Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[LizzieMaine]

On the question of the new baseball rules, I submit that baseball, as it has been played for the past twenty or thirty years, with all the fiddling and diddling between pitches, is, itself, an imposition on the basic structure of the game. This isn't just a grumpy statement from an old fan -- it's an empirical statement of fact, and I point to the evidence of hundreds of recorded radio broadcasts of games dating as far back as the mid-1930s. Even when you account for the difference in the length of commercial breaks between now and then, games prior to the 1980s moved at a consistently faster pace. A typical 1930s major league regular-season game lasted a little over two hours, occasionally 2:15 to 2:30, but almost never as long as 3 hours unless it went into extra innings or there was some other extraordinary circumstance. Games did get a bit longer thru the 1940s, moving more to the 2:15 to 2:40 range, but game length remained consistently under 3 hours until the very end of the 1970s. Even a game full of tension, strategy, and excitement like the famous 1978 "Bucky Dent game" between the Red Sox and Yankees was played in just 2:52.

This type of faster-paced, get-right-down-to-business baseball, without all the insufferable "get-me, I'm-a-chess-master" glaring between pitcher and batter and preening for the TV cameras is the game I knew and fell in love with. I don't especially like that a rule change is necessary to force the end of bad habits, but such is the world we live in. Maybe now my 85-year-old mother won't have to force herself into a state of sleep deprivation in order to watch her team.

 

[LizzieMaine]

On the mall question, up here talk of what to do about dead or dying malls is focusing more and more on turning them into affordable or senior housing. Given that I know people personally who have been forced to leave the state because the only housing option available to them, inthe face of rampaging gentrification, is to live in their cars, this can't happen soon enough.

 

[tonyb]

…
News reports are that mall management is discouraging loitering by youngsters there, seeing how their fisticuffs and occasional gun play discourages people who might actually be spending money there. It’s kinda amusing to hear how the concerns are phrased, though.

This morning’s news includes a report of a teenage male shot dead at that above-referenced mall on Saturday. The shooter is still at large as of this morning.

 

[belfastboy]

^^^^^
I’m reserving judgement on the rules changes taking effect this season until we have some history with them. But I don’t expect to ever favor the pitch clock. Part of the game’s appeal is the absence of a clock.

Still, though, I understand the thinking behind the changes. Baseball hasn’t been the “national pastime” for at least 50 years, and the fan base is aging. People, especially younger people, tend to find it slow-paced and less exciting than football and basketball.

I am a conservative, traditionalist in most things, baseball especially. Hated the DH for the longest time, loved the long gone days of a pitcher throwing a complete game. But, and I say this hesitatingly, I think the pitch clock is ok. The pace of the games is much more appealing and I welcome eliminating the 'human rain delays' so many hitters present these days. I no longer have to record the program after the ball game in order to catch the last two innings of a game. 2 1/2 hours, give or take, is now the new normal and I think that is a good thing.

 

[belfastboy]

We took steps toward installing rooftop photovoltaic panels a few months back, but backed out when the price we were quoted wasn’t the price on the proposed contract. Turns out they had, um, “overlooked” a couple things when they made the initial bid.

It would take at least a decade for the cost of the system to be offset by the savings on the electric bill. And that’s okay. Net metering (selling the juice back to the utility at the same rate it charges) has many paying essentially nothing for electricity.

We very well may go solar, but with a different company. But I harbor no illusions that we will ever have free electricity. The system will eventually wear out and need to be replaced. And then we start over.

We are blessed to live in a province with rivers, dams and hydroelectricity. Our electric bill runs about $35 (about $25US$) a month. Our heating is natural gas (about $80 a month) not electric and we don't run a heat pump or A/C. We air dry our clothes and generally keep a low energy footprint.

I think at $35 a month (we pay that each month of the year and once a year there is a reconciliation of the bill, up or down) we are about as close to free electricity as one can get.

Solar makes zero sense for us as the payback is very very long and we live in a cloudy, grey, rainy climate.

 

[belfastboy]

^^^^^^
Wasn’t it the industrial designer Harley Earl who coined the slightly more euphemistic phrase “dynamic obsolescence”?

Earl was the head of styling for General Motors. The “obsolescence“ he had in mind was more concerned with the aesthetics of the product than its function(s) and durability.

When I was a youngster I could tell the model year of almost every car on the road, because 1.), I cared about such things back then, and 2.), the body styles changed every year. It was costly for the car companies to constantly restyle and retool to stay “up to date,” but the industry banked on a large portion of the car-buying public wanting the latest looks. A car three or four years old had become, in the eyes of many, an “old” car.

My first car was a 1956 Meteor 2 door coupe, a lot of money when one is making a buck an hour. I bought it as a 16 year old in 1966 for $500. I was thinking about it the other day.....it was only 10 years old when I bought it but at the time buying a 10 year old car it seemed vintage. My father traded in the family car every two years as he put 30,000 miles a year on them and after two years those 60,000 miles seemed an enormous amount of mileage.

 

[belfastboy]

On the mall question, up here talk of what to do about dead or dying malls is focusing more and more on turning them into affordable or senior housing. Given that I know people personally who have been forced to leave the state because the only housing option available to them, inthe face of rampaging gentrification, is to live in their cars, this can't happen soon enough.

Malls up here, in my neck of the what used to be woods, all Malls seem to be doing well and if anything are expanding. A very recent thing is for the malls to use the enormous amount of land to develop high rise condos around the mall.

It makes great use of large swathes of land and gives the malls somewhat of a captive audience. We have an elevated metro system....dubbed SkyTrain that extends throughout the metro area and there is a SkyTrain station at every Mall so to build condo villages makes great sense (as long you don't mind HongKong style living). A mall a few miles from us formerly known as Lougheed Mall is now rebranding as Lougheed City.

In my formerly small town, now a bedroom community the small shops in the downtown are thriving, no empty storefronts, all businesses are looking bright and prosperous in spite of a plethora of Big Box stores but a mile further up the road. We shop at both.

 

[tonyb]

We are blessed to live in a province with rivers, dams and hydroelectricity. Our electric bill runs about $35 (about $25US$) a month. Our heating is natural gas (about $80 a month) not electric and we don't run a heat pump or A/C. We air dry our clothes and generally keep a low energy footprint.

I think at $35 a month (we pay that each month of the year and once a year there is a reconciliation of the bill, up or down) we are about as close to free electricity as one can get.

Solar makes zero sense for us as the payback is very very long and we live in a cloudy, grey, rainy climate.

I had cheap electricity when I lived in Seattle. Lotsa hydro projects out that way. Seattle City Light owns outright three dams on the Skagit River. And if not for those Depression era projects on the Columbia and Snake rivers, the agricultural Mecca east of the Cascades would be barren desert. And the electricity those dams generated powered the aluminum industry and along with it the aircraft industry.

Far different story here in the semi-arid Front Range. But solar is much more feasible here. Rarely do we see multiple cloudy days in a row. It snowed an inch or two overnight. It’ll be sunny this afternoon, and for the next several days.

 

[belfastboy]

I had cheap electricity when I lived in Seattle. Lotsa hydro projects out that way. Seattle City Light owns outright three dams on the Skagit River. And if not for those Depression era projects on the Columbia and Snake rivers, the agricultural Mecca east of the Cascades would be barren desert. And the electricity those dams generated powered the aluminum industry and along with it the aircraft industry.

Far different story here in the semi-arid Front Range. But solar is much more feasible here. Rarely do we see multiple cloudy days in a row. It snowed an inch or two overnight. It’ll be sunny this afternoon, and for the next several days.

We used to camp over the Cascades along Hwy 20 into Mazama, Twisp, Winthrop and pass the big dam sites along the way. Other times a bit further south into Yakima, Cashmere, Wenatchee.

 

[tonyb]

My first car was a 1956 Meteor 2 door coupe, a lot of money when one is making a buck an hour. I bought it as a 16 year old in 1966 for $500. I was thinking about it the other day.....it was only 10 years old when I bought it but at the time buying a 10 year old car it seemed vintage. My father traded in the family car every two years as he put 30,000 miles a year on them and after two years those 60,000 miles seemed an enormous amount of mileage.

My grandfather was a blue collar worker with an eighth grade education but whose union job at the packing plant afforded him a decent home and four well-fed progeny and a new Ford (or Mercury; he was partial to Ford products) every couple three or four years.

His biography was fairly typical back then.

 

[belfastboy]

My grandfather was a blue collar worker with an eighth grade education but whose union job at the packing plant afforded him a decent home and four well-fed progeny and a new Ford (or Mercury; he was partial to Ford products) every couple three or four years.

His biography was fairly typical back then.

My father was a bit lower on the food chain than blue collar.
He worked the killing floor of an abattoir. A job that today we can even get immigrants to do for very long.

He did provide us with a good middle class life but he worked 6 1/2 days a week as he could not abide having a mortgage hanging over his head. I imagine the Depression will do that to you. But it afforded us a lifestyle with a stay at home mom

And him being a butcher we ate good meat! He too was a Ford man and although he died when I was 11 I could hear his voice of admonishment when I eventually became a GM guy.

 

[tonyb]

My first car was a 1956 Meteor 2 door coupe, a lot of money when one is making a buck an hour. I bought it as a 16 year old in 1966 for $500. I was thinking about it the other day.....it was only 10 years old when I bought it but at the time buying a 10 year old car it seemed vintage. My father traded in the family car every two years as he put 30,000 miles a year on them and after two years those 60,000 miles seemed an enormous amount of mileage.

My first car was a ’58 Karmann Ghia with no reverse gear. I paid either 35 or 65 bucks for it (it’s getting to be a quite distant memory so I can’t attest to the particulars with confidence).

 

[belfastboy]

My first car was a ’58 Karmann Ghia with no reverse gear. I paid either 35 or 65 bucks for it (it’s getting to be a quite distant memory so I can’t attest to the particulars with confidence).

I had a 59 Ghia. Loved that car even though it was a rust bucket. I think I paid $150 for it in the early 1970's. It was my first project after university when I decided to become an auto mechanic and thought the best way to learn was to dismantle a car and see if I could put it back together without having parts left over. I owned the Ghia,, a 64, 65 & 67 Beetle and a 1969 VW van. My 67 was the last car I ever worked on. It was a barn find and I rebuilt it to almost new......The engine mounts rusted away and I had to put the old boy down......a sad sad day indeed.

 

[tonyb]

My father was a bit lower on the food chain than blue collar.
He worked the killing floor of an abattoir. A job that today we can even get immigrants to do for very long.

He did provide us with a good middle class life but he worked 6 1/2 days a week as he could not abide having a mortgage hanging over his head. I imagine the Depression will do that to you. But it afforded us a lifestyle with a stay at home mom

And him being a butcher we ate good meat! He too was a Ford man and although he died when I was 11 I could hear his voice of admonishment when I eventually became a GM guy.

My grandfather routinely worked the kill line. (I appreciate the plain-spokenness of calling it exactly that, for that is exactly what happens there.)

I’ll always remember him telling my brother and me, when our stepdad was giving my brother grief over quitting his job, that we shouldn’t fall into the trap he did. He hated his job for several years before his retirement, he said, but at that point he had too many responsibilities and was getting a bit too long in the tooth to risk quitting.

He went a long way toward countering less benevolent influences in my early years. My cousins on that side often express similar sentiments. I suffer no illusions that I will be so fondly remembered.

 

[belfastboy]

My grandfather routinely worked the kill line. (I appreciate the plain-spokenness of calling it exactly that, for that is exactly what happens there.)

I’ll always remember him telling my brother and me, when our stepdad was giving my brother grief over quitting his job, that we shouldn’t fall into the trap he did. He hated his job for several years before his retirement, he said, but at that point he had too many responsibilities and was getting a bit too long in the tooth to risk quitting.

He went a long way toward countering less benevolent influences in my early years. My cousins on that side often express similar sentiments. I suffer no illusions that I will be so fondly remembered.

I recall my father taking me to the abattoir after he had been promoted out of there. I was 5 and it was shocking....surprised I am not a vegan! I think, in his mind, it was a teachable moment designed to show me where he had come from and what I should avoid. As he died so young I didn't know him very well at all but that memory is burnt into my brain. I admired him so.

 

[tonyb]

… As he died so young I didn't know him very well at all but that memory is burnt into my brain. I admired him so.

I believe it’s something akin to a biological imperative that children admire, literally “look up to,” their parents. Kids sense on a primal level how dependent and vulnerable they truly are, and cleave to that which offers them at least some security.

I wanted to be proud of my stepdad. He came into my life before I had any memory of it, so I never sensed that I wasn’t his kid. But I knew from an early age that he didn’t approve of me and that he harbored far more insecurity as to the legitimacy of his parental status than I would have had he not so painfully forced the matter upon me.

He wasn’t big on self-reflection — self-absorption, for sure, and self-centeredness, but rarely a sober, detached examination of himself.

So I have some pity for him, along with the lingering resentment. He had been seriously injured himself, and he spread the pain around.

 

[Rmccamey]

I'm not a fan of the play clock. Baseball should not be run on a clock as there is a certain amount of strategy involved. The longer the game, the more fatigued the players and coaches who are then increasingly prone to errors...a matter of endurance...who is in better mental and physical condition to outlast the other.

No, I'm not a fan of all the fiddling and diddling either but let's not add more rules, let's make the umpires do their job of controlling the flow of the game.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I'd rather not pay good money for "less". I'm forced to do that every day at the grocery store and I'd rather not do it with my entertainment.


We'll be right back after this commercial break...

 

[tonyb]

Branch banks, and physical banking locations in general.

They haven’t disappeared entirely, and it’s unlikely they will in my lifetime, but there are many more closing than opening.

Today, for the first time in a long time, I had reason to stop in at a branch bank. There was one teller at a facility that would accommodate at least 10. And not a soul at any of the dozen or so desks in the low cubicles on the other side of the building.

 

[LostInTyme]

On the game of baseball, I agree with the rule changes to speed the game up. I used to be a Cleveland Indians fan. Then came along a guy named Mike Hargrove. He would stand in in the batters box and take five minutes to adjust every piece of his equipment, every time, between every pitch. I lost interest in the game back then just because of him. I believe sometimes the pitchers would intentionally throw at him just to get rid of him and his antics.

 

[Rmccamey]

On the game of baseball, I agree with the rule changes to speed the game up. I used to be a Cleveland Indians fan. Then came along a guy named Mike Hargrove. He would stand in in the batters box and take five minutes to adjust every piece of his equipment, every time, between every pitch. I lost interest in the game back then just because of him. I believe sometimes the pitchers would intentionally throw at him just to get rid of him and his antics.

They don't need a clock for that. The umpire should do his job!