# Why when I was a boy...



## David Baxter PhD (Jun 12, 2012)




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## Peter (Jun 13, 2012)

... of 16 years of age, I built my own computer from an electronics kit. It had a memory capacity of 64KB. I cannot remember the other specifications. The whole thing was built from scratch. That is, components were soldered onto a circuit board. The TV was the screen. The best it could do was to be a digital typewriter. If you had a Daisy-wheel printer, you could write letters, and the most popular game at that time was Dungeons and Dragons. This was before virtual Ping-Pong. The game was text driven - no graphics what so ever. Other electronic nerds, of similar ilk, would chat on the Citizen Band radios, discussing their latest adventures of Dungeons and Dragons. The funny thing was, we all had similar mental images of the game.
The reason for this post is that David’s posted thumbnail image reminded me of a circuit board.


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## Peter (Jun 14, 2012)

...I would spend time in the kitchen talking to my mother, or grandmother, while peeling potatoes and pea-pods. I would eat the occasional pea when no-one was watching. Mother knew, but I never ate more than a few, even when I was hungry. Today, peas come in a tin.


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## Peter (Jun 15, 2012)

...sending a love letter to the other side of the planet took ages.


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## Retired (Jun 15, 2012)

> sending a love letter to the other side of the planet took ages



Mostly because we had to wait for the ink to dry on the parchment..

Steve


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## David Baxter PhD (Jun 15, 2012)

You had parchment? You were lucky, mate. We had to sweep up all the dust from chipping the message into stone tablets.


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## Retired (Jun 15, 2012)

You had brooms?


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## David Baxter PhD (Jun 15, 2012)

Well they weren't really brooms... we just tied the hides of deceased rodents onto a stick and called it a broom.


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## Cat Dancer (Jun 15, 2012)

I miss the outernet.


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## Peter (Jun 15, 2012)

...carpentry required more hand skills than today.


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## lammers1980 (Jun 16, 2012)

I think i was the last generation who came of age knowing the outernet.  When I was in high school there were "mallrats", teens like me who hung out at the mall because it was the place to be.  Until I was about 14-15 only nerds went "online" using dialup modems and connecting to bbs's.  Then around grade ten people started talking of this worldwide web.  I remember it took about five minutes to load one picture.  So my high school days started in the age of the outernet and ended at the dawn of the internet age, or at least the beginning of when it really took off.  There was no texting then however, and the only kids who had cellphones were either rich or involved in shady business.


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## Banned (Jun 16, 2012)

I remember typing class in grade 9.  We weren't allowed to use white out if we made a mistake, and our school didn't even have a computer yet.  Our first home computer was a Commodore 64 when I was around grade 9 or 10.   Sometimes it's hard to believe I'm *that* old, but I guess I am lol.


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## Peter (Jun 17, 2012)

... Well, as a younger man during 1991. I was walking home along a footpath when I came across a disturbing scene. A lone man was walking towards me, speaking aloud and waving one of his hands. His other hand was against the side of his face. He looked clearly distressed. I was wondering what to do if he requested my assistance. As we got a few yards from each other, I realized he was on one of those new mobile phone units. I thought ?what is this world coming to? What next, Dick Tracy watch-phones?? ---YEP!


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## lammers1980 (Jun 17, 2012)

I experienced the same feeling when bluetooth earpieces came out.  I would see people seemingly having in-depth conversations with themselves.  Not even a hand to the side of their head.  It was only when they turned and I saw the earpiece that I realized they were having a phone conversation!


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## Banned (Jun 17, 2012)

I remember my first car phone.  It was this monstrous thing that sat on the seat beside me and plugged into the cigarette lighter.  It couldn't go much further cause it had a cord attached!  I thought I was pretty hot stuff with my new car phone haha.


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## Retired (Jun 17, 2012)

> bluetooth earpieces c.... people seemingly having in-depth conversations with themselves. Not even a hand to the side of their head



Can we expect the next step to include an embedded chip in our brain, that would enable continuous, and direct connectivity to one another?  

That way, as I see it, we would be able to have those same conversations, but eliminating that annoying and tiresome step of vocal speech and communicating only with our thoughts to one another.


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## lammers1980 (Jun 17, 2012)

Steve said:


> Can we expect the next step to include an embedded chip in our brain, that would enable continuous, and direct connectivity to one another?
> 
> That way, as I see it, we would be able to have those same conversations, but eliminating that annoying and tiresome step of vocal speech and communicating only with our thoughts to one another.



We are the borg.  Prepare to be assimilated.  Resistance is futile!


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## Peter (Jun 18, 2012)

Steve. I don't know about thought transference, besides telepathy. Sounds a bit scary! My internal 'censor' works more consciously than subconsciously. I would hate to think what messages would leak-out, uncensored, the way I think sometimes. Actually, I can easily imagine the traffic jam of thoughts leaking out from everybody. I am sure I have over a thousand times as many thoughts than I have spoken.


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## Peter (Jun 27, 2012)

... I would give flattened pennies to my girlfriends.

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... I would also give daisy chains to my girlfriend.


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## Retired (Jun 27, 2012)

> flattened pennies



Did you make those on a railroad track?

Steve


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## sweetsoleil (Jun 27, 2012)

that post made me smile...i cant tell you how many pennies i flattened on the nearby railroad tracks when i was a kid..   (ya, i was a tom boy lol)

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## Peter (Jun 28, 2012)

My answer to Steve's question about the pennies - Yep.

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...my mother would insist I wear a suit to go shopping. 
I have three long-term memories about those shopping days: my mother was always in a hurry to pass the toy shop; both my mother and grandmother would spend hours at the haberdashery; and for a treat, we always had fresh ham and horseshoe rolls for lunch – yum!


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## Retired (Jun 28, 2012)

In the City where I grew up, there were streetcars that often performed the same task as railroad trains..(penny compression).

Nice picture, Peter.

I happen to have a picture like that:



Would love to see similar photos of others taken at that time in their life


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## David Baxter PhD (Jun 28, 2012)

I lived out west in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia so my formal wear in those days was a little different...


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## rdw (Jun 28, 2012)

I grew up in a large city in Western Canada. I can remember the street cars that my grandmother and I would take to go shopping . Hard to believe but every Wednesday at 1:00 PM all of the stores would close early.  There was no such thing as Sunday shopping...


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## Peter (Jun 29, 2012)

?we had an annual junk day. To me, it was a treasure-trove. I would get in trouble, from my parents, for bring home more junk than we put out.


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## Banned (Jun 29, 2012)

Oh I totally remember the days of no Sunday shopping.  I remember too we'd gather our friends at sun up and take off and play outside all day.  We might remember to go to someone's house for a meal between tree climbing, tag, and hide and seek in the forest.  Usually we'd return home at sundown, tired, hungry, and in need of a bath.  We didn't have cell phones to call home and our parents never worried.  

When a friend moved away as they often did in a military upbringing, we would write real letters and put on that 17 cent stamp to mail it.


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## Peter (Jul 1, 2012)

?I had homing pigeons. After a while, they made such a mess, I was told to sell them. I did, but after a few weeks they came back. After selling them a few more times, my mother told me to stop feeding them, and re-selling them.


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## Banned (Jul 1, 2012)

I used to be able to phone my friends just by dialing the last four digits of their phone number.


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## Peter (Jul 2, 2012)

?my grandfather was speedway-car safety inspector for twenty years. I would watch, along the fence line, the Saturday night races. The hotdog stands, cold-winter nights, the smell of racing fuel, the roaring noise, the screaming commentating, and dirt flown everywhere was all intoxicating (for some reason). . . Today, we still have speedway but it?s not the same as it was 40-50 years ago.


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## rdw (Jul 2, 2012)

And what about drive in movies? The speaker on the window, large drinks of coca-cola and popcorn - this was a once a summer treat for us.
 Like Turtle, we were out of the house first thing in the morning and returned at night. We walked everywhere - to the pool, the playground, the store for a treat, and to the library. I loved the library! Of course I always stopped at my grandmother's on my way home from the library. There was always a hug and a treat for me there.


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## gooblax (Jul 2, 2012)

I remember going to a couple of double feature drive-in movies as a kid, and falling asleep in the back seat by the time the second movie was starting. Then dad would have to carry my brother and I to bed when we got home. :lol:


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## adaptive1 (Jul 2, 2012)

Drive in movies, makes me also think of A and W....they used to bring those cold mugs of root beer out to your car and attach them to your car window on trays, it was so fun to order a teen burger when I was nine or ten, like I was allowed to be part of this grown up world.


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## Banned (Jul 2, 2012)

Ooooh I remember getting my $2 allowance and going to the movie.  Admission was 50 cents, popcorn and a drink came to a ollar, and we spent the remaining 50 cents on penny candies that really were a penny.


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## Peter (Jul 3, 2012)

?of 7-9 years, I did not receive pocket money for school. So I ran to and from school to keep the bus fare. School was a mile away, and the bus meandered several miles to get their. That gave me time to get to school, and back home without anybody knowing I ran the distance. Was it worth it? It gave me money to buy a hot pie and a cold Tarax drink with my school mates, and years later I became the school?s most valued athlete. Yes, it was worth it.


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## Retired (Jul 3, 2012)

> cold Tarax drink



Not familiar with that


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## Peter (Jul 4, 2012)

Steve. Tarax was a popular Australian brand of soft drink in the 1960s.

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*Why when I was a boy*…it would be embarrassing to let a shirt tail hang out, let alone showing any underwear.


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## Retired (Jul 4, 2012)

> it would be embarrassing to let a shirt tail hang out, let alone showing any underwear.



.....or to allow your hair to become unkempt

....or......


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## Peter (Jul 5, 2012)

?.my pushbike had one gear. To climb steep hills, I had to stand on my pedals and zigzag across the road. To stop, I had to pedal backwards to put on the brakes. My light, a later luxury, was a generator attached to the wheel, and was dependent on wheel speed. So, if I slowed down because it was dark and dangerous, the light dimmed. Of course, at the time, I thought the whole thing was marvellous.


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## Retired (Jul 5, 2012)

Peter,

Your reminiscences made me think back to the early cars of my parents.  Initially they had no car and traveled by streetcar, but eventually my father bought a used car.  I recall it was very large and had a matte finish.  When I see movies from the forties, I realize that paints on cars did not have a gloss until they began using enamels in the fifties.

To celebrate the new enamels, cars were often "two tone" colors, that were usually some peculiar combination of pastels, separated by wide bands of chrome.

Interestingly my father's first "new car" was a 1950 Austin, one of the first British imports that he bought from a rural gas station operator, because City car dealers shunned those tiny "English" cars. Other similar imports were the Morris and Hillman.

During those years, though living in the inner City of Montreal, in tenement housing, ice milk and bread was still delivered by horse drawn carriage, and television was in its infancy.

There was one television station, that broadcast in English and French alternately, but only a few hours each day, mostly from studios that resembled radio station studios, using one camera and drab backgrounds.  Oh yes, when TV programs were telecast, neighbors would come over to watch the new spectacles being offered.

Personally I enjoyed looking at the test pattern, with the Indian head in the center while listening to Oh Canada being played!


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## Banned (Jul 5, 2012)

I remember my bike with a banana seat, and pedaling backwards to brake as well.

I also remember the milkman delivering the milk to our door, although by then it was no longer by horse but by truck.

I remember riding in the back of the station wagon, waving to the cars behind us, and making a fort back there to occupy us on long road trips.


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## rdw (Jul 5, 2012)

Our house had a milk chute for milk deliveries and the milk came in glass bottles. As my mother worked out of the home, I had to make sure to run home at lunch to get the milk out of the chute before it would freeze and the bottles would break. I too remember the test pattern on our black and white tv.


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## Peter (Jul 6, 2012)

Wow, Steve. I did not know about the two-tone colored cars, but I do relate to the Morris Minor, my dad had one. It looked like a VW Beetle. Whenever we went camping, the car was packed to the roof except for one tiny niche ? for me to squeeze in.


About the TV shows, I was one of those visiting neighbours! The first TV scene I watched was an episode of Zorro.


The TV has a peculiar attraction about it, even when it is switched off, it still demands attention.


A work friend and I made a list of all the TV shows (not movies) we could remember when we were boys. After three months, we came to a dead end. We listed about 480 TV shows. We were dumbfounded by the enormity of our TV viewing. As a side note, I do not like TV, and have not watched it since 2008, and have not watched any DVDs, etc, since last April. However, I do spend several hours on the computer per day.


*Why, when I was a boy* I always wanted to deliver the weekend newspapers on my bike, much like this boy in the photo. Unfortunately, that job never had any vacancies.

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RDW. Your comment about the milk bottles reminded me of school days when we got mini milk bottles in a grate. We would use two fingers to flick the aluminium lid like Frisbee.


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## Retired (Jul 6, 2012)

> Why, when I was a boy I always wanted to deliver the weekend newspapers on my bike



Then I consider myself fortunate, in that I had a paper route delivering the Montreal Star after school.  The cost to my customers for home delivery was 35? a week!!

In winter, I used a sleigh to transport my wares, and my trusty dog Rinty would help by pulling the sleigh.

Now, Rinty had above average intelligence, smarter than me at times, and although I don't have a picture of Rinty pulling the papers, I do have one of Rinty in charge of my electric trains:


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## rdw (Jul 6, 2012)

Gosh I always wanted a job as a newspaper "boy". However that was not allowed as girls were supposed to babysit not throw papers.


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## Retired (Jul 7, 2012)

Peter said:
			
		

> About the TV shows, I was one of those visiting neighbours! The first TV scene I watched was an episode of Zorro.



As a kid, I remember Howdy Doody, with Buffalo Bob and Princess SummerFallWinterSpring as being one of my favorites, but later Sky King cam along as well as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans in their TV series.

I watched Zorro and every Sunday looked forward to Walt Disney.  But then even as a child, I learned about how big business manipulates kids when Disney showed all the TV episodes of Davey Crockett, and later promoted the movie that I persuaded my Father to take me to see.  I was disappointed to see the movie was simply a repeat of the three TV episodes, spliced together to make a 90 minute movie <sigh>.

But then there was Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason that were weekly favorites.

What are some of the other early TV programs that others might remember?

Trivia for Canadians: What was Percy Saltzman known for?

How many on the Forum are old enough to have been mesmerized by the live weekend TV showing of the aftermath of the Kennedy Assassination debacle?

Steve


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## rdw (Jul 7, 2012)

Walt Disney, Ed Sullivan - who can forget the Beatles' performance- and Jackie Gleason were all watched in our house. Along with The Fugitive which was my mother's favourite show and Car 54 where are you, Dragnet and Mr Ed - that lovely talking horse. The hot weather also reminds me of the sound of the ice cream truck coming down the street - now that was exciting!


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## Retired (Jul 7, 2012)

> Along with The Fugitive which was my mother's favourite show



The earlier hit of David Janssen, before the Fugitive was Richard Diamond, Private Detective.

Trivia Question: In Richard Diamond, Private Detective , who played his secretary, Sam, whose face we never saw, because they only showed her from the waist down to feature her great legs?


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## rdw (Jul 7, 2012)

Mary Tyler Moore?


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## David Baxter PhD (Jul 7, 2012)

Yes. From IMDB:



> Sam (Mary Tyler Moore)  the switchboard operator's legs and hands were all that were ever seen  of her on-camera during this series. Moore's voice was heard on the  soundtrack but her face was never revealed


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## Retired (Jul 7, 2012)

RDW and David..You guys are good!!

:clap:

....and I too love IMDB

Whenever I watch a movie, I now search for the "movie name IMDB"    eg. 





> The Fugitive IMDB


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## rdw (Jul 7, 2012)

Who remembers Outer Limits? I was too afraid to watch it and had to go bed early mg:. One of my favourite Disney movies was "Old Yeller".  I cried for weeks...


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## David Baxter PhD (Jul 7, 2012)

I remember it but didn't get to see it very often. Not sure why. It might have been a period when I wasn't watching much TV or it may have been when it was broadcast.


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## Retired (Jul 8, 2012)

I'm not familiar with the 1963 version of Outer Limits mainly because it was during a time in my life when I was occupied with things away from TV.

But I did watch Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone as often as I could, and now realize, when I see re-runs that many big name actors got their start on Twilight Zone.


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## Missed Link (Jul 8, 2012)

Thank you, all of you.  You gave me a much needed chuckle. :lol:


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## rdw (Jul 9, 2012)

During high school I worked at a drive in restaurant cooking burgers, making milkshakes etc. It was hot greasy work but we had so much fun during a shift. Good times and I still cook a mean burger...


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## David Baxter PhD (Jul 9, 2012)

Mean burgers scare me. 

I think burgers should be humorous and gentle, like Andy Griffith. Mean burgers sound more like Don Rickles.


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## rdw (Jul 9, 2012)

Good  Alberta beef = mean burgers; gentle kind burgers must come from the east:funny:


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