Interesting NY Times article that was linked on Slashdot about how chic retro stuff has become. I'm talking cell phones from the 80's, PC cases that look like old radios, etc. The author seems to think that people in my generation and younger yearn for eras that they know very little about. While I don't necessarily disagree, I don't miss not having a broadband internet connection, central heating and air and only four watchable TV channels.
But I, too, miss some of the devices I grew up with. I especially remember our phones. For those of you too young to remember, know that there was a time when you did not own your home phone; it was leased from the phone company. The styles and colors were limited and cordless and cell phones belonged to science-fiction. We had four rotary (touch tone? HAH!) phones in our house. They were big, heavy and two of them were flat black. The dials and the phone hook were steel---not brushed aluminum, but honest-to-goodness-made-in-Gary, Indiana-steel. When you slammed the phone down (not a common event in our home and something that was never done by a child), it didn't click----it thudded, like two rocks hitting each other. The phone on my parents' rolltop desk looked like it was meant to adorn an executive's desk. It looked authoritative just sitting there. And you got one ring tone---loud and business-like.
We had one TV, a 25-inch Zenith. When the TV was on in the evenings, we watched what mom and dad wanted to watch or we went and did something else. It was full of vacuum tubes, so turning on was an excercise in patience. It would whine to a pitch we couldn't hear and then the picture would be dark for the first 30 seconds as everything warmed up. It was a serious piece of furniture. It was so substantial, in fact, that when it was replaced by a plastic imposter made in Korea, my dad made the TV cabinet into an entertainment center that they used for another 15 years. Try that with your 50" plasma screen.
I love today's technology because I remember when much of it didn't exist. But it does not have the physical substance of the devices of yesterday. Of course, you wouldn't carry a cell phone if it weighed eight pounds and you wouldn't own a PC if it filled up a room and required its own air conditioning unit. But I can see why younger people would crave retro for the same reason that people restore old cars---old technology is solid and reminds us of a time when life was, at least in hindsight, simpler.
Posted by Matthew at September 20, 2004 10:41 AM
hey Matt. How about the old velcro shoes. Are they coming back ,too?
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