SUNDAY FUNNIES: REMEMBER WHEN...?

Those were the days.

Hello Everybody. Your humble Editor-In-Chief Lee Houston, Junior here. Autumn the Puppy and Waxy Dragon have the holiday weekend off, so it's up to me to entertain you for a few minutes.

With New Year's Eve drawing near, it's easy to let your mind wander and reminisce.

I was born in 1962, and grew up with some great television. Captain Kangaroo, Cadet Don, Kitirik, Jonny Quest, Herculoids, Space Ghost... I think you get the idea.

Local favorites Kitirik & Cadet Don

Television started out in glorious black and white, and while color sets were available in the 1960s, they were kind of expensive for the average person until the 1970s. So imagine seeing the original Star Trek or the Adam West version of Batman in black and white. For some reason, it seemed like a big deal when your family was able to make the switch. Yet today color is common place and seeing something like Casablanca or The Three Stooges in black and white is the "oddity".

From Star Trek to this!

Pay phones inside phone booths were common place until the early 1980s, and then started getting phased out as cellphones caught on. Yet the first cellphones were larger than a paperback book size wise!

Computers were HUMONGOUS machines that filled whole rooms, while using punch cards and magnetic tape to store data. Now they're smaller than books and use flash cards and more internal memory than even the Human brain might have!

I could go on about how, unless they have family that remember those "ancient" times, today's generation(s) have no idea what a manual typewriter is, realize that CDs replaced vinyl records, photographs were not always digital, and a whole host of other things.

1 + 1 = 2 regardless of the device used.

Now don't get me wrong. A lot of today's technical marvels are fantastic compared to what they replaced. But progress seems to come with a loss.

Once upon a time, my generation could play on the sidewalk or walk to the corner convenience store without worry of being kidnapped or shot at.

Once stamps were just edited to reflect price increase instead of creating new ones!

We used regular "snail mail" to communicate with each other long distance, and the post office was run a LOT more efficiently than it is today. In the past, it was scandalous when the cost of mailing a letter went from six to eight cents! Yet now the cost of the stamp may rise as high as fifty cents, and the post office is still considering doing away with Saturday deliveries to save money! And this is considering that once, depending upon where you lived, you might have gotten both a morning AND afternoon delivery if you were within the inner city limits.

Were things ever THAT inexpensive?

And then there is the price on just about everything.
When I was a kid, a comic book would cost you twenty cents for twenty pages of story and art, usually two tales per issue, with a letters column too, so you could see what other readers thought about past issues. Nowadays that same comic book is at least $2.99 for the same twenty pages, although most no longer have a letters column and the story usually ends with those dreaded words: TO BE CONTINUED.
And have you noticed how the prices on some things might be staying the same, but you are no longer getting the same amount you used to?

Maybe I'm just feeling my age today with the end of another year approaching,  a foot of snow on the ground, and a howling wind blowing the dust around while I stay safe and warm inside.

But this is the Sunday Funnies, although you folks can see why I prefer to leave the comedy to the puppy and the dragon. So let me end this column on a high note.

The more things change...

You can never go wrong with a funny cat picture!

Here's hoping your 2013 is filled with happiness and a bright warm future.

And don't worry folks, the ladies will be resuming their regular duties next weekend, for more Sunday Funnies.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Lee Houston, Junior

Editor-In-Chief, The Free Choice E-zine.