OK Solberg: 00:00

I wanna again welcome you to the 4:05 Coffee Break. You ever get tired of that? Get your cup of coffee, glass iced tea, bottle of water, tall, cool glass of lemonade. Hey, beverage of your choice. And let's see what's happening out there.

OK Solberg: 00:13

Spring wheat, $5.79 a bushel. 550 pound steer calf, $3.95 a pound. A butcher hog in Iowa, 56¢ a pound, and a 100 pound fat lamb in Billings at $2.19. But guys, there's more, much more. Okay.

OK Solberg: 00:36

Yesterday, I told you I heard a roughneck use the word icky, but I also told you, I really did, but I also told you that I found an interesting article online that stated, you might be older than you think if you remember these items and events. Now, yesterday we talked about the milkman delivering milk to your front door. Today we'll explore even further. But why don't I use the same bible verse as yesterday since it's so fitting? Deuteronomy 30 two:seven, remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations.

OK Solberg: 01:17

Ask your father and he will show you. Your elders and they will tell you. This, I will tell you. Any of us old timers like to remember back when. So remembering the days of old is not something we don't know how to do. We love it.

OK Solberg: 01:37

The article states, you might be older than you think if you remember the first time you saw color TV. So what about you? Think about it. Do you remember the first time you saw color TV? Now if you do or if you do some research, you'll remember or find out that in the mid nineteen sixties, color TVs were coming into fad.

OK Solberg: 02:09

And in fact, shows like the Andy Griffith Show, Petticoat Junction, they went into color in the year 1965. So even if you had a color TV set in 1964, you would have been watching Andy Griffith and the Petticoat Junction in black and white. So do you remember when you first saw color TV? I myself remember it well. We still had a black and white set, but it was the Christmas holiday season, maybe '66 or '67, I'm not sure.

OK Solberg: 02:46

And our neighbor, Ori Lubbers, had purchased himself a color TV. Ori was right uptown out there in the country. Now all the Solbergs, my whole family, loaded up in the suburban and drove the few miles over to Ori's house and we watched. And we watched the new color TV, the classic Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. You guys gotta remember Rudolph, and it was narrated by Burl Ives, and he was the roly poly snowman on the animated special.

OK Solberg: 03:23

You remember it. It was a highlight of our Christmas season, and we were very thankful for Ori, allowing all seven of us to come to his house to watch the great event on color, in color. That's another thing we did more often in days gone by. We would go to the neighbor's house to visit. What happened?

OK Solberg: 03:46

Anyway, Ori was a great one to visit. They always had pop and candy for us kids. He'd give it to us and we'd enjoy eating it, drinking the pop, sitting around visiting and watching TV. Guys, Ori was so good that way that one time I'd ridden my bike over to visit my friend Tim Bruckner. And Tim and I had this great and grand idea to ride our bikes over to Ori's and visit.

OK Solberg: 04:15

Well, we knew he'd give us something. Oh, Ori welcomed us in just like his own family, and he brought out a can of Shasta Pop for each Tim and I. And then I remember, he went to his back room and brought out a double decker box of chocolate covered cherries. Ori set them down on the table and he said quite seriously, you know, you boys better clean up these chocolate covered cherries because they'll be getting old here pretty soon and I don't want them to spoil. Well, if you know boys, we took Ori at his word and we cleaned up every one of them in no time flat.

OK Solberg: 04:57

I believe if my memory's correct, that makes eight chocolate covered cherries apiece. Eight for Tim, eight for me. And I'm happy to announce it did not spoil our appetite. But lucky there. I wandered off the TV subject, and more importantly, the color TV subject.

OK Solberg: 05:19

So do you remember the first time you saw color TV? Now the article continues, you might be older than you think if you remember when phones had rotary dials and cords that never reached quite far enough. Oh, that one too, I remember. In fact, I have an old black wall mount rotary phone in my church office, just like the one we had when I was a kid. And yes, back then, the cords were short.

OK Solberg: 05:51

But I remember when we got a new long cord on our rotary phone, this long cord would allow you to get a full 12 feet away from the phone itself. 12 feet. It was a whole new world, guys. Now you kids today will laugh at that, but it's a fact. And when those 12 foot cords came out, it changed our lives drastically.

OK Solberg: 06:20

Now, finally, we could have a little privacy. Our 12 foot cord out in Harb was just long enough to get to the top step on our stairs going down to the basement, and you could close the door and speak in privacy. Well, kind of privacy? You have to remember we were still on a party line. But like they say, out of sight, out of mind, that 12 foot cord was a game changer.

OK Solberg: 06:51

Hey, I gotta run. So until next time, as you go out there, remember now, don't be bitter.