For me, it’s my parents, but yeah.
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Hah. They sold the house they were living in for a 2 bedroom apartment/condo and have ditched the land line completely.
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We had WAY fewer electronic devices, but those that we did have… their power buttons cut off the flow of electricity and thereby turned them completely off, instead of that namby-pamby half-assed “sleep mode” that freaking everything has these days. Sheesh.
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Most car windows were hand-cranked and rear-view mirrors had to be adjusted by hand.
The first Automatic Teller Machine
The first successful heart transplant.
“Che” Guevarra is killed by the Bolivian army.
The first Super Bowl.
Average cost of a new house (USA) $14,250, average yearly income $7,300.
Muhammed Ali stripped of his boxing world championship status for refusing to be inducted into the US Army.
Creation of the National Transportation Safety Board.
US Supreme Court rules 6-3 that state bans on interracial marriage are unconstitutional.
Otis Redding dies in a plane crash.
Kurt Cobain born.
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and that the magazine had typed it up correctly in the first place…
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And your older relatives would still insist on going around the house unplugging them all at night…
I still find electric windows to be delightfully magical.
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The little vent corner windows
in cars…so convenient!
Recces only made "big’ Cups
and they cost a nickel …
Archie comics were 12 cents
Gas was .58/Gallon
Bell-bottoms were IN
along with Flannel plaid shirts.
10-speed bikes had curved under
handlebars…(hated!)
Kids got FULL SIZED
candy bars for Trick or Treat.
The local Drugstore had a counter
with spinning round stools, and sold
2-scoops of ice cream in a tulip-dish
for .25
(and the chocolate chip had huge chunks
of chocolate throughout…mmmmm!)
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does that use reverse polish entry format?
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But of course.
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Hmmm… I’m old enough to remember when:
- Schwinn bicycles were made in Chicago
- So were Zenith radios and TV sets
- You rented your landline phone from the phone company
- If you were ultra-rich, you had a car phone (IMTS, not cellular)
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Nice!
I’d love to get a mimeograph and crank out some absurdist Chick Tracts for distribution on the T, but the machines on eBay exceed my annual stupid projects budget by a minimum of $500. Xerox is more cost effective, but it’s just not the same.
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I still have my HP-11C, bought in 1985 after one too many TI keyboard failures. As long as the batteries are good, it works just fine.
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You may consider posting a picture then, as I did… 
In the mean time, I’ll try to locate the model with the red display, but its batteries are probably dead.
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“That’s ZOOM (zee-double-oh-em), Box 350, Boston, Mass, oh-two-one-three-four.”
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I’m still suspicious of them. All my friends had them in high school and they always seemed to be broken.
I did know a guy who did the ultimate power windows maneuver.
He’s in the high school parking lot, sitting in his (new, and to us very fancy) car and talking to a girl (!). The conversation is wrapping up, so as he’s talking he casually hits the power window button. Unfortunately, in his excitement, he hasn’t realized that his head was leaning slightly out.
The window caught him under his chin, slamming his head into the top of the window frame. Fortunately there was a cut-out in the motor, so it didn’t slice his face off, but the cut-out was only a fraction of an inch, so immediately after dropping it went up again, again smacking his head into the frame. At this point his hand is no longer close to the button, and in his panic he can’t find it. It probably hit him about eight times before he had the presence of mind to time extracting his face to the up-and-down motion of the window.
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Oh man! That was my absolute favorite!! That’s when I decided it might be cool to be smart.
ETA: And now I have that song stuck in my head. Thanks!
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I have to know…
what happened with the girl!?
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Although when they didn’t, it taught me debugging.
That sounds like some fun. Are these absurdist Chick Tracts something you’ve made? If so, I would love to see one, provided you have a digital version of course.
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It was a long time ago, but I assume she died of laughter and we had a nice funeral for her.
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