Remember when

I'm pretty sure that the small church-run elementary school that I went to for 1st thru 8th had all the coat hooks and cubbys right in your classroom. I thought I had an early class pic scan I was going to post, but I can't find it at the moment.

 

I loved the smell those things gave off.

 

You must pin the gears down to cardboard with pushpins (which were always getting lost) and after about 10 rotations with the pen, the pins would work loose and your pattern would slip.

Anyhow, if you had a big pattern you put pins in every single hole to keep that thing planted on the paper until you were done.

 

I’m not the only one….. right fellas?

 

We used to get calls from Dad on the Mars System in the 1960’s.

You could dial the number on Christmas Eve and hear the radar report of Santa being spotted over the DEW Line.

Remember the big USAF command room in Dr. Strangelove? Radar consoles around a huge plexiglass map of North America, inside the blockhouse?

That’s where my dad worked in the 60’s. Watching for missiles and bombers.

 

Remember these guys?

 

F Troop
Who was the guy with thick glasses as the lookout?

 

The character's name was Vanderbilt, played by actor Joe Brooks.

 

I had a white Shepard we named Kimba! Good dog!

 

I can remember when we would wrap toilets with saran wrap and put the lid down in high school.
Also remember a cigarette made great delayed fuse when you wanted to be long gone when an M80 went off.
I was a problem child. Sorry

 

One of my first jobs.... Yes, I went out on a weeknight.

But my boss was cool, and knew what he saw right away...

He gave me this box and said, "File these in the basement storage unit. This should keep you busy until lunch..." and off I went to recovery...

 

Huh?

The school I attended nearly 40 years ago is also where I go to AA. I can still smell that and rubbing alcohol in that part of the building.

I feel like this should be in the text a girl thread too @SRH

Yup

 

How bout these?

 

On Google Earth.
We lived in a lot of houses. I got googlepix of many by screen capture, and printed the images out for my mom.

Otherwise, there is a house I owned in the next town. We sold it because of the neighbors.

I go by every couple years to see if they've burned it down yet. The neighbors that is. Terrible drunks and drug pushers.
Due to "social issues" the cops would never arrest those folks. When realestate hit the big bubble 20 years back I sold it.

 

One duplex we lived in still there. Big tree in yard that wasnt there as a kid

 

I remember sharpening my pencil with a pocket knife in school. Nobody cared that a 10 year old had a pocket knife.
The school only worried about being liable if children lost expensive possessions.

A genuine cub Scout pocket knife cost Mom as much as a carton of Kents.
That was one of those motherly sacrifices. It's also how I got my first skateboard.

She would quit smoking. For a week of so until she went nuts.
It eventually took her another 28 years to quit smoking.
I got some camping gear out of the deal though...

 

This is the former blockhouse in Duluth. It is now owned by the U of Minn as some kind of science facility. They added the red things, which I assume were for heating/cooling. Formerly there was a cooling tower to handle heat from the mighty dual IBM 360 computers. They didn't need heat. There were 10,000 vacuum tubes in that building. The walls are 10 feet thick. No windows. Without massive AC you would cook like a turkey.


Here's how it was in the '60's. That's the same wall, before windows.
The only (above ground) hole in or out was the one between two flags below, now covered by the red porch.
When you entered you went thru a concrete "tunnel" with several substantial doors.
I don't know about the escape tunnel. There must have been one.
I imagine it had a charge that blew open something hidden.

My chess buddy's dad was lost in Lake Superior, flying one of those planes shown.
I think that's a T-33 jet trainer.

Alert sirens went off several times, while we lived there, and Dad was off to that blockhouse in the middle of the night.