The Olden Days

[naomikritzer]

Molly asked me today whether I'd ever considered writing a book about the way things were when I was a little girl. I told her I really wasn't old enough to pull this off yet -- these books are pretty cool when they're about covered wagons and hand-dug wells, but no one would be all that impressed with rotary phones. She persisted and asked if maybe I'd write one when I got older. I said I'd consider it.

This got me thinking, while cleaning up from dinner, about the hardships of the olden days -- you know, the late 1970s and early 1980s. (I turned five -- Molly's age -- in 1978. Yes, all you people who flinch when I mention that I was four years old when I saw Star Wars can flinch now. In fact, you might want to just skip the rest of this post.)

We had rotary telephones, of course (something Molly has only seen a handful of times), with actual cords, though my parents were phone junkies (still are) and had a phone in every room, plus the kitchen phone's cord was so long you could walk all the way through the dining room and sit down in the living room to chat. I'd say we had no Internet, but that may not have been true: my father was using a paper dumbterminal with an acoustic coupler modem so early that I can't remember the study without it, and was certainly using e-mail in the earliest days of the Internet. I didn't have Internet access, of course, nor could I do my research with Wikipedia -- we had an encyclopedia and some other reference books, or I could go to the library. And use a card catalog.

The childhood hardship I was mulling over while cleaning up was heat. I lived in Wisconsin, and we did not have air conditioning. No one I knew had central air; I did know one girl who had a room air conditioner in her own bedroom, but this was a rare privilege. To escape the heat, I could skulk in the semifinished basement, eat a popsicle, sit in front of a fan, or go to the library or movie theater. My parents didn't get central air put in until I was in college, and they still don't use it much. Neither do we; I did not have it on today, and had positioned a box fan to blow on me as I scraped plates.

Our TV only got four channels, but we had a TV aerial on our roof so at least they came in pretty clearly. Ed and I don't have an antenna up, and don't have cable. I'm not sure how many channels we get in theory, but only a few of them come in well. We do, however, have a DVD/VCR player; VCRs came along pretty early in my childhood, but they were something rented occasionally for birthday parties. Since my parents were weirdos, we had a color computer monitor in our house before we had a color TV; my father had some gadget that let the computer monitor be used as a TV, on special occasions like when Wizard of Oz was being broadcast. (Or we were renting a VCR.)

This isn't exactly roughing it, I think, even to an easily-impressed five-year-old.

Comments

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

We are near-contemporaries (I was six when Star Wars came out).

Here's a weird one: I remember more regional variation. When we would go on long car trips, different places were different -- stores, restaurants, and all those things were not the same as the ones you shopped in at home. Now things are much more homogenized; there's a Wal-Mart and a McDonald's and a Pizza Hut, no matter where you are.

I also remember that eating at a fast food place was a rare treat, mostly reserved for traveling.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

If it means anything, I didn't see the inside of a MacDonald's until I was 13.

[naomikritzer]

I also remember more regional variation, and fast food was also mostly a travel treat. I had the impression that other people's parents took them to McDonald's on a more regular basis than mine, but this was probably largely based on exposure to ads.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the 1950s, in a rural area of NYState. My parents didn't get a TV till I was around 12 (I think). We could get one and a half stations.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Heck, here in New England, most people still don't have AC, except window units.

[naomikritzer]

Huh. What kinds of heat aremost common out there? I think the relative availability of central air in the midwest is partly because forced-air heat is so common. Installing the ductwork is insanely expensive, but if you already have it, central air isn't that prohibitively expensive to put in. I've seen houses in New England with electric baseboard heat; I don't know if I've ever seen that in Minnesota.

There are plenty of people in the midwest without central air, of course, but when I was a kid, NO ONE had it.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Lots of radiators, some baseboard heating.

Basically we have a ton of 70-100 year old housing stock, so the heating is not super-conducive to retrofits.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

(I wandered over here from juliansinger having read me more about Molla and east Mo Molly and Kiera. Hope you don't mind.)

I'm, I think, a year older than you, and I grew up in Illinois. Air conditioning was my first clear, indpendently percieved piece of class awareness: we had central air, and so did most of my friends, whose parents, like mine, were academics. My close friend in high school who had a kindergarten-teacher mother and an...I'm-not-sure-what blue-collar father had a house with one window air conditioner in the livingroom. This struck me as weird, until I thought about it more.

Now I live in New England (Boston), and it's true, no one (well, practically no one) has central air. Central air is the kind of thing you find in stores, not houses. Even some businesses in big business buildings have row upon row upon row of window air-conditioners studding the faces of the buildings, rather than anything centralized. The summers here are horribly hot and muggy, easily equivalent to an Illinois summer, so I think it's about the oldness of the buildings, and the, er, custom of the country.

[irihs.livejournal.com]

Now I'm trying to figure out if folks think being 4 when Star Wars came out is really old or really young. (If people think it's really young, flinch at me. I was born the same year as Star Wars. 30th anniversary next year - woo!)

I also grew up without air conditioning (and only have it one room now) or cable. In fact, I didn't watch any cable until college, and didn't really take advantage of it until grad school. Fraggle Rock? MTV videos Yeah, I saw those once at a friend's house...)

But the one thing that really astounds me about what life was like for people not too much older than me is word processing. Maybe I overestimate how wide the gap was, as we didn't have a computer in my house until I was a senior in high school, and didn't get internet until my sophomore year in college. But I'm under the impression that most people a decade older than me were using typewriters to write their papers in high school and college. I certainly used one for high school, and hated it. I can't imagine how I ever wrote decent papers on one.

I don't completely hate typewriters. I could see really enjoying one if I were writing something that didn't have to be reorganized and edited 20 times before I was satisfied with it. But writing my comps on a typewriter? Just thinking of the extra hours spent retyping pages makes me want to cry.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I regularly used a typewriter up to my 30s, I believe.

A few years back I was watching 2001 for the first time in I don't know how long (and I've also gotten to the point in my life where "a few years" = 10 to 15 years).

Anyway...

When Heywood Floyd walks out of the "space" elevator and over towards the receptionist's desk I stated chanting, "Don't let there be a typewriter, please don't let there be a typewriter..."

[naomikritzer]

The flinchers are usually shocked at how young I am.

I am slightly older than you (four years, apparently) and never used a typewriter except in the class I took to learn to touch-type, or occasionally for fun. My parents were early adopters of computer technology, and I had access to a word processor from the beginning. I took a Mac LC to college.

Ed, however, used a typewriter all through high school, and took an electric typewriter (which we still own; it's down in the basement) to college. I'm not sure, but I think he may have typed his papers freshman year. By his senior year (my freshman year), he was using the VAX to write his papers; he used a program called Runoff. That made him a bit of a dinosaur; most students used Macs for their paper-writing, in response to which he cheerfully pointed out the much longer wait for a Macintosh than for a VAX terminal.

[winterswitchery.livejournal.com]

Sounds kind of like my early childhood, except for the four channel thing. And I was born in '82. No probably not roughing it :)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I was 3 when Star Wars came out, but the first movie I saw in a theatre (a real theatre, as opposed to a lecture theatre at the university with a projector set up to play a kids' film for faculty brats) was Return of the Jedi.

The big ones for me are word processing and Google. I am an editor, and I cannot imagine my working life without those two things -- I really can't. I don't think I would have wanted to be an editor if I'd entered the workforce, say, ten years earlier, and my main tools had been a blue pencil and a packet of post-it notes. And this amuses me, in a way, because until Grade 11 -- the night before my 25-page IB History paper on the unification of Germany and Italy was due, to be exact -- I wrote everything in longhand or on a portable typewriter, by choice, and refused to learn to use my mom's WP5.1. And, of course, I had done all the research for that paper, and did all the research for the one the next year on the British mandate in Palestine, using books from the university library which I found using their electronic catalogue from a terminal in the library. It's mind-boggling.

When I was a child we had a black-and-white TV that got four channels, more or less. We got a colour TV the year we got back from our sabbatical in Spain (1982), and it was a big event. I think that's also when we got cable, but maybe that was later. My mom still has that TV -- it doesn't work all that well anymore, though. We didn't have central air, or, indeed, any kind of AC, but really, in Calgary it wouldn't be worth it. In Toronto, on the other hand ...

[naomikritzer]

Ditto to both the word processing and the Google. I remember life before Google, but damn, Google has made some kinds of research SO MUCH EASIER.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Totally.

I wrote a story parts of which were set in Edinburgh. I have been to Edinburgh exactly once, for less than a week, and it was 14 years ago; yet at least a couple of people who actually live there found my portrayal convincing. How did I do my research? Google.

I remember life before Google very, very well. I wouldn't want to go back.

Job hunting without the web

[(Anonymous)]

When I embarked on my first serious job search, in 1991, one piece of advice I really took to heart was that you should be informed about the places where you were applying. I don’t think it was unusual for students to walk into job interviews knowing basically nothing about the employer in question. (There was this story about an IBM interviewer who started every interview by asking what “IBM” stood for and kicking you out if you didn’t get it right...)

Sometimes I was able to get useful information from my college’s career center, which had books of company profiles and kept folders of information on some companies. But for the most part I gathered the information by going directly to the company. Specifically, I would call them long distance from my apartment, and the conversation might go something like this:

“XYZ corporation, how may I help you?”

“Good morning, I’m interested in receiving some general brochures on your company. Who would I talk with to have those sent to me?”

“Um... why do you want the brochures?”

“I’m looking for work, and I’d like to educate myself about XYZ before applying.”

“Okay...”

Not five years later, the web had sprung into existence and most large employers had a significant presence, thus making the entire process I went through unnecessary.

One thing that made the whole phone experience difficult was that I never knew how “serious” a particular call would get. I might suddenly find myself on the line with a manager who wanted me to describe my qualifications and what sort of job I was looking for. That’s not a bad situation to find yourself in, but it meant having to prepare and “psych up” for each phone call, just in case. (Plus, if you wanted to be thorough, you had to get the first and last name of the person who helped you, and an address, so you could write a thank-you note...)

It all added up to a considerable amount of work per employer.

Actually, when I think about how life is different now than it was, say, 50 years ago (when I was -13), one thing I never hear other people mention is photocopiers. I suppose this is because there were several other methods of copying available -- in particular, if you knew when you created a document that you would want copies, you could use carbon paper, a ditto machine, or a mimeograph. And if not, you could perhaps retype the document, or take a photograph.

Fillard

Re: Job hunting without the web

[naomikritzer]

Photocopiers are so much a part of my world now I didn't even think of that one. I remember when my school bought its first photocopier: it was a big deal. Previously we'd had only a ditto machine, and carbon paper.

In 1986, when my family went to England for a year, photocopiers were well entrenched most places -- nonetheless, at my English school, I spent copious amounts of time copying things out of textbooks. I think this was partly because this school was really hard up for money, and toner costs more than exercise books (which were provided to the students by the school) and pens (we had to bring our own pens). Also, some of the teachers were really pretty awful, and having students spend half of every class session copying stuff out was an easy way for them to fill up time. (I remember science classes where we would do "labs" by copying out the instructions for the experiment from the shared textbooks, then taking dictation from the teacher to write out what our observations and conclusions would have been had we been allowed to actually conduct the experiment.)

[squigsoup.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling very metropolitan because we had FIVE channels--NBC,ABC, CBS, PBS, and a weird independent that turned into a Fox affiliate.

I try to impress my children with tales of having to get up and walk all the way across the room to change the channel, but this seems to mean nothing to them. They're more interested in the part about how when you would turn off the TV, the picture would gradually shrink until it was a tiny little dot.

[naomikritzer]

Madison got Fox when I was in middle or high school, but it wouldn't come in properly at my house, so it didn't count.