Cable TV taught me never to become a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake

I'm not sure of the exact year, but at some point in the early 80s, I got a cable-equipped TV in my room.

This was like the hitting the jackpot. It included the full package of premium channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax.

These channels were great for watching movies that had been in theaters only weeks earlier. It was a big deal when the first of the month rolled around and HBO introduced its new lineup of movies, including the blockbusters that were otherwise only available at, well, Blockbuster.

It was on HBO that I saw the first four (I think) "Friday the 13th" movies.

I remember sitting in my room one very late Friday night watching the first "Friday the 13th." My parents were asleep, the house was quiet, and I was scared stiff.

I wanted to turn it off when Mrs. Voorhees got her head chopped off, but I couldn't look away.

You have to understand, back then we hardly ever saw anything like that in movies or video games. It was terrifying.

With today being Friday the 13th, I think back on how cheesy those movies really were, and how they probably weren't particularly scary compared to some of the things you see today. But believe me, back in the Reagan Administration, Jason and his hockey mask were the height of the horror genre. They made you think twice about ever working at a summer camp.

And you sure as heck knew not to run to the basement when you heard a strange sound down there. That was just common sense.

BLOG RERUN: Things I miss and don't miss about growing up in the 70s and 80s

NOTE: This post originally ran here on the blog 11 years ago today (August 12, 2013, for the calendar-challenged). I bring it back now because I still miss and don't miss these things.

Things I Miss

Fantasy Island

There have been some good shows on TV in the past 50 years, but none have matched the awesomeness that was Fantasy Island. Saturday nights at 10, as I recall. ABC aired it right after The Love Boat, and I have to believe they dominated the ratings. Mr. Rourke ruled the island with an iron fist ("Smiles, everyone, smiles...NOW."), but it was Tattoo who got the girls. Something about that little guy was apparently irresistible. 

The Sony Walkman

I could walk around and listen to music outside. OUTSIDE. Without carrying a 14-pound boom box. I could go running and listen to music. Or cycling. Or whatever it was we did back then (I can't quite remember how we filled our days, to be honest.) Of course, the music was on cassette. And you had to fast-forward and rewind to get to different songs. And that fast-forwarding and rewinding drained the life from your double-A batteries. But it was revolutionary, don't you understand?

This version of Michael Jackson

I miss that guy.

Things I Don't Miss

People smoking...everywhere

Good Lord, it was terrible. You kids have no idea how good you have it in this department. People just lit up all over the place...in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in church, etc. OK, maybe not in church. As far as I know. I mean, I didn't go to church in the 70s. The point is, the world smelled like cigarettes. Which is to say the world was disgusting and it stank. The fact that there are still people who smoke amazes me. I just assumed we all collectively came to our senses round about 1997 and that everyone was going to quit. What did I miss?

Four channels of TV

After the iPod and the Keurig coffee maker, I say cable/streaming television is Western Civilization's greatest contribution to the universe over the past several decades. When I was growing up in Cleveland, you had channels 3 (NBC), 5 (ABC), 8 (CBS), and 43 (independent). And at some point there was channel 61, too. And that was it. The reception was bad during storms AND YOU HAD TO GET UP TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL. Who does that? Not us now. Which is why we're all fat. But still...

Rubik's Cube

There wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with Rubik's Cube, other than the fact that I could never solve it. Ever. Even bought a book explaining how to solve it and couldn't understand it. Yet there were people appearing on "That's Incredible" who, given a randomly configured Rubik's Cube, could solve the thing in, like, 12 seconds. Maybe less, I don't remember. All I know is that I was bitter about it then and I'm bitter about it now. DARN YOU AND YOUR DEMONIC INVENTION, ERNO RUBIK!

My dad would have loved (and maybe occasionally hated) 2023

This was our living room tech set-up in the 80s, featuring a big old Curtis Mathis VCR and a cable box resting on top of a wood cabinet RCA TV. Displayed on the screen is the 24-hour weather data feed Continental Cablevision used to broadcast. It was a hot, hot day in Wickliffe by the looks of it.

My father was a gadget guy.

He embraced technology, particularly in his later years. Thus, we were fairly early adopters of everything from VCRs to home computers.

Dad hoped to live well into the 21st century, if only to be there for The Next Big Tech Development, whatever that turned out to be. Unfortunately, he died in October 1999, just a little shy of the digital revolution that has irrevocably changed all of our lives.

He would have given almost anything to have witnessed it, I'm sure.

On the other hand, being politically somewhere just to the right of Archie Bunker, I don't know that he would have been thrilled with everything that has happened in the world socially over the last quarter century. And I don't say that judgmentally – positive or negative – but simply as an observation with which anyone who knew him would very likely agree.

As I've mentioned before, we were among the first people in our town to get cable TV in 1980. As I recall, Dad walked a couple of streets over to talk with the Continental Cablevision work crew and find out when they would make it to Harding Drive and what day was the absolute earliest he could sign up.

He bought us a VCR around that same time, and I'm not talking about one of the lightweight, sleek units that would be in vogue a decade later. I mean a big, heavy-duty Curtis Mathis job that could be used equally to watch a movie, record an episode of "M*A*S*H*," or throw at a would-be intruder as a show of deadly force.

We had a home video game system as far back as 1977, when he sprang for a black-and-white Radio Shack Pong console. We also got an Atari 2600 before almost any of my friends. Same with the Commodore 64 and my green-screen IBM XT computer.

The man loved new hardware, and I benefitted from it all as an equally tech-crazy teenage boy.

The first time I used a cell phone was when Terry was pregnant with Elissa in 1994 and I had to be reachable at a moment's notice in case she went into labor. I received the phone on a day I was covering a wrestling match a half-hour's drive away for my then-employer, The News-Herald (which as I recall lent me the phone).

I got into my car, and the first person I called was my dad.

He and I were amazed that we could carry on a conversation while one of us was driving and no CB radio was involved.

Now cell phones are everywhere, and it's sometimes difficult to tell how much of a good thing that really is.

Regardless, if my dad was still around, he would probably own both an iPhone AND an Android.

You know, just in case.

All these years later, I still miss the guy.

If you're younger than 50, you can't imagine what a revelation cable TV was in the early 80s

 

In 1980, cable television came to my hometown of Wickliffe, Ohio.

As I recall, the technicians from Continental Cablevision began stringing wire and performing home installations on the far east side of the city where we lived, so we were among the very earliest adopters (which was so like my dad).

If you never lived with only the channels a rooftop antenna can get you, it's difficult to understand what a stunning advancement cable TV was.

Before, we had channels 3, 5, 8, 43, and 61. Now we had 36 channels. Thirty-six!!

Before, reception was often spotty, especially in bad weather and especially on the UHF channels (i.e., Channel 43, which had all of the good weekday afternoon cartoons and evening reruns). Now every channel came in crystal clear...or at least what passed for "crystal clear" before HDTV.

There was even a channel devoted just to showing the current weather stats: Temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. I have an old photo I took of the TV screen showing that channel the first time it hit 100 degrees in Wickliffe during the sweltering summer of 1988.

And if your parents would spring for it (mine did), you also had HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax. The latter is often referred to as "Skinemax," and there was good reason for that. But we won't get into it here.

Suffice it to say, cable TV changed our lives to a very real degree.

For one thing, when we got cable, we also got our first TV remote. It looked like this:

Yes, it was wired to the cable box, but the wire was really long and you could sit in your chair and change channels without ever getting up. Do you understand the significance of that? Not that we had much selection prior to the advent of cable, but we did occasionally want to flip around the channels and see what was on, and to do that we had to stand next to the TV and turn a dial. Those days were gone forever!

We also had the channel switcher box shown at the top of this post, which was cool and all, but not chunky-remote cool.

Nowadays, of course, cable is fast becoming a relic. It has given way to streaming services, satellite TV, etc. But in 1980, cable TV was the wave of the future.

And it was a future where I would never have to manually change a channel again. It was stunning.

Things I miss and don't miss from growing up in the 70s and 80s

Things I Miss

Fantasy Island

There have been some good shows on TV in the past 30 years, but none have matched the awesomeness that was Fantasy Island. Saturday nights at 10, as I recall. ABC aired it right after The Love Boat, and I have to believe they dominated the ratings. Mr. Rourke ruled the island with an iron fist ("Smiles everyone, smiles...NOW."), but it was Tattoo who got the girls. Something about that Hispanic dwarf was apparently irresistible. 

The Sony Walkman

I could walk around and listen to music outside. OUTSIDE. Without carrying around a 14-pound boom box. I could go running and listen to music. Or cycling. Or whatever it was we did back then (I can't quite remember how we filled our days, to be honest.) Of course, the music was on cassette. And you had to fast-forward and rewind to get to different songs. And that fast-forwarding and rewinding drained the life from your double-A batteries. But it was revolutionary, darn it! Don't you understand?

This version of Michael Jackson

The one who was still African-American. And wore one glove. And could dance in a way no one had danced before. And, for that matter, was still alive. I miss that guy.

Things I Don't Miss

People smoking...everywhere

Good Lord, it was terrible. You kids have no idea how good you have it in this department. People just lit up all over the place...in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in church, etc. OK, maybe not in church. As far as I know. I mean, I didn't go to church in the 70s. The point is, the world smelled like cigarettes. Which is to say the world was disgusting and it stank. The fact that there are still people who smoke amazes me. I just assumed we all collectively came to our senses round about 1997 and that everyone was going to quit. What did I miss?

Four channels of TV

After the iPod and the Keurig coffee maker, I say cable television is Western Civilization's greatest contribution to the universe over the past 40 years. When I was growing up in Cleveland, you had channels 3 (NBC), 5 (ABC), 8 (CBS), and 43 (independent). And at some point there was channel 61, too. And that was it. The reception was bad during storms AND YOU HAD TO GET UP TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL. Who does that? Not us now. Which is why we're all fat. But still...

Rubik's Cube

There wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with Rubik's Cubes, other than the fact that I could never solve one. Ever. Even bought a book explaining how to solve it and couldn't understand it. Yet there were people appearing on "That's Incredible" who, given a randomly configured Rubik's Cube, could solve the thing in, like, 12 seconds. Maybe less, I don't remember. All I know is that I was bitter about it then and I'm bitter about it now. DARN YOU AND YOUR DEMONIC INVENTION, ERNO RUBIK!