Back from the 80's

[HomeRacingWorld]

Just spent my work day on a range on Ft. Leonard Wood.

Where there is NO phone signal (hardly), no net, and the land line phones have those funny "cords" to them.

When is the last time you dialed anyone on one of those? Oh, they are that wonderful shade of olive green too.

I was repairing some electrical cables and had to get into one of the old closets. Guess what was in there? Old posters from 80's about the "REDs". That was fun to go through.

I felt like I was back in the service out in Colorado!

The younger soldiers out there have plenty of jokes about how "outdated" everything is.

Funny too, as we are seeing and hearing everything they say with a remote robot :) We have 2 of these out here. They are R/C tracked vehicles like you may have seen on TV. We use them for chemical detection/disposal.

Now I'm back in this fancy place with air conditioning, a phone I can type on, and our virtual world of slot cars :)

[reek455]

We were having a discussion last night and my younger children had no idea what a "floppy disc" was and the oldest knew about the 3.5" version but not 5 1/4". They can't even imagine a world without computers, cell phones, internet and so on. Total dark ages to them.

Rico

[BRP32]

Times were simpler then.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to them......

Wayne (Bolton's Speed Shop) :D :D :D

[nhdungeonracer]

[BRP32]

Yeah,

Heavy metal, big hair,chicks in spandex.... :banana-rock: :banana-rock: :banana-rock:

And you use to be able to roam around in junkyards back then too looking at cars from the 50s,60s and 70s.

My Dad and I spent many weekends roaming junkyards for parts for our 1:1 muscle car and streetrod builds.

There were still quite a few muscle cars sitting around in those yards back then too before these crazy investor types ruined the muscle car hobby for your average Joes......

Every corner had a pay phone so who needed a cell phone?

When was the last time you seen a pay phone anywhere on a street?

Hot rod parts stores like Midwest Auto Parts, Super Shops and HRP and Mr Gasket Co. were around these parts......

Now Summit racing put them all out of business years ago.

Well Mr Gasket is still around by name but got absorbed by someone now.

Wayne (Bolton's Speed Shop) :D :D :D

[TsgtRet]

Yeah I'm with you on this one; we're going through stuff in prep for our move next Summer and I came across 2 flip files full of 5 1/4" discs; I think I have an old CPU that will still take them. Harry, I still have a couple of cord type phones plugged in "just in case", and I have an original, chrome, Amana "Radarange" microwave that I'll be selling before we leave (what a boat anchor)! No telling what I'll find the further I dig. As far as the young soldiers making jokes about the out of date equipment; I remember doing the same thing when I was in, except it was joking about the WWII and Korean War stuff we had to use.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Boat anchor huh?



This is ours :) Anyone here that has visited old HRW will tell you it still works :)

My son bought it for us right before he shipped to the big sandbox.

Oh sure it takes a little power....when you turn it on it makes the lights at school flicker, but it makes great popcorn!

[waaytoomuchintothis]

As the senior member in loco, as it were for right now, (there's probably lots of us watching the thread, but we take a lot of naps), I suspect now is the time to provide a new context for Harry's thread. For us, the 80s were a weird era when screaming while wearing costumes was regarded as music on this side of the Atlantic, while in England, really amazing new kinds of Rock&Roll were coming to light having been born in the late 70s, and really crazy things were done to consumer protection and the Uniform Code regarding corporate law.

I was born on a military base, Fort Benning, Georgia. The only concrete was the wash areas for tracked vehicles and the little pyramids of concrete barely visible above the grass where the steel doors to ammo dumps were. Everything, including the camp dispensary where I was born (a lie, I was actually born in a barracks the company jeep passed along the way), was wood framed yellow buildings with brown trim. Corded phones, oh yeah, and washing machines with a wringer on top, oh yeah.

Ah, but the late 50s and early 60s, that was a great time. Rockabilly that morphed into real rock and we heard every beat of it on AM Rock radio, amazing advances in the nation's history, World Series that were so accessible, there was an announcement every morning and afternoon in school about it, and no one ever heard of a war that slaughtered our boys for nothing, historically speaking. I received an email that summed it up beautifully... Yes, I'm giggling at this... its awfully long, but its all true and correct. Please be patient and read it.

Back then,we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that were used for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

Back then,we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing from overseas that didn't last.

Back then,we had one TV, or radio, in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen,we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity, or regulate our sodium intake- we knew sweat for that.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

Back then, people took the street car or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi crazy driver service. We had four or five electrical outlets in a room.

How's that? Hoohah!

[MoparGreg]

Hey that sounds like my place, only my house is stuck int he 50s. The style is more on the mid-century modern side of thing. We are renovating our house to suit the 1950s. I have finished the lounge room mostly & 3 bedrooms. The only modern thing is the flat screen TV in the lounge but I have started to build a wooden structure around it so its only visible when its in use. Our telephone is a plugin phone with a cord, ill take a photo of it later on as its an unusual phone.

So Harry what do you do for work?

[TsgtRet]

Harry, mine still works too.....my parents bought it brand new, I have it down in the basement next to my old computer desk and, yes, there is a local "brown out" when you turn it on.

Waytoo, I was born in the old WWII wooden hospital at Lockbourne AFB, Ohio (Dad was in the Navy); when we lived at NAS Glenview, Ill part of the base housing was made up of those same barracks converted into apartments. Stepson is stationed at Benning and they still have some of those same buildings......they're set up as a sample "company area" at the Infantry Museum. When I lived at Glenview I had a basket on my 1 speed Huffy Impala bike so I could run to the store for my Mom. My first job at 16 was working at the A&P (if you don't know, ask an old person) and one of my jobs was sorting those empty pop bottles that people brought back for deposit. I also marked prices using a "jump stamp" that you had to reink regularly and I ran a giant NCR cash register where you punched in the price and department for each item and when you finished with the customer you made sure you gave them their "Plaid Trading Stamps" (that was A&Ps brand, most everyone else had S&H). One of my other duties was bagging (in paper bags) and carrying out (you were forbidden to take tips). On the stamp thing my Paternal Grandparents smoked Raleigh and BelAir cigs because they had the trading coupons on the packs. My first 2 record albums (I already had 45s) were "Meet The Beatles" and "Jan & Dean, Drag City", I still have them both, albeit a little worse for wear. When you went to a Prom you rented a tux and borrowed Mom & Dad's "nice" car (what's a limo? my first prom was in 69 and I used my folks 66 Chrysler Newport convertible).

Found a new site on our Roku called PubDHub and all they have is old public domain TV, Movies and commercials. They have all kinds of commercials (including cars, of course) but the one that really got me was an hour of 1 minute toy commercials from the late 50s to the mid 60s....Remco, Mattel, Ideal, Hasbro, Gilbert, and the things you ordered from cereal. I have to admit, that my brother and I must have had at least a third of everything they showed! "Every boy wants a Remco toy......and so do girls!"


Umm, I think I need a nap now.

[RazorJon]

I had sex back in the 80's :banana-rock:
I miss the 80's :o

[Ember]

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Jon, ole buddy, like everything else, it was better in the 60s. It was easy for us to be sex-crazed. The worst thing that could come of it (other than being stupid and having to face some pregnant girl's father to explain what a piece of crap you were (the downside of sex with strangers), was syphilis, which was rather painfully cured with penicillin. As soon as herpes came on the scene, those days were over. Then came the unknown scary disease they eventually named AIDS, and all that "free love" just flat died immediately. Of course, by then, we were getting kinda old for that kinda stuff. Then came the 80s, and my generation just couldn't believe anyone was still doing it. I was engaged in 1970, and married in 1972, so I was out of it, anyway.

[oldtymer]

Wow...you brought back some old memories....I started with AT&T back in 1973 and one of my first jobs was changing colors on phones when the women were getting sick of that olive green and wanted more earthy colors....then they wanted longer cords...touchtone...lights on the princess phone..etc .Then I left after 39 yrs while working on a simple pair of wires that carried highspeed internet , phone and HD video..times have changed I now slot on a digital track 2 lanes but 6 different cars, unlike my setup from 1962...Oh ya...this was about the 80's..sorry 1971 to 1981 were kind of foggy ,lol......thanks for letting me time travel and ramble on.......keep slottin'...never toooo old for that !!!


Fred

[DHansen]

When I was a kid back in the 1960's, the house we lived in had one light bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the room with a pull string to turn it on and off with. Except for the kitchen and living rooms, they had a real light fixture with a switch next to the door. With maybe 4 outlets in the kitchen, the rest of the house had only one or two pr room. The phone hung on the wall in the kitchen and it was customary when you called someone to let the phone ring 10 rings to let who ever it was you were calling get to the phone. Usually they were not standing by the phone when it rang. Maybe they were out in the yard, or washing dishes, by hand, or working on the family car, or what ever. Now days if you don't get the phone picked up in two or three rings they hang up thinking you weren't going to answer it. [one of my pet peeves because my phone is still tied to my desk with a cord in my home office. I don't have a phone in every room]. And Wow. in the mid 1970's we all so got one of those fancy new Amana Radar Ranges. I think my younger brother still has it. Ours had two dials on it one for minutes, I think up to 10, and one for anything over that up to an hour. My mom and all of my aunts and grandmother all collected S & H Green stamps. Most of the bicycles we had were second or third hand. I never had a new bicycle in till I bought my own when I was 14 with money I earned setting trap at the local gun clubs. My dad and grandfather both had lead pots and molds for casting our own lead sinkers for fishing and casting new bullets for reloading ammo. [Me and both of my brothers were taught how to do that and no one got lead poisoning]. I learned how to fix things and turn wrenches from my dad and grandfather. Dad had 3 gravel trucks back then and something always need repaired. Things were a hole lot simpler back then. And we learned from doing things, and helping out our parents with chores like mowing the yard and changing the oil in the trucks, and if we wanted to go fishing the next day we went out at night with a flash light and a coffee can and collected night crawlers.