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“Just Thinking"
The old saying goes, the days are long, but the years are short. I think of that often when showing young people older homes. One of my favorites is the phone nook, for those of you that don’t know, back when telephones were large, tethered to the wall, and shared by the whole family there needed to be a dedicated spot for them. It was small, recessed alcove in a hallway with a shelf for the rotary phone, and a shelf underneath for the phone book. The phone mounting bracket in the kitchen was the home of another phone that had a twenty-foot cord, typically wrapped tight and knotted, that needs to be removed, patched and painted. Also, disregarded right away are the TV cables coming out of the wall, since everyone is streaming with their smart TVs.
This got me thinking of everyday things Baby Boomers grew up with that many Millennials and a lot of Gen Xers barely recognize or have no clue how to use them. Some Gen X remember a few of these, but Boomers lived them.
Every generation has a few quirks that define their childhood, favorite toys, technologies, and everyday routines that later generations can’t quite wrap their heads around. But the world that we grew up in feels practically prehistoric to younger generations today.
From rabbit-ear antennas to gas station attendants, we lived through an analog era that shaped everything from how we watched TV to how we made a phone call.
We were the remote. If Dad said, “Change the channel,” you got up and turned the dial. Then if the picture was fuzzy, we had to adjust the rabbit-ear antennas to just the right position that usually went to crap as soon as you let go of the atena. TV signoffs meant the day was officially done. After midnight, stations aired the national anthem, then a test pattern until sunrise.
We didn’t send text messages. we dialed on rotary phones. If you had to call a number with a 0, it took so long that you often forgot your place and would have to hang up, look up the number again and start over. If the person you were calling was already on the phone, you’d hear a busy signal, no voicemail, no call waiting, no “I’ll call you right back.” You just tried again later. No Google searches or stored contact lists, you remembered phone numbers or pulled out the phone book, which was printed with every local number including the yellow pages, to look up local businesses, these also include advertisements. The phonebooks were updated yearly and left on your front doorstep by the phone company.
Music was quite different then also, Record players required gentle needle placement, cleaning kits, and the constant threat of “DON’T SCRATCH THE VINYL!” Followed by 8-track tapes that were clunky, unreliable, and prone to switching tracks mid-song, but they were high-tech at the time. Then came the audio cassette that were often eaten by the cassette player, that is where we attempted to repair them by putting a pencil in one of the gears turning it until all of tape was back in the housing, if it wasn’t too gnarled or twisted. Car radios, which were AM only, had big plastic mechanical buttons to take you to your preset stations, pushing a button would send the needle jumping across the dial otherwise you were forced to gently turn the knob trying to find a clear station before a bump brought on static.
Collecting S&H Green Stamps? You collected them from grocery stores, pasted them into books, and redeemed them for household goods.
Full-service gas stations, where an attendant would pump your gas, check your oil, wash your windshield and check your tire pressure.
School featured overhead projectors with clear sheets smudged with marker ink and ditto machines that printed in purple-ink with a unique, probably toxic smell that we will ever forget.
Milk delivered to the doorstep in glass bottles, door-to-door salesmen, encyclopedia sets and paper maps. Smoking was everywhere, cars, offices, restaurants, movie theaters, airplanes and even hospitals.
In cars, seat belts were optional, often stuffed behind the seats, no car seats, babies sat on someone’s lap and the windows rolled down with a hand crank.
It was a world without smartphones, Wi-Fi, streaming, seatbelts or bike helmets and somehow lived to tell the tale.
Let me know what you think.
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