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"Back in the day..."


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21 hours ago, chair jockey said:

May I ask whether "government cheese" is the same thing as "American cheese" except that it's not in individually wrapped slices? If so, I used to love the stuff as a kid but ended up feeling that it tastes like a petroleum product and stopped eating it.

It was a thing in the 1980's.  I do believe it was processed American Cheese made from surplus milk the government purchased from the dairy farmers to keep them in business.  There were cheese lines whenever they had it to give out and you had to "qualify" for it.   and it found its way into school food, jail food, and anything institutional. 

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Autumn Sunrise

I remember these songs, but I must have been very innocent/naive ( . . . ace ? :lol:) because it didn't occur to me that they were about anything other than young people enjoying being in love. Then again, being musically inclined, I did tend to pay more attention to the music than to the words :D.

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5 hours ago, daveb said:
5 hours ago, Midland Tyke said:

there was a thread a few months ago about "I'll be watching you" by The Police, suggesting the singer was a stalker.

Yep.

 

There's Private Eyes by Hall and Oates, also rather stalker-y

Centerfold by J. Geils Band, rather creepy and stalker-y, too

Just the Way You Are by Billy Joel, where he talks about "don't go changing" in a way that sounds like he doesn't want her to be intelligent.

And several songs about 16 year old girls by Neil Sedaka, Ringo Starr, Billy Idol, etc., that could be considered cringe-worthy if you examine the songs 

 

And stuff like:

Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band, which is all about having sex in the afternoon (less creepy than the other songs, but I didn't realize for the longest time that it was about sex)

Don't Stand so Close to Me - by The Police comes to mind. Not one of my favorites. Only the stalker is the student ...

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Random weird (and some really cool!) stuff from my childhood:

 

Dial telephones

TV test patterns

Double-clutching in old cars

The craze over the Beatles

Traces of blackout paint on the skylights in my elementary school, left over from WW2

No gas stations or grocery stores open at night, except in big cities

Fred and Wilma Flintstone smoking Winston cigarettes on TV

Riding in piston-engine airliners (a Constellation and a DC-3)

Watching  President Kennedy on TV

The Cuban Missle crisis (was too young to know what was going on, but everyone was scared shitless)

Watching Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon, on an old black & white TV in someone's house

 

Yeah, I'm really old :lol:

 

 

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Autumn Sunrise

If those reminiscences make you really old, then I must be really old too :lol: I wonder how many people remember when TV channels used to shut down for the night? I remember our Channel 7 used to have a little cartoon, in which the elements of "Channel 7" were taken down, one by one, by a kangaroo and turned into a little bed into which she tucked up her joey for the night :D

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The Buffalo, NY television stations used to display the station log and a voice would say: "It's eleven o'clock. Do you know where your children are?" Today there would be an Amber Alert instead! Which I think is a good thing.

 

For a short time I made a hobby reading about unidentified human remains. The authorities would find a dead body and then years or decades would pass with no one being able to figure out the identity of the body. Meanwhile, some teenage runaway would disappear and nobody would have any idea where they went. Over the past 10 years, or less than 10 years, the authorities have increasingly been connecting human remains that had been unidentified for decades, to runaway teenagers who had simply not come home. And in a number of cases those kids had not been reported missing. That was a major reason their bodies hadn't been identified--without a missing person report the authorities didn't know enough to conduct the appropriate forensic tests. But it wasn't all that uncommon for a small kid to run away, return home, then run away again, return home again, and so on until the parents adopted a strategy of just not doing anything because the kid was going to come home sooner or later. Well, in some cases the kid didn't come home because the kid had died. I'm very glad that practice has been discontinued.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I remember when the TV ended after the 10pm news, always with the National Anthem....and my dad used to shoot up out of his chair and stand to attention! It was the same in some cinemas, the National Anthem was played at the end of the film. 

 

After WWII, many children (and adults ) in the UK were malnourished, so there was this government plan to give free rose hip syrup, full of vitamin C (and sugar) , school milk, etc, to nourish folk. I think it was Mrs Thatcher who did away with the free school milk, then she got the name 'Thatcher the milk snatcher':lol:

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I remember when the tv stations would sign off at night, and play the national anthem as the last thing first.

And rotary phones, and phone booths everywhere.

I remember drills in elementary school teaching us to "duck and cover" in case of nuclear attack; and warning sirens you could hear throughout the city as they activated them once a month on a regular basis (to test them and the people, I guess?).

I know I watched rocket launches and moon landings and the Mercury and Apollo missions on tv (mostly B&W in school assemblies), but I don't think I remember much about those times anymore (most of any memories I have of those events and things like the JFK assassination, and RFK and MLK, are at best vague impressions and something about the emotions and atmosphere at the time)

I remember thinking a lot about war and Vietnam in my teen years - if the war continued, as it seemed like it would, I could have been drafted - I just missed it though, as the war ended shortly after I finished high school

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Oh, the remember when thing ...

 

The Cold War was a constant background noise during my childhood, being on TV, in books, the nightly news. May Day will forever be colored by images of troops and weapons being moved through Red Square. When Gorbachev announced Glasnost and perestroika in the USSR and the Wall fell in Germany, things seemed to be looking up ... sigh. My childhood is bracketed by the Cold War (the wall was up by the time I was born in '69, and fell about the time I turned 19 in '89).

 

Nickelodeon coming on air for the first time with Pinwheel, Electric Company (Morgan Freeman will forever be a favorite because of this show), You Can't Do that on Television, The Third Eye, Black Beauty, The Tomorrow People (my first taste of British SF) ... The joy of realizing there was a TV station just for us kids was exciting at the time. Now we're inundated with such channels.

 

MTV meant Music TV not Miscellaneous TV. LOL Oh, but those were fun videos to watch. Then the 90s happened and all the fun stuff left. Not that there's anything wrong with grunge and Nirvana, but I still like to watch the old stuff.

 

Coming home to 24/7 coverage of the news and CNN rerunning the attempted assassinations of President Reagan (03/30/81) and then Pope John II (05/13/81) definitely created an impression of what life is like in a spot light.

 

AIDS - which I admit forever colored my view of sex, but not the people who were dying of the virus.

 

The Challenger Shuttle disaster - I was at school that day and walking through the Media Center at the time.

I remember the excitement in the early 80s when reps from NASA visited our elementary school to show us the tiles that would be used on the shuttles to protect them from friction and such. We even got to see one of the first shuttles riding piggy-back on the jumbo-jet! There are pictures around somewhere ...

 

 

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

It's really weird. When the cold war was at its height, I was petrified of it. As a schoolkid, I'd already worked out that the government pamphlets imploring us to make shelters under our kitchen table just didn't cut it. My plan was to sit in the garden with a huge chocolate cake, in the knowledge I'd never live long enough to suffer the calorific effects!

Now, when we have Kim Jong Un v Donald Trump, I just go ''pffft!'

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  • 1 month later...

In 1969 I was seven years old.  I remember my parents got us out of bed at some wee hour of the morning and sat us down in front of the TV to watch the moon launch.  My dad was an engineer for General Dynamics which built the booster rockets for the Atlas-Centaur missions.  When you are seven you think your Daddy built the whole space ship though.  The first thing I ever wanted to be "when I grew up" was an astronaut and I was sure I would have my own custom built space ship.

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The recent posts on this thread about the Cold War and nuclear-attack drills had reminded me of the yellow-and-black "Fallout Shelter" signs that were ubiquitous during my childhood. In the apartment complex where my family lived, each building had such a sign outside its basement entrance, and as a young girl I thought that "Fallout Shelter" was merely a synonym for "basement.":unsure:

 

Just yesterday came an obit of the man who created those signs: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/obituaries/robert-blakeley-whose-fallout-shelter-sign-symbolized-the-cold-war-dies-at-95.html

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RiseOfCourage

Reading this thread got me all nostalgic. Now my buddy & I are talking about when 8-track went to cassette tapes and how those tapes sometimes unwound in the player and you had to carefully wind that thin brown ribbon back in. Ha ha, and the older kid's huge album collections!

 

When we were kids we'd walk to a friend's place a few miles away and play outside, usually building a fort in the woods or go fishing in a nearby Creek. We'd also watch Bugs Bunny cartoons and Superfriends almost every Saturday morning and feel sorry for Wile E Coyote.

One time my friend found a stack of old Playboy magazines under his parents bed. We hid in the closet with flashlights and leafed through the magazines, giggling over the pictures and feeling like big shots for the opportunity to access this secret adult-only thing yet not having a clue why the magazines were "off limits" nor what sex really was! (We were pretty young)

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On 9/11/2017 at 4:42 PM, daveb said:

I don't miss the "good old days" when you often saw unspooled cassettes strewn along the roadside.

 

Maybe it was different in the US, but I never had any problem with the milk in the school cafeterias. Now, "government cheese" is another story! :P

Our milk was good, but it wasn't free, it cost a nickel.

 

On 9/14/2017 at 2:32 AM, chandrakirti said:

It's really weird. When the cold war was at its height, I was petrified of it. As a schoolkid, I'd already worked out that the government pamphlets imploring us to make shelters under our kitchen table just didn't cut it. My plan was to sit in the garden with a huge chocolate cake, in the knowledge I'd never live long enough to suffer the calorific effects!

Now, when we have Kim Jong Un v Donald Trump, I just go ''pffft!'

I remember watching the Nikita Khrushchev shoe banging incident replayed on TV news in 1960. He made those two look like children having tantrums. Oh, wait, he also resembled a child having a tantrum. Only now I'm old enough to see it for what it is.

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I lived before video games. When I tell kids this they look at me incredulously and ask "What did you do?" I always answer we had this thing called outside.

 I also tell them that when I rode a bike we didn't have safety equipment, and that you could ride in the back of a pickup truck. I think they wonder how I survived.

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We had books and tv and radio and board games and toys and all sorts of ways to entertain ourselves. :D

(before video games, before cable, before the internet, before smart phones)

Those were just different times.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Last night was a fundraiser for the Children in Need charity, and part of it , between the concert acts singing from the 80s , consisted of primary school age children grappling with VHS tapes, Vinyl records etc..there were audible gasps when they scratched all the vinyl to bits trying to put the needle on it! The VHS tapes were tried with their boxes in situ, then upside down , back to front etc, till eventually they managed to see what was on them. The main complaint was that flat screen TVs are easier to see....does that mean our eyesight will deteriorate due to seeing such high definition images ?

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:) Hello. I just wanted to thank the older adults on this forum for being helpful and respectful towards the younger members on AVEN. On other forums on the internet, I've come across older adults who insulted or criticized the younger generation, just for growing up differently from them. So, it's nice and a relief to see that not all older adults dislike or hate younger people.

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We were all young once. I grew up in the 70s and we were criticized for growing up differently too!

 

My pet peeve these days is SOCIETY's (and this includes older people) obsession with our phones. When someone gets a text or a call, they often will stop WHATEVER they are doing to read/answer it. Really??? I work in a doctor's office and have even had a patient, while I was readying them in the exam room, stop and take a call. I politely waited till they were finished and then told them that their time with the doctor would be shortened if they chose to answer their phone.... I also am dismayed by how rude people are online. They write things in anonymity that they would probably never say to someone face to face. Gosh, I'm sounding like an Old Geezer, aren't I? <_<

 

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Another geyser (the Brits I've heard seem to pronounce that word the same as or very similar to "geezer") spouting off?

geyser.gif

 

But I agree about phones - it's like they take priority over the people they are actually with in person. I understand that sometimes you have to take a call, but some people just can't be apart from their phones. I have seen people spend all the time they are with you on their phone. And not just with phone calls, but texting and doing stuff on their phone, as if they can't tear themselves away.

 

Now,

b4c.gif

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On 11/13/2017 at 3:39 PM, seneca said:

I lived before video games. When I tell kids this they look at me incredulously and ask "What did you do?" I always answer we had this thing called outside.

 I also tell them that when I rode a bike we didn't have safety equipment, and that you could ride in the back of a pickup truck. I think they wonder how I survived.

Yeah, I remember when Pong was a huge new thing. LOL Also rode in my share of the backs of pickup trucks, and I remember when everyone had to get used to actually using the seat belts in cars so the driver wouldn't get a ticket. And car seats for babies back then were a joke - my ex-SIL posted a picture of one on FB the other day and we were all like, "How did we survive?"

 

On 11/17/2017 at 4:53 PM, teatree said:

We were all young once. I grew up in the 70s and we were criticized for growing up differently too!

Yes, we were supposedly the worst generation yet. Now I hear people put down Millennials, and I just want to shush them. Every new generation gets criticized. 

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Following the Apollo mission to the moon and seeing this for the first time - took my breath away then and still does 
 

earthrise.jpg 

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32 minutes ago, Frankentan said:

Following the Apollo mission to the moon and seeing this for the first time - took my breath away then and still does 
 

earthrise.jpg 

I was amazed then by how blown-away people were by pictures like this. What did they think it was going to look like? I still am. Don't get me wrong it's a wonderful image, but it's exactly how I thought it would look.

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On 9/12/2017 at 3:16 PM, Midland Tyke said:

I could hum the chorus to Young Girl now. 

 

Young girl get out of my mind

My love for you is way out of line

Better run, girl

You're just too young, girl!

 

It's rather sleazy, really, isn't it?

Wow, I never realized that could be a guy in his 20s, or 30s, or 40s, singing about a teenager.   We were pretty naive back then in the day. 

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2 hours ago, Midland Tyke said:

I was amazed then by how blown-away people were by pictures like this. What did they think it was going to look like? I still am. Don't get me wrong it's a wonderful image, but it's exactly how I thought it would look.

that made me feel physically insecure -- looking at the curvature of the earth, I didn't really trust gravity.  

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The difference between imagining how something would be or even knowing how it would be and actually being there (or getting actual photos for the first time ever) seems pretty wide to me. For example, even just from my own travels, I never knew how green a place could be in terms of the vegetation, growing up in southern California. And then I went to the UK for my first trip; first time I had been anywhere where it rained more than 1-15 inches per year. My more recent trip to Iceland and seeing the waterfalls and the volcanic terrain and all that; that was amazing, too. :)

 

And, of course, part of the awe some of us felt seeing those Apollo images live was knowing the effort it took for that to happen. Those images can still evoke some of those feelings in me all these years later. :)

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