80s Things You'd Never See Today: Nostalgic Throwbacks

Hey y'all, welcome to Past Time to 80s High, the cast that takes you back. We are gonna do another good one for you today where we are actually gonna take you back and do lots of things, you know, that we did, owned, said, just things back from the good old days that you know maybe you wouldn't see so much today, if you will. But as always, first I shall introduce the boys. Hello, brother.

Hey, AJ, how you doing today, ma'am?

Good, good, thank you. Dungo. What's happening? Hello, I soul. Kev. Hello, hello, and I am AJ. As always, we like to get started right out of the gate here at Pastime's at 80s high. But with that being said, Kevin, you always like to give the shout-outs to our fans and listeners out there.

Absolutely. So cool to see all these people joining us all over this globe. Um, today we've got folks in Iracana, Alberta, I think maybe a little north of us, uh, Belmont, North Carolina, and La Jubjana, Slovenia. Got me, something like that. And uh Greensboro PA as well. Well, welcome, friends. Glad to have you here.

Awesome. Yes, thank you all. We we can't appreciate that more. I can't wait to go back through and put all these new listeners into one skit.

And me boot. And then put the bitching in about the pronunciations we all say. Awesome.

My own Archie Bunker clip of mispronouncing.

Yeah, well, I you pronounce it like you see it, right?

Yeah, I try, but you know, it's hard when there's like 47 consonants and and one vowel to pronounce uh a place, you know. I mean, nothing against anybody's alphabet or any of that, but it just it's kind of kind of difficult growing up in the states to uh turn all those consonants into one not knowing which ones are silent and which ones are you know what what did you say to me?

I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish.

Yeah, you don't want any hawking on my sandwich.

No, I got the ha down pretty good from the Lebanese language. Yeah, all right. Well, so Mark, you're gonna get the honors today. All right.

Well, I'm a child of the 70s. I mean, I did turn, I was, let's see, I turned 15 or no, 16 in 1980, but these are all gonna be from Littleton, New Hampshire. And the first one is uh put some butter on it. And if you guys remember when you would burn yourself, your parents would put butter on your burn, and it made it worse, if I recall. And uh, I don't know if that's Donnie, that's never come back around. Am I right? No, how stupid we were to do that. But I mean, we're probably doing things today that are that we're gonna look back on.

But uh I said they used to put leeches on people, and they still do that. True.

I assume the butter would be more sanitary than what I was told, which was rub some dirt in the back. Rub dirt back, right?

You know what really helped me? One day of my first year in business, I was getting really tired. It was the end of the day, it was twilight hours, and I put my hand on the muffler of the walk behind I was using, and it was the most pain I've ever been in. I mean, oh my god. Why did you put your hand on the muffler? Because I leaned down on it. I used it for balance, and I guess what I've never done it again. So, but anyway, um I got home. I mean, I was in tears on the way home. And uh any anyway, um my uh Valerie, she called a friend of ours and he said, put a hand gauze on it, or hand, you know, like a wrap the cloth around your hand, and the next day there was hardly any pain at all.

So well, if you put some butter on it, then you could have fried an egg.

That's true. No, that's a good one.

So yeah, put some butter on it, you know, and uh well, I got a not another line for you, Mark, for the muffler that they used to say. Well, you won't do that again. Yeah.

Yeah, there was some show where a kid was like putting a butter knife, and the the mother's like, no, don't, don't, no. And the dad's like, no, let him do it.

Don't do that, sweetheart. It's dangerous. No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Well, go on. Yeah. But you're not gonna do that again now, are you? Right.

You know, he'll never do that again.

Yeah, that was Christopher Titus's show. Yeah, yeah, that was good. Stacey Keach. Awesome. Learn the big way. Yeah, your mom's like, oh my god, don't let him do that. And dad's like, let him learn.

Exactly.

Which is, I mean, let's face it, a better method. Yeah, unless you're swinging a chainsaw between your legs, right? Right.

Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna learn from it and really learn from it, and you're gonna be okay, then yeah. All right, let him learn from it.

Yeah. All right, so that's off to me. Number seven here. I'm going with a basic one. And this is where I was kind of I had texted you boys last night about how some of these could go into several tie-ins, which hopefully I don't ruin anyone's by saying them. If I do, I'll edit mine out. But I'm going back to payphones slash rotary phones, the things that we did with them through the ages, as far as first of all, you're hard pressed to see a sell uh payphone nowadays. Uh we still actually, where I work, there's a a plate on the wall where one existed for years. But just the fact that you know, being out at night and needing to ride home, you know, if you didn't have a friggin' dime, you'd have to pick the phone up, dial the operator, and make a collect call. Yep. And then as they're saying, will you accept a collect call from AJ? You would say, No, would you accept a collect call from you'd say, pick me up at funspot? And they could deny the call so that it didn't have to be paid for. And that's how you told your parents to come pick you up.

Uh operator. I'd like to make a collect call, please. First name, Bob. Last name is Dr. David. We Autobaby Eatsaboy.

Dr.

David Hello.

Click call from Mr. Bobby Autobaby Eatsaboy.

Sorry, wrong number. Who's that to? Bob. They had a baby. It's a boy.

Hello.

You know, the rotary phone. If you fuck the number up, you you gotta start all over. No backspaces. Um, the 900 numbers that you know, not just porn people, but they had a 900 number for everything on the friggin' planet. And then the other thing that I want to say about them is the phone numbers, just the memories on us as kids. I'm not gonna chant them off right now, but dongo 528-4395. You know, I can name, I can wrap off every one of my friends as a kid's phone number. 524-6254 was Guilford. You know, just it's amazing.

1360 was Norm Godboat.

Exactly. You know, we we had those that Rolodex in our friggin' head, or we used the phone book.

And just hit contacts now.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I don't know, but his phone number. I don't know my daughters. Remember Miss Cleo's number? No, no, I don't know.

Oh, you talking about 900 numbers then. Oh, yeah. Miss Cleo. I just I I don't even it's sad. I don't know how to get in touch with my daughters if my phone dies. That's heart-wrenching.

You know, well then you might want to study the number.

Yeah, you get the point, though. You I got your point. Payphones. You're not gonna see them around anymore. All right, Don.

I'm gonna look for them now, now that you mentioned it.

Yeah. Well, that's uh first double because my first number seven was corded wall phones. Yes, and it was the very same, a lot of the same talking points, but uh, you know, just the busy signal. So you knew that somebody was on the phone and you weren't interrupting them. You couldn't interrupt them because it at you know, in my childhood, there was no call waiting, there was no um what was it when you can you could hang it up real quick and switch calls kind of thing?

Call yeah, well that's call waiting, right?

Yeah, yeah, there was none of that. There was no caller ID, there was none of that. Um, think about it.

You just would you pick up a phone today if you didn't know who it was? You know what I mean?

It's like it's so insane that you never knew who was calling you. I mean, and they didn't have the near numbers of robocalls that we do now, but true. Um, but I also like the fact that like you know, you were tethered to it for one. That was kind of crazy. But um, every kid's nightmare was like, you know, someone calling and then your parents telling him, Oh, he's in the bathroom or something like that, you know. Sorry, Donnie's taking it in the phone.

We thought there were just girls in there. Sorry.

Oh, it's just us dudes. Yeah.

What are you doing here?

Yeah, we just taking a shit.

No, but I no. What I meant was what are you doing at the party?

Oh, it's on my house.

This is your party.

People who answer the phone probably when they're taking a dump nowadays. You'd never know the difference. Maybe an echo in the background or something. Um, you can be like, Are you in the bathroom? You know, but back then it would be like, Don't tell them I'm in the bathroom.

But God, I mean, nope, nobody has to go to the bathroom.

Don't let no girls never have to go. Another thing about phones, too, where if it rang and rang and rang and before answering machines, because you were rich if you had an answering machine. Yeah, you know, so you weren't home. And then you would, you know, whoever was if I was trying to call somebody and it rang, I would just be like, Oh, they're not home. I'm gonna move on and you know, get them next time. Uh, but now it's like if someone doesn't answer you or respond to you, you're pissed. You're like, I know they're home. I know, you know, like a text message that goes unread, or now you can see like, oh, they read my text message, but they didn't answer me. Why the fuck aren't they answering me? You know, so it pisses you off. But I mean, back then it was like, oh, can't get through, move on to the next person, or you know, especially when you pay the phone bill. Yeah, right, right.

Like your kids when I grew up in Littleton, we only had to hit the four numbers. I mean, if it was in in town, yeah, not even the four or four.

I had a party line in Massachusetts very early, very early. Remembering it was when I was very young, that it would be a different ring for the neighbor. Right. So you had to rent the phone. You rented the phone from like Ma Bell, you know?

Yeah, and if you called one town over, it was a toll call. So I yeah, I'm sorry. If you if I met somebody in the next town over, it's like, hey, great and meeting you, have a good life. I'm not allowed to make toll calls, right? Like my father would have shelled out 50 cents for me to call a girl in Dover. Like no fucking way. Yeah, right.

Yeah, and then how long would you talk? And that call added up and added up and added up. Yeah. And if you were a lucky household, your parents bought the extra long cord, right? So you could like stretch it down to the bedroom.

Or you just stretch the flup out of it.

Yeah. Nice.

All right, Kev. All right. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm gonna move away from payphones. Uh maybe we could, you know, get it all get it all over.

I thought that's what this podcast was about.

Yeah, it's a payphone podcast. Yeah, so uh no, I'm going right to the heart of the matter, and and I'm gonna go with movies. Whether it was the drive-in or just going to the theater, it it meant something then. It was a shared experience because like we've talked about before, there wasn't 87 different streaming channels that you could you went to school the next day and you all saw Goonies that weekend.

Go join your friends, you those uh I mean that was that was it because that was the movie that was out, you know?

Um so like I said, it was that shared experience, and it meant something to go to the movies. It's not like we get now where you sit down and it takes you 20 minutes to figure out which streaming service you're gonna look at, and then once you get to that narrowed down, then you got to figure out what you want to watch. Or my personal favorite, you go to watch the next episode of a series that you are watching, and nowhere does it have like you think I watched this the last three nights in a row. I watched episode one, two, and three. Netflix, do you think there's a chance that maybe I turn on the TV and I want to watch episode four? Maybe maybe you make put that right up front so I can continue, not bury it underneath fucking 300 movies that you know I don't want to see because I've never watched anything. Like you know what I mean? It's like you gotta sift through 400 romance movies to get to you know whatever you're watching. It's like why not just here bring it up first. You know this is what I'm watching, but let me have it.

Something you said, Kev, was um like watch we you saw the Goonies Friday night, and then Monday, that discussion, you know, like everyone saw the same effing thing, and you talked about it. Lines came out of it forever, you know.

Like, yeah, and we're in a movie theater. We still use them. You're watching the movie, you you watch the movie if you're at home and the movie kind of starts to lose your attention, or you just go to your phone, and you know, you're not gonna be into it as much. I mean, there's very few movies nowadays that will grab you to the point where you're like, Oh, I'm gonna put my phone down, you know. Like a lot of them are just background noise now. Exactly, garbage. Yeah.

I mean, when we were kids, I mean, the biggest thing was going to the matinees on Saturday, 75 cents. Nope. You know, just yeah, Swiss family robins and stuff like that. Godzilla vs. Megalon, as I've brought up, but that was a big deal. That was so much fun for everybody.

You know, it was it was a pastime. You know that 80s I'm a good one. I'm right on top of things. All right, Kev. You good to go on that? I didn't want to cut you off there. Yep.

All right, brother. What you got? Okay, I'm going with uh playing board games in the back of a station wagon.

Two in one.

Yeah. I mean, because we would uh, you know, go on trips with like the Silvers or and us and you know, we'd we'd be bored, we'd be just sitting in the in the back, way in the back, no seats, of course, and we'd play board games, stuff like that, and uh it's nothing you'd see today, that's for damn sure. Now kids just sit on with their 22 seat belts and they watch movies.

Right, you get pulled over ticketed or whatever. Yeah.

You wouldn't even freaking uh they don't even see what's in you know, you go by some beautiful sights and everything, they wouldn't even notice they're watching a friggin' movie. But uh yeah, just I mean, that was just really kind of cool. It was kind of you know, you remember who you're with and everything, and back then station wagons were really big. The 70s of uh the cars were huge back then.

Hi, this is my new Chevy wagon with flipped down seats. The 74 Caprice Estate. And this, well, she's my mother. The divided second seat folds right down, and when you pull a lever, the third seat back flops over. And Chevrolet made it so you can operate all the seats from the same door. And this is the gliderway tailgate we ordered. You just turn the key, ta-da, it opens.

The 74 Caprice Estate Wagon from Chevrolet.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, and paneled like a 17-foot trunk, you know, and that ties into so many different things, Mark, that I won't get into, but if you think about that, like that one activity, just you know, no seat belts, yeah, board games, no cell phones, you know, like you're hanging out.

Right, yeah, god forbid. I mean I mean, if you don't know what it's you what you got till it's gone. Now, if I don't have my cell phone, I I it's like losing your wallet. You know? Or worse. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. How things change, and I not necessarily for the better, you know. So but that's what I had for this pick, and uh I got a million of them. I got a million of them.

Alright. So to me. And I'm going to an obvious again. Most of mine are gonna be pretty obvious, but I started out by calling it BMX bikes. But that's just because that's what I rode, and most of the kids my age, that's what they rode back in the day. But you didn't wear a friggin' helmet, you took the pads off it, or you were a friggin' pencil net geek, you know, um, and you went miles and miles and miles from home. Just, you know, explored the cities. And I'm not gonna go too in detail with this because I feel like this could, you know, tie into a lot of our picks. You rode your bikes everywhere, you weren't stuck, you know, and no one gave a rat's ass where you were. You just you went and did your thing all friggin' day, and it was transport. Like, I can't tell you, like, I mean, now you see like the occasional young adult or grown-up on their fucking electric bike, oh yeah, you know, to get to work because they get a DW or something. But you know, I can't tell you the last time I saw like six kids riding down the road on their freak on the highway, you know, you know, or a main road on their fucking bike. And boy do I miss that.

So I I was at uh Dollar General earlier today to get some um 16 ounce cans of stuff. Anyway, uh when I was there, there was a bunch of kids on bikes, but they weren't you know, they were electric bikes, so they're these lazy ass kids.

Yeah. Unbelievable. But they're kind of cool.

Pretty easy to decipher who's biking for exercise. Yeah, and and who got a D week. Exactly. Even before the E-bikes. If they're wearing the Spandex shorts, probably not a D week. Probably biking. Yeah, if they got a 30 pack on the handlebar. You gotta be careful and not get a B wee. Yeah, right. Oh shit.

Yeah, and uh you gotta wonder that I'm surprised they're allowed to ride.

They can go like fucking 40 miles an hour now. How can they get away with that? You couldn't drive a moped when you got a DWE back in the day. Right.

You know, why can you ride one of these? Yeah, and and it's like if you're going that fast, you should be following the rules of the road, but they're they're like on sidewalks and you know, yeah, yeah, it should be on the road.

And I don't I don't I I don't say much because I'm not one for giving up freedoms, but I hate cyclists on the road. It just it's not because it's not safe, right? Yes, is it legal for you to get your 10 speed or 18 speed out there on the highway? Sure, it's it's not the highway, but you know, a 50 mile an hour road. But you gotta think about it.

Yeah.

When the tractor trailer goes by and you get sucked under the tires, how good are you feeling about yeah, it's my right to bicycle out here? It's it's it scares the hell out of me, is is what it does.

Yeah.

Because I'm afraid that I'm gonna have to make a choice between killing myself for somebody in oncoming traffic and killing you. Either way, I'm not gonna feel good about it, but why you're putting me in that position?

Well, back then the speed limit was a lot slower too. So you didn't have to worry as much when you were saw the nine kids on their buttons.

Yeah, well, right now the uh a lot of roads down here anyway, the shoulder's about eight inches, you know. Exactly. Yeah, so you always have to go into, especially going around a friggin' corner, a curve, you know. It gets pretty scary. It gets a little hairy when you're going around and don't know what's coming on. Should I wait?

Even people friggin' walking, you feel that way.

Yeah, yeah, just common sense. That's all. That's it's so uncommon these days. Uncommon sense. Uncommon sense.

All right, Dongo. All right, so this one's gonna be a little strange, maybe, but it's like I like maps. I like maps, and I miss maps.

Hey, Mike found a map! Yeah, look, look. That says 1632. Is that a year something? No, it's your top score on four. Yes, it's a year, chunk. Look, it's a map of our postline.

What's all that Spanish junk right there?

Uh no, mouth, mouth. You said you could translate. Translate right here. Yeah, translate it. Yeah intrusive beware.

The old Rand McNally. I catch your Halloween costume.

Yeah. I traverse the entire country using a Rand McNally atlas, going from state to state, flipping the page, and it's you know, looking at it like, oh, that looks like that would be the fastest way, as of crow flight, blah, blah, blah, you know, and figuring out the right routes, not knowing what was what. And I got there, you know, and I I enjoy that. I can't stand when you look up something on a cell phone and it just shows you the little screen and it shows the little pinpoint, but you can't get any perspective because it like say you're looking for like something in Massachusetts or Boston, and it will just show you like downtown Boston, but you can't see anything around. Exactly like the one square mile. It's like I need to see the 50 square mile map, you know, so I can see the the where I am in relation to where I'm going and all that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of that's lost because now people just plug in GPS, oh I know it'll take you there, and you know, but I like the the looking at something and I want to go there and yes plot a route to it, yeah.

But I think more importantly to your point, Dongo, is that back then we didn't have that luxury, we figured it out, right? Right. Meaning either with a paper map or just sense of friggin' direction. Yeah, yeah. We knew where we were going, we knew it was gonna take us hours to pedal there, but we did it. We found our way home, you know.

Yeah, well, I mean, look look at this generation, you know. Put a put a Ran McNally in a in a five-speed car, and they'll never get anywhere. You know what I mean? That's an anti-theft device with the with the stick shift. Yeah, and then they won't be able to navigate. I mean, I remember not even having a Ran McNally. I mean, I did at one point, but not having it with me, and just being able, my dad made me find the way home just by highway signs. Right. So figuring out north and south and east and west and routes and all that. Yeah, and the sad part is I can't do that anymore because I punch it into the telephone.

Yeah, and it you could do it though, if it boils down. If I had to, yeah, come back and you still have that.

But it's like when when you know when when the sunflare hits and we lose all that, it's like you're gonna be like, oh boy, I I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

Don't throw out your map, okay?

Well, they suggest if you have a go bag to throw in a Rand McCallie and that bad boy. Damn right. So when the GPS goes down when we have nothing.

Again, yeah. Uh it's gonna happen to people. Yep. Right. All right, Kev.

All right. Well, you know, this was all about music and taking it with you because the world changed when you could slap a cassette in a Walkman and put those headphones on, crank up your tunes, and look at your buddy. Am I talking too loud? What? No, no, I got can you Yeah, I'm oh okay, yep. No, I mean there was a lot of that where you you you couldn't hear yourself and whatever, but it was great because you had a private, portable music experience.

Sony Walkman, you really feel the music with the Sony Walkman.

The Sony Walkman is a tiny stereo cassette player with truly incredible sound. Put on a walkman and see the world in a whole new light. The Walkman from Sony, the one and only.

Because prior to that, what did we have? We all had the the the rack system with I mean, mine was a Fisher and it had 15-inch subwoofers. You weren't taking it with you. You weren't taking that with you on your bicycle. You weren't going nowhere with that. Well, I took it to a few parties, but that's a different story. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you could just go out in the world with with your tunes, and that was a game changer.

Incredible.

I remember listening to the Walkman for the first time and being like, Whoa, this is your Def Leopard tape, Donnie. It was Molly Crew. Oh, I thought it was Def Leopard. Um it was uh shout out the devil, yes, yeah, and it was a Walkman, and I put it on. I was like, Whoa, that's so amazing!

It's so crystal clear, and you know, yeah, the stereo effect when you're yeah and a lot easier to walk with it a than a boom box up on your shoulder, right?

Right, or ghetto blaster as well, yeah, that they were called. Um nice. Um, I'll have to go to an Audible next when I get to me then, Kev. But the remember the orange foam you know headphones. And then do you remember when Sony came out with the yellow one that was waterproof? Yes, I go ahead and put that friggin' thing underwater. Tell me how good it works.

I did eventually buy the stupid one ever, which was the disc man. Oh, I had that. Yes, let's have a spinning disc portal.

Right. And then you had the cassette thing that you could use your car so the disc would go into the cassette.

Right, right, yeah, the adapter.

But it would skip like every bump. Yeah.

If you sneezed. The cassette cord. The car didn't have to be running. You just sneeze and the CD would skip. Exactly.

Awesome. All right, Mark.

Okay, well, I'm gonna, you know, this is gonna be a little darker now, unfortunately, because as we know, I grew up in uh Littleton, New Hampshire, which was you know, it was a rough town, especially Apthorpe. Okay, no more gang wars between the battle. Okay, all right. I'll joking aside, we used to uh we'd get into neighborhood fights, you know, they were almost like uh they they they would just I mean, I don't know how to explain it, but it was like the Hatfields and the McCoys, but it would just be between uh Pete Belmore was always on one of the Presley side, and I was always on one of the Presley side. And uh, you know, um it would either be Fred and I or Kevin and I. And uh it it it would go on for days, days and days and days, and our parents just let us settle the differences. They you know, hey, the kids. That's why you don't worry. You know, they weren't and you know, it was I I I remember one time I'm like, hey Fred, I I want to come over to your side. Okay. And there was another time me and Fred were in elementary school and at Lakeway, and he would be like we'd be in line and he would just do little things, you know, like grab my arm or whatever, and we wouldn't speak. And I don't know if other people got involved or not. I don't quite remember, but my biggest memory is um I think that the whole um the whole battle ended at the Presley's house on Hadley Street, and it was Kevin and Fred right out in the driveway, just fighting with Hot Wheel tracks, whipping each other in the face. It was unbelievable. But uh the orange hot wheel tracks. Yes, yes, and nobody got involved back then. I mean, they let them do what they gotta do. Yeah, I'll tell you what was that, Fred Sr. Um, that's just Kevin whipping Freddie in the face with a hot wheel track.

I mean it's got a smaller.

Yeah, I just I just don't think that would happen today. I don't believe so anyway. The parents would get involved in a you know, in a half a second.

Yeah, I think just an attorney. Yeah, to make it relatable to back then, it's just exactly you worked your differences out with your friends slash enemies or whoever it was, you know. It was I mean it ha I think that happened to all of us throughout the 70s and 80s. It was, I mean, the fist fights were left and right. Afterwards, you shook hands and all was good. All right. This is one that most people nowadays I'm sure have never heard of. But let's just go back about what are we now? Five years out of COVID? Okay. Well, now let's go back to the 70s and 80s, throw a chicken pock party.

Hey, Homer, why the sour puss? Did you chug a lug a skunky snapple? I don't know, maybe. Plus my wife won't let me inside because the baby's got chicken pox. Really? Do you mind if I bring my boys over so she can infect Rod and Todd? Why would you do that? Are you a bad parent? You see, Rod and Todd can only get the chicken pox once, and uh childhood's the safest time. So you want Maggie to infect your kids? You betcha. In fact, some parents have been known to hold pox parties, so other kids in the neighborhood can get the disease when they please.

Chicken pox party. Like Oh, chicken pox, yes, yes, no, it it was a thing. It was an absolute thing, and just going a little off the rails here, but you know, shit that happened back then that you won't see now, you know. No one messed up for these parties, people, because the whole friggin' point was to get all the kids together in a neighborhood and get them all sick at once so they could get it out of their system, build the immune system, and be good to go for the rest of their lives, right? You know, and just to think about that and watch what happened five years ago is just astronomical to me. And I actually remember them as a kid, and it took a couple reminders to me. Um, you know, like a year or two ago, it's it was a thing, you know what? Probably the better way to go about shit like that, in my opinion.

So I I think there was a I think there was a Brady Bunch episode where they had a measles party, and yeah, you've got the counter on the news. Oh, there's 30 cases of measles in Texas or something like that. And it's like, okay, are we gonna keep track of sniffles too?

Exactly. I know.

Well, I have two things to say on this. Uh, first of all, AJ, I thought you were about to you were gonna say chicken pot pie parties. I'm like, okay, yeah, I remember that. We just got the Mortons and the Swansons together, you know. And the other thing, what's gonna happen? Do you think we'll go through that again when turkey pox comes around? That's gonna be a lot worse. Turkeys are a lot bigger, and uh, you know, no, we'll all be wearing masks and uh petrified and monkey pox.

Yeah, there was monkey pox was right after COVID, and people were like, eh, screw it, whatever. It went off for this bullshit. And they changed it to Mpox, and then again, people are like, whatever. Who cares? Right?

Yeah, we're done with this.

Yeah, we're done with being scared, you know, scared straight kind of thing.

What a feel like Fauci's first single, but not really hot on his follow-up hit.

Yeah, basically, exactly, yeah, yeah. Takes for uh what's the line, uh Cav I'm thinking of is uh you have your whole life to write your first record. Yeah, right. Yeah, he had his whole life to have his first record democracy, you know. Exactly. All right, Dongo.

All right, so uh mine is gonna be just gathering in the woods, aka pit parties, we used to call them. Yes, um, you know, there was Lafayette Street in Laconia, there's the place in Meredith, and you guys would have to help me out. I think it's like near Plymouth Street, yes, in Highland Street, is am I correct there?

Uh well off of Plymouth Street, um, and maybe Janice Hill, I think. Yeah, the two. I do remember you.

The ghetto. Yeah, yeah. Getting the getting the fire going and just sitting, you know, sometimes we'd haul a keg out there, uh, like in Laconia or whatever, which is like you know, a feat now akin to like building the pyramids. It's like carrying a half barrel out into the woods.

You know what I mean?

And uh it would always be on either on i you were lucky if it was on ice, if it wasn't, then it was you know pretty warm and foamy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, foam was terrible, right? But it man, it went down smooth, and we'd just hang out in the woods and sit around and shoot the shit. And I mean, now people would be bored stiff, they'd be on their phones, they wouldn't want to be out in the woods, you know, that kind of stuff. Uh so yeah, I miss the pit party days just being outside.

And how about those slides in the pits? Just sliding down them. Oh yeah, so much fun. I have more to say about that, but I'm gonna hold my tongue for a bit. Anyway, nice Don. Okay, Kev.

All right, so we did the personal the walk man, and now the rude and impose your music on everybody else, as you said, ghetto blaster or boombox.

Everything else, but the cool thing about the boom box was it was it could also be your home stereo.

You know what I mean? It was it was allegedly portable. The ones we had weren't really because they were like 85 pounds, they you know, but they did such a good job at like making the speakers look like impressive, even though they were the cheapest thing that they could find, but they had all the effects on them, and you had all the view meters and and everything. I mean, they just packed a lot of stuff into those things, but it was really such a rude thing.

Uh that you know, you just like now you yell at people when they drive by, they must have really heared it.

You know, 2,000 feet want to hear the same thing you're listening to. I mean, it's it's it's pretty presumptuous, but I drive down to Hampton or something.

The speakers came off. Yes, yeah, detachable speakers. Put the handle in a certain orientation, the speakers would come off, and you can yeah, but it was like eight inches more thick.

Right, it was wide, yeah.

Versus the ones that were like tall and you know, typically like the breakdance area table.

Yeah, but that was my truck radio for a while. I'm sorry, AJ. Up when my S10 that I had, the death trap there, yeah. Uh the radio broke, so I would drive up and down with a friggin' uh my my little boom box and put on tapes and whatever.

That took eight double D batter or D batteries, yeah, and it would last an hour. But adding an extra five pounds to it, yeah. But that was also, like you said, Kev, the home stereo, because especially when you could dub tapes when they put the two tape decks in. Yes, but yeah, you also had the radio tuner, which I'll leave alone.

But anyway, it might happen. Yeah, that's I forgot about the the double cassette, and if you had the really advanced one, you could like do the the high speed dubbing. And do a 60-minute cassette tape, you could copy it in 30 minutes. Exactly half time.

Yeah. Awesome.

All right, Mark, it's to you. Okay, I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember these, but uh I would go down to Ruggles supermarket, uh little supermarket right on the same block in Littleton, and every time you would uh buy something, I mean you know the change would come out in that little tube or whatever. But you got SH green stamps. And uh SH green stamps, what you would do is you would collect them and they would have a a green stamp store down in uh in on Main Street in Littleton, and you know, you go down there and you'd see how many green stamps you needed, and I think a lot of people remember that. And um you don't see that kind of stuff anymore.

It was kind of like the ticket counter at fun spot if you think about it, but basically you have to go like out of your way to go down and see what prize you could get for X amount of stamps, or you don't give us money too once in a while, like you get a quarter for like 18 dozen stamps.

I I know, and we I mean, even the last time I went up there with Alla and Fiona, Fiona was still in uh Nicole's body at that time, but uh you know, you've all these tickets, and you end up with like a three-dollar item, but that's not how SH green stamps work, mind you.

I'm getting a lot of great ideas. That's why SH calls it the idea book. When do you see what I'm getting, Jack? You mean I can get all these things with SH green stamps?

Housewares, clocks, radios, board stuff, linens. They really do have everything. Well, what do you think? A cuisine art for Jack? He's a great chef.

Here's to SH green stamps, and here's to the stores that give them.

SNH green stamps, they make your money do more.

You know, you'd go down, you get a toaster oven or whatever. Yeah, and uh, so yeah, it was kind of cool. They were awesome.

I can still kind of picture it, the stamp, actually. All right, here's another uh one that is not an uplifting one, but just a thing, and it's another one that I kind of tied into a few different areas, and it was smoking sections. Like, first of all, I think Donnie, our last year in high school, which was 90, was it two years prior to that where they axed the smoking area?

I think so. I can't remember the time frame, but but then we migrated into the bathroom. When you went into the bathroom, you had to be like cool. Be like cool, and nobody would in, you know, if you didn't say cool, it was like oh yeah, you could punch someone in the face if they didn't say it. Because you just went on a cool cigarette. If you smoke a cigarette in you know a room, you would smoke. Like that had to reach out.

You can't stand it forever.

They had to know that was going on, you know. Oh, sure.

Our bathroom hallways were probably like 25 feet long, and it was all cinder block, and you always had to have a wooden pass to go to the bathroom. And so you had to scrape your pass to let people know that you were safe because you would get your ass kicked if you walked around the corner and everybody was ditching their cigarettes into the toilet. Yeah, it wasn't a good day for you. I had a couple times where I got my buddy and I got sent to the office. So when you get sent to the office, you didn't have a wooden pass. So we got in trouble. I think it was a cooking class or something like that. And we decided to stop by the bathroom and smoke a butt on the way to the principal's office. Makes sense, right? Of course. So we had the paper passes and we're like scraping those on the wall, going, it's you know what I mean? Because we didn't want to piss anybody off, make them throw at their butts. So we get in there, there's nobody in there. We're about halfway through smoking our cigarettes, and we had a vice principal, um, Mr. Was it Wright? I think it was right. Um had he was like, this was his mission in life to bust people for smoking. He was like taking his job way too serious back in 1986.

And he probably smoked in his office. He probably did.

He was, I just remember there was there was, and I actually think it's my son's girlfriend's uncle. I think it was him. So the guy had a receding hairline, and he used to, when he saw him, he used to sing, I see a forehead arising instead of I see a bad moon rising. So anyway, he comes into the bathroom and Tony and I are standing there smoking our butts, and he's like, That's it, down to my office. All right, so we throw our butts out, we're walking down the hall. He goes, Aren't you two in the same class? How are you both in the bathroom at the same time? And then we pull out the little paper pads, like, actually, we were on our way to see you.

Just a quick pit stop first.

He was super impressed.

In my yearbook, my high school yearbook, there's a picture of me smoking in the bathroom. Yeah, exactly. It's beautiful.

Yeah, period. It's a thing of beauty, but it was airplanes too. Like, you know, as a matter of fact, I'm sure because some of the planes are still so old that not long ago the ashtrays are still in the armrests. Right, right. You know, yeah. Any restaurant, anywhere, it it was just that's why the smell wasn't so potent back then, just because everyone smelled like a fucking cigarette, they didn't know it.

Yeah, what a what a ludicrous concept that on a plane you're in a big metal tube in the sky, but you can smoke here, but you can't smoke here. The pilot knows the smoke know that it can't go past this line. I mean, it's like it should have been smoking and less smoking.

I'll be brief on something that I want to say about this. Uh just what is ironic is back in the, you know, you go back into the 60s, 50s, whatever, it seemed like the more affluent were the ones who smoked. And now, even with cigarettes being in some places 11 bucks a pack, it's the you know, the uh less affluent are smoking. Right, yeah.

Yeah, that you were sophisticated back then.

Oh yeah, and now it's I mean, the money that you would save if you quit, and that probably includes chewing too, I would guess. Yes, sir. You know, so I mean it's a three hundred dollars. That's a car payment. Oh no. I I mean, even one pack a day.

Yeah, it's fucking um it's a mortgage. Yeah, you might not brilliant, but they'll make you pick up a house on the lake.

Right? Not gonna do that, Marge.

I think I was thinking you could cut back on your beer, Homer.

Not gonna do that, Marge. And now, a short commercial break.

Welcome to Halftime at 80shigh. Want to just get a little info out there for you folks, including our website, which is pasttimes at 80shigh.com, and that is 80s for 80s, past times at 80shigh.com. Shoot us an email at pta80h at gmail.com, pta80H at gmail.com. Love the feedback you've been sending. We can't appreciate it more. Check us out on all the socials, including our new Facebook, which is past times at 80s high. And then for interaction, past timers at 80s high. Find us on all the major podcast platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And please remember that those five star reviews and the comments go a long way helping us move up that chain. So thank you so much. We couldn't appreciate it more. And now back to the scheduled broadcast. All right, Dongo, that's number four to you.

All right, so this one is um kind of a two two fur, sort of. It's um one paying face value for a ticket to a show, and the second is being able to wait in line or wait at the you know, to call in at you know, tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Or, you know, I'm either waiting outside on the parking lot, you know, of the ticket master or or the box office or wherever you were going to buy your tickets through. Sears. Or tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. At 9 a.m. You start dialing, beep, beep, beep, hang up, dial again, beep, beep, beep, hang up, dial again. Finally, you get through, and you had a chance to get decent tickets. I mean, they probably held like the front rows and all that for the for the scalper or whatever. VIP. You at least could get in line, you know, get in line, get on the phone, and buy a concert ticket, face value price for a show. And now it's like you don't even even consider doing that. Uh you have to go through, you know, there's somehow they just legalize scalping.

You know, it's incredible. That's exactly what they do. The biggest companies out there have legalized it. Ticketmaster and live nation, same company. It's legal through them. It's it's it's bullshit, you know.

Like for the football team or whatever, though, if the upside of that on Ticketmaster is if the team sucks, you're gonna pay well below face value. In fact, you could you could get tickets to a Red Sox game for probably you know, 25% of the face value. Huh. Right.

Interesting. Yeah. But keep going, but that was that was it. Yeah. Just waiting in line to buy show, you know, tickets to a show. Yeah.

And it you had you had some skin in the game, you know, kind of skin in the game, and nowadays it's still so fucking stupid how people will buy them right out of the gate. Like, like, I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's Iron Maiden who sells out every show once they're there. If you wait till the day of the concert, you are gonna pay $300 less than the jackass sitting next to you paid. Right. And yet people are going on and spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for these artists. Yeah. And it's it's just the pricing in in itself is incredible.

Because I mean you're taking a risk waiting for that day of the show, but if you're willing to do that, then it's not a big deal. Yeah, you can get in there to this day.

I have still not gotten a ticket on the day of the show. Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't going to see Taylor Swift. You know what I mean?

But right. Yeah. And we're fortunate to have a venue in our backyard, so we're not putting a lot of travel time into it. But if you were going down to Foxboro or something to a stadium show, yeah. And you know, you're gonna get in. You're gonna get in if you want ACDC day of at Foxboro.

You could get it like a $50 seat and sit next to people paying $350, $400, $500. It's outrageous.

Yeah, don't forget back then you could go to the mall and see Damone.

What can I do for you, gentlemen?

You're the guy with the Van Halen tickets. How much you want for something in the first 10 months?

$20 a piece.

These tickets are only $12.50.

Scalper. Did you call me a scalper? Listen, gentlemen, I perform a service here, and the service costs money.

Okay. We'll take them.

Let me say $25.

20 exactly.

Detour right outside, right outside the venue. I would just walk around until the guy's price came down. I just I'd miss the opening act a lot, but I would get in at half the price from that dude, because what's he gonna do? Use those tickets to you know, wipe himself because they're junk as soon as that show starts.

So I remember buying Patriots tickets in I think it was Molten Borough.

It was a store that sold Patriots tickets. Yes, they were all over the place. Sears had the little window, little convenience stores, front row ticket agency. Like even then, it was like a hundred bucks for front row. But anyway. I used to love those radio ads, man. Awesome.

Almost as good as the uh uh funny cars under the stars, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, live at the Worcester Centrum.

Cheers.

The greatest ads, man, on the radio. Awesome. All right, Kev.

All right. Well, I gotta tell you, the bicycle was it was everything at that age. When we were that age, that you could. I mean, I had a parking lot across the street from my house because it was the elementary school that I went to. And literally get up in the morning and ride that bicycle or have it with me until the sunset, and pedal that thing all day long. And it was it was your transportation, it was your freedom, it was your seat, because you know you'd stop and you'd just be sitting on your bike and you'd all be talking. It was your GPS because that's how you found your friends. Yep. Yep. You're bike in through the neighborhood, and there's five, you know, mongooses laying on the lawn, you know where everybody is, and you just walk into the house and party's on. I mean, it was it was more than just a bicycle, and it's like, yeah, kids still ride them today, but not the way that we did. No, and they don't have the meaning that that they had, I don't think. To us, again, like I said, there was so much to it. I remember the first time. Yeah, the first time, like the street that I lived on was over five miles long, and I was that was I had a portion of that, or actually could do the whole thing when I was delivering papers, but beyond that, I wasn't allowed to do until a certain age, and I just I still have this vision in my mind of getting about a mile down the second road, the first time I was allowed to on a 10-speed and just feeling like freedom like nobody was within earshot. There wasn't, you know what I mean? No parents around, no older siblings, nothing. It was just me, and I was out in the world, and I was on my bicycle, and it was just just an amazing feeling. Absolutely.

You were a king, you know, just unfreamable.

That's how we got around, man.

So well put, too. Like it it was literally the phone of that time, you know. Like, people can't be without their phone now. I couldn't have been without my fucking bike then. So just incredible, awesome. Like the meaning of that bike. I that's something that perfectly takes me back. And you too, obviously, all of us, but just yeah. I miss that shit. All right, brother Mark. It's to you. All right, this is gonna be you. Okay, that's Mark snapping a belt in case you couldn't hear anything.

I I don't know if that came through, but uh oh my god, and they meant it. They meant it. Uh yeah, if you were acting up, you weren't, you know, you're mouthing off or whatever, and uh they had the belt. And you know, this would be corporal punishment now. You couldn't do it, but uh yeah. And even Mum would do that, and she whacked us a few times when we absolutely 100% deserved it. So that is more, I mean, of a 70s, 80s thing, I would presume. I mean, it probably I don't know.

Oh, it definitely sure was, and prior, let's not forget about prior to the 70s and 80s, because boy, they really beat the kids back in the day. But disciplinary action, brother, absolutely, and it wasn't just our parents, it was our teachers. It was most of you know, if you're not if your neighbor's dad beat you, your dad would say, Well, what'd you do? Exactly.

You're not allowed to beat your own kids back then, other people beat your kids, exactly.

But such a good one, man, because that that was also on my list, but just it's so true. Think about it.

Yeah, you that was on your list. I mean, were you gonna do the prop too?

Or I I had the snap for the belt because mom would say, You're gonna get one of these. You're gonna get one of these. But yes, it's on there. It's getting the belt. And that's what it says on my board. But and that fucking thing hurt, man. Oh, see, it didn't hurt me. I used to put my head in the pillow and they'd hit me and think I was crying, but I'd laugh.

Yeah, well, no, I'd well maybe they were, you know, that this is the baby. No, I got whacked.

Right. You're the you're the first, so so just to say a quick story here, because this just talking about things that couldn't happen now. I was in fourth grade, um, I don't know what year that puts us in, like 78, whatever. And Mr. Fleck was his name, and I swore in his class because I was upset, and he smacked me in the mouth and gave me a bloody lip. Oh my god. Yeah, nice, give him a raise. Brought me to the the office, right? And at that point, it was Mr. Brunell, God love him. He was an amazing principal, and Mum came down and said to Mr. Brunell and Mr. Fleck, you never lay a hand on my son. The only reason you still have a job, and I'm not gonna request you be fired, is that I know he asked for it. You know, and that was that, you know. Oh my god, and I think there's some lines that should go with that, brother. Like you said, like there'll be two hits, you know, me hitting you, you hitting the floor, you hitting the floor, or I'll give you something to cry about. Yep, you know, that was discipline back then, and dare I say this out loud on our podcast, boys. Sometimes I wish it remained. Blah blah blah. All right, great pick, brother. That's to me. This one, it's gonna ride into some other things, but I'm gonna, I guess the way I'll word this is back then age 11 is now age 19, and what I mean by that was just like overnight weekends, you know, I'm in seventh, eighth grade, and Friday after school, I tell mom, you know, I am going to the movies, okay? And then I come home Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon at 11 years old, 12 years old, and one story dungo, you weren't here with us at this one, I don't think, but I'll never forget it as long as I live, because I'm pretty sure it's when we met the prices for the first time and all those Meredith girls. But we left the movies, met those girls like outside the theater for the first time. Their older sister at the time, I mean, still their older sister, Heather, picked us all up in a suburban and brought us out Meredith Center, and we crashed at this girl's house overnight, you know, all pairing up with young girls at whatever, eighth grade, whatever it was exactly, showed up home like two days later, and there was no where you been, you know, just oh, assume you had a good weekend with your friends, and that was that. And F and A, man, you would never see that crap nowadays. No, just I mean, my kids missing for eight minutes, and I'm worried if they didn't reply to me. And I mean, it's a different world. I understand that, yeah, which really sucks for these kids now because fuck was that fun? And that's all I'll say about it.

You sure she wasn't crying, tears of misery that you came back? David and I were like What do you mean crying?

She was didn't say a word when I got home. I understand.

Like, we had such a great weekend, and there he is, you know.

Anyway, it was awesome. And that's something I really miss about back then. And I guess what I was saying is the kids nowadays, when I started the the pick with 11 opposed to 19, is even like you know, older teenagers nowadays are not doing or able to do what we could do then, you know, and it's very unfortunate. Okay, now do you, Dongo? Hey, all right.

So this one's uh a little weird. I might have to uh ex tie it up somehow, but it's um family shows. So now with streaming, it's it's kind of hard to find the the Little House in the Prairie or the Waltons or those network family shows that you could sit down and watch and enjoy with the entire family. Like I can watch shows with my daughter, my three-year-old daughter, that are gonna be miserable for me to watch because they're like cartoons and you know they're not fun for me. Sometimes some of the Disney stuff is okay to watch, but I mean but like Little House in the Prairie, you could watch that show from age three to age eighty, and and it was something for everyone, you know what I mean?

Ow! There's a rock right there! There's a huge rock right there, and it's covered up by grass, and there's no way you can see it, and I got lucky, but someone else can hurt themselves, and and and a small cut is is a is a death sentence in these times. So let's just, you know, let's let's let's get these rocks out of here.

It's so hard to find something for everyone now because any show that is cool for adults has got an F-bomb every other word, and I'm not like a pearl clutcher, you know. I don't mind language when I'm watching a an adult appropriate show, but sometimes it's like landman, there's an F-bomb every other word, it's ridiculous, you know what I mean? Does it like the writers lost that ability to write dialogue without throwing F-bombs in there? And I think that's you know, something they should consider. Like, hey, maybe we're going a little overboard with the F-bombs here, you know, or the violence in the, you know, and again, I like a good action show, I like a good adult humor show, but it's like it's gone way too far to one one side. Often there's nothing you can watch with with a kid that is, you know, both adult appropriate and appropriate for kids, and on the same level, yeah, right?

On the same level, like when you're watching Little House, you're all watching the same thing and getting the same dialogue. Where now, if they do make something that's okay like that, it's this is what the kids seeing, and here's the adult humor, the adult seeing. You know what I mean? It's not you enjoying the same exact dialogue. Content. Yeah.

Yeah.

But they used to do that in kids' shows and movies, is they throw in a little bit of something for the kids to do that. Of course. Yeah, but like you're talking about the profanity. It's I think some of that is like we talked about before with the with the uh movie ratings. You know, you can't put it out there and and have a G rating on it because nobody will watch it. So I think they feel like they have to put those F bombs in there to be cool.

Well, no, you could actually take though to make it the R rating or the adult rating. You know what I mean?

Well, it's somebody's perception, I guess.

Yeah, you know, TV mature or whatever now.

What used to be the sensors, yeah, whatever they are now.

Right. Great show. Streaming with streaming now, it's a different animal. It used to be, you know, if it was beamed out over the airways, the FCC had its its hand on it. Now because it's all streaming and through a cable, that it doesn't that none of that applies now. Right. It slips through their cracks, exactly.

Right, because you're paying for it, so it's not over the air.

So it's not as yeah.

I don't know where that line is, or there's still even a line of something on a streaming content that goes, you know, is is there a line that they can cross, or is it just I don't think there is anymore.

They can do anything if it is a a movie with that is you know G-rated, it's crap. It's just total crap, lazy writing, um, you know, just cookie cutter stuff that you know there's no creativity, I feel, anymore.

You know, that there is no you're right. Yeah, hence all the uh remakes, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Remakes, and then it's a catch 22 on the content because it's you know, over the top and down to this. Like in other words, mature could mean like an F bomb or half a boob, you know, or the rest. Yeah, yeah. It's I don't know.

It's or if it's aimed at kids, it's get a it's got a political agenda.

Yeah, exactly.

You may or may not agree with, but they feel like they have to push that on on your kids because it's their belief.

So excited about Landman, though, by the way. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love this show. It's a it's a decent show. It's there's some great dialogue and banter in it. I think they could just they could probably have the F-bombs and still be entertaining.

Yeah, all right, Kev, that's to you. All right, Friday night. Our parents would take turns driving us to the roller skating rink, and it was the best. You were out there, tunes blaring, you could hear some journey, you may be some foreigner. Um they have the the snowball, you know, the girls on one side and the boys on the other skate around, and some of the guys would get picked or whatever else. But um, but that was something that you know we did. Our school somehow set something up with the rollers getting rigged. So for a couple hours in the afternoon on Fridays, we could all go for it's probably two bucks or something like that, and piss the uh piss the guy off working the counter and order a swamp water, so he'd have to like individually hit every soda on the on the fountain, and he'd always roll his eyes like Jesus Christ. Why can't these kids just get a Pepsi for peace's sake? Now I gotta do all this. But it was, you know, it was the thing. You had to do it. Unbelievable. Yeah, those are the things. Which one did you go to, Kevin? It wasn't the one you went to.

I know, that's why I'm asking you. I'm trying to I don't remember the name. No, but what town was it in?

It was in Dover.

Oh, okay. Are there any left? I mean, I still don't know how people go roller skating.

I mean, they still have them here and there, um, but it's not what it was at all. And Kev, do you have anything more to say about it? No, no, just it was a great time. All right. All right. To you, Mark.

All right. Well, okay. I'm going back to uh Brian Street on this one. And uh, you know, we we did all our things back then, mostly the boys and the girls did their thing, but and this is after the the street lights went on, so we were not we didn't have to go home when the street lights came on. No, we stayed outside and we would all gather around uh said Belmore's house or whatever, and we would play hide and seek. As we got a little older, we played a game called Skip. I don't even remember the rules, and then I think he had teams, but but yeah, it was just such a blast. I mean, we would just have a a grand old time and like I don't know if you remember Dave Thompson, a heavy set kid, you know, and we would have our we had our one ha uh our hiding spot, which was a stupid hiding spot because we knew we'd get caught, and we would run to the hiding spot and just laugh our heads off, and it was just the funnest thing, and we this went on for years, guys, and uh maybe it was a good hiding spot, but your laughing gave you away. No, we would just sit there. No, it was a terrible. We go around the Henderson's house, and uh I got a little story on that too, but uh no, I mean we'd go around the edge of the Henderson house and uh you know, we'd get caught every time, whatever. We had fun, but there was a very, very scary clock shop that that they used to have before, you know, I was born and everything, but there was a blood clock in there. And uh I didn't know that it was a blood clock. When I was a child, I thought it was a blood clock. And there was a clock in there that I think I I'm like, oh my god, I think that's a blood clock. And uh yeah, I've told this story before to people out there, not on the show, but uh, you know, any cousins, they know what I'm talking about. But uh yeah, but what the point is is when do you go outside after dark and see kids playing hide and seek or anything?

You don't see anyone out after dark.

Yeah, and we're out there, you know, and we came in when we felt like it, damn it.

Flash uh flashlight tag, Alcatraz, so many great games out there.

Take the can, smear the note. Don't say that.

But yeah, we had a blast, and uh, you know, I mean everybody, the boys, the girls, everyone got involved, and it was just great fun. And uh I miss it, man. You know?

So the street lights was dinner, and then you went out after dinner, so exactly, you know. So all these things you see on TikTok with knowing the streetlights was the time to go home, that was just for dinner, and then you got to go back out, yeah, catch fireflies, you know.

Well, not in the summertime, dinner time is still at the same time, but well, you know what I mean.

For God's sakes, I'm not gonna go through the time zones here.

Well, you know, so what happens around here? The sun during the summer stays in the sky.

Okay, all right. All right, so I'm going in Audible. My number two was roller skating, Kev. So nope, thank you. You beat me to it. Uh, but man, that was every Friday night. God, I loved it. Why was it Friday? Because I used to go too, you know. It was just the night we went. But I'm gonna go to an Audible here for my number two, and I'm gonna this is might be a little personal to me, but I believe it does stick in today's craw, and that is tryouts. All right? Oh yeah. Now, when I was a kid, I had to try out for Little League, and I either friggin' made it or I didn't. Okay? And then when I made it, which I did immediately, I didn't get a trophy if my team lost. Okay? So I had to prove myself to make sure I was good enough to be part of a team so that I could excel and try to better myself, and then if I lost, I lost. And you know what? There's only one winner out there, and I didn't get a friggin' trophy for losing my friggin' you know, last game of the season. Right. And nowadays, uh you know, there was no participation trophy. You didn't make the team if you absolutely sucked. Guess what? You're fucking either benched or you just simply don't make it. Go cry to mom, okay? And yet, guess what? That toughened that kid up and made him practice and become better for next season so he could make the said team. Okay, that's right, and that fires me up greatly. So, tryouts is my pick. Dungo. Good one. I like that. Merit-based, right?

Exactly, Catlin.

I worry somewhat about some things being merit-based, like being an airline pilot. Like, I don't want my airline pilot to just get kind of pushed through the grades and push through the like, oh, you didn't do well on that simulation, but we'll just we'll try next time. You know, like when something's going wrong, I want them to be like, I got this. Like, I'm gonna, you know, put the computer away and fly by the stick, kind of thing, you know. So, yeah, that goes along with your brain surgeon, yeah. Right, right.

Like my brain surgeon to you want to care how many boxes he checks is as long as competency is the first one, right? And then he can be whatever color, sex, creed, I don't care. Ross Iceland. Uh competency, that's the one that I'm concerned with.

Right.

And should be. Yeah, that goes to everything, though. I don't want somebody a bad cook cooking my meal. Yeah, anything.

Well, of course. Any any position on the on the planet, you should be fit for the position.

And not pride in what you do and and work at it. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So for mine, uh, this is one that's it, you know, when I was a young kid, I used to like watching the news with my dad. Um, I I've at a young age, I would watch the nightly news, and it was a half an hour long, and you could you could kind of trust the news. And like now the news has an agenda, it's um, you know, it's always painted towards one team or the other, and it's no one manipulated. And no, I mean there's there's a there's a there's a two-team network, you know. There's a but it, you know what I mean? So I I just I long long loin long for the days of when you could you could trust something on the on the news, you know. Now it's like nope, I gotta I gotta fact check that. I gotta see what spin they're putting it on it, and you know, yeah, you know, surf through the internet and find find the truth, but because what they're feeding you on the on the any kind of you know 24-hour news whatever it's just echo chambers. It's all crap, yeah.

Yeah, just echo changing.

You're right. Yeah.

Oh yeah, there's only one team, they're just wearing different uniforms.

Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah, because if you look at Fox, I mean Fox is better, more tolerable than some of the the left-leaning stuff, but I mean they have their moments too where they're they're preaching to their corporate sponsors as well. The military industrial complex, all that stuff. I digress.

It's their world. We're just passing through. Right.

All right, Kevin. Off to you.

Oh, it's me? Well, I should probably say something then. Yeah. Oh, we're gonna go the greatest thing ever. Building a tree house. Oh yeah, of course.

I love fort building.

That was and and and the great thing was building it was really almost better than hanging out in it. I mean, we still had fun hanging out. But you're going through the neighborhood and you're finding lumber and you're grabbing nails from somewhere, and yeah, so some furniture and some curtains, and you just brought all everybody's garbage basically. You brought together and and you made your fort, and it was a cool place to hang out, and you spent you know, half the summer building that, and then the other half the summer it was, you know, it was where you hung out.

Yep. No, I I I agree that building it is half the fun, like the scavenging. More than half, I think. Exactly.

Finding nails. I remember going to 18 different places to find nails.

But you're probably using like a roofing nail to like put a support beam in.

Yeah, like a finish nail.

It worked, you know, like a bent 16 common for this, and right uh and I remember the two by four steps that you built up the tree.

Like I remember. Oh, yeah, I know what you're saying, AJ.

Tapping on the bent nails and straightening them out with a hammer so you can use them.

Right. Right.

Yep. As a matter of fact, I still have a scar from one where I hit the nail and the head, a piece of the head chipped off. It must have just been a manufacturing thing. It went right into my side and under the skin. It was like a it was a piece of shrapnel. It was grenade. And I still have a sick, I still have a scar, but I think it's on my back now.

From stretching, from fat, yes. Um, awesome pick, Kev. I'm so excited you took that and parachuting out of said tree house. Does anyone know what that is? You would run and jump off the tree fort, which was probably four feet off the ground back then, but we thought it was 60. And grabbing the top of a small tree while it bent over to the ground and carried you until you went down and hit every branch like the ugly girl.

You know those slide for life that you know, you it's it's a high point and then a low point. Like we made one of those, but it was like clothesline rope with the clothesline wheel. Yeah, I was holding on, and that thing let go midway. And like you said, it was probably 10 feet off the ground, but it to me it was like 80 feet off the ground.

Oh, yeah. I was telling you about the tree broke halfway down and flung me back against the trunk, and then I slid down, and every broken branch ripped my chest to shreds as I went down. I remember running home bawling and then having to toughen up to my friends after that because I looked like such a pussy.

That was last week.

Yeah, I was a little boy, jackass.

Uh all right, Mark. All right, well, my this is my number one, people. And I'm going back to my favorite time of my childhood, which was when I learned that fishing is so much fun, especially when you're either with your friends or you're alone. And my parents let me go anywhere. They didn't worry about me. I went everywhere, anywhere. I walked across waterfalls, I jumped into rivers to catch a trout that I caught and lost. I lost and went back and got. And uh I mean, and I would go in the morning, come home for lunch. I didn't eat breakfast, I didn't have time for that. I was going fishing. And then I'd come back for lunch, and I'd go back out. And and especially one year, I remember we caught I mean every trout I caught, I would come home clean, and I I was always I always break the neck, AJ. Yes and bring it home. Bring it home, put it in the freezer. I caught over 200 trout one year, and I don't think that's the best way to store it, by the way. But um, you know, I be I mean I'm even remember one time with I've talked about this, me and Ollie Laflamme. We we drove all around into different towns and everything and caught all these beautiful fish, and it was just so much fun, and nobody cared, nobody worried. I'm not saying they didn't care about me, but they probably were happy that I was having fun.

That is more yes, agreed, and hence the away from home for hours and hours, and that's the beauty of the water.

I would fish right up until it was legal not to do so or illegal to do so or whatever. And don't forget the danger about crossing the dam and yes, I walked across the waterfall and walked down this long wall that was really kind of I I got a little nervous going down there, but it but anyway, it it's it was a lot of fun, and uh I don't see these little pencil neck geek kids going out and fishing all day. No, it's just something that I mean that's what I did. I just all of us did. Freddie, all of us. So that's my number one pick. All right, rather nice.

All right, so Kev, the reason I was uh talking about the tree fort thing is I'm going with my number one, which is the most obvious one on the list out of all of us, but my audible for number one in case one of you took it was tree forts. So I'm very proud. I don't have to go with that one, but um, and it's in our opening, everyone, for the show, and it's still riding in the back of a pickup truck.

Jump in the back of the pickup truck and join us for a ride back to the good old days.

The way to think about that nowadays, and like I said earlier on one of I think it was your pick, Kev, about the speed limit with the bikes on the side of the road. Like it was a little slower on the highway, but 55 miles an hour back then. But still, to be riding down the highway with your buddies sitting in the bed of a pickup truck, there was nothing more fun, nothing more exciting as a little boy for that to be able to happen, and the fact that our parents didn't have a care in the world and just let it go. Think about that head-on collision, we're all gone. You know, it's we're doomed, but that is something that you certainly wouldn't see today. That was an absolute pleasure back then, and even into my late teens and early 20s, I remember be still being able to do it legally and like going to the sandwich fair with our buddies driving, and and you know what? I'm pretty sure we were drinking at that point, so that was very, very and in the front, my point being. So, not the wisest decision I've ever made in my life, but just the fact that we could do that stuff, you wouldn't see it today, which I feel is a lot of the point of this exercise. So there's my number one, and to you, Donnie.

Cool. So my number one is just pretty broad, but it's just being outside. Yep. Um, not many people are getting outside like they used to. For some reason, we've been scared into staying indoors lately. Like, when did the sun suddenly change to make it so that you're gonna get skin cancer immediately if you don't put slather on sunblock? Like I used to, you know, in the summertime I'd be outside every single day swimming. We were lucky in the summer to have a uh a summer cottage, and it was a true cottage, had no running water, you know, no insulation, nothing. But I would be out on the lake, like swimming and playing and running around. I don't think I ever put sunblock on until you know never we never did either.

We put baby oil on, yeah, exactly.

We lubed up, yeah. But in the winter time, we'd put you know, one. Bread uh bread bags on our feet to keep our feet dry in our snow boots or whatever, and be outside in the snow. And you know, just for some reason now it's like you know, if you're gonna go outside, you gotta put you know ten things of sunblock on and reapply every 30 minutes, and you know, all this.

I think somebody just did a study um that skin cancer uh rose with uh sunblock.

Yes, and I don't mean to get into you know diet and things like that, yeah, food, but let me tell you something about nowadays that should reflect on that that people will fucking deny till they die. But the hydrogenated oils and all of the shit that we're eating that based our own skin like we're eating a fucking turkey, I mean, like we're based in a turkey, that is I'm telling you, it's half the problem. So it's interesting.

Yeah.

Well, if there's a health food section in the supermarket, what's the other stuff they're selling you?

Yeah, right, right.

I walked into market basket yesterday or two days ago, there's a bag of Lay's potato chips. It said made with real potatoes. It was Lay's classic, made with real potatoes. What the fuck is in the other bag?

Yeah, right. Oh my god.

What the you know? Fuck that says it on every bag of chips.

Right, right. One molecule from being plastic.

Yeah, that's margarine, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's what we used to eat. That could have been a pick.

All the fake stuff, and yeah, but anyway, I didn't mean to go down that rabbit hole. I'm sorry. No, but being outside just on the point of your pick, Donald, is not only did we play outside, we were friggin' tossed outside and thrown outside and told not to come home until dinner. So we were not just you know wanting to be out there. We didn't have to be pushed though. That was the point. We actually wanted to.

What made our parents not worry? Because I would be worried if Margaret was just out running in the woods, deep into the woods. Like I would go deep into the woods at a very young age. Oh, yeah. I would be I would be scared to death if she was out there. So I don't know what changed.

I was walking to school in fourth grade, for God's sakes. Yeah. Yeah. What changed is is humanity and society.

Yeah.

Yeah. I wonder if it was like the the the young kid that got kidnapped in New York. That one kind of like had a ripple effect, but it's also different, too, because Adam. Yeah, yeah, is Adam Walsh.

Yeah, yeah, from America's Most Wanted.

Uh oh yeah, no, this one this one was prior to that.

This was in I thought that was his son. Adam was the 80s.

Adam was like, that was his son's in the 70s in New York City.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Actually, I think I think Cumberbatch did a uh movie based on it. Um but anyway, it's it's weird because when you think about it, our parents, like you said, get out of the house. And and I'm sure it wasn't because or maybe it was because they didn't want to see us, but I mean, I took my kid to do stuff because I wanted to have experiences, but I wanted I wanted to be around him. You know what I mean? As a parent, I wanted to experience his life. I mean, not you know, he still has a life and whatever else, but when and it might have been because he was growing up in two ho households that I cherished my time with him, and our parents were like, beat it. So I just wanted to I don't I don't think it was because they didn't love us, but it was just a different and there's like you said, it's a huge shift in the mentality and the thought process. I didn't want to be around him all the time because I was afraid somebody's gonna kidnap him or or whatever else, which is a big difference, right? I wanted to spend my time with my kid and experience his childhood.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm the same way with my kids. I and back then I didn't feel a lack of love. I just I think you said it perfect. It was the mentality and the time frame and just how shit happened, right? No, no, strange.

All right, Kev, wrap it up. All right, so my number one is simply this using your imagination. Yes, yeah, just using your imagination. Now you got a video game, you got a PlayStation or an Xbox, and it's all designed for you, and all you have to do is push buttons. Well, we had to go out and imagine that we were cowboys and Indians, that we were aliens, that we were whatever else.

Squidward, we don't need television. Not as long as we have our imagination. With imagination, I can be anything I want. A pirate, uh a football player, a starfish!

Patrick, you're already a starfish.

Sea squid where it works! Uh you had to actually think of stuff that entertained you. You had to find a way to be entertained because there wasn't a screen to do it for you. And that's when we built the forts. We built the bike ramps for jumps. We we played in the woods, we played in junkyards. I remember, you know, it's funny. This is my earliest kiss memory for you KISS fans. Kid down the street from me, his dad was a gear head. He had a couple of beat up non-functioning cars behind the house, and we used to like put on concerts jumping on these cars at like seven or eight years old, and that was I mean, that was rock and roll all night.

And that was your imagination doing that.

Doing that we were, yeah, they we were given a concert and and lip syncing and and screaming out to the fans. Whereas now you go by the rock star video game and push buttons and pretend you can play guitar or something. Oh, you mean whatever. What is that?

Uh rock bands.

Yeah. Yeah, a rock band, yeah, exactly.

But yeah. But Kevin, you mentioned that. We used to play that either Cowboys, Indians, or Army Man all the time, and I'm surprised they had forgotten that. And that was kids using their imagination, like you said, and you know, and they don't really do that all that much, I don't think. I mean everything's even sports. They don't use their imagination, period, now it's it's you have organized sports. You don't I mean, you do here and there you'll see a kid shooting a ball out in the in you know, playing basketball in their yard, or but it's not like it used to be where you'd drive by and see people playing wiffle ball or even baseball or football or any of those things. No. Right now it's all it's just all controlled, if you will.

Right. Not even necessarily yeah, but just they don't have the drive to do any team-oriented activities. And Kevin, to your point with the imagination, it made me think of something you had said in the past about the uh vacant houses and the shit we would play in those places with our imagination and just you know, pretend this is a haunted house today, right? Tomorrow, this is our fort for the army war, you know, and just incredible.

You were you were scared of ghosts and abaritions, but really the fear should have been for rusty nails that you were gonna stare watch.

Exactly.

Tetanus was real, not so much. Tetanus. Exactly. Well, awesome boys. Yeah, that was fun too. I you know, and that's why we do this, just to take us back. And there's a lot of categories we could stem off of this, too, where just things we may have owned, and some of the lines that people said, and maybe those will come out down the road, but for now, thank you, boys.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Good times, good times, yes, and listeners out there, thank you so much for listening. Uh, just seeing the downloads go up and everything, and the contacts, and we can't appreciate that enough. So, thank you so much, and we are out.

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