Read this homily and beyond.
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But I, am older than whoever wrote the above.
I'm so old I remember when our telephone number was 145 ( the license number on my father's car was 145 ) and to make a call, you picked up the handset and an operator would answer, "operator." You told them the number you wanted to call and they would connect you. When I was courting my Bride in the early '60s, rotary dial phones were just coming into use. My Bride lived on a dairy farm 5 miles from town and her family was on a party line with several other subscribers. It wasn't unusual for someone to pickup their handset to make a call and if they heard someone else on the line, to listen in. It definitely curtailed any comments regarding your personal feelings. Any calls made out of the immediate area were considered toll calls and subscribers were charged by the minute like the early days of cell phones.
My first transistor radio was purchased in 1954 but prior to that, I had a vacuum tube radio with an antenna wire stretched across my bedroom ceiling and certain times of the year I could listen to radio stations broadcasting from Wheeling, WV (WWVA) and Shrevenport, Louisianna, KWKH and the Louisianna Hayride to the Grand Old Opry from Nashville on WSM. The transistor wasn't any better at reception, just smaller in size.
FM radio was just coming into being in more areas around the mid to late '50s and listening to a.m. radio could be a challenge with thunder storms and fading in and out signals. Traveling any distance in a car meant constantly changing stations as they faded in and out the further you got from the signaling tower.
A tape recorder? What was that? Never knew what a tape recorder was until late '50s.
My Dad bought a Fada television set with a 12 inch screen. He had a telephone pole installed in the back yard with a television antenna mounted on top in 1954 and I recall coming home from high school and watching the McCarthy hearings until the truck delivering the Newark Evening News came by and that meant it was time for me to start my paper route of 64 papers over 6 miles distance and running from the street to the front door of each house to leave a paper if it was too far from the street and most of them were too far from the street.
Wrestling on Saturday nights was a big must watch and my hero was Antonino Rocco, the drop kick specialist. A far cry from the modern day WWF matches. When the wresting matches were over, the screen displayed a channel logo until the next morning when broadcasting began with the National Anthem.
I love to recall adventures from those times in my life. Every now and then someone will say how good it was back then but giving it some reflection, it really wasn't much different than today. We feared nuclear attack from Russia, polio was a crippling potential deadly disease with no known cure. It was a lot like Covid-19. Medical science has come a long way since then and people like SDJ and me might not to be alive were it not for advancements in heart disease medical science.
Polio was nearly eradicated in the U.S. until recently when it reared its ugly head once more.
I think of the changes I've seen in automobiles and then reflect to the days my father told me about where when, as kid (my father was born in 1901) if they saw a car tire track as they walked two miles to go to school, they played hooky and followed the tire tracks in the hope of seeing the car. My parents saw the first man on the moon, a phenomenon considering the first flight was in 1903.
My Mother played piano in a movie theatre that showed silent films and she witnessed 3-D movies after telling my sisters and me about how wonderful it was to hear Al Jolson sing on the silver screen for the first time.
If interested, I can always embellish more as I love to write but understand not everyone likes old fart reminiscing.
) but I really appreciate you posting this. Of course I've heard the stories of my parents, grandparents and my grandma's 101-year-old sister growing up but it's great to hear from someone who grew up in a different country. 
It's a wonder Amazon didn't cancel me out for trying so many different headphones and returning them. These really changed my way of listening to music and with this song they work great producing good bass but not where it overpowers the other instruments !!
