Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[Zombie_61]

A number of Presidents were younger than or equal to my current age (55), but Barack Obama was the first who was younger than I was on the day he took office. Granted, I'm only older than he is by 7 days, but still...

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was born there were still a number of active major league ballplayers who had been active in the 1940s, and one was still active from the 1930s. Now there's only one player *still alive* from the 1930s (not the same guy), and there are no longer any active players from the *1980s.*

 

[vitanola]

Too many years and too many numbers have gone by for me to be fully confident in the exact accuracy (but it's close), but my Dad's new 25" color Magnavox in '64 cost (again, shaky memory - I was born the same year, so it's a handed down story) $400 or $500. Not a small amount of money, at all, today, but according to my handy-dandy internet inflation calculator about $3000 - $4000 in today's dollars.

And we were far from rich and my dad did not part with a dollar, let along four or five hundred of them, casually. Ten and twenty years later we were still treating that TV with much respect and it wasn't until I was (again, shaky memory) about 12 or so that I was even allowed to watch it by myself.

And, yes, the TV repair guy came out to the house when it went on the fritz and sometime could affect repairs there or, in a what made for a sad time, had to take it back to the shop for a week or two.

I just bought my mom a 20" Samsung flat panel for her small bedroom for $140 or (according to the handy dandy inflation calculator again) $18 in 1964 money. Remember when a 20" TV was big?

We did not get a color set until I was fourteen. By that time I had been dragging home junked television sets and repairing them for some time. When I was twelve I took the remote control chassis out of a Zenith Space Command television and used it to build a simple robot which I could control with the remote. Not a very useful thing, what with the trailing power cord.

My dad was not interested enough in TV to pay the price for a color set, but he was willing to buy electronic components for my education. When I was thirteen I brought home an early vintage RCA color set (a CTC-7 or CTC-8) out of the rubbish. He sprung for a rebuilt picture tube and some components along with a color generator so that I could learn to do a convergence and get the set up an running. He kept that set until the early 1990's.

 

[Fading Fast]

When I was born there were still a number of active major league ballplayers who had been active in the 1940s, and one was still active from the 1930s. Now there's only one player *still alive* from the 1930s (not the same guy), and there are no longer any active players from the *1980s.*

Long careers in football are not common now, but were even less common back in the '50s and '60s when the protective gear was less developed, the rules much-less protective of the players and the general attitude (sadly) was to use them up (play 'em injured, etc.) and move on.

That's what made George Blanda so fascinating to me as a kid. Even in the early '70s he was still an active kicker (having been a quarterback at one point in his career) even though he had started playing pro football back in '49. There was not only no one who had played long, but no one even close - ten years was a long career in football and he played for 26.

And that sparked a "Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime" thought: straight-on placekicker in football disappeared (I think) in the '90s as soccer-style kickers took over. That was a huge change as soccer-style kickers were an oddity when I started watching football in the late '60s/'70s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I felt the same way about Hoyt Wilhelm in baseball. He'd "only" begun his major league career in 1951, but when I opened up the Baseball Register to his page and saw that he'd begun his minor league career in 1942 -- and was still pitching in the early 1970s, I was suitably astonished. And he didn't even look old in his picture.

But then I think about Vin Scully, who began his broadcasting career with a Dodger spring training game against the Athletics -- who were still managed at the time by Connie Mack, whose baseball career began in 1886. That one man could thus bridge the gap between the game's Stone Age and the second decade of the twenty-first century causes my mind to fall on its back and have a spasm.

 

[HudsonHawk]

When I was born there were still a number of active major league ballplayers who had been active in the 1940s, and one was still active from the 1930s. Now there's only one player *still alive* from the 1930s (not the same guy), and there are no longer any active players from the *1980s.*

There are only three active players from the 1990s...Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, and Bartolo Colon.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There are only three active players from the 1990s...Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, and Bartolo Colon.

And here I've been sitting around like a fool waiting for Bob Zupcic to reach his full potential.

 

[vitanola]

^^^^^^
Last time I went to the movies was when "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was new in theaters.
I've been a customer of TW/Spec for
years that as of 2016, they now provide
me with all the "premium" channels at
no charge.
But over the years I've had to call &
threatened to quit and switch to other
cable companies.
For me, most of the movies today are
high in tech but low in story or plot
content.
I mostly watch TCM & PBS.
But it's good to know I can scan
the gadzillion channels available.
If there's nothing I find interesting
at least I gave my fingers a workout
with the remote.

Last pictures that I saw in the theater were "The Artist", "Wings" and "King of Jazz", only one of which was in its first run.

 

[HudsonHawk]

And here I've been sitting around like a fool waiting for Bob Zupcic to reach his full potential.

Zupcic is older than I am. He's ancient.

 

[sheeplady]

None of the recycling places near me would take a dead microwave when ours died. So I took it apart and sold it for scrap metal. Interestingly enough, the scrap place wouldn't take it "whole" but once I broke it apart, they took the metal components even though I told them it was from a microwave.

I also made money since I got cash for the copper wires separate from the bulk metal than if they had taken it whole (and unsorted) and paid me "metal" prices rather than copper. Oh, well, their loss for five minutes of time and a screwdriver..

 

[2jakes]

Last pictures that I saw in the theater were "The Artist", "Wings" and "King of Jazz", only one of which was in its first run.

"Wings" release date was January 5, 1929 (USA)

That explains your firsthand knowledge of things.

Congratulations old boy!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Last pictures that I saw in the theater were "The Artist", "Wings" and "King of Jazz", only one of which was in its first run.

I begged to get "King of Jazz" here, and was told "Yuck, nobody likes jazz."

 

[vitanola]

"Wings" release date was January 5, 1929 (USA)

That explains your firsthand knowledge of things.

Congratulations old boy!

I hope that you have made an incorrect assumption.

 

[vitanola]

I begged to get "King of Jazz" here, and was told "Yuck, nobody likes jazz."

They just don't get it.

{SIGH}

 

[Fading Fast]

I begged to get "King of Jazz" here, and was told "Yuck, nobody likes jazz."

Isn't Jazz still big with the "intellectuals," "elites," "Hipsters," etc., who, I assume, are a big part of your tourist and artist community that are driving up the rental prices and driving out the regular-people stores? Jazz - and I know many people sincerely enjoy it who are not pretentious at all - always had a bit of a counter-culture snobbish appeal that seems to fit in with the crowd that's both putting money in and destroying your town.

 

[vitanola]

Isn't Jazz still big with the "intellectuals," "elites," "Hipsters," etc., who, I assume, are a big part of your tourist and artist community that are driving up the rental prices and driving out the regular-people stores? Jazz - and I know many people sincerely enjoy it who are not pretentious at all - always had a bit of a counter-culture snobbish appeal that seems to fit in with the crowd that's both putting money in and destroying your town.

Yes. Since Jazz musicians left behind the "straight-jacket" of playing for dancers beginning in the 1940's, it has become a pretentious, self-referential art music.

The hipsters would probably not recognize the "Jazz" music in "King of Jazz" as anything at all, to wit:

 

[Fading Fast]

It's funny, Jazz just never "sang" to me - maybe I'm too simple and need the chorus / refrain / etc., but it just never touched me like some music does. And as I got older, the smug, snobbish "we're so cool" subset of its fans (again, I know many not-snobbish people genuinely enjoy it) turned me off and probably prevented me from giving it more chances.

 

[2jakes]

Today I had the sad task of saying goodbye to my dog who was born in the last century.
Dog loved 20s & 30s jazz.
If I could, I would've had a jazz funeral march in the streets in his honor!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Isn't Jazz still big with the "intellectuals," "elites," "Hipsters," etc., who, I assume, are a big part of your tourist and artist community that are driving up the rental prices and driving out the regular-people stores? Jazz - and I know many people sincerely enjoy it who are not pretentious at all - always had a bit of a counter-culture snobbish appeal that seems to fit in with the crowd that's both putting money in and destroying your town.

Nah, up here they go for skinny ponytailed white people sitting on stools baying tunelessly to acoustic guitars. Modern jazz would frighten and intimidate them, and they wouldn't understand 1920s jazz at all. The only "jazz" they can handle is Kenny G-style "smooth jazz," and then only as FM radio background music while they go scrambling to find the Cialis pill that fell under the bed.

 

[vitanola]

It's funny, Jazz just never "sang" to me - maybe I'm too simple and need the chorus / refrain / etc., but it just never touched me like some music does. And as I got older, the smug, snobbish "we're so cool" subset of its fans (again, I know many not-snobbish people genuinely enjoy it) turned me off and probably prevented me from giving it more chances.

Well, the "Jazz" in the "King of Jazz" really was just what we today would call "popular music". The two terms were synonymous in the 1920's. "Swing Music" was the last really accessible and popular form of jazz expression. If you like Gus Arnheim, Jimmy Dorsey, or Benny Goodman, they you are a fan of jazz, though it be a form of jazz which is not currently considered to be important.