I’m so old, that…

[Jperry1466]

Ace wins!
My mother was born in 1930.

My great-grandmother, whom I knew well and lived until I was 13, came to Texas via covered wagon, survived raids by Comanche Indians, and saw the first men go into space.

And I'm older than you, bloke. Like Paulver, I grajiated in 1969. When I was 10, my family drove from Texas to California on Route 66, across the Mojave desert in a car with no air conditioning.

[bloke]

Most people - with whom I associate - are older than am I, and - because of fakeb00k - I have discovered that I’m the better part of two years younger than most of the people in my graduating class, due to the odd month in which I was born vs. the most common months in which American people tend to be born… That having been said, I really didn’t associate very much with people in my graduating class, but tend to associate with those in the class one year ahead of mine…so more like 2 1/2 years older than me.

…but all of my grandparents were born in the 1880s, I knew all four of them (well), and one of them was born on the first day of 1881.

Had my parents lived, they would both be preparing for their 106th birthdays.

I’m younger in years - compared to some older people (huge “duh”), but most of my lifelong close friends are older am I (as most are roughly 70 to 85 years old). Further, as a very early talker, I (as memories tend to hinge on language) have lots of vivid memories from my not much after my first birthday. My two siblings are roughly 77 and 79 years old, both are brilliant, both (VERY) wrongly believe that I’m smarter than they are (I AM smart enough to be able to correctly ascertain this), and both almost tend to treat me like their older brother - at least, in some ways.

[WC8KCY]

...I remember car-shopping with my Dad when our "good" car--the one that Mom drove to work--hit 80,000 miles.

Dad got to drive the older of our two cars to work. Of course, we always went hunting, fishing, berry-picking, and camping with Dad's old car, so it was always more cool than our "good" car.

[WC8KCY]

…..the television I watched “Officer Joe Bolton” on was a DuMont (with knobs for VHF and UHF!)

I've been watching kinescopes of the DuMont Television Network (DTN) show Rocky King, Detective on YouTube. Great stuff.

What a shame that the DTN archives were destroyed. Other than Life Is Worth Living with Bishop Sheen, not much of their programming is extant today. Still, 16mm kinescopes of their programming continues to pop up every now and then.

[Jim Williams]

I'm so old that there was no such subject as "History" in my school. We only had "current events."

[Stryk]

I had to practice crawling under my desk at school so we were ready in case of a nuclear attack.

[bloke]

We had a Silvertone-Sears blonde maple television similar to the dark stained one that Yorkboy displayed in his post.

By the time I was in first or second grade, that TV was the “old dog” that constantly had to be fiddled with (both the channel and fine tuning knobs were worn out, as well as having some weak vacuum tubes), and the new reliable TV was a 19 inch portable B&W on a stand with wheels.

My Dad would watch Bonanza on the 19-inch portable, while I (age 7) went off in the other room and watched the Judy Garland Show each week. Even at that age (I had been taking piano lessons for about a year, have been messing around playing “at” the piano “by ear“ since about age 3, and fooling around with a ukulele for a couple of years, by then), I somehow knew that the show that I was watching was of far greater value than Bonanza.

… and yeah, our school had all that civil defense crap in the basement (where the fourth grade classrooms and the piano classroom were located) and nuclear/tornado drills, as well.

[hrender]

I don't think I'm that old, but my dad was the last of nine kids, and his parents were born in 1889 and 1892 in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire. When they came to the US as adults in 1910 it looked like this:

[hrender]

Oh, when I took my first programming class, we used punchcards.

Edit for music-related content: I now own a tuba that would have been new around the time my grandparents came to this country.

[bloke]

My Dad was one of those who introduced Sears into the computer age in the 1960s. It was one of those super air-conditioned rooms with an elevated floor, 1 inch magnetic tape, punch cards, and etc.
He would get phone calls in the middle of the night with some tech asking him what code might work to enter - on the keyboard- in order to get the “stuck“ computer running again, as it was processing all of the catalog orders that were going to be filled the next day.

[Stryk]

My sister was a keypunch operator.

[bloke]

My Dad turned down a huge promotion - when he was in his mid to late 30s - to go to Chicago with Sears. He turned it down, so Sears kept him in Memphis, and gave him the best job they could give him - without him paying his groomed-for-top-executive “dues” in Chicago.
Prior to that computer transition (mentioned earlier), he had some keypunch operators in his department (of approximately 200 employees) and five or six teletype machines were constantly roaring their heads off - surely violating every OSHA regulation on the books, today.
As a very small child, I could not stand being near those machines for more than a few seconds at a time.

My sister was a keypunch operator.

[bort2.0]

My grandfather died years before I was born, but my understanding is that he was part of a small team of people who "worked on the computer" at the Maryland National Bank building downtown. The computer was (obviously) a full room thing, like they all were. But it was on the very top floor, for some reason like it kept things cooler and better ventilation up high? Not sure what he did or anything though. He passed from cancer when he was only 55 years old. Decades of heavy smoking...

I'm so old that I remember my grandparents and my dad's aunt's/uncle's smoking heavily, constantly. Leathery skin. Smokers coughs. Cheap beer. Big laughs, good times. Early deaths. :(

[Stryk]

My brother worked at General Electric Apollo Park in Daytona Beach where he worked on the Apollo Project for NASA. He took me to see the computer one day. It was a room approximately the size of a Gymnasium full of whirring rotating tape drive and blinking lights. At the time, it was one of the world's most powerful machines. Our cell phones are now MUCH more powerful!

[Three Valves]

I'm so old that I remember my grandparents and my dad's aunt's/uncle's smoking heavily, constantly. Leathery skin. Smokers coughs. Cheap beer. Big laughs, good times. Early deaths. :(

There was a lot of that up in Wilmington, DE too.

[Yorkboy]

…..the television I watched “Officer Joe Bolton” on was a DuMont (with knobs for VHF and UHF!)

I've been watching kinescopes of the DuMont Television Network (DTN) show Rocky King, Detective on YouTube. Great stuff.

What a shame that the DTN archives were destroyed. Other than Life Is Worth Living with Bishop Sheen, not much of their programming is extant today. Still, 16mm kinescopes of their programming continues to pop up every now and then.

I read somewhere (?) that the kinescopes were dumped into the ocean…….IDK if I dreamed that or not…..

[jtm]

…..the television I watched “Officer Joe Bolton” on was a DuMont (with knobs for VHF and UHF!)

I've been watching kinescopes of the DuMont Television Network (DTN) show Rocky King, Detective on YouTube. Great stuff.

What a shame that the DTN archives were destroyed. Other than Life Is Worth Living with Bishop Sheen, not much of their programming is extant today. Still, 16mm kinescopes of their programming continues to pop up every now and then.

My living room as a kid had a kinescope recorder in it for a couple of years. I don't remember why. It was enormous, though. Seems like my Dad got the color wheel gizmo on it toward the end, so it was possible to make color movies with the monochrome monitor.

[Jperry1466]

I had to practice crawling under my desk at school so we were ready in case of a nuclear attack.

You do know that those desks would have saved us from the fallout of a nuclear attack, right?

[Paulver]

Quick Jesse Owens story.... of sorts: Way back when I was in college..... Geneva College (small college) in Beaver Falls, PA, Mr. Owens came to Geneva as the main speaker at our monthly convocation. After things were over he was extremely gracious with his time, and asked a small group of us to get a cup of coffee with him in the student center. He sat with us..... not the college "higher ups"...... for at least a couple of hours, just talking about anything we wanted to talk about. He was a very interesting person, and his life experiences were most intriguing. Nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.

[Three Valves]

I got to meet Frank Capra at the US Army information school back in the 80's.

I was an English Lit and Film Studies major at the time and a big movie fan.

Loved speaking with him.