You Know You're Getting Old When…

[Jim Koepke]

You remember this on your TV screen:

Os TV Test Pattern.jpg

If your father did TV sales & repairs, mine did, you might have known the meaning of everything.

You know your getting old…

When you arrive at your dental appointment
And realize you left your teeth at home.

jtk

[Ken Fitzgerald]

50 years ago, I used that pattern in the same method you father did as a part time job while serving in the USN.

When you go to bed at the time that you used to go out.

[John Ziebron]

When I was a kid I used to fix TVs in our neighborhood by removing the suspect tubes and going to the drug store 4 blocks away to test them. If I remember correctly (that's getting to be a stretch these days) that pattern came on in the morning when the TV stations started broadcasting. Don't recall how long it was on for though. At the end of broadcasting at night they would play the national anthem and show a picture of a flag flying.

[Greg Quenneville]

WXYZ in Detroit used to show USAF footage while the anthem was played. I am old enough to remember F-86 footage, but old enough too that I am probably wrong about that.

[Rick Potter]

When I was in my first house, Channel 5 in LA would sign off at midnite, and Mahalia Jackson would sing the National Anthem.

When I was a kid, we got our first TV around 1953 or so, and the test pattern like shown was on in the mornings and evenings when the TV station (3) in Cleveland was off the air. It didn't come on till around 5PM and went of after my bedtime.

Before that, I remember standing in the snow in a neighbors planter watching their TV through the window often. They were first adopters. People would stop at storefronts and watch TV in the windows back then.

We bought our first Color TV for the 1966 Rose Parade. Drove to downtown LA, at a Sears Outlet store, and bought a 'scratch and dent' 21" TV, with a dented black steel case. It cost over $400, and I was making $640 a month gross at the time. It was a big deal, as that is the year everyone started broadcasting COLOR. Today I can buy a 32" smart TV at Costco for the same amount. I guess that is one item that has not suffered from inflation (size for size).

[Jim Koepke]

50 years ago, I used that pattern in the same method you father did as a part time job while serving in the USN.

When you go to bed at the time that you used to go out.

That is interesting, my father was in the Navy on Treasure Island teaching radio operators how to maintain ship radios during WW II. He also worked in a radio shop in Oakland fixing radios.

jtk

[Ken Fitzgerald]

That is interesting, my father was in the Navy on Treasure Island teaching radio operators how to maintain ship radios during WW II. He also worked in a radio shop in Oakland fixing radios.

jtk

Jim, I was in from '68-'76. I spent 2 years in school, worked air traffic control maintenance except for the last 8 months when I ran a shop on a subtender where we repaired equipment used aboard fastattack subs. With a wife and 3 kids, I always had a part time job. I bar tended, worked on the loading dock of a Sears warehouse and tv repair.

[Bill Dufour]

My father worked at the 180" cyclotron inBerkeley. the control panel had a tv set that was always on when the machine was running.. they watched to make sure they did not interfere with the signals.
Fellow teacher was in the airforce worked radioman on B52's. He told me they would wait until A Cal Worthigton used car commercial was on tv then test the radio jammer. Worked every time.
Bill D

[Rick Potter]

I hope it didn't upset Cal's dog Spot.

[Jim Koepke]

My father worked at the 180" cyclotron inBerkeley. the control panel had a tv set that was always on when the machine was running.. they watched to make sure they did not interfere with the signals.
Fellow teacher was in the airforce worked radioman on B52's. He told me they would wait until A Cal Worthigton used car commercial was on tv then test the radio jammer. Worked every time.
Bill D

LOL!

jtk

[Roger Feeley]

You can remember the Montreal Worlds Fair (Expo 67) where Iran and Iraq shared a pavilion.

[Andrew More]

FWIW, Netflix has an updated version of this. Search for "Test Patterns", which should turn this up:TestPattern.jpg

[Ronald Blue]

I remember the crank telephone vaguely. Then sometime between 1960 and 1963 Bell telephone plowed in all new cable and we had direct dial but still party lines. Some of you have a good number of years on me and remember much further back.

[Aaron Rosenthal]

I still remember my old telephone number from 1951. I was 6 1/2.
I remember that at Christmas time, my folks both worked in their Variety store, and I was allowed to stay home by myself (again just over the age of 6). Boy, try THAT today and have the social workers on you.
We got our first TV in 1957 - I think Dad wanted to watch Sandy Koufax pitch.
I never served since Canada never had the draft except in war time - enough problems with Anglo-Fench relations anyway AKA "The two Solitudes".
I remember being on tenterhooks whether my cousins were going to come to Canada during Vietnam from L.A., since they were born here and had citizenship. (they didn't)
I also remember the test pattern and oh, my!, when colour was introduced. Do you remember when your parents turned off the TV and told you to go outside and play - and you DID?
Times change.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

When I was six, some city relative gave us an Easter Duckling. Back in those days at Easter many stores sold chicks, ducklings and rabbits that had been dunked in dyes. This duckling was purple. Well Mr. Peepers grew into a large Pekin duck. At about 6 months of age, Mr. Peepers started laying eggs. Part of my responsibilities every morning at 6 and a half, was to dress and go out to the barn to feed Mr. Peepers, the chickens running in the barn yard and to feed the rabbits in the hutch. Also about the same time I had a baby sister who had several birth problems and my mother would be up most nights caring for my sister, who then was about a year old. So after barn chores, I came back to the house and had to make my own breakfast and run to the school bus stop a half mile away. When my grandmother came for a week to help out when my sister was especially ill, grandma taught me to make that Duck egg for breakfast, or alternatively, how to make hot water for oatmeal. (no microwaves back then. At the end of the week, she gave me my own little six inch black cast iron frying pan and showed my how to care for it and clean it. So from some time in second grade through 4th grade, I made my own breakfast and got myself off to school every morning. One of the things I do remember is turning on the old black and white TV set when I got back to the house from the barn. We got three channels out of Philadelphia. But the test patterns would be on each one until 7 am. The one I usually had on, would play the music theme from the movie "Big Country" (I didn't know it came from a movie back then) and show a farm field for a few seconds and then the morning agricultural reports would come on. That was over at 7:15, the exact time for me to leave for the bus stop. If there was a snow storm, I would tune in to Channel six where a morning announcer named Wee Willy Webber would announce the school closings. A few rare times, that announcer did not get to my school before it was time to leave for the bus. I'd walk all the way to the bus stop and stand there in the snow. The old lady across the street from the bus stop would call me into her house and call my mother to come get me because there was no school. Mrs. Gavin always had hot cocoa and cookies. My mother once accused me of knowing school was canceled and walking to through the snow to the bus stop just to get the hot cocoa and cookies. My sister needed an operation. we sold the farm and moved to town. Everything was changed then. No more duck eggs for breakfast, no barn chores before school, no farm report on TV to watch before school. I hated my new school. The neighbor boys constantly talked about baseball or football. I was used to talking about farm life with other farm kids. We moved just as a neighbor farmer was paying me to help with planting. Yeah, I was 9 yrs old and he paid me to follow the cultivator and replant any corn that was accidentally dug up. In mid summer, his wife paid me to pick berries for her. Rasberries, wine berries, blue berries, On the farm, we had an apple orchard. Anytime between late August and November, I could go out side and pick an apple to eat. I would pick and load up a basket of apples on my wagon and haul them over to the neighbor's wife and got to keep what she gave me. Out in the country, there was no place to spend any "spending money" and in town no way to work for any spending money. At least not at 9 yrs old.