I remember. Do you?

I know I appreciate Nubs!!

Mike

[Beav]

What would my grandparents say? They'd say I'd better get started on my chores if I wanted any butter, corn, beans, etc. They had a farm and if I wasn't in school I was there doing things the way they had done them all of their lives. No quarter million dollar combines or monster tractors. Growing up meant no more baths in the wash tub on the back porch, you graduated to a garden hose draped over the clothes line.

They both came from families of substance, they weren't the Ledbetters or the Kettles. Their home was nice, built of solid black walnut in the 1860s. I learned the value of a warm comforter in the winter. They had a t.v., a new car and pick-up and taught me that there's no use in buying nice things if you're not going to take care of them. We started each day at o:dark thirty and finished a couple hours after dark each night. There was an enormous feeling of pride when the county agent stopped by and said that we had the nicest farm in the county.

They taught me that a smart person doesn't tell everything he knows, as soon after he'll be perceived to not know anything. Another lesson was that you don't have to volunteer information, but if asked, a person of integrity and worthy of respect won't lie. "Don't lie when your hand's in the cookie jar", apparently Slick Willie never heard that one, although I think it should only have been a concern for three people.

It's funny that tv was mentioned, I was just thinking about that last night. A tv with remote control was mega cool and expensive in the 60s, and about as worthless as the 'open/close' button on a dvd or cd player remote today. Every time you changed channels you had to get up and adjust the rabbit ears.

I'm going to get lengthy here and toss in a post I received a couple days ago:

The difference 100 years makes. . .

The year is 1902, one hundred years ago ... what a difference a century makes.

Here are the U.S. statistics for 1902.

Theodore Roosevelt was serving his first term as US President.

The average life expectancy in the US was forty-seven (47).

Only 14 Percent of the homes in the US had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City Cost $11.

The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved
roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents,

California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at
home.

Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the US were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza

2. Tuberculosis

3. Diarrhea

4. Heart disease

5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been
invented.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

One in ten US adults couldn't read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high
school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach & the bowels, & is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."

Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US

My what a difference a CENTURY makes ...

Hmm.. got in late on this thread. Dittos to the Beav. Wondering about the next century.

[LarryIII]

Originally posted by Ron Mummert
Mitch - did you write this? If so it's brilliant. If you just forwarded it....brilliant forwarding.

I remember when we had three network TV stations to watch when the "test patterns" weren't showing. A 4th station later joined up (Dumont?) Oh no, too many choices! I watched everything on a 12 inch 1949 Sears Silvertone console TV that had a PUSH BUTTON channel selector (on the console, of course). I never could figure out why there were 12 buttons. I still have this TV set! It needs a few tubes to make it actually work. Oh well...Maybe when I retire.

Ron.

Ron,

You are right. The 4th network was DuMont (channel 5 in NYC). In '48 my dad bought one of their sets after he had seen it in the lobby of the Roxy theater. It was a DuMont 20" x 20" mirror projection unit. My cousin still has the mahogany console. He made a dry bar out of it.

[svxistentialist]

Larry,

You got a PC as well as a bed in that garage?? What is it, 5, 6AM over there?

Does the Navvyguesser know where you are??

Joe

[LarryIII]

Originally posted by Beav


The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. ...

Beav,

My first job as a Mech. Eng'r was for Boeing Aircraft in 1967.
My yearly salary was $8,150. I believe that now, that is way below the "poverty level ". So for the early part of this century the yearly salary of mech. engr's. had not quite doubled in 65 years. But, for the last part of this century, that yearly salary has increased about 7 times in 35 years (2002 avg. starting salary for mech. engrs. = $55-60k). No wonder we have such a large a trade deficit. It's a geometric progression. Let's see, if I retire in 7 years, I will be making 2.5-3 times my current salary. Damn, not even Donald Trump could afford to hire me at those rates.

[svxistentialist]

Ron, putting tubes in the set might make it functional. The problem is there would be no compatible broadcast signal to try it out.

Early B&W sets here in Ireland were broadcast in 405 lines. This went up to the current 625 lines of the modern variants, with some sets being "dual standard", i.e. two tuners to receive both.

I remember the 405 signal being robust, it was VHF frequency as opposed to the current much clearer UHF. Because of the lower frequency it was a lot less sensitive to line-of-sight signal attenuation.

You would have to get an old Outside Broadcast Unit or private CCTV system of the same frequency as the tuner to try the refurbished set out in receive mode.

TechnicoJoe

[Aredubjay]

Originally posted by alacrity024
...Actually that pretty much sounds like my childhood. I grew up at the end of a dirt road in the country.. -adam

Must be why we make such good "theater of the mind" people, huh?

I wasn't at the end of a dirt road, but, I was in the country (still am). I always had a forest to play in, with my dogs. We had t.v., but, who wanted to stay in the house when you were the only boy of four children? Days were spent swashbuckling with the native foliage and hiking for hours. I miss those days. I don't miss outhouses or razor strops. I do miss the smell of momma's ironing mixed with the aroma of pinto beans cooking on the stove. I don't miss the smell of boiling polk. I miss the smell of the school bus exhaust and the sound of its rumble, as it dropped me off at home after my hour-long ride around the hills and hollers. I miss listening to the Hilltoppers on radio, and when they made the big dance, watching it on TV, turning down the sound and listening to Bud Tyler call the game on the radio. I miss Ed Sullivan. I miss my Mattel Power shop and my ChemLab set, BB Guns and burning the trash.

Thanks, Mitch. For a while, I had forgotten "who I was." You've helped to bring me back.

[Uncamitzi]

Originally posted by Aredubjay


Must be why we make such good "theater of the mind" people, huh?
..........................
Thanks, Mitch. For a while, I had forgotten "who I was." You've helped to bring me back.

Three sisters! Sounds like we have that in common too. Have you noticed that there are no "Variety Shows" on any more... I too miss Ed Sullivan. I miss the small town feel that my home town had as I was growing up. I miss car engines that I could reach into and change the spark plugs without having to unbolt the engine and raise or lower it. (somebody needed to bring this back on topic just a little!!!)

As I was sitting here reminiscing, there are some things that I don't miss. The one thing that stands out in my mind is the rampant racism that was part of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Oh I know it's still there, but in the last 30 years we've been able to put a label on it, identify it as bad and take some steps to enlighten people.

Now if we could just get radio theatre back on the air!!!

[sfsvx]

As I drive around New Mexico, I am awed by the landscape and the fact that people chose to settle here and build lives for themselves. The Southwest is, in many respects, a harsh and forbidding place that doesn't forgive errors.

Imagine growing up in a town in the East or in Europe and deciding one day to travel out here, to an unknown land, and take up a totally unfamiliar livelihood such as farming or ranching.

It seems that the job of each generation has been to make things easier for the next one. As we become farther and farther removed from the real struggles of the past, we lose a lot of perspective.

I'm afraid this may be the same process that led to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

[WestCoastSVX]

Good stuff, Mitch thanks for fwding that here. I'm "only" 30, still a kid to a lot of you that seem to relish your age and wisdom (as rightfully you probably should), but I do remember most of those things. Probably helped that I grew up in the "country".

Ironic we are spreading the message and now all talking fondly about it using very modern technologies. This same technology is the reason we are all here knowing each other from all over the world I guess, rather than sitting there wondering if anyone else owns such a wonderful car as us.

I'm maybe being a little sarcastic about that, but I am glad I grew up without personal computers the first half of my life and then seeing them evolve from a novelty to the incredible capabilities they have now. That is something that really hasn't changed until very recently, there will now be kids growing up never knowing a world without high powered PC's.

Of course as Alan suggested, things never change, in 20 years these kids will be saying "Can you believe, when I was in elementary school we had these ancient computers called Pentium 4's... they ran at something like 2 gigs and had these flat screens to look at... ha ha ha ha How did we manage?"


Troy (starting to feel old)

P.S. Beav, that was extremely interesting about 100 years ago too.