MisterCairo
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 7,005
- Location
- Gads Hill, Ontario
I remember the mechanical bull craze. I always associate that time with Mickey Gilley.
If that happened in this part of southern California I didn't notice it, but I really don't care for Disco music and wasn't part of that "scene" so it may have happened to some degree. But when Urban Cowboy became a hit three years later there was a noticeable increase in the wearing of "cowboy" hats, boots, and other apparel, and quite a few trendy bars installed mechanical bulls for their customers to ride.
It depends on whether or not you use it the way the original owners would have -- maintaining it where necessary and not abusing it or treating it like some kind of disposable thing from Wal-Mart. What people don't understand is that things from the Era were meant to be serviced and maintained. "Maintenance Free" goods trade durability for "convenience."
In May of 1984 I bought a radio at a junk barn for five dollars. It wasn't a top of the line model, but it wasn't a curtain-burner, either. It was a good mid-range Philco from 1937, and it had seen a lot of use before it ended up in the junk barn. But I figured out what was wrong with it, fixed it, replaced the parts that needed to be replaced, cleaned it up, and put it to use -- I didn't run it 24 hours a day, but I didn't treat it like it was made of eggshells, either. It might run half-an-hour one day, or six hours straight the next. I kept it clean and dry, serviced it when it needed servicing, and enjoyed it as it was meant to be enjoyed. Thirty-two years later that radio is still sitting in my living room, and I'm listening to a ball game on it at this very moment.
I bought a forty-three year old refrigerator in the fall of 1988, not as a collectible or as an artifact, but because I needed something to keep the milk cold and I was tired of using an icebox (which I had done for about three years prior.) I replaced the thermostat, and it's been running in four different kitchens over the past twenty-eight years. I defrost it twice a year and clean under the condenser coil, but that's all I've ever had to do. Short of somebody driving an ice pick thru the coil, I'm pretty sure it'll outlive me. I've even made provision for it in my will.
The telephone in my living room was made in 1933. I acquired it thirty-one years ago. It still works, and other than the cord between the handset mount and the subset that I replaced about fifteen years ago, it's still 100 percent original. It's such a simple device, with only a few moving parts, that there really isn't anything other than worn-out cords to go wrong with it.
Durable goods of the Era if they're used properly will last as long as you're willing for them to last. On the other hand, goods that were never meant to be durable goods will wear out as fast as you can wear them out. Every fall I find a half-a-dozen pairs of old-stock cotton stockings to get thru the winter, and every spring they're worn out. I don't particularly care -- I don't consider clothes priceless artificats, I consider them something to wear, and if you're not wearing them, what's the point?
I remember the mechanical bull craze. I always associate that time with Mickey Gilley.
Good old heavy concrete-slabs. But I think, construction industry usually don't like this longlasting surface.
The movie's overall "bull riding" theme and Country-and-Western soundtrack are rather "American" in nature and may not have been accepted so favorably in other countries, so this doesn't surprise me too much. I've only seen it once myself, mostly to see what all of the fuss was about; it didn't make me want to become a cowboy.Curious! I never heared of this movie, for real...
Well, the movie was called Urban Cowboy for a reason--it was intended to represent a "city slicker's" idea of what cowboy life might be like in the modern 1980s world.Living in Pasadena, TX, a few blocks from Gilley's, it was indeed a crazy time. The thing that strikes me most now about the cowboy "style" at the time was how contrived, uncomfortable, and completely unauthentic it was.
I'm confident that many of the original owners of those more durable goods replaced them when they could afford the newer, snazzier examples.
Local politics don't seem to vary much regardless of whether you live in a small town, a big city, or anything in between. Money talks, and the more affluent neighborhoods will always get more attention and care. We have no street lights on our block because the city can't afford to install them (or so we've been told) and, more to the point, they don't really want to. But if Daddy Warbucks moved into the house across the street and demanded them, you can bet they'd be moved up on the city's priorities list.When you live in a small town, potholes are, if you will pardon the expression, deeply political...
Living in Pasadena, TX, a few blocks from Gilley's, it was indeed a crazy time. The thing that strikes me most now about the cowboy "style" at the time was how contrived, uncomfortable, and completely unauthentic it was.
Local politics don't seem to vary much regardless of whether you live in a small town, a big city, or anything in between. Money talks, and the more affluent neighborhoods will always get more attention and care. We have no street lights on our block because the city can't afford to install them (or so we've been told) and, more to the point, they don't really want to. But if Daddy Warbucks moved into the house across the street and demanded them, you can bet they'd be moved up on the city's priorities list.
Tell that to Yule Gibbons! Ever eat a pine tree?Not if you adopt an elderly kitty. As for one's genetic bagage, a healthy lifestyle can change the game plan of destiny.
No!70's:
Is it true, that four weeks after "Saturday Night Fever" nearly all young US-Americans were walking around as fashion-victims, with such disco-clothes??
Well, so much for a week to ten days, I got a call last night telling me my truck had arrived and would be ready in the morning! Wow, talk about service, and it was nicer then I imagined. I joked with the young salesman, they must have took the Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, school of expectations. Where he would always tell Kirk that it was imposable, and would take weeks, then he would fix the Enterprise in a couple of hours.I have to laugh! This evening, I traded in my truck on a new one, one problem, they did not have one on the lot. So, I could wait two or three months for a new build, or they could get one from another dealer. I took the latter, It's in Utah, so only seven to ten days. I said, no sweat, I have a motorcycle, the weather has been near 70F the last week, I can do the time standing on my head! Looking at the extended forecast, you guised it, rain on Saturday, turning to snow on Monday through Wednesday.
Good old heavy concrete-slabs. But I think, construction industry usually don't like this longlasting surface.