Things I’ve seen change
The last 20 or so years has seen alot of change brought about by technology. For the most part, I love it and embraced it early on. While working for a National Science Foundation Program in the late 90’s, I was introduced to the internet as it was just starting out. I later worked for Apple Computer and was a beta tester for Mark Cubans streaming software which would later make him a billionaire basketbowl entrepreneur.
What about before that? I’m 56 years old and barely remember the JFK assassination. I was still living in my birth place of Calgary at the time. We had friends who bought a color tv, but there was not much to watch in color. I think Gilligans Island may have been the first tv show I saw in color, but that may have been a year or two later. I remember moving to Littleton, CO in 1965 shortly after a devastating flood. I remember LBJ and the Vietnam war. Christmas of 1968 was amazing as Apollo 8 was orbiting the moon and reading from Genesis. 7 months later, the entire world watched men walk on the moon. Still have newspaper clippings from that era.
One of the more overlooked changes, at least in my opinion, was the transformation in clothes. Look at the crowd at a baseball game from the early 60’s and before. Almost everyone is wearing at least shirt sleeves, and most likely a suit. A SUIT!. To a ballgame. This is part of the fascination of the 60’s. Besides all the other revolutions taking place, musics, civil rights, women's rights, etc, etc, etc… the T-shirt became an accepted fashion accessory. Today it is makes a statement, but once it was simply an undergarment or only worn by bad boys like Marlon Brando or James Dean.
When I was a kid, my dad would slick back my hair with brylcream or some other greasy mess. Former New York Yankee Joe Pepitone made the hair dryer essential for the locker room. As much an accessory for the disco age as nylon shirts (or worse - leisure suits…gasp) and bell bottom jeans. I wore a sweet set of puka shells around my neck for a couple years in high school. Today I don’t even wear a watch. Nor do I miss disco.
Music has gone from very mellow to hard rock to punk. I checked out of really listening to music after high school (at least new music). To me, AC/DC and U2 are those new bands. I remember buying my first record player and my first record was The Beatles. Then 8 tracks came along, followed by cassette tapes, followed by cd’s and finally digital. I have most of my all-time favorites in my cell phone and in the cloud. The transistor radio begat the walkman and then the boombox and finally the iPod.
I think I saw my first tatoo in Australia in late 80’s. Today it is hard to find someone who doesn’t have tats. And Remember to donate blood before getting that tattoo, as you won’t be able to for a whole year.
As kids, we used to crawl all around the back seat of the car. Today’s kids are strapped down like they were riding on a Saturn 5 rocket. Seat belts used to be an added feature that nobody used. Even the dog gets strapped in. Throwing garbage out the window of a moving car was pretty common, as nature was treated as a waste disposal system. Thank god that earth day came along and we have slowly but surely made progress in changing attitudes towards dumping and recycling.
What about the little everyday things we take for granted? Like when I saw the first 7/11 open nearby. The story was it was open from 7 in the morning to 11 at night. My parents asked ‘why would anyone be out at 11 at night’? Speaking of 7/11, the icee was a game changer that they brought forward.
Now for the real horror. There was a day when we only had about 4 tv stations. Yes, the stories you’ve heard are all true. ABC, CBS, NBS & PBS. Cronkite gave us the news without opinion, until he did give an opinion on Vietnam and the country agreed. In Denver, we also had an independent little station called KWGN. They had the after school cartoons with ‘Blinky the Clown’, and Friday night ‘Creature Features’ where I watched the classics like Frankenstein and the ‘Amazing Colossal Man’. The newspaper is almost gone, replaced by my iPad.
I saw the transformation from wood to aluminum bats. I got my first aluminum bat with green stamps (remember those?). It was red and I started putting dents in it after a couple of years. I’ve also witnessed the transition of the front on ‘toe kicker’ to soccer-style kicking in football. My high school kicker was a ‘toe-kicker’. I also remember watching the olympics and seeing a guy do the high jump backwards in what he called the Fosberry flop. Until then, people would approach the bar from the front and jump. Tennis rackets were small and made of wood, as were the ‘woods’ in my dads’ golf set.
The microwave oven might as well have been magic. No longer did we have to eat half frozen ‘tv dinners’. Automatic icemakers elimated the need to refill ice trays endlessly. The ability to get crushed ice eliminated the need for the manual ice crusher which was a total beating.
So, for about the first 35 years or so of my life, things moved along at a slow but steady pace. Today, I’ve got a walkman, camera, phone and more computing power than they had to land a man on the moon in my cell phone. I don’t really miss alot of these outdated things, just the times from which they came.
Let me know what I’ve overlooked….Mark
