Well you know...that you're over the hill.....

[Eric Worthington]

You know you're moldy when you can remember living in a monophonic, lo-fi, small-screen black & white world. Music was only heard in certain spaces. Some cars had no radio, and those that did were most likely AM only, with one measly, nasally little speaker. TV was black & white--and even if some lucky neighbor friend's parents had a color TV, most shows and movies were in B & W anyway. The screen was little, there was no remote, and you had to not only get up to turn the channel (remember the LONG clicking turns it would take in UHF to get from like, channel 17 to channel 57?), but you had to adjust the attennae. And sometimes it wasn't worth it--you certainly weren't going to switch back and forth between commercials. And that's assuming you lived in a region that had a bunch of TV stations. Living in a big city (Philly) we had FOUR, baby, plus THREE more on UHF. And at night, we could sometimes get a couple New York stations, so altogether we had, like, almost ten stations. In your face! Ten, baby. (Of course, they went off the air late at night.) And music, yeah baby! Two words: Transistor Radio. With the one-inch speaker and that little plastic earplug that goes in one ear. And record players. No, I didn't say turntable, pre amp, amp, tuner, speakers, sub woofer, tape player. I said record player, as in, heavy arm that scrapes against dust and cat hair-covered vinyl slab that emits mid-range mono rendition of ONE song, which lasts two minutes and twenty seconds. Then you fling it across the room (the record, that is, not the record player) and find another song. The best ones are where the record has a heavy scratch, and the needle jumps at a certain spot every time you play it, and you memorize the skip in the record, and expect it to hear every time from there on out. For the rest of your life.

[henryrobinett]

Eric! Yeah. And what about vertical hold/horizontal hold? The TV would start rolling just about the time Red Skelton would start his monolgue. You start playing with the rabbit ears turning knobs to keep an image on the screen. What fun.

[Chip McDonald]

[quote]Originally posted by henryrobinett: [b]Eric! Yeah. And what about vertical hold/horizontal hold? The TV would start rolling [/b][/quote]How about if your family couldn't afford a color tv - B&W - AND the channel knob stripped out, which meant you had to keep a pair of pliers handy to change channels. I remember that sucking as a kid...

[Botch.]

A "SCSI Interface" was something from the night before you'd just as soon forget...

[henryrobinett]

[quote]Originally posted by Chip McDonald: [b]the channel knob stripped out, which meant you had to keep a pair of pliers handy to change channels. I remember that sucking as a kid...[/b][/quote]Been there too! Or bending a coat hanger and sticking it in the antennae. Or tin foil. Or attaching a wire to it and running it across the room.

[Jeff Leites]

[quote]Originally posted by Eric Worthington: [b](remember the LONG clicking turns it would take in UHF to get from like, channel 17 to channel 57?), ................. Living in a big city (Philly) we had FOUR, baby, plus THREE more on UHF. And at night, we could sometimes get a couple New York stations, so altogether we had, like, almost ten stations. In your face! Ten, baby[/b][/quote]If you go back a little further, most sets didn't have UHF at all. When they first did they didn't click from channel to channel, it was smooth like dialing in a radio station. When I first lived in the Phily area, we didn't have UHF, only 3, 6, and 10 (maybe 12 also, I don't remember when that came in). When my folks first got a color set in late '65, we put a big antenna on the roof with a rotor, then we could swing it around to New York for clear signals on 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, and 13. And aim it west for 8 from Lancaster.

[stanner]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dan South: [QB]- You understand the history behind the phrase "to go on like a broken record." - You can remember when Mic Jagger was the only thing more scandalous than the Beatles' haircuts. - You remember being shocked when Pete Townshend smashed his guitar in the middle of a set. - You can remember when the most conservative looking electric guitars seemed like bizarre instruments from outer space. - You remember when the theme music to every show was played by a big band. - You associate the phrase "follow the bouncing ball" with Saturday morning cartoons, not Saturday night drinking binges. was all good before and after you said THIS: - You remember when the Monkees seemed cool. ex squeeze me-i baking powder!! s :cool:

[Chip McDonald]

I remember way back, before they inveted fire, we used to take rocks and push them with a stick, and we called it "The Stick and Rock Show", and sometimes the rock wouldn't move, or maybe the stick would sometimes bend or break.... Ha, that was good for a laugh, I'll tell you! Then fire came along, and pretty soon, yep, EVERYONE had to have the new "fire", everyone's talking about it, yada yada yada, then before you know it it's no big deal. But the damage was done - people got used to having "fire", and it changed everything. So then, people would just sit in their cave and passively watch the "fire". Well, granted, it did keep the mammoths away, and the ravenous blood-sucking proto-moths (back then they had teeth and fangs, you know), but all everyone did was just sit and watch the "fire". They'd even let their KIDS watch it. Disturbing.

[Jotown]

[quote]Originally posted by Chip McDonald: [b] [quote]Originally posted by henryrobinett: [b]Eric! Yeah. And what about vertical hold/horizontal hold? The TV would start rolling [/b][/quote]How about if your family couldn't afford a color tv - B&W - AND the channel knob stripped out, which meant you had to keep a pair of pliers handy to change channels. I remember that sucking as a kid...[/b][/quote]Hey!? We must have had the same model television.

[henryrobinett]

Ever used to have those TV repairmen over to the house? Big leather belts with tools hanging. Big box full of TUBES! G.E. mostly.

[StoneKnife]

McDonald's regular hamburgers--- were eleven cents.

[Sylver]

I'd just like to point out that all you people are REALLY F***ING OLD! Ha, ha. You know your really old when you're talking to me, and you say, "Gee, I wish I was 37 again!"

[Wewus432]

I don't know if you guys know this or not but Sylver is a woman. I can prove it to. She made some posts back in March that mention it.

[lakeside studios]

Originally posted by Chip McDonald: [quote] I remember way back, before they inveted fire, we used to take rocks and push them with a stick, and we called it "The Stick and Rock Show", and sometimes the rock wouldn't move, or maybe the stick would sometimes bend or break.... Ha, that was good for a laugh, I'll tell you! Then fire came along, and pretty soon, yep, EVERYONE had to have the new "fire", everyone's talking about it, yada yada yada, then before you know it it's no big deal. But the damage was done - people got used to having "fire", and it changed everything. [/quote]You had a rock AND a stick!LUXURY! And Fire!We used to DREAM about fire.......

[Wewus432]

[quote]Originally posted by Chip McDonald: [b]I remember way back, before they inveted fire, we used to take rocks and push them with a stick, and we called it "The Stick and Rock Show", and sometimes the rock wouldn't move, or maybe the stick would sometimes bend or break.... Ha, that was good for a laugh, I'll tell you! Then fire came along, and pretty soon, yep, EVERYONE had to have the new "fire", everyone's talking about it, yada yada yada, then before you know it it's no big deal. But the damage was done - people got used to having "fire", and it changed everything. So then, people would just sit in their cave and passively watch the "fire". Well, granted, it did keep the mammoths away, and the ravenous blood-sucking proto-moths (back then they had teeth and fangs, you know), but all everyone did was just sit and watch the "fire". They'd even let their KIDS watch it. Disturbing.[/b][/quote]Gawd, how did I miss that post. Chip that is too funny. One of my favorite toys as a child was "Bag 'O Rocks".

[freddynl]

closing time for teenagers was 00.00 pm instead of opening time... :rolleyes:

[Eric Worthington]

[quote]Originally posted by henryrobinett: [b]Ever used to have those TV repairmen over to the house? Big leather belts with tools hanging. Big box full of TUBES! G.E. mostly.[/b][/quote]Yeah, there's another one: Ya know you're old if you remember when a TV was an appliance! When I was little a friend's dad had a color TV with one of the early remote controls. It made this (mostly inaudible) sound--it wasn't an optical sensor. And they discovered that if they rattled their dad's keychain real loud, it would change the channel. So, if I can sum up some previous comments, you know you're old if you remember having a tiny B&W TV with foil and/or coat hangar antennae, pliers to change the channel, with the set tilted at just the right angle--for the station you're watching. And watching a show because it's the only thing on. Literally. As in, it's the only station--that you can get in--that isn't airing a test pattern. With ghosts on the screen, that come and go, and multiply. And flickering of the horizontal hold. Having to adjust the fine tuning on a regular basis, always. And the contrast--movies were way to dark, ball games in bright sunshine were washed out. A color TV was amazing--we seemed to be the last ones to get one. I watched the Wizard of Oz a bunch of times before I ever saw it in color. (They land in Oz, and nothing changes! The whole Horse of a Different Color sequence in the Emrald City made no sense until I was about 7.) You're also embarrassingly old if you remember actually getting an FM convertor for your car's Am radio. Still in mono, of course.

[Roto]

You could actually buy [b]something[/b] for a penny, even if it was only a gumball.