Re: Remember when?

I think it's the technology that really distinguishes then from now.  Black and white TV was bad enough.  We also didn't have VCR's, microwave ovens, video games, computers, cell phones or mobile phones of any kind not to mention cordless phones, boom boxes... 

And, treehugger, I remember regular pot going for $10 per ounce (we called it a lid).  When it hit $25 I quit because I just couldn't afford it any more.  $25 would be a huge bargain today.  I also remember when possession of any amount here in Texas was a felony.

What also becomes equally clear is that some form of fear has been used in each era in order to achieve aims that would be rejected by the people otherwise.  The fear of commies is what they used to gain support for the war in Viet Nam and used the "domino theory" the same way they use the fear of growing terror groups today.  The domino theory has long since been discredited even by the retired generals and whatnot from that war.  But enough time goes by that the next generation or two has forgotten how the prior generations were tricked into giving their lives for a lie, so they are always able to pull it off again and again.

Re: Remember when?

Solo...I bet you cleaned your pot and rolled your joints  out on your record albums? Yeah, possesion  was a felony where I lived too. Seems like we got away with a lot, though. Im amazed that my friends and I never got caught. The only arrest was when our friend Larry mooned us at the same exact second a state trooper was driving by. He spent the night in jail for that one! I do remember eating a joint or two to escape from getting caught on a couple occasions.

In man's analysis and understanding of himself, it is as well to know from whence he came as whither he is going.   Edgar Cayce

Beliefs are tools for social conditioning, rather than expressions of inner realization or inner truth.   unknown
Ad Verecundiam

Re: Remember when?

Athenais:

My all-time favorite show was Benny Hill.

The U.K's favourite pervert! That guy used to cause outrage with his antics, but looking back he pales in comparison with some of the stuff regular T.V gets away with these days. I loved the end sequences where they would play the daft music and Benny would run around in fast-forward while being chased by a posse of scantily clad beauties.

Ape-X

I remember those too, and actually we just got a massive reminder, 2-3 weeks ago it looked like this around here- http://dalesdesigns.net/NY_snow.htm

That's more like it, how I miss those winters. Summers here have never been consistent and the one thing we could rely on was a damn good winter...at least, we could.

Lono

porno fairies

lol

'Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world' - T’ien Yiheng.

'You are here for no other purpose than to realise your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment' - Morihei Ueshiba (Founder of Aikido).

19 (edited by ShineOn 2007-03-05 11:47:42)

Re: Remember when?

Interesting posts !
     
      I was a military kid born in 56". We lived in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Massachusetts and England. I was in 12 schools [non -concurrent] in 12 years. I went from a one room school house in Dauphin Island , Alabama directly into the British school system. I remember the shrimper's kids on Dauphin Island who were lucky to have shoes on their feet , but always managed to have a $20 bill in their pocket in first grade! The only black family on the island collected the garbage. Blacks literally were not allowed on the island. They lived near the baseball fields just off base and we would always invite the boys over to play. One day the wing commander stopped and came onto the field to shue the black kids off. It was an early lesson in ignorance I've never forgotten.
    I spent a number of summers in New England with my grandparents. The kids in the Boston area when they came over would call for you from outside...Baawbee...Baawbee. Standing two feet from the doorbell they would still holler out....different!
    England was a real twist. My mom always insisted that we be a part of the culture wherever we went. We rarely lived on bases. I remember how strict the teachers and the head master were in British school. Expectations were very high. I remember being caned in school there for misbehaving , which was quite a shock to the senses. I can fully understand the English and their fancy for light s/m and spankings because it's woven into the fabric. We got to England in 64' just a few months after the Beatles hit the states. Here we were in the home of the Beatles and they in popularity took a backseat to a number of British acts. The Stones, Herman's Hermits, Freddy and the Dreamers, Petula Clark were all equally if not more popular than the Beatles. I fell in love with the show there called Top of the Pops , which every Thursday night featured the likes of the Troggs, the Hollies, the Who, Sandi Shaw, Dusty Springfield or the Tremeloes. We lived in a small village in Suffolk called Sudbury. It required that my mom shopped nearly everyday. No supermarkets !....You went to butcher, the baker, the chemist, the fish monger. I remember getting fish and chips there and they then used real newspaper to wrap your fish. If you waited to long to eat it the print would come off on the fish. Kind of carbon-dating myself here....sorry!
     Back to the states in 69' and things here amongst the kids I'd known prior was very different. They were into drugs and just general deviance. Granted from 8 to 13 most kids would change but socially I couldn't identify with them at all. Funny, I too remember finding the dumped porn in the woods...ha!...I also remmber telling my friend who I had to share this collossal find with that we had to cover the box of mags with something because the rain was causing the pages to stick together. Silly boy!
    In relation to today the biggest difference seems to be expectation. My parents demanded a great deal from my sister and myself. B's in school were a sign that things were slipping. We were never asked once what we wanted for dinner, we simply ate what we were served. We were required to have summer jobs by 15. There was no idle time it just wasn't tolerated. "If you can't find something to do we'll find something you can do" was a constant refrain.
  btw-My first bag o' weed was in 75' and  for $25 and I got three fingers of Columbian Red bud. That stuff was so good even visine was useless. Within a few years it was gone...paraquated away probably.

" The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it "

Ayn Rand

Re: Remember when?

What, none of you have heard of S.A.P.E.P (Secluded Area Porn Exchange Program)? I am shocked! 
--no deposit, no return!--

treehugger, treehuggers seem to start out with an affection of smaller, pungent-smelling trees, odd. wink

20 bucks a Z? Hows 1200-1500% inflation strike ya?
Don't ask me how I know this, must be intuition...

Soloflecks wrote: "What also becomes equally clear is that some form of fear has been used in each era in order to acheive aims that would be rejected by the people otherwise"

Whammo!

As I was reading yours and treehuggers posts, that is exactly what I was thinking (in somewhat different words), it gets no clearer than the way you put it, and looking at it thru a microscope like that makes it seem so trivial, in terms of being incredibly and disproportionately effective. 

That is the kind of illustration that makes one shake the head, and realize we are just being looked at in the fishbowl. Be it the drug laws, or fear of the thing in the closet, it never fails, and someone damn sure knows it.

Eternal Pavlov Syndrome. They ring that bell incessantly.
We are the ones constantly looking for an out of that wretched coil. Does no amount of will prove enough to accomplish that?  Argh.

The re-branding of the same old games, with more rule changes to boot, that's one thing that has changed in my time for sure. This game blows- I want a new one.

With NO rules.......                                                          J

Happy to have been a part

Re: Remember when?

The re-branding of the same old games, with more rule changes to boot, that's one thing that has changed in my time for sure. This game blows- I want a new one.

With NO rules.......

I like that analogy, and I feel the same.  Ready for the polar opposite of what we're living right now.  Let love and integrity rule!

22 (edited by GreenT 2007-03-06 10:20:20)

Re: Remember when?

ShineOn:

I fell in love with the show there called Top of the Pops , which every Thursday night featured the likes of the Troggs, the Hollies, the Who, Sandi Shaw, Dusty Springfield or the Tremeloes.

That show was my weekly highlight during the 80's. Sadly the show was aired for the final time last year, although 42 years isn't a bad innings!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5099894.stm

'Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world' - T’ien Yiheng.

'You are here for no other purpose than to realise your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment' - Morihei Ueshiba (Founder of Aikido).

Re: Remember when?

GreenT wrote:

ShineOn:

I fell in love with the show there called Top of the Pops , which every Thursday night featured the likes of the Troggs, the Hollies, the Who, Sandi Shaw, Dusty Springfield or the Tremeloes.

That show was my weekly highlight during the 80's. Sadly the show was aired for the final time last year, although 42 years isn't a bad innings!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5099894.stm

MTV owes its entire early existence to TOtP and The Old Grey Whistle.  In those days, this was the only game in town.  So when MTV first started, this was how they got almost all of their material.  Gary Numan, The Police, The Pretenders, et. al. were heavily showcased because American bands weren't creating videos yet.

Re: Remember when?

And, treehugger, I remember regular pot going for $10 per ounce (we called it a lid).  When it hit $25 I quit because I just couldn't afford it any more.  $25 would be a huge bargain today.  I also remember when possession of any amount here in Texas was a felony.

yikes It is very standard to pay $400 for an ounce of "high grade" herb at a legal medicinal dispensary in a California city today (Oakland, SF, Clearlake, Arcata, probably statewide). Maybe more like $320 if you are lucky, for a slightly less-high-grade. For a long time I never had ENOUGH money to buy more than a little 1/8th oz bag for like $50 and try to make that streeeeetch for a few weeks.

Not to get too off-topic, but we could save this country in so many ways if they would decriminalize hemp. Food, biodiesel fuel, clothing fibres, paper/textile fibers, building supplies, cheap nutritious protein source, medicine.... legalizing hemp could completely revitalize California's currently-massively-in-debt economy. Unfortunately I live in an area where cattle ranchers rule the land, and vast hundreds and thousands of acres are fenced off and reserved for large herds of cattle who eat the grass down to the roots and make the land un-farmable. This has happened all over America and is one of the reasons why I am cynical as to ever seeing change in this country without *extremely* radical restructuring. There is nothing even remotely "sustainable" about a meat-eating society, it is entirely a myth which allows the elite (and in America, all the wish-I-was-elite's) to indulge in their addictive fatty fleshy treats. Only massive factory farms can feed the demand that has been created in this country, and it will NEVER be able to convert to an environmentally-responsible, sustainable system.

http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7130

According to the study, "Marijuana Production in the United States, 2006," domestic marijuana production has increased ten-fold in the past 25 years from 1,000 metric tons (2.2 million pounds) to 10,000 metric tons (22 million pounds) and now has an estimated annual value of $36 billion.

"Despite their best efforts, the [government] has been unable to curtail the growth of domestic marijuana cultivation in the United States, let alone make any progress toward suppressing, abolishing, or eliminating this market phenomenon," the report states. "The focus for public policy should be how to effectively control this market through regulation and taxation in order to achieve immediate and realistic goals, such as reducing teenage access, rather than to continue to sacrifice achievable goals in exchange for unachievable long-term goals that have failed to materialize over the last 25 years."

According to the report, marijuana cultivation in California is responsible for more than a third of all US pot production.

Cannabis ranks as the top cash crop in twelve states and is worth more than $1 billion annually in five states: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii, and Washington.

The spin has always been that cannabis is just another "deadly drug aimed at destroying our youth", but hopefully folks on NR are aware of the massive disinformation campaign that has been waged against this plant ally of humanity. If the focus could be placed on the *positive* constructive uses of the *entire* hemp plant, we could see HUGE, paradigm-shifting changes in our economy, agriculture, diet and culture, quickly and for the better!

Sorry I know thats off-topic, but it is just CRAZY to hear about your folks exposure to cheap marijuana in the past, because those days are OVER, at least in the cities. I don't agree with it being so expensive as a medicine in the first place, but the larger issue is that the entire plant, the industrial hemp plant, is completely out-of-bounds for Americans, and there are so many more uses than just the flowering tops for smoking!

Tim

Re: Remember when?

I remember watching a show in the 60's called "Shindig", I think Dick Clark or one of those guys hosted it. For the commercial, they would bring up some pizza-faced kid from the audience and wipe his face with a Stri-dex pad, which at the time was basically an alcohol pad, and then shine a spotlight on it to show how much axle grease it took off the kids face. Pretty impressive.

Re: Remember when?

Now I'm having flashbacks thanks to this thread. Anyone remember orange sunshine acid? Window pane? Some of the other items which contributed to my moral demise: Maximus Super beer, Weldwood Contact cement (before they added the mustard oil), black opiated hash. As for porn, why did the 8mm film ALWAYS have to stop and melt right at the critical scene, while we were watching on the garage wall, and then my friend yells out "Joey, your old man's home!".

Re: Remember when?

I remember one time my family visited some friends who had kids about my age.  Well, we were pretty much allowed to run amok in the neighborhood, and they had this old abandoned house they liked to hang out at.  Sounds scary now, but it was cool back then!  Anyways, this particular house had no furniture or anything, but it was packed to the rafters with porn.  I think it scarred me for life, because I can still remember it.

Thing is, it was about the silliest porn ever created.  I don't know if it was just a '70's thing, or if whoever collected this stuff was just really strange.  It was all in black and white, and it was still shots "old silent picture show style" that told really bizarre and corny stories about sheiks, doctors and nurses, etc.  The "dialogue " was terrible.   It seemed pretty sophisticated to my 8-year-old mind, but looking back it was really childish and corny.

I'm a girl, btw, and detest porn and what it stands for nowadays, but when you're a kid, you're curious about this mysterious thing called sex.  Like I learned anything from that silly stash!

28 (edited by treehugger 2007-03-07 05:28:58)

Re: Remember when?

WEOPPOSEDECEPTION wrote:

Now I'm having flashbacks thanks to this thread. Anyone remember orange sunshine acid? Window pane? Some of the other items which contributed to my moral demise: Maximus Super beer, Weldwood Contact cement (before they added the mustard oil), black opiated hash. As for porn, why did the 8mm film ALWAYS have to stop and melt right at the critical scene, while we were watching on the garage wall, and then my friend yells out "Joey, your old man's home!".

Yes, I remember the windowpane. I did lots of that in high school. Also, "blotter". It was a little purple dot on a piece of paper.
As far as my porn experiences. My father was a teacher at a boys boarding school, (Im a girl, so that was a strange kind of lifestyle  to begrowing up in ) and we lived on campus. Our house basically was a dormitory. We lived downstairs, and the boys upstairs. We usually had about 30 boys. When they would go home on vacations, I would go in their rooms and look at all their playboy and porn mags they had stashed away.

In man's analysis and understanding of himself, it is as well to know from whence he came as whither he is going.   Edgar Cayce

Beliefs are tools for social conditioning, rather than expressions of inner realization or inner truth.   unknown
Ad Verecundiam