Am I as old as dirt? I’m old as some dirt, not as old as other dirt.
These are things I remember as a kid:
Rotary dial telephones. People still talk about dialing a number on their smartphones, though there is a gradual shift toward using “calling” over “dialing.” With rotary phones you hated people who had lots of 8s or 9s in their phone number. If your finger slipped on the last number you had to start dialing over from the beginning.
Party lines. Picking up the phone and hearing others talking would be a plot for a horror movie now. Back in the early 70s it meant you were on a party line shared by others or your sister was gabbing to her boyfriend on the upstairs extension. “Get off the phone, I can hear you!”
The 8-track cassette. I’ve written about this before. It was the worst format for music ever, even if switching tracks was kind of neat. Like all terrible things, there is a small subset of people who love the 8-track cassette.
Black and white TV. We got a color set in 1975 and I discovered that Gilligan’s Island had color episodes.
The vinyl album. I guess that meant I grew up with a generation of audiophiles or something.
Typewriters. There was a room in the library at the Langara campus of Vancouver Community College that was filled with typewriters. It had a door that automatically closed for reasons that were obvious to anyone who entered the room when class assignments were due. I had my own portable Smith Corona and the only thing better than using it to write my own trashy stories (I did a lot more of that than actual assignments) was mashing as many keys at once. Why this was so entertaining I can’t precisely say.
Disco. The rise and fall and slight rise again.
The energy crisis. The first one.
The following stores: Eaton’s, Woodward’s, Woolworths, Woolco.
Video game arcades. Yes, these still exist in some form but I’m talking about the classic arcades of yore, with rows of games you paid 25 cents (50 cents if new) a shot to play. Duncan had a surprising number of arcades given its size. I spent most of my quarters in one adorably called The Saucy Dragon. I got my first full time job at an arcade at the age of 19, just as laser disc games became a very brief fad. I loved that job. I wrote my first novel working at that place. Handing out quarters was not exactly a demanding task.
Roller skates. You know, the kind that had four wheels, two in the front and two in the back.
Pong. Yes, I remember when Pong was new and futuristic. We’d drive the horseless carriage to the local pizzeria and play the cocktail table version, mesmerized by the bouncing phosphor dot.
The constant lurking fear of nuclear war. I was pretty sure my hometown wouldn’t get nuked but it was scary to think about all the same.
