You know you are getting old when:

[ChiTownScion]

Lizzie you probably remember Gordon Sinclair's broadcast of The Americans in 1973. It created quite a sensation at the time.

That was grist for a lot of impromptu comedy skits among college friends (some Canadian) and myself at parties of the time, as I recall. His heart was in the right place, but it had an element of overkill to it, particularly with the patriotic music swelling in the background.

 

[Stanley Doble]

That was grist for a lot of impromptu comedy skits among college friends (some Canadian) and myself at parties of the time, as I recall. His heart was in the right place, but it had an element of overkill to it, particularly with the patriotic music swelling in the background.

That was Gordon Sinclair for you. The script was written in a few minutes, and aired as one of a series of "Let's Be Personal" pieces he did for 1010 CFRB radio in Toronto. Every day he did a news broadcast at 11:50 AM preceded by "Let's Be Personal" at 11:45. This was Gordon's slant on some question of the day, always utterly frank and usually at odds with conventional opinion.

The music was added later when the broadcast tape was reformatted into a 45 RPM record.

It was easy to make fun of his loud jackets, outspokenness, his Rolls Royce and bombastic manner but he was a hard boiled old time newsman at heart.

Guys like Stewart, Colbert and other comics are trying to do something similar with the news today but they don't have the heart.

 

[Zombie_61]

...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...

The parents of one of my sisters-in-law divorced when she was very young, so she never really knew much about her father's family. Several years ago she took a trip to Alabama to rectify that to some degree, and while she was there his family showed her several family artifacts. One of them was a copy of her rather wealthy Grandmother's will, which contained (among other things) detailed instructions regarding the distribution of her slaves in the event of her demise. One of the female slaves who worked in the house was clearly a favorite because the will explained that she was to be freed, and that a good portion of Grandmother's finances was to be set aside to pay for her (the slave's) care until the day she died. I think many of us in this era, particularly those who have never lived in the "American South", understand slavery existed, but to read a will in which human beings are listed by name and were to be distributed like furniture or livestock, i.e. considered nothing more than personal property, makes the awareness of slavery somehow more poignant.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the many important legacies of the Works Progress Administration is the "Slave Narratives." Writers employed by the WPA traveled thru the South in the late thirties taking down first-person interviews with former slaves, and these documents today form the single most important collection of documentation of what slavery was actually like for those who experienced it. Read them here.

 

[rjb1]

A former girlfriend was from West Tennessee and her family house pre-dated the Civil War, was on the National Register of Historic Places, and even in the nineteen-fifties their farm/plantation still had elements of the slave-era. They had black sharecroppers/tenant-farmers who lived on the land and worked it.
I saw a picture of her taken when she was a baby and she was being held by an old black lady. I know it was taken in the 19-fifties but it looked like it was taken in the 18-fifties.

 

[Stearmen]

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.

You are a little off on your time line. Pappy could not have been at the 50th any of the WWII celebrations, since he passed away in January 11, 1988. I meant him in the late 1970s.

 

[ChiTownScion]

You are a little off on your time line. Pappy could not have been at the 50th any of the WWII celebrations, since he passed away in January 11, 1988. I meant him in the late 1970s.

You're right. I was there in '87 and '88 as well. Old age settin' in, I suppose.

 

[vitanola]

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.

For those few who have not seen Baby Rose Marie in action, here's a Vitaphone short that she made at the age of five, in 1929, just about the time that she signed with the NBC.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHGlX6eA4-0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[GHT]

You know that you are getting old when, on the way to work, a sixth sense prompts you that something is wrong, you then catch sight of your foot, and, realise that you are still wearing your slippers.

 

[F. J.]

Let's see . . . suit and tie, briefcase, hat, overcoat, and HOUSE SHOES?!

You know that you are getting old when, on the way to work, a sixth sense prompts you that something is wrong, you then catch sight of your foot, and, realise that you are still wearing your slippers.

I've done the same thing, and I'm a young feller! It makes me wonder about how I'll be when I do get old and forgetful.
Now the first thing I put on in the morning are my shoes . . .

 

[Formeruser012523]

You know that you are getting old when, on the way to work, a sixth sense prompts you that something is wrong, you then catch sight of your foot, and, realise that you are still wearing your slippers.

Yep. Big, purple, fuzzy ones. Had to turn around halfway to work. At least I caught myself as I stepped out the door the 2nd time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I own several identical pairs of shoes -- identical except for color. Two pairs of brown, two pairs of black, one pair of beige, and one pair of white, all in the same style. On more than one occasion I've made it as far as work before someone pointed out to me that I was wearing a brown shoe and a black shoe, a black shoe and a tan shoe, or a tan shoe and a white shoe.

You know you're getting old when someone points this out to you -- and you just don't care.

 

[Gregg Axley]

I tend to ask those inquiring (socks in my case) "if two different color socks bother you, then you have a bigger problem than my sock matching one."
Now days I just buy black ones, plus I'm a bit more concerned about my appearance than most men, color coordinating even to the baseball cap.
I'm not overly concerned to the "Dandy" level of course, but I'm way above the 2 a.m. run to Walmart level.

 

[Stearmen]

For some reason, seeing the 40th anniversary of things, and realizing that was in the 70s! I am not sure why, but I am having a harder time with that then with the 50th anniversary of the 60s. Maybe, it is the fact that the 70s seem like only yesterday to me.

 

[Zombie_61]

For some reason, seeing the 40th anniversary of things, and realizing that was in the 70s! I am not sure why, but I am having a harder time with that then with the 50th anniversary of the 60s. Maybe, it is the fact that the 70s seem like only yesterday to me.

I occasionally have difficulty when someone mentions something associated with the early 90s or early 80s, and then has to remind me that was 20 or 30 years ago. But then, I also have trouble at times getting my mind around the fact that the turn of the century was nearly 14 years ago. :eeek:

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know you're getting old when somebody says "the turn of the century" and your first thought is about William McKinley.

 

[1mach1]

You know that you are getting old when, on the way to work, a sixth sense prompts you that something is wrong, you then catch sight of your foot, and, realise that you are still wearing your slippers.

I have not done that, but I accidentally wore one of my wife's polo shirts to work one day. I wondered why it was so tight, since I don't really wear slim fit, but was too tired to care at the time. I found out once I got to the office. At least it wasn't the hot pink one.

 

[Edward]

I realised at the beginning of this academic year that most of my undergraduate class (final year undergraduates who will have a bachelor's degree in July 2015) are exactly half my age. What particularly drove it home was teaching about the legal restrictions on the press viz-a-vis reporting court proceedings last week. I was discussing the Thomson and Venables case, and had a sudden realisation that, had he lived, little Jamie Bulger would have been older than these kids.

Now days I just buy black ones,

Yeah. Tried that. Twelve pairs of black socks. After a month, I had twenty-three grey socks, no two of which were exactly the same shade. Number twenty-four is still MIA, presumed victim of the Sock Monster. I recently started to wear odd socks as the norm, because I seem to be incapable of getting pairs out of a laundry cycle. [huh]

For some reason, seeing the 40th anniversary of things, and realizing that was in the 70s! I am not sure why, but I am having a harder time with that then with the 50th anniversary of the 60s. Maybe, it is the fact that the 70s seem like only yesterday to me.

Hits me with the 70s because I remember them (I turned six in 1980), but increasingly with the 90s as they are far enough back to be 'retro' now, and I'm seeing the revivals come around of things that were my undergraduate heyday. Nice to see the nineties stuff hold up better than the Eighties, for the most part; 99% of the eighties revival stuff I look at and clearly remember thinking what a bad idea it was the first time around.

 

[Formeruser012523]

 

[Harp]

I realised at the beginning of this academic year that most of my undergraduate class (final year undergraduates who will have a bachelor's degree in July 2015) are exactly half my age. What particularly drove it home was teaching about the legal restrictions on the press viz-a-vis reporting court proceedings last week. I was discussing the Thomson and Venables case....

The Bulger murder and Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs Woodward are etched in memory.