Category: Things that Disappeared When You Weren’t Looking

It’s more than a camera, it’s almost alive. It’s only nineteen dollars, and ninety-five!

Polaroid instant cameras had been around for years, but they were expensive gadgets that our PARENTS owned. In 1965, the camera company saw the obvious: there was a huge number of youngsters out there who needed to buy their product. So they came up with an ultra-modern (and inexpensive) design that was aimed straight at the face of youth.

Now, to top it off, we need a beautiful babe on the beach (Ali McGraw, if I’m not mistaken) as well as the catchiest tune of 1968’s commercials to make this a cultural icon. Mission accomplished.

Of course, I was an eight-year-old kid in 1968 (although I fondly remember that babe on the beach), so I didn’t get my mitts on a Swinger until a couple of years later, a gift from my oldest brother after he upgraded to a better camera.

It was a pretty cool item. The film was a bit pricey (hey, you can’t make money selling cameras at cost!), and gave black-and-white images about three inches square, as I recall. Not studio quality, but perfect for a generation that was always on the go.

And yes, it really did say YES when the light was right.

Here’s to a piece of Boomer culture that will live forever in our minds. Just TRY to get that song out of your head!

 

It was the ultimate in cool. James Bond even wore one. It was the light-up LED watch.

Introduced in 1970, it was a very expensive toy for the wealthy. But by 1972, they had gotten affordable and were starting to be popular. I got mine a couple of years later.

Dad used to get Coordinated Universal Time on his shortwave radio to set his watch (at the tone, it will be . . .). I had a wind-up Timex, and it used to lose or gain a couple of minutes a day. Hey, if you had a watch, you had to keep adjusting it. That’s how it was.

But LED watches got us used to knowing EXACTLY what time it was.

One of my favorite tricks was to count down the bell in class. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1!” followed by the bell ringing on cue. Great stuff for a class clown.

The watches were accurate to within a minute or so a year. That was also the most ridiculous advertising claim ever, because you were replacing the battery at intervals that might possibly stretch into three months. Of course, when the watch was new, as you obsessively checked the time, a battery would give out after a month or so.

LED watches were a common sight until 1979. Then, they disappeared almost overnight. That year, the much more efficient LCD came on the market, and you could get a year or more out of the battery (if you didn’t use your light too much to check the time in the dark).

The watches, which cost hundreds of dollars in 1970, were given away in cereal boxes by the end of the decade.

“Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away” sang Paul Simon in what is clearly the greatest song ever written that paid homage to slide film. Unfortunately, mama, i.e. Kodak, didn’t listen.

Earlier in this year of 2009, Kodak announced that Kodachrome was going away. They had actually been making it disappear gradually for some time. For instance, Kodachrome 25 passed form the scene in 2002. Super 8 Kodachrome went away in 2005. Kodachrome 200 sailed off into the sunset in 2006. And the last holdout, 35mm Kodachrome 64, was discontinued this last June.

I spent ten years as an avid photographer. My specialty was 120 and 35mm B&W, developed in my own darkroom, and 35 mm Kodachrome slides. I preferred 64, although I picked up a couple of dozen rolls of 25 that were about to expire for half price and kept them in the freezer until I finally shot them all up.

One reason that serious photographers preferred it was its unparalleled sharpness. Plus, it tends to magnify colors in the red range, making things like red lipstick, roses, or sunsets look particularly amazing.

What Kodachrome was NOT was forgiving. It required perfect exposure for good results. Thus, many of us learned to “bracket” our shots. Instead of shooting a subject once, we would shoot it three or more times, making subtle exposure adjustments each time.

Kodachrome has a long history. It was invented in the early 1930’s by a pair of musicians. Yes, you read that right. Leopold Godowsky, Jr. and Leopold Mannes were fascinated by color photography. Unfortunately, at the time, color photography was expensive and not too good in quality. Slides were thick with pigments, and required very strong illumination to effectively display them. That meant lots of heat and short-lived expensive bulbs.

The two Leopolds devised a formula in their own laboratory to produce a subtractive film that made much less use of pigmentation. Kodak was impressed with their independent work, and poured cash into their efforts. In 1935, Kodachrome 16mm movie film was released, the next year the venerable Kodachrome 35mm slide was introduced to the world. Photographers didn’t take long to make it a huge success.

What photographers quickly figured out was what they COULDN’T do with Kodachrome: develop it themselves. The amazing film required an equally amazing combination of massive equipment and trained chemists to turn into slides that could be viewed on the more modest projectors that could now be used. Up until 1954, Kodachrome came with an envelope that allowed you to mail it in and get it processed as part of the price. That year, the practice was deemed anticompetitive in court, and Kodak was forced to allow others to obtain their proprietary chemicals.

(aside)Too bad no judge has yet decided that selling computers with Microsoft products pre-installed is just as bad, or worse.(/aside)

However, Kodak still processed the lion’s share of Kodachrome, due to its complexity.

I gave up photography about the time I got my first computer back in 1993. The smart box began taking up most of my spare time as I pursued a side career in freelance writing and cartooning. I was also busy enough teaching myself the ins and outs of computers, which would eventually allow me to make a wonderful career change to full-time IT.

My 90’s vacation shots were taken with a borrowed digital camera, or else on my wife’s point-and-click. I was impressed with the digital pics, but assumed that serious photogs would continue to use Kodachrome for professional usage.

I assumed wrongly. Even the pinnacle of great photography, National Geographic magazine, eventually began using digital technology in lieu of slides.

Thus, demand for Kodachrome dropped, and the inevitable happened. The world’s favorite slide film became unprofitable to produce.

Fortunately, its legacy will live on for centuries. Kodachrome colors are among the most durable and long-lasting in the business.

Mom dreaded summer vacation from school. That meant that I would likely be accompanying her to Farrier’s IGA in Miami, Oklahoma. That additionally meant that I would be relentlessly “warting” (her word for begging) for all sorts of food items that she could normally bypass when I was absent. It also meant that I would hammer her for a dime to drop into the horse kiddie ride.

The kiddie ride was strategically placed at the entrance of the store. Mr. Farrier knew that it would prove irresistible to kids accompanying their mothers, and that the kids would then do the selling.

Mothers probably wanted to wring Mr. Farrier’s neck.

But he wasn’t alone. Probably every 1960’s supermarket in the US had a kiddie ride or two located near the store entrance. Back in those days, a thin dime would buy a minute or so of sheer heaven for a Boomer kid, an investment that our mothers would frequently cough up to stop that relentless begging sound…

I couldn’t find much of a history for kiddie rides. No doubt, they have existed since at least the 19th century. Once upon a time, an enterprising businessman would let a child ride a tame donkey or pony for a reasonable fee (to be begged from the parents by the child), perhaps even throwing in a photograph of the child on said equine as part of the deal.

However, as urban life became more sophisticated, it became difficult to keep live animals at places of business. Thus, it would have been a natural transition from real ponies to mechanical models parked in potentially lucrative locations.

The result was that we Boomer children were surrounded by magical rides that would provide us with about a minute of musical, mechanized motion for a thin dime.

They could be found everywhere. Cafes, bus stations, hotel lobbies, just about any place where parents with children were likely to congregate with some time to kill.

And they weren’t all horses, of course. Horses were my favorite, but a kid could also encounter large plastic creations including elephants, Donald Duck (and a host of other cartoon characters), ferris wheels, the Batmobile (and many other types of vehicles), kangaroos, chipmunks, pigs, and fanciful creatures like Puff the Magic Dragon.

The car rides frequently had the advantage of being able to entertain two kids at once, although this would also frequently precipitate a power struggle between the kids as to who got to “drive.”

Most of the rides provided the same product for a dime: 60-90 seconds of back and forth motion, accompanied by music from sophisticated 1960’s era electronics. Sometimes, other sounds would also be generated, like motor noises, whooping Indians, or gunfire.

Some games would combine two joys for the price of one. For instance, there was an Indian Scout ride that provided a kid with a galloping horse PLUS a six-shooter to hit targets with at the same time! I don’t recall ever being lucky enough to spot one of those back in the day.

The amazing thing about the kiddie rides is their timelessness. Thus, many businesses are making good money restoring vintage models and selling them to collectors, arcades, and even many of the same types of establishments that hosted the games when we were kids.

Even the price has stayed kind. Most rides take a single quarter. The businesses are no longer making much or any money from the ride itself, but they are effective at attracting eager kids and nostalgic parents and grandparents, who presumably will purchase things that DO return a profit.

The sounds that we grew up with were things we took for granted. I always assumed that I would hear the five-days-weekly noon whistle at the B.F. Goodrich plant in Miami, Oklahoma. The sound that accompanied making a phone call would always be a spring-wound noise that accompanied the rotary dial. And purchasing something at most stores would involve hearing keys pushed and a ringing bell.

My first real job was sacking groceries at Phillip’s Food Center in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. I watched in amazement as the ladies would punch those keys at lightning speed, calling out each price so that the customer would hear them. And when it was all over, the drawer would open with that classic “ka-ching!”

My grocery sacking job has, for the most part, disappeared, along with those manual registers. Nowadays, most checkers scan items over a laser, and also bag the customer’s groceries (unless the customer must do so himself). But today, the past comes alive once again for just a bit, as we experience the comforting mechanical sounds that accompany a 1960’s supermarket buy.

The cash register came into existence when saloon keeper James Ritty, of Dayton, Ohio, devised a contraption that would supplant the money drawer. It was very tempting for low-paid employees to pull a few bucks out for themselves, and Ritty’s cash register tallied actual sales totals. The money in the drawer had to match the machine’s calculations, or questions would be asked.

Former grocery store owner John Patterson saw tremendous potential with Ritty’s patented invention, and bought it outright. He worked feverishly to improve the design, and eventually employed a team of inventors. His business became the National Cash Register company, and soon dominated sales of the highly popular devices. By WWI, a million and a half cash registers had been sold in the US.

Patterson was a ruthless businessman who used legal shenanigans to stomp his competition. For instance, he patented the bell that would ring when the drawer was opened. He sued Heintz Cash Register Company because they sold a machine that made a cuckoo sound, and won! Heintz’s registers had to run silently. In 1912, NCR earned the wrath of the feds and was convicted of running a monopoly. I guess Bill Gates could have taught Patterson a thing or two about beating that particular rap.

Cash registers remained pretty much the same until the late 1970’s. One advance was the addition of a printed receipt for the customer. But by and large, cashiers punched up sales pretty much the way their parents and grandparents might have done it.

The advance in computers changed the way stores tallied sales. By the mid 80’s, cash registers had become networked devices, able to send their totals electronically to a central location, perhaps located thousands of miles away. The universal adoption of barcodes eventually caused the mechanical cash register to vanish altogether. Nowadays, even the smallest retail businesses use scanning and Point-of-Sale software to keep track of purchases.

Also vanished is the toy cash register that many of us grew up with. Durable models made by Structo and the like would often be handed down form elder to younger siblings, perhaps eventually making it all the way into a new generation.

All the modern-day toy registers I found for sale had two things in common: they were made of plastic, and they all had toy scanners attached. There were no friendly prices to pop up at the push of a key, no manual crank on the side to record the sale, and saddest of all, no cha-ching.

Fortunately for Boomers, Pink Floyd has immortalized the sound for all eternity.