Blast from the Past

[crich70]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I wasn't born when Fess Parker and Buddy Epsen filmed the Disney Davy Crocket series of movies/TV shows. I saw them in the 1960s though. But I do remember Fess and Ed Ames in the Daniel Boone TV series in the 1960s. As I recall Ed Ames and his brothers were talented singers too. I remember that Daniel Boone toys were all the rage back then too--for about 15 minutes.

I understand the Zorro swords with chalk at the point were very popular among kids at the time too.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by dwig

My first thought was "chocolate covered double parking meter".

Not quite. Then there were the Charleston Chew candy bars and candy bracelets/necklaces too. Not to mention orange pushups.

Just remembering my teen years in the 1970s. I remember mood rings and pet rocks. In Texas we also had a Texas Turd Bird which was a dried patty of cow poop that was painted for the body and had tobacco pipe cleaners for legs and some feathers added for a tail.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by crich70

I bet you were very popular among the kids of the neighborhood for the Pong game alone.

Not really. Due to certain adult problems, we rarely invited kids over. Or more precisely, not knowing how one adult was going to behave, we rarely had friends over.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Just remembering my teen years in the 1970s. I remember mood rings and pet rocks. In Texas we also had a Texas Turd Bird which was a dried patty of cow poop that was painted for the body and had tobacco pipe cleaners for legs and some feathers added for a tail.

Glad we didn't have those in the late 70's. Pet rocks yes.
Oddest pet we had was a walking catfish. And yes, it was a pet.

[wodin]

I remember my Uncle Walter and Aunt Eva getting the first or possibly second television set in town. One of the local taverns got one at about the same time so I'm not sure who's was first. That must have been in the late 1940's as I was quite small at the time.

The thing was a huge mahogany piece of furniture in art deco style, and had a small hole in the middle of the front of it. If you peered into the hole you could see a six inch round piece of glass that would glow an eerie green with some black blobs moving across.

In my childhood naivete, I couldn't see any use for it, though it must have cost a fortune. As I sit in front of my 70" UHD, I reflect on how little I realized.

Originally Posted by wodin

I remember my Uncle Walter and Aunt Eva getting the first or possibly second television set in town. One of the local taverns got one at about the same time so I'm not sure who's was first. That must have been in the late 1940's as I was quite small at the time.

The thing was a huge mahogany piece of furniture in art deco style, and had a small hole in the middle of the front of it. If you peered into the hole you could see a six inch round piece of glass that would glow an eerie green with some black blobs moving across.

In my childhood naivete, I couldn't see any use for it, though it must have cost a fortune. As I sit in front of my 70" UHD, I reflect on how little I realized.

My parents always had the big wooden console TVs with record player and radio built in. They were big, bulky, and heavy, and you are absolutely correct in that they were furniture and not just a TV. They made a statement just like the rest of the living room furniture. And since they were vacuum tube electronics, they were often easily fixed with a trip to the Radio Shack store where you could test all the tubes and replace any bad ones. And also the vacuum tubes helped heat the living room in the winter!

I wish I had a dollar for every time mom yelled at us, "Get back farther away from the TV or you will ruin your eyes."

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by jswinden

My parents always had the big wooden console TVs with record player and radio built in. They were big, bulky, and heavy, and you are absolutely correct in that they were furniture and not just a TV. They made a statement just like the rest of the living room furniture. And since they were vacuum tube electronics, they were often easily fixed with a trip to the Radio Shack store where you could test all the tubes and replace any bad ones. And also the vacuum tubes helped heat the living room in the winter!

As a child, my grandmother's stereo was also a coffee table. She also had a black and white tv with a color screen in front of it. Made some things look really weird. It was supposed to turn your b&w tv into a color tv.
Her tv seemed to always be on. My other grandparents rarely watched tv. Just game shows and the news. But they didn't get their first tv until 1970. And they didn't have cable. Well grandmother did after granddad died. Now I know my great-grandmother got a tv when Guiding Light went from radio to tv but then she didn't like the show after it went to tv. The characters didn't match her thinking.

The image below is similar to what my parents always had, minus the VCR or cable box of course. We also had to get a UHF converter box when Austin got its first UHF TV station because the TV we had was VHF only--channels 2-13.



And I remember seeing ads in magazines for those conversion screens to turn a B&W TV into a color one. They basically had three color shades or bands running horizontally and were designed to tint the sky blue, the center neutral or red and the ground green, which of course rarely worked!

[Cinisajoy]

Yep, you found the screen I remembered.
That looks like my best friend's tv. Except he had done something to it so we could watch old movies and homemade videos on it. Well except he had an actual tv camera to record with. Not a consumer model. The ones on the reels. I can still remember him setting up the projector to watch The Nutcracker Suite every Christmas.

[wodin]

If memory serves it looked something like this.

Originally Posted by wodin

If memory serves it looked something like this.

Yep I think the first ones were designed to look similar to the big wooden stand-up radios of the day. I've only seen one TV with a round screen, and it was a true color TV. I guess the rectangular screens came along later. I'm not old enough to remember anything before the early to mid 1960s though.

[wodin]

Or maybe this.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by jswinden

... In Texas we also had a Texas Turd Bird which was a dried patty of cow poop that was painted for the body and had tobacco pipe cleaners for legs and some feathers added for a tail.

We had manure formed into very large toads, usually with "eyes" painted on them. The idea was to put the "toad" in the garden and as it weathered away it would fertilize the plants.

I never had any.


EDIT: Did some searching. They were called "Poopets." It looks like there may be a few sources for them, even today.

[drjd]

This is the HMV gramophone I inherited from my dad, along with dozens of 78 RPM records. I enjoyed listening it a lot during 60s and 70s. Now it is not in working condition, as the main clock-spring is broken. It was used as a showpiece in our living room till we changed our residence, and now kept packed in a box.

I guess my dad would have bought it during 1940s. He maintained it with great affection, and I well remember the stereophonic music I listened from my dad and mom when I over-wound its spring and broke it in mid 70s. Repairing of a mechanical gramophone had become difficult then, and it remained unattended for a long period. In late 1990s after death of my dad, I got it polished again and kept it as a memento.