Now I Realize I'm Old

[DougRichards]

You realise you are old when aircraft younger than you are, are starting to appear in aviation museums. That horrible realisation arose for me when Duxford took delivery of a Tornado and an A10.

 

Im EVEN old enough to remember an era before this new fangled 'internet' thingie, and we all had tape drives instead. And we were thankful for them!

 

Black and white TV (1960 in my home).... and the home didn't get a telephone until 1963.

 

78rpm records

 

My grandparents next door had a gas powered refrigerator, but others in the neighbourhood still had ice delivered, in a horse drawn cart.

 

Yes, early 1960s.

 

When the young bloke at the service station who put petrol in your tank also checked the tyres and washed the windshield but your family car didn't have seatbelts.

 

And everyone used cash.

[baboon6]

 

You realise you are old when aircraft younger than you are, are starting to appear in aviation museums. That horrible realisation arose for me when Duxford took delivery of a Tornado and an A10.

 

Im EVEN old enough to remember an era before this new fangled 'internet' thingie, and we all had tape drives instead. And we were thankful for them!

 

 

 

When the young bloke at the service station who put petrol in your tank also checked the tyres and washed the windshield

 

.

Still happens here!

[Richard Lindquist]

 

You realise you are old when aircraft younger than you are, are starting to appear in aviation museums. That horrible realisation arose for me when Duxford took delivery of a Tornado and an A10.

 

Im EVEN old enough to remember an era before this new fangled 'internet' thingie, and we all had tape drives instead. And we were thankful for them!

 

Black and white TV (1960 in my home).... and the home didn't get a telephone until 1963.

 

78rpm records

 

My grandparents next door had a gas powered refrigerator, but others in the neighbourhood still had ice delivered, in a horse drawn cart.

 

Yes, early 1960s.

 

When the young bloke at the service station who put petrol in your tank also checked the tyres and washed the windshield but your family car didn't have seatbelts.

 

And everyone used cash.

 

We had a deal with the local Mobil station. We just signed a sales receipt and at the end of the month the owner would send us a bill (no plastic involved). Good for me keeping gas in my 1953 Hudson Jet as my mother paid the gas bills.

 

I went through four years of engineering in college using a Pickett slide rule in "eye saver yellow".

 

The Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering departments jointly owned a half a dozen expensive (couple of thousand 1950s dollars) Friden mechanical calculators which could add, subtract, multiply, and divide (one of the machines would actually calculate square roots). They were noisy with all of the little wheels inside spinning around and had sliders with pointers to indicate the decimal points (manually). A three dollar pocket calculator does all of that today.

 

We also used twelve place logarithmic tables which were books the size of the old high end library atlases. Try taking an examination balancing one of those on your lap. Handouts and examinations were all produced in a purplish blue ink on spirit duplicators.

 

The instructors used blackboards and chalk for demonstrating the working of problems. Written work was hand typed on little portable typewriters or was hand written.

 

Permanent engineering plans were done on tracing cloth with inking done with "bow pens". They were copied onto blue prints which were white lettering on blue paper after reproduction. You stuck the tracing in a frame under glass with the white paper behind it, then secured the frame like a picture. You took the apparatus out into the sun to expose it, then went into a dark room and developed the paper in some yellow solution. After developing you had the blue print.

[DougRichards]

 

 

You realise you are old when aircraft younger than you are, are starting to appear in aviation museums. That horrible realisation arose for me when Duxford took delivery of a Tornado and an A10.

 

Im EVEN old enough to remember an era before this new fangled 'internet' thingie, and we all had tape drives instead. And we were thankful for them!

 

Black and white TV (1960 in my home).... and the home didn't get a telephone until 1963.

 

78rpm records

 

My grandparents next door had a gas powered refrigerator, but others in the neighbourhood still had ice delivered, in a horse drawn cart.

 

Yes, early 1960s.

 

When the young bloke at the service station who put petrol in your tank also checked the tyres and washed the windshield but your family car didn't have seatbelts.

 

And everyone used cash.

 

We had a deal with the local Mobil station. We just signed a sales receipt and at the end of the month the owner would send us a bill (no plastic involved). Good for me keeping gas in my 1953 Hudson Jet as my mother paid the gas bills.

 

I went through four years of engineering in college using a Pickett slide rule in "eye saver yellow".

 

The Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering departments jointly owned a half a dozen expensive (couple of thousand 1950s dollars) Friden mechanical calculators which could add, subtract, multiply, and divide (one of the machines would actually calculate square roots). They were noisy with all of the little wheels inside spinning around and had sliders with pointers to indicate the decimal points (manually). A three dollar pocket calculator does all of that today.

 

We also used twelve place logarithmic tables which were books the size of the old high end library atlases. Try taking an examination balancing one of those on your lap. Handouts and examinations were all produced in a purplish blue ink on spirit duplicators.

 

The instructors used blackboards and chalk for demonstrating the working of problems. Written work was hand typed on little portable typewriters or was hand written.

 

Permanent engineering plans were done on tracing cloth with inking done with "bow pens". They were copied onto blue prints which were white lettering on blue paper after reproduction. You stuck the tracing in a frame under glass with the white paper behind it, then secured the frame like a picture. You took the apparatus out into the sun to expose it, then went into a dark room and developed the paper in some yellow solution. After developing you had the blue print.

 

 

You talk about logarithmic tables to the children of today and they just won't believe you.

 

(personally we had them at high school and I hated the things)

[Dawes]

Before there were copiers, my school had a machine called (IIRC) a mimeograph, or some such.

[Ken Estes]

The first 'xerox' machines in the Seattle public library delivered b&w negative copies, reeking of fixer, c.1958.

[sunday]

Reading about the cancellation of MBT-70, and about the cost-saving XM-whatever that would be the M1. Being disappointed with the whole tank business, then.

[DB]

Chris - I'm a year or so younger and you were lucky to have ersatz DPM. We were still in khaki, the abiding memory was f*cking puttees, and 37 pattern webbing (although I'm sure it was called 38, oh well).

 

Our weapons were as mixed a bag as you mentioned - we had two demo. Brens with two different sights as well.

[Chris Werb]

Puttees!!! LOL!!! I remember struggling with those ****Ing things and finding WW2 canvas gaiters in my dad's shed and thinking what a great improvement they would have been on 1970s friggen puttees! Some of our members (as we were in a garrison town and many had serving parents) got hold of "NI boots", but Doc Martens were popular for exercises as you could feel twigs underneath them before they snapped. I remember stripping a mint Inglis Mk 2 BREN, but can't recall if it was on our books as it was at Friday Woods Camp. We used the TA armoury on West Circular road and I loved going down there to draw the Enfields as it was full of SLRs, GPMGs, L4s and Sterlings. We did have official MoD spec BSA Meteor .177 air rifles - you could tell they were official because they lacked the screws above the breech for the normal open sights. I had three similar, but civvy spec Meteors at home at one point, one of them with the peep rearsight.

[Ivanhoe]

Before there were copiers, my school had a machine called (IIRC) a mimeograph, or some such.

Correct, IIRC Mimeographs were the primary method for locally printing copies when I was in elementary and junior high school. Anything widespread came from the school district HQ. Those Mimeograph machines were a tabletop thing. Photocopiers became widespread when I was in high school.

[Richard Lindquist]

`Mimeograph required that the original be typed on blue "stencil paper" and signed with a metal stylus (all freehand drawing was also done with a metal stylus). The blue paper was then peeled off its backing and fastened to the wheel of the mimeograph machine (small ones were desktop and big ones looked like the heavy duty xerox machines). The wheel was inked and the blank paper fed through. After your copies were done, you had to hand collate them. For large jobs. they had a "collating table" which people sat around and spun while they were assembling the copies.

[Richard Lindquist]

The first 'xerox' machines in the Seattle public library delivered b&w negative copies, reeking of fixer, c.1958.

Remember thermofax copies (dark brown printing on flimsy tan paper that faded out in a couple of months)?

[Ken Estes]

The horror! The horror!

[Dawes]

I'm old enough to have assembled Paveway I's (them funny lookin' Paveways with the boxy tails).

[Colin]

`Mimeograph required that the original be typed on blue "stencil paper" and signed with a metal stylus (all freehand drawing was also done with a metal stylus). The blue paper was then peeled off its backing and fastened to the wheel of the mimeograph machine (small ones were desktop and big ones looked like the heavy duty xerox machines). The wheel was inked and the blank paper fed through. After your copies were done, you had to hand collate them. For large jobs. they had a "collating table" which people sat around and spun while they were assembling the copies.

If you did communication media in High school you had to operate those and film projectors. When we did tours at the hovercraft base, the kids were as fascinated by the movie projector as they were the hovercraft.

[Chris Werb]

I'm old enough to have assembled Paveway I's (them funny lookin' Paveways with the boxy tails).

 

When did Paveway I leave the inventory? Ditto the GBU-8?

[shep854]

Watching the Spru-cans come and go (even though they were actually axed early) didn't help

Edited August 9, 2014 by shep854

[Richard Lindquist]

Log Cabin maple syrup in little cabin shaped tins with the sides printed to look like a log cabin. The round chimney jutting out of the roof was the spout. After the syrup was gone, you could rinse out the tin with hot water, cap the chimney and had a little house to play with.

[sunday]

 

Cute!

[DougRichards]

Log Cabin maple syrup in little cabin shaped tins with the sides printed to look like a log cabin. The round chimney jutting out of the roof was the spout. After the syrup was gone, you could rinse out the tin with hot water, cap the chimney and had a little house to play with.

 

I am sure a few were pressed into service as money boxes for kids as well.

 

We had a simpler idea - one jam company packaged their product in glass jars with pressed on, not screw seal, lids. These jars were about the same size and shape as an 'Old Fashioned' glass. Why recycle when you can keep and use?

 

But they haven't been on the shelves since the 1970s.

[Archie Pellagio]

 

Log Cabin maple syrup in little cabin shaped tins with the sides printed to look like a log cabin. The round chimney jutting out of the roof was the spout. After the syrup was gone, you could rinse out the tin with hot water, cap the chimney and had a little house to play with.

 

I am sure a few were pressed into service as money boxes for kids as well.

 

We had a simpler idea - one jam company packaged their product in glass jars with pressed on, not screw seal, lids. These jars were about the same size and shape as an 'Old Fashioned' glass. Why recycle when you can keep and use?

 

But they haven't been on the shelves since the 1970s.

No they were around much more recently, I certainly remember them as recently as 1995.

[DougRichards]

 

 

Log Cabin maple syrup in little cabin shaped tins with the sides printed to look like a log cabin. The round chimney jutting out of the roof was the spout. After the syrup was gone, you could rinse out the tin with hot water, cap the chimney and had a little house to play with.

I am sure a few were pressed into service as money boxes for kids as well.

 

We had a simpler idea - one jam company packaged their product in glass jars with pressed on, not screw seal, lids. These jars were about the same size and shape as an 'Old Fashioned' glass. Why recycle when you can keep and use?

 

But they haven't been on the shelves since the 1970s.

No they were around much more recently, I certainly remember them as recently as 1995.

 

 

 

Old stock????

 

---------------

 

But you are most likely correct. I can also understand why they went off the market. To open you pried the lid off with the tip of a bread and butter knife. There would have been a few careless people who would have done this badly leading to the rim of the jar chipping. Done with care and with a blunt knife, no problem. Done with a steak knife and I can see a problem.

Edited August 10, 2014 by DougRichards

[Richard Lindquist]

When I was a kid, we got all of the glasses in our cupboards free. The large glasses came from the Peter Pan peanut butter, the medium glasses from Welch's grape jelly, and the small juice glasses from Kraft's pimento cheese spread. My mother owned one set of water glasses for special company dinners. The rest of the time, we used the peanut butter, jelly, and cheese glasses. Such were the lives of the blue collar.

[Ivanhoe]

When I was a kid, we had the "good glasses" (and china and flatware etc), and we had the stuff we actually used. Some of the glasses we used were like these;

 

 

They were a giveaway from Mobil gas stations, as I recall. You bought some amount of gas to qualify for another "free" glass. Ebay prices for those things are all over the map.

[EvanDP]

When I was a kid, we got all of the glasses in our cupboards free. The large glasses came from the Peter Pan peanut butter, the medium glasses from Welch's grape jelly, and the small juice glasses from Kraft's pimento cheese spread. My mother owned one set of water glasses for special company dinners. The rest of the time, we used the peanut butter, jelly, and cheese glasses. Such were the lives of the blue collar.

As a kid I remember we had "good" glasses for company and important dinners. For day to day we used the plastic glasses you would find at a local pizza joint. The stuff would survive multiple drops to the floor.