The Black and White TV! How did we survive?

[beemerdons]

The BLACK & WHITE TV

... I think
you'll enjoy this. Whoever wrote it could have been my
next door neighbor because it totally described my
childhood to a 'T.' Hope you enjoy
it.

Black and
White

(Under age 40?
You won't understand.)

You could
hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the
rabbit ears as far as they go.


'Good Night,
David.

Good Night,
Chet.'


My
Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on
the same cutting board with the same knife and no
bleach, but we didn't seem to get food
poisoning.

My Mom used to
defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it
raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped
in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack
coolers, but I can't remember getting
e.coli.


Almost all of us would

Have rather gone
swimming in the ocean instead of a pristine pool
(talk about boring), no beach closures
then.

The term cell
phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell,
and a pager was the school PA
system.

We all took gym,
not PE... And risked permanent injury with a pair of
high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having
cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles
and built in light reflectors. I can't recall
any injuries but they must have happened because they
tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid
kids! I guess PE must be much harder than
gym.

Speaking of
school, we all said prayers and sang the national
anthem, and staying in detention after school caught
all sorts of negative attention.

We must
have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic
health system we had then. Remember school
nurses? Ours wore a cap
and a white, starched dress and white nylons and
shoes.

We thought
that we were supposed to accomplish something
before we were allowed to be proud of
ourselves.

I just can't
recall how bored we were back then without computers,
Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable
stations.

Oh yeah... And
where was the Benadryl and the sterilization kit
when I got that bee sting? I could have been
killed!

We played 'king
of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant
construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom
pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids
liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine
did) and then we got our butt
spanked.

Now it's a trip
to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a
$49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the
attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly
vicious pile of gravel where it was such a
threat.

We didn't act up
at the neighbor's house either; because if we did, we
got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt
spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny
Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his
tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell
off.

Little did his
Mom know that she could have owned our
house.

Instead, she
picked him up and swatted him for being such a
goof. Yep, we must have lived in a
neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off,
not a single person I knew had ever been told that
they were from a dysfunctional
family.

How could we
possibly have known that?

We needed to get
into group therapy and anger management
classes.

We were
obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we
didn't even

Notice that the
entire country wasn't taking
Prozac!

How did we ever
survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF
US WHO SHARED THIS ERA; AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY
FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR
ANYTHING!

Pass this to
someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures
are very often the
best.

 

[RossKean]

Holy shit, Don! I must be almost as old as you are!

 

[Bungie]

Having just rolled the odometer over to 55 (Crap! where does the time go). This is spot on the money. Playing street hockey (on the street!) with my buddies until the street lights came on. When a car came, we'd all yell "CAAAAR", and we'd get off the road. Nobody got killed. We got a slap on the ass when we were stupid, if we traversed into bad, where, somebody could get hurt or cause property damage, we got the belt.

Nowadays, kids spend their time with their faces stuck in their 'devices' and if they do something 'bad' they get a good stern timeout.'

True story: Thinking I need to get some exercise, I did the unthinkable and bought a bicycle (hey, I loved my bikes as a kid). Well, I talked the girls in coming out for a ride with me (they both had brand new bikes that had NEVER been ridden, one still had the price tag on it).

I can't believe, I've smoked for ever. I'm fine, not even breaking into a deep breath when I notice both the girls (who live in 'device' land), 12 and 15, are both stopped, faces are flushed, gasping for air. What the flying fuck is wrong with THIS picture!

 

[beemerdons]

Holy shit, Don! I must be almost as old as you are!

Brother Ross I am not as old as dirt, but I know the three FJR Forum guys that are: Niehart, petey and Jer! JSNS, Fossils!

 

[BkerChuck]

That does bring back memories. Our partents didn't have remotes to change the channel they had us. "Get up and turn the news on boy" was my father's remote.

I remember small game hunting with my dad when I turned 12. "stomp through that briar patch and bark like a dog scare the rabbits out".

I rode my bicycle or skateboard to my friends houses kids now expect the parents to drive them the measly quarter mile. If I got in trouble at school I kenw I was in trouble at home! Now parents complain how the teacher has it in for their poor misunderstood little angel.

 

[sath182]

I'm certainly not that old, but my parents were. And I was brought up under these same values. Even I, in my comparative youth, am very concerned with how lazy, self absorbed, and oblivious to the world everyone has become. Fall and skin your knee? Rub some dirt in it and keep going. Thirsty? Drink some hose water.

 

[Big Sky]

Yeah, come in the house complaining, "I'm hungry!" Mom's response: "Go out to the garden and get a carrot." And we did, just washed it under the spigot...and rhubarb, and raspberries and apples...

Or as nine or 10-year-olds, after our morning chores were done: "Hey Mom, me an' Dave are goin' fishing. I'm gonna make us some P&J sandwiches." Mom: "Okay. Be home by dinner." Didn't even ask us if were were going to the river or the creek...

 

[bluesdog]

Oo, don't get me started!

But I will say the first time I even saw a tv was at my aunt's house. Hockey Night in Canada was on, and I got nauseated trying to watch, as the cameraman panned erratically trying to follow the puck.

I hate hockey to this day

 

[beemerdons]

Oo, don't get me started!


But I will say the first time I even saw a tv was at my aunt's house. Hockey Night in Canada was on, and I got nauseated trying to watch, as the cameraman panned erratically trying to follow the puck.

I hate hockey to this day

Ai Caramba bluesdog, don't say it around FJRob1300 or RaYzerman19 eh; they'll take away your Canadian Tire Money and put you on a Poutine Watchlist! JSNS, eh!

 

[airboss]

Funny, how my Dad insisted that we didn't need no TV set, radio was good enough!

Until the local TV station announced it would broadcast the World Series.

 

[juniorfjr]

My parents had one of the first sets in the neighborhood. Thursday nite fights would fill the house, mom almost made dad get rid of the TV, just to get her life back.

 

[wnyfjr]

We had a Zenith B/W tv...with a remote! It was called the Channel Commander and it had two whole buttons. One to turn it on and off and the other to change the channel: UP only! If you clicked it too many times and passed your channel, you had to cycle through all the VHF channels to get back to the one you wanted. If you wanted to watch UHF, you still had to get up and turn THAT knob!

Of course, where we lived we only got about 10 channels total, so no biggie! Then Dad put one of them new-fangled antennas on the roof that you could turn. Had a big box on the top of the tv and you would turn the large knob to the direction you wanted and it would s-l-o-w-l-y rotate the antenna on the roof.

Hi-tech indeed!

 

[SacramentoMike]

I remember the first time I saw seat belts in a car parked on the street. It was a Cobra, maybe '62 or '63. What a thing of beauty! IIRC, a 4-point "restraint system," like a jet fighter. Riding with my dad, if he had to brake hard, his right arm came across to hold me in my seat. Guess it worked OK, I made it.

Dogs ran free, kids ran free, and we'd get ice chips from the milk trucks during our street softball or football games. Out all day, home for dinner when my father whistled (I could hear it for two blocks), and back out in the summer until bedtime. Winters, head-first sledding down the biggest hill in the neighborhood. Through the trees. And hiding behind parked cars till somebody came to a stop at the corner, then we'd run out, crouching, and hook onto the bumper (cars had bumpers) and slide for blocks. Our galoshes didn't last too long.

Thirsty? Drink some hose water.

You had hoses?

(@wny): When we finally got a tv, there was ONE station, and it only came on about 8 p.m. most days, to broadcast Uncle Miltie or Ed Sullivan or something. Eight stations? You must be just a kid! :lol:

 

[sath182]

You had hoses?




<----- Est. 1986

Parents did most of their growing up in the 60s and held on to those values when raising us.

So, who feels even older now? The way some of you talk there's a full century difference in vintage!

 

[mcatrophy]

Here we go.

Mother got a television for the Queen's coronation in 1953. It was rented, she didn't fancy having repair costs (at least, that's what she said; she probably couldn't afford to buy one). Black and white of course. I was 10. Gawd, that was a long time ago.

Not many years later we moved to a house where, at night, we could see the television transmitter aerial (US: antenna) glowing a dull red. It broadcast on 45Mc/s (this is before we used Hertz for frequency). Made myself a television using an ex-government radar IF strip (sorry, a little technical; a few here will know what I'm talking about). Its frequency was 45Mc/s. This was no coincidence, the radar IF strip was originally made as the RF stage of a television receiver, a convenient adaptation for the designers of war-time radar sets.

So my first home-made TV picture was 5.5 inches, black-and-green (the colour of the radar tube). It was of the Tiller Girls. A bit of a wobbly picture, but for me that was the most satisfying picture I've ever seen, before or since. The sound sucked, though. There wasn't any.

My work-bench was my bed, the chassis was live to the (240 volts) mains. The tube required something like 2500 volts, this was also exposed. Never actually knew what any voltage really was, I no means of measuring anything. How I never killed myself with the shocks I got I'll never know. (Might explain something about me, though.)

 

[Pterodactyl]

First memory of TV was when Elvis made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. We lived on Fort Wingate outside Gallup, New Mexico. A neighbor had a TV and just about every family member of every officer on post was squeezed into their living room. It was a "Really Big Shue".

We then moved to St. Johns, Newfoundland and had our own TV. One channel that broadcast about 10 hours a day. If I was deemed a good boy I could stay up and watch "Bonanza".

 

[ionbeam]

In 1959 I remember going over to Cherry Valley Illinois to watch Bonanza in COLOR! That was just as good as going across the (gravel) road to listen to one of the very first STEREO record players. The ones that could play 45, 33-1/3 and 72 RPM records. My grandparents were on a party line and phones only had 4 digit dialing.

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

 

[bluesdog]

I remember them good old days, before nostalgia

 

[beemerdons]

I remember them good old days, before nostalgia

bluesdog, this is Alan ionbeam's first television set! JSNS, Flintstones eh!