I like the topic of Olive Tree Genealogy’s Sharing Memories this week, so I’m back in.

I know I watched Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Captain Kangaroo when I was little. And of course, there were always cartoons like Bugs Bunny and others. I don’t remember much of them, just that I watched. The Muppet Show was also popular in our family. Again, I remember more of that from watching re-runs during my college years. Every now and then, I’ll catch an old clip on YouTube from any of these shows and somehow vaguely remember it.

I also know that I watched Star Trek with my Dad. This is another one of those memories where I know that I did something but can’t specifically remember.

I remember arriving at junior high school to find everyone talking about the same TV shows that I had never seen. I was somehow able to convince my parents to watch, or let me watch, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, and Growing Pains (I remember Leonardo DiCaprio before Titanic). There might have been others, but those are the ones I remember best. My parents liked the shows too, so finally I wasn’t a social outcast in those conversations.

Of course, once you start watching prime time shows, you get all the commercials for the others and you keep going. Senior high school viewing included 90210 and Melrose Place. And Dinosaurs. Our family loved Dinosaurs. BTW, “I’m the Baby! Gotta love me!”

I don’t know how I started watching MacGyver in high school, but I remember that one specifically. I was allowed to watch it because no one else was interesting in watching anything else from 7-8pm. Unfortunately, my best friend at the time loved to call me during that hour, so I’d just ask her the time and she’d call back later.

During college, I finally watched Star Trek: The Next Generation and loved it. Oddly, I had no memory of watching the pilot when it came out when I was 14, but I knew it was relevant to the finale, so I rented it — and remembered half of it. So I figure my Dad and I did watch that episode, but he prefers the original.

Back to Olive Tree Genealogy’s 52 Weeks of Sharing, the topic is childhood pets.

We had a bird that I don’t remember, and my brother had a goldfish, but the family pets were a dog and a duck.

Sir Reginald Von Feldstein

Every young boy wants a dog, right? My brother wanted a dog and we got one. My mother chose a Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie) and his name. Called Reggie, he was adopted in 1974 just before I turned 2 years old. My mother took pictures of him for every birthday with a candle in a Gaines Burger. He was a well-trained dog; would take the Milk Bones out of your hand so gently when you told him “nicely”.

In his later years, we taught him how to shake, though I think we did most the actual shaking for him. The one trick we never taught him was Treif/Kosher; we had seen another dog do that and thought it was adorable.

Reggie hated car rides because they always meant either the vet or the kennel when we went on vacations. My mom finally learned how to drive just before we moved when I was in fifth grade. We bought the house and spent a lot of time working on it before moving, so Mom would drive over and take Reggie along. Slowly he learned that the car also meant “that other house”.

When he was finally too sick, he was put to sleep on the third day of Passover in 1983, not long after we moved, and was buried by the side of the house.

Webbey

We lived not too far from Oak Grove Park. One day, a duck came waddling down the street and ended up at a neighbor’s house. That neighbor, Fred, called my brother over and said, “Do you want a duck?” And thus, we adopted Webbey around 1978. Webbey and I didn’t always get along so well. He liked to nip at me, especially when swimming, like he was trying to save me from drowning.

One time, we brought him back to the park to be with his other duck friends, but he didn’t get along with them, so we took him back. He died while we were away at summer camp and was buried next to the house. (The first house; he didn’t make it to the second one.)

Skipper

He wasn’t with us long, but during high school, someone abandoned Skipper in our neighborhood. He walked up to my brother on the front porch and we took him in for about nine weeks until we found another family to adopt him. Skipper was a sweet dog and well trained, likely a pure-bred American Eskimo. We found it hard to believe someone would just abandon him, assuming it was someone who moved into a condo that didn’t allow pets. Surely there must have been some way to find the dog a good home.

Skipper didn’t walk, he pranced. My parents had to ride a bike to take him for a walk; I just ran with him. I wanted to keep him, but he went to a family with a couple of younger kids.

While I’ve got a few entries from the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog 52 Weeks of Sharing, Amy Coffin of the We Tree blog has also been doing a similar theme of Personal Genealogy History. So for this week, I’m switching where I get my theme from and writing about Technology.

I remember Pong. We had it hooked up to a TV in my bedroom in our first house, which means pre-1983. When it was out for a year or two, my parents finally sprang for an Atari 2600, and I still have that original one we owned and it still works. I also have all the games they bought, which I’ve added to a couple times with eBay.

In elementary school, I was in the Academic Excellence program. I can’t remember anything about that except that in sixth grade, we learned Basic programming on the Atari 800. I have one of those too now, but I got it during college when a professor found some while cleaning out a closet.

I don’t remember exactly when, but we soon had a computer in the house. The IBM PC, or the XT, or maybe both at different times. I remember seeing the amber monitors and wanting one, just to see something different than the green we always had. Over time, the home computer upgraded to a PS2, and just kept going over the years. Eventually, I was given my own computer, a hand-me-down from my Dad’s office; he would take parts from one or two older ones when someone was upgraded, and maybe add in a couple newer components for me. The first laptop I got was around 1993, also an office hand-me-down.

I was a late adopter of CD technology, having such a collection of LPs and cassettes and not wanting to replace them. Eventually I was given a few CDs for Hannukah and took the plunge.

My Dad was the type who liked to have the latest technology for most things. He had a remote control for the TV, or maybe it was just for the VCR, back when the remote had a long wire still attached. He liked to buy the most expensive VCR, that even a rocket scientist reading the instruction manual would have difficulty programming. I always bought one of the cheapest ones, which were much simpler to operate. Dad even had one of those weighs-as-much-as-a-brick cell phones when they first came out.

When I started college, moving into the dorm, instead of a phone, I had a beeper so I could be reached. I was introduced to email, chat, and Internet beginning in 1991 and was programming web sites by 1993. I didn’t pick up a cell phone until I lived in Nashville in 1998. In 1999, I tried a different carrier, and just before my big genealogy trip across the US and Canada, they introduced nationwide calling plans, so I didn’t have to calculate long distance and roaming charges. I switched to broadband via cable modem in 1999, leaving behind the last land line phone I’d ever have (so far), no longer needing the second line for the computer and depending on the cell phone for phone service.

I was a fairly early adopter of the PDA (personal digital assistant) and I still use one today that I bought in 1996 (my third). I have not switched over to a smartphone yet, especially having used all the major cell phone carriers at one time or another and not being thrilled with any of them anymore.

I know there were lots of other technologies that came about during my lifetime, but I didn’t pay attention to most of it. I was never into fads, so I didn’t have “the latest thing” until it wasn’t brand new anymore. By then, it seemed to be around forever. I vaguely remember rotary phones — our phone number started with 949, can you imagine calling home on one of those with that number?

Olive Tree Genealogy is hosting 52 weeks of Sharing Memories – A Genealogy Journal. I don’t tend to keep up with the regular columns, or I haven’t in the past, but let’s see how I can do with some of them.

Week 1 is about New Year’s Eve traditions. I don’t have any other than making sure to stay up until midnight and watching fireworks on TV. I’m not even set on watching any particular show — though NYC used to be the show of choice. This year, I watched the local fireworks, partly because I follow Jenny on Twitter who works for the company that runs the best fireworks shows in Utah. She tweeted something about a seven minute show going off inside of 90 seconds. It was pretty cool.

So I’m going to write about a specific NYE, partly because it’s the only one I can remember where I didn’t just stay home. I’m sure there were others that I spent with friends at some point, but I can’t remember them right now.

It must have been my first year in college, so 1990. My parents were good friends with Victor and Eileen Nunberg, and I used to babysit their three kids for years. They were old enough by that year to watch each other, but my only option at the time was to hang out with them. And I was miserable. It wasn’t a good few years for me around the end of high school and beginning of college.

I didn’t have a cell phone, so I must have gotten a message on my beeper from my friend, Paul Auerbach. His parents were having a party. He was acting as videographer but he invited his friends to stop by. Many of them did just as they were told, but I stayed the whole night with nowhere better to go. I didn’t know anyone else there, and I’m sure I wasn’t at all social, but Paul would stop to talk to me, or his other visiting friends would too. Somehow I remember that night like it was one of the lowest points of my depression, but that invitation felt like it saved my life; it certainly saved the night.

Paul was always a happy memory for me from the first night I met him at Marcy Babischkin’s house. I first met Marcy in Driver’s Ed class at NMB Sr High. When I went back to find her again after I started college, I learned that her house was at the geographic center of her friends, so they would all gather there and go out together. I joined them many times.

The first night I met Paul, we got along terribly well. I can’t remember all the details, but we ended up sharing the brown chair. Does anyone remember those chairs on the infomercials where they were made to fit a specific person? Marcy’s father had one. Paul and I sat in it together. I think one of us got up for a drink or something and the other had taken their place, but it was not surrendered peacefully. Again, no memory how it happened, but somehow, instead of each of us crossing our legs, we ended up crossing all four together, and then we stacked up our hands on top of that, also alternating.  Anyone else who stopped by that night thought we were old friends, or maybe more, but we had just met and sometimes you just get along with a person from the first moment.

And so that’s my NYE memory, with two back-stories to explain it. A depressing night during a depressing year, saved by a friend. Thanks Paul.