What is something from your youth

the emergence of spaceflight
from the daredevilry of suborbital sling shots
the 'race' with the soviets (mitigating some hot aspects of a cold war)
space walks
rendezvous
to apollo 11
apollo 13 and the miraculous ingenuity to work a problem while the world watched
to...
the media moving on...
losing all real traction, funding, support...

momentum squandered...

also,

must see tv. event tv.
no home video taping, dvr, netflix etc...
now, or not part of the it.

roots captivated a fortnight and drove a (inter)national dialog almost as forcefully as any thing to that date.

and too, the above... july 20, 1969.
the whole known intelligent universe was one with two humans on another world...

crystal, nearly universal moments delivered by idiot box...

the immediacy and focus is something now drowned out by logarithmic variety, accessibility and general noise.



perhaps one more.

a general sense of modesty.

when pornography was less "available"
when a sense of *wink-wink* 'naughty' still applied...
when the tease of nudity still held some sway...

i am not sure where this point goes...
but,

instant availability - through the net
of any imaginable predilection
graphically displayed
on any number of media
in any place at any time
has seriously desensitized a populous...

privacy is now myth.
the opiate has well infused the bloodstream
the search for even greater titillation
numbs and dumbs the simple things that could and did get us going...

kids see cocks and twats and buggery (in many flavors)
long before any of "us" knew where to look at their age...
before any of "us" even realized that there was something to look for...

the drive we had, to explore these things, inter-personally...
is kind of bleached out in our next generations...

i do wonder what the long term effects
of this particular aspect of the info-explosion age
will ultimately have?

Colonel Hogan said:

Polio. I remember as a kid just starting elementary school, our next door neighbor Mr. Hartlage had it. Also remember taking the oral vaccine on sugar cubes.

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My sister died of Polio in 1951. She was eleven years old. Polio vaccine wasn't available in the UK until 1956.

NOIRTRASH said:

My school produced a minstrel show (my ma was in it). I offered the new principal photos of the cast in black face (for the diamond anniversary) and she shit her pants.

Click to expand...

I performed on Empire Day at my primary school. I was in black face with a gold coloured satin waistcoat, a silver bowler hat, and a bright blue star-covered bow tie. I sang a 'coon' song.

1. It shouldn't have been Empire Day but Commonwealth Day. All the pupils dressed up in 'native' costumes but their ideas were weird.

2. That sort of black face coon was a relic of the 1890s when American Banjo Bands toured the UK. Although there were some black members of the bands, all of them, black or white, wore black face with white lips. So I was representing a part of a country that hadn't been part of the Empire since 1776.

3. That school still exists. They would have no problem at all representing most countries of the Commonwealth with pupils of appropriate descent, and no one would dare wear black face.

Party lines on telephones, the strap at school, pre-Pong days, when immigrants still came to NA by ship

Denny

My wife went to a one room school in Minnesota. Damned she's old.
My aunt had a wooden wall phone with a party line that went one ringie dingie..two ringie dingie.

LIVINRFANTASIES said:

My wife went to a one room school in Minnesota. Damned she's old.
My aunt had a wooden wall phone with a party line that went one ringie dingie..two ringie dingie.

Click to expand...

Dang, that takes me back to my youth as well, when we also had a 'party line'. There were no 'area codes', and the first three digits of our phone number was 'Rockwell'. Sort of makes me laugh at the old 'Hee Haw' number to contact Junior Sample, just call BR-549!

yossi said:

They still make manual transmissions. Oh, you probably meant the column thing. Nevermind.

Click to expand...

Three on the tree. The Saab 95 and 96's had four on the tree.

thør said:

Three on the tree. The Saab 95 and 96's had four on the tree.

Click to expand...

Some Italian cars had FIVE on the tree...

My parents first car, an Austin, had four on the tree worked by cables at the lower end of the steering column. The cables used to stretch and you were never sure which gear you would be in.

Of course, if you took the car to an Austin dealer every 1,000 miles for greasing he would check the cable alignment while cursing the designer...

Home delivery of milk, card catalogs in libraries, traveling salesmen, boarding houses, wedding-night virgins, telegrams, singing telegrams, carbon paper, soda fountains (as restaurants, not appliances in fast-food joints), security-free airports, typewriters, men's garters, automats, balsa-wood model airplanes, blue laws, bridge parties, the Hays Code, labor unions that mattered, x-ray machines in shoe stores, red scares, polio scares, vinyl records, psychoanalysis, family farms, enclosed telephone booths, military conscription, slide rules, two-newspaper towns, urban political machines, rural courthouse rings . . .

Wind-up gramophones playing breakable shellac 78 rpm records.

To vary the volume you changed to a thicker or thinner needle. You were advised to change the needle every two sides.

To mute the sound instantly - you pushed a rolled up pair of socks into the horn which is the origin of the expression "Put a sock in in".

Aircraft?

My first commercial flight was in an 18 seat plane with an unpressurised cabin. We had to fly around the Pyrennes because we couldn't go over them without stressing the passengers.

But - each seat had a table in front and the onboard meal was silver service...

oggbashan said:

I performed on Empire Day at my primary school. I was in black face with a gold coloured satin waistcoat, a silver bowler hat, and a bright blue star-covered bow tie. I sang a 'coon' song.

1. It shouldn't have been Empire Day but Commonwealth Day. All the pupils dressed up in 'native' costumes but their ideas were weird.

2. That sort of black face coon was a relic of the 1890s when American Banjo Bands toured the UK. Although there were some black members of the bands, all of them, black or white, wore black face with white lips. So I was representing a part of a country that hadn't been part of the Empire since 1776.

3. That school still exists. They would have no problem at all representing most countries of the Commonwealth with pupils of appropriate descent, and no one would dare wear black face.

Click to expand...

Well, it's not that Brits are especially racist, but that British racism has a different history and heritage than American. The Black and White Minstrel Show was on the air until 1978, and the BBC could get away with that.

Commercial minstrel shows, of the standard format with a white Interlocutor and two blackfaced Endmen, Bones and Tambo, died out around 1910 -- certainly not because of rising awareness, that date was in the middle of what black historians call the "nadir" of post-bellum race relations in America, but because it couldn't compete with vaudeville. After that, minstrel shows were produced only by schools and clubs and community theaters -- that came to an end once and for all (AFAIK) in the 1970s. Blackface minstrel acts continued in vaudeville, however, and in the Jazz Age, performers like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor did a lot with them. Jazz was new and shocking and -- *gasp* -- darkie music! Part of the appeal of minstrelsy was that a blackface minstrel was an "all-licensed fool," a jester allowed and expected to say and do things that would be unthinkable in anyone else at the king's court. If a black is assumed to be a creature without dignity, then he has none to lose, and a white performing in blackface could get away with things from which he would die of embarrassment or get lynched by the audience without it, at least in 19th Century and early 20th Century society -- nowadays people have less shame and are harder to shock. One thing that still does shock is blackface.

The decline of the minstrel show is in some ways regrettable, as it is the one uniquely American form of stage entertainment ever invented. Theater in general goes back to ancient Greece, the Broadway musical derived from European comic opera, and American vaudeville was essentially the same thing as British music hall.

Judy Garland in blackface.

Mickey Rooney and the backyard-musical gang in blackface.

Eddy Cantor in blackface.

More Eddy Cantor, plus some real black people.

Al Jolson singing "Camptown Races" and "Oh, Susanna" and "Old Folks at Home"/"Swanee River". When I was in elementary school we watched a film about the life of Stephen Foster. No one in blackface appeared on-screen; the film entirely ignored the fact that Foster wrote for the minstrel stage and his songs were intended to by sung by white men in blackface dressed like clowns.

Pen pals.

No it's not like Instagram followers.

Dressing up to take the airplane, I still think this is appropriate.

Record players. Waiting for your fave song to come on the radio.

Kick the Can

Making forts in the back yard with whatever supplies were available, not buying materials to make it work.

Supper every night, together. Saying grace.

The 10 ft phone cord stretched to its max around the corner to get a modicum of privacy.

Knowing everyone's phone number.

KingOrfeo said:

There was a time -- mainly the late '40s and the '50s -- when a drive-in theater was known as the "passion pit."

Click to expand...

Heck when I was going it was in the mid 70's. Still then a passion pit.

You would park against the back fence for a little privacy.

cleaver said:

the emergence of spaceflight
from the daredevilry of suborbital sling shots
the 'race' with the soviets (mitigating some hot aspects of a cold war)
space walks
rendezvous
to apollo 11
apollo 13 and the miraculous ingenuity to work a problem while the world watched
to...
the media moving on...
losing all real traction, funding, support...

momentum squandered...

also,

must see tv. event tv.
no home video taping, dvr, netflix etc...
now, or not part of the it.

roots captivated a fortnight and drove a (inter)national dialog almost as forcefully as any thing to that date.

and too, the above... july 20, 1969.
the whole known intelligent universe was one with two humans on another world...

crystal, nearly universal moments delivered by idiot box...

the immediacy and focus is something now drowned out by logarithmic variety, accessibility and general noise.



perhaps one more.

a general sense of modesty.

when pornography was less "available"
when a sense of *wink-wink* 'naughty' still applied...
when the tease of nudity still held some sway...

i am not sure where this point goes...
but,

instant availability - through the net
of any imaginable predilection
graphically displayed
on any number of media
in any place at any time
has seriously desensitized a populous...

privacy is now myth.
the opiate has well infused the bloodstream
the search for even greater titillation
numbs and dumbs the simple things that could and did get us going...

kids see cocks and twats and buggery (in many flavors)
long before any of "us" knew where to look at their age...
before any of "us" even realized that there was something to look for...

the drive we had, to explore these things, inter-personally...
is kind of bleached out in our next generations...

i do wonder what the long term effects
of this particular aspect of the info-explosion age
will ultimately have?

Click to expand...

When my grandfather was born, man had yet to fly.

By the time he died, we put a man on the moon.

One small step...,

What about 8 track players? Did any one have one of them ? I thought those things would out live Cassettes. When it got to the end it started over.

And then there was Beta video, In the Navy that was the player we had on our ship?

4est_4est_Gump said:

When my grandfather was born, man had yet to fly.

By the time he died, we put a man on the moon.

One small step...,

Click to expand...

this was my great grandmother...
a deep south grande dame of sorts,
who... as a youngster i was embarrassed by her use of...
derogatory terms for "the help"...

to her, "negress" was a genteel (but still anachronistic) way to describe
someone who had 'been with her' for ages...
respectful, in its way, when others of her time and 'station' used far harsher terms...
i was acutely aware - in the mid 60's - how utterly outdated and hurtful that actually was...

time will eventually erase this...
in fact, in retrospect,
(and most will refuse to understand this... in "southern retrospect")
she had already walked down the beginning of the path to erasing this.

still, a remarkable lifespan...

she crossed the atlantic at 17 on a great ocean liner...
(of that ilk, these are all gone)
did a grand tour with her uncle and male cousin...
(no longer on a young person's immediate agenda)
flew first in the late 40s
(as a middle aged adult)
and watched the first moon landing with her great grandchildren...
(perhaps mine will do the same with theirs re:mars?)

I understand cursive is no longer on the curriculum.

Hard_Rom said:

I understand cursive is no longer on the curriculum.

Click to expand...

Nor penmanship.

Hard_Rom said:

I understand cursive is no longer on the curriculum.

Click to expand...

Some schools but not all. It's understandable but I don't agree with it.

KingOrfeo said:

Nor penmanship.

Click to expand...

That was always iffy with me. A lot of folks just can't write by hand very well. I am one of them. No matter how hard I try I just have sloppy handwriting. I got bad grades for it and even as a kid felt it wasn't fair.

cleaver said:

this was my great grandmother...
a deep south grande dame of sorts,
who... as a youngster i was embarrassed by her use of...
derogatory terms for "the help"...

to her, "negress" was a genteel (but still anachronistic) way to describe
someone who had 'been with her' for ages...
respectful, in its way, when others of her time and 'station' used far harsher terms...
i was acutely aware - in the mid 60's - how utterly outdated and hurtful that actually was...

time will eventually erase this...
in fact, in retrospect,
(and most will refuse to understand this... in "southern retrospect")
she had already walked down the beginning of the path to erasing this.

still, a remarkable lifespan...

she crossed the atlantic at 17 on a great ocean liner...
(of that ilk, these are all gone)
did a grand tour with her uncle and male cousin...
(no longer on a young person's immediate agenda)
flew first in the late 40s
(as a middle aged adult)
and watched the first moon landing with her great grandchildren...
(perhaps mine will do the same with theirs re:mars?)

Click to expand...

So interesting.

When/where I grew up, negro was appropro...

My Cherokee grandmother lived in "Brown Town" (the highway was even named "Brown Avenue").

She lived on Jersey Creek.

I used to try and catch the "puppies" there.

rocket_surgery said:

That was always iffy with me. A lot of folks just can't write by hand very well. I am one of them. No matter how hard I try I just have sloppy handwriting. I got bad grades for it and even as a kid felt it wasn't fair.

Click to expand...

We had artists on both sides of my family, but it was my third-grade teacher (who also taught my father) who took the time to teach us the mechanics of writing, things like (as with teaching the piano) holding your wrist firm/stiff. When I want, I have beautiful handwriting, but most of the time, it looks like am am writing a prescription...

coachdb18 said:

Dang, that takes me back to my youth as well, when we also had a 'party line'. There were no 'area codes', and the first three digits of our phone number was 'Rockwell'. Sort of makes me laugh at the old 'Hee Haw' number to contact Junior Sample, just call BR-549!

Click to expand...

Sometimes the changing world dates and ages jokes. Who would get this one now?

"What is VAT 69?"

"The Pope's phone number."