The topic of typewriters came up in family conversation the other day. I described the clickety-clack of our old family typewriter and how excited I was as a young teenager when I received an electric one. This meant that at the end of typing one line, the typewriter automatically transferred to the next line without me having to switch it manually. This seems wildly funny to my teenagers. Even the words “electric typewriter” sound hilarious. The thought that it would even be necessary to include the word “electric” to describe a word processing device is beyond their scope. And you know what? It seems unbelievable to me now too. We all chuckled as my mother-in-law and I talked about liquid paper (you might know it as “white out”)and the precision involved when typing so that you didn’t need to go back over and over. And I’m sure I remember some sort of “correction thing” that you could place over your mistakes and then type over too … correction tape, maybe? Even to me it seems like another lifetime sometimes.
We talked about party lines. Did anybody else have party lines? As a young child, our one telephone (yes, one) was on a line connected with Clarence, an older man across the road. That meant that if Clarence was on the line, we needed to wait until he was finished to make a call. If someone was trying to call us and Clarence was on the phone, they would get a busy signal. Yes, a busy signal … that loud, low, repetitive beeping rather automatic voicemail. Of course if we were on the line, Clarence would need to wait for us to finish and his callers would be greeted with that same busy signal. One can imagine how this might have played out for Clarence as we girls became chatty teenagers. Fortunately for him, the party line became a thing of the past at our house, as did the single family telephone. By the late ‘80s, we’d even moved from a dial phone to a “push button.” Not a cordless, yet mind you, but a push button. I mentioned that I loved the push button phone because my best friend had a phone number with a lot of zeros and nines in it and it took so long for the dial to come back around to finish the number. These are the kinds of statements that lead to incredulous stares from my kids. And there are more.
How about the story of the first time I heard an answering machine? I remember it clearly. My mum, with wide eyes, summoned my younger sister and I to the hall where our telephone was. She’d just called her cousin who worked in a doctor’s office. Expecting to get her in person, she got an answering machine message instead. This seemed incredible to all of us and we called back at least twice to hear the message😊. I even remember the first friend of mine, N, whose family got an answering machine.
The idea of car phones is an interesting one as well. In the mid-90s, I remember car phones being installed in some cars. We had one for a while and it was quite exciting. It was a pretty fancy phone with coloured buttons as I remember. There are two things that amaze them about this. One is that talking on a telephone outside of the house would be particularly exciting and the other is that people could legally hold a phone in their hands while driving.
Oh wow, it goes on and on! I told them of when we first got the internet … not my childhood family, OUR family, in the house we live in now. We didn’t have it until a couple of weeks before my oldest was born and I didn’t use it until a few weeks after he was born. It just didn’t occur to me. It was something my husband got to use and I couldn’t see any use in it for me. Other than sending the very odd email from our joint account, I didn’t bother with it. I remember the magic of discovering Yahoo Groups a few months later and posting my first message before bed. Then, in the middle of the night, creeping back down, young baby in arms, to see if there were any responses and the thrill of this online group connection with other people across Canada. LOL. The kids weren’t the only ones laughing as we thought about this.
It isn’t that they don’t enjoy some old technology though. Last year my husband came across working replicas of the original Atari. There are multiple games spanning c. 1978 through early/mid 1980s. We have had a LOT of fun with this system and picked one up for our oldest to have at his place as well. We’ve also sought out other games from our past that now come in updated forms while still being true to the original.
Most amazing of all is the fact that I used to hang out regularly with someone who was born two centuries ago. That’s right. Not the 1900s, but the 1800s. My Great Grandma B was 80 when I was born, which means that she was born in 1894. We used to spend some wonderful summer mornings together, watching gameshows in her living room, chuckling at the contestants and gameshow hosts and guessing the answers. At the commercial break, we’d head to her little kitchen to open a tin of ginger cookies. Hanging out watching TV with someone born in 1894. Can you imagine how long ago that sounds to kids born at either the very end of the 1900s, or the early 2000s? We talk about how many technological advances came about during her time. She passed away just a couple of years before the internet. I can only imagine what a shift that was over the course of her lifetime.
Which leads to the sense of wonder that our oldest child was born, not only at the end of the last century, but also millennium … wild.
What are some other things of note? (My daughter helped me with these)
NHL hockey players on the ice without helmets
The length of 1980s and 90s NBA basketball shorts
Stories of groups of people riding around on county roads in the open flatbed of trucks
No shoulder seatbelts in the backseats of cars
No daytime running lights on cars
No individual plastic water bottles (not every invention has been a good one)
Smoking in restaurants
That my childhood family doctor would smoke throughout my appointment while diagnosing me with a throat infection
That I could get my driver’s licence the day after getting my learner’s permit (I didn’t, but I could have)
Hair perms (my daughter finds the prevalence of perms in the 1980s humorous)
Grocery store cashiers typing the prices in rather than having a scanner
Pulling into full serve gas stations and requesting “regular unleaded” fuel to the gas attendant
Manually locking each car door
Manually rolling and unrolling car windows
Calling a couch a “chesterfield” (I think that might have only been in Canada but boy, was it a common term)
VCR remote controls with cords (remember those?)
Having to wait for your favourite song to come on the radio in order to hear it (I guess nobody else hung over their Boom Box hoping they hadn’t missed “Sunglasses at Night?”😉)
You might be old enough to remember some of these things too, or you might you be old enough to remember things even further back? Feel free to add any that I’ve missed😊.
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Hi Erin:
Had a some good laughs at the memories you invoked with ‘Typewriters and other old things that make my children laugh”! Being just a bit older than you ,( okay, quite a bit….:)) , I clearly remember all these things and also spent time with my grandmother who was born in 1896. Such treasured memories of my time spent with her! I was also one of those grocery store cashiers that had to manually punch all the prices of the groceries into the cash register, and make correct change…none of this putting the amount in and having the machine tell you the correct amount to give back. Plus, we had to memorize the ad each week …often 5 or 6 pages of specials!! Good thing I had a good memory then…:) I will share this with my granddaughters as I know they will find it hilarious! Thanks so much for the trip down memory lane!
Thank you, Diane:). There would have been a lot of concentration involved in manually punching in all the prices and figuring out change yourself compared to these days. I didn’t ever work as a grocery store cashier, but I made change for years at the fruit and vegetable farms I worked at and also in the short-lived job I had a waitress at a truck stop restaurant. Load of groceries after groceries though … lots more concentration and memorizing. And 5 or 6 pages of specials? Wow. It’s so neat to hear that you also spent time with someone born in 1896:). Hope your granddaughters get a bit of a laugh too!
Ahh yes changing the channel on the tv itself… I don’t even know how to do that on our tv now!
I remember waiting outside the phone box at the end of the road for my Nan’s sister to call at 4pm on a Sunday. If anyone was in there we just had to wait ’til they finished and my Great Aunt just had to keep trying. My family were late adopters of the telephone – I’m not that old honestly 🙂
My guys love the fact that I remember when we first got a colour tv, mostly so my Grandad could watch the snooker! Yep, late adopters of tech all round. And to be honest that’s carried on into my adult life, always seem to be a little late to the party!
Loved this post Erin. As you can see it got me reminiscing 🙂
Thanks Hayley! That is quite something to think of waiting at the end of the road for a phone call, but it’s also really neat to think about those days when there would be something like a consistent phone call at the same time on a Sunday afternoon … love that:). I spotted a phone booth ( we call them booths here , or we used to when there were more of them around) the other day and it actually caught my attention. There are fewer and fewer around. So funny about mostly getting the colour TV so that your Grandad could watch Snooker, lol. Motivation is everything! I’m always a little late to the party getting into each tech advancement as well:).
This is such a fun one!!! What about grocery shopping at the A&P, loading your goods into baskets that would then roll down a belt, and then collecting them in your car at the other end? The pre-cursor of click and collect 🙂
Or getting up to change the channel on the TV?
Courtney, that is too funny! My brother-in-law mentioned the grocery belt as part of this conversation and I didn’t know anything about it. We didn’t have an A&P in the town where I grew up and I was trying to picture what he was talking about. When L was listing some of the funniest things to her, she actually mentioned that one, but I didn’t know how to explain it and left it out, so thank you:). And getting up to change the channel on the TV .. yes!