I was thinking the other day just how many things have changed in our lives since the 70s. I started listening to the radio during the disco era, in a time before computers came along and completely changed our whole world. I’d guess that the average high school grad can’t remember a time when there weren’t mp3s, Ipods, cell phones or anything called “HD” – TV or radio.

Most people under the age of 35 probably never heard music on an AM station, always had some kind of computer in the house, and remember using dialup. They likely do remember just before cell phones became popular when people used pagers for nearly everything, then the early cell phones that looked like a walkie talkie, big antenna and all.

For those of us over 40, we grew up in a time when things were so much simpler. We had ONE TV in the house, a rotary dial phone, later, a touch tone pone in the 80s. We used a typewriter to do our resume’s and business communication. Cars had the engine installed the right way, where you could actually get to the spark plugs and the timing belt and there wasn’t all this computer crap – and when the car didn’t start, you could actually remove the air filter, squirt some starting fluid into the carburator and get it going. Most of us can vaguely remember being very young and watching a black and white tv. We remember that we heard most of our music on AM then we moved over to FM in the 80s. We remember 8-track tapes, 45 and 33 1/3 rpm records and cassettes. We remember analog receivers, CB radios, and those big walkie talkies that were on the CB band that you could talk about one block on (talk about fun!). We can remember after school and Saturday morning cartoons on our local TV stations, because there were 13 cable channels and usually 3 or 4 local channels if we only had rabbit ears. We remember Creature Feature – usually Godzilla or something like that, Wrestling at noon Saturday, followed by Wide World of Sports (ABC) or a Major League Baseball game. Jackie Stewart commentator on Indie Car Races. “Stock Car” racing as opposed to todays NASCAR. Howard Cosell and boxing matches. Evil Kanevil jumping 20 cars and wiping out.

And we remember that we didn’t come home from school and hibernate in our rooms – that was usually punishment from mom or dad… no, we came home, threw down our school books and went outside to play: go fishing or play basketball or something but we were NEVER caught in the house or we’d end up cleaning or doing dishes or doing HOMEWORK, YUCK!

My, my my how things have changed.

I’m reminded about how hard life has become. Back in the day, the worst that could happen to a kid was a spanking or grounding for some major offense like being caught with a cigarette or being in a fight at school. Today, both will land a kid in jail and the parents will have social services breathing down their necks. Schools today are filled with police officers, metal detectors, ’sensitivity’ classes and all sorts of gobbldy-goop instead of focusing on reading, writing and arithmatic… leave the extras to the parents. I digress.

We sit here and worry about where our precious radio stations, DJs and formats went, and forget that our whole lives have completely changed.

Once upon a time we Americans looked upon our President and politicians as people to be respected.

Things have changed.