Ten on Tuesday on Thursday...

10 Ways the World Has Changed Since You’ve Been in School

I graduated high school in 1964...forty-four years ago! I lived in the South. Talk about different - I would think so!

1) The high school I attended was segregated. There were no black students there. We didn't have black neighbors and in most cases black friends.

2) Our restaurants were also segregated. Blacks were not allowed to drink from the same water fountains and had to ride in the back of the bus.

3) We didn't have calculators as we know them now. We had adding machines that had a tape that printed out. They were clunky and a pain in the you-know-where.

4) There was no cable TV - we only had network television. And, damn little of that! I can remember having networks added!

5) There were no DVDs or compact discs. Music came in the form of 45s and LPs (33-1/3). You played your music on a record player which needed electricity therefore you could not carry it with you. Eventually we had portable radios but they were big and clunky.

6) We lived through the Bay of Pigs thinking that we were going to be bombed at any minute by Cuba! (And, with Cuba being right at the end of our state - it was scary!)

7) We watch in horror as our President was assassinated...we cried for days - and watched his widow and her small children walk behind his casket. We thought our world as we knew it had ended.

8) There were no computers or internet. We wrote letters and used postage stamps to mail them. We used the library a lot - or if our parents could afford it we owned a set of encyclopedias. (We did) We did have typewriters - but no copy machines...so, it you wanted more than one copy of what you were typing or a copy for your records you used carbon paper...nasty stuff that left your fingers tips either purple or black.

9) We had no malls to shop in. Sears and JC Penney were the big stores in town and they were stand alone stores. Our downtown had Grants and Kress department stores. During Christmas holidays I worked in the candy counter at Kress. Yes, they had a real candy counter and you could buy candy by the pound or piece. We were allowed to eat as much candy as we wanted - and by the second day of working no one usually ate more than one or two pieces - if they ate any at all - because they got so sick the first day!

10) We did not have any big chain grocery stores - we had two local chain stores - Publix and Kash N Karry. I worked at Kash N Karry in my senior year as a cashier. I had to punch in the numbers of the items - there were no bar codes or bar code readers.