Grandma Barb's Blog: A trip down memory lane

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

This morning I found myself laughing at a shared photo on Facebook:

It reminded me of some of the bands I had seen perform in my youth, some of whom I doubt many will even remember. I was very lucky to have seen the Beatles perform in Toronto, Canada in 1966, and also The Lovin' Spoonful in 1968. Once at University of Michigan, my access to concerts increased dramatically, and so I was able to see such groups as Mountain and The Ike and Tina Turner Revue. I saw Judy Collins, and the Beach Boys and even met John Denver (a long story...). All of these are etched in my memory...

Felix Pappalardi, along with Lesley West, formed the band Mountain. Very cool, no?

The Ike and Tina Turner Revue. John Denver once said that God receated Tina Turner to show other women how to dance in high heels!

I got a little nostalgic for that time in my life, seeing it through the proverbial rose-colored glasses. I found an excellent website for anyone who would care to take a walk down a baby boomer's memory lane: http://www.mikanet.com/museum/index.php

In the meantime, I copied and pasted some of the things that sparked my own memories and have included them below for your viewing pleasure. If you are old like me you should recognize them instantly. If you are much younger, it may be hard to relate to them, but it will serve to show you how different life was for us Boomers!

The original Pong arcade game was introduced in 1972. I remember seeing these at the local mall-- 3 games for 25 cents!

These signs appeared in public buildings. We had them at our elementary school, and regularly practiced "air raid" drills. The Cold War was a very scary reality!

Gas stations and other stores gave out Green Stamps when you bought their merchandise. You put them in books and redeemed them at S&H centers for more merchandise. I remember my parents got their first electric blanket with Green Stamps!

If you wanted a copy of something you had to use carbon paper!

I learned my "keyboarding" skills on a Royal manual typewriter in high school Typing I class. I was in an elite group in college who had an electric typewriter to type my papers on. No errors allowed... thank goodness for "erasable" typing paper!

This is a slide rule. It was used in advanced math classes to figure sine, cosine, tangents and cotangets. Also square roots. No calculators... My father, an engineer, kept one of these in his shirt pocket while at work.

My sister and I got this game one year for Christmas and LOVED IT!

Old mainframe computers did not have keyboards... they used these cards. The cards had to be punched by a keypunch operator, stacked in the correct order, and then fed into the gigantic machine.

This is a rotary telephone. It was considered the property of the telephone company. We had only one-- people who had more than one when I was a kid were considered rich. When in high school, if a boy called me up I had to talk to him in front of the entire family...

Water beds were introduced when I was in college. Kids in the dorm would get twin-sized ones. I remember at the end of the spring semester, hoses sticking out of dorm windows all over the place as they emptied out the water bed to go back home for the summer. I only slept one night on a water bed -- tried out a friend in the dorm's when she was away-- and didn't like it at all-- the wave action every time I turned over kept me awake, and the girl who had it didn't have a heater for it so I froze.

A transistor radio allowed me to listen to my favorite AM radio station any time! I used to take it to bed and listen with an earphone late at night-- I could get the far away WBZ from Boston, my absolute favorite station at the time.

A black and white cabinet TV... what I watched Captain Kangaroo on!

I received a portable record player for my 13th birthday and started collecting records... some were 33 1/3 rpm LP's and a lot were 45 rpm single tune per side records. I sure wish I had them now!