Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 12, 2024

I remember party lines on our one home phone.

I predate Sesame Street.

Dittos, Ratkin and sirbadger.

I remember when you had to ring up the operator to call someone. It was on Lassie. I loved Lassie.

This is a reprint from 2012.

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I remember when you had to get up to change the channel because the TV didn’t have a remote.

I remember when TVs were only showed shows in black and white. Of course that could be because my parents couldn’t afford a color tv. Lol

I remember when tv ads were short and infrequent. You couldn’t skip ’em but you could get to the refrigerator or jakes and back before the program resumed.

Current tv ads resemble a preschool where spastic madness has affected everyone in the room.

The Good Times ?? I’m not sure that using that label actually lands where it should; Baby Boomers unite!

I remember when they invented dirt.

Don’t call me old or i’ll run over your toes with my mobility scooter.

Remember when Boston, Chicago, and Kansas were bands?

I remember the arrival of computers and the internet. Loved it. Built my own computers. That was so much fun. You will take my phone and laptop away only from my cold dead fingers. Cheeky youngster!

Much of what we of advanced age remember, some of it fondly, some not so, have seen the law of unintended consequences affecting society. I suppose our parents and grandparents mused much the same way.

For a brief time, we were living in the Information Age. Now it’s become the Too-Much-Useless-Information Age.

like when your son turns 60

This feels less like a cartoon and more like a Baby Boomer support group.

Looking back, I try to imagine what it must of been like for my parents, post WWII. Trying to adjust to the enormous changes happening all around them in technology, social norms, product development and medicine. Then, perhaps it will be the same for my children trying to imagine the same thing for me. Ah…unrestrained progress.

We all get older. It’s a law of reality. Why is it such a source of embarrassed shame now?

What will today seem like 40 years from now?

Professional football teams had even-numbered rosters to prevent a mixed-race rooming situation.

(The “Good Times” were not good for everyone.)

There will be a lot of us sneezing in the Dustbin of History.

My sister and I were just talking about how we did without computers and cell phones for the first 35 years of our lives. . .remember typewriters and carbon copies and white-out?? and phone booths and quarters? Tell ya, trips across country were fraught—not many phone booths across the Rockies. . .or the Great Plains. . .

Who remembers the screen shrinking to a white dot when you turned the tv off?

When I was a kid, the big excitement was going to the dinosaur races. Ah, those were the days.

My grandparents had the first TV in town. They put the antenna on top of a telephone pole in the back yard and they could get one channel — in the early morning and evening. And in the evening it was pretty much like watching radio — the picture was mostly snow.

We had a 3-digit telephone number, party lines, and an operator until I was 12. That was 1960 and we were getting hooked into the state and national systems. Our phone numbers went from 3 to 5 and then to 7 digits long. And we also had to get street signs and house numbers. Those had always existed in legal documents and plat maps, but actual signs and house numbers hadn’t been needed because everyone had a PO Box — no home mail delivery — and we had telephone operators. But with the new system, we had to have a telephone book and telephone books needed to provide street addresses, so they put up street signs and handed out house numbers. Not sure how many of the house numbers got put up — when I cleared our house for sale in 2005, the house number was still sitting on top of the china cabinet.

And when there was noting but black and white radios and all the cell phones had dials.

I remember before we had phones we used tin cans and string

I remember when the only politicians who wore make-up every day were women.

I remember “Raising Arizona” where a reminiscing prisoner tells Nicholas Cage that “we ate dirt”. I know that doesn’t really fit into this chain, but it sure is a funny scene.

I remember party lines…

Just embrace your age, whatever it is. I’m 71 and I don’t care who knows it. I remember rotary phones and our first color TV.

Join the club, daddy. Some of us remember when phones were permanently wired and had rotary dials, when we didn’t even have handheld electronic calculators, when Man first landed on the moon. I remember playing with the hand-cranked party-line phone grandma used to have, mom and dad told us about being kids during the Great Depression and rationing during WWII, using horses to plow until they could afford tractors — mom recalled a time when a pilot gave her family a ride in his plane because it was such a novelty he wanted to encourage others to pay for trying it.

He is old, he is still getting his news on a physical paper, I don’t think many even have that many pages if you want to find them anymore.

Kids today have it worse because the rate of change is increasing all the time.

Obama was cutting edge in 2008 because he used a Blackberry.

In 12 years you can sing “76 Trombones”

Ah the good ol’ days. No cell phones, computers, cars you could work on yourself, 25 cent gas stick shifts, clutches and floor dimmer switche (and they cleaned your windshield while they pumped your gas), no sat tv and yes it only had three channels you had to get up and change yourself, books with paper and so many other things that made America great.

Cell phones, computers? Pshaw! I grew up with a bakelite black rotary dial phone, radio, and the public library.

No area codes in those days, just the 7-digit phone number. My Dad paid extra for a private line. Our phone was portable because somehow he’d wangled to get a long enough cord that the phone could be carried throughout the house.

I remember our first TV, a huge, small-screened B&W monstrosity that we worshipped.

I remember the TV in the bar where people walked around behind it to see what was making the “movies” with no projector in sight!

Is Daddy a single father, raising two girls?

When my parents moved to Fargo, ND, they had a small TV but there was no TV station in Fargo!

They were good times, because life was simpler, and not ruled by technology.

Our phone number was 2269.

Times were much simpler when I was younger.

Some day he’ll be a granddaddy-saurus, heaven forbid.

even now, when I have been out for the day, I often look at the spot where the phone used to be looking for a flashing message light

I was in my 20’s when pocket calculators first came out.

I remember putting tin foil on the antenna for a better picture.

Up until 1945 the advances in human endeavor came, but quite slowly. Since then the advances have been non-stop. We have it better than any before us, though there will always be some bad along with all the great. Somebody always has to mess up a good thing. But imagine just 100 years ago, horses to travel, no air conditioning, medical advances, communication, air travel taking hours to go where it used to take months and we complain about sitting so long!. And it will get even better in our future.

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things. — Douglas Adams

I had channels 2,4,7,9,56 and 62. On Sunday mornings it was church and a golf channel

OK so things have changed over time. What’s so new about that?

Wow, what a trigger for some people. Reality, technology is in its infancy, just cause your little electronic buddy is in your hand, does not mean control is an illusion. People don’t even really grasp the difference between machines, and the software that runs them. If they did they’d stop babbling incessantly about AI all the time ! Early days folks, cool your jets, take a breath !

I like the daddy-saurus comeback.

I remember the time before ZIP codes. My address ended in “Brooklyn 29, New York.”

Give the brat a lump of clay and a pointed stick and let her tell the world all about it!

You know, the good times are the times you in right now. As disheartening as that may seem right at this moment, looking back on it will be most enlightening. Think about it.

Honestly, truer words were never spoken. The older I get, the more I catch myself saying things that make me sound old. SMH. Someday I will actually admit I am old.

I remember when I had to watch the Floyd Patterson fight on the radio…

I’ve been reading science fiction since 1953 so I was prepared for them. Pohl and Kornbluth’s ’50s novel “The Space Merchants” had 3D targeted ads that appeared in the air in front of you as you walked down the street.

Sort of off topic, I’ve come across YouTube’s of young people listening to “old” music. 70’s mostly but a few older, 40’s. They all like them and are amazed by it. I suspect most generations do the same thing, but by the time the youngsters figure out we may have something to show them, we’re all gone.

I remember when I thought my Dad was old & my Grandmother ancient. I’ve revised my thinking, so will Danae.

Daddysaurus! I love that! It’s a keeper.

Now that all the geezers had their coming out – is there anyone commenting on Non Sequitur who wasn’t born in the bygone millennium?

Just remember, all you young people … "Guile and treachery will win out over youth and skill … ;)

Age is supposedly a state of mind. Or so they say.

I remember the Milton Berle show. 1950’s

Oof. I remember and I don’t necessarily feel they were the good times. But I am glad we moved past dial up. That was hell.