We had three TV channels - at 11 PM the National Anthem was played against the background of Old Glory, while a formation of F-100 Super Sabers flew by. Then the screen went blank.
Oh man, I pity those who did not know what America once was. I'd better stop for now before I become sentimental. America you were beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
It always is and always will be. You are letting nostalgia color your memories; every time is difficult, and every time has its beauty.
"We had three TV channels - at 11 PM the National Anthem was played against the background of Old Glory, while a formation of F-100 Super Sabers flew by. Then the screen went blank. "
That just brought back a memory, of sleeping over at a freinds, and us staying up just to see it.
I grew up in upstate NY (born in 64), and I remember some of it, pretty much what everyone else has said. As my mom said, it was all innocent then - the world still had hope, people were upbeat and honest, and you could trust strangers.
I look at our modern world, and marvel at all that we've done...and wonder why we're unhappier, nastier, more selfish, have no tolerance, little patience, and little respect for anything, and everywhere you look it's corruption and dishonesty. I dimly remember a different world, and I sometimes resent the aged hippies here in the Bay Area who champion the idiocy that they wrought. for despising such innocense, in the name of selfish gratification.
I recall the end of each broadcast night as you describe but before the national anthem, a recital of the poem, High Flight (with the blue skies and jets soaring amongst billowing clouds).
High Flight
-John Gillespie Magee, Jr
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God...