In color, that's a bit sophisticated.

When I was about 5 the guy down the road got the first TV in the area and I went to look at it. It had diagonal lines going across the screen and I thought it's OK but I don't know what all the fuss is about. Once it had pictures, I was impressed.

And there was no such thing as staying up and watching tv all night.

After 11:30 pm there nothing.

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High Flight
By John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Back in the 60s we would bring shotguns to school and do an evening hunt on the river. No big deal, we kept the guns in the Principals office. Just normal for the time.

In 1976 in Franklin PA during deer hunting season one guy brought his new high powered rifle into a (large) machine shop for show and tell. Just walked to his OD grinder and set it on his bench for us to oogle over.

I distinctly remember those lots in the late 50's early 60's with the rental trailers and they would rent you a car hitch and put it on right there and you were out of there pretty quickly. Under $10 for the rental if I remember correctly.

I remember going to a dusty old warehouse full of stuff for sale with folding chairs all lined up in rows everybody sat in and bid on stuff. We called it the ‘dirty store’. They’d bring out a box of miscellaneous toys and you could buy the whole box not knowing what all was in there. One time we got a battery-powered airplane that flew in circles on the end of a stiff wire maybe 4’ long or so. Cap guns, air rifles, fake hand grenades were all necessary and proper accouterments for playing army all day.

Things I remember:
Mini skirts.
Monkey bars.
Girls in mini skirts on monkey bars.
Go-go boots! Go-go girls! Juke boxes! (my uncle owned a nightclub)
Paisley silk shirts with turtle-neck dickies.
Corduroy pants.
Sonic booms.
Catholic Mass in Latin.
Niel's first step on the Moon televised (1969, but close enough)!
Boy Scouts (back when boys were molded into men)
T-Birds.
Twiggy.
Veg-o-matic.
Typewriters.
GI Joe.
Barbie.
GI Joe & Barbie in a GI Joe Jeep.
Tinker Toys.
Lincoln Logs.
LEGOs!!!
Aluminum Christmas Tree backlit with a spotlight with a rotating multi-color lens.
Grandma & Grandpa!
The "Kids" Holiday table.
Hippies.
Easy-Bake Oven.
Walkman.
Hula-Hoop.
VW Beetle.
Shag Carpeting.
35 Cents/Gallon "Hi-Test" gasoline.
Lava Lamps.
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

^^^ I had kinda forgotten about the sonic booms.....never had any broken windows, but they could sure surprise you.
Corduroy pants were loud also....when walking.

Someone mentioned party lines with the old telephone system. Before I was born, the telephone service provider approached my parents to put the telephone switchboard in their home. Growing up the room next to my parents bedroom was 'the office'. I was allowed to take calls before I was 10, but had to pass long distance calls over to someone older for a couple of years. I can remember being left to look after the switchboard on Sunday mornings when the rest of the family went to church. (Little heathen that I was. )
Last summer I saw an almost identical unit in the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck.

Best
Les

^^^ My mother was a Bell Telephone operator for ten years. She knew everyone in the town...because she talked to them all when they made a call.

I remember asking people on our party line to shorten up their calls so that I could call someone.

Tall skinny glass returnable pop bottles (rattled loudly when loaded in shopping cart to return them at grocery store)
Foam wrapped throw away pop bottles
Real glass cups in hotel rooms
"Smear the queer" rough tackle football games at recess
Rotary knobs to change tv channel on front of "huge" 25" console tv
Big heavy family tent made from canvas
Hand shears for trimming weeds (pre-weed eater days)
Wood water skis
Stiff leather just above ankle snow ski boots
Leather basket ski poles
Shorts that were actually short
Silent home movie camera
Flashbulbs for instamatic cameras
American made cars that were completely used up and junk after 100k
Me and siblings riding all the way to Florida crawling all over in back seat of car w/ no seatbelts

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Growing up, Mom & Dad had a newer car, and an old use hooptie. Many of the cars back then had no seat belts. My mom's right arm was our safety restraint as we stood up on the front seat to see out. Even long after I was an adult, if I rode with my mom, her right arm flew out if she hit the brakes hard.

Fridays when they tested the air raid sirens.

Duck and cover.

The older I get, the more I forget from today and the more I remember from my childhood. Give me a year or two and I'll remember back to my birth.

Things I DO remember from the late fifties and early sixties:
Froggy from the Andy Devine Show. I now know it was called Andy's Gang, thanks Google.
Lightning bugs in the evening in upstate NY. None in California, more's the pity.
Lying on the package shelf in the back window or the car with my little sister while on the Sunday drive. Try that today.
My father fixing a flat, in the middle of nowhere, by prying the tire off the wheel to patch the tube.
Seeing JFK at Eleanor Roosevelt's funeral in Hyde Park NY.
Being an altar boy when the mass was in Latin.
Third grade, St. Monica's School. Miss Orange crying and telling us that Kennedy had been assassinated.

False memory: Kennedy's funeral with the slow, somber drumbeat. Watching it now on YT, the beat was rather fast.

The only warning system we had was a 200 lb bell atop the school roof that rang when recess or lunch was over. :)

Wow, some of you guys are seriously old! :cool:

When I was a child in Minneapolis, the used to run the air raid sirens every second Wednesday at noon or something just to make sure that they worked and so that people would know that it was only a test. They were LOUD.

I remember thinking that if the Russians were smart, they would attack on a Weds. at noon.

Here is Oklahoma City, they test the tornado sirens every Saturday at noon. We have one about 1/4 mile from our house. We can hear it clearly. If the weather is bad, and possible tornadoes, they will skip that week's test.

I remember reading that Muskegon, Mi was high on the list of targets in a nuke war because they built the majority of army tanks there.
I lived very close to it growing up. We never had air raid sirens or tests.

Nice!