When you were a chile? Was that with or without cornbread?
We couldn't afford self rising flour and buttermilk, so we just have cornpone (also know as hardtack or corndodgers)
BTW, like your new white t-shirt
The first TV I ever saw belonged to a neighbor. It had a tiny screen and a tuner that was like a radio's--no clicking, just continual dialing.
That was, oh, around 1898 or so. I think it ran on steam power...
First show I ever saw, John Cameron Swayze - 15 minutes of news, 'Camel News Caravan'. How could it be any longer, it would bore the audience and they'd run out of things to say.
Famous for Timex commerical (broadcasters did commercials back then, it wasn't a conflict of interest) - "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking".
From 15 minutes of news to 24/7 cable news networks--we've come a long way, haven't we? Wish I could be joyous about it.
The first memory I have of watching television is of the assasination of JFK. I was all of 14 months old.
My first tv show, seen at my stepgrandmother's home: Art Linkletter's Houseparty. It was on a Sylvanea tv, one that had a glowing white tube built in around the screen - to lessen the glare.
Old and Knew, re technology affecting program content quality, I tend to agree. In an analogous situation, I had as part of a work project to look through some working drawings for a set of apartment buildings for Low Income Housing drawn in 1952 by an architectural firm in downtown San Francisco. I can hardly believe my eyes. All hand lettered (not all that new to me, I've done that), but with the lettering came a massive amount of complex drawing. I have photocopied the firehydrant drawing for my own pleasure, also the manhole drawing. What a rich set of plans, including intricately detailed interiors.
It is true that one can save time and money now with a few call-outs, and I don't completely rue that. But when I have reviewed cadd generated plans, I am often bemused by the lack of sense of graphic design, and much loss in content, even increase in error, though I won't generalize on that one.
On tv, I first saw it in 1950; we had one relatively early because my dad was a film editor too, OAK. I had listened to radio before, but not all that much. In the fifties, I spent a lot of time both listening to radio and watching tv and doing my homework and building houses out of chairs and boxes with old sheets and playing tag and playing cards and monopoly and making doll dresses and eventually my own clothes. No play dates......
Oh, yeah, I had a stamp book that I worked on, and embroidery to do, and mowing the lawn with the old rotary mower, and shovelling the snow off the front walk, and making fudge, and learning to bake, and going to girl scout meetings, and not practicing the piano. In summer we played croquet and gin rummy and skated to the corner store or even down by the houses that were never finished and climbed around them. Plus played softball over in the school yard. With any luck, some parent would take us to a department store where we could cool off, or once in a while to the movies, which were also air conditioned. On a really good day we could get ice cream cones down on Green Bay Road.
So, I had tv, but I also had a lot of other things to do. I see I didn't mention reading. I was a busy reader by age ten...
This all sounds very privileged middle class, and we did have it relatively easy til I was about twelve and then the floor fell out from under us. Among my playmates though were kids in a family of fourteen with very spare money. Mostly the stuff we did didn't cost money, except for those once in a while movies, and the material for the doll clothes....
I just realized my current avatar is rather apropos this thread.
Anyone recognize the gal accompanying the hat?
Faulty memory. I recall Coca as a smaller person.
Now I'm confused. I guessed on another thread that it was imogene coca and you said it was you, ehBeth..so I said I thought it was you at first but then you asked who we thought it was and so I guessed imogene, so now..
well, hey, whichever, great picture.
ossoB - i thought i was telling you that you'd guessed correctly that it was Imogene.
She was a very tiny woman. 4'5" or 4'6" by Sid's estimation.
When I was 5 I would listen to the Lone Ranger on Radio. It came on at 7:00 pm in the evening and I would whine and sulk to convince my parents to allow me to stay up a half hour past my bed time every Wednesday night to listen to it. I can still recall specific programs. I saw my first Lone Ranger on TV in 1956 when I was 8. Not one of those programs remain in my memory. The difference was (I think) that having only an aural medium a great emphasis was put on creating atmosphere , and the emotions and images those programs created in my mind stuck while the programs that depended on visual imagery required less of my imagination and therefore did not stick.
