memories for thos of us older than dirt

[El Cajone]

15.

A few years ago at a wedding reception, a couple of us old cranks were telling some teenagers about this stuff, guiding them carefully through successive stages of disbelief. After we finished with the stories about the mainframe computer and the stacks of cards, I told them what I used as a calculator in engineering school in the late '60s.

" Well kids, there were no calculators in our days. Instead we used something called a slide rule. It was two sticks with numbers marked on them. You slid the little stick along the big stick until you were happy with it's position. Then you moved this little slider along the 2 sticks to another place where you read off the answer. It used something called a log scale."

At this point the kids bailed and called it a great big load of BS. Then they decided since this was such an obvious whopper, nothing we said could be believed and everything else we told them was also untrue!

 

[ShinyPartsUp]

The NHL expanded to 6 teams.... I did dishes at home right up until he passed. Bugger...*L*

That brings up two memories.

First, my retired two sisters in Boston still don't have a dishwasher. They have never had one and don't see the need.

Second: My brother was sixteen, 6'4" and a mother ice skater. He was flying around an outdoor muni rink in Cleveland Circle (on the Green line) and a Boston Bruins scout saw him . The scout offered him a minor league contract then and there. My brother was FAST on skates. He came home and thought about it, then turned it down because there were only six teams in the league, and no American players. Figured he had no shot. He's an old fart now and rides a Gold Wing with a trailer.

Computers: COBOL was king in business.

 

[Patriot]

Remember the starter button for the car was down by your foot.
My teen age son informed me that I'm "so old I was busing tables at the last supper"

:lol: :lol: :lol: Got a son like that too. I was bragging about the National Parks pass I got last year--gets you into any N.P. for free the rest of your life. I called it a "Golden Age" pass.

Kid says "They should've called it a Bronze Age pass." Punk.

******* nephew accuses me of picking up my wife on our first date with a chariot...

 

[old&slow]

Damn ,,, :dribble: A bunch of really Old Farts on this web site....

The sad part is ,,,,, I remember most of the things listed... :blink:

At 12 or 13,, I would grab the rifle and the dog and be gone for hours ,, no body thought twice about it..

Use to ride my bicycle about 2 miles or so to the Hay & Grain and paid 50 cents for a box of 22 ammo.

If someone saw a kid walking down the road with a rifle over his shoulder ,, no body thought twice about it,,

They would probably stop and ask if you wanted a ride home...

If you got your butt beat by a teacher at school ,, you got it again when you got home...

When I was older and had a car ,, Cigarettes were 35 cents a pack ,,, High test gas was 38 cents a gallon...

If a cop caught you drinking under age ,,, he would give you Heck ,, tell you to be careful going home and

if he caught you again there was going to be trouble...

Those WERE the good old Days.... :clapping: :yahoo: :clapping:

 

[exskibum]

Lowest I ever saw gasoline when I was driving was 25.9 cents. Used to work in gas stations and would call my friends when we got word that the gas prices were to go up the next day (sometimes to as high as 33.9 cents). Of course, at both stations where I worked, it was full service -- windows, tire pressure, ask about checking under the hood. Sundays were usually slow, and whoever was working that day (usually 2 of us) would have his own car up on the racks in the bays as we serviced and lubed everything, or tuned them using the huge new Sunn Scope the boss had bought. And the boss encouraged all of that! I can remember selling a set of tires at night while alone, mounting them between trips out to the islands to pump gas for other customers (of course gas stations had mounting and balancing machines back then) and getting a commission for that unexpected sale (PITA that it was due to all the interruptions).

 

[fjrchooser]

I remember my Dad buying cigarettes from a vending machine for 35 cents when the actual price was 33 cents. Every pack of cigarettes in the machine had 2 pennies taped to it. I miss that kind of honesty today...

 

[mcatrophy]

Dude, I had an HP-35. And a 67. My brother has a 41 (I think.) I still have the 67, but the card reader is gummed up with melted nylon.

Um, not too sure how to put this, but I still use my HP25C (yes, it's the one with the "Continuous Memory") on a daily basis, although I've replaced its rechargeable batteries with ordinary alkalines. You can't get a decent calculator these days.

A few other memories - Portable valve radios (before the transistor radio were invented), with the separate HT and LT batteries. My mother doing washing in the copper (a hot tub), using a wooden stick to stir the clothes. The "copper stick" was also used as the ultimate deterrent to my brother and me. Her iron was heated on the gas ring.

And, for any UK types, I remember listening to **** Barton, Special Agent (a sort of radio James Bond), "Radio Luxembourg, 208 Metres, Medium Wave". Blimey, that's positively ancient.

I could go on, but I'm feeling tired. At least I rode my FJR today .

 

[wfooshee]

Um, not too sure how to put this, but I still use my HP25C (yes, it's the one with the "Continuous Memory") on a daily basis, although I've replaced its rechargeable batteries with ordinary alkalines. You can't get a decent calculator these days.

Nothing beats RPN for big calculations!!!!!

In high school, I had a Corvus 500 calculator that was RPN, the only non-HP use I ever saw in a calculator. My 67 still works, aside from not being able to use the card reader. That thing was a beast, with its programmability and being able to save programs and data on the little magnetic card strips! Without the cards, it's just a nice calculator, though; its real power was external storage. I mean, multiple kilobytes on cards in a little pocket doodad you could carry around in the calculator's belt case! KILOBYTES!!!!!!!

Hell, today someone could write an emulator for it that runs on my phone, and runs several times faster!!

 

[Patriot]

geez, I have my TI SR10 in a box with my high school diploma...my college unit of preferance was a TI SR51 which had a square root key !!! both red LED display... yep upside down SHELL OIL <sigh>

 

[Silver Penguin]

Some of you guys must have taken computer science in the 70s when the 'mainframe' was as big as a room and you had to use punched cards - in the absolutely correct order - to run the most simple of commands. And you set the pile of cards somewhere and then knocked them onto the floor !? :blink:

I'd forgotten all about that until now. In college computer class, we had to dial up the main frame by phone to get a connection. There weren't enough lines to go around so if you dallied long enough, you didn't get through, and were able to use the phone for the entire class time, instead. Then they figured out that the International students were calling home so they blocked the zero from the phones. I was still able to call my Mom though.

Had to write computer programs in BASIC. Line 10, line 20 etc. Then we got our very own home computer. It had a membrane keyboard and connected to the TV via a wire. Memory was an audio cassette recorder that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I can hardly believe how far we've come since then, since it seems only a short while ago.

 

[Patriot]

since it seems only a short while ago.

ah, OK...

 

[Khunajawdge]

Lowest I ever saw gasoline when I was driving was 25.9 cents. Used to work in gas stations and would call my friends when we got word that the gas prices were to go up the next day (sometimes to as high as 33.9 cents). Of course, at both stations where I worked, it was full service -- windows, tire pressure, ask about checking under the hood. Sundays were usually slow, and whoever was working that day (usually 2 of us) would have his own car up on the racks in the bays as we serviced and lubed everything, or tuned them using the huge new Sunn Scope the boss had bought. And the boss encouraged all of that! I can remember selling a set of tires at night while alone, mounting them between trips out to the islands to pump gas for other customers (of course gas stations had mounting and balancing machines back then) and getting a commission for that unexpected sale (PITA that it was due to all the interruptions).

Say Rich,

"If" you ever go back to work as a gas station attendant, I am going to find your station, reportedly for its "X-cell-ent" service! If I could count on that level of service from a service station (these days), then I would be a return customer, and I would Not be stingy with a tip!

In my "if it were an ideal world mode"... just sayin'

 

[stealth1]

Somebody was talking about rotary dial phones the other day.

I told him we were technologically advanced in my home town.

When I was a kid we had voice activated phones.

"BS" he said.

"Nope" says I,"you just picked up the phone, a voice said Number please and you told them what number you wanted."

It worked great!

My first car was a Studebaker Lark. I paid $180 for it and it ran great!

My granddad was a Dr. but he wasn't making house calls anymore because he couldn't see well enough to drive. Patients still came to his house.

When the adults wanted to get rid of us kids for the afternoon they would give us all a quarter and we would walk downtown to see the movie matinee.

 

[oldryder]

Dads 46 ford. he was working under the hood and my 5 year old self somehow found the starter button. I got a whuppin I can still remember.

smoking cigarettes with my buddies in the back yard tent and getting a bare @ss whupping when I got caught. (ditto for my buddies)

goin out on trash nite and picking radio's and TV's (tube type, remember "tubes") from peoples trash and going to the hardware store and using their "tube checker" machine to find the bad tubes and fixing the radio's and TV's and selling them. A kid could fix a radio or TV.

playing in the neighborhood anywhere I wanted and home "when the street lights come on."

making motorbikes from a bicycle frame and a scavenged horizontal shaft mower engine. no throttle, no brakes, no lights, no helmets, just fun.

going to catholic school and getting beat with a stick (you know, those 3-4' long "pointers" the nuns used) for doing horrible misbehaviors like "talking". then getting whupped at home for for getting in trouble at school.

buddies and me riding bikes for miles and miles without adult supervision and no one worrying about perverts

Dodgeball every weekday in the summer at the local public school summer recreation program and no one ever worried about "self esteem". you knew you were gonna get slaughtered when you were younger but your turn would come.

lots and lots of sandlot baseball. do kids even play sandlot anymore?

 

[Big-D]

One room schools and outhouses

Doesn't Bust still prefer to use an Outhouse?

I remember going to the local drug store, sitting at the bar-counter and ordering a milkshake. They had the coin operated music machines at each seat and at the tables around the place. Then when you got your milk shake, they gave you one of those paper straws that would collapse when you tried to drink your shake. The milkshake same in a metal container that always had a little left over that would fill your glass half way up again making you feel like you got two milk shakes instead of only one.