In my day.....

[Texas_Tickle]

Back when I was a kid (early 70s), we did not have the stuff the kids of today have. No Nintendo, We did not have 3 different versions of the Sega gaming systems, no X-Box, no 10 MTV channels to choose from.

You know what we had to play? The Atari 2600! And back then, we thought that was the greatest! Hell, I still have mine, somewhere. And we also had "pong". If you were around in the 60's and 70's you know what I am talking about....with that square-looking "ball" bouncing from one end of the TV to the other.

HDTV? Cable? Satallite dish? Forget it. You were doing good if you had a working color-TV.

We did not have 10,000 CDs. No sir! We had to wait for the damn radio station to play a song, so we could tape it with the cassette player, hoping the DJ didn't keep yapping 1/2 way into the song. Either that go thru our stash of records and hope that they weren't so scratched that they would not play.

Computers? Back then, computers were only for the filthy-rolling-around-in-money-rich-people. The "ordinary folk" couldn't afford such luxuary as a 186.

In fact for Christmas, back in 81, I got a Commodore 64 computer and back then you could not get any more "state of the art" than that and I still wonder how my parents managed to afford it, because those things did not come cheap.

We did not have on-line gaming either ***gasp***. No EverQuest. No Ultima Online. No MMORPGs of any kind. You know what I did? I got my AD&D books and a local book store let us play, in the back with some other friends.

We didn't have e-mail. We actually had to march our ass to the post office, plop down a 25 cent stamp and mail the letter, hoping that it will reach, where-ever it was going, in time.

We didn't have cell phones either. If we were out and about and were supposed to check in with our parents at such-and-such time, we had to pull somewhere and use a pay phone.

We didn't have the Internet for porn, and since we were under-age, we could not buy Playboy or Penthouse. We had to rely on the panty ads in the Dillard's catalog.

No $40.00 video games to keep us kids entertained. You know what we did? We played football and baseball, and since we did not have a field near us, we usually had to settle for playing in the streets or some abandoned lot.

If there was a video game we wanted, we could not "pirate" it like the kids of today. No sir. We had to march our ass down to the store and plop down our money for it.

As for TV? Well we didn't watch all that much as either my mother or grandmother made sure we were well occupied.....TV is going to rot your brain is what our grandmother would tell us.


But when we did watch TV, we did not have 24 hours of the Cartoon Network, nor did we have 24 hours of Nick. Cartoons came on at 4pm and went off a 5:30pm, just in time for the evening news, except on Saturday morning when they would come on at 7am until 11am.

We didn't have The Simpsons or Rug-Rats, or even Pokemon. No sir. We had The Smurfs. We had GI Joe. We had Transformers.

We even watched educational TV such as Zoom and "The Electric Company".

 

[BlackmoonDoll]

Back when I was a kid (early 70s), we did not have the stuff the kids of today have. No Nintendo, We did not have 3 different versions of the Sega gaming systems, no X-Box, no 10 MTV channels to choose from.

You know what we had to play? The Atari 2600! And back then, we thought that was the greatest! Hell, I still have mine, somewhere. And we also had "pong". If you were around in the 60's and 70's you know what I am talking about....with that square-looking "ball" bouncing from one end of the TV to the other.

HDTV? Cable? Satallite dish? Forget it. You were doing good if you had a working color-TV.

We did not have 10,000 CDs. No sir! We had to wait for the damn radio station to play a song, so we could tape it with the cassette player, hoping the DJ didn't keep yapping 1/2 way into the song. Either that go thru our stash of records and hope that they weren't so scratched that they would not play.

Computers? Back then, computers were only for the filthy-rolling-around-in-money-rich-people. The "ordinary folk" couldn't afford such luxuary as a 186.

In fact for Christmas, back in 81, I got a Commodore 64 computer and back then you could not get any more "state of the art" than that and I still wonder how my parents managed to afford it, because those things did not come cheap.

We did not have on-line gaming either ***gasp***. No EverQuest. No Ultima Online. No MMORPGs of any kind. You know what I did? I got my AD&D books and a local book store let us play, in the back with some other friends.

We didn't have e-mail. We actually had to march our ass to the post office, plop down a 25 cent stamp and mail the letter, hoping that it will reach, where-ever it was going, in time.

We didn't have cell phones either. If we were out and about and were supposed to check in with our parents at such-and-such time, we had to pull somewhere and use a pay phone.

We didn't have the Internet for porn, and since we were under-age, we could not buy Playboy or Penthouse. We had to rely on the panty ads in the Dillard's catalog.

No $40.00 video games to keep us kids entertained. You know what we did? We played football and baseball, and since we did not have a field near us, we usually had to settle for playing in the streets or some abandoned lot.

If there was a video game we wanted, we could not "pirate" it like the kids of today. No sir. We had to march our ass down to the store and plop down our money for it.

As for TV? Well we didn't watch all that much as either my mother or grandmother made sure we were well occupied.....TV is going to rot your brain is what our grandmother would tell us.


But when we did watch TV, we did not have 24 hours of the Cartoon Network, nor did we have 24 hours of Nick. Cartoons came on at 4pm and went off a 5:30pm, just in time for the evening news, except on Saturday morning when they would come on at 7am until 11am.

We didn't have The Simpsons or Rug-Rats, or even Pokemon. No sir. We had The Smurfs. We had GI Joe. We had Transformers.

We even watched educational TV such as Zoom and "The Electric Company".

i'm not to sure where this post is going? 😕

 

[Mimi]

It wasn't intended to go anywhere. It's nostalgic humor of how pampered todays youth is compared to how it was when us older farts were kids.

*sigh* I remember all too well, TM. I still long for the simplicity of Atari. One joystick and one or two buttons. There was no confusion over what button to push when you needed to move. Nowadays they have controllers with 16 buttons and hundreds of combinations that allow you to walk, run, jump, hit, shoot, dance, wave, kick, skip, stab, twist, duck, climb, drive, swim, dive, swing, throw, hike, bang, toss, clap, pat, scratch, tickle, pull, push, pick your nose and flip an obscene gesture. GAH! Give me the old original Frogger anyday!

Mimi

 

[venray]

Still have our atari 2600 with 35 games....😀

But when I was a kid you played outside, read books or played board games as there was no such thing as online or electronic games..the B & W TV got 3 channels NBC, CBS, ABC...but movie admissions were only 50 cents....😀

Ray

 

[toyou444]

Hey...I'm not THAT old

I'm 35 and I remember growing up with one B&W tv...five...count 'em FIVE stations! ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and another NBC afiliate out of Johnstown we could pick up!

I had the Atari 2600, Pong and Commodore 64 too! (I longed for the video toaster that came with the commodore upgrade!)

We never got MTV until I was in high-school!

Now my floks EACH have a computer!

I have a sattelite dish with 200+ channels and cable modems on all our computers...but the kids still go outside and play, my daughter loves to draw and read and my son plays with his toys more thatn watches tv.

Still, I do miss the simplet times while still loving the advantages that technology has brought us!

~ toyou

 

[featherfingers]

Music collecting was so much more fun back then... the artwork on album covers could actually be viewed without a magnifying glass and in some album packaging, posters and souvenir booklets were included... maybe CD's sound better, but part of the fun of buying an album was the cover itself.

 

[Haltickling]

Well, I'm a bit older than most of you, so times were even more un-electronic when I grew up. Besides, my parents were very poor (both war refugees) and couldn't afford much then. We didn't have a TV until I was 10, only a very old tube radio with 3 or 4 stations. No video games, no computers, no record player. I bought my own first radio (combined with a cassette recorder) when I was 15, and I had to work for 3 weeks in my summer break to earn it.

Oh, there were video arcades in town during my late teens, but I had just my 8 $ pocket money per month. So we played table tennis and soccer in summer, skiing in winter, board games and cards. As I grew up in a rural area, we often played in the forest, and I knew where milk and eggs really come from. Later, I had to help my parents in the house a lot, as both of them were working full-time. I joined a band with some classmates, and later a basketball team. I was 44 when I bought my first computer, and I've never had a cell phone.

And guess what? I think I grew up at least as happy as today's generation.

BTW: Sesame Street celebrates its 35th birthday on Nov 10! 😎

 

[Knox The Hatter]

Seems that you're only acquiring more and more crap. I was lucky not to grow up in a remote place where the only thing you got was static on television followed by 'Hee-Haw'. In New York, we got all three network channels, three indies, and PBS all on the VHF. That was it. Today, my cable offers over a hundred channels, and there can't be more than two or three worth watching.

Funny, but it sure is hard imagining life now without cellphones or fax machines or the internet. Nevertheless, I was there. How did we function? I don't know. Private couriers, I guess.

There are times when I wouldn't mind stepping into a time machine, and going back to Nixonville. Life was so much simpler, then.

 

[Texas_Tickle]

Also every time it rained, the antenna on the roof would always go out, and my father would don on his rain-slick and climb on the roof and re-adjust it.

 

[ticklkitten]

I'm 25 and still have all of my transformers and can no longer able change any of them!

Kitten

 

[ticklkitten]

.

I was born in 1978, I remember the Monkees, Transformers (still have them all evem if I can't make them work) g.i. joe. But still Skeletore still looks in my bed room window and gives me nightmares as far as I am concerned! I had a stuffed Azryle from the Smurfs and I owe my brother arrox. $100,000,000 from playng monopoly. I played Oregon Trail on the 6th grade commodor we had in my class! We all died.

 

[Texas_Tickle]

Still have our atari 2600 with 35 games....😀

But when I was a kid you played outside, read books or played board games as there was no such thing as online or electronic games..the B & W TV got 3 channels NBC, CBS, ABC...but movie admissions were only 50 cents....😀

Ray

On Friday nights the drive-in movies had a special. Only $1 per car...and we crammed as many people as we could in my father's station wagon and went there every Friday night. It was a ritual with my friends and myself.

Also you're right. You don't see many people playing baseball anymore or just outside in general.

When I was a kid, we were out all the damn time.

 

[lightninbug]

IN MY DAY

We were SO poor our parents couldn't afford to HAVE children...the next-door neighbors had us & gave us to our parents.

My Dad couldn't afford beer, he'd just chew on the cap & hit himself in the face w/ the bottle.

I couldn't even afford Immaginary Friends...

For 1/2 a channel of B&W TV, All of us had to hold hands & then Dad would, w/ his left foot, touch the TV for any kind of reception whatsoever.

Goin to School I had to walk 30 miles thru the snow, uphill BOTH ways, Barefoot......BACKWARDS.

MTV ????? Heck, In MY Day we had to Go to Concerts & take Drugs!!

You try & tell the kids that today & they won't beleive ya!
Bug

 

[tommytikl]

I'm 25 and still have all of my transformers and can no longer able change any of them!

Kitten

I grew up at the height of the GI Joe and Transformers craze...
I was 9 in 1984..

Sooo I had a shelf in my room that had oh about 10-12 of my FAVORITE transformers on them and transformed them in the morning when I woke up to their robot mode and transformed them at night to their "car" or "Jet" mode at night...

Ahh youth... 🙂

 

[featherfingers]

Christmas Day, 1966
Reporting for duty at my home
MAJOR MATT MASON
www.phd.msu.edu/storto/mmm.htm

More fun than G.I. Joe, as far as I was concerned, what with all the space toys.

 

[giantfan121262]

In my day, if I wanted to get from point A to point B, I had to ride my bicycle

In my day, my friends and I would to the school, paint a box on the wall, and play stick ball for hours.

In my day, I considered myself blessed to have a rickety 9" B&W television all to myself. A stereo, I had to pay for it myself, which I did through paper routes.

In my day, I can go to a movie with $10, pig out on snacks, and still come home with change.

MTV came out in my Freshman year of college and the first song was Video Kill the Radio Star.

Does anybody remember the 45 records and 8 tracks? I believe I still have the Yellow Submarine 8 track. Now to find an 8 track player 😀

Yeh Right 😀

 

[featherfingers]

Does anybody remember the 45 records and 8 tracks? I believe I still have the Yellow Submarine 8 track. Now to find an 8 track player 😀

Yeh Right 😀

Giantfan, if only I had known you a year ago! I had a combination AM/FM Stereo/8-track tape player that I simply gave away. It still worked, but even a working 8-track tape deck is almost as bad as a broken one.

8-track tapes were the worst invention ever created. You'd stick 'em in the tape deck and have to sit through a bunch of songs to get to the one that you wanted to hear. There was no fast forward or rewind button. Sometimes a song would fade out right in the middle... click to the next track... and then fade back in. A real pain in the butt for music lovers like me. Why didn't I buy a cassette player back then?! www.8trackheaven.com

45's were fun to collect and usually lasted awhile as long as you took care of them. Eventually, they would start making popping and clicking noises, or skip all over the place. Some are now worth big bucks. I don't know if CD's will ever become as much of a collector's item as albums and 45's are.