Before Cell Phones

[Spitfire1975]

I'm 37 and I remember every part of that in my child hood...described in detail. If you stay outside you better find stuff to do.

And a place to grump in peace.

 

[kimcrwbr1]

when I was younger and the tape player ate the 8 track I got stuck in the woods and I had to build a fire and send up smoke signals to get my 72 bronco pulled out of a beaver pond in the middle of winter but no one would answer so I used a axe to cut a couple trees to pry the pig out. with a bag of doritos and a half rack of schmitzs beer oh man life was good without a cell phone.

 

[Spitfire1975]

huh. Guess I neglected to add that I got locked out of the house a lot.

 

[97ranger xlt]

some musings...

when your 8 track player ate the tape you could sort of pull it in a certain way that would snap it back into good condition again. we never thought cassettes would ever catch on...
you could phone home at a ''pay phone'' ..for 10 cents
drinking age was 18 so we got fake id's at 16..a bottle of ripple wine cost 2.50...

 

[01_ranger_4x4]

ha ha i used to sit in front of the radio for hours to try and record my favorite songs. i actually found some of those tapes the other day in my basement but i couldnt find a damn tape player to listen to them. lol now im not quite 30, im 27 but things def have changed since i was a kid. our entertainment as kids was legos, pedaly bikes, BB guns and dirt, not MP3's, internet and video games. i remember when the first nintendo came out and we actually got to play one, it was so futuristic! lol

 

[scott5640]

im 17, and somethings i could do back then...

although now im a type 1 diabetic living off of an insulin pump....i would make it back then..

 

[straycat]

My dad was an AF pilot and I was in the military as well. I remember when we lived in Africa for almost three years (the Congo) back in 67-69 and we had no TV over there. I had BBC to listen to on my shortwave radio and listened to that every day and at night (when we weren't in school). I loved all the music BBC palyed. I was a teenager then (early teens) and we had a huge swimming pool and we swam a lot (great exercise) and once a week we had a real movie that came to us and the whole community of military people would come over to visit and have a huge dinner party and watch a movie on those old huge projectors like they had at movie theaters. This was one the biggest thing to do except people also used to love and play with our pet monkey, Boo and enjoy the Afican nights.
I learned to play guitar while I lived there, from a record of the Ventures called 'Play Guitar With the Ventures'. I still have that record but not the original Fender Strat my parents bought for me with an amp one week when they both flew to Germany for their wedding anniversary and left me and my little sister there with one of our friends to watch over us......to make sure we did not get eaten by a wild animal. The jungle was about 50 yards from our home.

Today, kids just don't use their imagination as much. All of these gagets that keep coming out are making them spoiled and lazy. Humans are becoming more and more lazy. I have a cell phone but I have no games or anything. I still like to get back to nature and that is why I have a home out in the woods so I can enjoy seeing fox, racoon, wild boar, possoums, bob cats come to visit and sometime stay over night. The less I see people with their spoiled kids the better I feel. Go for a walk, ride a bike, take out that canoe get some exercise and live a little (and longer).


Straycat

 

[heptofite]

yeah, i think i could have handled that, because on the other hand you actually had real cars to work on.

 

[straycat]

when I was younger and the tape player ate the 8 track I got stuck in the woods and I had to build a fire and send up smoke signals to get my 72 bronco pulled out of a beaver pond in the middle of winter but no one would answer so I used a axe to cut a couple trees to pry the pig out. with a bag of doritos and a half rack of schmitzs beer oh man life was good without a cell phone.

Heeeheeee..... you said 'beaver' heeejeeeee lol


Straycat

 

[r1hatman]

I'm 38 and I remember listening to hours of 45 records. In the summer, and winter I stayed outside till the street lights came on. I couldn't get outside fast enough after breakfast to go build my fort or terrorize the neighborhood. Today I have to lock my kids outside, then they sit around in the shade and complain ,whaa it's hot, I'm bored, blah blah blah! I will say this, life was simpler back then! Now if someone can't reach you on your home phone they blow up your cell. How about I don't want to talk to right now jackass! Everybody is entitled today! And these damn kids have no respect for anything or anyone! My kids walk the line and say yes sir, and mam and thank you cause they know I'll woop that ass if they don't! Time out my ass! You can take time out to rub your ass after I burn it! I'm like ATT I'll reach out and beat your ass! I see kids running over their parents every day and I think to myself, Are you %#@king kidding me? That kid needs an ass woopin! When my son talks about video games I tell him that I had the first video game, Atari and Oddessy, the first one was pong, and we had that too and Star Wars was out when I was a kid, that one blows them away, then I let them watch Flash Gordon, there's a memory jogger for you if your over 30! LOL Actually . We also had HBO and Cinamax, so when my parents went to bed, I was getting my education on! LOL Anyway, I digress, It was better back then, but we can hold on to a little of that as we grow with our families. My oldest son loves watching the oldies with me, Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Beullers Day Off, Uncle Buck and basically any John Hughes movie. They don't make movies like that anymore!

 

[kimcrwbr1]

Yea I am terrible at games two years ago I bought an atari with about 20 games and I still suck at it my favorite is the original star wars but it still kicks my ass.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I thought the list was pretty good... I'm not quite 30 yet but I'm not to young to remember a lot of that sort of thing. I didn't get a cellphone until around 2000, and then it was a company cellphone for about 5 years before the company did away with their phones and I transferred it into my name. Back when I first got it, I was limited to 50 peak minutes a month plus free cell to cell and no text.

Now I have 450 peak, unlimited off and mobile, and text. Bout the lowest plan I can get without goin with one of those small companies or a pay-as-you-go. It's quite rare that I uses all of those minutes. And I hate texting for the most part. I'll do it some, but it seems like most people my age and a lil younger always want to text. If I get a text when I'm driving, I'll usually read it, and if it requires more than a one-word response, I'll call. Of course, most people don't answer and then send a text along the lines of "why don't you just text me?" At that point I toss the phone back on the seat next to me and ignore it. I'm sorry, I'm driving, so it's call or wait, lol.

I remember when Nintendo came out. My parents wouldn't let me get one, they said they didn't want me rooted in front of the tv for hours. I bought an Xbox about a year after they came out and hid it from my parents for awhile (I'd take it over my buddies place an if it was raining, we'd play it... if it was nice, the Xbox stayed in the truck and we went outside). I spent a lot of time outside. Actually, me and my buddy spent a lot of time on mountain bikes. A 15+ mile trip was the norm. I can't believe how lazy I got since the invention of the automobile.

I also remember when we got our first computer. I used to spend hours on that thing (and often got yelled at for it). But it wasn't without purpose, I spent a lot of that time on instant messengers talking with people, which worked wonders for improving my typing skills. Now I'm rather well connected and spend a couple hours on average on a computer every day. But I spend a lil of that browsing forums that I'm a member on and most of it working on estimates, bills, trying to find more work, or taking care of my website. When I'm not doing that or working, I'm outside. Which is where I'm headed in a few minutes.

 

[Pt_Ranger_V8]

i agree, altho im 16, kids today are spolied lil turds. trust me, im not spolied, i was the only kid in high school rockin a tape player.

my first computer i got was back in 2005, i still use it, it was a 1989 compaq deskpro 386 with a 80mb harddrive and MS-DOS!

my first cellphone was in 2006, and it didn;t even have a color or black n white screen, heck the date of manufacture is febuary of 1993!, danm phone is older than me, its an old analog motorola microtac brickphone, i dont even have a cellphone since 08 cause they turned of analog in the cities.

and as far as music players, i had a beaten up tape player that i used everywere, that i still use today, i dont even like mp3 players, cd players or anything else forthat matter, im keeping the stock radio in my ranger stock! i prefere tapes anyday! i was the only kid at school rockin judas priest, eagles, journey, black sabath, metalica, motley crue, etc on TAPE!!! seemed like all the girls at school cant keep there danm face out of there phone texting thier friend 10 ft away from them at all, i just didn't fit in there, i beated up alot of stuck up "OMG, whatever" ppl at school cause i just cant stand being around such fagoritory, heck, i tought the ghetto kids how to pick lockers and all the stuckup kids were freakin out cause they got there cellphone/ipods taken, they deserve it for treating those without like crap. eventually in 10th grade i just said screw it, and droped out. man, i would love to live in the 80s.

I'm thinking you probably should've stayed in school, among other things that I won't type out.

 

[Shran]

Heh. I think it's funny.

Nobody believes that I grew up the way I did. I didn't have electricity until I was 7 years old and didn't have plumbing or running water until I moved out of my parents house at 18 (in 2005... I'm 23.) I remember when the other kids at school were playing video games, I was out building forts and hunting small game in the woods with a homemade bow and arrow. Finally found another buddy who shared my appreciation for that type of living and we would live off stuff we hunted or fished, and lived in a shack that was built in the 1930's and abandoned for 50 years prior to us.

Oh man those were the days. Every summer I go on a big wheelin trip with my club and get to ditch the cell phone for a week... it's great

 

[88_Eddie]

i remember my first cell phone, it was bigger than the house phone my mom and dad have in there house today. think it was a nokia and the screen looked like it should be on a calculator. it didnt fold in half and ALL it did was make calls. i hardly used it except to get checked on by my parents. then i got an ericsson that was at least 1.5" thick, people thought i had wood when i would carry it around, lol.

when i first got my BII a little after my 16th b-day, the FIRST thing i did was go out and buy a new TAPE player for it, lol. i think i paid close to $100 for it, RIP OFF.

i spent a lot of time outside as well, me and my friends didnt get out of our "fort building" phase until we started driving, lol. we also had a vast arsenal of slingshots, bb guns and bow & arrows. many a small creatures died by our hands in the 90's, LOL.

and of course, one can never forget the bb gun wars, to this day i have a scar on my side from getting shot with a bb gun at 30 feet......just think of the lawsuit that would be today