Print

     For my final post of my Blast to the Past blog, I interviewed Carol about her experiences with print. She told me how magazines and newspapers were incorporated in her life growing up and where they stand with her today.

     Carol definitely remembered that her family didn't have much use for newspapers. There wasn't much use for them, especially if they were getting their news through the radio station(s) and television. So, newspapers had no effect on Carol's life. But she does remember the St. Louis Post Dispatch newspapers being around when she was growing up, which are still around today. Carol told me that the paper was normally delivered by a paperboy, whom she attended school with up until she graduated.

 

An older version of the St. Louis Post Dispatch reporting about the Titanic.

The more modern version of the St. Louis Post Dispatch newspaper.



     Magazines played a more dominant role in Carol's household. Carol remembers her favorite magazine being Vogue, which is a fashion magazine, which like the St. Louis Post Dispatch, is still in circulation today. Carol said she and her older sister enjoyed looking at the different fashions and clothes in the magazines. Carol told me that fashioned always excited her. When I brought censorship into the conversation, Carol said that she and her siblings were banned from looking at Playboy Magazine and Sir! Magazine. Her mother didn't like how women were explicitly posed on the front cover of the magazines. She felt it gave a bad connotation to women. Also the content with the magazines had were too vulgar for Carol and her siblings to view also. After viewing some of the covers and some of the articles within these 2 magazines, I was not surprising as to why my great grandmother would censor her children from viewing such graphic content.

 

One of very few Sir! Magazines that have an appropriate cover page.



     Today, Carol still does not read any newspapers that she receives. She gets her news from Fox 2 News, but she is still invested in magazines. Her choice of magazines have changed over the years. Now, Carol prefers magazines like the National Enquirer and Star. Carol informed me that she knows that a lot of what these magazines publish are not true, but she finds the articles entertaining. The outrageous stories keep Carol coming back for more, which is why she continues to read these magazines.

An issue of The National Enquirer.

An issue of Star magazine.



Movies

     For my next entry in Blast to the Past, Carol and I talked about what movies were like when she was growing up. It was interesting listening to the memories Carol talked about, and how her movie experience is quite similar in mine!

       Carol started off our conversation by describing what movie theatres looked like when she was a teenager. Carol said she and her family normally went to a theatre. Their favorite theatre was the Esquire, which is located in St.Louis. Carol recalls the Esquire not being nearly as fancy and technologically advanced as it is today. One thing that interested me the most was when she said how the ushers were much more interactive with the customers. She told me that the ushers would actually escort them to their seats in the theatre. I thought it was quite odd how people were assigned seats within the theatre instead of being able to sit wherever they would like, like how we do today.


The Esquire in the mid to late 1900s

 



The Esquire today



       Carol associated the movie theatre with family and the drive-in movie with non-family persons. When carol was growing up drive-in movies were the "cool hang out spots" for teenagers, specifically. Carol went on to tell me how often dates occurred in these locations. She deemed drive-in movies as more private and romantic than the normal movie theatre, because they would be in the comfort of their own car instead of in the open with a bunch of other people. Specifically, she would go to the Airway Centre. This shocked me a lot because I pass the sign of the Airway Centre on a daily basis. I was quite shocked to have learned that that spot once use to be a drive-in movie. Now a Shop n Save and an elementary school have taken over that location.

 

The sign of the Airway Centre Drive-in.


       Next, I asked Carol about her favorite movies at the time. She told me how she greatly favored Disney movies, such as Snow White and Cinderella, at the time. She was a very big Disney fan growing up. I could relate to Carol because I, too, grew up on Disney movies and loved them as well. She told me she liked them because they always had happy endings, and they made her long for a prince charming. Clearly after hearing this, Carol's favorite genre is romance. But, I was kind of surprised when she said she was a little guilty for liking horror movies as well!

 

       As of today, it has been a few years since Carol has been to a movie theatre. When I asked her how does she access movies, she told me that she watched movies either on TV or on Netflix and/or Hulu whenever one of her kids come over. She still makes movies more of a bonding experience with her family to this day!

Television/ Cable

     I had the pleasure to sit down with my grandmother, Mrs. Carol again, and talk to her about cable television. We talked about what television was like for her growing up and how it is different for her today!
    
    Carol recalled to me her first personal interaction that she remembers with television. She told me that she remembers being very excited about the people on the screen, who turned out to be dancing. The dancing figures on the screen made her want to get up and dance and join in on the fun that they seemed to be having. Carol told me that television had a bigger impact on her because she could physically see what was going on instead on trying to visualize or listen to it. This statement in particular made me think of how television does have a big impact today, especially on teens and younger age groups. At those time frames of life, people are more likely to be influenced by what they see on the screen.

     Unlike the radio and the vinyl record player, the television set resided in a different part of the home. The television was put in her parents' bedroom. So, if Carol and her siblings wanted to watch TV, they had to go into their parents room to watch it. Because the TV was in that specific location, Carol and her siblings couldn't watch TV very often like they would have liked. Carol told me that because of this reason they used the radio and/or vinyl record player quite often. I thought of how today, we practically have a TV in every bedroom, while there was only one TV in the household. Technology has really boomed over the years.

 





     Carol told me that their overall viewing experience with TV went well. It became one of many ways that they bonded as a family. She told me that they always watched TV together as a family so their parents could censor what they saw. Carol said they weren't allowed to see any sexually explicit content, violence, and some degrees of racism. I can relate to my grandmother because my mom censored me from those things as well growing up. Carol said that TV now is greatly different that TV today. She said that she was appauled at the fact that there is more sexually explicit content and violence shown on TV today.

     As of today, Carol still watches TV. She does not use DVR or have any television programming online accounts, such as Netflix, Hulu, etc. She did admit that whenever one of her children come over to spend time with her, they will watch a movie or TV series on Netflix. TV has definitely changed over the last few decades in terms of content and censorship. What people see on TV today impacts how they live their lives forever.

Radio

     For this week's blog, I talked again with Mrs. Carol about the radio. We talked about how the radio had influence in her early life and her experiences.
 
     Carol told me that her family had owned their first radio in the early 1950s. From what Carol had told me, it seems that she and her family had an overall positive experience with this invention as well, along with the record player. "We enjoyed the radio! My sister, Doris, and I would spend hours dancing to the music that played from the radio", exclaimed Carol, when telling me about her first experiences with the radio. While listening to this, I started to compare my first experiences with the radio to my grandmother's. I was amazed at how our reactions were quite similar, in the sense that we danced to the music that came on through the radio! We may be years apart, but radio still has some of the same influence, even today.

     The radio was positioned in the living room, near the kitchen of their home. Carol told me that mostly music and news were played from the radio. She told me that her mom enjoyed listening to the radio while cleaning or cooking. Her father mainly listened to the radio for the news. But Carol and her siblings enjoyed listening to the different shows that came on. She said she remembered their favorite show to listen to was The Goon Show. I did some research on this particular show, so I could know more about it and even listened to a few of their shows. I was surprised to see that it was actually a British comedy show. Personally, I didn't really think the show was that funny, but it was interesting knowing what kind of shows grabbed my grandma's attention when she was young.

 

 

    I had Mrs. Carol describe the radio the best she could, so I could have an idea of how their radio looked back in the past. This was the best picture that I could find that kind of resembled the details she gave me. The radio was a lot bigger than the first radio that I saw. I knew radios were a lot bigger back then, but it still shocks me today that they started off being this size!

     To wrap up our talk, I asked Carol about her radio usage today. She admits that she no longer uses the radio anymore, and that the only time she listens to the radio is when she's in a car. I was surprised to hear this because it seemed to me that she had such a good experience with the radio. But then I remembered that other future technology took the place of the radio, such as the television. I asked Carol why she doesn't use the radio to this day. She responded by saying that she didn't care for today's music that they played on the radio, and that over the years she lost interest in it. I could relate to the fact of losing interest in the use of the radio, because I, too, only listen to the radio in my car. Though the radio's Golden Age is long gone, the radio will always be a part of cultures around the world!

Sound Recordings

     For my first interview with Mrs. Carol, we talked about sound recordings and music as she grew up from 1942 until today. She informed me a lot about the importance of music in her family growing up and the influence it had on her.
     Carol started off with the mention of the record player that her parents had bought sometime in what she believe was the late 1960s. She said that the record player was positioned in their family living room, where they would hang out and listen to the records that her parents would play. Carol listened to artists like Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, and many other artists that existed at the time. She mentioned of all the people she listened to, her favorite artists was B.B. King with the song "Shake It Up and Go."

 

 

       At home, Carol and her siblings were allowed to play music whenever they wanted as long as company was not over. Unless their company wanted to enjoy the sounds of the vinyl recordings that the family possessed, there were no exceptions. She said that her parents considered it to be rude.
     Carol said that her parents strongly influenced that type of music that they listened to. Before the record player, she remembers them singing or humming songs around the house. As a result, she became familiar with certain songs growing up and acquired a taste for the same music.
     Today, Carol listens to a few of the same songs when she has time during the day. She said that her children had to teach her how to use the Internet, and specifically use Youtube so she could have access to her favorite type of music whenever she wanted. Carol admits that she still struggles with trying to use a computer system, but she is thankful for having a way to get to the music that she listened to growing up!

Introduction to the Past

     For the next couple of months, I will be interviewing my grandmother, Mrs. Carol. Mrs. Carol was born in 1942 and has experienced many things of the past that we have learned about within out history classes. Within those years, our country has experienced wars, changes in culture style, new inventions, and many other experiences. In the next few blogs, Mrs. Carol and I will talk about the more simpler things in life, such as music, radio, television, movies, and print media. With these interviews we can gain insight to what is was like growing up in the decades that we hear so much as about, but never had the chance to live in. With that being said, hold on to your seats because we're about to take a blast to the past!
     Below the following text, I included a video to introduce and sum up the events that happened in the year 1942, in which Mrs. Carol was born. Feel free to watch some or all of the video. It's a pretty long video, but yet entertaining! Enjoy!


Year in Review- 1942