CH-CH-CH-CHANGES . . .

Re: CH-CH-CH-CHANGES . . .


I was still in nappies!

I graduated college in 1968.

I had no dough and if I needed to get someplace, thought nothing of
standing by the road with my thumb up. On the rare occasions when I
was behind the wheel of a car, I also thought nothing of giving a ride to
anyone standing by the road in that position.

No way would I do either these days. If I ever hear of one of my kids
doing either, I will go full-goose ballistic.

Re: CH-CH-CH-CHANGES . . .

Thanks for the straight line, but I'll pass.

Good point, George, i hadn't recalled that aspect of that different world we used to inhabit. In my younger days, i hitched literally thousands of miles.

Prince, you are excused from the discussion, if you think it a topic for fogeys.

I may be going back farther than you, Set, but I have a memory of some popular game shows on radio. A woman would be introduced, and the announcer would say something like, "Welcome, Mrs. Jones. And what does your husband do?"

I remember one time that I went into Manhattan by subway in the summer. It was the first time that I had worn bermuda shorts in "the city", and was terribly self conscious about it. In high school, no girl wore slacks, only skirts or dresses.

I remember the cigarette ad, "You've come a long way, baby," that marketed cancer sticks to women.

We would go to the movies, which had a big banner, "It's Coool Inside". They must have kept the temperature in the sixties, because we needed to take sweaters with us. It was a great way to get out of the heat. We could spend an entire afternoon in the movies. There were two films, a Movietone news, and a cartoon. Sometimes, in the spring, the guys from Duncan Yo-Yos would have contests on the stage.

Actually I let my hair go longer in 1971. I remember quite clearly it was a choice between a haircut (which had increased by a disgraceful 25 cents and a neat pair of boots with a buckle. I decided not to get the hair trimmed away and bought my footwear which I wore until I could feel the ants underneath the holes in the soles of those boots. Were men really still getting crew cuts in '73?

The world seemed gentler and kinder in many ways. Neighbors still could be relied on to look out for one another and to make sure the children weren't getting into trouble. I recall cutting class one day (back in the late 60's or so)and some annoying woman spotted me and called my Uncle Bert (he was a stay at home sort of man long before it became chic) and when I wandered in later he confronted me. My lie to him became bigger and bigger as I attempted to weasel my way out of it. Finally he had had enough and I was sent to my cupboard (it was a small New York apartment) without any dinner and my outside activities were cut off for a month. People don't seem to invest their energy in looking out for others these days and during my years as an educator I found fewer parents each year caring about how their child was misbehaving (missing class, acting up in class or not coming close to achieving their potential). Yup, things seemed a lot nicer back then...at least they do in retrospect. Truth is things weren't always wonderful even then, we just didn't know it. The media wasn't throwing horror stories at us every minute of every day. Telephones were still used as a basic communication device. The internet hadn't crippled the world with its isolating ability.

Of course I think back to the last day of school in the 5th grade. We headed out to the schoolyard and (it was a hot day) one student collapsed on the ground. She wasn't back the following semester and I heard rumor that she had died. So things weren't all rosy. I had a friend who got hit by a car, dragged a few hundred feet and the driver fled. Clearly hit and run drivers were around.

There were good things as well. Always people around to hang out with and go and do something. There was always a feeling of safety. You could always find a way to make a few dollars for whatever it was you wanted. A movie or a burger or some record by that guy Rod Stewart...it would cost you 49 cents down at the Woolworths store. Or maybe a pet canary...it was fun to go to start the purchase just to watch as your unfortunate classmate who was working there had to read off the information about the canary...this is a male canary, he eats such and such and with proper care...after he read his cards we would 'change our mind' and not buy the bird. This worked well at least twice a month. So there were more ways to get a cheap laugh back then. But the easy way to make a buck is what I miss. One of my first jobs was clearing snow off of cars for a quarter. Not shoveling the car out, just getting the roof and windshield cleared. Shoveling out got a dollar or more depending on the snow amount and the generosity of the car owner.

I guess in around 1972 or '73 I first knew a big change was taking place. I was staying down in New York for the summer and there was a radio program where this man mentioned walking around nude in his home even when his children were there. It was insane. A few days later I was on one of those Brooklyn highways (Gowanus or maybe the Belt Parkway or something )with someone and over to the right was a billboard for some X rated film. I was shocked (I was easy to shock back then).

I remember an early job where I was paid $94.00 per week and thought it was a huge amount. I recall an apartment which cost a mere $90.00 per month...it had a lovely view of a parking lot and a railroad track with an active railroad less than fifty feet away. It was loud but affordable.


Yeah, life was kinder and gentler, money was easier to come by and things were more affordable. Of course I have this feeling that 35 or 40 years from now there'll be a place similar to this (or maybe even this place) where people will think back to the autumn of 2006 and remember it as a peaceful loving time.

Conservation and the first Earth Day. I was still in high school and a part of the planning for Earth Day activities in our area. We were just beginning to connect human activities to the damage being done to the environment.

We were still in awe of space travel and the world stopped to bear witness to each event in space exploration, no matter how small. The only thing that gets much attention these days is a tragedy in space or damage to the space craft. We had a national goal in space that just about everyone agreed on and cheered along the way. Non-existent today.

People seemed to have a lot more to talk about with each other, it wasn't just all about politics and religion. Rap sessions on a single subject such as a poem or novel or music concert would go on for hours.

Speaking of which, free concerts in the park at a moment's notice. Access to music of all genres was everywhere and was live!

Being able to do the repairs on most household gadgets yourself, rather than tossing them out for a new one because it is cheaper to buy a new one then pay someone to replace the electronics inside.

The Sears catalog. Ordering from the catalog used to be a really big deal. They weren't delivered, we had to go to the department store to pick them up. Things were pretty special if they came from that catalog.

Gas stations that provided free services such as checking the oil, washing the windows and gave out premium gifts with every fill up and the cashier came out to you while you were in your car for the payment.

Televised town hall events were huge boons in broadcasting. I remember the first live telecast between audiences of ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union and the United States and how shocked everyone seemed to be over how much they had in common. It was the first time we'd gotten glimpses of each other that wasn't full of propaganda.

I remember my very first transistor radio and many after that one. It was on a transistor radio in grade school that we first heard about the JFK assassination. We all walked around with our transistor radios to our ears or with the ear plug. Today's cell phones were yesterday's transistor radios. Radio was how you got current updates on hot news events. Television took hours to catch up. Today, it is radio that takes hours to catch up to television's 24/7 news updates.

Your remark about hit-and-run drivers reminds of the subject of drunk-driving--which wasn't a subject which anyone discussed. The police would stop a driver, and throw him in the can until he sobered up, and then cut him loose. Sometimes, they beat the Hell out of him first. There were no Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, and the laws against impaired driving were a farce. People who drank and drove might kill someone, and be back on the road in a year or two to do it again. That is definitely a big change. Even as the change was enacted, proponents of stiff penalties saw their efforts ignored by police who didn't want to enforce the new regulation. There are still a lot of drunks on the road, but they are headed for a fall, and i rather suspect that this has been an improvement.

Title 9 - the mandate about sports being equal for girls. I wasn't into sports, but the year it passed the girls got to use the basketball court for the first time at my junior high.

About the same time - The elimination of Home Ec. just for girls and Shop Class just for boys. We all got smashed together and learned to make meatloaf and crappy wood projects in a coed environment.

I'm guessing I am between Phoenix and Setanta; I came of age during the beatnik era of coffee houses, folk music (Josh White/Odetta) gas was 19.9 and a pack of camel bullets was 17 cents. I worked (during high school) five nights per week earning (after taxes) $11.00 per week. There were some good times then if your were white-middle class christian, not so good for others.

dys- You've got that right. I hung out in Greenwich Village coffee houses in the late 1950's, and discussed, "life"!" :wink:

The good old days were not so good really. Racism was tolerated and even encouraged. Women were kept in their places. Pregnant teens were sent off to foundling homes and were looked on with scorn. Richard Nixon was president, fergodssake! With all the problems we have in the present, I still think we have come along way. (Not that the repugs didn't try to take us back there.)

I hate nostalgia.

Nostalgia sure ain't what it used to be!

I'd like to emphasize that i don't believe in "the good old days," and that the point of this exercise is to examine how things have changed for the better.

"The good old days" is a myth of sour-pussed old fogeys who feel side-lined by a society passing them by.

Yes, I hear that, the quality of life, for me, is better than it's ever been before.

...with their thumbs out...

Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

I picked up a hitch-hiker a few years ago--i was driving back to Ohio from Toronto, and pulled out of a service center on Highway 401 in southwest Ontario. He was a truck driver who ferried trucks--he would deliver a truck, for which he was well-paid, and then had to find his own way home. He told me he would hitch until nightfall, and then find a bus station so he could get home in time to work the next day.

I took him to the town he came from, to the truck depot he worked at, which he said gave him a chance to ferry one more rig that same day. He was astonished that i'd go out of my way for him, and even more astonished when i turned down his offer of money. I've had so many people help me so much when i hitch-hiked that i would never take money from a hitcher.

I once hitch-hiked across the state of Iowa in the course of the morning and early afternoon. It took 13 rides to cross the state from Illinois to Nebraska, and i started in the dark before dawn. Nobody gave me a really long ride, but i got picked up within minutes of being let off each time. Iowa was the friendliest state i ever hitched in. Nebraska is hell on hitch-hikers, and then (1981), at least, had "no hitch-hiking" signs on the highways. I stayed on the Council Bluff side, across the river from Omaha, and waited until almost night fall until i got a ride which was crossing the entire state (500 miles!) to Colorado.

That's some serious thumb-tripping.

Had my little dog with me, too.