I think I'm the epitome on this one... I was born in '67; graduated in '85, and I have all kinds of stuff that reminds me of when I was little, and so on. I have a 1965 Zenith color TV, which my family couldn't have afforded at the time, but I was so fascinated with the round-tube color TV sets that some neighbors had when I was a little kid, that I have to have this one now, to satisfy the need back then.
Same holds true for cars, trucks and motorcycles. I have a whole garage full of 1985 model Toyotas, which I wanted when I was in high school, but couldn't afford. I also have several 1985 motorcycles, which I wanted desperately at the time as well. I guess I could live without those things, but I do watch the old Zenith TV, (luckily I'm a qualified TV repairman so I can keep the thing operational myself), and I do drive and ride the 1985 vehicles regularly, and keep them in new condition.
And my most bizarre nostalgia special interest, is air raid sirens. I was fascinated by the last-Friday-of-the-month test of the civil defense sirens in Los Angeles in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, and I was crushed when they stopped the program in January of 1986. I really missed hearing that siren wailing on the last Friday, so I dragged my wife on a 6,000 mile round trip, all the way to Wisconsin in 2007 to buy a pair of Federal Thunderbolt air raid sirens from a siren collector, and hauled them back to California, and installed one behind our house... I blare it every last Friday of the month at noon, and have done so since April 2007. Since then, I have accumulated several other air raid sirens for my collection.
Now that's nostalgia in action!
Charles
09 Aug 2011, 12:31 pm
