Remember when?

[flatwins]

I remember playing 33 rpm records at 78 rpm.

I remember rotary dial telephones.

I remember 8 track tapes. Every case of 8 track tapes HAD to contain Meat Loaf - Bat out of Hell. It was an unspoken rule.

I remember when Elvis died. I remember when Lennon was shot. I remember when Reagan was shot. I remember when the Challenger exploded. But there were mostly good times.

I remember when Evel Knievel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon!

I remember when you could could buy complete sets of chrome-plated Hot Wheels, all made in the good old USA.

I remember every water tower in every town in American being painted red, white, and blue for the Bicentennial.

I really miss Saturday morning cartoons that were worth a flip. I remember watching the Wide World of Sports. The agony of defeat!

I had a good youth. I miss those simple days.

 

[Toney]

I remember when a gang of kids packing bb guns and pellet rifles could get passed by a cop and just get waved at.

 

[farmerbyron]

I remember riding a 4 wheeler in the field jumping terraces and making race tracks while my grandfather was working ground. It wasn't fun unless you were on 2 wheels on the sharp turns.

I also remember doing similar things on the lawn mower after I got done mowing.

Remember having a rock chunking war with my neighbor friend across a tin horn. It was great until I caught one right on the forehead. Kinda ended that day.

 

[Biggsly]

I miss having a floor furnace.

 

[dennishoddy]

I miss being able to put dead minnows in the neighbors water cooler because he kept yelling at me to "KEEP OFF MUH GRASS!"

(true story)

 

[Lurker66]

I miss being able to put dead minnows in the neighbors water cooler because he kept yelling at me to "KEEP OFF MUH GRASS!"

(true story)

hell ya!! I thought that was a good place to keep my minnows alive. It didnt work, but the idea was sound.

 

[Okie4570]

Remember most the above mentioned, as well as watching Don Wallace fishing/hunting on tv, the smell of some of the first unleaded cars and how they stunk, Grape/Peach/Strawberry Nehi, Chocolate Soldiers and Marathon candy bars. Not all plastic plates were mircrowave safe, learned that the hard way, after a couple the minutes, the bacon and plate became one!

 

[flatwins]

Remember most the above mentioned, as well as watching Don Wallace fishing/hunting on tv, the smell of some of the first unleaded cars and how they stunk, Grape/Peach/Strawberry Nehi, Chocolate Soldiers and Marathon candy bars. Not all plastic plates were mircrowave safe, learned that the hard way, after a couple the minutes, the bacon and plate became one!

I remember the first time my parents laid eyes on a microwave. They were both working parents and the idea of being able to nuke food quickly sold them in a heartbeat. It was like the Jetsons or something. It was the showroom of Montgomery Ward in downtown Enid and the year was 1974.

And speaking of downtown Enid, they had some of the best pawnshops ever.

 

[yukonjack]

In 66 when I was 8 my mom would drive me down to Lake Overholser and leave me there all day to fish. I'd snag gar below the dam and sell them to the drunk black men to take home to their wives. Got 25 cents a piece for them. One man told me if he didn't bring a fish home he was gonna get another beating. Oh the joys of being 8 and naive.

 

[JB Books]

One of the things that brought us together back then was the fact that our TV choices were so limited. Everyone watched pretty much the same programs. You ALL watched the original Star Trek (in syndication in the early 70s through 80s), Gunsmoke, Bonanza, SWAT, The Hulk, Wonder Woman (who I had an intense crush on and who my wife looks like!), Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Starsky and Hutch, Ironsides, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Battlestar Galactica, Barretta, Hawaii 5-0, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, reruns of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Andy Griffith, Branded, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Paladin, The Guns of Will Sonnet and The Wild, Wild West. Then when our few cable channels came along, we had Batman, The Green Hornet, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel, etc.

And lest we all forget, those after school cartoons....politically incorrect and banned by today's thought police, but those old Warner Brothers Cartoons were so cool.

We had a connection to being outside. Riding our bikes, shooting our BB/pellet guns and later our .22s. We used to enter old buildings and nose around. Never looking to destroy or vandalize, just full of boyish curiousity and adventure. We'd camp out and canoe and ride horses and wander (and be in wonder) through the woods...the hills, the streams, the draws and meadows. Didn't need too much Sunday Schoolin' to see God's handiwork outside.

We felt like little grownups as we ordered our hamburgers and made plans at the Tastee Freeze. The world was open and full of wonder. Anything was possible.

Then it all changed.

Hang on to those memories boys. They are the only thing we have left as our country hurtles headlong towards a quasi-Orwellian demise.