March 29, 2024

On this date, once upon a time…

I would just like to point out that 52 years ago, on October 15th 1962, my existence was documented in a small Arizona hospital that was later converted into a jail. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was president of what was then the most scientifically advanced country – in world that still had not been to the moon. At the same time, interracial marriage was illegal.

We walked though airport security with our shoes on, and we didn’t need passports to cross any continental border. Children left home on their bicycles without helmets or knee pads, nor any means of tracking or communication, on the orders that they return home by dusk.

A brand-new Corvette only cost about $4k and only had about 300 horsepower. Gasoline was $0.35 per gallon. The minimum wage was $1.15 per hour, and they spent it watching the first movie about James Bond, or on records by Ray Charles, the Drifters, or the Four Seasons. TV only had a black & white screen that was 19” at most, but it had the Ed Sullivan Show, the Dick Van Dyke Show, the Andy Griffith Show, and the Twilight Zone.

MIT and IBM had just invented the first disk storage system and the first video game –for a computer the size of a small car, but with far less processing power than an average cell phone today.

That round screen is showing the dot-pixel game, SpaceWar!

There was one more species of tiger and one more species of dolphin than we have today, and the global population was twice what it was when my grandmother was born, but still less than half of what it is today.

Think about that for a moment.

8 thoughts on “On this date, once upon a time…

  1. Happy Birthday plus 2 !

    Despite being one year older, I cannot compete with your fine facial hair.

    And the population growth and animal extinctions suck ass.

    (You should visit Scandinavia some time, we do not have quite as many professional wankers as political leaders, resulting in a less depressing place)

    — — — — —

    “my existence was documented in a small Arizona hospital”

    -But can you prove those documents were not forged? Besides, BENGHAZI!

  2. Having just returned from a visit with my 99-year-old Mom, I was engaged in similar retrospective thought processes. Her early recollections including running down the street in Detroit during the late 1910’s to watch the horse-drawn fire engines race off toward the most recent conflagration. During her child-bearing years. I can remember being sent to the corner store with a Liberty half dollar for a quart of milk and a loaf of Wonder Bread, and expected to return with about a quarter in change. My dad earned all of $3000 per year, and we lived modestly but comfortably, even considering a $40 monthly mortgage payment. Doctors made house calls, and no one had to have health insurance to see one, nor to visit a hospital. And I can actually remember a few months of “peace” between the end of WWII and the Korean “conflict.”

    Just memories now, but just a tiny bit of what shaped our lives.

    Happy birthday, Aron!

  3. Happy Hatch Day, Aron!

    In 1962, it was also perfectly legal in many states to deny food or a hotel room to a person with dark skin. Just sayin’

  4. Hey, happy birthday! It’s my birthday today, too (1976, though, so I’m a relatively young’n)! I’ve been following you since your days on the Christian Forums CrEvo subforum (I still frequent it; AV hasn’t changed). Love your videos, and love reading your blog. Have a great day!

  5. Happy Birthday!

    You got me thinking about color TV in the early days, and I think one of our neighbors had one by 1962. (He also had a brother who owned an electronics store. It seemed like the brother was by on a weekly basis to keep it operating properly. Vacuum tubes weren’t the most reliable devices.) TV repairmen as well as doctors made house calls.

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