The Big TV switch to digital finally came in June 2009. Back in my day we put antennas on the roof and if we were lucky we got 4-5 stations to come in clear enough to watch. North of Boston it was 4, 5, 7, 38, and 56. The Bruins played on 38 so that was great.



Here is a picture of my uncle and step father putting up a roof antenna back in the 70's.

We rarely watched a show without snow, shadows, or static of some sort. When I first saw the Brady Bunch on cable TV in the late 80's, I couldn't believe how clear it was. Even now on the TV land channel they replay some Brady Bunch shows, and I watch them now just for the clarity.

We upgraded to a rotary dial in which you turned a dial in the house and the antenna would turn by motor as you tried to get the signal to come in better. Sometimes you had to do that ever time you changed the channel. The next step was Starz and Preview, two pay channels that were availble over the air with a special antenna, that was the predecessor to HBO. Finally cable arrived and antennas were obsolete.

Now the big switch came and you need a special converter to watch over the air TV now. Why anyone would still watch over the air TV is beyond me, especially with HDTV relatively inexpensive now.

Though I never hung out in Revere, much, I did have an Iroc Z Camaro in the 80's. The late 80's to be exact. It was really only a regular Camaro, but I knew someone at a body shop that put the Iroc Z sticker on for me.  I picked it up pretty cheap too. Whomever owned it had blown the engine, so this car that had 70,000 miles on it had an engine put in with less than 1000 miles. I think I paid $5,000 for it and figured I'd get some decent years out of it. I was the smart shopper.

Immediately the chicks were all over me, as you can imagine. I had two dates lined up before I even had it officially on the road. Sadly the car gave me alot of problems, almost as many as those chicks did, and it spent more time being fixed than I had hoped for. There was always something wrong with it.

I guess it was a blessing when it was stolen on a winter day in February 1992. I woke up to look outside and find I had one parking space too many. (Who would steal a Camaro with six inches of snow on the ground?) It was found in Revere, of all places, right off of route one, when the two kids that stole it found out the brakes were bad and didn't quite make the turn.

I say two kids, as there were two baseball caps left on the front seat with basketball teams logos, and the lid was set to the smallest setting. You do the math. There was also a head imprint in the windshield and blood on the outside of the car when I went to see it. It was totalled. I actually got a pretty good check from the insurance company for it, so it wasn't all bad news. Here are a couple of photos of the wreck.

Sniff, ah the memories of the Camaro.

You may all think I was shot out of the womb with beautiful hair, but it took many years to get the mullet, just right. In the 90's the dew was really long. Chicks really dug it, especially in hot tubs.



And though the long hair looked good on stage, I found myself playing more hockey and less guitar, so I had to scale back to the Jagr look.
But it was way back in 1984 when I got hazed by the high school hockey team that the story of the mullet begins.

This is the only picture in the world of me with short hair. Right after this happened I put a curse on the rink in which this happened. The rink closed down the next year, and was torn down.

Coincidence ???  Don't mess with the mullet.

I finally had the chance to watch a movie all the way through. I chose to watch Cloverfield, the Godzilla type movie that came out last year.



The movie was about a big monster running around New York City. It was basically a modern day Godzilla move. Since I love Godzilla movies, I figured I'd like this one. It was a great concept with some terrific special effects. However they chose to make this a Blair Witch type of movie, where it was all shown from a hand held camera.

I had to look away many times because I was dizzy. Good thing I was watching at home, because I coudn't have watched this in the theater. I managed to get through the whole movie. I thought the movie was good, but would have been great if they just filmed it as a regular movie instead of in the Blair Witch style.

The two hour headache I had from watching the movie was almost worth it.

On Memorial Day weekend 2008, I came across a bunch of old photos from the 70's and 80's. Now some of the blog articles will not only have pictures, but the actual pictures of the stories I am writing about.

Check out the picture of me playing the video game in 1977 in the blog about my first video game. It is one of many photos that will now bring my old stories in this blog from just words into full blown Technicolor.

Originally this article was going to be called, Impressing the Chicks in the first grade. That's because we always played street hockey during my birthday parties. We had a long driveway on Holten street with fences on both sides, almost perfect for a hockey game.

I remember a party I had in the first grade, I tried to impress my first grade crush by playing real hard and scoring a goal when she showed up. I didn't have a photo of that game, but I found an earlier photo of my with my chin cut open from when I was four in 1971, and not yet in first grade, so I changed the title to My First Hockey Injury.



I remember someone, I think a friend of my dad's or my uncle, it wasn't a kid my age but rather an older guy who tried to tip a shot behind me while I was playing goalie. He caught me good in the chin with his blade. I thought I took a stick just above the eye, until I found the actual photo, and it was to the chin. After a quick repair, I was back into the game.

I'm not sure who took the photo, but it's pretty funny that I remember getting hurt, and somebody got a photo of it back in the day when there were no digital cameras or cell phone cameras handy.

And to think, we didn't even sue the guy who cut me, unlike today when someone's kid gets hurt...

Since when can't you ride on the back of pick up trucks ???

When I was a kid, after every little league game we would jump on the back of my step dad's pick up truck, and go over to Friendly's for ice cream. Nearly the whole team would pile in for the ride.

When we won the Championship, he drove us around town and through downtown honking his horn while we waived to everyone. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got sued. It was just a great time for us kids.



My how times have changed. I heard that it is now illegal to ride in the back of a pickup truck. When did this happen? Who the hell would pass such a law?

I know who, the same people who were riding on the back of the pick up truck with me. All of us now are in our late 30's or early 40's. And somehow, what was perfectly okay for us as kids, now is considered dangerous to kids. They are missing out on so many fun things by having their parents "protect" them every second of the day.

Can we make the bubble any bigger around kids today?  Are they still allowed to sharpen pencils at the window sill in school like we did?  Or is that also against the law. I don't dare ask.

I always wanted to keep some sort of diary of some of the things that happened in my life. Not that I have done anything Earth shattering, I haven't invented calorie free Oreos or been to Stonehenge, but there have been some interesting things that I have seen or done since 1967. With the advance of technology and the internet blog, it is now easy to catalog some of these memories as well as some of my daily thoughts.

Some of the older guys reading this will probably relate to much of this. It was a vastly different world growing up in the 70's and 80's compared the politically correct 90's and 00's. I expect some of you to say, "Oh man I remember that," while reading some of the blog articles.

The younger guys may find it funny reading about a world without cell phones or cable tv. (For me High Definition TV was when you could tune in the Brady Bunch with the rabbit ears without shadows.)

I tried to organize the blog into categories, mainly Thoughts, Flashbacks, Dreams, and man do I have some crazy dreams. Some of this blog will be funny, some will be serious. I hope you will enjoy reading this blog. Check back often, I hope to add to this regularly. And please feel free to leave a comment or contact me. I'd love to hear your feedback.

daveicehog@aol.com

I was a child of the 60's. (Okay so it was the late 60's, and I was too young to remember anything until 1970 when I was about 3 years old... )

My very first memory was of me holding a putter and putting a golf ball into some plastic thing in the living room of our apartment in Danvers. I was surrounded by family members who were all sitting in chairs and couches, and I must have drained the putt because I remember them all cheering and clapping for me.

When I try to think back, that is the very first thing I can remember, putting a golf ball. That's where it all started for me.

What was your first memory? Leave a comment and let me know, if you can remember...

daveicehog@aol.com

I can remember my first video game system. (Well, the first one was actually a hand held Mr. Quarterback by Coleco. Mattel also had some hand held sports games, and they all consisted of red dots for players.) But I am talking about one that plays on the TV.

It was 1977 on Christmas morning we got a Sears video game system that hooked up to the TV. It had a version of Pong, and also a simple car racing game. It came with four paddles, and you could play one or two or up to four players. I think they said it cost $100, which was a boat load of money back then. Graphics were black and white and there was a small speaker on the console itself for sound, I don't there there was any sound on the TV itself.

This is an actual picture of me playing the game on Christmas 1977.



Ironically I was in a Friday's or some restaurant like that in Worcester in 2007 and they had this exact video game up on the wall along with all sorts of other memorabilia. I found a picture of it on the internet.



Soon after the Atari 2600 came out and also the Mattel Intellivision game systems. It's amazing how bad the graphics were on these games back then, but we would play them for hours. And the worst thing about those games, you couldn't save your progress. You either finished the game or you didn't. I'll have more on past video games in another post I'm sure.

Leave a comment or email me and let me know your first video game memory.
daveicehog@aol.com