Category: Pop Culture History

Boomers Gladly Went Where No One Had Gone Before

On September 8, 1966, NBC began broadcasting Star Trek, and Mister Boomer was watching. He watched all three seasons — just 79 episodes — with his family on their black & white TV. Then, when the show began syndication, he continued to watch the original episodes as well as the later incarnations of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and all of the movies. Mister Boomer’s aunt, born in 1918, was even a bigger fan than Mister B. She never missed an episode, and declared her favorite character was Mister Spock. The show had a vast reach across generations, because of its hope and optimism for a peaceful future based on mutual respect.

The show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, worked with Desilu Productions to pitch a pilot for the show to NBC. Desilu was Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball’s company, but Lucille Ball had bought out Desi’s share to become sole owner when they were divorced in 1960. It was pitched as “Wagon Train to the stars,” comparing the premise to the popular western TV series about pioneering the Old West. The first pilot was rejected by the network, but they saw enough potential in it that they asked for a second pilot to be produced. It was the second pilot that introduced the actors and characters boomers came to cherish on Star Trek.

It’s not surprising that boomers loved the show; after all, they grew up with the inception of the Space Program. At the same time, they watched the metaphorical sci-fi alien movies of the 1950s on TV and it set their imaginations churning into what might be found out among the stars. NASA was in the process of forming its ability to take us where no one had gone before, and then Star Trek showed the possibility of that progress into the 23rd century. Meanwhile, boomers were watching every launch and mission, from Project Mercury with Alan Shepherd’s first foray into space, to ultimately Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon.

In 1960, President John F. Kennedy had laid down the challenge of sending a man to the moon and back within the decade. By 1966, however, when Star Trek first appeared, NASA was in the middle of the Gemini program, which tested crucial docking procedures between spacecraft and saw the first U.S. space walk EVAs (extravehicular activity). Star Trek was leaps and bounds beyond any earthly capabilities.

As a youngster, the technology of the show was the ultimate dream. Mister B recalls that in school, he and his friends were immediately struck by the ethereal theme song and whooshing Enterprise spacecraft that left the name of the show in futuristic lettering on the TV screen. Mister B and his friends would try to draw their own names in the style of the Star Trek lettering on their paper bag book covers. Then there were the flip-open communicator devices; they seemed very far out at the time, but sort of the logical move from Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio. The hand-held phasers were a real mindblower. A flip of a switch could change the gun phaser blast from a stun ray to a death ray. Now that was a weapon young boys wanted to see. The mac-daddy of tech was the Transporter. To think people could be molecularly deconstructed and whisked through space, only to be reconstructed at a different location was great sci-fi in anyone’s estimation.

And as soon as Mister Spock performed his first split-hand salute while stating, “Live long and prosper,” all the boys tried furiously to duplicate the sign. Very few could do it as effortlessly as Spock in their initial attempts. One by one they succeeded, and Mister B was among the first group who could display the hand signal across a classroom when a teacher wasn’t watching. It was as if the “Trek” boys had a new club of their own.

Like Twilight Zone before it, boomers who Mister B knew quickly latched on to favorite characters and episodes. However, Mister B would be hard pressed to pick a favorite character or episode. Before Star Trek appeared, his sci-fi reading was defined by Jules Verne, so the show was a real mind expander and gateway to his next generation of sci-fi reading, which continues to this day.

Rather than a favorite character, Mister B enjoyed certain phrases repeated by certain characters. There was Mister Spock’s “Live long and prosper,” of course. There was also, “I’ve given it all she’s got, Captain,” from Engineer Scotty; and “I’m a doctor, not a magician,” uttered in various iterations by Doctor McCoy. Mister B also liked when Captain Kirk, at the end of several episodes, was asked by navigator Sulu for travel coordinates, would point to the space view screen and say, “Out there, Mr. Sulu,” like Babe Ruth pointing to the spot he would hit his next home run.

There is hardly a person in our culture who hasn’t been in some way touched by the concepts that began in Star Trek sixty years ago. If you watch those original episodes during the 60th Anniversary celebration that is now underway, take note of the influences the program has had. Star Trek had people of all races working together peacefully, and portrayed women in key positions at a time when it was unheard of in corporate America. While most will readily admit humans have a ways to go in accepting each other, progress has occurred in spits and spurts. We’ve seen women at the head of major companies as well as at the top of the ticket in presidential elections, though it should be noted that the office of President of the United States is still an all-male club. Then, of course, Motorola based its early designs of the cell phone on the Star Trek communicator. The StarTAC phone debuted in 1996. Mister B carried a similar flip phone model a decade ago. He thought of Captain Kirk every time he opened it. When Yeoman Rand approached Captain Kirk with electronic data tablets, it was hard to imagine the future e-readers and tablets that are common today.

Mister Boomer has always been a Trekker at heart, though he never — not once — used the phrase, “set your phasers on stunning” when greeting a young lady. How about you, boomers? Were you watching 60 years ago, and what influence has the program had on you through the years?

Please note: This is an updated post first published by Mister B on September 4, 2016.

 

Boomers Tossed the Party Line

In telephone parlance, a party line was one phone line shared by multiple households. According to Bell Telephone history, the practice of sharing a line started in the late 19th century. At that point, the telephone was not yet in every home, and a party line was an economical way to introduce new users to phone service. It became the predominant package for home use. Into the early 20th century, the telephone was thought of primarily as a tool for emergencies and the spread of pertinent family information (which usually meant bad news). Consequently, each phone call lasted no more than a few minutes.

As early as 1899, Ma Bell sought to make the party line undesirable so people would opt for the more expensive single, or “private,” line. Bell would place up to 20 houses on a single line to purposely complicate a consumer’s use of the phone. By the 1920s, people were moving off the party line, but the Depression put a crimp in Bell’s big picture. By the time the country’s economy was recovering, World War II came along. Many people, whether through tradition, inertia or family economics, kept their party line — much to the chagrin of Bell Telephone.

After the war and into the early boomer years, the use of the phone grew from an emergency tool to one of increasing social communication. Women were required to return to their homes after “manning” the factories while the men were at war, and now, at home and having babies, they used the phone to “reach out and touch” family and friends (as the telephone commercials used to say). When phone call times increased in duration, the frustration factor grew for party line users. It would seem that no matter when you wanted to use the phone, another person on the party line had beat you to it. Some neighbors used the direct link as an opportunity to eavesdrop on another neighbor’s conversation, while others were flummoxed by its inconvenience.

The 1959 Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk, portrayed scenes of a one-on-one confrontation between neighbors in New York City who were sharing a party line. Of course, the party line in the movie was used as a plot vehicle to get the two characters together. In real life, party lines in New York had all but disappeared after 1930.

The Rock Hudson character in Pillow Talk was a real ladies’ man, while Doris Day’s character was more of a homebody, career woman.

In the Midwest of Mister Boomer’s youth, party lines comprised about half of all telephone lines until the mid-60s. Mister B’s family had a party line connected to at least three or four other households. Often times, merely picking up the phone meant you were in the middle of someone else’s conversation. By picking up your receiver, a click could be heard by the actively speaking parties. That would prompt a terse, “We’re on the phone!” comment that would require you to instantly hang up for the sake of phone etiquette.

Mister B’s mother was constantly exasperated by the perpetual chatter on the phone every time she wanted to make a call. He recalls his mother yelling into the phone, “You’ve been on the phone over fifteen minutes! Give someone else a chance!” or, in periods of extreme frustration, “This is an emergency! Will you please get off the phone!”

Around 1962, she had had enough, and petitioned Mister B’s father to get a private line. That time period coincided with Bell moving people away from the two-letter phone number prefix to one of all numbers. Mister B’s house received their private line and new phone number that enabled direct dialing to and from anywhere in the world, though they kept the dial and didn’t upgrade to a push-button model. Phone numbers then consisted of a three-digit area code and three-digit exchange, followed by an addition four-digit personal number (see Boomers Dialed Up Some History).

As the Bell System introduced push-button phones around 1963, touch-tone dialing was replacing the older pulse dialing of a rotary dial phone. This technology conveniently required a private line, so it became another way Bell could move people off the party line and into a higher monthly payment bracket. Most households had dropped the party line option by the 1970s.

Do you have family memories of a party line, boomers?

Please note: This is an updated version of a post first published by Mister Boomer on July 31, 2011.