... you're excited for a Led Zeppelin pinball machine.
(Topic ID: 222483)
Elko, NV
Quoted from DCP:You know you are old (and/or arthritic) when you haven't been able to snap your fingers in 10 years. I can still kinda snap on my left hand, but it hurts like fuck. The right just makes a quiet sound like trying to light a wet match...
We used to zing bottlecaps 50 feet like frisbees by hanging them between the thumb and middle finger and snapping our fingers. You hold your elbow up and tilt your hand back by your ear so your thumb is toward the ground and your little finger is up. You could hit someone all the way across the room if you were good. Any of you guys do this?
Now, the bottle cap just falls out of my fingers and rolls around by my feet. Very disappointing!
There used to be kids that were deadly accurate doing that.
London
Quoted from DCP:You know you are old when you love corded tools! Power never fades, lasts as long as you need, never have to buy or charge batteries. I just bought a Dewalt corded hammer drill that kicks ass. Screw batteries, what a scam!
There are a few places where it really is better not to be dragging a cord, but mostly it works fine. I'd rather have the power.
I am loving this tool talk 
I bought a large Bosch belt sander for the decking on my beach huts, as doing that job manually is no laughing matter. I preferred to get a large corded sander and take a Honda generator with me than get a little girlie iron-shaped battery sander. Hell yeah. Batteries are for vibrators.
Putting some RaceDeck Tuffshield garage flooring in this weekend, and cutting the tiles with a corded Bosch jigsaw, naturally.
Quoted from Pinballs:Batteries are for vibrators.
So, in my youth, I worked on a county road crew. We poured the concrete for a bridge one time. They smoothed it out with a gas powered vibrating beam. It was the object of a lot of jokes 
I snapped beer caps.
I stopped drinking 7 years ago ( i was getting to old for it) and now i no longer snap the caps.
You placed foil "Ice cycles" on your model railroad tracks and turned up the voltage.
Everyone thought foil Christmas trees with a colored projector were "Cool, futuristic".
Your Dad sprayed fake snow all over the Christmas tree, which clung to the bulbs, furniture and walls.
You remember a popular tradition among heavy drinkers in the South called "Tear down the Christmas tree and throw it outside".
Quoted from phil-lee:You remember a popular tradition among heavy drinkers in the South called "Tear down the Christmas tree and throw it outside".
I went to a Christmas tree bonfire one time. Someone touched a match and in less than 5 seconds there as a flaming inferno. I said I would never have a real Christmas in my house after that.
Quoted from cottonm4:I went to a Christmas tree bonfire one time. Someone touched a match and in less than 5 seconds there as a flaming inferno. I said I would never have a real Christmas in my house after that.
Amen to that.
My wife bought a black Christmas tree with built in lights. Classy looking AF, and I don't have to screw with applying lights to the damn thing every year. Winning all the way.
Two years ago, we bought a tree that died two weeks before Christmas. The place let us have another one. So in the middle of December, we tossed the first tree to the curb. My neighbor was walking his dog and said, "What's with you throwing out your tree? It's not Christmas yet!" I looked at him and deadpanned, "Fuck Christmas. We're all in on Hanukkah now."
I wish I had taken a picture of his face.
Quoted from phil-lee:Everyone thought foil Christmas trees with a colored projector were "Cool, futuristic".
I try to put my aluminum tree up every year. . . with the original blue glass ornaments. Still have the color wheel too -- now everyone thinks its "Cool, Retro." 
Quoted from TractorDoc:I try to put my aluminum tree up every year. . . with the original blue glass ornaments. Still have the color wheel too -- now everyone thinks its "Cool, Retro.
We had rear trees. Then I remember my Mother putting one of those up in 1962 with two color wheels and the tree rotated in the stand and played Christmas music.
Many people drove by to marvel at that thing. We used it for four or five years until going to fake green trees and then onto real ones until years later.
I always wondered if my Mother grew up in Caesars Palace in Vegas.
LTG : )
Alcona, ON
Quoted from cdnpinbacon:Go figure my angel is tilted. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Merry Christmas my friend.
Great picture. I think I miss the tree and presents around it the most.
LTG : )
Quoted from LTG:Merry Christmas my friend.
Great picture. I think I miss the tree and presents around it the most.
LTG : )
You too Lloyd.
Quoted from cdnpinbacon:My new guitar is sitting behind the tree. I know what it is !!!!
[quoted image]
Did you say "guitar"? it might be one of these. 
Quoted from cottonm4:Did you say "guitar"? it might be one of these.
[quoted image]
Nope...height doesn’t match box. Could be a red rider BB gun though!
I broke into my wife’s Christmas sock and ate the beef jerkey and a box of smarties. Am I a bad person?
I am so old and jaded, I can find something to bitch about in every single Xmas/holidays song I hear.
Don't get me started! Seriously, I've considered writing a standup routine, some of my observations are pretty funny. But probably only to me...
I just bitch about the existence of Christmas music in general. I'm glad I don't have a job in retail or customer service, because 8 hours a day for a month of that would drive me to drink. More.
Quoted from cdnpinbacon:I also sharpied out names and added my name as the giver.
I'll admit to being a mischievous youngster. There was a time in my distant past when the magic and mystery of Christmas was strong and the idea of Santa was real. I cannot remember how old I was, but I have a memory of sneaking over to the gifts under the tree after the big guy had eaten his milk and cookies but before anyone else was up and moving on Christmas morning. I found a couple gifts that Santa had left for my brother. . . so I conveniently blocked out his name and wrote my own in its place -- Mom and Dad would never know, right?
It was eventually time to open the gifts and while I don't remember all the details of that day I distinctly remember the look on my mom's face when she looked at the "To/From" areas that I had altered. I did not score anything intended for my brother. . . I suppose I was just lucky to get my own presents that year and probably started to think something was up with that Santa guy.
Our entire family still gets a good laugh from the story, myself included.
Quoted from TractorDoc:being a mischievous youngster
I love euphemisms. We don't die. We pass away. We can't say f**k in polite company, but we can say your screwed---which means the same thing. The boxer did not kick the other guy's ass; He took him down.
"Pissed off" is still vulgar, just not as vulgar as it used to be.
"Mischievous youngster" is good euphemism for: Little bastard, young vandal, pain in the ass kid, little hellion, and probably a whole lot more that I cannot think this of at the moment
Quoted from cottonm4:"Mischievous youngster" is good euphemism for: Little bastard, young vandal, pain in the ass kid, little hellion, and probably a whole lot more that I cannot think this of at the moment
From the stories I hear and what I remember. . . Guilty as charged. I doubt my parents (or I) would change a thing about how we grew up though.
I'm just glad it was in an era before there were cameras and recordings of everything. Many of my actions were never malicious or harmful to anyone but might result in some mug shots if attempted today.
Quoted from cottonm4:"Mischievous youngster" is good euphemism for: Little bastard, young vandal, pain in the ass kid, little hellion, and probably a whole lot more that I cannot think this of at the moment
I prefer "hoodlums."
That's what my aunt called us five kids.
Quoted from ThatOneDude:I just bitch about the existence of Christmas music in general. I'm glad I don't have a job in retail or customer service, because 8 hours a day for a month of that would drive me to drink. More.
Reminds me of 20 some years ago. The casino played Christmas music. But only had about 6 songs and kept repeating them over and over and over.
Even when I was winning at black jack I could only take an hour or two of that. Had to go.
LTG : )
Quoted from TractorDoc:I have a memory of sneaking over to the gifts under the tree
Curiosity always got me. I could rewrap presents better than when Mom wrapped them to begin with.
One year I got threatened with bloody murder if I knew what one present was.
Of course I knew them all. She went over each package and could find no source of forced entry. She gave up.
She never said a word. Until some 30 years later, about a month before she died. She asked me that one Christmas how I knew what everything was ?
Easy I said. I got up one morning before everyone else. Grabbed the keys to the garage and car. Opened the trunk and played with everything before she wrapped them.
She was shocked. She never saw that coming.
LTG : )
We grew up pretty poor, so in general, if my mom was working for a retail place, I got a present from there. One time, she tried to get me to guess. Told me it was black and white. I immediately guess that it was the blow up orca pool toy from her workplace. She said, no, it has fur. Hmm, I'm stumped. Wake up Christmas morning...to a blow up orca pool toy.
Here's the kicker: we didn't have a pool. No personal pool, no neighborhood pool, no city pool. We did have a bay nearby(Florida panhandle), but that vinyl orca would die quick in that stump ridden water. So, I'm not sure it was ever anything but a brief lived decoration.
Quoted from cdnpinbacon:Guilty![quoted image][quoted image]
Your name must be "Darrin" 
Quoted from cdnpinbacon:Yeah rhymes with Aaron and Erin,,,never mind.
Time for a Finley walk he’s terrorizing me.
[quoted image]
Look at that face!
That's a good boy!
You are old when you remember your Dad having this on his desk and that he was very happy not to have to use his slide rule anymore.
This is Dad's Curta mechanical calculator, purchased new around 1960. He gave it to me while he was still alive, because he knew my sisters would have no clue what to do with it. 
It's a frickin' brilliant mechanical device that makes a smooth, humming ratchet sound as you turn the add/subtract crank. Sixty-year-old device still works perfectly!
He used it until he could afford a battery-powered electronic one, once the prices of those got down below $200.
Two hundred dollars in 1971 would be $1285 today, adjusted for inflation. People paid a lot more for technology in those days. They had to really need it for their jobs to justify the cost.
20201221_061112.jpg20201221_061155.jpg20201221_061221.jpgYou gave and received chocolate covered cherries for Christmas. My Daughter picked up on it so now I still get them, even though one is about all I can stand and they wind up rotting on a shelf.
Quoted from ThatOneDude:We grew up pretty poor, so in general, if my mom was working for a retail place, I got a present from there.
Remembering growing up poor I always say "I grew up so poor I didn't have two wooden nickels to rub together let alone real ones."
Quoted from Grayman_EM:Remembering growing up poor I always say "I grew up so poor I didn't have two wooden nickels to rub together let alone real ones."
This reminded me of a post I responded to in the Childhood Toys thread, about someone only having a stick and hoop.
Quoted from DanQverymuch:I only had the stick, I was stuck just playing with that while imagining what the hoop must be like.
I still dream about Jane Parker fruitcakes from A&P. Someone bought the rights to the name on these and 
clock coffee. Not the same,just the name remains.
People know I like fruitcake and tell me about all these others that are supposed to be great, Grandmas (the real whiskey ones are good but not real fruitcake), Southern Supreme (expensive, too nutty, too much butter.)
Claxton will do in a rush, need to get another one before they go away after Christmas.
Quoted from beelzeboob:Back to the kill shelter.
When he was a pup his nick name was shark.
Quoted from PopBumperPete:all the actors from you favorite films die off
They come back to life everytime they are played.
Quoted from phil-lee:They come back to life everytime they are played.
Celluloid heroes!!
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