I grew up in the era BEFORE video games! We got 3 channels and had cartoons on Saturday morning!

[HarveyDarkey]

[PoliticAverse]

1. And most of the TV stations went off the air sometime after midnight... n/t

[rurallib]

9. but we had all night rock and roll radio on the 50,000 watt AM stations

OMG am I old!

[PoliticAverse]

10. Back when there was music still on AM and not crazy talk... n/t

[rurallib]

11. Chicago, New York, Oklahoma City, Little Rock ------

[Gidney N Cloyd]

13. WCFL, WLS. Your 50 thousand watt blow torches out of Chicago.

[grilled onions]

76. Great Stations Both

When only WLS was the big boy in town we used to rush to the record store to get the "survey" for the week. When 'CFL came along they were the ones who did promo work at the "teen clubs" and gave away promo '45's for winners of silly contests. Miss those days.

[Art_from_Ark]

33. I don't think Little Rock had a 50,000 watt station

With my little transistor radio from my little perch in Northwest Arkansas, I could get KMOX (St. Louis), WWL (New Orleans), WLS (Chicago), WOAI (San Antonio) and KOA (Denver), which were all 50,000 watt stations, but KARK was hopeless. Even when I was upgraded to a stronger radio and could pick up KDKA out of Pittsburgh, PA, I still could not get KARK or KLRA.

[PoliticAverse]

35. Yes they did, KAAY...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAAY
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=6228

[Art_from_Ark]

36. Interesting

I certainly couldn't pick up KAAY during my AM radio heyday of 1966-1977. My favorite late-night station in the early days was WWL, followed by KMOX (for Cardinals baseball games). Any signal from Little Rock was always weak at best.

[rurallib]

41. It is a religious station last I knew 1090 AM

still 50,000 watts - if you live in St. Louis or close to it KMOX might overpower it.
At night it still blast up here in Iowa

[Jenoch]

53. How far away from Little Rock were you?

At night time, the ground wave and the sky wave parted at around 180 to 200 miles from the tower. If you were about that far from Little Rock you would not get them too well at night where the long distance listening was using the skywave signal.

I grew up in rural Minnesota and we could get KAAY but not WCCO out of Minneapolis. I also remember listening to WLS and WOW out of Omaha. I don't think WOW exists anymore, not even the AM frequency.

[Art_from_Ark]

68. I was close to 180 straight-line miles from Little Rock

with the Ozark Mountains occupying most of the space between me and Little Rock.

[Jenoch]

70. I probably did not explain it as well as

someone could with a broadcast engineering degree, but you could not hear KAAY in Arkansas at night the same way I could not hear WCCO in Minneapolis at night.

[IBEWVET]

88. I could pick up KAAY

In Pensacola Fl at night during the sixties.

[cliffordu]

44. XERB RADIO FROM HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA!!!!!!!! AWOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

[Archae]

52. WOKY-AM from Milwaukee! Mighty 92!

Top-40 stuff.

Nowadays I use Pandora, my mp3 player or WKLH-FM out of Milwaukee.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. And I read books! (still do) and watched test patterns

And Mr. Green Jeans taught us to say please and thank you instead of fuck you.

[antiquie]

5. so true

[lastlib]

46. Conelrad? (my dad said he was a helluva detective!)

. .

[MuseRider]

3. :-)

There were so many things to do outside that nobody wanted to stay in anyway.

TV was for occasional info and an occasional program. Remember the Star Spangled Banner at midnight and the static after?

I was out of college working a job and trying to go to nursing school when Pong came out. I am glad it was such a crappy game

[pinboy3niner]

4. You had THREE channels?

I am so jealous!

[rug]

6. Time for bed.

(The comments say this is from 1968 but it's from the 70s after the WTC went up.)

[orleans]

37. "time for bed" is right. that was always the hint for bedtime! n/t

[caraher]

51. Sometimes we got this sign-off

A treat for an airplane-mad boy...

[Art_from_Ark]

69. I loved that sign-off

I sometimes stayed up late just so I could watch that. And then they'd have the test pattern with the Native American on it after that.

[susanr516]

80. I remember staring at that test pattern

waiting for the cartoons to start on Saturday morning.

[irisblue]

77. slipped the surly bonds of earth...

..put out my hand and touched the face of G*d....my mom loved that..thanks for the memory
one of my nieces bought a plane this week....maybe I can ask het to take me for a flight and a barrel roll...those always lookes sooo cool

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

83. Graduate School in West Virgina

The public television station signed off with "Appalachian Spring" playing to gorgeous views of the West Virginia landscape. That was worth staying up for.

[Callmecrazy]

7. I remember when Pong first came out...

I was 7 or 8 years old and first played it at a pizza parlor that played Laurel and Hardy films on a pull down screen.
Our TV had vacuum tubes and when one went bad we went to the THRIFTY DRUG store and put them in a testing machine. If it was bad they had the replacements inside the cabinet. And while we were there us kids would beg for an ice cream cone for 5 cents a scoop.

[Aristus]

17. Was that pizza parlor Shakey's?

Shakey's played lots of old black and white films during the dinner hour.

[Callmecrazy]

19. Yes it was!

Shakey's pizza. There were only two of them in Las Vegas at the time.
Laurel and Hardy. The Keystone Cops. Etc. Good times.

[Aristus]

22. I loved Shakey's.

The big open dining room. The long polished hardwood tables. The pizza and the root beer. Good times, indeed...

[hunter]

28. Our local Shakey's was a hangout for GLBT people after the kids went home.

My parents didn't have a problem with that.

Sometimes we'd wake up Saturday morning and they'd be sleeping on our sofa.

We'd watch cartoons together.

[orleans]

38. (have to ask...) who'd be sleeping on your sofa?

the "glbt people?" or your parents?

[hunter]

50. As a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons with GLBT people was fabulous!

I'm a fortunate human. I was raised in a family that celebrated human diversity.

[steve2470]

98. loved Shakey's, worked there when I was 11 for free pizza ! nt

[Baitball Blogger]

8. We had three channels too.

Canal cuarto, dos and the U.S. Military station on Channel 8.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. And you had to get up and walk over to the tv set to change the channel!!

[RebelOne]

15. I remember that time well.

We have now become so lazy and must depend on a remote.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. The good thing about not having a remote is that there was nothing to fight over

or lose under the couch cushions.

[pintobean]

60. As a child

I was the remote. I operated on voice commands.

[irisblue]

78. LOL!!! oh yeah

my sister and brother were deaf....I was about 7 when I figured out I could nudge.."Dave, Mom said...."

[Jenoch]

65. When I was little and got up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons,

my oldest brother did not need a remote control (not that we had one), he would tell one of his little brothers to change the channel. I still don't know why we got up and changed the channel for him.

[woodsprite]

14. I can remember watching Cowtown Rodeo and

Red Skelton on Saturday nights. Would start off weekday
mornings with Captain Noah and Popeye. If I didn't have
homework after school, I'd watch Mr Rogers, The Electric
Company or Hodge Podge Lodge while mom fixed dinner. All
that TV, and I still had time to catch lightening
bugs or toads, play a game of badminton with
my family, and walkie-talkie and bike ride with
friends.

[Aristus]

18. I used to get up early on Saturday mornings, turn on our old vacuum-tube

TV, wait for it to warm up, and then watch the test pattern until it switched to cartoons.

Those were the days...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

20. Besides the cartoons, there was The Lone Ranger and Sky King

and Andy's Gang.

Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy.


God, I'm old....

[Hardlyaround]

30. Sky King was my favorite, along with The Rifleman.

Cartoon wise, by far Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn.
Also loved Tex Avery cartoons.

[lastlib]

47. Mike Mercury!

Supercar!



"It crashes on land,
and sinks in the sea,
Next thing you know,
it's stuck in a tree!"

(our version)

[RebelOne]

54. I met Sky King (can't remember his real name)

once sometime in the '80s. I worked for a magazine in Miami and he came into our office. He was working for a resort in central Florida doing PR at that time. I was a big fan of him and Chuck Conners. I would have loved to have met Chuck.

[Hardlyaround]

58. Kirby Grant.

He was an actual pilot.
He passed away on Oct. 30, 1985. You must have met him shortly before his death.

The only famous, or semi famous people I've met is when I was spending the night at the Pilot Truck stop in Rice Hill, Oregon, John Force and his daughter, Ashley Force's semi's with their funny cars, pulled in for fuel, John and Ashley were in a vehicle following, when they got out to go into the store, I asked them for their autographs, both were very courteous and didn't hesitate to sign a couple of pictures for me.

[RebelOne]

66. Yes, I think it was either 1982 or 1983.

He was a really nice person. Living in Miami most of my life, I met a few celebs.

[Callmecrazy]

21. The Justice League...

Scooby Doo, Johnny Quest, and H.R. Pufinstuf.
Sunday nights was Hee Haw, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, and then The Wonderful World of Disney.

[Jenoch]

55. Don't forget Flipper on Sunday nights.

I think it was on between Wild Kingdom and Disney. After that it was Bonanza, but we were not allowed to stay up for that.

[Brigid]

61. Remember "Gentle Ben?"

I don't remember what night that was on, though.

[Jenoch]

64. Gentle Ben was also

broadcast on Sunday nights. One of my brothers still calls my almost 82 year old father 'Mr. Boomhauer' when dad is wearing hip boots while we are duck hunting. Mr. Boomhauer was the neighbor who drove a swamp buggy.

[Art_from_Ark]

71. Flipper was on just before Disney

Or, "The Wonderful World of Color" as it was called until 1969 or so. We watched Wild Kingdom to see what kind of animal Jim would be wrestling in that episode, and when that was over changed the channel to whatever (McHale's Navy? My Three Sons?), then switched back to catch Disney, usually just in time to catch the ending theme song of Flipper. And I was allowed to watch Bonanza, which in those days was sponsored by Chevrolet and featured, as part of the introduction, a Chevrolet branding iron setting fire to the map of the Ponderosa.

[awoke_in_2003]

82. Wild Kingdom was a great show...

I wonder if they have them on DVD.

[Archae]

23. I grew up during the 60's and 70's.

Got up in the morning, saw "Davey and Goliath" and then the rest.

[HarveyDarkey]

62. You're a lot younger than me

That was in color

[MiddleFingerMom]

24. We had 4. NBC/ABC/CBS/PBS and 2 UHF stations 17/29 that had unwatchable reception...

.
.
.
... which was a shame because they had the best latenight weekend horror movies
with really cheesy hosts.
.
Musically, we were in heaven after midnight. Our smalltown AM station -- top 40
by day, turned the station over to local radio god Ron Hively, who introduced us
to British blues and the San Francisco sound.
.
Ron used to emcee the rock concerts in town -- held in this old 19th-century prison
which was, at that time, the National Guard Armory. Rough stone walls and 30-foot
ceilings. My favorite memory of Ron was when they couldn't find him to introduce
the next band and someone else jumped up to the mike, started the intro, glanced
over to the side and said, "Oh hi, Ron."
.
Ron was so high that he was standing on the side of the stage enthusiastically and
unselfconsciously humping one of those massive stone walls. He was completely
unaware of anything around him and continued on uninterrupted to tremendous
laughter and applause.
.
.
.

[Aristus]

25. A couple of the networks had a Sunday morning line-up of cartoons, too.

Anybody remember those?

They were usually pretty lame, I remember. The kind of thing that was not ready for the big leagues of Saturday morning.

Anybody remember a Sunday morning cartoon that was sort of an animated 'The Waltons'?

The only thing I remember about it was that the grandfather was some kind of goofy Rube Goldberg-style inventor...

[Archae]

32. Was this it?

I remember my little sister loved it, I detested it.

[Aristus]

34. That's IT!!

Wow. I haven't seen that for probably 35 years...

Thanks for the memory...

[liberal N proud]

26. There were no 24 hour stations

After midnight, you got a test pattern or bug wars.

[bluesbassman]

27. We were to poor to own a TV. So we made do...

My brother still gets pissed when I ask him to change the channel.

[Hardlyaround]

29. When I was growing up, we had 4 stations,

ABC, NBC, CBS and another one on channel 5, don't remember the call letters.

I was 15 when JFK was assassinated and I remember for three days, all 4 stations carried nothing but the news of it, same with the funeral.

I remember all of the family would have popcorn night and watch The Ed Sullivan Show.
Good memories.

[Brigid]

31. Bugs Bunny. Fat Albert. Mighty Mouse.

Rocky and Bullwinkle. Underdog. Scooby Doo. Ah, good times.

[Jenoch]

56. When I was quite young, my two older brothers and I would

play superhero. We tied towels around our necks for capes and jumped around on the beds. They always got to be Atom Ant or Mighty Mouse and they always made me be Underdog.

[Art_from_Ark]

72. I watched all of those except Mighty Mouse

I never really liked the mouse cartoons, except for Klondike Kat because Klondike Kat always got his mouse, unlike those wimpy cats like Sylvester, Catnip, and Tom, who always seemed to let the mouse get the best of them.

[Tabasco_Dave]

39. I used to love watching old movies on the independent stations

late at night. It was a grab bag, you could watch Citizen Cain followed by a Godzilla movie. And you could order chicken at 4 in the morning.

[dipsydoodle]

40. I can remember when the BBC was the UK's only channel

didn't even come on air until 7pm.

With frequent breakdowns we used to get subjected to watching either a goldfish or a potter at his wheel as an interlude while they fixed whatever was busted at the studio.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

48. Did you watch Ande Panda?

[mucifer]

42. My favorite kids program. It was on Sunday because of Shabbat is Saturday.

It was a Jewish kids show on Chicago's local CBS station. Very few clips survived. It had a puppet beaver named Booby Beaver. I'm hoping one day some episodes will get posted. Lots of non Jewish kids watched this show because there were no kids shows on Sundays. Anyway Tiny Tov sang a song walked into an acorn and went into a community of Jewish puppets including a mailbox named Max oh and a rabbi who taught values and about the many Jewish holidays. I think they were high when they came up with these ideas. But, us kids were entertained.

[kiva]

43. Three?

We had one - lived in a valley so only got the single local station. The guy who owned it tended to show stuff he liked, I think they ran "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and "The Great Escape" at least twice a year.

My mom loved it though - when cable TV came to town we begged her but she said no to more channels, telling us kids that this way we could only fight about whether the TV was on or off

[baldguy]

45. And we were THANKFUL! dammit!

I remember in college, some of my classmates from NYC were bemoaning the fact that cable TV wasn't available in their neighborhood back home. And here I am, from suburban Buffalo, in an area that was farmland 25 yrs before, piping up to say "My parents have cable at home."

They stopping whining about Buffalo being the back end of beyond after that.

[walkerbait41]

49. Just two words

Wolfman Jack

[blueamy66]

57. And my BF n his friends hid in the neighbors bushes

to watch color tv thru their front window...

[Brigid]

59. That would probably get them shot today.

[blueamy66]

67. Eh, it was in suburbia, outside of Chicago....

people liked eachother back then

[joeybee12]

63. And I got up early on Saturdays and plopped down in front of the television...

And did not move for hours!!!!!!!

[TorchTheWitch]

73. I really miss Q102 radio's Friday Flashback every week

It was always done live in some nightclub, and they played all the good oldies tunes... Shake a Tail Feather, A Whiter Shade of Pale, Bernadette, Tears of Clown, Shout, Tequila, Secret Agent Man, Can I Get a Witness, Since You've Been Gone, Takin' Care of Business, The Love You Save, and on and on. Once a year they did the 102 best of the oldies tunes and the next week they did the top 102 that didn't make the best of list. I also loved waking up to their "Horrible Scopes" (horoscopes) every morning to get off to work.

Video games didn't come out to play at home until I already graduated high school. Asteroids was the big favorite that kids played hours on end in the pizza shops and delis though most of us were still into pinball. My favorite corner bar in the 90's was the only place I knew of that still had a real juke box with records and pinball machines... most of the younger crowd thought pinball was something new since they'd never seen it before.

I grew up with 3 regular tv channels (well, 4 if you counted PBS which was all children's shows then other than the occasional Masterpiece Theater) and 2 or 3 UHF channels (3 if you were lucky and had good reception). All the channels went off the air around midnight and always used to play the national anthem with a video of a waving flag before going off to the gray fuzz screen. To change the channel you had to get off your ass and go change it on the tv (and fiddle with the aerial again since every station needed adjustment.

Households had one phone line, rotary dial and no call waiting until around the time I got into high school. Phone exchanges were letters with a number (instead of 688 followed by four digits it was MU8 followed by four digits). Most people didn't even know their area code since that was only for long distance calls which were too expensive to make anyway.

Clocks - even the one on the oven - had hands. Same for watches.

Word processing didn't get into businesses until I already graduated high school. Most people that saw job ads for word processors had no idea what that meant. I actually went to the local community college to take a word processing course since it was the wave of the future that some day all secretaries would have to know. And in high school I thought that the electric typewriter with the correct button was all the tech rage.

Cameras used film that had to be sent out for processing and photo taking was an expensive hobby. Having your photos put on slides to view on a home movie screen or one of those little handheld light boxes was so high tech as were polaroid cameras. Videos? Only wealthy people could afford the cameras and the projector to show the tape reels. I was 19 when video cameras became popular and were nearly as big and heavy as real cameramen used.

The Walkman didn't come out till I was out of high school... before that you used a little transistor radio or a boom box. Music was on vinyl. Cassette tapes became all the rage while I was in high school but they were poor quality and most people still bought record albums and used turntables. When I was a kid it was 8-track tapes that were all the rage.

But without all the tech we have now that was unimaginable back then people talked to each other face to face and got out of the house. We did stuff that required getting off one's butt and mingling with the human race, and if you didn't want to do stuff that got you off your butt and wanted to be alone there was always books... made with paper and ink.

[Chan790]

74. You must be older than I thought you were.

My mother had video games as a teenager and she was born in the late 1950s.



She did spend her childhood however forced to sit 2 feet from the TV and change the channel on command. Sundays during football season were the worst because she wasn't allowed to play with her friends so she became a Packers fan because the rest of the family HATED the Packers.

Hell, I had Saturday morning cartoons and I was born on the cusp of the 1980s. Crash had Saturday morning cartoons and he was born in 1987.

[deutsey]

75. I also loved the UHF channels

I could get them from DC and Baltimore. Some classically cheesy programming on these channels...kids stuff like Capt. 20 and Capt. Chesapeake...






and horror movie shows like Creature Feature and Ghost Host...

[benld74]

79. And THAT is how I found out about Monty Python

Aired on PBS station, Sunday nights after 10pm.

[texanwitch]

81. I remember the days.

Seems it was about 12 midnight or so when the tv channels went off.

On Saturday nights there was a horror movies shown late at night.

I could stay up late as I wanted to that night but I always feel asleep before the movie was over.

Seems like it was the early 80's before the channels stayed on all night.

[No Vested Interest]

86. Real old-timer here. - I remember Sat. mornings before TV

We listened to the radio.
Can't remember all the shows, but one was "Let's Pretend".
Another one started off with a man intoning "Grand Central Station!"
Radio caused you to use your imagination, -- Good fun.

[texanwitch]

89. I like old radio shows.

There was a station in Houston that would play old radio shows in the evenings.

I would listen to them when I went to bed and in the summers nights.

Some of the shows would scare me under the covers.

I had a great imagination.

I have a two old radios from the 30's and 40's.

One of them still works.

[applegrove]

84. I loved the cartoon "Max, the two thousand year old mouse".

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

85. In the 50s, they had kid shows on in the early afternoon like Pinky Lee

Last edited Thu Sep 26, 2013, 02:38 PM - Edit history (1)

and the puppet world of detective Fearless Fosdick, with its elaborate puppet-world props and sets.







And instead of playing video games indoors when I was a kid when it was too cold or rainy to go outside and play, I read comic books. My parents bought me tons and tons of comic books, from Classics Illustrated to Superman. I must have averaged at least a dozen new comic books a week In fact, it's how I learned to read even before starting school, with the help of my parents.

[B Calm]

87. We had 3 channels with a snowy black and white picture.

[cherokeeprogressive]

90. Anyone ever hear this poem at sign-off just before the test pattern came on for the night?

"High Flight"

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

[B Calm]

92. I remember them doing that, my station would show a video of a fighter jet in flight.

It was pretty cool!!

[cherokeeprogressive]

94. Yes. The jet fighter flying in the clouds...

Way cool.

[Arkansas Granny]

91. The first Saturday morning "cartoons" I remember were on the radio.

My older brother and I used to listen to kid's programming on Saturday mornings. We listened to "Gunsmoke" and "The Lone Ranger" in the evenings. The first cartoons I remember watching when we got a tv were "Krazy Kat" and "Scrappy".

[B Calm]

93. My Arkansas brother brought me up a cement stone that has Jot-em-Down Store

Nov. 1st, 1957 inscribed on it. I have the stone out by the swimming beach on my farm pond. You remember that radio show?

[Arkansas Granny]

96. That was from Lum and Abner. I don't really remember listening to it, but I know the program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lum_and_Abner

I remember listening to Fibber McGee and Molly & One Man's Family in the evenings. My mother used to listen to soap operas during the afternoon. We had a Silvertone radio with a phonograph in a cabinet that looked like a piece of fine furniture.

Something similar to this:

[B Calm]

101. Bingo! The show was about a country store/restaurant in Arkansas.

[Kaleva]

95. I had 1 channel, WLUC-TV, to watch when growing up.

[steve2470]

97. I remember watching The Outer Limits on TV when I was 5 and being scared ***less LOL

I still hate horror movies to this day. Yes, I know, it was a TV series, not a movie.

[okieinpain]

99. old people always bragging about 3 channels. lol. n/t.

[Arugula Latte]

100. I have a memory of watching "Voice of Agriculture" on Sat. mornings before cartoons started.

This was in Ohio. The show maybe ran from 6 am to 7 or something like that, and then the good stuff came on. If we woke up early my sister and I would just watch the end of this show on our black-and-white TV. It was a lot of footage of big combines going through fields. Exciting stuff!