The "Wonder Years"

[Bud Bud]

After reading the last thread about the Sundowner and also the one discussing the excitement that still surrounds the Phase Falcon’s after all these years, got me wondering, is there anybody here that did not grow up through those "wonder years", and wished they did (or glad they didn’t), and for those of us that did what funny stories or good (or bad) memories do you have from this era?

For me I was born in the early sixties and I can still remember Beatle tunes on the radio that were the latest singles at that time. Ob-la-di ob-la-da along with lady Madonna were amongst the first songs I can ever remember hearing.

Gilligan's Island, Bewitched and Get Smart were brand new shows and not re-runs. Days of our lives still had the same awful start as it does today. Is it still on?

I can still recall Neil Armstrong stepping out and on to the moon surface (July 69), but I was too young to remember him uttering his now famous speech. The launch alone dominated the TV for probably three days and I can still recall the antiquated digital clock counting backwards to lift off in the corner of the screen no matter what program was on at that moment. I had the presence of mind as a six year old to know that was the biggest single event that man had achieved up until then and that it would still rate right through my life.

In Motor sport, visions from Bathurst in the early seventies still excite me today. I can recall people literally standing on the side of the track with no barricades and watching these barely in control missiles hurtling only meters past them and think nothing of it. The very mix of different brands and classes is what made it look like an exciting race back then and these cars really did look like the cars that were in the show room at that time. The Moffat Bond Cobra 77 win was one of the most exciting finishes I can remember. When peter Brock died it actually reminded me that I could still clearly remember most of his Bathurst victories. His total domination of the late seventies in his A9X was also incredible.

As you can see, I can not remember a world without TV!

I know that this era had just as many social and political problems in a relative sense as any other and perhaps it has more to do with my childhood and not that era anyway (most of us grew up scared of the Rusky's dropping the "bomb'), but I still think that there was definitely a greater innocence and naivety back then than there is today.