What are you old enough to remember?

[CuriousByNature]

1 minute ago, Luv2play said:

So how exactly do outdoor cinemas work in over half of America when evening temperatures are over 90 and sometimes 100F.

Do people have to keep their motors running with the ac on? I imagine the fumes would be suffocating.

And let's not forget cinemas located in Tornado Alley and the Hurricane Belt, where the most appropriate film to show would be Gone with the Wind.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Luv2play said:

So how exactly do outdoor cinemas work in over half of America when evening temperatures are over 90 and sometimes 100F.

Do people have to keep their motors running with the ac on? I imagine the fumes would be suffocating.

Has Old Timers' Disease taken hold such that you can't remember the title of the string, "What are you old enough to remember?"? While drive-in movies had their day (in the 50s and 60s, I believe), the whole point is that they're a thing of the past. I only went to one in my life, as a child in the 1970s, and that was because I begged my mother to take me, before on of the last ones closed. 

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

13 hours ago, Luv2play said:

So how exactly do outdoor cinemas work in over half of America when evening temperatures are over 90 and sometimes 100F.

Do people have to keep their motors running with the ac on? I imagine the fumes would be suffocating.

We have a drive in theater in person in Las Vegas.  It's very popular in the summer when school is out.  Desert temperatures are very pleasant outdoors with a breeze.  It is about 100F right now at midnight, but with the sun down and humidity under 10% it is very pleasant to hang out with friends on the porch or in the drive in with all the windows down, or best yet naked in the pool with neighbors.

[Danny-Darko]

The day President Kennedy was shot. 

[+ Charlie]

12 hours ago, Danny-Darko said:

The day President Kennedy was shot. 

On Nov.22, 1963, I went to visit a friend who was recuperating in the college infirmary. I saw the tv was on, and the news broadcast was showing the Kennedys arriving in Dallas and preparing to take the ride through the city. Then I left to do something else, and about an hour later I was on my way to the barbershop when I saw several classmates standing around a car on campus, with the doors open as they listened to the radio. I asked what was going on, and they said the President had been shot during the motorcade. I continued to the barbershop, and was in the barber chair getting a haircut as the shop buzzed with customers discussing the news from the radio there. Then someone on the news announced that the President had been declared dead, and suddenly the room went totally silent. After a moment, the scissors started clicking again, but for a few moments no one knew what to say.

A few days later, four classmates and I, who had driven to DC, walked silently in the queue of people past the casket in the Capitol, and then stood on the street to watch the procession of mourners and dignitaries following the riderless horse pass by us as they headed to the church for the funeral. Then there was nothing to do but get in the car and drive back to the college, and wonder what the future held.

[+ poolboy48220]

I was three when that happened, no memory of it.  A friend, a year younger than me, says he remembers it - no details but he remembers everyone being sad.

[Rod Hagen]

There was a drive-in theater near my hometown (actually, it's still running this summer).  They had double and triple and sometimes quad features that would go very late.  The whole thing was an excuse for very heavy, MASSIVE, underaged midwest drinking and, less so, but somewhat, also for sex.  I remember when Bird fucked this one super duper slut in the back of someone else's car and afterward I asked him if he felt he needed a shower, and he said "I need a fucking gun so I can shoot myself".  Booze makes you do funny things.  It was also the place where I learned that lighting farts afire wasn't urban legend.

I'd always ride into the theater in the trunk, next to the cooler, because avoiding the $4 entrance felt like getting away with something.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Rod Hagen

[Luv2play]

I was sixteen when Kennedy was assassinated. A very impressionable age but not sufficiently aware of the outside world as I would have been even 5 or 6 years later. At the time the president seemed like a paragon of a world leader.

Today, after all that has been written about him, his place in world history has assumed a more modest ranking. Definitely a popular figure that brought style and glamour to the White House that has not been repeated. But nothing he accomplished in an admittedly short term of office really sticks out. 

In his first couple of years his successor LBJ, passed historic legislation on voting and civil rights, something Kennedy had no appetite nor legislative chops for.

[+ tassojunior]

16 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

I was sixteen when Kennedy was assassinated. A very impressionable age but not sufficiently aware of the outside world as I would have been even 5 or 6 years later. At the time the president seemed like a paragon of a world leader.

Today, after all that has been written about him, his place in world history has assumed a more modest ranking. Definitely a popular figure that brought style and glamour to the White House that has not been repeated. But nothing he accomplished in an admittedly short term of office really sticks out. 

In his first couple of years his successor LBJ, passed historic legislation on voting and civil rights, something Kennedy had no appetite nor legislative chops for.

His successor also murdered 7 million Vietnamese, mostly by burning them alive with napalm.

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

I remember being the poll monitor during the 1988 election in my Kindergarten class.  Our class voted for Bush by a landslide because we thought "Bush" was a funny name. 😊

[Luv2play]

1 hour ago, tassojunior said:

His successor also murdered 7 million Vietnamese, mostly by burning them alive with napalm.

What about the millions of American Blacks he lifted up. The war in Vietnam was his Waterloo but let's not forget Nixon carried it on for 7 more years and expanded it beyond Vietnam.

Many of the Vietnamese and American deaths happened under Nixon and Kissinger's watch.  

[+ tassojunior]

1 hour ago, Luv2play said:

What about the millions of American Blacks he lifted up. The war in Vietnam was his Waterloo but let's not forget Nixon carried it on for 7 more years and expanded it beyond Vietnam.

Many of the Vietnamese and American deaths happened under Nixon and Kissinger's watch.  

True, I should have said "successors". Nixon was as bad as Johnson even though he was elected on having a "secret way" to get us out of Vietnam. But the US lost 54K and 7 million Vietnamese were killed in what was universally condemned as terrible genocide by the US. In fact, JFK had firmly resisted the military and the CIA urging an expansion of our war in Vietnam and had unwisely let out that he doubted we were in the right direction there according to what I was told and what used to appear on Google before it's sanitizing. (as Jack Dorsey famously recently repeated that JFK wanted to break the CIA into a million pieces it was controlling government so much. Not a wise thing to actually say.) But Google will slowly scrub that too.  

LBJ was not a nice person but was a legislative master at getting his party's agenda through Congress whatever it was. 

Edited July 13, 2023 by tassojunior

[+ tassojunior]

My first real memory was actually the Cuban missile crisis. We lived not far from a railroad track headed to Florida and I remember the train loads of tanks and armored carriers and jeeps going by nonstop 24/7 for a week on tracks that usually saw 2 trains a day. Everyone was so certain we were about to have a nuclear war any minute and die that I wrote a note to the future and buried it in a bottle telling the future who had lived there before the war. 

Just after that my father moved us to Washington to work for the Kennedy administration and I have a blurred memory of Kennedy's assassination being announced to our class. I have my first gigantic clear-as-yesterday memory of us going to Kennedy's funeral and burial at Arlington. Kids don't really understand death and funerals much, even one with thousands of people and pageantry. But I most certainly remember Ronald Reagan making a beeline for me to pat my head and I guess compliment my mother and father on me. I felt attacked by a person way taller than I was used to with the most unnatural color of orange hair in the sunlight and wearing more white make-up than would seem possible. 

My dad wouldn't work for LBJ (and that crowd didn't want him I assume) so he went back to academia and moved us back out of DC. My mother's first cousin (and my future international law professor and Hague sponsor Dean Rusk) and my father split ways over that decision but years later after my father's death Rusk told me disagreed with my father but admired greatly his stand on principles. 

But that seven-foot tall orange hair guy with white paint on his face suddenly coming for me at a funeral may as well have happened yesterday.  

[+ FreshFluff]

On 7/10/2023 at 9:38 AM, Charlie said:

My best friend was the #1 ranked kid in our high school class, but it was his younger brother who was the only person in our school ever to get a perfect score on the SAT. IMHO, their sister was actually the smartest member of the family, but she never excelled scholastically. When ETS asked me to help revise the SAT in the 1990s, it was one of the most frustrating tasks I've ever had.

Yeah, when someone at the high school across town scored a 1600, the local newspaper published a profile of the kid. Even a 1550 was a huge deal. 

I’m impressed that ETS hired you to revise the test. Tell us more! 

[+ Charlie]

5 hours ago, FreshFluff said:

Yeah, when someone at the high school across town scored a 1600, the local newspaper published a profile of the kid. Even a 1550 was a huge deal. 

I’m impressed that ETS hired you to revise the test. Tell us more! 

I worked for ETS as an independent test reader (TOEFL, GMAT, etc.) and consultant for twenty years. When ETS was revising the SAT, they asked me to help brainstorm new questions.

[+ Charlie]

On 7/13/2023 at 5:12 PM, tassojunior said:

My first real memory was actually the Cuban missile crisis. We lived not far from a railroad track headed to Florida and I remember the train loads of tanks and armored carriers and jeeps going by nonstop 24/7 for a week on tracks that usually saw 2 trains a day. Everyone was so certain we were about to have a nuclear war any minute and die that I wrote a note to the future and buried it in a bottle telling the future who had lived there before the war. 

Just after that my father moved us to Washington to work for the Kennedy administration and I have a blurred memory of Kennedy's assassination being announced to our class. I have my first gigantic clear-as-yesterday memory of us going to Kennedy's funeral and burial at Arlington. Kids don't really understand death and funerals much, even one with thousands of people and pageantry. But I most certainly remember Ronald Reagan making a beeline for me to pat my head and I guess compliment my mother and father on me. I felt attacked by a person way taller than I was used to with the most unnatural color of orange hair in the sunlight and wearing more white make-up than would seem possible. 

My dad wouldn't work for LBJ (and that crowd didn't want him I assume) so he went back to academia and moved us back out of DC. My mother's first cousin (and my future international law professor and Hague sponsor Dean Rusk) and my father split ways over that decision but years later after my father's death Rusk told me disagreed with my father but admired greatly his stand on principles. 

But that seven-foot tall orange hair guy with white paint on his face suddenly coming for me at a funeral may as well have happened yesterday.  

What on earth was Ronald Reagan doing at the Kennedy funeral? At that time he was president of the Screen Actors Guild and was not active yet in politics.

[Rudynate]

On 4/1/2023 at 5:23 PM, FreshFluff said:

I love that they put on a jacket and tie for this protest. 

Why wouldn't they?   That's the way male teachers dressed for work - jacket and tie.   In the classroom, they took their jackets off.

[+ tassojunior]

12 minutes ago, Charlie said:

What on earth was Ronald Reagan doing at the Kennedy funeral? At that time he was president of the Screen Actors Guild and was not active yet in politics.

He was most definitely there. Remember, he had already quit GE and pretty sure SAG and was making speeches for Goldwater against Rockefeller for the next year's election. In three years Reagan would be governor of California. He was already a political mover and half the attendees were GOP. I just hope he got a better hair color and makeup.  

[+ DERRIK]

On 7/13/2023 at 8:12 PM, tassojunior said:

My first real memory was actually the Cuban missile crisis.

I recall watch Adlai Stevenson at the UN - saying he would wait till Hell Freezes Over when waiting for Russians to respond to shown photo of missile sites

[+ Charlie]

2 minutes ago, tassojunior said:

He was most definitely there. Remember, he had already quit GE and pretty sure SAG and was making speeches for Goldwater against Rockefeller for the next year's election. In three years Reagan would be governor of California. He was already a political mover and half the attendees were GOP. I just hope he got a better hair color and makeup.  

I know that he became involved in the Presidential election the following year, but who invited him to the funeral? Senator Goldwater?

[Rudynate]

I remember watching the coverage of the integration of Little Rock Central High School on the evening news in 1957.  It made absolutely no sense to me - I had about a million questions - who's fighting who - why are they fighting - what are the soldiers doing there, why don't the people want those kids going to school there, etc. etc.  I was at my grandparents house, and when I got home, I asked my mother what it was all about.  She explained it in a way that I could understand, but I was still dumbfounded

Edited July 17, 2023 by Rudynate
correction

[Rudynate]

6 minutes ago, DERRIK said:

I recall watch Adlai Stevenson at the UN - saying he would wait till Hell Freezes Over when waiting for Russians to respond to shown photo of missile sites

I was scared shitless.  I couldn't understand why nobody else seemed to be. 

[+ Charlie]

1 minute ago, Rudynate said:

I remember watching the coverage of the immigration of Little Rock Central High School on the evening news in 1957.  It made absolutely no sense to me - I had about a million questions - who's fighting who - why are they fighting - what are the soldiers doing there, why don't the people want those kids going to school there, etc. etc.  I was at my grandparents house, and when I got home, I asked my mother what it was all about.  She explained it in a way that I could understand, but I was still dumbfounded

I think you meant "integration" rather than "immigration" (don't you hate autocorrect?).

[Rudynate]

2 minutes ago, Charlie said:

I think you meant "integration" rather than "immigration" (don't you hate autocorrect?).

Thanks for catching that.  should I edit it, or leave the way it is?

[+ Charlie]

21 minutes ago, Rudynate said:

Why wouldn't they?   That's the way male teachers dressed for work - jacket and tie.   In the classroom, they took their jackets off.

In the mid-1960s, even the early gay rights protesters wore suits and dresses. I remember Frank Kameny, one of the most prolific organizers, insisting that he wouldn't take part if everyone weren't "properly" dressed.