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We had a party line. You only answered your ring, not the neighbors down the road. Well, children did NOT answer the phone (unless older and had express permission to answer or call someone).


Ours was similiar:


Neighbors across the street still used one of these:

.........We used cardboard and newspaper inside our shoes when the soles wore out because we didn't have the money to get them repaired..... or God forbid..... buy new ones!! Also, when the shoelaces broke, we just tied a knot in them and skipped a couple of holes at the bottom so they could be tied again at the top holes!

....... I remember when there were only three stations that could be picked up by the TV antenna, and it was the kids' job to go outside, pick up the pipe wrench, and turn the antenna pole in the correct direction until the picture came in as clear as possible......and it was never that great a picture!! This ritual took place in any kind of weather!!

bort2.0 wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:01 pm

Ace wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 10:29 pm I was born in 1936----the same year Jesse Owens performed so brilliantly at the Berlin Olympics, dashing Hitler's notions about the superiority of the Aryan races.

Ace

You win!

I can only, dreadfully, imagine what life must have been like for you as a young guy up until around 9 years old.

For young boys at that WW II time, life sometimes was a bit anxious. But mostly we were content with our trikes, bicycles, roller skates, strap on cowboy pistols/holsters and hats, bags of marbles, balsa wood toy airplanes, and our very active imaginations. We had little clue as to the unspeakable carnage, suffering, broken lives, and grieving families all over the world because of that dreadful war.

Ace

Hey, I am another '69 High School graduate, my wife was in first grade.

CCC

My dad didn't believe that computers would ever come into his life in a way that would directly affect him. He was a fork-lift operator at a paper mill. Two weeks after he said that he went into training to make punch cards to be attached to multi-ton paper rolls for routing, and to work on terminals to pass the info along to the mill's computer. I was 10 at the time.

I also graduated HS in '69.

jtm wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:15 pm My living room as a kid had a kinescope recorder in it for a couple of years. I don't remember why. It was enormous, though. Seems like my Dad got the color wheel gizmo on it toward the end, so it was possible to make color movies with the monochrome monitor.

Wow, I'm gobsmacked. Many television stations didn't even have a kinescope recorder.

For those who don't know: A kinescope is made by using a film movie camera to record the audio and video images from a television monitor. Before videotape machines became available in 1956, this was the only way to record television. At that time, most of the movie film produced was being used by the TV networks to record programs originating from New York so they could then replay the programs two hours later over the Mountain/Pacific time zone network feed. Before the nationwide network feed was established though, kinescopes of programs would be mailed to stations not receiving a live network feed and shown a week later than stations on the East Coast. The resultant shortage of movie film was a major headache for the networks, TV stations, movie studios and other filmmakers.

Having a kinescope recorder at home...wow, your family must've been serious TV viewers. Unless you also had a darkroom, you'd have to send your recording out to be developed before your could watch it...using a movie projector.

An extensive collection of Kukla, Fran and Ollie kinescopes, going back into the 1940s, are now available on YouTube.

bloke wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 3:56 pm We had a Silvertone-Sears blonde maple television similar to the dark stained one that Yorkboy displayed in his post.

By the time I was in first or second grade, that TV was the “old dog” that constantly had to be fiddled with (both the channel and fine tuning knobs were worn out, as well as having some weak vacuum tubes), and the new reliable TV was a 19 inch portable B&W on a stand with wheels.

I'm just slightly younger than you, but for years our family's only TV was a 1968 Zenith 25-inch console. The fine-tuning was broken, and the channel indicator would go out of sync and show the wrong channel number, so you had to know what channel you were watching and count the clicks on the knob when switching channels. With no fine-tuning, to watch channel 13, you had to get the selector lodged between channels 12 and 13.

My Dad and I had to haul that hulking console into the repair shop several times, and the TV repair guy also made several trips to our place. Nobody could get the parts to fix the broken fine tuning or channel indicator, so we just had to live with the kludgy tuner.

The label on the back of the TV proudly proclaimed that it had a $ervice $aver chassis...

I remember when Pop-Pop had a hernia, he got a truss!!

In the second house that we bought, that exact wallpaper - in the picture below the picture of the tan telephone - was in our kitchen, along with lime green countertops and harvest gold appliances.
Also, nasty shag carpet, and this was a three-quarter brick house with the wood parts being painted a dark barn red color.
We did a lot of things to that house that would probably still be acceptable – decor wise – today…
… though not super-deluxe.

When I was a teen, Dad used to pick up old tube TV sets at rummage sales and see if I could get them going. Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't electrocute myself trying to revive those old TVs.

I had particular success with a mid-'60s 19" RCA color portable, and it was our living room TV for years. Woo hoo--we had two color TVs, just like rich people! I had to adjust it every few months to keep it watchable, but it made me beam with pride when people would comment how beautiful the picture was on that old TV.

We had a console TV when I was a kid. And I remember when it stopped working, and we got a new TV, We sat it on top of the console TV. As if it was some sort of piece of furniture. I guess it sort of was...?

bort2.0 wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 4:06 pm We had a console TV when I was a kid. And I remember when it stopped working, and we got a new TV, We sat it on top of the console TV. As if it was some sort of piece of furniture. I guess it sort of was...?

I guess you were inconsolable....

I'm not old... but I still wish to play the game:

When I was in high school Drivers Ed, the instructional videos were on 8mm film.

My grandfather was born during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency.

I remember buying "penny candy" as a kid and each piece cost 1 cent.

WC8KCY wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 12:58 pm

jtm wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:15 pm My living room as a kid had a kinescope recorder in it for a couple of years. I don't remember why. It was enormous, though. Seems like my Dad got the color wheel gizmo on it toward the end, so it was possible to make color movies with the monochrome monitor.

Wow, I'm gobsmacked. Many television stations didn't even have a kinescope recorder.

This was the early 70s, I think, so it was a relic. Not sure why we had it, but my Dad was an engineer at the local public TV station, so there were all kinds of strange things around from time to time. The station by then had a room full of 2” quad Ampex decks, most with color, so they didn’t need a kinny machine.

This is our first family car that I remember, 1947 Plymouth 2 door. Ours was dark blue. I learned to drive in a '55 Chevy just like this one below; that was in 1963. Wish I still had it. My parents never had an automatic transmission until I was grown and married.

jtm wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:18 pm

WC8KCY wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 12:58 pm Wow, I'm gobsmacked. Many television stations didn't even have a kinescope recorder.

This was the early 70s, I think, so it was a relic. Not sure why we had it, but my Dad was an engineer at the local public TV station, so there were all kinds of strange things around from time to time. The station by then had a room full of 2” quad Ampex decks, most with color, so they didn’t need a kinny machine.

With your Dad being an engineer, I'm not surprised you had a DuMont television set. From both a technical and a longevity standpoint, they were the finest TV you could get in the early days of television.

DuMont could also fully equip a television station, and if a station became a primary DuMont affiliate, the equipment would have been subsidized or even provided free or charge. If your kinescope recorder was from DuMont, it would have been called a Teletranscription machine.

I used to produce programming at the auxiliary studio of now-defunct CJIC-TV in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. All the castoff old stuff from the main studio went there to die, but having to use it made me a lot better at the art of television. I'd love to talk some shop with your Dad, were it possible.

My Dad bought a brand new four-door basic blue 55 Chevy, and paid $100 extra to have the top painted white at the dealership, so the car would not be so hot in the summer.
We drove that car on annual trips to Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin to see relatives. He also drove it out in the boondocks to open up bank accounts in small towns for Sears, where catalog order stores were being set up.
I believe around 1963 or so, my brother bought a 55 Chevy Belair identical to the one in the picture and the previous post (including paint scheme). He did a tremendous amount of mechanical and cosmetic work on it. He even restored the tube AM radio on it. He did all of these things himself without any help.
If you take a look at US Highway 51 N. through Illinois, you’ll see a railroad crossing part of the way up. In the past, that was a blind crossing without a flashing light. Our entire family was almost killed a that crossing one time, but my father made the wise split second decision to downshift to second gear and floor of the car, and the locomotive missed the back of our car probably by 2 feet. He pulled over afterwards and sat very quietly for about 30 minutes. I believe he wept a little bit.

I love them turtle back late 40's cars...

There isn’t a whole lot of difference between those mid-late 1950s Chevrolets and the later Chevrolet Nova, other than appearance and smaller details.

Hm. Three reminders of age:

1. My Granddad had severe stomach ulcers. The best surgeon around almost gutted him, slicing his abdomen wide open and removing most of his stomach. Now he'd be cured with bismuth tablets and an antibiotic.

2. We got our first TV around 1957. There were two Atlanta stations that we could get on the rooftop antenna, and they came on at 5pm. At 11pm both stations played the national anthem and then showed a test pattern for about an hour, and then went off till the next afternoon. Then the new 9am Today in Georgia show extended the hours, daily game shows and soap operas began, and late night movies started, eventually becoming 24-hr broadcasting.

Fairly soon after we got the set, Alabama had an educational broadcast channel going during the day, and I watched it every weekend or when I wasn't in school. I saw the same documentary on agriculture in Alaska at least fifty times. It was several years before Georgia caught up.

3. Radios and TVs ran off vacuum tubes. When I was about 11 I learned to look for tubes that didn't glow, and I would carry them to vacuum tube replacement displays in drugstores, service stations, and whatever other odd places carried them. It soon became almost impossible to find replacements as transistors took over electronics. Now the main uses of vacuum tubes are guitar amps and high-end stereo amplifiers.