Life in the 80s as a teen

It’s early October.

Evening. Well, night. It’s 10:30ish.

A nice day in the ending. Slightly unseasonably warm day, pleasantly cool night. Jackets not required, but recommended for your enjoyment.

Right now, I’m sitting at my desk at the newspaper. I pulled up Spotify, and was feeling like a little Alan Parsons Project (APP). I called up the Sirius disco version, which I could write a volume about by itself; there are very few songs so ready for lift-off on every playback.

Then I recalled I’d started playing through their library a few months back. In order. …ish. Tonight I selected Ammonia Avenue. It is a 1984 album, and as it pulled up memories, I realized just how different of a world it was back then. I thought I’d write.

I was in junior high and high school through the Reagan years. That seems like an apt reference due to the current motion picture by the same name. It helps set the time-frame for a younger generation, and should bring an era instantly to mind for those of us who lived through it.

What initially struck me as I started this listening session was, I had this album on CD. And I dubbed it to cassette tape.

There was a era before mine when LPs, long-playing vinyl records, and similar medium were the best, if often only, way to hear and share recorded music. A brief soliloquy on vinyl: recordings were easy to press into vinyl plastic disks with a reasonable level of fidelity to the original material, which, interestingly, you’d never know unless you attended a concert and heard it performed live or were one of the blessed few to attend a recording session (as rare a thing then as today).

For its fidelity of recording, playback was error-inducing. A fine needle would follow the track of the recording as the record spun on a turntable. Dust could easily collect on the static-chargeable vinyl, creating noise as the needle passed over it or collected it. Needles on your hi-fi setup were either very high quality and wore out easily, or were cheaper and sturdier but less sensitive.  In any case, needles needed to be replaced from time-to-time, and ultimately a popular record could be “worn out” from too many playings.

If you’re commercial-minded, you see the balance of this in the marketplace. Popular songs made popular records, and popular records were bought multiple times because of multiple playings. Now, that’s where I wanted to get to, because many department stores had “music” sections not unlike Wal-Mart does today. But the best were music stores, where row after row of albums and singles (smaller records with a single song on each side) were grouped by genre and sorted alphabetically by band and then usually by year of release. Staff usually had “demo” albums of the latest hits available at the counter, where you could check one out and take it to a listening room – a small, walled cubicle where you could play your record and be the only listener. Later, as quality headphones came down in price, these often changed from tiny private rooms to caroles – a round table partitioned for, say, six turntables: six listening stations with headphones.

Why this is important is that these were social destinations. Many young men and women found their initial connection through music by simply bumping into each other (often, literally) while looking for songs and albums by their favorite performers. At the very least, you could look around and see other people in the same isle as you, and know they were all a fan of Jazz, or Electronica, or Western – same as you.

Segway back to the late 80s and the appearance of CDs. Music stores slowly gave over to the new media, but you could still find common ground as the digital discs were displayed and sorted the same as before.

My brother was an aspiring audiophile – many people from the 70s were, because either you had a quality home high-fidelity system, or you listened to crappy radios. FM stereo was still becoming a mainstream product during this time frame. New cars had stereo receivers, but there were still plenty of cars on the road that had mono FM, or only AM receivers. This is also what drove the car-audio market: aftermarket auto sound systems.

My brother was an aspiring audiophile. When he came home from college to spend the summer, he brought his Denon pre-amp, an amplifier, tape deck, and turntable, plus speakers. Our family had a probably state-of-the-art stereo turntable with selector for auxiliary-input from the 70s. My brother gave me a dual-cassette deck he was passing down, as he had purchased a new deck with a better set of minerals in the recording and playback heads which improved the audio fidelity. He helped me make the connections, so that I could play and record LPs to cassette, play one cassette and dupe it (duplicate it) on the second cassette unit, or plug in a portable Sony Walkman Disc player, and either play it through the speakers on the turntable (“head unit”) or listen to any of the above using the headphone jack.

So, between vinyl and CDs were cassette tapes. The medium of the 80s. Just like vinyl, cassette tapes could wear-out through multiple playbacks. The thin plastic tape in a cassette was coated with a magnetic film composed of ferrous minerals. These minerals would flake off over time, literally dropping the recording. Also, the thin film would stretch, creating a distortion in the music. So, if you got a new cassette from a performer you liked, you immediately duplicated the tape in its entirety. As CDs were new, most people didn’t have CD players in their car, and even in their home, so you dubbed the disc to cassette. And then, there’s the ubiquitous “mix tape” which was the only way for another decade to have your own personal collection of music.

And I had a deck that could do it!

I still have a denim travel case of about 60 home cassette recordings. Many of them are just LPs or other people’s CDs on cassette. (Copying other people’s recording media is illegal. It was then, too, but the recording industry was thriving at the time and no one cared. A dubbed cassette was not as good as the original LP or CD, so sales were still great!) But many of them are mix tapes.

I lived in a five-storey split-level house at this time. In junior high and early high school, my room was on the 4th floor with all the other regular bedrooms. I had a shelf beside my bed which seemed like it was designed to hold my audio setup.  The cassette deck had an auto-shutoff feature and a continuous-loop feature. I could plug in my headphones and play a tape while falling asleep.

In any case, I remember the Ammonia Avenue album had a coolness to it, like the last sunset of summer: emotional but detached, or maybe “departing.” Some of the songs didn’t click with me as a teen, so when I was struggling with young women at school, I’d take my portable CD player to the basement, plunk on my beanbag and set it to loop on “Don’t Answer Me” until my depression was played-out.

In the latter high school years, I moved up to the penthouse: our home was the “showhome” for the neighborhood, so the developer added a 5th floor, which was a room by iself over the kitchen. It had nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, and I’d remove the screen from the window above the eave over the back deck and stash it all summer. Then, when no one was actively listening, I’d throw open the window, step out and then up onto the roof above my room which was nearly flat. This was a good place to go to get-away and think, or sunbathe, or star-gaze.

Then, at night, I’d run a super-long coiled headphone-cord from where the audio set was, and still listen to music until I fell asleep – being careful not to roll up in the cord!

In the basement was the “old” 28″ Zeinth TV, into which the Intellivision game console was plugged. It supported two players, and had wired control controllers with a numeric keypad and 8-way hat pad, plus side buttons. There was also a pool table, and on a big heavy maple typing desk stood the color monitor and workspace for the Commodore 64 computer. With 64k of RAM. There was also the “old” refrigerator and “old” range/oven. There was usually a card table set up, and the sofa and recliner usually faced the TV. Three bean-bag “chairs” – one for me and my step-brothers – could be found around the room. Also, usually by the TV.

If this sounds like the ultimate set up for a home-party space, it was. During summer and breaks from school – particularly winter – I hosted D&D nights with my clique. Sometimes as many as 8-9 guys, but usually 5-6, we’d pile into the basement, help ourselves to my mom’s chili on the stove in the corner, and watch HBO or video cassettes until we settled down and played Dungeons and Dragons. When we needed a break, we bundled up and played outside, having snowball fights in the moonlight. One winter, we walked all the way around Lake Shawnee (about a mile from home, then two-miles per long side and a mile per short side: an 8 mile hike in freezing temps. But it was a dry-cold and we kept moving the entire time, except when we crashed in on one of our cabal member’s homes to get cocoa and warm up).

Yes, we wandered around at night, unsupervised and no one knew where we were. I lived on the suburban/rural interface, and attended a rural high school. We were also on the school district boundary line, so while we could have made a similar loop in any other direction, we didn’t “know” people we could crash in on at need. Plus, its the difference between police patrols or deputies. Not that we were up to no good… we walked from cabal home to cabal home (even going the extra mile out to Troy’s house, which was not on the lake circuit), deliberately lingered as we walked past our favored or girl-friends’ homes. And we might have occasionally added phalluses to snowmen.

This was also an era before Ring doorbells and wireless camera-nets.

I had my own phone line. First, all phones were landlines. Yes, “bag phones” existed, but they were not ubiquitous. They WERE expensive, bulky, and very regional in service area, like “the center of the county” and no where else! So, we used land lines. Most homes had the standard Bell System wall mount phones or slimmer Princess phones which could be wall-mounted or left on the coffee table. My mom had worked for SOC with Southwestern Bell, and someone she knew gave us a 12-extension business base-unit. So, we put it in the bar-closet (a wet bar behind slat doors) because I could run the necessary business phone wiring to that space easily from the garage (it was next to the stairwell).

With this unit, we could answer the phone, put a caller on hold and then holler into the stairwell for whomever to “pick up”. Then, we could see when one of the extentions in the house was active and hang up our handset. This base station was about a foot deep and 18″ wide and had gobs of other functions we couldn’t access and didn’t need to.

I lived in the era when my aunt and uncle still had a party-line ringer phone at their home in rural Carlton (that’s oxymoronic; if you know…). You could get the whole community on the line by cranking the handle in a certain pattern. Of course, every home had their own ring pattern too. And, nothing but decency stopped you from picking up the earpiece and listening in on other people’s calls.

However, this was on its way out. At my home, I had a rotary dial phone on the wall in the kitchen. By the time we moved and I entered 5th grade, we had touch-tone. There were still glitches in the system. Our community had a “time and temperature” service where you called a well-known number and a recorded voice would say the temperature and then say, “and at the tone, the time will be” whatever, and then there was a tone. And then the talking computer would hang up.

But the phone connection remained open. So if you were bored, you’d call Time and Temp, wait until after the message, and then say, “Hello?” and usually several other people would respond with, “Hey” “Hello!” “Whats going on?!” and you could chit-chat until you were bored.

In high-school, my mom figured I’d be a “talker” and got me my own private phone line. The number was unlisted but I told everyone at school, and friends that I met elsewhere. I had a girlfriend for awhile, and we’d talk and talk, and TALK and TALK! And, I’m an introvert, and I eventually made some comment about not talking so much. And then I didn’t have a girlfriend anymore.

Her parents were the SYSOPS (system-operators) for my town’s computer bulletin-board system (BBS). The C64 had a modem (telephone modulator-demodulator) that converted digital info into sound, like a fax machine but much faster and higher frequency. The BBS only had four incoming phone lines. If you wanted to connect, you ran BBS software (the BBS app, before “app” was a trendy term) and told it to wait. Then you dialed one of the numbers for the BBS, and if you got the fax-like tones, you either set your phone handset onto a special accoustic cradle, or, for the C64, unplugged the handset cord and plugged it into the modem (which was a cartridge at the back of the computer).

The modem would start sending the data it was hearing to the BBS app, and it would start displaying information on screen in a DOS-like way. You would type a number or letter at the right prompt to tell the BBS what you wanted to do, and eventually you could leave a message for other BBS users (if you knew their handle) or for the SYSOPs if you had a request or complaint.

Well, when we broke up, she had my account struck from the BBS. Her mom eventually reinstated me like a year later, when apparently Erin had moved on. This was awkward because I was also taking Morse Code training from her dad at local Ham radio club meetings.

Most of the time, after school and after homework (or sometimes before), I’d play with my Legos or watch TV, and help with chores around the house. I might play a game or three on the computer, but it wasn’t networked. If you were to play against someone, they had to be with you in person. So, I usually hopped on my bike and rode around looking for people I knew and stuff to do. Introvert that I was, I often rode off someplace then just stopped and watched the sunset, or rode a circuit around my neighborhood or out into the country and back, or into town to QuikShop.

And with that, I’m winding down. It’s after midnight, and I need to be productive tomorrow. So I’m off to bed.