Remember when

My Evel Knievel doll. It came with a little motorcycle that’s long gone.

We would watch Evel on TV, jumping busses or the fountain at Ceasers Palace. Afterwards, we would go outside and try to jump things on our bicycles. We never had much luck and ended up with a lot of scratches and bruises. Fortunately, I don’t recall any broken bones.

 

I remember 78 RPM records. Grandparents had several.

 

Remember the metal records? Instead of grooves, they had prongs protruding from the bottom.
The prongs would "pluck" the tuned vibration bars (?) and make music. Like a huge over-grown jewelry box, but those had a drum with prongs instead of a flat metal record.

The player we had was from Germany and was hand-cranked to wind it up. Beautiful carved wood w/ lockable lid. Very ornate. We had/have (my sis still has it I'm sure) maybe 12-15 records. No idea at what speed they revolved.
A long arm with spaced wee wheels rotated down to apply even pressure on top of the record to ensure contact was made between the prongs and the music bars.

 

Early 70's Public Elementary School, every morning the whole school would go to the courtyard in the middle of the property. And say the Pledge of Allegiance as the Flag was raised.

 

Don’t remember the metal ones. Would be something to see!

 

How about these school desks?

 

They were the 1965 Rat Fink era cartoon monsters. Stuff inspired by Ed Roth.

I will wait and see if anybody knows about Surfnik before I post anything.

 

The one by the bus station in Covington KY about 1965.

 

There is a channel on YouTube devoted to these devices and there are some very interesting videos of ones in European museums.

 

Back then there was snow outdoors most of the time, but we had a flag in every classroom with a picture of Washington and Lincoln. We saluted the flag, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and we sang America the beautiful and other patriotic songs.

I lived mostly on military bases until I went off to college, and they had flag raising ceremonies and flag setting ceremonies every day. They played Reveille over the loudspeaker’s at 6 AM and at 6 PM they played Taps.

Traffic stopped when that happened. Foot and vehicular. If there was a flag in view, you turned and saluted it. You took off your hat if you were a civilian. Nobody moved until that music stopped.

I never had a problem with any of it, and overall it was much less of an inconvenience than what my friends in Catholic school went through.

 

I still have my Sheridan Bluestreak 5mm. Stock is cherry, action and barrel have a slight patina due to lack of maintenance but it's been in a climate controlled gunsafe for the last 35-40 years. I quit shooting it where I lived because it was damned near as loud as a .22!

 

They do have quite the report! That's power talking!
I never thought twice about that until that one night when I was trying to be stealthy. Thought the whole neighborhood was going to switch on their porch lights looking for: "Why, that must've been a Russian missile!", "Did you hear that Bob?" "Are we being invaded?"
You know how a kid's mind works after duck & cover drills under the desks in class & at home...

And mine wasn't even a Sheridan!

 

Yep. And my favorite pen ALWAYS seemed to find it' way to the very front and hide from me behind the books and stuffed papers (never neat & organized).
Added to it were rocks and string and sticks and baseballs and ??? from my pockets.

Some brands of these had adjustable legs and the janitor would come in on the first day of class to fit them for the too short or too tall kids.

 

Wow, the new fancy modern desks. I remember when those were new and replaced most of the old wooden/cast iron desks. God am I old.

 

So you were one of those kids whose papers and books were shoved in there… looking back, I had OCD back then too. I wanted to organize all of those messy desks!

I was (still am) one of the shortys….. my desk was never adjusted!! Assholes!

You felt special if you happened to get one of the new desks in class

 

The cast iron ones were the adjustable ones I mentioned. The ones I sat at had ink well holder holes in one corner, with ink stains around it.

 

Found it hard to do your sums with your chin resting on the desk?

I was short too (then, but not now). My legs were just barely long enough to reach my ass from the ground. Desk had to be adjusted or I was sitting on history books.

 

Every chair I sit in my feet still dangle. I get made fun of to this day about that. The reason my kindergarten nun hit me was because I was standing at my table coloring my papers. When I was sitting down, I couldn’t see it very well. She kept telling me to sit down and I kept standing back up. She came over, picked me up under my arms with one arm and hit me in my belly with her other hand. She then slammed me down in my chair. The hit knocked the wind out of me.

 

and some of those cars had shag carpet with plush interior . holy fk, I hated detailing the Oldsmobile cutlass