I’m so old, that…

[Heavy_Metal]

My oldest tubas are not quite twice as old as I am.

[Doc]

My oldest tubas are not quite twice as old as I am.

My oldest tuba is the same vintage as me.

[Yorkboy]

Old enough to remember bench seats in cars, and manual three-speed column mounted shifters (had them both and miss them too)

C117A3A6-20C5-485A-8A29-113A93656A35.jpeg (43.35 KiB) Viewed 712 times

[the elephant]

… I remember phone numbers that had word prefixes, such as "MYrtle 6-0276" (our house) or "DIamond 4-5657" (my grandparents).

I remember when the cost to mail a letter across the country went up to 6¢ for standard, non-Air Mail. (I collected stamps.)

I remember that you rented from the local phone company (in my case it was Southwestern Bell) black, dial-operated Western Electric phones that were hard-wired to themselves and to the wall — none of the cords were socketed plugs. You had what you had and you could not upgrade it, or even move it around the house. And I remember when touch-tone phones were the new and exciting thing.

I remember full-service gas stations.

I remember helping mom by licking sheet after sheet of S&H Green Stamps and putting them into the booklets so we could visit the S&H store to pick out our "free" items that the shoebox full of booklets would get us.

I remember watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

I remember watching Walter Cronkite talk about Vietnam while I sat in the darkened living room on my Dad's lap as he fussed over how inaccurately it was being portrayed, and him softly crying about his Marines who were blown to pieces.

I remember LBJ telling the nation that he would not seek reelection.

I remember when Sesame Street was brand new.

I remember cigarette vending machines at the register of restaurants.

I remember Meadowlark Lemon and the Harlem Globetrotters.

I remember my Grandfather retiring from the USAF after a 34-year career.

I remember going to the record shop to buy 45s.

I remember the new toy sensation called LEGO.

I remember when neighbors would come over and play cards all night.

I remember our '56 Dodge pickup (red) and our '65 Ford Fairlane 500 (black).

I remember rollerskates with skinny, steel wheels that you had to use leather straps and a "key" to clamp to your shoes.

I remember my blue Schwinn Sting Ray.

I remember the Beatles.

[bloke]

I remember watching the first appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on an old blonde maple cabinet (with doors) television that had been demoted to another room, as my parents had added a den/kitchen/master bedroom and bath onto the house. (Better judgment would have dictated him selling that house and moving to a nicer neighborhood.) Dad controlled the good working newer 19 inch black and white portable on a rolling stand, and had no interest in the Beatles as Bonanza (correct, or something else ?) was on NBC at the same time. I struggled with the antenna and the fine tuner to keep the picture on that old worn out television, but did see the Beatles broadcast (all by myself...not even my 11 years older sister or my 13 years older brother). Something else that I would go off and watch around that very same era was the Judy Garland Show, as my Dad had no interest in that either (perhaps that was the show that was back to back with Bonanza?) even though he was a clarinetist and did like music. I was about four or five years old when I was watching the Judy Garland Show and I guess I was six or so when the Beatles first appeared on Sullivan. Prior to the fall of1962, our single family car was a 55 Chevrolet. It wasn't fancy enough to be a Bel-Air. It was three on the tree with no air conditioning, and blue with a dealer-painted white top, which tended to keep the passenger area a little cooler in the summer. In the fall of 1962, my Dad bought a 63 Impala with automatic transmission and air conditioning. By then, my four grandparents - who are all born in the early-to-mid 1880s - were starting to have health problems, and he wanted to make absolutely sure that he had a car that could make it to Kansas or Iowa, if one of the four of them fell ill.
A year or so later, there was an emergency trip to Kansas, as his mother had a stroke. She had extremely high blood pressure her entire life and was told in her 30s to prepare for a very early death and to have someone to look after her children, but she lived to be about 83. Shortly into Arkansas, the universal joints on the back of the drive shaft played out which defined a serious wobble in the drive shaft. He turned around and drove back to Memphis to have that addressed, which delayed his trip by several hours. I was on that trip with him. He was really pissed off about that car, and traded it in a few months later for a new 65 Pontiac Star Chief. That Pontiac was a huge car, and as our grandparents moved out of their large houses into smaller ones - or in with us, he would actually move furniture to our home from their homes in the trunk of that car.

[Teubonium]

... I played under the direction of Karl King who was a guest conductor at one of my concerts in college. I still have the program he autographed for me.

... that my first car was a 1941 Ford Business Coupe. (Purchased in 1954).

[bloke]

I imagine there was a gap between 1941 cars and 1946 cars.

After all, we had to protect the murderous communists from the murderous fascists.

bloke "who struggles to understand the logic of that"

[Mary Ann]

I remember almost all of what Wade does, except that I remember 3 cent stamps. They were purple. The phone number I first remember was Blackstone 6 5263. Later it changed to Fleetwood 6, then to numbers. One phone, on the table in the hall, and there was no such thing as a private conversation.
My mother's Nash, which preceded the bought-new 55 Plymouth (stick shift of course. She drove sticks until her arthritis made it impossible; what she said about automatic transmissions was, "all you have to do is step on the gas and aim it."

[bloke]

I remember when postcard postage went up from 3 cents to 4 cents (I was in the second grade).

I also remember when our coinage ceased being minted of precious metals...
(those who don't know when that occurred: I suspect they possess sociology, English, or history degrees.)

[tofu]

.

[Jperry1466]

I remember when we had a 1947 Plymouth and a 1941 Chevy (dad's work car) and being fascinated by Clarabelle, the clarinet-playing clown on the Howdy Doody Show when we finally got a TV. Six years later I tried to play the clarinet in beginner band and was very mediocre. The next year switched to baritone, for which I was better suited, and when I got to high school, the tuba (or bass horn as my director called it), where I found my home. When I started teaching, every Texas kid who drove a pickup to school had a deer rifle, .22, or shotgun in the back window. The trucks were never locked, and nobody ever thought about shooting another kid.

[martyneilan]

I thought Big Bird was white, not yellow, because I grew up with a B&W television. Not getting a new television was a hill to die on for my mother for years.
My stepfather was very proud of his Quadrophonic audio system he had purchased from Radio Shack.
The local Radio Shack had a big console tube tester in the back of the store.
My stepfather used to drive up to the Playboy Club on weekends as a family trip.