What you remember from past decades.

[ArrowCollarMan]

I decided to set up a thread discussing decades past (that people posting lived in and experience). The only decade I lived through was the 1990's and I can only remember so much. Like the weird color combinations that were especially prominent throughout the 90's. Funky colors and shapes on things like shirts and wallpaper, weird colored jeans, white t-shirts (I just remember alot of white t-shirts at bbq's somewhere around 95'), plaid shirts galore, grunge, doc martins, funky hawiian shirts and from 99' came the shirts with brightly colored prints of flaming dragons or Dragon Ball Z characters, and so much more. And the music, I thought the alternative rock was great! I felt there was really good music from that time from artists like the Goo Goo Dolls, The Cranberies, Third Eye Blind and The Smashing Pumpkins. But come the mid to late 99' and it was a hudge-podge of elctronica and all kinds of other poppy music. What was that decade?

 

[scotrace]

Phat Chance

You're asking us to date ourselves, Son.









.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Aw, I dont mind dating myself....

From the sixties, I remember --

My Suzy Homemaker oven and my Francie doll

watching Jackie Gleason on Saturday nights and Ed Sullivan on Sundays

The Red Sox winning the 1967 AL pennant (my first memory of baseball)

Sitting up late with my mother watching the Apollo 11 moonwalk

All the words to Mister Rogers' songs

Scooter dresses in pastel colors worn with white tights and black maryjanes on the first day of school

The greasy shoestring with my roller skate key on it

That boy next door with the Sting Ray bike with the gearshift on the crossbar

Funny Face Instant Drink Mix, with No Cyclamates

Those elastic ponytail holders with little plastic balls

The tin box on the doorstep where the milkman left the milk

Seeing the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" at the Drive-In as the bottom half of a double feature, and being terrified of the Apple Bonkers.


From the seventies, I remember --


"I'm a Brownie in a beanie, 'neath the beanie is my face..."

The Watergate hearings on TV every day

Learning all the words to "My Ding-a-Ling" by Chuck Berry, and singing it loudly in front of people just to scandalize my mother

Eating Tang powder out of the jar with a spoon

"We are the Freakies, we are the Freakies, and this is our Freakies Tree..."

Hating "bell bottom" jeans because they kept getting caught in my bicycle chain

Space Food Sticks

Basketball Jones

Thinking Danny Bonaduce was much cuter than David Cassidy

The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour

Having to stay home from school because of being so upset at the Red Sox losing the '75 World Series

Pullover zipper-front shirts with a big ring on the zipper

Clackers

A-line skirts, which I liked because they looked kind of forties.

Feathered hair, which I did *not* like

Seeing the original "Star Wars" at the Drive In, and thinking Han Solo should kick that whiney weenie Luke out the airlock.

Buying my first 78rpm records at a flea market, and realizing I could live my whole life without having to listen to disco.


From the eighties I remember --

My first radio job, at the height of the "Duran Duran" era, and a poster of some goof in a fishnet top and lavender lipstick on the studio door. Ew.

Other women wearing jackets with shoulder pads that made them look like linebackers. Fortunately, I had sense.

Spandex stirrup pants. (See above.)

Mall bangs. (ditto)

Jellies (and once again...)

Trying to figure out what the deal was with Boy George.

Seeing MTV for the first time while doing my washing in a laundromat, and feeling the Apocalypse had at long last arrived.

"Behind the bag! It gets past Buckner!" (The moment the Apocalypse did, in fact, arrive.)


From the nineties I remember --

Little of any consequence that wasn't cobbled from bits and pieces of some other era.

The death of local radio.

Wishing I still had my Suzy Homemaker oven and my Francie doll.

 

[Tomasso]

Lizzie, what a memory you have. Makes me wish I hadn't smoked so much

 

[Zach R.]

I remember the remnants of the "poofy-hair" '80s that somehow trickled into the next decade, going into a video store and finding nothing but VHS tapes, fanny packs being cool(now THAT was a long time ago), and it taking me over an hour to download 10 megabytes.

 

[Hannigan Reilly]

growing up stream of consciousness:
The dukes of hazzard, knight rider, simon and simon, magnum PI, M*A*S*H*, doctor who, Chariots of Fire, green machine big wheels, dirt bikes with "mags," hot wheels, superstar bomb pops, The Hobbit (animated), pop tarts, new math, the Microwave, the metric system (that we'd all be using soon), the walkman, the first home PC's, atari, breakdancing, Casper Weinberger, Transformers, the A-Team (fools to be pitied), Polo by ralph lauren, parachute pants, coca-cola couture, swatch watches, air jordans, Guess jeans, Celtics v. Lakers, cable tv, Oliver North (hero), the Challenger and the O-Ring, Capri-Sun, the Achille Lauro, Lockerbie Scotland, Beirut, Khaddafi, Glasnost, Perastroika, MR. GORBACHEV TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!, Prince as Prince, Chernobyl, star wars (movie and weapon), On Golden Pond, The Dark Crystal, Who shot J.R.? Fantasy Island, Remington Steele, $800 for a VCR, punk rock, hair metal, hip-hop, new wave, madonna actually attractive, yuppies, Jordan on a bad Bulls team, Harry Caray live!, Powell & Peralta, Penn and Teller, when REM was "alternative," MTV when it showed videos, George Carlin, You Can't Do That on Television! When Guns N Roses saved rock n roll.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

My older brother turning me on to rock and roll records from the 60's.
Really, really heinous TV from the 70's!
New wave music of the 80's.
Uhhhmm,...the 90's,.... [huh] Oh yeah, The Berlin wall came down, forever altering the geopolitical dynamic of the world.
The Y2K scare of 2000. lol What if it had really happened and we all woke up in the year 1900?

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

MC Hammer dolls
Lynx game systems
Tailspin, Darkwing Duck and Saved By the Bell after school on TV
Scrunchies
Stretch Armstrong
Power Wheels
Desert Storm
Transformers
Doom 3D

Guess when I grew up?

 

[Doh!]

I was quite young at the time, but I remember that my dad "made" us watch the moon landing because it was going to be a historical event. I'm REALLY glad he did!

A few years later, there was a block party of sorts to watch the Nixon resignation. One of our neighbors strung together about 3 extension chords and set up a TV in their backyard so that almost the whole block could watch it as a group, all the while eating BBQ. Weird.

 

[ArrowCollarMan]

You're asking us to date ourselves, Son.









.

So what if you have to "date" yourself? The 20th century was one of humanitys most progressive and most fascinating. Its history! We're apart of it as we speak.

 

[magneto]

-Being really excited over my all-metal roller skates and keeping the skate key around my neck while sleeping.
-Patty Hearst being on the TV news *every night*.
-Living in North Beach, San Francisco when it was exclusively the province of Italians, with a few selfstyled degenerates.
-Parks that smelled of mown grass, rather than other substances.
-Going to a place called a "record store" with my lil' allowance and being able to buy several of these things called "45s" just because they looked interesting.
-Urban corner stores that were well-run, tidy and nice and sold actual groceries, and storekeepers (or any other service-jobholder) that were friendly proud members of the community instead of incommunicado price-gougers slumped sullenly among piles of graffiti-marred litter. (sorry, pet peeve).
-My mum coming from the hairdresser with a new beehive and me crying/screaming and running off to hide in fright, about age 3.
-Elementary school dress code: "sneakers may be white or dark blue and are only to be worn during Gym class."

 

[Strider]

Swatches
High Tops
Acid washed jeans
"Bad" being played a lot on the radio
"Once bitten, twice shy"
"Cocomo"
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tiger Handheld LCD games being all the rage amongst the kids at school
Power Rangers
Animaniacs
Toy Story in theatres
Boy Bands
The Macarena
Quik Witz
Seinfeld
really baggy clothes
"sagging"

Anyone know which two decades I grew up in?

 

[Novella]

What Vladimir Berkov and Strider said, plus:

libraries with only card catalogs, jelly shoes/sandals, kool-aid, bike shorts and big t-shirts, Paula Abdul (waaay before American Idol), My Little Ponies, Care Bears, Jem, Polly Pocket (back when she was actually made small enough to fit into pockets), PeeWee's Playhouse, Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, Today's Special, 101 Dalmations, cassette tapes, trolls (a lot of toys, you can see where my interests were in the late 80s to 90s ), Lip Smackers, American Girl and Jump magazine, OJ Simpson trial, pogs, Lion King, candy and jewelry shaped like pacifiers, Titanic, Spice Girls, Warheads, TLC (the earlier years), TGIF, Jurassic Park, Nick at Nite, Batman movie soundtrack, Otter Pops, Squeezers (I think that's what they were called - those sugary "juice" drinks that came in plastic bottles shaped like characters with names), nail polish in every color imaginable, rollerblades, Slip n slide, Sanrio stationary, Ducktales, Snick and nickelodeon shows (Are you Afraid of the Dark?, Salute your Shorts, Hey Dude, Clarissa Explains it All, etc.)

Funny that the only political thing that comes to mind is the OJ trial.

 

[Strider]

OJ Simpson trial, pogs

HOW could I have forgotten these two things?! :eusa_doh:

 

[scotrace]

LizzieMaine & Me? Like *this*

We had parallel lives. I think we are the last generation that remembers what life was like before the apocalypse. I remember a bunch of us at a college party at this guy's parent's house. They had MTV when it was brand new. We were all silent, watching for hours.
The local radio station where I worked has just been sold. The tower is going 75 miles north. From local to Clear Channel clone, just like that.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

We had parallel lives. I think we are the last generation that remembers what life was like before the apocalypse. I remember a bunch of us at a college party at this guy's parent's house. They had MTV when it was brand new. We were all silent, watching for hours.
The local radio station where I worked has just been sold. The tower is going 75 miles north. From local to Clear Channel clone, just like that.

I recall when MTV was brand new. That was when "M" stood for music!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I watched too much TV growing up, so I recall a lot of the commercials and jingles!

Lite Bright, Baby Alive ("Baby alive, soft and sweet...she can drink she can eat..."), Tasty Cake, Connect Four ("Pretty sneaky, sis!") Battleship ("You sunk my battleship!"), Tootsie Pop ("How many licks does it take to get to the center..."), Madge and her Bounty quick picker uppers, Charmin ("Don't squeeze the Charmin'!"), Life cereal ("He likes it! He likes it!")

I recall playing Mouse Trap only I reassembled it to make my own contraptions, Operation, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, and Atari when I was 13.

I watched the Carol Burnette show, the Gong Show and all of the stuff you see on TV Land today.

My favorite: "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?"

 

[Strider]

Ooh, ooh, what about the American Express guy?

"Don't leave home without it."

Or the drug commercial where the dad catches his kid with pot, and he asks: "Who taught you how to do this?" and the kid blurts out: "It was you, okay!? I learned it from watching you!"

And then, in that make you feel horrible about yourself voice:

"Parents who use drugs have kids who use drugs."

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I was just thinking, if they brought back the PSA it would now be: "It's 10 p.m., do you know where your children are at." lol

 

[Hannigan Reilly]

And then, in that make you feel horrible about yourself voice:

"Parents who use drugs have kids who use drugs."

hahahha! those were great!