Remembering to Forget
I sometimes think that growing up when I did, during the fifties and sixties, gave me and others a much fuller experience than that of later generations, including the present-day crowd. The kids of today, of course, would probably surmise that I suffered from a mild, or even serious, brain malady. I can see their point, even if I don’t agree with it completely.
I welcomed central air conditioning when it came along, as well as AC in cars, and wouldn’t want to be without either. But that doesn’t mean that I wish we had either one when I was a kid. Yes, I remember some hot, stuffy, sweaty, and very uncomfortable nights with little sleep, and feeling almost sick to my stomach from the oppressive heat while riding in my parents’ car. So why would I, or anyone, for that matter, remember things such as those with any degree of fondness?
Well, it’s simple. I also remember the many nights with the breeze rattling the Venetian blinds as it wafted through the windows, coming off the bay. A gust felt like the proverbial “breath of fresh air,” and created almost a soul-cleansing sensation, making me feel great to just be alive! Air conditioning can make you feel very comfortable, and gives great relief from hot, humid weather, but it can’t breathe life into your veins the way a gentle breeze somehow figured it out.
Nor can the AC unit in your auto bring the feelings, scents, and sounds of a summer day on a back road into your car. And long after the sun disappeared for the day, the car windows brought the summer night in to ride along, with its somewhat crisper night air and somewhat more eerie sounds.
The kids today carry cell phones around with them, and not just plain old phones, either. They can download music, take pictures, and some even have a GPS system, making it hard to get lost. Having phones with us when we were young would have been a mixed blessing. Sometimes we preferred that our parents not be able to contact us, or, in some cases, know what we were up to, or where we were. But there were times when a phone would have been much desired – times when we could have summoned a parent to come pick us up and save us a long walk home. Times when the recreation center closed up, turned off its lights, and left us standing outside in the dark. I remember one cold, winter night when some teenagers went exploring the marshes across the bay, and their boat drifted away. We heard their calls for help and called the police, who eventually rescued them. A cell phone would have simplified the whole process. Yes, we had public telephones, but they weren’t always at hand, and when they were, we often lacked the dime required for a call. I ran out of gas one night on a rural road, and to this day, I don’t remember how I contacted my dad - I only remember him showing up with a can of gas.
We had no video games to take up our time. Pinball machines, and, to a lesser extent, electric trains, satisfied our thirsts for electronic adventure. Most people only hauled their trains out for Christmas, but my brother and I kept a permanent layout in the basement. Mostly, though, we passed our time outside, either playing whatever sport was in season, or just thinking up something to do. Wire ball was a constant, when only two of us were available. It involved throwing a ball up over telephone or electric wires running across the street. If the other person caught it, it was an out, and a miss scored a single, unless the ball hit the wire, in which case it scored a home run. Now, most places feature underground utilities, so wire ball has pretty much become a thing of the past.
Color TV was something most of us only dreamed about. The sets were very expensive back then, and only a handful of shows featured color broadcasts anyway. When my grandfather bought a color TV, we watched a lot of shows like Hazel, just because they happened to be in color. And the color wasn’t that great, requiring adjustment between almost every different show. Of course, we kids itched to get the color looking right, which usually evoked shouts from our grandfather, who didn’t seem to mind whether the people on TV were jaundiced, or suffered from severe sunburn. The adjustments, of course, including the volume, had to be performed at the TV, since remote controls were almost nonexistent. A friend’s parents had a Zenith TV with “Space Command” remote control. Remote control meant that the channel knob would clunk from channel to channel by using a remote, which, however, didn’t operate the volume.
Basically, we had three watchable channels on VHF, and a couple on UHF, and most people watched the latter channels rather infrequently. Because we lived about 80 miles or so from the broadcasts coming out of Philly, reception wasn’t always great, and sometimes faded in and out. Our antenna was on the roof, and sometimes the wind would turn it a bit, and it would have to be adjusted. Some people spent the money for a rotating antenna that could be controlled from the TV set, but we never enjoyed that luxury. In the early 50’s, we also required a booster, which sat atop the TV. Every time the channel was changed, the booster would have to be adjusted in the same way of tuning an analog radio. What fun!
Okay, so maybe some things weren’t all that great back then, but we managed to squeeze as much as we could out of what we had. We didn’t have AC, or cell phones, or high definition color TV with 150 clear channels. But we dreamed a lot. We knew air conditioning and color TV would reach all of us eventually, but we also wondered if the time would ever come when someone developed the two-way wrist radio that Dick Tracy sported. More importantly, though, we could talk about it over a vanilla malt at the local soda fountain, or while sipping an RC while sitting on the newspaper stand in front of the neighborhood grocery store. Those little things made up for a lot.