OK I'll bite and spew some old codger memories in somewhat chronological order...
Riding the 26 miles into town standing next to my mom on the bench seat of our 56 Ford panel truck (man I wish I had that thing now). She had the fastest right arm in the west. If she had to hit the brakes hard, out came her arm to keep us from face planting into the unpadded steel dashboard.
Dad running recap tires on said panel truck
Being turned out of the house to play in the summer with the only instructions being “stay out of trouble and be home by supper”.
Cuts and scrapes from those long days of fun being treated with Mercurochrome or Merthiolate. It stung like heck but was like a badge of honor because it turned your skin a nice shade of orange. Nobody worried that it actually did contain small amounts of mercury. Heck the funnest part of the science lesson in school was passing around the bottle of mercury and getting to play with that amazing, shiny, liquid metal!
Every boy had a BB gun as soon as he was old enough to hold one up in front of him. Dad’s sternly given warning, “Never point this at anyone and don’t shoot the songbirds”.
My assignment of holding the Coleman lantern for my dad while he finished up the brake job on the old panel truck. The light it put out was bright and pure white due to the thorium coating on the mantles!
On the rare times a road trip could be afforded the excitement of looking for the orange roof of a Howard Johnsons along the highway.
There was no Siri to tell us where to go, it was this guy named Rand McNally
.
Eagerly anticipating the Sears Christmas Wishbook.
Drooling over the Major Matt Mason astronaut stuff in said catalog.
When we finally did move into town they had these places called hobby shops and I was mesmerized! Many of them also had a big slot car layout.
Looking at the Hasegawa 1:32 scale stuff and dreaming of the day that I could earn enough money to buy one of those. Also being totally convinced that not even Michael Angelo could create art as beautiful as those box tops.
When I was in jr. high my generous older brother spending his first few paychecks from McDonalds on Christmas presents for the family. Mine was a Binks Wren airbrush and I was over the moon. I still have it to this day.
The “sweet” smell of Floquil square bottle paint flowing from that Binks Wren.
The first “aftermarket” items I saw were squadron vacform canopies.
Saving money to buy my first SLR and the excitement and anticipation of waiting for the slides to be developed at the corner drugstore.
The “click-clack” sound of a GAF carrousel slide projector rotating through those images and projecting them up on the wall. Eventually saving enough money to show them on a real, honest to goodness projection screen!
Working at McDonalds with my best high school buddy after school and on payday Fridays going to the record store in his 69 Pontiac Lemans to buy a new LP.
On Sunday morning you would usually see a few 8 track tapes lying in the gutter with the tape streaming in the breeze. Some poor guy had been out cruising with his friends, listening to their favorite tunes when the deck decided to "eat" his tape. In exasperation it was yanked out and thrown out the window into the gutter.
Being thrilled when cassette tapes came along and I could record those albums to cassette and have more reliable tunes in the car.
Taking two years to pay off a TRS-80 4P computer while I was working days and taking college classes at night. It had two floppy drives, a whopping 128K of memory and a 9" green phosphor monitor built in. It was "portable", more like "luggable" at about 28 pounds. Those were tiring times but I was thrilled and fortunate to have an employer that would pay my tuition if I kept a B average.
Being able to remember important stuff like Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek trivia, but struggling to remember my login password at work.
Wow I am an old fart. I'm sure there is more but it's almost time for a Gilligan's Island rerun.