You know you are getting old when:

[V.C. Brunswick]

[video=youtube;MGQASun9d8E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQASun9d8E[/video]

 

[GHT]

Everything stops for tea always reminds me of Noel Coward's Mad Dogs:
[video=youtube;DXxL2K3_-4c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXxL2K3_-4c[/video]

 

[2jakes]

You know you are getting old when:

Checking out at the grocery store, the young cashier suggested to the
much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because
plastic bags are not good for the environment. The young clerk added,
"That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save
our environment for future generations."

The woman apologized to the young girl & explained, 'We didn't have this
'green bag' back in my earlier days."

Back then, we returned soda bottles to be recycled.
We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store.
We washed the baby's diaper because we didn't have the throw away kind.
We dried clothes on the line.
Kids got hand-me-downs, not brand new clothes.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine & burn fuel just to cut the lawn.
We drank from a fountain instead of a plastic bottle when we got thirsty.
We refilled fountains pens & we replaced the razors when the blade got dull.
Back then we rode streetcars or buses.

And we didn't need a computerized gadget to find the nearest burger joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks
were because we didn't have the 'green thing' back then ?

 

[LizzieMaine]

You take two raw sausages out of the refrigerator for your breakfast and instead of putting them in the frying pan, you toss them into the cat's dish. And then you realize what you've done and because they're the last two sausages in the house you wash them off in the sink and cook them anyway.

And then you apologize to the cat.

 

[LizzieMaine]

...and then when you try to back the car out of the driveway to go to work you get this horrible grinding noise when you step on the gas, and it happens twice before you realize you're stepping on the starter pedal instead.

 

[Fading Fast]

You know you are getting old when:

Checking out at the grocery store, the young cashier suggested to the
much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because
plastic bags are not good for the environment. The young clerk added,
"That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save
our environment for future generations."

The woman apologized to the young girl & explained, 'We didn't have this
'green bag' back in my earlier days."

Back then, we returned soda bottles to be recycled.
We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store.
We washed the baby's diaper because we didn't have the throw away kind.
We dried clothes on the line.
Kids got hand-me-downs, not brand new clothes.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine & burn fuel just to cut the lawn.
We drank from a fountain instead of a plastic bottle when we got thirsty.
We refilled fountains pens & we replaced the razors when the blade got dull.
Back then we rode streetcars or buses.

And we didn't need a computerized gadget to find the nearest burger joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks
were because we didn't have the 'green thing' back then ?

Fanfrekintastic, there is too much smugness on the "green" issue from the twenty year olds that makes this fantastic. It is so easy to judge, especially to judge another generation facing a completely different set of facts and circumstances.

The environment in this country was a mess in the early '70s - from smog, to waterways, to general trash on the side of the roads. A great effort was made, starting in the '70s and carrying through to improve all this and, you know what, is was improved and in a meaningful way by the '90s (before any precious twenty year old was old enough to have contributed to that improvement).

I can speak for the greater NY metro area and air quality is meaningfully better, many formerly closed and polluted waterways are now clean (or much less polluted) and the general condition of things is less polluted. All of that was started by and executed by Baby Boomers.

Did they and the generation before them also do much of that damage - yes. So what, coming out of the depression and WWII they weren't focus on it / they made mistakes and when they saw what they did, they changed it. Could they have done more - sure, but they made meaningful improvement. Is there more to do - always, life is a struggle and perfection doesn't exist.

What I loved about the above is that is shows how today's young adults aren't willing to sacrifice things that they want for the environment (how many will not use disposable diapers or will use a manual loan mower), but they are completely smug about their "green" bonafides.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Never forget that it was Richard M. Nixon who started the Environmental Protection Agency -- not because he was some kind of tree-hugging progressive, but because the America of 1970 absolutely reeked with garbage, pollution, and industrial filth, so bad that even the likes of Nixon realized that something needed to be done. I can remember riding over the Passagassawakeag River bridge in the seventies on my bike, and having to hold my breath because the stench from the chicken-processing factories was so absolutely horrific. They'd pump the waste into Penobscot Bay forming a scum of chicken fat, feathers, and viscera on the surface of the water that congealed into a waxy mass a couple of inches thick. If you can imagine the stink of death itself, and then multiply that by ten thousand, that's what unregulated industrial pollution smelled like. And there was a fish-waste rendering plant in the town where I now live that was much, much worse even than that.

The ones who get me are the people -- of any age -- who lecture you about the environment with a filthy stinking cigarette sticking out of their face.

 

[2jakes]

Ordinarily, I would've posted this in the "what's for lunch" thread.


Had a rough night, woke up sleepy & hungry.
Too tired & late for work.
I opened up a can of tuna .

Sitting at the table, enjoying the meal with saltine crackers & a Dr. Pepper,
I noticed Polo looking at me very strange.

 

[jamespowers]

Ordinarily, I would've posted this in the "what's for lunch" thread.


Had a rough night, woke up sleepy & hungry.
Too tired & late for work.
I opened up a can of tuna .

Sitting at the table, enjoying the meal with saltine crackers & a Dr. Pepper,
I noticed Polo looking at me very strange.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

[2jakes]

With regards to the young generation of today...

Heck...I can remember as a kid having to walk 9 feet of shag carpet to go change the
television channels.

Kids nowadays have it so easy ! :tsk:

 

[jamespowers]

With regards to the young generation of today...

Heck...I can remember as a kid having to walk 9 feet of shag carpet to go change the
television channels.

Kids nowadays have it so easy ! :tsk:

Shag carpet?! :faint:

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

With regards to the young generation of today...

Heck...I can remember as a kid having to walk 9 feet of shag carpet to go change the
television channels.

Kids nowadays have it so easy ! :tsk:

Back then it was only the very high end TVs that had a remote.

 

[2jakes]

Shag carpet?! :faint:

That's kinda personal question...but if you must know...
I haven't, it's not my thing!

 

[jamespowers]

That's kinda personal question...but if you must know.. I haven't.

No shag burns then.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Back then it was only the very high end TVs that had a remote.

Many of the earliest remotes were "ultrasonic" -- they worked by sounding a tiny chime inside the clicker that was supposed to be higher than human hearing could detect. But overtones from some doorbells and telephone bells sometimes resonated at the exact frequency required to activate the channel-switching motor -- with the result that channels would change whenever somebody came to the door or the phone rang. Ooops.

 

[Fading Fast]

...The ones who get me are the people -- of any age -- who lecture you about the environment with a filthy stinking cigarette sticking out of their face.

I have never had that happen, but my utter, complete and total disdain for someone smoking in my face or breathing space probably comes through and explains why smokers tend not to talk with me.

 

[Fading Fast]

Many of the earliest remotes were "ultrasonic" -- they worked by sounding a tiny chime inside the clicker that was supposed to be higher than human hearing could detect. But overtones from some doorbells and telephone bells sometimes resonated at the exact frequency required to activate the channel-switching motor -- with the result that channels would change whenever somebody came to the door or the phone rang. Ooops.

My grandmother had one of those - a sonic remote for a black and white TV. It had two buttons - one to change channels and one that turned the TV on / off on the first click and, then, if clicked again, raised the volume, clicked again, raised it once more and, clicked once more, shut the TV off.

When she passed away, we inherited her TV, became a two TV household and I discovered old movies on that TV (as my Dad dominate our "main" TV). All classic movies, "Gone With the Wind," "The Wizard of Oz" were black and white to me for many years. This sounds wrong, but isn't meant so; I would not have discovered old movies as a young kid if she had not passed away when I was young.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Zenith marketed those remotes as the "Space Command" system. Because, you know, John Glenn and Wally Schirra and all of those guys were using them to communicate with Mission Control.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Which also reminds me. You know you're getting old when you can actually remember having a black and white TV. We got our first color TV in 1973.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandparents traded off an oil debt with a furniture dealer for a Philco color TV in 1967. It was the lowest-end model, but it was *color* and that was a big deal in the neighborhood. We all watched it the night it was installed, but were annoyed because the first program we saw, the local newscast, was in black and white. The first show we finally saw in color was the very last CBS airing of "Gilligan's Island."

We watched the World Series on that set a few weeks later, and I was confused when they told me to root for the team with the "red socks" on, because, of course, both teams playing that year were so garbed.

That set was spectacularly destroyed a few years later when it was struck by lightning while my grandfather was watching a ball game. It jumped six inches off the floor when it hit, and when it landed, it was a smoking ruin.