50 Years Ago with Alan Branson
It’s 2026! We have made it to the second half of the decade! Can you believe it?!?!? Where does time go? It seems to speed up the older I get. This is the year of our country’s 250th anniversary. We will have been a democratic republic for a quarter of a millennium on this coming July 4. I am old enough to remember our country’s bicentennial celebration way back in 1976. I thought that was a special time. 200 years. But now we are looking at another 50 years that have clicked off our nation’s odometer. We have seen a lot of changes these past 5 decades. Do you remember what life was like back then?
We didn’t have the internet. The world wide web went public August 6, 1991 and life hasn’t been the same. We used to look up information in encyclopedias. My kids never really got the opportunity to pour through those ample volumes of print so they could finish a report for school. Truth became relative. No Facebook, no Amazon, no Google, no YouTube. Our socialization was up to us either calling someone on the phone or personally speaking to them either at school or in town. The people who were influencers were people of substantial noble character whom you wanted to emulate, not those who do it now as a career choice. Our entertainment was television, radio, sports, music, movies, board games, and cards. Now, it’s mainly our phones.
Fifty years ago, we only had vinyl records, cassette tapes and 8 tracks if we wanted to listen to our favorite music. No streaming. There were no personal video cameras, with the exception of maybe someone owning a reel to reel tape for home movies. Since then, we have seen VHS tapes, Beta tapes, DVDs become obsolete. Just download what you want to watch. Who would have thought?
We had to physically go somewhere to do business. There was no online banking, online shopping, or any other kind of e-commerce.
Our phones back then were rotary phones. Granted, they weren’t quite as rudimentary as my grandparents had in previous decades where you turned a crank on the wall and spoke into the speaker microphone on the box hanging on the wall, but you could get tangled up in the cord. (Yes, young people, you really could. It happened all the time. Then you had to untangle the coiled mess so your phone cord wouldn’t look unsightly when company came over.)
Saturday morning was cartoon day. Although it may have been hard to get up for school. Most of us kids would get up without an alarm clock by 6 am to watch Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. This cartoon extravaganza started the 6-hour television cartoon marathon every Saturday morning. Then, at noon, sports would dominate the airwaves. You could also catch cartoons for a couple hours after school, but Saturdays for young kids was the one thing you couldn’t wait for every week. Now, there are entire satellite stations devoted to children’s entertainment. Oh yeah, satellite and cable television. Those weren’t really a “thing” back in 1976 either.
What about chicken pox parties? When one young kid would get chicken pox, they would invite friends over and pretty soon the pox epidemic would be all around school. Instead of being inoculated so we wouldn’t get it, people would want their kids to get it to “get it over with”. Today, not so much. Now we realize shingles, a result of the chicken pox virus, can pose serious health threats to older adults. We didn’t understand (apparently because we didn’t have the internet…).
We used to travel in the back of a truck with a camper shell covering the truck bed. There were no seat belt laws. We would travel literally thousands of miles across the country living dangerously playing cards, board games, or sleeping in the back of the truck. We didn’t recognize the dangers back then.
Atari came out with video pong in 1975 and it started sweeping the nation 50 years ago. People were enamored with the little white blip going back and forth between two small lines used as “paddles”. Today, kids would scoff and that because the graphics and the 2 dimensionality of the game would make it boring. But to us back then, it was groundbreaking and fun.
This article just touched the tip of the iceberg of the changes of the last 50 years. (I didn’t even get to medical, technological, social, and financial changes. Sorry.) I won’t be around here when our country celebrates her 300th birthday. But I can only imagine the changes our kids and grandkids will experience.
So, enjoy 2026. Make it a year to remember. Live well, be well, do good. And reminisce about the good old days every once in a while. And realize these new days can be pretty good and memorable as well.
