Test pattern

Jus Cruisin

Jus Cruisin

Well-Known Member
Oct 6, 2021
2,289
Lake St Clair - MI (Belle Maer Harbor)
Boat Info
2004 390 DA
Engines
8.1's
Ok.... Who actually remembers turning on the "tube" (when that's what a TV was) and seeing this? I sure do.... Watching the 70th anniversary of the Today Show and that brought that memory back...
624px-RCA_Indian_Head_Test_Pattern.svg.png
 
Does’t everybody? :)
A more vivid memory was the switch to color in early ‘60’s.
I will always remember where I was and who I was with the first time I saw color TV. I was blown away.
 
When I was young we lived in the real north (Dad was a mining superintendent/manager/engineer in those years - the middle of the Yukon, northern Quebec and the North West Territories). This was in the 1960s and early 1970s. In those days, TV in the north came in by satellite to local relay stations and was not 24/7 or multiple channels in remote areas. I don't remember the exact timing, but TV came on roughly at 6PM and was off at 10PM - only B&W too. So if you turned on the TV middle of the day, nothing but static. About an hour or so before the broadcast started, when they fired up the relay stations, you would get the test pattern, meaning that you would likely get to watch TV that night. If it didn't come up at 5pm, you might have to play cards or other games that night.
 
Ahhhh, yes, the things the millennials will never know. Some neighbors had a kid I played with (1950's) and were the first in the neighborhood to have a TV. All the neighborhood kids would gather at his house to watch Howdy Doody. We'd all sit on the living room floor and couldn't wait until the preceding program, Kate Smith, sang her closing song "When the moon goes over the mountain". No commercials and it went right to "It's Howdy Doody time".

How many of you remember Buffalo Bob, Princess Summerfallwinterspring and the assorted other characters on Howdy Doody?

 
Gofirstclass said:
Ahhhh, yes, the things the millennials will never know. Some neighbors had a kid I played with (1950's) and were the first in the neighborhood to have a TV. All the neighborhood kids would gather at his house to watch Howdy Doody. We'd all sit on the living room floor and couldn't wait until the preceding program, Kate Smith, sang her closing song "When the moon goes over the mountain". No commercials and it went right to "It's Howdy Doody time".

How many of you remember Buffalo Bob, Princess Summerfallwinterspring and the assorted other characters on Howdy Doody?

Click to expand...
Ha, somewhere in a box that has made many moves, I have a Howdy Doody marionette. That and maybe 40 some 50's vintage Matchbox trucks and construction vehicles.
 
In the late 50's to late 60's Dad had the Amana dealership in Vero Beach, Fl and did all types of appliance repairs. We had all the good stuff, huge antennae on a 50' mast, rotator controls on the top. I was still the "channel changer" though, and yes, the anthem, flag, and test patterns. The shop was on the first floor front of a two story block building that Dad built with other craftsmen friends, his specialty was electrical, of course. Together, they all built homes for thier famlies, all barter labor. Goid stuff there. Behind the shop on the first floor were two apartments, a 1 bed and a 2 bed. The upstairs floor was a large 3 bed, where we lived. My bedroom had a door that went downstairs to the back of the shop.
My earliest memories are of me in his '65 Ford truck going to service calls with him, I think that is why I persued a career in EE. When the first microwave came out we put one in the house and one in the old "Serro Scotty" camper. First thing to try was the old "egg in the toast" thing. That camper went from Fl to N Cali through my preteen and teen years every summer. Dad sold biz and rented it out to a motocycle/small engine mechanic, Don Fisher. He taught me alot about mechanical things, I lived in his shop after school and summers for 6 years. It was dirtbike heaven, my last was a KX125. He had previously owned the fish camp at Blue Cypress Lake, now Middletons. He was the one that turned me on to fishing and boats, which led to my first boat, a 13'8" Gheenoe at 14, birthday gift from Dad. Three now, including the office, and the "Ole Gheenoe" hangs on one of my shop's exterior wall. My son and nephews learned to fish in it, retired now.
That's how I got into controls engineering, became a gearhead, and found my love of boats and the water.

I have really never made those three comnections at once, wow.
 
Funny you should mention the phones. Our first number was 4852. Then 34852. Then they added letters to the prefix so it became PLeasant 34852 and stayed like that until I left home at age 15.
 
It all comes back to BR549. Courtesy of Junior Samples on Hee Haw. BR was Bald Ridge. My boat was at Bald Ridge Marina from 5/2008 to 11/2021. I lived in a house from 1995 to 2003 was just off Samples Rd and backed up to Haw Creek. True story.
 
My grandfather had a TV with a remote control! All it could do was change the channel, and only in one direction. If you were on 4 and wanted 2, you had to hold the button until the big knob found its way around, and better hope you didn't hold it down too long, or you'd have to go around again. I still remember "ca-chunk ca-chunk ca-chunk, Crap!
My aunt and uncle up in Washington had the first microwave any of us had ever seen (they were kind of uppity...). An Amana Radar Range. After much experimenting, all it was really good for was cooking bacon, and, even then, you had to rearrange it throughout the cooking time. No rotating platters back then.
 
440 Jim, was your TV shop on Rte 60 west of town? Maybe For… something as the name. There were two appliance stores in Downtown Vero, Jetson and Crawford. I am sure at some point we purchased something from y’all.
 
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Who remembers the station playing the national anthem before they signed off at 2:00AM? I would then tune in to UHF. I’m not even that old. At least, not any older than Jim Maier.
 
SearayPaul said:
440 Jim, was your TV shop on Rte 60 west of town? Maybe For… something as the name. There were two appliance stores in Downtown Vero, Jetson and Crawford. I am sure at some point we purchased something from y’all.
Click to expand...

WOW, Rte 60...all the way out to the marshes at 510 and blue cypress, C54 canal, stick marsh, all of it old fishing grounds in the Gheenoe. Dad's shop, and our house, was south of 4th ave and north of Olso on 43rd ave. Skinner Appliance Repair, a 59 ranchero first, then the 65 ford for service vehicles. The building is gone now and a gas station/feed store occupies the property. Ray Welker bought it from Dad and started the feed store, don't know if the family still owns it, son Wendal was a friend, and daughter Maria was hot as hell, couple years older, married a high school jock, I was a busboy at thier wedding reception at Dodger Pines. I rode my bike to vero beach elementary school on 4th st. There was a pond across the street in the woods, we would hide our fishing rods in the woods and sneak to the pond after school, lots of bass. House across the pond, 4th grade, got hit with rock salt from a 12ga for trespassing. We ran like hell. I have never trespassed on a anyones land since, good lesson learned at a young age. Had to hide my leg from Dad....usta be a firetower at 43rd and 4th I think, rode my bike there and the Ranger would let me climb up on the tower and shoot the breeze, look around. Wound up messing around with his daughter, hmmm, maybe that's why I was going there. What can you do at 12 though :)

You from/living there?
 
Gofirstclass said:
Funny you should mention the phones. Our first number was 4852. Then 34852. Then they added letters to the prefix so it became PLeasant 34852 and stayed like that until I left home at age 15.
Click to expand...

Left home and struck out at 16 for me...hard row to hoe, but better now.
 
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