Does anyone remember the way America was?

Coach is Right ^ | 12/23/12 | Suzanne Eovaldi

[ctdonath2]

I remember...

Riding bikes without helmets. Was just...inconceivable.
Riding on a flatbed pickup, hanging on for dear life. Stupid, but nobody would get arrested for it.
Wearing a sheath knife onto an airplane. Didn’t advertise it, but nobody would have freaked out.
Experimenting with uranium in school.
4 digit phone numbers.
Home computer storing data on cassette tape.
Cold War.
Manned moon missions.
Voyager 1 launch.
Viking 1 landing.

[Alaska Wolf]

4 digit phone numbers.

Operators and party lines.

Manned moon missions.

Sputnik. Does anyone remember Sputnik gumballs?

[who knows what evil?]

And don’t even get me started on the ski area on Mt. Morris.

One day a year; they would give the locals a free ride to the top so you could hang out on the rocks and bask in the sunshine. Of course; that was a LONG time ago...

[Norm Lenhart]

OcTupperfest?

Lotsa Genessee Beer, drunk lumberjacks and fun ;)

[TNoldman]

I went to high school(Cass Tech) in downtown Detroit in the 1950’s. I worked in downtown Detroit in the summers and after high school graduation took girls on dates to movies in downtown Detroit. Theaters like Adams, Michigan, United Artists, Fox, Palms - and did it without fear or threat of harm.

Today I would not enter the City of Detroit!

[who knows what evil?]

No festival...just a few locals picnicking in the sunshine. They put an ad in the paper, otherwise you wouldn’t have known about it...

[Tired of Taxes]

Haha! Born in ‘64 here. That photo is exactly what my brother and his friends would do with their big wheels and what I did with my bike - with just a makeshift ramp and no helmets, except we did it on cement. How did we ever survive?

[Norm Lenhart]

Never heard of that one but I don’t doubt it a bit ...Rich tourist punks...;)

I remember they did the chair rides for the OcTupperfest and from time to time if there was some big event in Saranac or Placid to siphon off some biz. Up chair 1 and hoof it to chair 3.

Awesome view up there for sure. Better skiing than Iceface on good years.

And then the greenies decided snowmaking was BAAAAADDDDD.....

[who knows what evil?]

I did partake of the Oktoberfest celebrations at Whiteface one year, but I wasn’t going up that chairlift on a dare...older and less stupid.

[Norm Lenhart]

It is a bit high in places...and windy....

The more I think about how bad libs screwed that area up, the madder I’m getting. And all to keep ‘our betters’ in Albany and NYC free from the sheer horror seeing too many townies having a life in their playground.

Look up what happened to Whitney Park with the Sierra Club sometime. Just be sitting and preferably medicated when you do.

And their Clean waters BS...

And...

[who knows what evil?]

Commies ruin everything...

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

I remember ...

When dodgeball wasn't a dangerous sport.

When gays were queers and LGBT was a psychiatric condition.

When I'd get in more trouble at home than at school for causing trouble there.

I'd never heard of a problem with a nativity scene whether on private or public land. We expected our govt institutions to be just like us and celebrate with us since their employees WERE us.

I remember when we got report cards with grades on them instead of pass/fail so that underachievers wouldn't feel bad.

Shouldn't part of the pursuit of happiness be that we leave our children and descendents a better country than we received? In that way this generation is a failure. We're going to leave our children a worse country. I fear for my grandchildren's future.

I'm 55, born in 57 and grew up in or around Scranton PA.

[Nowhere Man]

Remember the night the 3 networks all had their cartoon preview for the coming season?

I know, the networks poured a lot into those previews, both for the Saturday cartoons and the season in general. I remember in the 1980's, NBC was the place, Brandon Tartikoff (RIP) was a true genius.

I remember the usually Saturday staples were made by Hanna Barbera, the Krofft Brothers and Filmation along with old stock from Warner Brothers. I'd say the golden age of animation was from 1960 with the Flintstones to the mid/late 1980s with the last hurrah of Saturday cartoons.

I loved the old "Land of the Lost" shows, they seem to be cheaply made but had good plots written by the old pulp era SF writers (Theodore Sturgeon)as well as the upcoming and Star Trek writers like D.c Fontana, David Gerrold, Norman Spinrad. My favorite episode of that series was where Will and Holly were playing with a pylon and they brought a space shuttle pilot into their world. I liked the discussion they had where he was piloting a shuttle from "Space Station Five" to the "Phoenix Spaceport" and they had "pulseships" that went to the other planets. The family, coming from circa 1974, commented "they did not have space shuttles yet" (although they were on the drawing board at the time, I saw a mock up at NASA in 1974). I assumed he came from the 1990's at least, I figured we would have been out there by then. B-P Then he could be from a parallel universe and/or future of course.

I also like the Filmation stuff, I catch them on RTV and MeTV from time to time.

It was a different time. I'm 46. There are times I wish I was 20 or 25 years young with all the problems we have to deal with but if I have to give up my memories and experiences, forget it, I'll struggle through with me being middle aged.

[Nowhere Man]

Here ya go, I made this in October of 2008:

[Norm Lenhart]

I never really got into the Kroft/live action shows. But then I’m still a hardcore animation fan.

Yes, I think late 90s was about it. Disney had some into the 90s with Darkwing/Rescue Rangers and the Lion King was the end for sure.

To me, the Little Mermaid will never be topped ;)

The Japanese Anime is great as long as you stay out of the Hentai and their back catalog of stuff could not be watched by one man in a lifetime.

But when we tried copying it, it was a disaster.

Wizards and Heavy Metal were another couple classics from back then.

SOOO much good stuff.

[Norm Lenhart]

Oops...Late 80s was about it.

[Nowhere Man]

Reminds me of the old “Thunderbirds are Go!” when they launch a spaceshuttle from a plane.

[dforest]

As a child, I always felt safe and secure in America. At least. I always saw that the leader of the country liked the citizens and the country.

I remember warm summers laying on the grass as a kid with no care, thinking how great life was. I loved my country and had no reason to think otherwise. I am 60. I am also the opposite of that young girl now, who was laying on the grass, feeling secure, even with the cold war going on.

I would have never believed that by the time I was an old lady that we would elect a communist muslim who would ruin the country and leave me feeling terrified for my kids and grandkids.

I get up every day feeling the pain in my knees and hands, feeling depressed that my own government wants me to die via Obamacare. They want my kids and grandkids to be mindless slaves to the government.

I am thinking I am in a nightmare, but I am not. That nightmare is reality and I just feel so sad. Kind of like the air has been sucked out of my lungs.

[Nowhere Man]

For about a month now, I, like a lot of you, have found myself growing increasingly melancholy as my mind drifts back to wonderful memories of Christmases past and loved ones now long gone.

Yeah, I know. When PBS had their special on Andy Williams, Mom cried as he sang Avi Maria and she told me that she was thinking back to the loved ones we lost and how much we lost as a country as well as Obumbles getting re-elected. I felt it too. I remember watching all those Andy Williams specials in the 1970's and it seems like we are a much different country then. IIRC, Glenn Beck did interview Andy Williams and he commented that Obumbles was taking us in the wrong direction. She's the same way on the 4th of July too when they sing "God Bless America." Obumbles makes my mother cry, which gets me angry.

BTW, I love your story. I remember going over my paternal grandmother's house and us kids would play downstairs and eat goodies. Since I was the youngest, they always send me up to get more goodies. I also remember my aunt having an aluminum Christmas tree and they had a floodlight on it with a plastic disc that rotated red, yellow, green, blue over and over again.

[Political Junkie Too]

And “Bravo Roberto” serves up every day in Florida’s St. Lucie West a product we have allowed ourselves to be traded out of by the nasty liberals, the nasty Democrats, the nasty progressives and the nasty RINOS in a Republican Party that is no longer representative of fiscal conservatism, fiscal restraint or fiscal pay-as-you-go standards by which America became America.

I hope she remembers a St. Lucy West that would never think of holding a corrupt election in order to throw our the only black Republican Congressman.

-PJ