Not sure what it was called, but I can remember laying in bed at night listening to the radio mysteries. They were crime mystery stories played out over the radio. Loved those
The first LED-based digital watches Obligiatory Douglas Adams quote: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” Along that line, some books: Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Jonathan Livingston Seagull The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings
As I got older (10) I could stay out later, the funny thing is things I did as a kid would get kids arrested now.
When TVs (and HiFi / stereos) looked like a nice piece of furniture (and some TV models had screens that could be covered to totally hide the set).
Making collect calls. And when long distance generally cost you something (do you accept the charges?)
Two TV channels, which stopped broadcasting after midnight, until the next morning. No commercials between the TV programmes! And getting our first phone, when I was seven or so. Our phone number had four digits
Dodo The Kid From Outer Space Colonel Bleep Col. Bleep had his based on a mythical island located at 0 degrees longitude and 0 degrees latitude and was known as "Zero-Zero Island". A half century later, I work as a software developer for military planning and C2 systems and whenever anyone talks about a unit with no location as being initialized to (0,0), I can't help but refer to the place as Zero-Zero Island.
The earliest I can recall is 1959 and our TV had doors over the front of the set. I would open and close them just for amusement. Remember having just one phone in the house? No air conditioning too! Nobody had them, but rich folks. In the summer, my mother would tell us to play under the tree in the shade. How about when they banned cyclamates? They had it in kool aid.
I remember when Red Dye #2 got banned... suddenly noticed that a bunch of women were no longer red heads.
We never had air conditioning, but we lived in MN so it wasn't such a big deal. We had a big (25 acres or so) pond where we would play on inner tubes and build rafts and such. It was pretty skanky water, and we used to get leeches stuck to us every so often, but we didn't care. It was hot out. I remember my old man not wanting to spend money on propane in the winter though, and we would fire the wood stove in the living room so hot you would just about die from the heat in the front of the house, but I would wake up with my blankets frozen to the wall in my bedroom in the back.
