My aunt and uncle lived about 15 miles outside the small town I grew up in. They had a party line and a phone with a crank you turned to get the operator. Once you got her you told her who you wanted to talk to and she connected you. Everyone out there was on a party line.

In town we had a rotary phone and a private line.

When I went off to college I didn't have a phone. I had to find a pay phone if I wanted to make a call.

I remember when we got our black and white TV (no color then). I used to watch the Mickey Mouse Club, Bozo the clown and Captain Puget (Seattle kids show). The highlight of the week was going over to my cousins down the block (different aunt/uncle than the farmers) to watch nightmare theater at 11:30 saturday night. The show opened with a shot of a coffin which opened and athe host in a vampire costume sat up and introduced the movie - always something like Frankenstein, Godzilla, Mothra meets Godzilla, the Mummy, the Wolfman, King Kong, with stars like Karlof, Lon Chaney. Jr. and Bela Lugosi. You never see those old movies anymore.

For entertainment we played outside with the neighborhood kids - games like kick the can and hide and seek. Sometimes we played baseball in the street - drivers would stop and wait until the batter was finished. When it rained we played inside doing stuff like building models (cars, planes and ships), running the electric train or reading. I also had a chemistry set.

Our dream book was the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

This all happened in the 50s and early sixties.