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How we grew up

Started by cjk374, August 05, 2017, 12:27:22 AM

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cjk374

I guess the original discussion started here:  https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=20168.msg2247861#msg2247861

We have a wide variety of age groups here on the forum. We were all raised differently...in different parts of the country (and world for some), and in different generations & eras. I guess I am from what they call "generation X."

Me for example: born 2 months before Richard Nixon resigned from the Oval Office. Pretty much a child of the 80s. I witnessed the end of the cold war. The Challenger disaster occurred on my 12th birthday. I rode bicycles all over my area. No such thing as a cell phone, so my mom put me on time limits to either get back home or check in just to make sure I wasn't kidnapped or dead in a ditch...even when she was at work! Born & raised in the house I currently reside in. Mom left us home alone while she worked 2 jobs (I am the oldest of 4). We were also left out in the car in all kinds of weather while she went in the store. (after all, who wants all of those heathen kids running around!)  :-D  :evilgrin:

Louisiana had a drinking age of 18 when I was growing up. Then the feds threatened to yank highway funds away if Louisiana didn't change their drinking age. So they did...you could still buy alcohol at 18, but you weren't allowed to drink it until you were 21. Well, that loophole didn't satisfy the feds. Eventually it was changed to 21 to both purchase & consume. I love my home state.  :cheers:

I didn't get my first car until I started college...and I bought it with MY money. It may have been a Chevy Citation, but it was ALL MINE! My first car note didn't happen until I was married in 1998.  :whip:

As I stated in the Video Game Console thread, I played on the Intellivision console...the great-great-great-great grandfather to the X-Box and other gaming systems. The arcade hall of my youth (the name was Extra Play) was bulldozed many years ago and now an oil-change place is there.

What about y'all? What was your upbringing like?

P.S.: a message to all of the youngens reading these stories  :wave:...there is something to learn from our stories. Pay close attention to your own upbringing. You will be passing some of it off to your own kids. Be sure to pass off the best parts.
Runnin' roads and polishin' rails.


Max Rockatansky

Similar stories for me being a fellow Gen-X generation kid.  I really feel like I got to grow up at the end of an era where kids still had a lot of freedom to do what they wanted and were expected to be adults.  My parents were pretty blue collar and had some traditional values that would typically be considered tropes of the Mid-West.  My Dad wanted me to have a taste of the experiences of adulthood a little early like; driving, drinking, traveling alone, ect which really prepared me for life as an adult when I was 18. 

I moved from Michigan to Arizona when I was 18 and I did so with money I saved up.  I know its small in scale in comparison to some of the stuff that I've done in my adult life but for some reason that really sticks with me that I had the foresight at such a young age to know Michigan was on the decline...that there was something better out there.  Really the thing that I think was different for my generation versus the Millennial is the focus we had on individual development versus being just one of the group.  I suppose the advantage now that it is easier to grow up more slowly, you really could crash and burn of your own accord quickly when I was younger. 

Some of the stuff that I tend to really remember was; beers/tailgates with my Dad in my early teens, driving and maintaining the lawn before I was ten, and really just working to with the end goal of leaving the Mid-West.  I had pretty much everything from an Atari 2600 right up to a PS1, so I suppose I was right on that line with modern times with tech.  Really the biggest story probably I remember growing up was the Berlin Wall falling and not having to worry about the Communists killing everyone.

Edit:  None of what I said above is meant to make it sound like I grew up in a "better" time than any other generation.  I'm just particularly fond of the era I grew up in and all it entailed

noelbotevera

My mom and dad are actually from the baby boomer generation, and they adopted their values and philosophies from their parents/their childhoods/their lives (and in my case, other siblings) during their upbringing. So most of what you hear from me is effectively from an avant-garde baby boomer clashing with foreign culture (they grew up in the Philippines).

I was born exactly 34 years after the first Earth Day celebration in 1970 (thus, my birthdate is April 22nd, 2004), and I never got to see the Philippines, since we had moved in the US in 2003. My birthplace was in Lumberton, North Carolina (so yes, I am a Southerner), and I had moved up north to Pennsylvania in 2006, at the age of 2. I am the youngest of 3, with a sister who is almost 22, and a brother who is 18.

Due to my late birthdate, I was a child of the late 2000s and the 2010s. When I was growing up, I had learned how to use the landline, but I never got my first personal cell phone until April-May 2017 (yes, I was jealous of people having those cellular phone things). I'd learn how to use a computer, and used to play around with whatever electronics were in the house. So my parents clearly realized I was gifted in electronics. Since I ended up on this forum, I of course was gifted in geography and reading maps, and had guided my parents on road trips when I was 7 or 8. These were simple road trips to Washington DC and back - it was all interstates and weren't hard to remember or anything. Thus, my plans in the future is to try things like computer sciences, electrical engineering, and cartography. Just some future college degrees I could pursue.

Rules were pretty lax for me; whenever I went out, I told whoever was in charge (95% of the time my parents/my aunt - 5% of the time was my siblings) where I was going, and when I could be home (emphasis on could - sometimes I'd take longer and I could tell them why, sometimes I wouldn't take too long). I wasn't forced to bathe daily. I learned many things by myself. So on and so forth - however, my parents didn't teach me things like how to tie my shoes (and I still do not know how to this day). They had set pretty lax rules because of their parents - they had been either too strict or too forgiving.

I however, had something go wrong in my head whenever I hit middle school. It was later to be confirmed to be Asperger's or some other mental health disorder I'd never heard of. I was either all in or all out. I'd go from being tranquil and peaceful, to being loud and up-in-your-face. That required a therapist to help me learn how to talk to people, which I'm still refining. I was too smart for my own good - I'd used quite complex words other children never heard of before (which explains my terse responses on this forum - I should work on giving more detailed responses anyways). My mind was years ahead of my body. I thought like an adult - wondering how to pay taxes, setting up a credit or debit card, where should I live, which part time job should I pick, what car is the best bang for my buck, etc.

I never got an allowance, and thus I never was able to save money. I still had everything I needed anyways, and we lived much better than in the Philippines (which I ask my parents about). That's another story for later.

So that's my sob story done. I could probably go deeper, and there is a lot of omissions present.

jp the roadgeek

I had a pretty good upbringing.  My mom was a teacher who went to Woodstock and hung out with some famous musicians, including Jeff Baxter of Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers fame.   My dad was one of 6 children from a somewhat well-to-do family, and helped run the family car dealership.  Not much significant happened on the day that I was born, except that it was the date of the last NFL game not to be televised in any way, shape or form.  I was actually due to be born on September 16th, but decided to hold out until November 1st.  My mom spent 27 hours in labor with me, probably because she didn't want me to be a Halloween baby.    I was born in New Britain, CT, and have lived within a 20 mile radius for all but one year of my life (9 months at school in Philadelphia).  I'm an only child, so while I received a lot of attention, I still like to think that I'm down to Earth.  My first exposure to any type of geography was a puzzle with the 50 states and capitals, so I learned them pretty much by the time that I was 4.  When I was about 5 or 6, my dad used to bring home atlases from work, so I used to study them, along with state maps, and even started to draw my own crude maps when I was about 5 or 6.  That was also about the time that my parents would go for a ride somewhere, and have me try to find our way home given just the surrounding and no maps.  From it, I developed a keen sense of direction, and my own internal GPS that I call "JPS".

  Other than roadgeekdom, I also developed interests in sports and music.  I kind of switched off in phases between the two.  When I was 6 or 7, I developed quite the 45 collection of hits from the early 80's.  A couple of years later, I got into collecting baseball and other sports cards, and once cable arrived, I started watching a lot of sports on TV.  Both my parents' families were Red Sox fans, so I was trained to be one.  My first exposure to basketball was the Celtics/Lakers '84 Finals, so being a New Englander, you know who I rooted for.  Football was a little more complex.  The first two years I watched football, the Patriots made the Super Bowl (my parents even went), and the Giants won the Super Bowl.  Seeing that they rarely played each other, I developed a liking of both, something that was never called into question until XLII.  I used to go to 30-35 Hartford Whaler games a year as well, and saw many of the most famous games in Whaler history from '85-'92.  I was sitting before a game when we bombed Baghdad in the Gulf War (a game against the LA Kings where I looked up and saw John Candy in a luxury box), and I watched on a TV on the concourse of the Hartford Civic Center when Christian Laettner hit the winning shot against Kentucky.   As far as music, my cousin, who was a year older and also an only child, introduced me to many of my favorite bands.  I attended many concerts in my teens and 20's.  Saw The Grateful Dead 16 times, Rush 5 times, Rolling Stones twice.  Also saw Pink Floyd, Tom Petty (with Lenny Kravitz opening), and Rod Stewart twice, as well as many others.

My life took a tough turn when I was 15.  My dad suffered a heart attack behind the wheel and passed away.  Then a few years later, my mom suffered a debilitating injury.  While she's still with us, I've had to take care of her.  I also helped many of my elderly relatives in their later years, as many of my great aunts and uncles never had children, so I stepped in to be sort of a surrogate grandchild to each of them.  It was through one of my great aunt's landlord's that I met someone who got me into accounting and tax preparation, and I'm helping run a business.

My exposure with computers started in 2nd grade with the Apple II.  I got my first game system, the Atari 2600, for my 8th birthday.  I got my first computer, the Compaq 8088 portable, for Christmas in '86.  I lived in an area without cable until I was 8, and remember television before remote controls and rooftop antennas.  I can remember when Totalphone with Call Waiting was all the rage, and we had to convert from rotary to push button phones, but only needed to dial 7 digits for local calls, and local payphone calls only cost a dime.  I got my first car in '92, a 1983 Buick Lesabre, and I even remember the novelty of having a phone in my car once when a friend brought his parents Motorola Car Phone with us to a concert in Foxboro.  I got my first cell phone in '98, and have had one ever since.  My last gaming system I bought was the original NES. 

That's pretty much my life in the nutshell.  The adventure continues
Interstates I've clinched: 97, 290 (MA), 291 (CT), 291 (MA), 293, 295 (DE-NJ-PA), 295 (RI-MA), 384, 391, 395 (CT-MA), 395 (MD), 495 (DE), 610 (LA), 684, 691, 695 (MD), 695 (NY), 795 (MD)

OracleUsr

I was born in 1970.  First exposure to computers was an Apple II+ system we had at school.  Loved watching the Lemonade Stand game on that, but I had no idea.

First gaming system was actually a Magnavox Oddessy system, second hand.  Only had a cheesy tennis game, but I had it for a year and then got an Atari 2600 for Christmas when I turned 10.  My first owned computer was a Commodor Vic-20 (had 3K usable RAM but I was in seventh heaven using it) for Christmas when I turned 12.

We lived in a very large townhouse community before I was a teenager.  I would spend Saturdays and sometimes Sunday's walking the grounds everywhere, pretending I was on the roads to some distant place (yes, I was a roadgeek from the age of 5).  All this technology is great, but imagination still reigns king.  When we moved downtown, that went away (but our house was quite big; I thought I'd get lost sometimes in one of the rooms in the basement). 

Unfortunately, a few years later, my mother went into end-stage renal failure from an autoimmune disease, so the summer after my first year of high school, I would take her twice a week to dialysis (my father took her on Saturdays) and went to a city pool with a good friend of mine, but I learned to cook and take care of things as a result of need, and that July, she got a kidney transplant.

My first camera was a Sears 110 camera...I think I still have it somewhere.  So many memories.    First digital camera was a Kodak 3125 Easyshare camera (now had a Canon EOS 80D, so that's a wide swing).

My first cell was in Decmeber 2000, for my thirtieth birthday.  A Nokia phone.  My father revealed the gift by calling the number and we heard it playing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" (it didn't have Happy Birthday) from the package.  Had it for 3 years before it gave up the ghost.

My parents were easy listening fans, so that's what played at the house.  Unfortunately, my classmates in junior high were in to hard rock and rap.  I was afraid my parents wouldn't like me listening to it, but one fine Saturday, I walked out of Record Bar with Def Leppard's album,  Pyromania (a funny story about that...we were in the store and I was looking for Slade's 1984 album, "Keep Your Hands off My Power Supply"...my dad, God rest his soul, didn't know that was the name so I got in trouble for asking if they had it...he thought I was asking them to keep their hands off my record...it's funny now, and we did have a few laughs talking about that story later).  Still, we did like to listen to the Doobie Brothers and Fleetwood Mac, so we did have some common tastes.

First car was a used 1986 Acura Integra RS five-door.  Great little car, and it got me all the way through college.  Only thing was it didn't have a cassette player, and to put on in at the dealership would have cost more than I pay a month now on mortgage.  Still, great sound.

Though my parents married early in life (my mother was just short of her 20th birthday when they married), I married late in life at the age of 43, but we're about to celebrate our third wedding anniversary next month.

Anti-center-tabbing, anti-sequential-numbering, anti-Clearview BGS FAN

cjk374

Oh yes...the phone system of my youth. How could I forget the luxury of having one phone, attached to a cord, hanging from the wall in the kitchen. Mom tested the limits of that cord too, stretching it into the bathroom and having to lean against the closed door. All of the curl in the cord was almost gone. The elderly lady who lived next door still had a party line. If the call was for her, the phone rang once. If the call was for someone else, it rang twice. If I wanted to dial someone here in town, I only needed to dial the last 4 digits. Then it was changed to 5. Eventually it was changed again to having to dial all 7.

My grandfather worked for the phone company after he came home from WWII. He made it all the way up to the #2 position in the big AT&T office in Shreveport. My mom had to call him one day because we were constantly getting wrong numbers dialed to us. (keep in mind that my hometown and the next town over, Grambling, share the same 247- prefix) Mom had to turn the ringer off at night Because of it. We were basically the switchboard for the 247 prefix...and we couldn't switch anything. The glitch was finally found and fixed after 2 weeks!

My daughter saw an old rotary phone at an antique store one day & asked what it was. I felt so old...she was enthralled by it.
Runnin' roads and polishin' rails.

bandit957

I'm the right age that I got to enjoy the freedom of the '70s before being hamstrung by the fascism of the '80s and '90s.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

bandit957

The place was Highland Heights, KY. I grew up in an ordinary working-class household. Some things back then were cooler than they are now.

Back then, you didn't wear uniforms in PUBLIC schools. EVER!!!

Records (vinyl) were the leading music medium. I buyed quite a few 45's in my day.

Radio was much, much better. We had an AM top 40 station until I was almost out of 8th grade, and they played records that skipped. That was cool!

The Ritalin racket hadn't completely taken over yet. (My social worker says I was probably one of the first kids anywhere to take Ritalin.)

Crooked teeth were considered normal. (Yay!)

Everyone chewed bubble gum constantly, and it blew bigger bubbles back then.

Newscasters did not use that miserable valspeak they use today.

'American Top 40' still used the real music chart.

We had LABOR UNIONS.

I used an Atari 800 to play video games.

The Texas Instruments Speak & Spell was one of the most popular toys.

We had compact cars, not hulking SUV's.

'Sesame Street' was great - not the poop pile it is today. And every kid watched it.

I'm not sure exactly when America went to hell, but I think it happened in stages.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

CapeCodder

I'll bite.

I was born in November of 1988 in Portland, Maine (Back when 495 still existed as a longer route in Maine, not the little connector they have now.) For the first two weeks of my life we lived in South Berwick. Both of my parents were in the USCG. My dad was stationed in Portsmouth, NH and my mom was stationed in Portland. I had many complications at birth including the cord wrapping around my neck.

After living in S. Berwick, my parents got out of the coast guard and we moved to Nantucket. Everything went fine and dandy until 2/15/1991. That's when my sister was born. We were living on Old South Road near the airport. My sister never left the hospital and on 4/27/1991 she died. I watched my parents go from being happy to two miserable people. My dad spent more and more time alone, away from us. THey divorced on 9/21/1993. That same day my mother and I moved into an apartment on Salros Road, on the other side of town.

I was diagnosed with autism on 10/7/1995, which was a Saturday and the same day Hurricane Opal struck the Florida panhandle. This was a time when just being dx'ed with autism was considered a death sentence. My mother didn't speak of it. She just called it "my problem." Mom and I moved to Saint Louis in June of 1996. I hated it there. Yet I lived there for sixteen years. I graduated high school in June of 2007 (the big question everyone asks in St. Louis is "where'd you go to high school?" I went to Francis Howell Central to answer the question of those of us from St. Louis or have lived there.

I moved back to Mass from STL on 6/21/2012. My heart never left New England. Some people say I'm brave because I can do so much with my autism.

Growing up I noticed things:

-I respected my mom, even though she was neglectful.
-You respected your elders because they just might know something useful to use in your life quest.
-Kids didn't dress like thugs/hookers when I was growing up.
-The way we treated special needs (I actually hate that term) children was a bit darker, we've come a long way, but we still have a ways to go. My great grandfather, Joseph Reed Burgess was instrumental in getting children with disabilities out of asylums/state schools and into public schools (at least in MA. He has an elementary school in Sturbridge named after him.)
-Musicians had actual talent.

epzik8

I was born in 1995, so I was a Bill Clinton baby. That was the year Windows 95 revolutionized personal computing, and the time frame in which the Internet boom was getting started. I've lived in the same house all my life, and it's in a rural subdivision but close to the more suburban areas of my Maryland county. My parents were both pharmacy school graduates, with my mom being a pharmacist, and my dad an oncologist at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. My dad is registered as a Democrat and my mom as a Republican, although they've displayed viewpoints all across the political spectrum, so I've heard opinions from both sides.

Somehow I survived the Blizzard of '96 when I was less than eight months old. My toddler and preschool years were marked by such events as the death of Princess Diana, and Clinton's impeachment. I also recall two weather events in 1999, an ice storm in January which is the first power outage I remember, and Hurricane Floyd in September, from which we lost power as well. My parents made sure my triplet brothers and I witnessed the countdown to the year 2000, at which point we were four and a half. Shortly afterward, we "graduated" from preschool and were off to kindergarten. That November, I mock-voted for Al Gore in the week leading up to the 2000 presidential election, although in real life George W. Bush was ultimately declared the winner.

I was six years old and newly in first grade on September 11, 2001. Hearing news of the terrorist attacks was scary for my brothers and I, and then on top of that our dad, who just left Johns Hopkins to start a new travel-based cancer research career, was stuck in Cleveland where he had been on business. President Bush's words that evening resonate in my mind. Our dad made it home and he put an American flag on display on our front porch for some time afterward.

Then I got redistricted to a new elementary school in '02 for second grade, in an even more rural setting than my neighborhood. February '03 we got an entire week off school from the Presidents Day Blizzard and that one was crazy. In March, President Bush sent us to Iraq. We had Hurricane Isabel in September. Our parents took us to Mexico twice, first to Cozumel in 2004, then Playa del Carmen at the same time in '05. Bush got re-elected in November 2004. Then I witnessed Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in August '05, and Bush's involvement in the situation.

My parents got divorced in September 2006 just as I was starting middle school. My dad lived in a townhouse for a year in Bel Air, Maryland before moving into a "real house" up in Jarrettsville in '07. I witnessed the death of his mother in November '06, then his father in September 2008. My dad also changed jobs twice during 2007 and '08.

November 2008, Barack Obama was elected as our new President. My parents by then were both expressing displeasure with Bush and seemed eager for a new beginning. I started high school the following August. In December 2009 we got a blizzard, which was followed by two more in February 2010, and those two were more powerful. Once again, we got a whole week off school from the February ones.

In between the '09-'10 blizzards, we went down to the Tampa Bay area of Florida to meet our dad's female friend who he's known longer than my mom. She moved in with him in June 2010. We got hit by Hurricane Irene in 2011, then Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Obama was re-elected in November '12. By then, my mom had turned against Obama and chose to vote for Mitt Romney this time. My dad on the other hand stuck with Obama. This was during my senior year of high school.

I turned 18 years old in May 2013, and graduated high school in June. I got my first job that September and also started college. Turned 21 and became legal to drink alcohol in May 2016. That November, it was time for a new president. I voted for Hillary Clinton only because I didn't like Donald Trump, while my mom only voted for Trump because she didn't like Hillary. Donald Trump won it and moved into the White House this January. Working together with others and seeing positives in things, though, is helping me cope with having someone I didn't vote for.

My brothers and I, along with other neighborhood kids did spend plenty of time outside and going between each other's houses, even though we grew up as "2000s kids". We also had plenty of computer access and my first system was Windows 98. The system I've used the most is Windows XP. I got my first laptop in 2013 and it had Windows 7, which I upgraded in 2015 to Windows 10.

As far as road trips went, my brothers, parents and I almost always went to Myrtle Beach in the summer to see my grandmother (who turned 95 years old this year), and after my parents' divorce, we still went with just our mother, and even did a second annual trip for Thanksgiving in 2007, 2009 and 2011.

I too am mildly autistic and have struggled with things my entire life, but I excel in others. It was early 2014 before I was diagnosed.
From the land of red, white, yellow and black.
____________________________

My clinched highways: http://tm.teresco.org/user/?u=epzik8
My clinched counties: http://mob-rule.com/user-gifs/USA/epzik8.gif

bandit957

I'm gravely disappointed at one of the major changes in American society since my youth. It used to be there was some admiration for the mischievous underachiever hero. People used to love it when I told them I was expelled from 3 schools. Starting in the mid-'90s, I'd get attacked for it.

You can tell 'The Simpsons' started before the mid-'90s. I don't think they could start a show like that later and have it shown on over-the-air TV.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

nexus73

Born in September 1955, I get both football and celebrating as part of my life in that month.  Hooray since that never changed!

HIGHWAYS: US 101 north of the McCullough Bridge (by North Bend) was redone with a whole new alignment in 1953.  It was always being called the "new highway" and what a wonder it was compared to the old one.  1961 saw the bypass section from where 101 and 42 join now to Bandon completed.  18 miles saved and more new highway!  Curry County, which is south of Coos County, got the old Carpenterville section of 40 miles replaced with a modern alignment of 27 miles.  Progress was being made in those days and it was very much appreciated as our area emerged from its 1st gen highway.

TELEVISION: Our area had CATV, Community Antenna Television, a predecessor to cable TV.  Channels from Eugene (ABC), Corvallis (PBS), Coos Bay (NBC), Portland (CBS and an independent channel) was the lineup.  A fancy TV had a tuning fork-based remote control.  Since there was just the three main networks (Dumont died in 1955), they got all the sports, all the news, all the movies, all the music shows, all the game shows, all the cartoons, all everything!  You took whatever was on at the time and either liked it or found something else to do.  Seeing the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo launches broadcast live was a special treat to see as history was made before our eyes.

RADIO: Three local AM stations, one in the county seat and a 50Kw station in Eugene is all we could receive down here in the daytime.  Local FM did not come along in broadcast form until the Eighties.  The cable company did offer out of town FM stations though!

NEWSPAPERS: One local daily paper (no Sunday edition), two statewide daily/Sunday papers and two local weekly papers were present.  That stayed constant through the Eighties.  Today the local paper does 5 days of the week, no statewide paper gets delivered, the weeklies are gone as a free ads paper KO'ed them and some tries at various papers/sheets came and went.

FOOD: Our franchises used to be DQ and A&W.  The first one is down to two outlets while the second one is gone.  Now we have all the usual lousy stuff but we also got a lot of good local places opened that are right up there with any other city.  Who saw that coming when I was young?  No one!

CARS: Before the Appliancemobile Era, before the Malaise Era, there was a time when our highways, streets and parking lots were awash in beautiful powerful machines and they were affordable along with the gas.  The #1 import wasn't Japanese as VW held that title.  There were even English, French and Italian cars around, not many of which were actually close to being exotic other than a Jaguar.  You could get a car that ran for less than $100 or even $50, pay $2 to transfer the title while keeping the plates, fill up cheap and away you went!

SAD STUFF: During the Vietnam War, the national news broadcasts always posted the daily body count.  Day after day, week after week, year after year, it never seemed like the war would end.  Desegregation in the South showed how brutal race relations could be.  Riots and protests were regularly taking place.  Assassinations left us stunned.  The threat of nuclear war hung over the world during the Cold War decades and the arsenals were much larger than they are today.  Cities were falling apart, looking like they had already been nuked.  Yes, we had our gangs too.

"Take this letter that I give you, take it sonny, hold it high.  You won't understand a word that's in it but you'll write it all again before you die." From Queen's song "Father To Son".  I expect long after I am dead and those who are young today are the old folks, you'll know what that stanza from a Seventies rock song means right down to the depth of your soul.

Rick

US 101 is THE backbone of the Pacific coast from Bandon OR to Willits CA.  Industry, tourism and local traffic would be gone or severely crippled without it being in functioning condition in BOTH states.

Roadgeekteen

Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

bandit957

Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

Roadgeekteen

Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Do you remeber him getting shot?
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

bandit957

Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:47:06 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Do you remeber him getting shot?

Yes. They interrupted my mom's soap operas for it.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

Roadgeekteen

Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:49:01 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:47:06 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Do you remeber him getting shot?

Yes. They interrupted my mom's soap operas for it.
What were the adults reaction?
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

bandit957

Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 11:01:12 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:49:01 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:47:06 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Do you remeber him getting shot?

Yes. They interrupted my mom's soap operas for it.
What were the adults reaction?

I don't even remember.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

cjk374

Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 11:02:41 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 11:01:12 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:49:01 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:47:06 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Do you remeber him getting shot?

Yes. They interrupted my mom's soap operas for it.
What were the adults reaction?

I don't even remember.
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 11:02:41 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 11:01:12 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:49:01 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:47:06 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on August 05, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on August 05, 2017, 10:16:52 PM
Obamas first election is the first major event I remember.

I remember Ronald Reagan being elected when I was 7.
Do you remeber him getting shot?

Yes. They interrupted my mom's soap operas for it.
What were the adults reaction?

I don't even remember.

I was in 1st grade when he was shot. My teacher told us it happened while we were in class. I came home to constant news coverage instead of my after-school cartoons.
Runnin' roads and polishin' rails.

jp the roadgeek

I remember hearing about Reagan being shot later, but I was 5 and in Pre-K so I don't remember the full details.  The Challenger Disaster and 9/11 have one thing in common for me: I was out of work/school those days.  I stayed home sick on the day of the Challenger.  My parents had just got back from Super Bowl XX in New Orleans, and I didn't feel well.  It was my dad's birthday, and I called him at work to wish him a happy.  He called back a couple minutes later to tell my mother and I to put on television that the space shuttle had just exploded.  We watched the events in horror after the fact.

When 9/11 happened, my regular day off from work was Wednesday, but because of a managers' meeting, I had to take Tuesday off instead.  As I went to bed the night before, my mother and I kind of made tentative plans to go to Long Island the next day.  When I woke up, it was between the two planes hitting but I didn't know what was happening yet until she called me to tell me to put on television.  I took one look, was aghast, and said "I guess we're not going to Long Island today, are we?"  After watching the rest of the events unfold (and being in tears as I watched WNBC and the 2nd tower falling),  we did end up venturing to Rhode Island and Wrentham, MA that day instead.  We were turned away from an outlet center by MA State Police, and went back to RI, then drove back to CT, stopping for dinner in Manchester.  I just remember being in the restaurant and thinking how surreal the day had been, and how it felt like a week rolled into a single day, kind of like the day my father passed away.  I was just drained of energy like I had been hit by a train.

For Obama's election, I was in a TGI Friday's in Bel Air, MD.  I had driven down from CT that day after voting, and remember sitting at the bar as others clapped.  However, being what I am, I just finished my dinner, and headed out to stop for some gas and to get a couple of things for my motel room, and didn't watch the inaugural address.
Interstates I've clinched: 97, 290 (MA), 291 (CT), 291 (MA), 293, 295 (DE-NJ-PA), 295 (RI-MA), 384, 391, 395 (CT-MA), 395 (MD), 495 (DE), 610 (LA), 684, 691, 695 (MD), 695 (NY), 795 (MD)

bandit957

I was at lunch in 7th grade when the Challenger exploded.

During 9/11, I was in bed recovering from a knee injury after being run off the road.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

Max Rockatansky

I was at class watching the Challenger launch when it crashed.  I was asleep through most of 9/11 before work and for whatever reason had the gumption to turn on CNN just to see what was going on in the world when I got up around noon Arizona time.

Rothman

Earliest news story for me is Three Mile Island.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

cjk374

9/11 was a horrible day. I was 27, married and a dad with a 2 year old son. I just came off a graveyard shift at the mill and had babysitting duty. My wife at that time had gone to work & we were home watching Sponge Bob.

About an hour or so later, she called me asking if I was watching the news. I told her what was on & she said I needed to tune in to see what was happening. Our TV was on CBS for the next 3-4 days straight watching the events take place. Surreal indeed.

Fast forward to late November. My son & I are headed north to Columbia, MO to spend Thanksgiving with my mom (wife had to stay & work). We were coming into Little Rock, AR from US 65/167. As you go past exit 3 (Dixon Rd), you are climbing  a mountain. When you crest the hill, you have a great view of the LR skyline, and you can clearly see the airport on the right. In the sky I could see a Southwest jet flying over. My son (age 3 at this time) turned to me and asked if that plane was going to fly into that building. I answered him as straightforward and calm as possible that it was not. I was numb for a little while after that.
Runnin' roads and polishin' rails.

noelbotevera

Earliest news story for me was the Afghanistan invasion back in 2005 (okay, there was the death of Ronald Reagan in November 2004, but I don't consider that a notable event).



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