I remember that for a while there was actually a printed book that someone put together and sold in bookstores that showed emoticons and smilies and such, illustrating each one and explaining their meaning. Most, though, one could pretty well figure out in context anyway.
My first access to the internet was online through our state library, and then eventually I joined Compuserv. At some point I had a Prodigy account, and of course when AOL was stuffing everyone's mailboxes with CDs, finally succumbed to signing up with that, too. Online access was dialup at first, and it was an exciting day when cable finally came to my neighborhood -- such a difference! I promptly canceled the second landline phone line that I had since I no longer needed it for being online.
Getting back on-topic of this thread, I realize that I didn't describe how I spent my time pre-internet..... As a vintage citizen here, I was born in the mid-1940's, and grew up in the 1950's and spent the tumultuous 1960's graduating from high school, then going to college and following that up with another year or so in graduate school. I remember party lines on the telephone, boxes outside the front store for delivery of milk and cream, the fun of skimming the cream off the freshly-opened bottle of milk.....
When I was small, phones were big and black and had a dial. It was expensive to make long distance calls and so that was something done rarely, usually on someone's birthday or a holiday or to make plans for a trip to visit relatives. When I was in high school, the big thing was Princess phones, and I was thrilled when I was allowed to have one of my own. We spent time together with other people and when they were at a geographic distance, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles or other family members, we wrote letters. Lots of letters.....
As a child I spent time playing outdoors with my friends in the neighborhood after school and on weekends, and on rainy days we'd get together at someone's house and play cards or board games (Monopoly being a favorite). We played various games in the street (traffic wasn't heavy then, and most families had just one car) and/or we rode bikes (no helmets) to other places around the general area. Nobody worried much about what we were doing or where we were all day on Saturday or Sunday, but as was mentioned earlier in other posts, the rule was to be home before dark or in some situations be home by a certain time (usually dinnertime). In the summer we'd either be dropped off and picked up at the community swimming pool (the Aquacenter) or we'd ride our bikes there, as it was a bit too far to walk.
On my own, I read a lot and loved receiving books as gifts and also going to the library and coming home with a stack of fresh new material to devour. Along with books, most of us also read magazines, too. Girls moved from kids' magazines to comic books to Seventeen magazine and later, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Women often subscribed to and read Good Housekeeping each month, along with Life Magazine and Time or Newsweek. We listened to music on the record player, and watched television. In our household, our first television set arrived some time just prior to Queen Elizabeth's Coronation, a spectacular and elaborate ceremony which awed us. Later my parents were fascinated following the McCarthy Hearings, but as a child that didn't really interest me.
Yes, I actually watched the original broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners" and others as they were being shown for the first time! "The Mickey Mouse Club" debuted and for a while we kids watched that after school. Saturday nights my parents and I usually watched whatever was on, and during the weeknights if I didn't have a lot of homework, which I didn't until around seventh or eighth grade. When my grandparents came to visit we all sat in the living room and watched "The Lawrence Welk Show." In our house we didn't leave the TV on all the time; we watched something and then if there were nothing else that seemed appealing or interesting, we turned the set off and did something else.
In junior high school we kids took ballroom dancing lessons in preparation for the social life that was to come once we got into high school, and self-conscious pre-teen boys and girls dutifully followed the teacher's instructions as we learned how to negotiate the dance floor. We liked our own dancing, though, rather than the more formal ballroom style, and sock hops were the rage for a while. Also it soon became a ritual to rush home from school and watch "American Bandstand" and we soon chose our favorites and time after time watched them dance and tried to emulate them.
Occasionally, but rarely, most families would go out for dinner, usually on a special day such as someone's birthday. My parents celebrated their anniversary each year by going out for dinner, leaving me at home with a sitter until I was old enough to be by myself for a few hours. The whole fast-food phenomenon for us started with the arrival of a McDonald's (one of the first in the US) in our immediate area and later a White Castle in a nearby town, too. Even so, it was still a special treat, not a commonplace weekly activity. Ditto for pizza, which again was reserved for once-in-a-while events, being almost an event in and of itself.
People also had formal dinner parties, where everyone would dress up and the hosts would have a lovely table set with their best china, silver and crystal. When a young couple became engaged one of their first tasks was to decide on their favorite china, silver and crystal patterns so that these could be presented to them as wedding gifts.
There were also more casual gatherings in back yards with paper plates and finger foods, hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill, that kind of thing, too. People socialized in their neighborhoods, especially in the summertime. However, colder weather didn't stop us. We had a traditional Hallowe'en Block party each year, with various treats and activities set up in several neighbors' garages. The party would begin after we kids had done the usual trick-or-treat rounds first. Dunking for apples, drinking hot cider....
At Christmastime there was another tradition where everyone decorated their homes and in some cases this was quite elaborate. One of our neighbors was an artist and he painted his large front "picture window" each year with a Christmassy scene in the traditional colors. Others festooned their houses with lights and garlands, etc. Someone usually had a New Year's Eve party at their house, too, or people would go out with other couples to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. Sometimes a neighbor would invite everyone to stop by their house on New Year's Day for light hors d'oeuvres, sweet treats and beverages.
In school we celebrated not just Christmas but also Hanukkah, and so we all learned about each other's holiday traditions. At Eastertime, Passover and Easter were each acknowledged and celebrated, and we had "Christmas Vacation" and Easter Vacation" rather than "Winter Break" and "Spring Break."
It was in college that I experienced the shift as the volatile 60's really were taking hold, and attitudes changed, people changed and society emerged from the quiet 1950's into a whole new world.....
My first access to the internet was online through our state library, and then eventually I joined Compuserv. At some point I had a Prodigy account, and of course when AOL was stuffing everyone's mailboxes with CDs, finally succumbed to signing up with that, too. Online access was dialup at first, and it was an exciting day when cable finally came to my neighborhood -- such a difference! I promptly canceled the second landline phone line that I had since I no longer needed it for being online.
Getting back on-topic of this thread, I realize that I didn't describe how I spent my time pre-internet..... As a vintage citizen here, I was born in the mid-1940's, and grew up in the 1950's and spent the tumultuous 1960's graduating from high school, then going to college and following that up with another year or so in graduate school. I remember party lines on the telephone, boxes outside the front store for delivery of milk and cream, the fun of skimming the cream off the freshly-opened bottle of milk.....
When I was small, phones were big and black and had a dial. It was expensive to make long distance calls and so that was something done rarely, usually on someone's birthday or a holiday or to make plans for a trip to visit relatives. When I was in high school, the big thing was Princess phones, and I was thrilled when I was allowed to have one of my own. We spent time together with other people and when they were at a geographic distance, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles or other family members, we wrote letters. Lots of letters.....
As a child I spent time playing outdoors with my friends in the neighborhood after school and on weekends, and on rainy days we'd get together at someone's house and play cards or board games (Monopoly being a favorite). We played various games in the street (traffic wasn't heavy then, and most families had just one car) and/or we rode bikes (no helmets) to other places around the general area. Nobody worried much about what we were doing or where we were all day on Saturday or Sunday, but as was mentioned earlier in other posts, the rule was to be home before dark or in some situations be home by a certain time (usually dinnertime). In the summer we'd either be dropped off and picked up at the community swimming pool (the Aquacenter) or we'd ride our bikes there, as it was a bit too far to walk.
On my own, I read a lot and loved receiving books as gifts and also going to the library and coming home with a stack of fresh new material to devour. Along with books, most of us also read magazines, too. Girls moved from kids' magazines to comic books to Seventeen magazine and later, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Women often subscribed to and read Good Housekeeping each month, along with Life Magazine and Time or Newsweek. We listened to music on the record player, and watched television. In our household, our first television set arrived some time just prior to Queen Elizabeth's Coronation, a spectacular and elaborate ceremony which awed us. Later my parents were fascinated following the McCarthy Hearings, but as a child that didn't really interest me.
Yes, I actually watched the original broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners" and others as they were being shown for the first time! "The Mickey Mouse Club" debuted and for a while we kids watched that after school. Saturday nights my parents and I usually watched whatever was on, and during the weeknights if I didn't have a lot of homework, which I didn't until around seventh or eighth grade. When my grandparents came to visit we all sat in the living room and watched "The Lawrence Welk Show." In our house we didn't leave the TV on all the time; we watched something and then if there were nothing else that seemed appealing or interesting, we turned the set off and did something else.
In junior high school we kids took ballroom dancing lessons in preparation for the social life that was to come once we got into high school, and self-conscious pre-teen boys and girls dutifully followed the teacher's instructions as we learned how to negotiate the dance floor. We liked our own dancing, though, rather than the more formal ballroom style, and sock hops were the rage for a while. Also it soon became a ritual to rush home from school and watch "American Bandstand" and we soon chose our favorites and time after time watched them dance and tried to emulate them.
Occasionally, but rarely, most families would go out for dinner, usually on a special day such as someone's birthday. My parents celebrated their anniversary each year by going out for dinner, leaving me at home with a sitter until I was old enough to be by myself for a few hours. The whole fast-food phenomenon for us started with the arrival of a McDonald's (one of the first in the US) in our immediate area and later a White Castle in a nearby town, too. Even so, it was still a special treat, not a commonplace weekly activity. Ditto for pizza, which again was reserved for once-in-a-while events, being almost an event in and of itself.
People also had formal dinner parties, where everyone would dress up and the hosts would have a lovely table set with their best china, silver and crystal. When a young couple became engaged one of their first tasks was to decide on their favorite china, silver and crystal patterns so that these could be presented to them as wedding gifts.
There were also more casual gatherings in back yards with paper plates and finger foods, hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill, that kind of thing, too. People socialized in their neighborhoods, especially in the summertime. However, colder weather didn't stop us. We had a traditional Hallowe'en Block party each year, with various treats and activities set up in several neighbors' garages. The party would begin after we kids had done the usual trick-or-treat rounds first. Dunking for apples, drinking hot cider....
At Christmastime there was another tradition where everyone decorated their homes and in some cases this was quite elaborate. One of our neighbors was an artist and he painted his large front "picture window" each year with a Christmassy scene in the traditional colors. Others festooned their houses with lights and garlands, etc. Someone usually had a New Year's Eve party at their house, too, or people would go out with other couples to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. Sometimes a neighbor would invite everyone to stop by their house on New Year's Day for light hors d'oeuvres, sweet treats and beverages.
In school we celebrated not just Christmas but also Hanukkah, and so we all learned about each other's holiday traditions. At Eastertime, Passover and Easter were each acknowledged and celebrated, and we had "Christmas Vacation" and Easter Vacation" rather than "Winter Break" and "Spring Break."
It was in college that I experienced the shift as the volatile 60's really were taking hold, and attitudes changed, people changed and society emerged from the quiet 1950's into a whole new world.....
