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You know you are getting old when:

Gregg Axley

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,125
Location
Tennessee
Me too.

But what really made me feel old recently was a discussion about horror movies on another forum in which one of the members referred to the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies as "classics". :eeek: :faint2:

Considering Hamill had to undergo a seven-hour surgery to have his nose and left cheekbone rebuilt after an automobile accident in 1977, you're not too far from wrong.

I read up about the accident, while watching Corvette Summer.
Oddly enough, Hamill gave several accounts of the accident being much less tragic than initially reported.
His damage, from what I understand) WAS some cosmetic and some nerve.
You can see this in the Star Wars Christmas Special (there are a few clips online).
One side of his face was almost expressionless, as if paralyzed by the nerve damage.
This can also be seen in the Empire Strikes Back, and any other tv appearances Hamill made during that time.
 
Messages
13,469
Location
Orange County, CA
The History Channel was on at my sister's house and a US Army general (deceased) was commenting on Vietnam,
and I remarked to my nephew that I once had a conversation with the general when I was my nephew's age many moons past....:eek:

Years ago I knew someone who had met a Civil War veteran. :p
...and now for some scenes from the next "Kevin Bacon: Time Traveler."
 
Messages
13,469
Location
Orange County, CA
Now if this doesn't make you feel old. I just discovered that Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson) is 63! :faint:

50245.jpg
 

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up
Messages
7,202
Now if this doesn't make you feel old. I just discovered that Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson) is 63! :faint:

What make me feel even older is the fact that my Mom knew her Mom! They lived a few blocks apart, and talked often. No, she was not as wild as they say she was when she was a teenager.
 
Messages
12,018
Location
East of Los Angeles
I read up about the accident, while watching Corvette Summer.
Oddly enough, Hamill gave several accounts of the accident being much less tragic than initially reported.
His damage, from what I understand) WAS some cosmetic and some nerve.
You can see this in the Star Wars Christmas Special (there are a few clips online).
One side of his face was almost expressionless, as if paralyzed by the nerve damage.
This can also be seen in the Empire Strikes Back, and any other tv appearances Hamill made during that time.
Hamill's nose and upper lip are noticeably different from the way they looked before the accident. Prior to the theatrical release of The Empire Strikes Back, rumors spread that George Lucas added the Wampa attack at the beginning of the movie to explain Luke's/Hamill's change in appearance, but that's all they were--rumors.

Now if this doesn't make you feel old. I just discovered that Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson) is 63! :faint:
And she still looks better than her alter ego Elvira, in my opinion.
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
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2,808
Location
Cobourg
Years ago I knew someone who had met a Civil War veteran. :p
...and now for some scenes from the next "Kevin Bacon: Time Traveler."
Not that impossible. Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair recalled how he was taken to visit relatives in Ohio when he was a boy. One of the relatives was a Civil War veteran they visited at the Old Soldiers Home. The veterans entertained him with war stories, and ended up arguing over the details, and who remembered what. This was before World War 1.

Sinclair died in 1984, at 84 years of age. I dare say most Canadians over 40 remember his radio and TV broadcasts.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
There were still 65 documented Civil War vets alive in 1950. The past isn't as remote as it seems.

I used to know a Spanish-American War vet, a gnarled old gent who used to beat his walking cane loudly on the floor at high-school basketball games.
 

ChiTownScion

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2,247
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The Great Pacific Northwest
There were still 65 documented Civil War vets alive in 1950. The past isn't as remote as it seems.

And it is my understanding that a number of Civil War widows were around well after the centennial of the 1960's. It was not uncommon for Union army veterans to marry girls in their teens- the promise of a widow's pension was an incentive for such a person of an impoverished background to marry an old geezer. The last one died in 2003.
 

ChiTownScion

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2,247
Location
The Great Pacific Northwest
Years ago I knew someone who had met a Civil War veteran. :p
...and now for some scenes from the next "Kevin Bacon: Time Traveler."

A few years back on one of my jaunts to Gettysburg we had one of the licensed battlefield guides who had been at the 1938 75th Anniversary Reunion as a boy. I asked him what his memories of the vets were, and he told me that the old fellas mainly spoke among themselves in quiet conversation.

The closest I got to anything like that was the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Britain at the EAA fly in at Oshkosh. Adolf Galland was there, with a number of the other Luftwaffe and RAF fliers. As I recall, another thrill at the time was seeing Gregory "Pappy "Boyington at the event as well. Don't want to sound too corny about it, but if at any time in my life I felt as if I were "walking among the gods," that was it.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I have a recording of a 1940 broadcast of the proto-reality series "We The People" in which one of the guests is an elderly gentleman who claimed to have been present, as a child, when John Brown presided over a meeting to plan his attack on Harper's Ferry. There's no way to prove or disprove his story, but he certainly *could* have been there -- that event was only 81 years in the past at the time, which would be the equivalent today of someone having childhood memories of hearing FDR's first inauguration.

One thing that often gets overlooked about the Era is the fact that there were still plenty of people alive at the time for whom slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction were very much within living memory. There were still very deep wounds in the country which were a long way from healing.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Oh yes. You couldn't listen to the radio in the mid-seventies without hearing that.

The all-time cake-taker so far as broadcasters is concerned has to be baseball broadcaster Vin Scully. He broke in as the third-string announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950 -- and will still be in the booth on opening day 2015. That's sixty-five years on the air in the same job. He was inspired to go into radio by hearing Graham McNamee broadcasting the World Series in the early 1930s -- which as far as sportscasting is concerned is like having direct, living memories of the Stone Age.

There's one other show biz personality who can top that. Although she's retired now, actress/comedienne Rose Marie was a popular radio personality in the late 1920s as the child singer "Baby Rose Marie." She is the last surviving person to have been heard on network radio before 1930.
 

Stanley Doble

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2,808
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Cobourg
She probably sat on the knee of a Civil War veteran lol. In point of time she could have sat on the knee of John D. Rockefeller who lived from 1839 to 1937.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,766
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
The earliest fan-magazine profile of Baby Rose Marie I've been able to find was in the December 1930 issue of "Radio Digest," in which an eyewitness describes the circumstances under which she was signed to an NBC contract in the summer of 1929. According to that reporter, she climbed up on his knee, gestured to the august gathering of network executives, and muttered "Ain't this a load o' applesauce?"

I'd loved to have seen her with Mr. Rockefeller.
 

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