How Has the World Changed as You Got Older? (Non-political)

[Salty Dog]

Polio,

Before there was COVID, there was Polio. I remember being scared of this awful disease as a child. It lead to terrible paralysis and was commonly picked up by people in big cities. It had something to do with not having immunity to drinking water - people used to live in the country and drank water out of wells and even streams. Once moving into the cities they lost their resistance to this water and became terribly ill.

Vaccines against Polio were developed in the 1950's. The most famous was from Dr. Jonas Salk but he was not the only one. The first vaccines most of us received used a piece of metal like a razor blade and they punctured your upper arm a bunch of times (maybe 10 or 20 times) in a circular pattern. This left a circular scar on our upper arm and I can still see my scar today. It is not very noticeable, no one will notice it on the beach or at the pool but it is there. My wife has such a scar as well.

I bet fleetp has the same scar on his arm. I doubt Duke Roland has one because the other vaccines came out when he was growing up.

After this "stabbing" vaccine, they came out with an oral vaccine on a sugar cube you ingested and then another oral vaccine you drank from a small paper cup. I took both of these vaccines as a child, we all did.

Anyway, the vaccines worked and the number of polio cases dropped dramatically. It is almost, but not quite completely, erradicated worldwide. President Franklin Roosevelt had polio and was paralyzed the entire time as President. He had to have massive metal braces on his legs to walk and this fact was hidden from the Public by the press.s. When he gave speeches he had assistants on both sides of him helping him walk down the aisles not eh House to give his State of the Union speech and he was always in a wheelchair or seated in other pictures.

We had a Walgreen's Drug Store not too far from my house and I used to ride my bicycle there with my playmates. They had an old soda fountain in the back and sold glasses of Coca Cola for only five cents. I remember going there and ordering a glass of Coke and I wanted to split it with one of my playmates. When the woman behind the counter figured out we were going to share the same glass, she refused to serve me because she said it was too dangerous for us to share a glass in fear of passing Polio on to one another.

[corsair91]

Also Tuberculosis (TB), Smallpox, Malaria.
(Syphilis was known as the great pox)


Polio vaccine was something disgusting you swallowed without trying to
taste, the sugar cube was a much happier experience.
Eventually replaced by a combination shot.


Sharing a glass was an increased polio risk
but also depressed Cola sales.

[fleetp]

I have the scar from getting the Salk vaccine. I also had the Sabin polio vaccine. I swallowed the sugar cube quickly.

[Roland]

You're right, Salty - I do not have such a scar. When I was growing up in the 1960s, I don't think anyone was worried about polio anymore. But tuberculosis was still a concern, and I recall being tested for it at school.

[Salty Dog]

Television

I grew up in Central Illinois - in the city of Decatur. We had a small TV station there. There were also TV stations in Springfield - 40 miles to the west and a station in Champaign/Urbana 40 miles to the east. These three stations were CBS, ABC and NBC so we had the bases covered at that time. There were no other stations available to us until the mid-1960's, when independent stations slowly started to appear. The only sports shows we had were the weekly ones from the networks. There were a lot of the "Game of the Week" shows and the one I remember most was the weekly baseball game on CBS and the announcers were the famous players Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese. They later bought the New York Yankees and I watched there games a lot. They were the most popular team and Mickey Mantle was the most popular player back then.

Like most middle class families, we owned a 19 inch black and white TV and a rooftop antenna. I am not sure if our antenna was mounted on an electrical rotor or not. It worked pretty well. Color TV was not available in the early 1960's and when it appeared it was VERY expensive. The cost of color TVs slowly started coming down. Very few shows were in color.

The biggest show in color, by far, was the Western show Bonanza. That show ushered in the color TV craze. It was the most popular show on TV. Another popular show in color was the Wonderful World of Disney.

We finally got a color TV in 1967 and that was a really big deal!

Back then, there was no such thing as computers in the home or internet or free phone calls. If you made a long distance phone call, it cost a lot of money, big money!

I recall in 1960 we had a really big sun spot cycle. Decatur, Illinois is the same latitude as San Francisco, Philadelphia and Indianapolis. Amazingly, the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealius) dipped all the way down south of us and we saw the Northern Lights very clearly at least one night and I remember it well - what a show! When sun spots are very high, radio and TV signals skip like crazy. I remember one Sunday morning getting up and we were receiving a TV signal from Denver, Colorado! I got to watch the Heckle and Jeckle show for the first and only time that morining.

People older than us - say Loki59 for instance - grew up without TV at all. People born in the early 1940's almost certainly grew up with no TV at all as a child. They had a lot more radio shows back then and we all entertained ourselves by playing games and reading more than kids do today.

[Roland]

I love old-time radio shows, even though they were mostly before my time. A local public radio station in DC broadcasts four hours of old radio programs every Sunday evening, and then it's available online for a week or two following. I always listen to Gunsmoke, and sometimes to Dragnet.

[fleetp]

Back in the 1950's on Sunday afternoons Dad would take Mom, my brother and me for a 'Sunday drive'. I don't remember anything about the destinations, but I remember listening to "Johnny Dollar" a detective drama on the car's A.M. radio.

[corsair91]

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yours_Truly,_Johnny_Dollar

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar is a radio drama that aired on CBS Radio from February 18, 1949 to September 30, 1962.

private investigator drama,
"the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account – America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator."

The final episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar airing on CBS, are often cited as part of the end of the golden age of radio


Yours Truly Johnny Dollar (audio) playlist
Recap Radio
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx8ZMoOQL_GH40PKmH_omoPUUHgKVKHo3

Recap Radio
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-yI6JO1LtCt4j1kQBmK3Bg



Yours Truly Johnny Dollar (audio) playlist

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/great-detectives-present-yours-truly-johnny-dollar/id430244417

(probably need to fast forward past some adverts)



Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar Radio (audio) Show playlist
Audio Drama Blitz
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnTF9NEii-cntf36MDFH8Z6ZU6q_mEmHr

Audio Drama Blitz
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgQ2Z89cv-uzsJTkBJEMFrQ



more Youtube Search Results on
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Yours+Truly%2C+Johnny+Dollar

[Roland]

On the local old-time radio program, The Big Broadcast, the first program is always Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. You might like to check it out for the sake of nostalgia:

https://wamu.org/show/the-big-broadcast/

[Guardacostas]

Im stil lost in the 90s. What a decade for all of us. When close my eyes i can still see the beepers and here the internet prrrrr while you're online and pick up your internet phone.

It was't just were i left off in life, it's were the world left off. I don't know if that helps or doesnt.

YOuth, wasted on the young. Everything gets taken for granted! I as well am guilty