Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Other Things I Remember

Here are some things that I can actually remember, and it makes me feel old:

Party lines.
No, not dollar per minute means to talk to people in your area, free means to be unable to use the phone because your neighbor won't get off the phone. I kid you not, certain parts of Jefferson County, Missouri, had them until 1987. On the other hand, since my neighbors were probably listening in on my phone calls for the latest intelligence about my household (and were always available to offer their unwanted commentary on it--kinda like blogs), I learned to speak in code on the phone which helped me when I became a technical writer--and wrote in technospeak to confuse the person who was catching an unwanted glimpse of how the software worked through my documentation!
Television tube testers in drug stores.
Back in the early 1980s, they still had these. I remember seeing them when my mother would send me to the store with a buck and a note for the clerk to sell the nice ten year old boy a pack of cigarettes. Undoubtedly, only the government's belated intervention that made such errands punishable by the drug store's death have kept me from smoking even though my mother persists in shortening her lifespan.

But kids today won't remember a time when the man of the house would pull out a screwdriver when the television went on the fritz (things never go on the fritz nowadays, either; they gon in the trash) and would hunt for a suspect tube. When he found one, he could take it to the 7-11 to check to see if it was working or not and could buy another tube to fix his own television. Kinda like we geeks persist in doing with our computers. But our children won't be able to operate on the miniaturized bucky-ball spinning computers of tomorrow. So enjoy the pre-retro chic that we have now, I guess.
Snow on televisions.
Speaking of televisions, you remember what snow looked like? Remember how you would adjust the antenna to fix it? Remember the first television you could put on an interior wall of your home because the antenna was strong enough? The television was 19", and it seemed huge.
Television dinners with aluminum foil trays.
Not that I eat many television dinners these days, but I know they're designed for microwaves now because more people probably have microwaves than ovens. You could take the trays, rinsed out of course, to the recycling facility with your aluminum cans.
Yugos.
Cheap little cars from an Eastern Bloc country. A country that no longer exists, in a bloc that no longer exists. Kinda like a communist Gremlin or Pinto, but at least the American punchline cars had longevity.
PCjr
Okay, I don't remember much since my rich uncle got one and wouldn't let me touch it, but it was a home computer, and it had a color screen.
Rotary phones.
When I was in college in 1990, I needed a touchtone phone to handle the interactive voice response for class registration. I had to buy the first touchtone phone in my father's house and I had to pay a monthly surcharge on the phone bill for the privilege. Come to think of it, I am probably still paying for it somewhere.
Ghetto blasters.
Remember dudes with Afros walking through the projects with large radios on their shoulders? You damn kid, never realizing that the iPod was not the first personal musical device. Although, come to think of it, the iPod is personal, whereas the ghettoblaster was not.

Well, it's not the Beloit College Mindset List for Incoming Freshmen, but it's enough to make me want to swizzle the Geritol given to me as a joke--I think--for my last *0 birthday.

Perhaps I shall swizzle more beer instead.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:37 PM