F*ck Atari, Calico Vision was way better!

 

What are you smoking? Calico was so much more expensive, and had a lot fewer games.

 

Well somebody was GRUMPY they didn't have a Caleco!!!  And who said I paid for mine?  Shit, this is Dayton, we get shit for cheap!

STOP SNITCHIN'!

Intellivision ruled them both.  Snafu is the greatest game ever.

It was hard to believe MATTELL built Intellivision.  I just remember Centipede on it.

I was in my early 30s when IBM came out with the PC. I bought one in 1983 with 256K RAM (maxed out on the motherboard), a 4.77MHZ 8088 CPU, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy drives with a capacity of 360KB each. The monitor was green-on-black monochrome, text-only. If I recall correctly, MS-DOS was up to version 1.1 by then. You had to put the MS-DOS floppy disc in the drive to boot the system. If you powered up without the MS-DOS disc in the drive, the PC would come up to a built-in version of Basic.

 

Hard drives weren't yet available, and an expansion board to take RAM up to 640K cost hundreds of dollars. I bought a Hayes Smartcom 1200-baud "fast" external modem and an Okidata dot-matrix printer that used tractor-feed continuous-form fan-fold paper. Throw in a copy of Word Perfect, and the whole package came to about $5,000.

 

There wasn't enough RAM to completely load WordPerfect, so you'd load the program disc and let the system read that in, and then load a disc with overlays and leave it in, to be read by the system as needed for various actions. That's where the second floppy drive came in handy. With just one floppy drive, you'd have to swap back and forth between the overlay disc and a data disc when you wanted to save your work or edit something you'd done earlier. With a second floppy drive you could leave the overlay disc in one drive and the data disc in the other and not have to mess around swapping them.

 

One of the guys from work came over to see it. He had a Tandy computer, a TRS-80 ("Trash-80") I think, and he was awed by how blazingly fast the IBM was in comparison.

 

The closest thing to IBM compatibles then were Wang and Texas Instruments, and they were less than 100% compatible. Each had its own version of DOS and its own version of the limited amount of business software that was available. The most widely-used application was Lotus 1-2-3, for several years the dominant spreadsheet program.

>In the post 9-11 homeland terrorism is a major concern in all American children's lives.  The fact that schools these days do both terrorism and school shooting drills,

 

Umm...you're forgetting about a little something called The Cold War.  We spent a lot of time in school discussing nuclear war and the Soviet threat and the monthly wail of the civil defense sirens was chilling.  We also heard the occasional sonic boom from Wright-Patterson AFB which made the implications of war very real.  I remember one boom in 5th grade that absolutely shook the school and another time when there was a boom just as I stepped off the school bus, as though my foot hitting the pavement caused it.  On the playground we watched vapor trails and speculated as to whether they were Soviet spy planes like our U2 or SR-71.   

 

I grew up five miles from the Fernald uranium refinery which created the fuel for thousands of atomic bombs.  Some of my relatives were awarded money when the plant polluted ground water.  The ominous presence of this plant made the Cold War very, very real for us.     

 

Also the fallout from the Vietnam War was a major part of my childhood.  My street had a variety of dads with injuries (deafness, limps, etc.) and Vietnam was a constant topic of discussion when I was 7-12 years old, especially since my best friend's dad died when we were 3 of cancer likely caused by exposure to something in the military. A lot of the vets used to still wear army jackets or hats around the neighborhood.  There was one guy with no legs who was always up at the mall and I remember making very intense eye contact with him.  He gave me this look once like "this is gonna be you in 10 years". In my neighborhood the boys grew up with the sense that they might very well be drafted, captured, tortured, then either killed or sent back here to live a lonely life in a wheelchair.   

 

Also I remember a friend of mine lived in the apartment complex directly across the street from our school and he shot holes in some of the windows on the weekend with a BB gun.  It was no big deal and I think they just called his mom and made her pay for a few windows.   

 

Also we didn't receive much punishment at all for fighting at school.  I myself was in at least 10 dust-ups but don't recall ever getting any kind of punishment for them.  Talking back to teachers or hitting girls was a big deal though.  The teachers were in control and lawsuits were unheard of.   

I remember the killer playground equipment. Remember when safety wasn't even considered? There was once a ten foot tall stainless steel slide when I was a wee kid, and I remember the day I learned the slide was coming down due to potential lawsuits.

 

I also remember such fun games as red rover and dodgeball. I guess such great games have been replaced by social networking.

 

I do wish I could go back ten-fifteen years before I was born so I could enjoy all the 'new technology' when it was just breaking.

I remember the killer playground equipment. Remember when safety wasn't even considered? There was once a ten foot tall stainless steel slide

 

We used to have one as well, but they took it down and gave us a whole new playground in 3rd grade.

 

I also remember such fun games as red rover and dodgeball.

 

Nope, they still play those. Well, red rover is more of a home game, but we played dodgeball in my high school gym class. I miss dodgeball. :(

I remember the killer playground equipment. Remember when safety wasn't even considered? There was once a ten foot tall stainless steel slide when I was a wee kid, and I remember the day I learned the slide was coming down due to potential lawsuits.

 

I also remember such fun games as red rover and dodgeball. I guess such great games have been replaced by social networking.

 

I do wish I could go back ten-fifteen years before I was born so I could enjoy all the 'new technology' when it was just breaking.

I didn't like dodge ball, I was always an early target!  :x

 

Red Light, Green Light and Simon Says, were my games.

>In the post 9-11 homeland terrorism is a major concern in all American children's lives. The fact that schools these days do both terrorism and school shooting drills,

 

Umm...you're forgetting about a little something called The Cold War. We spent a lot of time in school discussing nuclear war and the Soviet threat and the monthly wail of the civil defense sirens was chilling. We also heard the occasional sonic boom from Wright-Patterson AFB which made the implications of war very real. I remember one boom in 5th grade that absolutely shook the school and another time when there was a boom just as I stepped off the school bus, as though my foot hitting the pavement caused it. On the playground we watched vapor trails and speculated as to whether they were Soviet spy planes like our U2 or SR-71.

 

I grew up five miles from the Fernald uranium refinery which created the fuel for thousands of atomic bombs. Some of my relatives were awarded money when the plant polluted ground water. The ominous presence of this plant made the Cold War very, very real for us.

 

Also the fallout from the Vietnam War was a major part of my childhood. My street had a variety of dads with injuries (deafness, limps, etc.) and Vietnam was a constant topic of discussion when I was 7-12 years old, especially since my best friend's dad died when we were 3 of cancer likely caused by exposure to something in the military. A lot of the vets used to still wear army jackets or hats around the neighborhood. There was one guy with no legs who was always up at the mall and I remember making very intense eye contact with him. He gave me this look once like "this is gonna be you in 10 years". In my neighborhood the boys grew up with the sense that they might very well be drafted, captured, tortured, then either killed or sent back here to live a lonely life in a wheelchair.  

 

These situations were the impetus for the world of heavy metal.

This dude makes six figures for sitting in his office and posting on the internet all day during work hours, talking about how 'spoiled' the under 30 crowd is. LMAO

This dude makes six figures for sitting in his office and posting on the internet all day during work hours, talking about how 'spoiled' the under 30 crowd is. LMAO

 

Yeah, but I worked my way to the top.  And there isn't any job in my area of responsibility that I wont do in order to excell and exceed expectations/profit.

 

I'm not a micro manager (yet there are times when I need to line review things) and I lead by example and include everyone on my staff on project and promote from within.

 

In the 12 years I've been with the company only five people have left my areas of responsibility.  Out of those five only two have left while in my current position.

 

Treat your people right, give them the necessary tools to do their jobs, keep an open line of communication and set clear individual, department and corporate goals and acknowledge their accomplishments and they will do what you ask every time.

 

I love my people, except for two, but that's a whole 'nother story.

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc.  Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work.  I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30.  What a joke,  Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc. Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work. I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30. What a joke, Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

 

Who are you talking about?

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc.  Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work.  I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30.  What a joke,  Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

 

I'm just a couple of months from 70, and I have no desire to bash anyone unless they exhibit malicious intent and I can't otherwise avoid them. Different times present different challenges, and different people choose different directions and career paths. Some of us adapt to the changes, and some just keep on keepin' on, and I'm not the one to say that's wrong. They're doing what seems right to them.

 

I've known people who can manage and motivate and inspire large staffs of workers to do their best work, and I've known people who can start with iron, coal, and a hammer and anvil, and produce a beautiful, intricate piece of art, or who can add some ash lumber and build a wagon wheel or an entire wagon that's sturdy and functional and built to last a hundred years with decent care. I accord them both the same level of respect, because they both employ their native talents and experience in ways that are useful in an interdependent human society.

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc.  Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work.  I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30.  What a joke,  Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

 

I'm just a couple of months from 70, and I have no desire to bash anyone unless they exhibit malicious intent and I can't otherwise avoid them. Different times present different challenges, and different people choose different directions and career paths. Some of us adapt to the changes, and some just keep on keepin' on, and I'm not the one to say that's wrong. They're doing what seems right to them.

 

I've known people who can manage and motivate and inspire large staffs of workers to do their best work, and I've known people who can start with iron, coal, and a hammer and anvil, and produce a beautiful, intricate piece of art, or who can add some ash lumber and build a wagon wheel or an entire wagon that's sturdy and functional and built to last a hundred years with decent care. I accord them both the same level of respect, because they both employ their native talents and experience in ways that are useful in an interdependent human society.

 

Of course I didn't author that, nor was my intent to "bash" or "belittle" the Whippersnappers on the board. 

 

You little lazy ungrateful f*ckwads, know I love you, don't you?

Every now and then I encounter a whippersnapper who just needs a good spanking. I've learned to refrain, because afterward they tend to follow me home. :evil:

You little lazy ungrateful f*ckwads, know I love you, don't you?

 

It wasn't; I speak from personal experience.  The E. 120th-Euclid bridge is a fairly desolate and dangerous area, especially after dark. The aversion of Case students to Red Line use is not altogether unfounded.

 

So your experience is representative of all Cast students?

 

 

So every Case Student is affraid of that particular station?  It's not the best station or located in the best location, to be of use to University Circle students, workers or residents.  Moving it will tie the station into the community. 

 

Don't case students, workers and resident use the University Circle Station?  Are they all afraid?  You initial post, comes across as the rail line itself is unsafe.

 

The moral of the story is not to post statements as the gospel!

 

Yes, your "unique" way of expressing your "love" for us is well known.  :-D

Every now and then I encounter a whippersnapper who just needs a good spanking. I've learned to refrain, because afterward they tend to follow me home. >:D

 

Well alrighty then, playa, playa!

 

As I've said before, you can train a pup a few taps of on the @ss.  >:D

 

You little lazy ungrateful f*ckwads, know I love you, don't you?

 

It wasn't; I speak from personal experience.  The E. 120th-Euclid bridge is a fairly desolate and dangerous area, especially after dark. The aversion of Case students to Red Line use is not altogether unfounded.

 

So your experience is representative of all Cast students?

 

 

So every Case Student is affraid of that particular station?  It's not the best station or located in the best location, to be of use to University Circle students, workers or residents.  Moving it will tie the station into the community. 

 

Don't case students, workers and resident use the University Circle Station?  Are they all afraid?  You initial post, comes across as the rail line itself is unsafe.

 

The moral of the story is not to post statements as the gospel!

 

Yes, your "unique" way of expressing your "love" for us is well known.  ;D

 

Palijandro, you know I love you like I love red headed step child in a blonde haired Blue eyed family. 

 

Lets face Honey. You're simple, you're shallow, you have bad hair and you're a terrible dresser.  Those key ingredients that bond you little whippersnappers.

 

Look what you've done.  I'm all emotional now.  I need a moment..........

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc. Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work. I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30. What a joke, Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

 

Who are you talking about?

 

the author of the article on the first page.

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc.  Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work.  I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30.  What a joke,  Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

 

Who are you talking about?

 

the author of the article on the first page.

 

Goodness, relax.  The whole thing is in jest.  Note the little smiley face?

 

**Plus the man is old.  He knows we could take his a$$ on the baskeball court.  He'd come out with his Sidney from White Men Can't Jump outfit (visor, spandex, talking about Sizzler) and we'd have to inform him he's about 15 years behind the times.

You know what, this guy has no clue what it's like to go to work everyday without a computer, calculator, internet, cell phone, email, fax etc.  Somebody who is 70 can basically bash this guy and say he has it easy at work.  I am over 30, but I am not going to sit here and bash people under 30.  What a joke,  Everyone always thinks they had it harder.

 

Who are you talking about?

 

the author of the article on the first page.

 

Goodness, relax.  The whole thing is in jest.  Note the little smiley face?

 

**Plus the man is old.  He knows we could take his a$$ on the baskeball court.  He'd come out with his Sidney from White Men Can't Jump outfit (visor, spandex, talking about Sizzler) and we'd have to inform him he's about 15 years behind the times.

 

Who?  You could take who??

MTS, don't go flippin yo lid and being mad at us just because you're getting old ... and we're still young and beautiful.

MTS, don't go flippin yo lid and being mad at us just because you're getting old ... and we're still young and beautiful.

 

Oh...No...you...di'int!

 

    Oh...No...you...di'int!

 

 

Treat your people right, give them the necessary tools to do their jobs, keep an open line of communication and set clear individual, department and corporate goals and acknowledge their accomplishments and they will do what you ask every time.

 

MTS, believe it or not, you actually sound like my dream boss. If everyone did that, the world would be a better place.

 

I'm your "dream" boss.  :-o  humm I'm verklempt and frightened all at the same time.

 

 

 

 

Why not hire him and keep him very, very, busy!!!!!!

Why not hire him and keep him very, very, busy!!!!!!

 

I currently have two pet I don't need a third.

MTS.... I'm suprised you havnt mentioned what a guy I work with did when he was saying similar stuff to me. He said that the 70`s porn was crap compaired to todays stuff. 

I`m not into porn but he said its was better now. I can't believe people still use this you have it easier than I did crap. Craziness!!!

I remember the killer playground equipment. Remember when safety wasn't even considered? There was once a ten foot tall stainless steel slide when I was a wee kid, and I remember the day I learned the slide was coming down due to potential lawsuits.

 

I also remember such fun games as red rover and dodgeball. I guess such great games have been replaced by social networking.

 

I do wish I could go back ten-fifteen years before I was born so I could enjoy all the 'new technology' when it was just breaking.

 

I wish they'd reinstall all that dangerous playground equipment.  Screw safety, that stuff was way more phone.  Kids need to learn life doesn't always have its safety nets.

 

My favorites were:

 

1. Those large steel bar domes

2. Concrete culverts.  In the winter, water would get inside and turn to ice making it 10X fun.

3. 13 foot high swings.  Man those days in elementary school swinging real high with the boom box playing some early 90's hip-hop between us.  Our school would actually allow it on the playground.

4.  "The House"  Steel bar chimneys and slat walls.  I can only imagine what falling down that 10 foot steel chimney would be like.

 

I rarely remember kids getting hurt.  I remember one kid maybe fell and bit his tongue.  He walked back into the cafeteria during lunch recess with blood dripping from his mouth.  I was in line receiving my government meal and very impressed.

 

I could have a whole debate about playground safety, but that can go in a separate thread.

^I remember being on a swing that broke when I was coming back down.  I was in second grade (circa '95-'96) and no one made it a big deal.  I was fine, just kind of freaked out for a little bit.  I just remember the next day, the swing was replaced and kids were on it.  Very different then.  If that happened now.. omg.  I would have "needed" counseling, the school would have been sued, and the playground would have been closed.  It's ridiculous. And Hayward, I remember getting one of those domes when I was in second or third grade.  Everyone made such a big deal about it.  It was awesome though.

Playground equipment now is such crap, all made out of bright-colored plastic blow-molded and designed so even the most self-destructive brat wouldn't be able to devise a way to hurt himself. All in a giant sandbox.

 

That's what they put in the park by my house when they removed the good stuff. They had towering swings with steel-pipe frames and steel chains suspending wood-plank seats. You could get going high enough on those things to scare the bejesus out of yourself, high enough that the chains would go slack and you thought for sure you were about to die.

 

The see-saws were 2x12 oak planks, probably 18 feet long, pivoted over a heavy steel-pipe frame; there were three of them, painted in strong, saturated red, yellow, and green, repainted by parks and recreation workers every spring. See-saws are pretty tame, as playground equipment goes, but it was always fun to jump off without warning and let the other kid bottom out with a "THUD!" That only worked once on any see-saw partner. The see-saws are gone, too.

 

My mom used to tell about the really tall slides in Lakeside Park, in the neighborhood where she grew up. Back then, bread from the bakery came wrapped in waxed paper, and she and her sister would take bread wrappers and slide down on them until the slides were really slippery. Then they'd watch as the little kids would start down and get a frighteningly fast ride and go sprawling in the dirt at the bottom.

 

My elementary/junior high, a township school, had the steel-pipe jungle gym, tall swings, a pretty good slide, and best of all, they got this carousel sort of thing that was a circular wood platform with steel-pipe stanchions to hang onto. The whole thing rotated about a center pivot and you could stand on the platform and push with one foot and get it going 'round really fast. A favorite pursuit of the bigger kids was to get it going so fast that the smaller kids couldn't hang on.

 

One time a fifth-grader got thrown off and broke his arm. He was crying awful, and you could see the bend in his forearm where the bone was broken but hadn't quite broken through the skin. The principal put him in his car and drove him to the hospital in town, and the next day he was back in class with a sling and a cast. No lawsuits, no investigations, no angry parents at school board meetings, just part of growing up. The kid apparently wasn't damaged for life; now retired, during his working life he ran a major industrial contracting firm.

>In the post 9-11 homeland terrorism is a major concern in all American children's lives.  The fact that schools these days do both terrorism and school shooting drills,

 

Umm...you're forgetting about a little something called The Cold War.  We spent a lot of time in school discussing nuclear war and the Soviet threat and the monthly wail of the civil defense sirens was chilling.

 

We often had tornado drills but, as a member of the 40+ crowd I can't help but thing they also doubled as "duck-and-cover" civil defense drills.

 

Also we didn't receive much punishment at all for fighting at school.  I myself was in at least 10 dust-ups but don't recall ever getting any kind of punishment for them.  Talking back to teachers or hitting girls was a big deal though.  The teachers were in control and lawsuits were unheard of.

 

OK, this is where kids have it easier today. How many of you youngin's ever been swatted with a wood paddle swung by a 6-foot-tall teacher with a wingspan that would make a condor jealous? And that was the woman gym teacher! Mr. Novak at Kenston in Geauga County was even bigger and he used a swat paddle in which he drilled holes in shop class so the air would flow through it more easily so he could bring it with greater speed! Three of us got swats in the men's locker room moments before a school assembly in the adjacent gym. We had to waddle separately out into the gym where all our classmates were seated, smiling and pointing at us. Very embarassing!

 

OK, but I do miss a lot of things from the 70s and early 80s. I really do miss Atari 2600 as my neighbor Tony had one. Or better yet, having to go to bars during the day to play video games before video game parlors opened. I had Odyssey, which had good games like Pick Axe Pete (I'm not sure if this came before Donkey Kong, but both were similar games).

 

I got my first computer in 1984, a Commodore 64, and learned DOS real quick. I got a 1200 baud modem and I thought that was shit! I could log on to public bulletin boards. There were two in Greater Cleveland -- I seem to recall one was run by North Coast Computers, but they were way over in Avon Lake and that meant a long-distance phone call from Geauga County. My father was none too happy when the phone bill came! There was a BBS in Lake County but it was often busy, especially in the evenings when people would use the PC "CB radio." I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with the conversations anyway...

 

Speaking of CB radios, I had one in 1977 and, yes, my handle was Disco Duck. I would often just listen in, but some times a friend of mine with a CB would call me on the phone and say he would be on the CB in a few minutes.

 

Phones..... Ever try to dial into a radio contest line on a rotary phone??? Only then you find out from the DJ at WIXY 1260 that you're the 19th caller and they're looking for the 20th caller. Uggghh!!!

 

Hey, remember when the air was so polluted that you could see it! This was back in the 1970s when leaded gasoline was still common and the steel mills and other industries hadn't yet been fitted with scrubbers (or had closed!). Even in Cleveland's eastern suburbs, like Highland and Mayfield Heights, far from the industries, the air looked foggy and you could smell the pollution. The Pollution Standard Index would often be above 100 and sometimes above 200 on the real muggy days when the air wasn't moving.

 

But being a kid was the same in many ways then as it is today. We rode bikes everywhere, had paper routes (that may not last), played ball in the front yard or in the street, built tree houses and forts, hung out at comic book stores at the mall or giggled when looking at the dirty posters or playing cards of Playboy playmates at Spencers, or their cool lava lamps and fiber optic sprays and flowers.

 

 

But most of all, I miss family and friends who are no longer alive or have moved on, and the wonderful, simple times we shared. Whenever I hear music that played during those times, I always remember exactly what I was feeling then.

>In the post 9-11 homeland terrorism is a major concern in all American children's lives.  The fact that schools these days do both terrorism and school shooting drills,

 

Umm...you're forgetting about a little something called The Cold War.  We spent a lot of time in school discussing nuclear war and the Soviet threat and the monthly wail of the civil defense sirens was chilling.

 

We often had tornado drills but, as a member of the 40+ crowd I can't help but thing they also doubled as "duck-and-cover" civil defense drills.

 

How many kids today know where the air raid or fallout shelter is in their neighborhood or school?  Ours was the windowless basement of the convent across the parking lot from the elementary school.  In the neighborhood it was the YMCA building.  I remember in college seeing signs in University Hall at Toledo for a fallout shelter, but by then the USSR was toast.

 

We still have a map in our cottage in North Madison with evacuation routes in case of nuclear emergencies at Perry - that I'm hoping never to need.

 

 

^Or Nike sites (no, not the shoe!)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike

 

I remember there was one near us:  http://ed-thelen.org/loc-o.html#Ohio

 

they needed have bothered building those. it ended up that the clev bombed itself.  :|

>These situations were the impetus for the world of heavy metal.

 

Of course in the 80's Heavy Metal meant Heavy Metal, as in devils, mortar fire, etc. The phrase "hair metal" was invented in the late 1990's by those VH-1 shows.  When those bands were playing I seem to people just calling them "hard rock" and definitely weren't of any interest to real metal heads.  The MTV show Headbanger's Ball mostly showed real metal like Iron Maiden, Slayer, etc., although I do remember them occasionally throwing in some crap like Firehouse.   

 

It's clear though that young people today are struggling to write music because a) they've had it way too easy and b) are far removed from the times when good music was the rule more than the exception.  No doubt the Barney generation's computer-generated pop has hard-wired a generation's ears for fakeness. I had an unfair advantage because my mother went to see the Rolling Stones, at their peak, at the old Cleveland Stadium while 8 months pregnant with yours truly, which caused a sort of Mozart effect.   

 

Neil Young is and was the perennial favorite of my dad & his friends, so I was raised on his records.  I think the kind of music you are exposed to has a profound effect on your overall attitude, and I definitely had no hesitation to play loud & hard when I started playing myself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v5E27Fp59c

 

I still have a soft spot for Motown music, because I think the only two cities where it was played almost as much as Detroit was in Chicago and Cleveland due to the similaries and proximity. I heard a lot of when I was growing up....

 

 

When I went to downtown Cleveland from my East Side homes, traveling through Hough and Fairfax in the 1970s, the images of the still-dense but decaying neighborhoods enter my head. So does the music.... The O'Jays, Sly Slick and Wicked, Sensations, Imperial Wonders, Rotations, Silk, Satin and Lace, Bobby Wade, and Truth.

 

Listen to this and imagine you're listening to WIXY 1260 ("wick-see twelve-sixty") as you're riding in your dad's 1970 Ford Galaxy heading down Euclid Avenue past all the soul food restaurants, head shops and night spots like the Love Nest with downtown looming ahead....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC9YwLM2VSI&feature=related

 

I just found this at:

http://www.wixy1260.com/

 

 

 

I know I miss good nighttime soap operas!

 

Die Nasty (AKA Dynasty) was a delicacy.  Dallas, Falcon Crest.  ahhhhh, the good old days.

 

Knots Landing reinforced all the ills of suburban living.

On XM's 60's channel, Saturday nights they play actual broadcasts of 60's stations.  One night while working in Canada, I was listening to WIXY 1260.

KJP and I must be close in age after reading his bit.  There was quite a bit of that music around in cities with large black communities.  We had WLOU, "the Souuuuul of Louisville". 

 

Neil Young is and was the perennial favorite of my dad & his friends, so I was raised on his records.

 

Dont know if I'd call Neil Young Heavy Metal...I can see him having hard rock moments, though.

 

I think for my generation Heavy Metal would be bands like:

 

Deep Purple

Mountain

Black Sabbath

Led Zepplin

..oh,, I dont know, Bad Company and Aerosmith maybe.  And I guess Van Halen though VH never did anything for me.  I liked Bad Company, though.  Didnt find out until a few years ago they were English

 

It's been a long time.

 

There was stuff that was "hard rock" back in the 1960s but I dont think Id call it heavy metal, Like Cream and Hendrix, of course.

 

 

Hmm..this is an interesting thread.

 

I was in my early 30s when IBM came out with the PC. I bought one in 1983 with 256K RAM (maxed out on the motherboard), a 4.77MHZ 8088 CPU, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy drives with a capacity of 360KB each. The monitor was green-on-black monochrome, text-only. If I recall correctly, MS-DOS was up to version 1.1 by then. You had to put the MS-DOS floppy disc in the drive to boot the system. If you powered up without the MS-DOS disc in the drive, the PC would come up to a built-in version of Basic.

 

I think the first "microcomputer" I saw was maybe an Altair or early Apple, as part of some sort of high school engineering contest at UofL.  That event was were I saw my first screen monitor (they had some sort of Star Trek game running on it).  This would have been 1977.

 

The first time I actually interacted with a comptuer was 1973...i as in jr high but me and a buddy somehow got access to the Honeywell teletype terminal connected to the mainframe at UofL.  I think did a simple BASIC program on it.  I recall the "storage" was computer tape.  I was already familiar with that as my dad was a machinest and worked with "tape machines", (sort of primitive computerized manufacturin?).  The Honeywell connected to UofL mainframevia a telephone modem.

 

We used to use the chads from the tapes as confetti during pep ralleys.

 

 

Or Nike sites (no, not the shoe!)?

 

Hah, I remember those!  They had them around Cleveland, too?

 

 

>In the post 9-11 homeland terrorism is a major concern in all American children's lives.  The fact that schools these days do both terrorism and school shooting drills,

 

Umm...you're forgetting about a little something called The Cold War.  We spent a lot of time in school discussing nuclear war and the Soviet threat and the monthly wail of the civil defense sirens was chilling.  We also heard the occasional sonic boom from Wright-Patterson AFB which made the implications of war very real.  I remember one boom in 5th grade that absolutely shook the school and another time when there was a boom just as I stepped off the school bus, as though my foot hitting the pavement caused it.  On the playground we watched vapor trails and speculated as to whether they were Soviet spy planes like our U2 or SR-71.   

 

I grew up five miles from the Fernald uranium refinery which created the fuel for thousands of atomic bombs.  Some of my relatives were awarded money when the plant polluted ground water.  The ominous presence of this plant made the Cold War very, very real for us.     

 

Also the fallout from the Vietnam War was a major part of my childhood.  My street had a variety of dads with injuries (deafness, limps, etc.) and Vietnam was a constant topic of discussion when I was 7-12 years old, especially since my best friend's dad died when we were 3 of cancer likely caused by exposure to something in the military. A lot of the vets used to still wear army jackets or hats around the neighborhood.  There was one guy with no legs who was always up at the mall and I remember making very intense eye contact with him.  He gave me this look once like "this is gonna be you in 10 years". In my neighborhood the boys grew up with the sense that they might very well be drafted, captured, tortured, then either killed or sent back here to live a lonely life in a wheelchair.    

 

Also I remember a friend of mine lived in the apartment complex directly across the street from our school and he shot holes in some of the windows on the weekend with a BB gun.  It was no big deal and I think they just called his mom and made her pay for a few windows.   

 

Also we didn't receive much punishment at all for fighting at school.  I myself was in at least 10 dust-ups but don't recall ever getting any kind of punishment for them.  Talking back to teachers or hitting girls was a big deal though.  The teachers were in control and lawsuits were unheard of.    

 

No, I know about the Cold War, but I still think there is a big difference between growing up with the threat of violence on American soil, and actually witnessing your country be attacked.  Growing up and seeing the vulnerability of America is something only today's children can claim (except for the people who were kids during Pearl Harbor, and even then Hawaii feels very isolated and it was a military attack).  Also, the rise in mass murders in schools is a phenomenon that this generation of children knows all too well.  Sure you guys had the duck and cover for an attack that never came, but today you have drills where you have to lock the doors, pull the shades down, and all cram in a corner to practice for a gunman in the school.  In high school we also had chemical weapon attack drills where we all had to go to an air tight room in the event of a massive bio/chemical weapon attack.  Kids these days are very aware of the dangers that can and do happen in the US.

>In the post 9-11 homeland terrorism is a major concern in all American children's lives.  The fact that schools these days do both terrorism and school shooting drills,

 

Umm...you're forgetting about a little something called The Cold War.  We spent a lot of time in school discussing nuclear war and the Soviet threat and the monthly wail of the civil defense sirens was chilling.  We also heard the occasional sonic boom from Wright-Patterson AFB which made the implications of war very real.  I remember one boom in 5th grade that absolutely shook the school and another time when there was a boom just as I stepped off the school bus, as though my foot hitting the pavement caused it.  On the playground we watched vapor trails and speculated as to whether they were Soviet spy planes like our U2 or SR-71.   

 

I grew up five miles from the Fernald uranium refinery which created the fuel for thousands of atomic bombs.  Some of my relatives were awarded money when the plant polluted ground water.  The ominous presence of this plant made the Cold War very, very real for us.     

 

Also the fallout from the Vietnam War was a major part of my childhood.  My street had a variety of dads with injuries (deafness, limps, etc.) and Vietnam was a constant topic of discussion when I was 7-12 years old, especially since my best friend's dad died when we were 3 of cancer likely caused by exposure to something in the military. A lot of the vets used to still wear army jackets or hats around the neighborhood.  There was one guy with no legs who was always up at the mall and I remember making very intense eye contact with him.  He gave me this look once like "this is gonna be you in 10 years". In my neighborhood the boys grew up with the sense that they might very well be drafted, captured, tortured, then either killed or sent back here to live a lonely life in a wheelchair.   

 

Also I remember a friend of mine lived in the apartment complex directly across the street from our school and he shot holes in some of the windows on the weekend with a BB gun.  It was no big deal and I think they just called his mom and made her pay for a few windows.   

 

Also we didn't receive much punishment at all for fighting at school.  I myself was in at least 10 dust-ups but don't recall ever getting any kind of punishment for them.  Talking back to teachers or hitting girls was a big deal though.  The teachers were in control and lawsuits were unheard of.   

 

No, I know about the Cold War, but I still think there is a big difference between growing up with the threat of violence on American soil, and actually witnessing your country be attacked.  Growing up and seeing the vulnerability of America is something only today's children can claim (except for the people who were kids during Pearl Harbor, and even then Hawaii feels very isolated and it was a military attack).  Also, the rise in mass murders in schools is a phenomenon that this generation of children knows all too well.  Sure you guys had the duck and cover for an attack that never came, but today you have drills where you have to lock the doors, pull the shades down, and all cram in a corner to practice for a gunman in the school.  In high school we also had chemical weapon attack drills where we all had to go to an air tight room in the event of a massive bio/chemical weapon attack.  Kids these days are very aware of the dangers that can and do happen in the US.

 

What school district was this?  Sheesh!

I actually remember the hide in the corner, gunman drills.  I think we only did those in middle school.  It was the same time when all schools started covering up their door windows with paper.  I never heard of chemical weapon attack drills though.

Or Nike sites (no, not the shoe!)?

 

Hah, I remember those! They had them around Cleveland, too?

 

 

Yes, there were four sites that I know of. One was in Eastlake someplace, another was near where the Cuyahoga Community College East Campus is today off I-271 and Harvard. Another was at the shared borders of Westlake, Rocky River and Fairview Park -- today's Tri-City Park. And yet was at what is today..... "Nike Park"! It's next to Cuyahoga Community College East Campus (what's with AA missiles at Tri-C?) at the border of Parma and Parma Heights off Pleasant Valley Road.

 

I'm not sure, but I think another Nike missile site was at Burke Lakefront Airport.

NIke Missile Sites:

http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=NMB

I actually remember the hide in the corner, gunman drills.  I think we only did those in middle school.  It was the same time when all schools started covering up their door windows with paper.  I never heard of chemical weapon attack drills though.

 

It's crazy nowadays.  Two years ago, when I was interning for an architecture firm, I found a niche position for a few weeks drawing up CD's for security entrances for high schools.  Metal detectors, surveillance control centers, even a small detention room.  It was scary, the facilities they were calling for rivaled most county or federal buildings.  I don't know what to think.  Schools nowadays already look like prisons with all the CMU block, metal roofs, and narrow windows.

NIke Missile Sites:

http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=NMB

 

Wow, seven sites! Thanks!

Well the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings weren't the worst in US history.  The worst, in which 45 people were killed, was in 1927:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

 

Kind of like The Media started calling Katrina the worst hurricane in US history when it wasn't even close, they keep bringing up Columbine.

 

Cincinnati Public Schools is spending close to $1 billion to rebuild dozens of 1960's era schools, and they all look like jokes.  I went to the same grade school as both of my parents, all of my aunts and uncles, and 3 out of 4 grandparents.  It was built in 1912 and it still looks great.  We had steam heat, no air conditioning, no carpet, and only 3 TV's for over 900 students.  Cincinnati Public would have bulldozed it in the 1960's, then bulldozed that building in the last few years.