What did you do 'back before the turn of the century'?

And we listened to music on decent, hard working CD players! And went out and bought the whole CD. Not just one track from iTunes.

At my college, my dorm was at the top of an obnoxious hill and my classroom was across campus at the top of another hill. It didn’t snow often, but when it did I took special delight in walking to class thinking about how one day I’d be able to say, “I walked to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways!!”

@EmpressPixie I love your ‘decent, hardworking’ phrase. I’d missed that one!

I remember this place called the “library”. It had books made of paper! Our phone was connected to a cord in the wall. We couldn’t walk around with our phone… The good ol days!

There warn’t no durn interwebnets and laserbeam printers back in ‘77! Teacher had to write the weekly math quiz on triplicate carbon paper and run copies off’n a rolly-drum thing. Every kid in my 2nd grade class wanted to help Teacher with that rolly-drum thing! Ya get high off’n the fumes!

::Spit! Ping!::

@aprilsimnel LOL great sound effects!

@jonsblond Ayep! Those were the good ol’ days.

We had to get up off the couch to change the tv channel cuz we had no gosh darn remote!

@aprilsimnel: Oh my god, the ditto machine! We were still using it in ‘97! And it was the weekly math stuff! Always in purple ditto ink!

@jonsblond Dang times were tough!

@EmpressPixie @aprilsimnel I was trying to remember what those machines were called… Had to go to wikipedia and look it up ‘Mimeograph’. Wow! I must truly be in geezerhood.

Why, back when I worked Saturdays at my Pappy’s gas station (this was ‘round the time of that Ayrab oil embargo), we had to have a feller come out to change the counter on the pumps, ‘cause we couldn’t set the price at more’n a dollar a gallon, ner sell more’n $9.99 worth at a whack.

@Harp: Yeah, I remember a gas war in my town that pushed the price down to $0.23. Very disappointed when I got my own car and had to pay close to $.50. It was a VW. $5 to fill the tank!?? Outrageous!

back in the good ol’ days we usedta have cassette tapes that played movies and music. None of this disc stuff. We has soda in a glass and you could see a decent doctor that same day if ya needed too. Things were different back then, we worked hard.

I wuz just past knee-high to a grasshopper, and one day I turn on the big GE color tee-vee in the living room and some station’s got a bunch o’ them there music video records on, and there wuz some funny-lookin’, skinny, sweaty feller in a big suit and glasses.

He wuz a-wigglin’ and a-wrigglin’ like he got fleas down his pants or sumthin’, Singin’ about shotgun shacks and days gone by. Had to stop watchin’! Got dizzy just lookin’ at him! All o’ them polyrhythms and whatnot too much for m’ haid, y’see.

I hope he warn’t sick or nothin’. Ain’t good to be sick. A-nope.

@judochop Yeah… I’m not gonna talk about 8-track.

@aprilsimnel LOL.. ok… you lost me on that one.

We had REAL music in them days played by real musicians none of this digital enhanced nonsense song by super models.

@Grisson – Oh, well, then you must click the link! :D

@aprilsimnel DUH… (dang newfangled links!) ok. Thanks. I get it now. I was wondering if I’d get comparisons on tv shows. Didn’t even think about videos.

@GAMBIT Yeah… We had real musicians like the Beatles, not this electronic noise you get nowadays.

@Grisson – You got it!

Actually, I just answered this on a different fluther.

Back in the old days we didn’t have to download Apps to track our homework.
We used spiral notebooks and pens.

Every neighborhood and school had this building that was called a library where you could check out any book you wanted for free. You didn’t have to download it.

I loved getting a new spiral notebook for school every year, now they use laptops in class. Oh the times and technology it is a blessing and a curse all at the same time!! The summer was meant to be spent outdoor not inside like every kid I know does now.

@blondie411 Yep, Used to play in the mud with $.99 toy cars instead of in front of a $400 game console with a $59 game.

It was safe to go play a game with the neighborhood kids—who you all knew—down the street without parental supervision. As long as you were home by dark/in time for dinner.

The simple pleasures of mud and sand, it still amazes my mom how content I can be playing in sand…and how much of it can come home with me.

I have never owned a game console of any kind in my life to this day…my boyfriend the ultimate video game nerd thinks it is hilarious.

@blondie: Yap! And when we got tired of building mud castles, we’d start a good old-fashioned dirt clod fight!

In my day you didn’t get your favorite movie on the computer. When I was a teenager I borrowed your great grandfather’s car and watched a giant screen. It was called the Drive In. They hooked the speakers on the side of a great American vehicle called a Chevy and me and your Grandma would watch two shows under the moonlight with popcorn and soda.

@GAMBIT And for extra entertainment you could watch what was going on in the backseats of the other cars!

TRAPPER KEEPERS! i had a trapper keeper with a velcro piece in the front and i kept it in a bookbag not these little mesh and nylon things with rope that clearly weren’t inteneded to hold books. $1.50 MOVIE THEATER. EASTER SPEECHES. CHRISTMAS PAGEANTS. REAL NOTEBOOKS, NOT THIS PC. DIARIES AND JOURNALS, NOT BLOGS. TELEPHONES AND PHONE BOOKS, NOT MYSPACE AND FACEBOOK.

“dirt clod fight” I don’t know what that is, I grew up in New York City, I have no concept of such things. But riding the subway you can always find fun and cheap/free things especially in the summer outdoors.

Drive-ins! I was so sad when they shut down the last living one on Long Island! I saw the Flinstones there and Batman Begins!

@blondie411 “dirt clod fight” is probably a Southern thing. Best where the mud is good old red clay!

@Grisson – :-), Thanks for my first laugh of the day.

I know what red Georgia Clay is, gets on everything. I was in the smoky mountains for a few summers at a sleep-away camp in Cleveland, GA.

When I spend time at home over the summer, I still go to the drive-in with my dad. TWO first run movies for $8? What a deal! (Of course the sound comes over the radio now, which makes it easier to hear.) Plus the snacks are cheap when you bring them from home!

@blondie411 And you don’t know what a dirt clod fight is? You obviously didn’t run into the right pre-teen Georgia boys. :o)

We called them dirt bombs. Which led to acorn fights which led to rocks and fisticuffs but we never really hurt each other. We were all best friends split up in teams. Passing away our summers before school would start up again.

@GAMBIT Yeah, it was usually over as soon as someone got the bright idea to switch to rocks.

@blondie411 – yes the last drive in I saw was ‘Patton’ with George C. Scott.

@GAMBIT I can’t even remember what the last one was for me. Probably in highschool when we snuck in to watch a naughty movie. Didn’t need any sound.

I should have specified I didn’t go as a child I worked as an adult there. I wish I went as a kid though! Mostly the kids come from Florida and the Atlanta area.

@blondie411 Ahhh.. yeah, being an adult would take a lot of the fun out of it. :o)

No way, I had more fun than some of those kids did, it was my first time at a sleep-away camp! I was 18 the first year and away from home for the first time in my life, I would say it was a pretty awesome experience, aside from that I did have real responsibility being a bunk counselor and all but you know…

@GAMBIT we used to have dirt bomb fights that led to Acron fights which graduated to BB Gun fights until my neighbor mike lost his eye. Way to ruin a good time huh?

@GAMBIT That’s awful about your neighbor.

That was one of the ‘before the turn of the century’-sounding mantras: “Don’t play with that BB gun, you’ll put somebody’s eye out.”

I’m sorry to hear that that actually did happen.

Back in the day the only thing better than the drive in movie itself was watching people drive their cars away with the speaker still attached to the window. That’s right there was no tuninig the sound to fm you had to use the speaker box thingy. Boy were there some mad fathers about the scratched paint… Back in the day

@srtlhill LOL… yeah, done that.

I read the local newspaper because there was actually news in it. I had dinner parties, because I could afford to, and I had more real-time interactions than online interactions. I kept a cleaner house because I still had knees that worked, and could carry things up and down stairs.

@AlfredaPrufrock Newspapers… there’s something that ain’t what it used to be. I still get one because I want something to spill my coffee on every morning.

I can’t find the stuff I want for all the circulars. Even the Sunday funnies have a ‘popup’ add in front of them. If they’re going to be that ‘internettish’ then they need to find a way to let you click on the ‘See <story> on page 7C’ to get you there instead of having to wade through the (often out of order) sections and pages and ads and inserts.

mumblemumblegripegripe

@grisson, lol. And if you get the Sunday NYT, then two weeks later you get the same story in the local paper two weeks later. Our paper just announced that they are only running classifieds Wed. – Sun.

i’ve always wished that it snowed in florida, partially so i could tell long stories about the walks through the cold harsh winters to school. i don’t know, for some reason “i walked fifteeeeen miles through the foul humidity” doesn’t have the same ring to it ):

I was born.
BEFORE THE TURN, THE 90’s were here! Woo! 90s! Woo!....yea…..uh-huh…..yeh……