exactly what I made at my part-time jobs in high school. Probably around $2 an hour or so, I’d guess. Somewhere around here I have one of my pay statements from the Army on ‘79 or so. If I recall correctly, my take-home was $360 per month as an E3.
 
Those were some good ones in there, a lot that I remember. Sub $1/gallon gas, rotary phones. I had rotary phones, but in my lifetime they weren't required. However my grandmother had her phones all set to "pulse" (the sounds a rotary phone made) instead of touch tone because she was convinced the phone company charged extra if you used touch tone. I don't know if that was true or not, but I'm doubting it (this was the 90s).

Pay phones - my kids are still sort of wowed by the concept that those existed, or even the concept of a landline. Or cell phones that were, literally, just phones.

Here's a few others that come to mind that I didn't see listed elsewhere:

- Dial-up modems (didn't see those listed). My first connection to the internet was a 2400 bps modem, that had no volume control that I could find for the speaker. And it was LOUD for reasons I can't comprehend. After that was a 14.4k modem, a 28.8, and finally a 56k. I still have the 28.8 with the serial connection cable on the back. I forget which version of AOL I had when I first got online, I want to say 2.1? Downloads of everything took forever and a day. And you had to pay by the hour.
- AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy. If you had internet in the 90s, you probably had at least one of those. Who remembers Apple's spin-off of eWorld?
- Long distance. Basically it's not a thing anymore, other than just having an area code, but long distance charges used to be a significant consideration
- Someone mentioned not needing area codes, just the phone number since everyone had the same area code. That was a thing, but in my aunt and uncle's town, you only gave the last 4 digits of the phone number within the town. All phones in the town (small town) had the same first 3 digits
- Early Motorola flip phones had 3 connections on the battery, but normally the phone was only powered through the 2. If you put in a jumper to short the 3rd, it put the phone into a test mode which let you do things including listening in on any phone frequency you dialed (this was back in the analog cell phone days)

Seems like yesterday millennials were all the young kids, and now we're complaining about whatever generations have come after us. I can't even keep track anymore. Get off my lawn!
 
Ted said:
However my grandmother had her phones all set to "pulse" (the sounds a rotary phone made) instead of touch tone because she was convinced the phone company charged extra if you used touch tone. I don't know if that was true or not, but I'm doubting it (this was the 90s).
Click to expand...
I was a kid at the time, but IIRC it followed the familiar pattern of "charge the early adopters extra for the shiny new feature, wait a while for the shiny new thing to become the normal thing, then charge the stragglers extra to get them off the old system", so you had to pay extra to get DTMF service, at least initially. If you already had touch tone, pulse would still work. At least in my neck of the woods. Dunno about no fancy city folk ;)
 
Ted said:
...Dial-up modems (didn't see those listed). My first connection to the internet was a 2400 bps modem...
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure my 1st modem was 1200. When floppies still ruled the world, attached to an original IBM PC via a parallel cable snaking between the cover and the chassis, I had a 10 MB external hard drive the size of a shoe box! I thought it amazing at the time.
 
GeorgeC said:
I was a kid at the time, but IIRC it followed the familiar pattern of "charge the early adopters extra for the shiny new feature, wait a while for the shiny new thing to become the normal thing, then charge the stragglers extra to get them off the old system", so you had to pay extra to get DTMF service, at least initially. If you already had touch tone, pulse would still work. At least in my neck of the woods. Dunno about no fancy city folk ;)
Click to expand...

I'm sure there was a time when that was the case. My grandmother was in Richmond, VA, so not a huge city, but definitely not a small town. My guess is that sometime in the 70s (when did touch tone become commonplace?) they charged extra. By the mid 90s, I'd be pretty shocked if that was still the case, but I could be wrong.

I know that my phones growing up in NYC always were touch tone. I had a rotary phone at one point that I kept in my room and actually did use, so of course that was rotary. But my grandmother was the only person I ever knew who had pulse dial selected on her touch tone phones, claiming it saved money.
 
In 1968 I was able to buy gas at the Naval Base as a dependent. I don't recall exactly what the price was but I could fill up for about $2.

One day I was out and about and realized that I was about to run out of gas. I stopped at an AMOCO and saw that gas was $0.29/Gallon! "Yikes. I'll make it to the next station. I'm not paying that."

Of course I ran out of gas and had to walk back to the station and not only pay the 29cents but I also had to buy a 1 gallon gas can.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top