Growing up without a cell phone

[scpaisley]

If you are 30, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill... Barefoot... BOTH ways? yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no e-mail!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!

There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!

And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!
See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd


"Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints"

 

[DKMULEYBUCK]

The good old days...

 

[sageadvice]

I'm in the over 50 crowd and grew up in a ranch house that was off the grid. Generator and batteries for electricity, no phone or TV until i was in my teens. Up every morning before dawn to run my trap line, then the chores. Our entertainment was listening to the SF Giants on the radio...

I'd do it again in a minute!

Joey

 

[shedfinder]

Back to the cartoons. If you were lucky enough to have a day off from school or it was summertime, and your parents actually let you in the house, TBS showed them from 1-3(mst) starting with Tom and Jerry for an hour, then the flintstones followed by the jetsons. Also on Saturday mornings you had to get your butt out of bed because cartoon were over by 10.

 

[shedfinder]

We rarely went out for dinner. almost every dinner was cooked by mom or dad, and then the kids, thats right, the kids, had to do the dishes. You just didn't go to Mcdonalds, wendys, BK. And if we did go out, it was for a special occasion.

 

[shedfinder]

If we wanted to look at porn we had to steal magazines from dad, or friends, or even sneak them out of the mini-mart. No HD T.V., We had 12 channels on the T.V. dial but only 9 worked. My dads remote was telling the kids to change the channel. We always ate in the dining room. No sitting in on the couch watching T.V. eating dinner. We also had just one T.V. So we watched whatever dad wanted to watch.

 

[RV]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-10 AT 04:41PM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-10 AT 04:40?PM (MST)

Thanks for the entertainment.

 

[Bates7]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-10 AT 04:50PM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-10 AT 04:50?PM (MST)

How true it is. I'm 42 now and when I was kid I was the remote control, gardener, bartender, caller ID, mail getter, hog slopper, calf feeder, egg fetcher & chicken wrangler. You want to hear something funny? My ALLOWANCE was the roof over my head, the clothes on my back, the food on the table & the shoes on my feet. I wouldn't change one thing about it either. I truly love my parents and today I would literally die for them. Something else, the same two people that copulated 43 years ago to conceive me are STILL MARRIED TODAY!!! How about those apples? I waitng for OUTDOORWRITER to chime in. I know he will he really likes this kinda stuff.

I would do it all over again if I could.

"Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians - except for the occasional mountain lion steak."
-Ted Nugent-

 

[tylercreek2]

>>>Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe! <<<


LOL aint that the truth

 

[scpaisley]

HAHA I remember having to be up at 5am to go milk the cows and get the eggs from the hen house for breakfast! I can count on one hand the times the ol'man would "spring" for McDonalds. Grandma made everything from scratch, damn I miss those pies! Me and gramps would work in the field or barn all day, most times he was doing it just so he wasn't in "ma's hair" as he would say. I wouldn't change a thing if I could go back to those days.

"Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints"

 

[dillon]

Amen! Man I am only 23 and I agree full heartedly. In my town we had three stations on TV. And if the neighbors dish was working you could somehow get the KJAZZ channel...that was great. Seriously I like the toys of todays society but it is not all that fun. Now people watch youtube videos of trucks stuck in mud instead of going into the hills and getting stuck. I still am not a great texter, but the internet is nice for school. Don't worry I swear teacher find ways to get you to the library. Actually you can find some cool things in libraries if you have time to look around, and don't get allergies from the dust that coats the books.


Did you know the USA average IQ dropped like twenty points when sites like myspace and facebook took off. Seriously, we are dumber now than we were...sad!

Dillon

 

[NVBighorn]

>If we wanted to look at
>porn we had to steal
>magazines from dad, or friends,
>or even sneak them out
>of the mini-mart. No HD
>T.V., We had 12 channels
>on the T.V. dial but
>only 9 worked. My dads
>remote was telling the kids
>to change the channel. We
>always ate in the dining
>room. No sitting in on
>the couch watching T.V. eating
>dinner. We also had just
>one T.V. So we watched
>whatever dad wanted to watch.
>

Most of this is very real for me... except my Dad had no porn. What is up with having 9 channels? Our tv showed all the number but we had three that you could say worked and only one clear enough to watch. "Snow" was something we had on TV channel 2 and 4.

 

[eelgrass]

Joey, I used to love listening to the SF Giants on the radio! Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Jose Pagan, all three Alou brothers, Jim Davenport. All bigger than life in my mind. Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons announcing!

Eel

 

[gb22]

I think Sageadvice and I grew up in VERY similar circumstances....except he forgot to mention what passed for entertainment back then. We had to shoot, fish, play baseball or maybe swim in the canal.

Nowadays there ARE a couple of genuine improvements: bullet-drop compensating turrets, 3400+ fps .30 cal. bullets, laser ranger finders and GOOD optics.

Did I mention I get to WATCH the Dodgers via the internet, rather than trying to turn good ol' Vinny in? (Vin Scully is still there.....some things SHOULD never change!)


Within the shadows, go quietly.

 

[YukonDall]

YOU FORGOT ....JIM RAY HART, TOM HALLER, TITO PHUENTES, JUAN MARICAL (SP) & MY PERSONAL FAVORITE....GAYLORD PERRY.....YD.

 

[shedfinder]

I also forgot about going around the neighborhood shooting birds with a BB gun. You see a 10 year old with a gun now and someone is calling the cops. We also had a home made go cart without an engine or brakes, and would push it to the top of the street(about 4 blocks from home) pile on about 5-6 neighborhood kids and drive it down the street, We lived in a small circle, so when we reached the bottom of the street, we would use the momentum to turn around and see how far back up the street we could go, then all jump off, push it back up the hill, and do it all over again. We did this for a few summers back in the late 70's and early 80's. without ever seeing a cop, getting in an accident, or having the neighbors yell at us to quit.

 

[sageadvice]

Man, those were the days

We had a three sided wrap around porch on that ol Ranch house. The place never did see a coat of paint that i know of. There was a table up against the wall, the evening shady side, that had a couple drawers that held a veritable cornucopia of mystic treasures. There were old skinning knives in there, grandpas sharpening stones, lots of misc cartridges of every gun and rifle on the place, old hand tools for unknown purpose, a heck of a collection of this and that, and even a ledger book going way back to when grandpa had to hire extra men every year during the vineyard field grape harvest. That table was the center of our evenings and on it, only in the evenings or during a game, was grandma's leather bound, big bible sized radio tuned in to KGO!

A better Giants fan my not have lived than my Grandma. She never missed a game and when others were around, she'd play it loud so as not to ever miss a pitch, She loved all the old players as did i but Willie's Mays and McCovey were her fav's. She would keep talking encouragement to her players but would shout out, "AWE WILLEY, WILLEY, WILLEY, HOME RUN!!" I might be up at the barn, throwing a few charges down for the horses or checking on the few heifers that might need help calving but even that 150 Yd distance was no match for my grandma's voice if Mays or Stretch hit one out! We ate a lot of watermelon and cantaloupe off that porch too. I learned to catch flies with my fingers there, to sharpen a knife, and watched Grampa burn and breath in his asma medicine there. Lots of things!

During the warm evenings of the summer, nobody wanted to be inside. Around on the back side, under a rack of old Bows and Arrows of my Dads vintage or older, and bumped up against a huge old cabinet that held, most importantly among other things for my uncle Russ and i, "cases" of GI issue m-1 carbine and 30-06 ball ammo, was a cot that was my seasonal bed. Many a warm night, i slept on that old cot and rose before the rest to get a look see what i'd caught in my traps. I guess i probably learned a great deal of what i learned as a youth, right there on that old ranch house porch. Pretty neat time and place to be!

Joey

 

[shedfinder]

NVbighorn, about the 9 channels.
channel 3 was NBC
4 - ABC
5 - CBS
7 - PBS
8 - TBS
9 - ESPN
10 - was another NBC
11 - was another CBS
12 - was a news channel

 

[nickman]

Ha...I'm 63, grew up on working cattle and farming alfalfa with irrigation pipes, siphon tubes and friggin' ditches everywhere!
I had 2 hours of chores morning and evening and still managed school sports, girlfriends and FFA.

Don't talk to me about TV....I never even saw a color one till I went off to college.

The upside...shotgun shells were $1.25, .22's were $.39 and I could go shooting everyday, without asking anybody or worrying about what the neighbors thought.

My dad's boss had box seats at Candlestick and we got to go once or twice a season......it was amazing!

I could go on and on.......

 

[ramtagless]

I am 37 and can relate to most of the post. We did not get cable in my little town until I was in middle school. My girlfriend in HS lived in the country and she had 3 channels, when fox came out it was a big deal...now she had 4 channels. Yeeeha...

My dad was born at home, did not have running water until he was in high school and they had dairy cows. Imagine what it was like growing up with him as your father?

Makes you wonder though...my dad had a lot to complain about, I guess I do now. What is the next generation going to be saying in 20-30 years?

Funny comment about being the remote control...I remember before cable we had a big @$$ old counsel tv with a manuel dial. My spot in front of the tv was with in reaching distance of that knob...it is a miracle I am not blind.

 

[Huntnfever]

You all forgot the price of gas...i am only 30 but i can remember gas being 79 cents a gallon....oh and there actually being unleaded and fuel with lead. We had 4 channels until i was in 10th grade. cbs, abc, nbc, and pbs or on the tv 3,6,8, and 10...the good old days ha ha

has anyone seen my kittie

 

[sageadvice]

Huntnfever, Good points!!

We had gas delivered to our big above ground tank and used that but in town, you could easy get 3 gallons for a dollar and your tire pressure checked, oil checked, and windshield cleaned, all thrown in on the deal. Some places even gave you stamps, coffee cups, or other merchandise advertisements with fill-ups. Service was always free and with a smile, plus the "have a good day and be sure to come back now", was a great way to start the day.

I just don't know how those gas stations ever made any money.

Joey

 

[AZStickman]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-14-10 AT 03:27PM (MST)[p]Damn.... I remember gas at $0.20 a gallon,$0.12 a gallon when the stations got into gas wars.Now gas wars are fought overseas and kids can't afford to cruise the drag.I smoked my first cigarette when they were $0.25 a pack and quit them when they hit $0.65 a pack.The TV only had 4 channels and they didn't stay on all night,after the 10:00 news you got that cool little one pic screen until 6:00am.......The only people you'd see ain a day hunting were those in your own party, if you even saw them.... If you got out late and there was a car parked in the canyon you planned to hunt you'd head out to another spot.
Terry

 

[BoneJunkie]

This brings back a few memories. Im only 30 but I can relate to alot of that stuff. My old man made us work all summer in the timber. I never had any idea what kids my age did all summer until later. They swam at the local pool and played basketball. I ran a chainsaw all day and by night I was to tired to go out chasin all night. I learned to buy my own clothes and pay my own way for everything. Im glad because I have great work ethic today unlike alot of these other kids. Cell phones, yeah I bought my first one at 25 and only because I needed it for my business.

 

[sageman]

I remember my kids friends & they had to ask how to use our rotary dial phone, My uncle had the first color tv that I saw,but only Bonanza and some comercials were in color.Westerns were on most chanels and the good guys always won.I saw "Gone with the wind" on tv with my family for the first time & they were floored when Clark Gable said the D word on public tv.35 cents was the cost to see a walk in movie.22 shells were 25 cents if you bought longs 35 cent for long rifle.I would get home from school get the dog & my shotgun and walk 3 blocks threw town & then start pheasant hunting,never was stopped and got the thumbs up on the way home from people if I was packing a couple of roosters.I took my wife on our first date to a drive in it only cost 5 bucks for admission two hot dogs two sodas & two candy bars + i got change back.If you went to the drive in on Sunday night it cost 1 dollar a car load.When we went on vacation it was fishing or hunting.DANG! Im getting old.......Jim

 

[cbeard]

nickman please tell me about Willie Mays in person........

 

[BeanMan]

My buddy's and I would tie our .22 rifles to the handlebars and ride our bicycles to prairie dog towns. The cops would wave when we rode by.

 

[nickman]

>nickman please tell me about Willie
>Mays in person........
>
>


Well, since you asked.....He had no problem signing autographs after the games. He spoke English, that you could understand. He appeared at fundraisers all over the Bay Area, in the off season and was always smiling.

When he came up to the plate, the place went silent.

Pretty much, most players of that era were the same.....but Willie Mays was the best of them at the time.

I was a Brooks Robinson fan overall, but I still have my Willie Mays autographed baseball.

 

[cbeard]

nickman-

Although I am too young(45) to really remember him playing, it has always been my belief he is the best all-around player the game has ever seen.The first "five tool" player and each tool was outstanding. Wish I could have seen Willie,Mickey,Stan "The Man",Ted,Hank,Brooks and MANY others play.The '50's and '60's were the glory years of the "Great Game".

Thanks for the reply,Clay

 

[kilowatt]

Our first TV was a large wood cabinet with about a 10" screen at the most and only Black & White picture and able to get three, yes three channels ABC, CBS & NBC...then again this was in 1948.
My dad traded my Mom's player piano for the TV....she was mad for quite awhile about that.

Brian

 

[feddoc]

Dang, all you 'old guys' reminiscing have got me a little skeered about growing old.

I remember when gas went to .42 a gallon, I had to wonder if I could ever drive again...grew up in a boxcar and even after we moved into a house, didn't have a phone or a shower (baths were in a galvanzied tub) until I joined the Navy. All that bitchin' but, I never lacked for things to do. And I had a lot of fun as a kid....rabbit hunting after chores, bulding my own forts, shooting the neighbors bull in the sack wiht a BB gun because he ate mom's lilac blossosms...I had to stay in that tree for 3 hours until that bull left.

Seems like kids today don't appreciate what they have...TVs, game systems, computers. It is tough for me to understand why kids today don't seem to have manners. Once in a great while some kid in a store will say excuse me or may I. I always try to make sure that kids parents know how much politeness is appreciated.





Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?