How old/young are you?

[chiquitita]

just curious

[thomasgeorge]

.....Old enough to remember when Gay ment happy, talk radio was "The Lone Ranger" and running water was a fast trip to the well.....Tom

[DannyRaphael]

Since my age ends in a zero, I don't know in which category to vote (I'm tempted by the 'lower' of the two, however). Maybe you should redo your poll categories?

I remember riding my bike to/from school w/o locking it for fear it would get ripped off, seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, cracking up at Red Skelton (when humor didn't depend on the "F" word), where I was when JFK was shot, Alan Shepard's first Mercury capsule ride, when you could buy a bottle of Nehi chocolate milk out of refer cooled with about 8" of circulating chilled water, Howdy Doody, Sen-Sen, when the L.A. Dodgers played in the L.A. Colosseum for two years, when '57 Chevy's weren't nearly as cool as they seem to be today (back then, they were just 'cars') and when Tops baseball cards were a nickel a package.

Back then "bad" meant bad, not (sometimes) good like it does today.

OK: I confess. I'm 10.

~DannyR~

[gland]

Older than dirt.

I'm 64.

[Sharon Brunson]

Can I say in dog years?

[DJ Dubovsky]

I am 44 for 4 more days then I turn 29 again. Yup, I love this new math.
DJ

[Sanda]

@ DJ

[Jakaleena]

43 (April 21, 1959)

My first big memory is of JFK being shot and how my family parked in front of the (black & white) TV for days...

My then teenage aunts had Beetles posters plastered on their walls, and played 45's on a little pink record player.

The first place I remember living was called Fruitdale Holler (or "hollow" to all you who don't speak bumpkin).

We didn't have indoor plumbing. We had a cistern, 2 pumps and an outhouse. The pump at the kitchen sink was just for washing. The drinking water came from a pump out in the yard. Living in the house were my grandparents (Mamaw & Papaw), my 2 youngest aunts, Mom, me and my sister. Saturday night was bath night. Mamaw would heat water on the stove and carry it to the basement where we had set up a galvanized tub. Baths were in order of age/importance, and Papaw always got to go first. I was next to last (my sis is younger!)

There, my secret is out - I am a true Hillbilly!

[sjm]

this december i will celebrate the 16th anniversary of my 39th and last birthday.

[CJ Swartz]

I remember ice boxes, ice delivery men who gave us free slices of ice in the summer heat, kneading the bag that oleomargarine came in to make the dye spread to color the oleo, our '39 Ford that we had until 1953, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance BEFORE they inserted the words "under God", Arizona as the "baby state" of all 48 states, Studebakers, DeSotos, Kaiser-Frasiers, and lil' Nash Ramblers (all together now, sing: Hey, buddy - how can I get this car out of 2nd gear? ), the 'day the music died', saddle oxfords... But I'm having trouble remembering this morning...

[BigAl]

End of October I'll be 30... (hex )

Going to watch the movie of Woodstock 3x to concentrate on each of the strips and then another 3x just for fun.

Miniskirts (the 1st time round)

[chris h]

'Saddle Oxfords' presumably some form of casting couch CJ ?

[CJ Swartz]

'Saddle Oxfords' presumably some form of casting couch? -- Chris

Shoes, Chris. Shoes for pre-pubescent girls. So, how far back do YOU remember -- you sounded like you knew an awful lot about Hadrian's Wall...perhaps Emperor Hadrian himself?

[Jakaleena]

I have a couple of relatives - twin girls - that I played with as a child. They always wore Saddle Oxfords.

I was nearly 10 years old before I realized they weren't really called "Twin Shoes"

[ravenmd]

I remember when it was quite safe and normal to for kids to have the run of the neighborhood unattened and without fear. (well, except fear of our parent's occasional "discipline", which is now called "abuse".)

I remember when the Montreal Canadians hockey team was actually made up of Canadians, from Montreal.

I remember singing O Canabis, instead of O Canada during highschool morning anthem time .. and never getting caught.

[Ed_L]

I remember most of the things CJ talked about. I also remember the milkman, and when we got the bottles of milk, we shook it up to blend the cream in with the skim milk. Ah, the good old days. I also vaguely remember the end of World War 2.

Ed

[airubin]

CJ and Big Al,

Your comments have brought back many memories of the past. I just shared my 67th birthday on Aug. 16 with my wife and our two closest friends. It was definitely a time of both looking forward and back.

Big Al, my wife and I were half way to Woodstock when we decided that the weather was terrible and the traffic reports were not much better. Our two kids, when they were teen-agers, almost gave us cult status since we even made the attempt to go.

CJ, I got a non-paying job as the iceman’s helper when I was five. It was great riding in his horse drawn wagon and I got to know all the merchants in the neighborhood-141st and Broadway in NYC. The best was getting free goods from the kosher deli.

Progress is great, but I miss the trolley cars and the old ball parks-Polo Grounds and Ebbetts Field. They were a joy to visit and NYC lost more than two teams when the Giants and Dodgers moved out west.

Not least of all, bring back the ten cent subway.

Alan

[Bob Walden]

I also remember delivery from the milkman. Great chocolate milk! We also had Omar the Baker. He would deliver fresh bread and sweet rolls to our house a couple times a week.

Loved watching the Bears play in Wrigley Field. Not on tv!!

My wife and I were having a discusion just the other day about cures for being ill. Anyone ever had a mustard plaster? Or Boric Acid for eye infections. It made your eyelids stick together. And that miracle cure for just about anything, Vicks!

For jobs I set pins in a bowling alley and cadyed(sp) on weekends to make money for what I wanted.

[Ed_L]

I think every kid set pins back then. I started setting duck pins in Vermont when I was a kid. When I was 13, I moved back to Indiana, where most people didn't even know what duck pins were. It was big time! The balls even had holes to put your fingers in. I also sold newspapers on the street corner in Vermont. If I saw a kid around 18 or so, I'd say "Hey mister! Want to buy a paper?" Worked almost every time.

Ed

[PixelMover]

Just turned 30 last month and feel OLD now

Then, last night, I was watching one of the 'battlestar galactica' movies and remebered watching the series as a kid..made me feel even older... then when I saw the credits, I noticed the movie was from 1976..I would have been 4 then... So I must have seen re-runs of the original series as a kid...now THAT really made me feel old

Oh, since the choice for me would have been either 20-30 or 30-40 I decided to vote true to my 'mental' age and ticked the 20-30 box..after all, I'm not half-way into 30 yet

[CJ Swartz]

Just turned 30 last month and feel OLD now

Poor baby! Let's see, when you were being born in 1972, I was facing my 29th birthday and thinking about the "horror of turning 30". Now, I look back on my 30's as one of the best decades in my life -- experienced enough to handle life much better than when I was a 20-something kid, and young enough to have the extra burst of energy to do things I wanted to do. I'll bet you'll find that your next 10 years are even better... And there's even better times to come!

[Keith]

A POEM FOR THOSE OVER 30

A computer was something on TV
From a science fiction show of note
A window was something you hated to clean
And ram was the cousin of a goat.

Meg was the name of my girlfriend
And gig was a job for the nights
Now they all mean different things
And that really mega bytes.

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano.

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3-in. floppy
You hoped nobody found out.

Compress was something you did to the garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for a while.

Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode.

Cut you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider's home
And a virus was the flu.

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead.

[CJ Swartz]

A POEM FOR THOSE OVER 30

Good one, Keith!

[Ed_L]

Love it!

Ed

[winwintoo]

I've been thinking about all the reminiscing and doing some of my own. I started working with computers in about 1964. I was looking to change jobs and signed up for a key-punch operators course. That was in the days when the only way to imput data to a computer was via a card with holes punched in it.

I was advised not to waste my money by my older and wiser friends. I ignored their well-meaning advise and went ahead with the 6 week/$1,000 (that's about 5K in todays money

I completed the course and went looking for a job where I could use my new-found skills.

I was living in Calgary at the time - Calgary has always prided itself on it's forward thinking. It was and is a happening place. It was the center of Canada's oil and gas industry. Some major players had their head offices in Calgary.

Well I called the personnel managers of all those major companies and was assured by all of them that I had wasted my money. I was told that there were no computers in Calgary, in fact there were none west of Toronto - furthermore, there never would be any west of Toronto!

We all know how wrong those "forward thinking" managers were. It took a couple of years, but my next computer job was at a telephone utility company in Regina where I was responsible for assembling the thousands of punch cards that fed information into the banks of computers that took care of the company's billing. I saw the rapid demise of punch cards and the move to personal computers. It's been an exciting ride and I'm glad I'm 58 - any younger and I would have missed all that.



Margaret

[dcarr]

I was 44 in March. At this point I am still trying to forget Disco and the 70's, but it seems the new millenium just won't let me do that!! But perhaps I can tweak a few brains with the following; I remember getting really happy in Catholic School, thinking I was really buying pagan babies. Thought I was saving the world!! Believing in Santa and the tooth fairy for a looong time. There were no psychologists around to convince my parents they were harming me!! Having the nuns tell you that your face would freeze that way when you stuck out your tongue. "Owing a Coke" with "no backsies, touch blacksies". These are just a few random and fond memories. How about you?

[chiquitita]

I remember the days when MTV played videos. 24 hours. Martha Quinn.....

[DJ Dubovsky]

I can remember when MTV didn't even exist. I can remember (just barely mind you) when commercials came only at the beginning and end of an uninterupted show and then only a couple. Now we have shows dispersed among the beginning and end of uninterupted commercials.
DJ

[G. Couch]

I remember BETA vs. VHS!

[DJ Dubovsky]

Yeah, but do you remember cassettes vs 8 Track tapes? Heck, how about real to real?
DJ