I'm serious!
I've heard some people say this when they're referring to last year's sports team or the early "James Bond" movies. Back in the mid 1960s there was a song about them good ol' days...
https://www.google.com/search?q=RA-RA+RUMBLE+SEATS+AND+RUNNING+BOARDS
I can't speak with authority on dime-a-dance girls, but running boards? Oh yeah! If you don't understand you can go to that bottomless pit of knowledge https://www.google.com/search?q=pre-war+running+boards
Whenever I stayed on a family farm it was a squabble between us kids for the right to ride the board and jump off to open-and-shut gates. And a running board was the ideal tea-pot stand at picnics. I'd bet a sizeable chunk of the house-keeping money that kids don't even consider that these days.
Moving on from running boards...something else that became popular in the 50s/60s was record clubs. If you didn't have access to music shops you could sign-up to monthly selections from a club. Most outfits that hopped on this money-wagon were pretty good in that they offered modern music and well-known artists.
My father and I were members of the same club and, between us, we built quite a comprehensive collection, from classical to popular.
Of course, this collection of 12" LPs required a fair bit of space. Dad built a writing desk with storage for LPs in a double-cupboard below the desk. It didn't take long to fill that!
So then Dad bought a radiogram. (stereo console or hi-fi cabinet in North America.) And that space didn't last long either! About the same time he extended the sitting room by about 10x12 ' and bought a newer, bigger radiogram; this one also featured a reel-to-reel tape recorder which could be disconnected from the main unit and taken elsewhere (eg. my bedroom!)
The next "Big Thing" to come was, wait for it, wait for it....
Television! We lived in a district that did NOT have good reception; images shuddered, there was more "snow" than image and when you did finally get a reasonable picture it was some god-awful soap opera, with more advertising than entertainment!
So, back to this post's title...were they really good days? I'd hazard a guess that most of us oldies would answer "sometimes."
Oh, I've just remembered something else that has changed...back then, there was NO SUNDAY broadcast.
And now, for a complete flip of the switch...newspapers, TV, radio broadcasts over-the-fence chit-chat is mostly taken up with politics. We have a General Election coming up...I'd better find something more cheerful...!
Lordy. Roger Miller? He had one hit over here - King of the Road, and no-one ever thought about him again. Ever.
ReplyDeleteI did have a radiogram (in fact, I think it is still stored at our old family home in Wales, despite the fact that Mother hasn't lived there for 35 years, and has let it out to tenants), but I'm not of that generation at all! It was just a novelty.
To me, "the good old days" have nothing to do with childhood whatsoever, but my teenage years - the "Long Hot Summer of '76", Punk vs Disco, going to record shops to buy singles I'd heard on Radio 1 or Top of the Pops, sticking posters on the wall with Blu-Tack, getting served with lager'n'lime at youth club because I looked old enough, and eventually leaving school and going to proper pubs and dancing at proper clubs...
Very distant memories now, of course. Jx
PS Daffs?! In September?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We genuinely are poles apart. We haven't even thought about buying Spring bulbs yet; we're enjoying the late summer/early autumn flush of salvias, fuchsias, hemerocallis and nerines too much...
DeleteI think we all have our own "personal" shelves for certain times of our lives.In some cases, securely locked away in private vaults!
DeleteAnd daffs, OF COURSE,. It's Spring over here!
My grandparents had what looked to be a record player and a radio in a sideboard that had speakers - was that a radiogram [I shall look it up] - the grandchildren weren't allowed to touch it.
ReplyDeleteMy dad also built storage for albums - yes, that filled up quickly, too!
I remember reel to reel! And my uncle's car had a cartridge player!
I'm not sure if they really were good old days, but I remember them with fondness. The past is always comforting because you know what happened next, the present is scary because you don't.
Sx
Definitely sounds like a radiogram, Scarlet. And The Man's '73 Mustang had a built-in cartridge player, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I've just recalled that some friends had a proper juke box in their Dad's garage. We kept a jam far full of the sixpenny coins required to start it! (I also recall that it was bloody heavy when we had to move it to get the coins out again!)
I had a half a radiogram for years - once the Victrola on top had stopped working, my granddad sawed it off, threw it away and hammered on a new tabletop! The thing I miss the most about the old days is the daily newspaper - a big beast, and one of several that came out in any given town. I miss Sundays spent all spread out on the living room carpet with a cup of coffee and the Sunday Oregon Journal. Or sitting in a restaurant with my newspaper, which also served to fend off unwanted attention from men who assumed that any lady alone in a public place must be withering for lack of their company (grrr)
ReplyDeleteNewspapers! Yes, the weekend issues usually had a coloured magazine, too.But as TV expanded and prices rose, we saw the demise of "big" papers.
DeleteThere really was an art to reading really big papers...no wonder we called them broadsheets!
There's a radiogram in my garage. The Father had it in the living room for years, but what with some recent room rejigging, me and my b-i-l hauled it into the garage where, hopefully, it will get lost forever!
ReplyDeleteAlso, my car has what look like very narrow running boards, but I wouldn't be able to get my size 12s on them. Ms Scarlet might manage in her 3-and-a-halfs, though!
The first thing that popped into my head when I thought about "the good old days" was riding in the boot of our old estate car when we were kids (and in my friend's parents estate, too).
I’m sure I have a recollection of travelling up the M1 in the back of a Bedford van with my cousin and uncle, and my uncle had the side door open. I doubt any seat belts featured. I sometimes wonder how any of us survived?!
DeleteBut, yes, I also liked being in the boot of the estate car!
Sx
P.S I mean an old Bedford van with front sliding doors, btw.
DeleteSx
Dad drove an old '38 Ford V8 for a few years and then sold it back to the original owner who removed the back seats and used it when he went deer-stalking!
DeleteI still have a wind up gramophone and a Victorian polyphon. Also a car with a running board, though I don't have a tv any more, I just watch what I want on the computer. My parents bought a television before I was born, to watch the coronation. I seem to remember that there was a break in transmission around 6pm, to give parents time to put the children to bed before evening programmes started. I'm wondering now if they simply switched it off and told me that?
ReplyDeleteTV had not arrived in our town in 1953, but there was a lot of Coronation Coverage in cinemas.
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