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NSW, Australia
I'm made it past 50! married for over half my life, have 3 kids all grown and I'm loving this part of my life.I was a nurse in my younger days but an unhealthy dose of rheumatoid arthritis put a damper on my career,so I'm at home with the internet.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Memories on Friday.

I'm coming up for half a century in a couple of years time. Looking back over that time I can remember inventions that we thought back then were amazing. Way before mobile phones, ipads and mp3 players. We couldn't even imagine those things being real back even in the early 80's.

Some of the things that were "new" when I was a youngun were:



Portable transistor radio, these were still quite big, but put about a dozen D sized batteries in and you could take it to the beach it would run for a good....40 minutes.
My father had a habit of leaving it slightly off station so our music was accompanied by the horrid static white noise .I'm sure it's why I'm a bit nutty now.




Palm sized transistor radio...no earphones you had to hold it to your ear for your own personal space, they had a real tinny sound but it was great.It was awesome to have music of my choice in my own room.This was actually a big deal in my house. Odd ,yes ,Personal freedoms were a privilege.


Portable Record player
I was never lucky enough to have one of these but my friends did. I remember one 11th birthday party listening to Fox on the Run by sweet,over and over and over and over.I included the song, so you can get into the excitement too. You may want to play it over and over and over,thats ok .



Cassettes These were a huge thing in the late 70's and 80's. They were only about $2 cheaper than LPs or records as we called them but they started putting the cassette players into cars and the portable transistor radios. They were expensive for what they were and often got loose and you'd hear mwaaaarrr mwaaarrr mwaaarrr and not much else. There used to be lots of unravelled tape at traffic lights, a sight you don't see anymore.I just gave our collection of about 150 cassettes to our brother in law, he bought a campervan with a cassette player in it. It's all 70's and 80's music. I hope he gets more than mwaaaar mwaaaar mwaaaar out of them.



1970 brought us one of these rotary phones, not everyone had an in home phone then but in the next few years,not many homes didn't have one.Before that we used these.



Mum was lucky we had one in our street a few houses down, but some people had to walk for ages then wait their turn for the box.



I remember my mum buying one of these u beaut electric typewriters in about 1985. We were researching the family tree and mum would type up family groups etc. We also used it for our resumes.She tried to give it to me about 6 years ago we all had computers with printers by then.It's still in the back of a cupboard.



Thanks to the Japanese, by the time I got to highschool in 1975 calculators had been introduced for maths.Legions of students never had to remember the formula for cosigns and tangents.
Not that a calculator helped me, I was hopeless at maths.
I keep finding these in drawers.I think they breed.


In 1974 the sewer finally came to my home town. We could have had a pump out septic for about 3 years prior but Dad was not going to pay the plumbers twice,so we put up with this....
for 3 years longer than we needed to. There was no light in there, plenty of spiders and it only got emptied by the sanny man once a week. God help us when we had visitors.

I'm glad some things have changed!!!



16 comments:

  1. A good trip down memory lane. When I started work in a bank in 1973 they'd only just introduced computers. The modem was a big as a microwave and we added ledgers and cash books up in our heads. (There was double entry bookeeping so we knew if we'd done something wrong). Oh the joys of having a tranny to yourself....

    Only the other day I was trying to think, what did people do with computers before the internet?

    I found your blog on ExposeYourBlog!

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  2. Omg that was so cool! I had one of those portable record players, the lid was a bright orange....nice! lol
    and cassettes used to drive me mad but I will say, I so miss LP's cos buying a cd is just so not the same!

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  3. Anji ...lol@ the modem size!Imagine asking for batteries for your tranny now??
    My first computer was a 386 with 640kb...thats right kilobites of storage lol I could enter names in a family tree database..that was pretty much it lol

    Lyndy... I'm so jeelous, i wanted one of those,but wsn't allowed,wehad a perfectly good sterogram in the loungeroom.lol.
    I agree about LP's ,theres just something about that crackle at the beginning when you put the needle down just before it begins to play.

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  4. I often feel as though I should've been born in the future because I have always looked forward to the technological advances rather than look back nostalgically at the way it used to be when I was a kid.

    I don't miss any of the old stuff except perhaps LPs a little because of the lack of album cover art in CDs today.

    One great example is Elton John's "Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy." The art on that album cover just can't be appreciated on a CD.

    BTW the word verification is 'tombho' and you just left a comment on my blog about a tombstone. Weirdness.

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  5. Okay, I've never had to rely on an outhouse... unless it was a camping trip.

    But I loved this post. I like thinking back, too. Wrote one ages ago about the stuff we have now and when it was new:
    http://amimental.blogspot.com/2006/02/progress.html

    I recently found a box of REALLY OLD STUFF from my past. In it was an 8 track tape of Sweet... Love Is Like Oxygen.

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  6. I worked with a girl who didn't even know what an electric typewritter was, so dragged mine from the back of the cupboard to show her.

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  7. You had a portable record player? Dang, I never had one! Oh, I did have a typewrite like the one in the picture, though. It was my second electric typewriter, and it was oh-so-modern at the time.

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  8. There are alot of things I remember, and some things I'd like to forget.

    Can't even bring myself to use the port o pottys at the ball field. Nope. I'll drive home first. -J

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  9. I remember all of these things, but thank goodness I only had to use an outhouse when I visited my cousins in the country.

    My first computer was an Apple II+, with 64kilobytes of memory, and we still have it and our Pong game!

    I used Timex Sinclair computers at school to teach BASIC that had 25k memory!!

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  10. CUBE... I like that things were simpler then in some ways, but I like having the things we have now too. I remember standing in the schoolyard on the 7/7/70 wondering what what the world would be like in 2000, we thought Jetsons.
    Tombho ...bahahaha

    AMI..I went and had a read...great minds think alike.
    You've been blogging a long time and hard to believe only 1 comment!!!
    I forgot the microwave!
    also the sanwich maker or "breville" as many ppl here still call one even though many many brands make them.

    TWILIGHT...my kids only know what one is because Nanna brought it out and let them play on it,so she could have peace on the computer LOL
    ON MY SOAPBOX..hi welcome :) No my friend did, I was so jealous.2nd electric? must have done a lot of typing.I did typing school on and old manual..nothing like that clicking sound,imagine typing pools back then,so noisy lol

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  11. Julianna.... funnily enough until I was about 6 or 7 I was terrified of the flushing loos, thought I was going to get sucked down the hole. I would open the door and if i couldn't reach the button and keep it open urgh ,my heart, I'd run for it once I flushed.My mum thinks its because I was sitting on loo at my nonnas when the instant gas heater blew up in there.

    Dirty Butter..
    We lived 50 miles from Sydney! Not far but a long way back then.
    we looved going to school or other peoples houses(after age 7 lol)except my granddads, he lived out in the country and had no flush either, we had to bring our own loo paper, he had the preverbial hook and newspaper!!

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  12. 1957 - our TV (A HMV 17 inch in a rosewood cabinet). The neighbours would come over to watch "Wagon Train" and "The Perry Como Show"

    1959 - a big year. Our telephone (standard PMG Black with phone numbers that started with letters - I never understood that.)
    AND
    our car (a Vauxhall Velox which was two-tone blue). We were the first to get one on our block. Dad got it so he could qualify as a bona fide traveller. By travelling 40 miles out of Sydney he could be served beer on a Sunday. The trips home were pretty exciting!

    1962 - Our first record player. A powder blue "portable" much like your photo. Actually it was my sister's 13th birthday present. Dad bought most of the records (pretty awful stuff) but by the late sixties we had Poison Ivy by Billy Thorp, Move, Baby Move by JO'K, Rubber Soul by The Beatles and 12x5 by The Stones.

    We always were able to flush our toilet, but the cistern was up high and we flushed by "pulling the chain". (Don't forget to pull the chain.") When we visited our grandparents up at Woy Woy, the dunny was down the yard and sheets of newspaper were used for toilet paper.

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  13. I'd take all of that stuff over the stupid iPhone any day! Hehe. Now it's all "vintage" and cool.

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  14. Other than the outhouse, I remember the other items, and sort of miss them, in a nostalgic sort of way. Remember when your boyfriend would make you a mixed tape of love songs?...you can really do that with an iPod, right!

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  15. muse...flash tv lol ours was a box on 4 metal legs.the knob on the front fell off and dad used pliers to turn the channel.
    I never understood the letters either.I have one of those old phones here, i collect old things. I have a party line one too with the spinny handle. I still love JO'K! lol I could find a pic of the pull chain loomust have used the wrong keywords.

    Haven lol..I could go back to it all except for the "dunny"

    Sandra..it was much simpler then I think. but I think every generation looks back. I feel old when when the kids think the 80's are the olden days and retro.
    Nah I didnt have much in the way of boyfriends and none of the 3 of them ever did that LOL

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