TV: Television was (and still is) king. Black and White was A-OK back then because the first color sets sucked so bad it took an extra few years before people were willing to try again. All the first generation color boxes had a kill switch that would turn it back to black and white when the flashing colors started to nauseate delicate viewers. Tuning in was a science both at the box and in the field. For every hour of viewing there was a proportional amount of time required twisting the antennae. It was the early version of “Can you hear me now?” as we called back and forth, “How does it look now?”. Every Saturday morning we were up early to watch the test pattern change into the Captain Sacto cartoon show. We were proud if we made it up late enough to see the 'Signing Off The Air' show where they showed the flag and played the national anthem at the end of the broadcasting day.
Movies: We didn’t get to see all the movies that came out but some were too big to miss. The Beatles movies, James Bond, Disney and a bunch of Westerns were generic while The Graduate, Easy Rider and The Magic Christian are specific examples of what we saw. I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid followed by Bonnie & Clyde all within a year of my 8th grade graduation. We also moved twice during that time so maybe that was when I changed. To Kill a Mockingbird was the film that moved my parents so I figured it must be good. With movies like that, one or two a year was still enough. Every year the school would take the entire student body to the theater for the Holidays where we each got a bag of goodies, mostly peanuts and oranges but still some actual candy too.
Music: The old hi-fi was in every house along with a stack of records, LP’s and 45’s. They were so common because they were affordable. Playing in the school band was required for all 9th graders so we all learned to read music whether we liked it or not. I thought it would be cool to play the Oboe but that turned out to be a big mistake because it is not easy to play and I ended up frustrated for the year. I still managed to have fun with music after all but it was from outside the school.
Books: I was no big reader due to being cross-eyed and the glasses didn’t help enough to read more than a few minutes at a time even after my second eye surgery by the age of ten. Luckily my Mom was an avid reader and was willing to read out loud so I managed to keep up. Later I figured out how to use just one eye and after that there were many happy hours spent at the libraries: public, my school, my Mom’s school, My Dad’s school…there was an upside to having both parents being teacher.
Talking: I only include this because of the preference that people show lately for smart devices that make talking seem like something the dinosaurs used to do. People have lost their voices while they sit next to each other socializing with their thumbs. Reality is second rate today and makes the old conversations seem like lost magic. Even when we were out dragging main street in our junker cars it was only an excuse for elaborate dialogues straight out of That 70’s show.
Games: Board Games were big, but so were impromptu sports depending on the season. There were only three of us so we had a system for me switching teams but there was also a two-man rule book where each person was one man team. You had to pitch to the other guy in baseball but in football season you had to be your own quarterback and receiver. We followed the seasons with baseball all summer and then football until the lake froze over on Lake Almanor and we played hockey until the ice gave out and we started on baseball again.
Sports: In addition to the ad-hoc sports at home we did water skiing in the summer with the lake only 100 yards from our front door and snow skiing for the long winter on a regular basis. There was a weekend bus that would come and take all the kids to the local ski hill preceded by a pickup truck that would take our skis and poles. Extreme tree climbing was such a special sport it deserves a chapter of its own as well as the hunting, fishing, trapping and taxidermy.
Not Being Entertained: After all that other stuff we needed a break now and then and sometimes we had to do nothing at all in order to balance our sensibilities. Seriously, we could survive without constant reinforcement unlike today where even I have to have my phone mail fix every few minutes and I am not as bad as others I know. In the 1960’s we not only knew how to turn on, even more important; we knew how to turn off.
No comments:
Post a Comment