Terms Which Have Disappeared

[vitanola]

We have a couple of powerful "X" radio stations that are from Mexico but broadcast in English and they sign off with the Mexican national anthem.

[video=youtube;QreMMbk1Y7s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QreMMbk1Y7s[/video]

Listening to Dr. Brinkley again, OM?

 

[Fading Fast]

Just this morning, I turned on the radio and remembered how my father and his mother would occasionally call it "the wireless." I'm sure this has been discussed in the 89 pages of this thread, but if not, do others remember the radio being referred to this way?

 

[skydog757]

Just this morning, I turned on the radio and remembered how my father and his mother would occasionally call it "the wireless." I'm sure this has been discussed in the 89 pages of this thread, but if not, do others remember the radio being referred to this way?

Yes, but it was my grandparents who used the term. I also remember having to "warm up the tv" before a show that you wanted to watch as tubes had to run a while to function properly. And don't get me started on fixing the horizontal hold . . .

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

. . . fixing the horizontal hold . . .

That reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows when I was a boy, The Outer Limits. See the opening of each show on this YouTube video. Oh, and does anyone still have "rabbit ears"?

 

[LizzieMaine]

That reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows when I was a boy, The Outer Limits. See the opening of each show on this YouTube video. Oh, and does anyone still have "rabbit ears"?

I still used them when there were still actual analog signals to pick up, , but even though I can no longer receive any over the air television, I keep them on top of the TV set just the same: they keep the cat from jumping up there.

 

[Fading Fast]

As a kid, when we went to my Grandmother's apartment, sometimes I would have to hold the rabbit ear to improve the reception - and it was not fun as you had to stand, couldn't really see the TV and quickly got bored. Did anyone else get stuck with this stupid job? When the apartment building my Grandmother lived in put an ariel on the roof that the tenants could connect to, it was a great day for me.

 

[rjb1]

Modern digital over-the-air broadcasting is so unreliable in terms of reception that I have tried a number of antenna types, some that are theoretically the right type and others just plain old rabbit ears. The rabbit ears generally work as well, and sometimes better, than the "proper" type, so I do keep a set of the old "ears" in operation.

Dropping analog for digital broadcasting is one of the greatest sell-outs of the American people by Congress in modern times. I curse Congress every time I lose the signal - and I lose the signal a lot.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Dropping analog for digital broadcasting is one of the greatest sell-outs of the American people by Congress in modern times. I curse Congress every time I lose the signal - and I lose the signal a lot.

To say nothing of the digital communications/cable TV/cellphone industries that bought and paid for that legislation.

Heading for extinction is the habit of referring to television as "the tube," once a generation has arisen that has never actually seen a cathode-ray tube in operation.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

And then the government spent millions of dollars to subsidize the purchase of converter boxes. I never even bothered to get one.

 

[skydog757]

Another traditional phrase used on television which seems to have disappeared; "It's 11pm, do you know where your children are?" Guess kids can stay out as late as they want now or parents just stopped caring about it.

Was that just a local channel thing (Mid Michigan) or did the majority of stations carry it?

 

[sheeplady]

Another traditional phrase used on television which seems to have disappeared; "It's 11pm, do you know where your children are?" Guess kids can stay out as late as they want now or parents just stopped caring about it.

Was that just a local channel thing (Mid Michigan) or did the majority of stations carry it?

One of the stations (7?) out in Buffalo NY still does this at 11pm. I've heard it before (when I was younger) but no idea if I heard it at home (that would have been late for me) or if I happened to be out in Buffalo at some point and heard it... or heard it someplace else.

 

[59Lark]

yes; channel 7 buffalo still does that, that station was the one with the commander tom show, that dates me. I still answer my business phone good afternoon how can I help you, the common one, how may i help you madam. As I fill out a repair, tag may i please have your name and phone number madam. . someone came and wanted to pay for a blind hemmer with one of these wipe , swipe thingsy. I relpied, note the rotary phone on the wall, the portrait of the queen at the back and i am wearing a apron, drinking coke from a bottle do you think i have one of those. No was the anwer. one thing I really hate is being called guys, the most i will stoop , is how can i help you folks. Sir or madam, amish i handle differently mind you we are the englishers. 59LARK back from the edge of mount doom.

 

[Stearmen]

Swing Daddy!

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Do you know where your children are" did originate in Buffalo, over station WKBW-TV around 1960 as part of a campaign to promote the city's curfew law. It was part of the nationwide concern over juvenile delinquency carried over from the mid-to-late fifties, and it caught on with other stations around the country. But as far as anyone can determine, WKBW did it first.

 

[sheeplady]

"Do you know where your children are" did originate in Buffalo, over station WKBW-TV around 1960 as part of a campaign to promote the city's curfew law. It was part of the nationwide concern over juvenile delinquency carried over from the mid-to-late fifties, and it caught on with other stations around the country. But as far as anyone can determine, WKBW did it first.

I never knew that Lizzie. I have extended family out in WNY so it will be great to tell them that.

Why was there a concern about juvenile deliquency in the 50s and 60s? I could understand later decades (particularly in the rust belt) but not earlier. I can't imagine crime rates being higher, so it must have been a social concern rather than an evidence based one?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Part of it was statistical -- the FBI had indicated there *was* a rise in overall juvenile crime during the late war years and early postwar era, and part of it was a popular culture thing -- the whole "Blackboard Jungle" leather-jacket-teenagers-with-switchblades-and-zip-guns image that came out of movies and popular fiction in the early fifties made a big impression. Unlike the modern era, where a lot of the "urban thug" imagery is racially-based, the JD's of the fifties were perceived as mostly working-class white kids gone bad -- and that made them seem a lot more up-close and threatening to the sort of middle-class white folk who read startling exposes of street-gang life in "Pageant" magazine.

Interestingly, when various panels and committees and organizations were appointed to study this problem, the near-universal recommendation was not to slap the delinquents around and tell them to get a haircut and a job. Instead, the emphasis was nearly always on prevention and rehabilitation -- reaching out to delinquents and teaching them rather than bringing the hammer down on them, and working to do something about inner-city poverty and alienation: a "Great Society" approach ten years before the "Great Society" existed.

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

I remember when I was a kid hearing a character on an old movie saying something like "Gimmee those brass knuckles" or something having to do with brass knuckles. You don't hear about brass knuckles that much but it seems like it was popular back in the Era.

 

[sheeplady]

Part of it was statistical -- the FBI had indicated there *was* a rise in overall juvenile crime during the late war years and early postwar era, and part of it was a popular culture thing -- the whole "Blackboard Jungle" leather-jacket-teenagers-with-switchblades-and-zip-guns image that came out of movies and popular fiction in the early fifties made a big impression. Unlike the modern era, where a lot of the "urban thug" imagery is racially-based, the JD's of the fifties were perceived as mostly working-class white kids gone bad -- and that made them seem a lot more up-close and threatening to the sort of middle-class white folk who read startling exposes of street-gang life in "Pageant" magazine.

Interestingly, when various panels and committees and organizations were appointed to study this problem, the near-universal recommendation was not to slap the delinquents around and tell them to get a haircut and a job. Instead, the emphasis was nearly always on prevention and rehabilitation -- reaching out to delinquents and teaching them rather than bringing the hammer down on them, and working to do something about inner-city poverty and alienation: a "Great Society" approach ten years before the "Great Society" existed.

Interesting. Unfortunately I cannot see many of the movements that would later occur helping the situation- such as urban renewal, which in my city just moved the urban poverty problem and further accelerated white flight.

Although the one good thing to come out of the program in my city was affordable housing, there was not nearly enough built and it was never maintained. They tore down a huge huge section of it a few years ago to make way for more hospital/ medical facilities (the only thing that seems to get built around here) but they had never updated the roofs after it was built (or at least it looked that way). They say you had swimming pools in some of those apartments, and towards the end all they did was move people out of the top floors rather than fix the things.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Urban renewal -- another term which has disappeared -- was sort of like cutting off your foot to cure an ingrown toenail. I think it had more to do with technocrats like Robert Moses, who liked cars and highways and parking lots far more than he liked people, than with actual social reformers.

It's been replaced in the modern mindset by "gentrification," but the results are the same. The people displaced have nowhere to go, and they end up being shoved more and more into society's dark closet.

 

[sheeplady]

Urban renewal -- another term which has disappeared -- was sort of like cutting off your foot to cure an ingrown toenail. I think it had more to do with technocrats like Robert Moses, who liked cars and highways and parking lots far more than he liked people, than with actual social reformers.

It's been replaced in the modern mindset by "gentrification," but the results are the same. The people displaced have nowhere to go, and they end up being shoved more and more into society's dark closet.

But at least those communities now have Starbucks! (That is the joke that you can tell an area is about to be gentrified when a Starbucks moves in. Interestingly enough, our city only has one "stand alone" starbucks- it is right by the University. The rest are all in Targets. Apparently we do not live in an area that is about to be gentrified.)

Right now our city is talking about removing the main artery that goes north to south in our city, with people stating that the "feeling" of the city changed when it was installed in the late 1960s. (That is the nice way of saying that it all went to ****.) Apparently removing a highway that is used to get to the three largest employers in the county will somehow undo the poverty, get rid of the violence that is embedded in that area, make people move back into the area (when the people who live there don't even want to stay) and bring back the manufacturing employers. People talk as if removing this highway will suddenly Make Everything All Better. I am sure there was a similar discussion in the 1960s about how building the highway would do the same.