I Remember When…..

120px-You_Can't_Do_Business_with_Hitler_rehearsalI remember the days before television. I ran home from school so I could hear the next chapter of serial stories on the radio!

 

 

800px-Mimeograph.svgI remember mimeograph machines, tiny printing presses that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. That was how we made copies of documents.  No photocopiers.  No Kinkos.

 

I remember traveling alone by train.  I believe I between 7 and 9 years-of-age and was going from Florida to New Jersey.

I remember spending all day outdoors playing in the woods, building forts, looking for snails.  The only time constraints were to be home for meals and bedtime.

I remember when people put clear plastic over all the living room furniture to keep it clean, whether or not they had children. And the plastic stayed on when company came. We sat on it!

I remember being at a house that was on a party line, meaning neighbors shared the same phone line. If you picked up the phone when someone else was on it, you could hear the conversation or join in. I don’t think we ever had a party line.

120px-Vinyl_records_singleI remember when new musical hits came out on singles, i.e. one song per record.

 

 

120px-WLANL_-_mchangsp_-_Wringer_Hagea,_HageaI remember using a clothes wringer before hanging the laundry on the clothes line. No dryers.

 

 

I remember traveling to Seattle to go to college. On my first day I purchased a small typewriter in a red case. It served me for many, many years.

I remember attending the 1971 Atlanta International Pop Festival and waking up to hear Richie Havens singing “Here Comes the Sun.”

I remember going to concerts to hear Peter, Paul and Mary; Ike and Tina Turner; James Brown; Diana Ross; War; Harry Belafonte; and Prince……. when they were young!

Atari-2600-Wood-4Sw-SetI remember having an Atari 2600 game console and later an Atari word processor.  It was an 8-bit computer and the cartridges held 8 KB or less of ROM.

 

 (All pictures on this post are from Wikimedia)

 

What do YOU remember from this era?

 

 

 

30 thoughts on “I Remember When…..”

  1. Hey that was my Atari 2600 game consul, bought and paid for by making and selling brownies to our neighbors. Must have been around 7 years old.

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  2. You have some pretty awesome memories. I remember making forts in the woods and playing outside until it got dark.

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  3. Great post, Karuna. I remember when TV stations signed off for the night by playing the Star-Spangled Banner. (On a side note, would you be willing to edit a post I’m working on, please? I would just need an email address.)

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  4. I remember when I used to walk into a food store and could smell the coffee beans being roasted, the bacon being sliced, the cheeses being cut and wrapped in greaseproof paper, the sawdust being spread upon the floor – all of this, whilst hearing the refrain of the cash till . . . ‘ker-ching!’ . . . ‘ker-ching!’ . . . ‘ker-ching!’

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  5. Love this Karuna! I remember ALL those things, too! I remember it cost 5cents to go to the movie on Saturday. I saw Nancy Sinatra, Petulia Clark, Elvis Presley in concert. I remember learning long-division in 5th grade. 🙂 Just last night my husband and I were discussing having a party line. My friends and I got home from school and VERY CAREFULLY picked up the receiver, knowing that’s when the two neighborhood gossips conversed. We about had heart attacks when they’d stop talking and say, “Did you hear something?”

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    1. I remember going to the movie every Saturday but I didn’t remember it was 5 cents. I remember loving all the SCI-FI movies. I’ve tried to find some of them but no luck.

      The party line feels familiar to me. I wish I remembered more clearly about that.

      Another thing I remembered since I wrote the post is that once we got the television, all meals were eaten on individual t.v. tables in front of the t.v.

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      1. Oh yes. TV trays- and how I loved TV DINNERS in their little silver aluminum trays! The movies I went to were all Lassie or the Three Stooges- no wonder they only cost a nickle !

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  7. Don’t forget Dionne Warwick (2 concerts), Diana Ross, John Denver (2 concerts)Hot Chocolate, Last Poets from Brooklyn (Gill Scott Herren), and Alvin Ailey dance troupe (2 times)

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    1. Thanks for the additions! I remember most of those. Hot Chocolate doesn’t sound at all familiar though. We sure went to a lot of concerts in those days.

      I especially loved Alvin Ailey dance troupe.

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  8. I remember so many of these…my first 45 single record, my sister and I practicing dance steps before going out to James Brown, but boy you went to so many concerts…wow! I saw the Rolling Stones at 13 but saw James Brown only when he was old! learned to type on an underwood NOT electric, transcribing dictations on a dictaphone, sending out telexes around the world before computers, did have a party line once when I lived in the country…such snoops on the line! Great post, Karuna!!

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      2. I should do that too.

        I want to tell you about something that happened last week. I haven’t decided whether or not to write about it.

        I just sent you a “more details” email.

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  9. Pingback: I Remember When #2……. | Living, Learning and Letting Go

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