Growing up without a cell phone

[Scuba Steve]

Originally Posted by red-beard

#12. Microwave ovens were definitely around. We were the last ones in our neighborhood to get one, around 1978.

My parents must've been really behind the times. Their first one was from 1983.

[gatotom]

remember listening to the radio with my grandpa, the radio that had the police channel and others, programs like Amos and Andy, Red Skelton, Groucho Marx.

When I was about 6 we got our first TV, a little one with a oblong screen and since I thought I could be on TV by just going to the back of the TV, everyone got a good laugh out of that.

Got tired of skating with those skates that clamp on the shoes so we took a 2x4 with a crate box in front and nailed the skates on the 2x4. Went to the school yard down the street and proceeded to play demolition derby.

Having great fun running behind the ddt fogging machines driving down the streets to kill those mesquitos.

Going to the corner store and for a penny get 5 baseball cards and a flat piece of gum, if only I could remember where I put those shoebox full of cards??

Got my first pair of skis when I was 9, a pair of skis with just a strap to slide the foot thru. My dad cut a inner tube to make a loop so I sorta had a cable binding. First run down this hill in a park by the house, couldn't turn didn't know how just went straight and got to the botten only to go thru a picket fence to stop me. Great fun, next yr my Dad got me a real pair of skis with steel edges and cable bindings, I was hooked for life.

I was lucky and never went to a public school, the church school was at the end of the block were I lived. My 4th grade teacher was Mr Maas, a older gentleman that when we got him real mad at us he would turn blue in the face and have to sit down. He made me write soooo much that my Mom was concerned about the big bump growing on my writing finger. It was legal to whip you in school if you did wrong.

In high school during lunch one day a food fight broke out, great fun until someone thru something that landed on the big picture on Jesus at the last supper. Everything stopped and the teacher in charge wouldn't let us leave until someone confessed to the act. When the kid stood up, he was marched out into the hallway and proceeded to get beat.

At 15, my brother went off to college and he told me to start up his car once in awhile. One sat night in march my parents went to a wedding so I was home alone. Might as well take to the ol bro's car out for a spin. Back then we were into the drag racing so at a stop light when the light turned green, well, I hit the pedal to the metal only to find a big patch of ice about a half a block from the light. When the car stopped I was throw almost out the passenger door with the car wrapped around a big oak tree by the drivers door. My first thought was to run from the scene because I had no drivers license but I couldn't run because I broke some ribs and punctured my lung, busted. My punishment was that I could not get my license till 18. My bro when he came home from college wasn't a happy scene either.

[sailchef]

The Encyclopedia Britanica.

My parents bought a set when I was 9 or 10 years old. I can remember spending hours reading about things I never knew existed.

[Barwaut]

At least I grew up 'peeking' and 'poking' my Commodore 64.

1969 here.

[nostatic]

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by sailchef

The Encyclopedia Britannica.

My parents bought a set when I was 9 or 10 years old. I can remember spending hours reading about things I never knew existed.

I can vividly remember our Britannica. We had a yearly update volume that had the new entries. I still remember looking through the update and one of the new words was hippie. And the description was something like "one who is hip." That did not help me at all. I had no idea what that meant. Another new word in that volume was astronaut.

[peppy]

World Book on the top shelf and the Britanica on the second shelf with the updates above.



I was in high school when we got a microwave.

[Arizona 911]

My kids can't believe that I used to get swats with a paddle at school. I can still remember my dad giving me a sip of his beer when I was 6. He would be sitting out with the neighbors and I would ask for a sip and nobody questioned it. Try doing that today and see what happens.

[Rikao4]

Herr Leitzinger whacked me upside the head for 'talking back' in class..
when I told my Dad what happened..
he smacked me on the other side ...
and told me to apologize to him as well..
which I did..

Rika

[Oh Haha]

We just spent hours going through old photos with my mom last weekend. Comments were made about the red shag carpeting in the living room. Yes, we raked it with a leaf rake.

We got our first microwave around 1981-82. My mom is still using it.

[imcarthur]

Originally Posted by sailchef

The Encyclopedia Britannica.

We got our set around 1969. I read it cover to cover - the whole set. I also read most of our large Webster's Dictionary but I quit around P . . . In the 80s, I was an ace at Trivial Pursuit.

Ian

[Evans, Marv]

Well you bunch of whippersnapers, as one of the older farts around here, I can tell ya a thing or two. When I was little - about 4 or 5 - my grandparents had an old wood, crank phone on the wall. They had to pick up the ear piece, crank the phone, and tell the operator who they wanted to talk to. We got our first TV in 1950. I watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on that in 1952. In grammer school, we got swatted regularly, especially me. I made my teacher so mad on day in 5th grade, she hit me on the head with her paddle. It cracked down the middle of course. My grandparents on both sides got to hear the news about the Wright Brothers' first flight, and my father's mother rode a few places on a stage coach. I'm totally amazed at the technological progress I've seen in my lifetime sofar. I think my grandparents felt the same about the progress made during their lives. It feels like it's going to spin out of control some day.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

Erector sets (no way you could get that product name on the shelves today!), tinkertoys and legos were the best. And the star wars action figures. The legos only came in about 6 size/shape configurations and the action figures had paint that would flake off after about a week (probably toxic too). A pack of baseball cards would make you the most popular kid in school that day...

Life was a LOT simpler then.

Actually I bought my 6 year old son an erector set for Christmas this year, he loved it. It's a simple one with no motor, we built a helicopter with a pulley system to turn the rotor. You can find them at hobby shops, I don't think the mainstream stores carry them.

[VINMAN]

One of my fave toys as a kid was always Lincoln Logs. Cant get any simpler than that. I must have had hundreds of pieces. I'm amazed at how expensive they are nowadays.