So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[MisterCairo]

I remember the mechanical bull craze. I always associate that time with Mickey Gilley.

 

[Trenchfriend]

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.

Curious! I never heared of this movie, for real.
But, all movies, ordered from the textile-industry, seemingly.

 

[tonyb]

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'm confident that many of the original owners of those more durable goods replaced them when they could afford the newer, snazzier examples.

It was of a piece with the great post-war suburban migration. The "greatest generation" of myth was on the vanguard of that exodus.

I've driven cars with more than half a million miles on 'em, and I've owned some with half that many or more. So I know that a car can cover many, many more miles than the average one does before it gets melted down and turned into a new Hyundai. Still, there comes a point when you're throwing good money after bad in keeping a car on the road. There is such a thing as metal fatigue, after all. And the newer ones are more comfortable and safer and easier to drive and generally more reliable.

The hazards of the road do in a car sooner or later anyway. Take this from someone who has taken good care of a wheelchair-accessible van for the past 11 years, who has seen to the routine maintenance and replaced many a component, and who expected to log at least another 100,000 miles to add to the 200,000 it had already covered, only to have it rearended this past Monday evening. Yup, it's totaled.

I had a GE monitor top refrigerator at one time. Sold it. I suspect it is still chugging along in what must now be its 10th decade. A solid product, for sure. But I would much rather live and work with the fridge I have now.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I remember the mechanical bull craze. I always associate that time with Mickey Gilley.

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.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Good old heavy concrete-slabs. But I think, construction industry usually don't like this longlasting surface.

It's not the construction industry, it's the taxpayers who have to pay for such a road. They are orders of magnitude more expensive.

As for potholes, I think that's more than trivial. That's a public safety issue, one that can be pretty serious if not addressed.

 

[Zombie_61]

Curious! I never heared of this movie, for real...

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.

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.

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.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When you live in a small town, potholes are, if you will pardon the expression, deeply political. Not in the partisan sense, but in the sense of where you live, where the city council and city manager lives, and where the people who grease their wheels live. I've had potholes that could swallow a car whole in the middle of my street go ignored well into the summer, while the road crews are busily patching the upscale neighborhoods and leaving the working class part of town to fend for itself. It's kind of a joke here that if one paving brick pokes up on a Main Street sidewalk, six DPW trucks will be down there within the hour to knock it back down. But the Grand Canyon could open up in the North End and the reaction from City Hall is "well, we haven't budgeted for that this year." A microcosm of the larger world, really.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm confident that many of the original owners of those more durable goods replaced them when they could afford the newer, snazzier examples.

Enter the Boys From Marketing, stage right. LOOK, IT'S *PINK!* Followed not long after by LOOK, IT'S HARVEST GOLD!, LOOK, IT'S ALMOND!, and LOOK, IT'S STAINLESS STEEL! Meanwhile, my plain old white Kelvinator keeps the milk just as cold.

Maintenance isn't much of an inconvenience, really. I just finished defrosting, and it took me less than half an hour from start to finish. All you have to know is the right way to do it.

 

[Zombie_61]

When you live in a small town, potholes are, if you will pardon the expression, deeply political...

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.

 

[tonyb]

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.

The "cowboy" drag of recent years is much more a creation Hollywood and Nashville than the genuine "Old West."

I'm not one to let such inauthenticity put me off the look altogether, although many sporting it might do the trick. (And this from one who is occasionally seen in public wearing pointy-toed boots and a hat with an Indian quill-and-bead band.)

 

[tonyb]

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.

For decades Southeast Seattle's mostly chip-sealed side streets got patched with leftover materials from projects in the more affluent districts. Some of those side roads eventually became a patchwork quilt. Really let you know what kind of condition your suspension was in.

 

[Stearmen]

Not if you adopt an elderly kitty. As for one's genetic bagage, a healthy lifestyle can change the game plan of destiny.

Tell that to Yule Gibbons! Ever eat a pine tree?

 

[Stearmen]

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??

No!

 

[Stearmen]

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.

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.

 

[AmateisGal]

Good old heavy concrete-slabs. But I think, construction industry usually don't like this longlasting surface.

I think you're right. A lot of people would like to charge the city for car damage, but they never have been able to get them to pay for it.

 

[Fading Fast]

I live in the not fancy part of New York City's Upper East Side. The most expensive streets - 5th Avenue, Park and Madison - are incredibly well maintained - clean, regularly repaired and cared for. My area is okay, but you immediately notice that the streets aren't as clean or nice.

Here's the thing, the taxes paid by the owners living on those three streets I listed, subsidize services, not only for the rest of the Upper East Side, but for other less affluent parts of the city. The wealth concentrated there pays in incredible portion of the city's total tax take and every study shows that the affluent part of the city subsidizes the not-affluent parts in a very meaningful way.

So as someone living in the not-affluent part, I don't begrudge them their nicer services as they are still helping the rest of us. I have no idea if that is the scenario in any of the other places mentioned above - so I'm not judging something I don't know the facts about - all I'm saying is that in NYC, the "rich" meaningfully subsidize the city services, via taxes, of much of the middle class and needy areas - so I'm okay if they get nicer streets and services in return.

 

[vitanola]

Such is not necessarily the case in small towns. A street where I own a home has always been a "good" address, where the "right" people live. It is beautifully maintained, of course. Three blocks over there is a street of workingman's cottages which might as well be paved in gravel. The last reco ating was done in 1962. Folks who live in the street regularly fill their own pot holes. When preparing for a council meeting about road repair a lady who lives on the rough street went to the county cou those and determined the tax levied on the homes on this street and compared it with the taxes levied on our block. The rough street was taxed at nearly three times the rate per square foot of road surface as was our "good" block.

It has been traditional for "slum" neighborhoods to be taxed out of proportion to the services which they receive.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

When I see the easy perishability and constant maintenance of "modern"roads I sigh and think of Roman roads, some of which are still usable after 2000 years or more, with no maintenance. Of course, such roads are feasible only if you have unlimited slave labor, as the Romans had.

 

[Stearmen]

My Victorian house is just a half block from the hospital. The patients use our alley to get to the parking lot, it's a bit of a hassle getting out of the garage some times, with cars going by at to high of a speed. On the up side, our alley is paved, and if there is a pot hole, a quick call to the hospital and in two days it is filled. Also, since the hospital owns the house next to mine and a building on the alley, their security patrols our street and alley!

 

[GHT]

At this time of year, all my household annual bills come rolling in. House insurance, bricks & mortar, house contents, car insurance, utility bills, on and on.
My main gripe about insurance is how we are treated as a cash cow. Every year there's a thumping great increase on the previous year and every year I have this verbal exchange that results in my premiums being reduced to that of before. Are these premiums computer generated? And do they have some sort of software that deliberately hikes the rate, year on year? Makes me wonder how many households just pay up and put up.