A recent thread has revealed some misconceptions younger people may have about what life was like for kids in "olden days" - one remark, that because there were fewer TV programs in total, the general level of programming was higher, I find especially amusing. I thought I'd give an overview of how I spent my time as a kid.
I grew up in the sixties (I was 13 in 1970) in a middle sized, quite isolated Canadian city (Edmonton). We had two TV channels, we were much too far from the border to get American TV. In those days, there was no cable, no satellite dishes. Since there were no specialty channels, these two stations had to provide veiwing for everybody. The TV day would start at about 10 am, with shows for very small children., and maybe a cooking show. In my city, almost all schoolkids came home for lunch, so lunchtime programming would have some cartoons, or reruns of old comedies, something like the "Andy Griffiths Show". Afternoons would have soap operas, game shows, and some kind of local "What's On" type program. After school, another hour of cartoons, built around something like the "Krusty the Klown" show - a host would do skits, or tell jokes, or something, to a live audience of kids, and everybody would watch some cartoons. This would lead into the suppertime news. Prime time was westerns, cop shows, variety shows, and comedies. There were no 'adult' comedies like 'Friends' or 'Sienfeld" - all the sitcoms were aimed at about a ten year old audience, with lots of fantasy - these were the days of "Bewitched,", My Favorite Martian", I Dream of Jeannie". Then, the late news, Johnny Carson or an old b&w movie, and sign off around 2 pm. Weekend mornings had cartoons and local kid - oriented viewing (local kids showing off their tap dancig, that type of thing) Saturday afternoons had sports. Saturday evening had variety and a movie. Sunday morning, religion, Sunday afternoon handyman or travel shows, Sunday night "Wonderful World of Disney" and Ed Sullivan. That's it. If you weren't in the mood for what was on, too bad. There were no VCRs, no movie rentals. You saw a movie when it came to your local theatre, or you waited, (many years) until it came to TV. No electronic games of any kind, the only toys that needed batteries were ones that made some kind of sound - they didn't DO anything. No computers. A family had one phone line, one TV, one car. The idea of kids spending summer days in the house, in front of a screen was laughable, even to the kids - after all, who wanted to watch "Search for Tomorrow"? There were kids everywhere. You didn't need to phone and arrange playdates, or times to go over to someone's house, you just went outside and saw who was around. Even quite little kids, five and six years old, would go over to their friends' houses by themselves, and range the neighborhood reasonably freely. When I was 10, my mom, who was fairly protective compared to other kids' moms, let me go downtown on the bus by myself, and stay there all day. We played outside, went to the creek and fooled around in the woods, played board games and cards. We played big games of hide and seek and so on in the evenings, ran through the sprinklers. We were expected to do chores, and most kids stayed away from home in their free tiime, or else they would be put to work.
What was life like for YOU, when you were growing up?

I'm just 3 years younger than you, agony, and so much of what you said parallels my life growing up. My family home was, and still is, in the southern mountains of New Mexico. We had one TV in the whole house (as opposed to several as most people have today), with one channel for many years. I was 10 years old before I saw a color TV and remote controls were a thing of science fiction (remember the "Jetsons" on Saturday morning)? My sister and I just lived for Sunday night to watch The Wonderful World of Disney.

We rode the bus to school; a one-room schoolhouse. OK, it had three rooms, but it was still small . After school we had a list of chores to do. We didn't go play until they were all done. During the summer months the chores were done in the morning and the afternoons were for playing outside, riding our bicycles or horses, or hiking in the hills. Somedays (if chores were all done ), we'd get up at sunrise and hike the mountains until sundown. We built treehouses, played 'hide and seek', and never, ever told our parents we were bored. As was mentioned in another thread, that lead to being told to "clean up" something.

I was 8 in 1970 and lived in an Army Camp (my Dad was a Captain). We were not allowed to stay indoors on the weekend, my Mum would chuck us out of the house so she could clean etc - not that we wanted to stay indoors anyway, we had plenty of places to roam around: the Firing Range, the Obstacle Course (both out of bounds of course)! When it rained the creek would flood and the School Bus wouldn't come (we lived over 30km out of town). We'd play in the playground on the wooden swings, climb trees, ride billy carts that we'd made ourselves. We had jobs to do at home like washing the dishes, feeding the dogs/cat/rabbit, sweeping the driveway etc. Television (Black and White) was allowed as long as we watched what my Dad watched! We never had the telly on in the morning, and I only remember being allowed to watch kids shows when I was ill, and until I was 12 years old, then we got to see Disney on Sunday night too! We were never bored either, that I can recall, there was always something to do, somewhere to go (on foot) and some way of amusing ourselves! Unfortunately these days it's just not safe to let your children roam around like we did in the 70s!!!

Heck where would I start? I was a post-war baby, born in the baby boom which hit Britain immediately after the war. Baby boom meant that schools were overcrowded, 48 children to the class wasn't unusual so control was everything, you could hear a pin drop during classes.

We didn't have television in our home until I was about 10 years old then an uncle came to stay and bought one with him, when he left we bought one to replace it. In those days there was just the one channel, black and white of course, I think it started late afternoon as I used to watch friends' sets on the way home from school. The programme were quite dreadful quality, appalling in fact compared with what we get today. The second channel, when it arrived, meant having a second aerial so we had to wait a while before getting that. We were only permitted to watch what my father wanted to watch. When colour arrived in the UK not all homes had it at first, it meant buying a new television and they were not cheap. Before my mother bought one I had moved to Jersey (at 25) and we didn't have colour here at that time, I was 31 years old before I had a colour television set, I am now 56.

I was very lucky as a child, we had an area of waste land nearby, this had bushes and trees, a wonderland for kids to play, we built dens, climbed trees, constantly fell in a stream and wet our shoes (thus ensuring a wallop). That took care of much of the summers. I was an avid reader, the local library was my second home. We were inventive when it came to playing, there were not many toys nor commercially produced games so we made our own. Girls were into knitting, French knitting using an old cotton reel, four tacks and a pin was particularly popular.

We used to visit an old lady. We found her budgie and responded to an advert in the newspaper saying that she had lost one, we visited her for many months and it was fascinating to listen to her stories of when she was young. She used to show us scrapbooks and other old things, not at all boring. I have since had quite a lot to do with older people, I used to be a volunteer in a day care centre for the elderly, I got far more from them than they got from me and learned many skills.

When I was about 13 I discovered a home for unmarried mothers, it was run by nuns. The babies were put up for adoption, but not the children with Downs syndrome, they were left and there were quite a number of them. A friend and I used to visit once a week to help feed the little ones and to play with them, they were really sweet and loving.

In my teens, 13 to 18, one source of entertainment was the local youth club. There were the normal range of activities from craft to table tennis and dancing. The boys formed their own group and when they were sufficiently experienced they started to play at local youth club dances, we girls used to go with them (if you were dating one of them) so I guess I was a groupie.

Whether it was playing hopscotch, hide 'n seek or whatever as children or making our own entertainment as teenagers you never heard the words 'I'm bored', there was just too little time to be bored, and there was always the dreaded 'go tidy your room' if you dared to say that you had nothing to do - nothing changes.

Growing up in London during the 1970's was a whole lot of fun. OK there were no computers, satellites etc but what we lacked in indoor-entertainment we more than made up for outside. Every day I finished school it was straight to the local park for football (jumpers for goalposts, enduring image isn't it?), in the summer it was cricket and swimming and you stayed out all day until it got dark. Now indoors sometimes was OK despite having only 3 TV channels at the time (we didn't get our colour telly until around 1973) and an old stereo that used to play the 8-track cassettes. I generally found the programmes of that era being of a higher quality than today, but maybe this isn't true, but it just feels that way. I don't want to go on a full reminisence trip here because i'm going to bore you all with the details. But if I could step into a Time-Machine, just the once, it'll be back to 70's London just for one day..ah memories!

70s television would have been fine, but the 50s was pretty grim, The Groves comes to mind, and the wretched Interludes. for those who didn't suffer Interludes, this was a between programme filler, could be the famous Potter's Wheel with music in the background.

Maybe things have turned full circle Sue. TV is dire these days and in my opinion TV programmers just seem to have run out of ideas. Just have a look at the Saturday night schedules now on BBC1. Maybe I think of a stronger word than 'dire'?

Casualty is still OK but for the rest I agree, roll on the new schedule for the autumn - come back Have I Got News For You.

Talking of HIGNFY, I see that Angus is gong to be doing something similar on ITV on Thursday evenings.

TV is dire these days, I splurged and bought my husband a subscription to Foxtel for his birthday this year (over 100 Channels) - sometimes I wonder if it was a good thing but luckily for me, even though my husband has 'square' eyes and is a chronic 'flicker' he enjoys a good documentary and we both love history - I do yell at him to turn off 'rubbish' when it is really low, like mmmmm reruns of Seinfeld (it was bad enough first time 'round!)

Great idea for a way to explore our memories of "a while ago"! We had a test pattern to look at when nothing was on TV, so we didn't spend much time in front of that. It was a geometric design that didn't do anything. . .just there, I guess, to let you know that the TV was still working, but no programming at the moment. We liked to watch the Sat. morning Big Top, which was a circus program. Dad delivered mail to our rural area (he was a REAL "mailman") , and when he got home, we would have "lunch at the circus" (all together in the living room!)

Jump rope was an entertaining pasttime with all the little jingles, and seeing how long you could jump without missing. I'd forgotten about hopscotch. . .chalk or a white stone marked out the lopsided boxes on a sidewalk or scratched out in the dirt. We played Mother May I on top of an old equipment shed.

Never a dull or idle moment. We all invented our own entertainment, played board games or card games. My favorite thing was paper dolls!! They came with a few outfits and we designed more clothes, created stories and mini plays with our little paper "movie stars"!

Taking a trip back into the past is always an enlightening experience. Gives us a chance to reflect on what was.
SSB