I'm so old that

Hah, I knew a guy around the late 1990s that had a huge collection of eight track tapes and too much free time. So he took it upon himself to setup his PC to take the audio input from those tapes and record them to wav files then write those to CD. I wonder if he’s ripped the CDs to now turn them back to wav files or left the wav files in an archive somewhere. :slight_smile:

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That’s common or not weirdly-uncommon I think. I’ve read about people doing that. People are curious about a place that was a big part of their lives, nothing wrong with that.

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I’ve thought about doing that as well, but since I’m the type of person that doesn’t like people I don’t know in my house, I’m more than hesitant to inflict that on someone else. BUT! If I ever see it go up for sale, I’ll totally schedule a showing or hit an open house.

As for phone numbers, I never bothered changing my “loyalty” number with Safeway when I moved and got a new number. On the few times when I shop there, I still use the old number. Its worked fine so far.

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I remember seeing this on the Dan Ryan whenever the family took a trip into or through Chicago.

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The house we lived in in the late 1970s (and had the landline with the phone number I still remember) went on the market a couple years ago. A friend linked me to the archived Zillow listing. It was sad. It hadn’t been kept up. It was a beautiful well-built house on an amazing lot in an absolute armpit of a town. I hope whoever bought it does right by it.

Oh, and my old phone number belongs to someone in a completely different part of the county. No, I didn’t call.

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I think Dan has been reading BB.

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I’m old enough to remember when Dan Rather was the new kid in news anchoring!

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Like @chgoliz and @Pensketch, my phone number started with a word; Neptune1-xxxx, NE1-xxxx for short.

And like @ulasaw, it was time to go home when the streetlights came on.

I was riding in the car with my parents when news of JFK’s assassination came on the radio.

Topo Gigio was on the Ed Sullivan show every week - oooh, Eddie! Saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, too.

My dad and his friends would take their kids to the Elks Club to watch The Wizard of Oz in color before most homes had color TV.

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We didn’t have a color television, but my granddad did. It had a round screen. And I remember going to his house many Sunday nights to watch Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney. (I think we left either before or during Ed Sullivan because it got too late.) I remember getting a little thrill seeing the colorful NBC peacock. I also remember watching Wizard of Oz in color as well.

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I’m so old I remember green banded “computer paper” with tear-off sides.

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Oh my gosh!
You reminded me of those thick
as hell Spiegel catalogs
(like 5-lbs./ea.)
that I used to make DOORSTOPS
out of!
I’d sit and fold in
Every. Damn. Page.
until there was a huge brick,
which were then shellacked
and propped up against a door
once they hardened!

Another Spiegel catalogs memory,
Me and my “bestie” laying on
our stomachs,
leafing through and marking up
the pages, circling furniture,
bedding, curtains, lamps, etc.
Planning on how our homes
would look…
::::::::, someday.

ETA: I only had to dial 8-6825 on our phone,
which expanded to 448-6825 later on.

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I don’t remember the catalog (we were more of a Montgomery Ward house), but I remember the zip code because it was always said by the announcer on game shows like the Price Is Right.

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I’m so old that a $100 bill seems special and too big to spend. Just this month two different people gave me $100 bills in return for helping them out, and both times I thought they were giving me much too much. The first time, I thought: Oh I can’t spend that, I’ll just tuck it away for emergency money. This morning I took one to the store and found myself reflexively asking the cashier if they could break a hundred. No problem! Now I’m thinking that hundreds must be the new twenties.

Also: Happy Birthday, @Pensketch!

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I’m so old that I remember

playing Super Star Trek on the university mainframe, with the IBM golfball teletypes.

Playing games on a Wang minicomputer.

Creative Computing magazine and the gloriously weird cultural mix it had the first bunch of years.

Dad would pay me like ten cents to bike over to the admin building to pick up a printout from a batch he ran on the mainframe.

Bowling was a tv-worthy sport.

Watching Letterman meant actually staying up 'till 1 or 1:30 on a school night. (and I’m also old enough to remember watching his short lived daytime show!)

Traveling meant finding a random motel, and you always asked to see the room first because who knows. Restaurant chains had value rather than being derided because they implied some standard that you could count on back when checking online reviews in unfamiliar places weren’t a thing. Maps were still a thing, and folding and unfolding a large map while driving was a serious skill. Atlases. Traveller’s Cheques were a thing, especially for international travel. My grandmother wouldn’t travel by plane, preferring 40 hour bus rides because on principle “flying is for rich people” even though they were about the same price, and was impeccably dressed and made up for the trip.

When it wasn’t nice to fool mother nature.

Fran Tarkenton pajamas. Purple People Eaters. The Fearsome Foursome. When the St Louis Cardinals could have referred to two different teams at the same time.

Merlin Olson on Little House. Gentle Ben. Jim Rockford was like a second father. Dolly Parton’s variety show. Tim Conway. Mary Tyler Moore. Mark Russel. Bob Newhart, The Odd Couple. Paul Lynde’s short lived show.

Second run movie theaters. Downtown department stores.

Avalon Hill/SPI board games, before all the buyouts.

When pop music had dynamics. Top 40 radio and its glorious variety. Sunday afternoons glued to the radio for Casey Kasem, and music pirating consisted of sitting with a portable sony tape recorder with the mic up against the speaker of the clock radio.

Clock radios were a thing that still existed outside hotels. Travel alarm clocks.

Like others here Sunday nights were Wild Kingdom and Disney. But I only was allowed 2 hours tv per day max, so I had to be careful if it was football season or if there was a good afternoon movie.

Having said all this, I can get a little too wallowing in nostalgia if I let myself. Lately I’ve been watching Mary Tyler Moore and listening to Boston and I periodically need to force myself to come back to exploring the present. I don’t wanna become that guy.

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I think you mean side mirrors. :slight_smile: Also I assume you’re so old that passenger side mirrors were optional.

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My town still has one of those. It’s awesome.

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I retained the skill of “read the map, note some waypoints, go for it” but then I have a good visual memory.

Also; my dad worked across the county, so I grew up learning to navigate by pub and café landmarks.

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Which is why it was illegal to pass on the right in much of North America at the time.

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I remember the excitement of getting my first clock radio. If I set it up in just the right place near my window I could get the good Memphis station instead of the crummy local stations.

When Momentary Lapse of Reason came out they played it straight through.

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Seattle is no small town and we have one. I love it.

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