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Wonder Years (Non Political)

Born in 72 and my formative years were spent growing up in Terre Haute. All of these posts resonate. I just remember being outside all day and the variety of stuff we did.

Sports of every type, fishing, building ramps to jump, swimming at the various public pools and creeks. We used to build BMX bike tracks in the woods. Nothing like 10-14 year olds with saws, pics, and shovels.

The bike was key to getting around. We used to bike out to Seelyville where a little old lady ran a store and would sell us chewing tobacco. I was not a smoker, but remember friends buying cigarettes at the vending machine at Pizza Inn. My kids today find the cigarette vending machine to be a hilarious concept.

Thanks for the post. Great to not have a pissing match for once.
"being outside all day." not to be debbie downer on a great thread but that's the biggest difference i see with my childhood and my daughter. my friends and i were outside playing sports, walking to ben franklin and the other shops, walking the train tracks, always on adventures. every free moment. now it's kind of scary letting your kids go. she and her crew just don't have the freedom that my friends and i had in that regard. and i guess ignorance is bliss as she doesn't know any different but it makes me sad. i'd get out of the house in the summer at 9 am and come back at 8 pm. there isn't a chance in hell i'd let her do that. i'd have an amber alert and a hundred cops tracking her
 
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So growing up, the original version of this show was something I was a fan of. It was a little glimpse into the world my parents grew up in. And at the time there would be pieces of the show where you would think, hey I am sorry I missed out on that.

I was born in one of those quirky years where I am a young Gen X who has old millenials as siblings and as a wife. And looking back on that time, I think I was the last generation of kids to not really be so tech dependent. Yeah it was there, I remember dialing up and "You Got Mail!" but it was not as omnipresent as it is today. I was a latchkey kid, which really meant that my friends and I were left to our own devices from about the age of 9 or so and we had to kind of do some growing up because of it.

Anyways, I think we all have those "wonder years" that we look back to, what are yours? Is there something you think kids today miss out on? Is there stuff they have today that you feel you missed out on?

Edit to add: When they first announced this show I was thinking, oh great another remake where they either gender or race swap the main characters and do it all over again...and they are doing it in a period that is the Grandparents of today. It would have been like the original having been set in the 1940s....BUT...I have seen a few trailers and such and this actually looks like it may have some promise. I hope it can catch the heart of the original.

Things kids/folks today miss out on:

We all used to “share” tv moments. Talked about an episode the day after it was shown. Now, everybody streams and DVRs and Netflixes at different times.

Watching the US go to the moon was unbelievable. It unified the world in a small way, for a small time.

Before Watergate, people could find more-neutral media - fact-based reports. 15 minutes of “news” at dinner time. Now, it’s all opinion to fight about.

Books over screens.

New things I wish I experienced as a child:

Thought for 5 minutes. Couldn’t come up with anything. Then thought “shoes are more comfortable now.” But modern kids never had Red Ball Jets either.
 
Gen X checking in (1975)

Latchkey from the age of ten

Leave house in the morning. Come home when dark. Nobody knew what the hell we were doing or even where we were.

Stealing cigarettes from the neighbor’s outdoor freezer.

4 channels until 1986 so TV was really an adult thing except for the Saturday morning toons.

Tackle football in the neighborhood with kids ranging from 8 to 15. (and like 15 to a side)

BB gun wars

Endless basketball games including in the dead of winter. Scraped the pavement and wiped down with newspaper. Kept hands warm by putting over the coals from neighbors wood stove. (Thanks Marilyn!)
Sounds like the 60’s - without the drugs and war!
 
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You have me by 3 years, pretty similar experiences growing up. You kind of got with your friends and went out and found something to do until it was time to eat dinner. Sometimes that was pickup sports (usually basketball or football) or you found some other trouble to get into. Like fireworks were still illegal in Indiana, so getting your hands on those to blow stuff up was like the Holy Grail in late elementary. My friend and I built a fire pit in his backyard and played the "what happens if we burn this" type of game.

Saturday morning cartoons, the Sunday comics, the sports page the day after your team won a game, waiting to see the AP rankings where Indiana was at so you could argue with your friends at lunch about who was better....Sports Center before school in the morning where you got actual highlights instead of opinions on top of opinions. Ahh... the good old days.

Bugs Bunny!

Foghorn Leghorn!

Adam West Batman!
 
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Born in 1962 here, and I think I have said what a small town I grew up in. Starting in late elementary school, I can remember summer lasting FOREVER (Memorial Day to Labor Day). My bike was the most important thing I owned. Rode it all over town and out into the country from morning until dark. Mom even gave me a couple of dollars to get lunch at the hamburger place "downtown". Spent all day with friends inventing things to do. I remember a game of "war" (capture the flag with toy guns) that included over 20 kids and stretched out for miles...and lasted all day, then hide and seek games that were just as big at night. I remember pick up baseball games (who does that any more?) at the junior high field. I also remember 2 on 2 whiffle ball tournaments, tackle football, and basketball until it got too dark to see the goal.

Even though my home town has been on a long, slow death spiral, when I was growing up, it had a bustling little retail area full of mom and pop shops (clothing, jewelry, dime store, sporting good, etc), and everyone knew everyone. One of my favorite memories is all the little neighborhood grocery stores all over town. One in particular is where I bought my baseball cards/chewing gum. Sure wish I had those cards from the late 60's.

I remember watching the moon landing on a black and white TV, and making that little lunar lander thing out of cardboard, with the tabs and holes and flaps. We bought a ping pong table with green stamps, and that's where I learned how competitive my dad was. I remember the Pinewood Derby in Cub Scouts (our town wasn't big enough for Boy Scouts, so that's where it ended...meetings were held in the basement of the Presbyterian Church in the Fellowship Hall. I also remember VBS every summer at my own church.

I know this all sounds like some "Leave it to Beaver" bullcrap, but my childhood was fun, uneventful, and pretty "Wonder Years ish".

I had you much younger.
I’m 1958.
We shared a lot.


(How did you go wrong? 😎)
 
Tell me this is shit:


Agree and absolutely love whenever you bring that track.

I actually think there is a ton more good music readily available now than there was in the 20th century. I don't even think it's really close. There's always great music being made, but so much more of it is easily accessible now. It's awesome.
 
Juices flowing now:

mowing yards for money

pinball machines

being followed all over town by my dog

John Wayne

Johnny Carson

Harry Carey and Jack Buck calling Cardinal games

Topps baseball card monopoly

AM radio at night - faraway cities fading in and out

The Beatles newest song

Watching the Delta Queen go up the Ohio

and maybe the best - I got to have Willie, Waylon and Merle teach me about Hank and Bill Monroe and roots of the blues
 
I was organizing my music and was pondering if 80s/90s music is now considered oldies? Does what we previously consider oldies (like beatles and beach boys) become stone age music or just combine all the music into just oldies?
Well...the 80's and early 90's groups have made it to the classic rock stations around Indy. Do with that info what you like.
 
Agree and absolutely love whenever you bring that track.

I actually think there is a ton more good music readily available now than there was in the 20th century. I don't even think it's really close. There's always great music being made, but so much more of it is easily accessible now. It's awesome.
Possibly true, I think it takes effort to go find the gems though.
 
Possibly true, I think it takes effort to go find the gems though.

As it always has...but definitely not more effort than it took to trudge down to the record store, dig through the bins, and find them - unless one was just into buying whatever the Top 40 chart told you to buy.
 
Juices flowing now:

mowing yards for money

pinball machines

being followed all over town by my dog

John Wayne

Johnny Carson

Harry Carey and Jack Buck calling Cardinal games

Topps baseball card monopoly

AM radio at night - faraway cities fading in and out

The Beatles newest song

Watching the Delta Queen go up the Ohio

and maybe the best - I got to have Willie, Waylon and Merle teach me about Hank and Bill Monroe and roots of the blues
Hold my beer:

Blizzard of '78
Buying 8-tracks, then albums, then cassettes
Family Yahtzee nights (and cutthroat croquet games in the backyard). On that competitive note, we lived on 6 acres on the edge of town and my dad and grandpa once made a little golf course with about 4 holes (no fairways or greens...just holes and flags)
The real Jarts
First family car I remember was a late 60's red Plymouth Fury
Not many family vacations, but remember "See Rock City/Ruby Falls", the Great Smoky Mountains, Savannah Beach (all driven to in one day, in the back seat with 2 siblings...I had the middle seat)
The CB radio boom
Family Drive-In Nights (A funny family story is when we would get there, my dad would need to wipe off the windshield, he would grab a roll of toilet paper from the glove compartment, and make a big deal of pulling off a bunch, and wrapping it around his hand as he stood in front of the car, thus mortifying my older, high school sisters)
Going to HS basketball games as a 5th grader, and the smoke cloud that hung over the court after a halftime of smoke in the concession lobby, and the band playing 25 or 6 to 4, Proud Mary, and another song I can't name, but can hum. They played the same 3 songs for years, and one had a major drum solo that was the highlight of halftime.

Most of these are memories from 5th-8th grade. Once high school hit, it was all sports, girls, and school. Nothing like those carefree middle school years, before life got real complicated.
 
As it always has...but definitely not more effort than it took to trudge down to the record store, dig through the bins, and find them - unless one was just into buying whatever the Top 40 chart told you to buy.
This is true, I have stumbled on stuff that I have found I liked by just letting a computer algorithm pick songs for me based on feeding it some info on likes and dislikes.
 
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Hold my beer:

Blizzard of '78
Buying 8-tracks, then albums, then cassettes
Family Yahtzee nights (and cutthroat croquet games in the backyard). On that competitive note, we lived on 6 acres on the edge of town and my dad and grandpa once made a little golf course with about 4 holes (no fairways or greens...just holes and flags)
The real Jarts
First family car I remember was a late 60's red Plymouth Fury
Not many family vacations, but remember "See Rock City/Ruby Falls", the Great Smoky Mountains, Savannah Beach (all driven to in one day, in the back seat with 2 siblings...I had the middle seat)
The CB radio boom
Family Drive-In Nights (A funny family story is when we would get there, my dad would need to wipe off the windshield, he would grab a roll of toilet paper from the glove compartment, and make a big deal of pulling off a bunch, and wrapping it around his hand as he stood in front of the car, thus mortifying my older, high school sisters)
Going to HS basketball games as a 5th grader, and the smoke cloud that hung over the court after a halftime of smoke in the concession lobby, and the band playing 25 or 6 to 4, Proud Mary, and another song I can't name, but can hum. They played the same 3 songs for years, and one had a major drum solo that was the highlight of halftime.

Most of these are memories from 5th-8th grade. Once high school hit, it was all sports, girls, and school. Nothing like those carefree middle school years, before life got real complicated.
My dad had an old CJ7. We piled all my buddies in it and went snow wheeling during the blizzard of 78. Was so great.

Neighbor had a bug. She'd put the little kids in the back back.

My best friends dad had a bronco. It had no back window and we'd sit in lawn chairs in the back facing out

First car in high school was a 79 Monte Carlo with t tops. I'd come out after school and the t tops would be gone. Buddies hid em

In high school we'd go to our games in one of the guys pickup trucks. You could fit half the team in the back.
 
Family Yahtzee nights

We started as kids playing Blitz/Euchre for pennies. Progressed to the adult table at a family cottage playing against your aunts/uncles. Games would get pretty big but nobody ever got in a twist about it. Turned me into a decent poker player.

Big game though with both close and extended family was Scrabble. For money. 10 cents a point.

First car in high school was a 79 Monte Carlo with t tops. I'd come out after school and the t tops would be gone. Buddies hid em

Senior prank kind of stuff but my friend had a shitty old MG like convertible. We put it by the front door to the school on one of our last days in HS. I won't repeat what the sign said.
 
We started as kids playing Blitz/Euchre for pennies. Progressed to the adult table at a family cottage playing against your aunts/uncles. Games would get pretty big but nobody ever got in a twist about it. Turned me into a decent poker player.

Big game though with both close and extended family was Scrabble. For money. 10 cents a point.



Senior prank kind of stuff but my friend had a shitty old MG like convertible. We put it by the front door to the school on one of our last days in HS. I won't repeat what the sign said.
Lmao! I had a triumph spitfire for about 4 months. No power steering. If you didn't shift perfectly it would die. Was a piece of shit. I drove 7 guys to our high school game in it. Two holding onto the trunk rack. Made it halfway there before we got pulled over.
 
We started as kids playing Blitz/Euchre for pennies. Progressed to the adult table at a family cottage playing against your aunts/uncles. Games would get pretty big but nobody ever got in a twist about it. Turned me into a decent poker player.

Big game though with both close and extended family was Scrabble. For money. 10 cents a point.



Senior prank kind of stuff but my friend had a shitty old MG like convertible. We put it by the front door to the school on one of our last days in HS. I won't repeat what the sign said.
Lars another things are worse now. If you play Academy you can't play high school. There are no club games (I played in two national championships) that compare to the feelings of high school
 
Same here. Mid 70s. One year I had to do a paper for a Poly Sci course and a History course. I wrote one paper that would work for both. Gave the manuscript to the typist and told her when I needed them. She called on the date I'd given her (they were due in class the following day). I went to pick them up. She did a great job -- even complimented me on the content -- but there was only one copy. I asked her where the other copy was, and she gave me an Oh Fvck look. I wasn't about to try and turn in a photocopy, so she had to type another copy that night for me to pick up in the morning.

Got an A on both.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I recall another time when I turned in a handwritten paper that should have been typed. I think I plead poverty about not having the money to pay a typist, but might be able to get it accomplished if I had another day or two. He took a quick look and said he'd take it the way it was. I'm glad I paid attention to my elementary school penmanship lessons. Pretty sure he gave me a good grade and didn't ding me for it.
I just never learned to type, and still basically hunt and peck. My fingers just aren't long enough, and I never was very good at hand-eye coordination. When I worked as a supervisor with the Census last year we were issued IPhone 8s, and watching some of my friends was the first time I ever saw people text with their thumbs. Luckily I've subsequently discovered voice texts...

Most of my college exams were bluebook/essay. The only one I really remember after 40+ yrs was for a class on Russian Revolutionary Thought. I remember the prof/TA who graded it gave me like a 104 A+. He wrote that he added the + in appreciation for the individual historical perspective I added in my answer to the basic question. I guess someone appreciated my long windedness...
 
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Lars another things are worse now. If you play Academy you can't play high school. There are no club games (I played in two national championships) that compare to the feelings of high school
yeah, daughter made a high school team (JV) and there is a 7 player cap per club team per highschool. IHSAA is dumb sometimes.
 
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Gen X checking in (1975)

Latchkey from the age of ten

Leave house in the morning. Come home when dark. Nobody knew what the hell we were doing or even where we were.

Stealing cigarettes from the neighbor’s outdoor freezer.

4 channels until 1986 so TV was really an adult thing except for the Saturday morning toons.

Tackle football in the neighborhood with kids ranging from 8 to 15. (and like 15 to a side)

BB gun wars

Endless basketball games including in the dead of winter. Scraped the pavement and wiped down with newspaper. Kept hands warm by putting over the coals from neighbors wood stove. (Thanks Marilyn!)
neighborhood football? We played Smear the... uhhh... LGBQTOU812... oh nevermind, I'm sure kids don't play that anymore anyway!
 
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neighborhood football? We played Smear the... uhhh... LGBQT... oh nevermind, I'm sure kids don't play that anymore anyway!
I was being pretty generous calling it football!
 
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So growing up, the original version of this show was something I was a fan of. It was a little glimpse into the world my parents grew up in. And at the time there would be pieces of the show where you would think, hey I am sorry I missed out on that.

I was born in one of those quirky years where I am a young Gen X who has old millenials as siblings and as a wife. And looking back on that time, I think I was the last generation of kids to not really be so tech dependent. Yeah it was there, I remember dialing up and "You Got Mail!" but it was not as omnipresent as it is today. I was a latchkey kid, which really meant that my friends and I were left to our own devices from about the age of 9 or so and we had to kind of do some growing up because of it.

Anyways, I think we all have those "wonder years" that we look back to, what are yours? Is there something you think kids today miss out on? Is there stuff they have today that you feel you missed out on?

Edit to add: When they first announced this show I was thinking, oh great another remake where they either gender or race swap the main characters and do it all over again...and they are doing it in a period that is the Grandparents of today. It would have been like the original having been set in the 1940s....BUT...I have seen a few trailers and such and this actually looks like it may have some promise. I hope it can catch the heart of the original.
No Wonder Years reference is complete without a tip o' the cap to Winnie Cooper!

images


...and just in case SD is lurking (oh, hell with him, this is for me!), today:

Danica-McKellar.jpg
 
Born in 1963 here, and had my own website by ~1993/4 (a book I have says October of 1995, but that’s not entirely accurate). Busted a hacker in 1996 (dumbass was using his work IP address to try to shutdown part of my website). First used email in 1985 I believe, but first computer class was FORTRAN and punchcards (1981). First paper I wrote on a computer was in 1984 or 1985, yet I also used an analog computer in 1985 (it had vacuum tubes and you “programmed” it by moving wires around!). First personal computer I used was in 1985. Created my first computer database in 1985 or 1986 (for respirator fitting data). Used tape drives to store the data. First used a spreadsheet program in 1987 (Lotus 123) to figure out why the refinery plant I was responsible for was having stability issues. Accessed computer bulletin boards as early as 1991 (300 baud modem!).
And things now are nothing like they were 20 years ago. 2001 seems like a lifetime ago.
Slacker. I know a guy born in 1948 who invented the internet.
 
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No Wonder Years reference is complete without a tip o' the cap to Winnie Cooper!

images


...and just in case SD is lurking (oh, hell with him, this is for me!), today:

Danica-McKellar.jpg
Yeah, she was definitely an attraction as a young guy for that show.

Now as an adult she has quite a bit going for her. Obviously physically attractive, but incredibly intelligent as well. IIRC she has a Math theorem named after her (and a few others that were on the project).
 
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@JamieDimonsBalls Things definitely change. Messi gone from Barca.
Wow. I assumed it was a done deal a few weeks ago when they basically announced it was a done deal.

Rumors suddenly flying again about Messi coming to Inter Miami in the MLS. Shades of Pele? Nahhhhh...can't see it happening just yet. Someday, I think it will, but not yet.
 
Wow. I assumed it was a done deal a few weeks ago when they basically announced it was a done deal.

Rumors suddenly flying again about Messi coming to Inter Miami in the MLS. Shades of Pele? Nahhhhh...can't see it happening just yet. Someday, I think it will, but not yet.
Agreed on all fronts. When that co bought 10 percent of the league I figured Messi would retire at Barca. I was wrong. My money is on psg with Neymar. Then mbappe to real. Two years then Miami. That said I still can't picture Messi playing in Kansas City in the dead of summer against some recent grad from creighton making 48k a year as an almost 40 yr old billionaire
 
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Wow. I assumed it was a done deal a few weeks ago when they basically announced it was a done deal.

Rumors suddenly flying again about Messi coming to Inter Miami in the MLS. Shades of Pele? Nahhhhh...can't see it happening just yet. Someday, I think it will, but not yet.
Imagine the revenue from jersey sales
 
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Agreed on all fronts. When that co bought 10 percent of the league I figured Messi would retire at Barca. I was wrong. My money is on psg with Neymar. Then mbappe to real. Two years then Miami. That said I still can't picture Messi playing in Kansas City in the dead of summer against some recent grad from creighton making 48k a year as an almost 40 yr old billionaire
Can PSG afford him? I would have thought only thought one of the top Premier League teams could do it.
 
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