I got to live out 7.5 years of the 80s. It was a great decade in most regards. However, I was on a ballistic missile submarine for 5 years, so 1/2 of that (2.5 years) I was out to sea or stuck on the boat in the shipyard for many long hours/days, isolated from the world. My "confinement" all started RIGHT BEFORE the rise of the G-body's foray into the yesteryear with the 83
H/O, Monte SS, and 442s, etc. I missed a lot of the new car unveilings during that period. But my dad was the one keeping me up on the GM front as he worked for GM at the time. So I knew the 442 was coming back much earlier than the Olds dealers did. It's just that I had not much of an idea of what it was going to look like. My dad tried to explain it to me, but I couldn't fathom it. I knew it was two-toned with silver, but how?
Now, I did get to watch MTV when it was actually MTV instead of some trash reality garbage it evolved to. In fact, I was in Nuclear Power School in Orlando when MTV debuted in the summer of 81. It was clunky in the beginning (aptly started by the first video Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles followed up by a Pat Benetar song). There was some huge air time gaps between music videos I recall, but it was one of the coolest things the younger crowd had ever seen up to that point. The biggest problem I had was in my earlier Navy years, all my room mates wanted to watch was MTV when we were not at sea. So as far as newsworthy events, we were pretty clueless.
Finally got to shore duty nearly in the middle of 1987, and started getting back in the world again. Just in time to watch the start up of "The Simpsons" on the "Tracy Ullman Show." It wasn't until around 2 years later when they made it a series by itself. (didn't see that one coming- and neither did Eckersley) As interest rates started to ease off (they actually started going back up above 10% in 88/89 again), we bought a new 87 442 that year as well as dragging my 85 442 down to Charleston, which I hardly saw since it was at my mother-in-law's second garage for a long stretch when I was still on the submarine. And Reagan's famous Berlin Wall speech. 1987 was a great year. At least the summer was, anyway.
I also recall watching the iconic Kirk Gibson home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series between the Dodgers and the A's, and watching the news 30 years ago when the Berlin wall actually started coming down. It was a big deal for the start of the fall of the Soviet Union.
The 80s were great. I miss them. Well, I kinda missed it the first time around.
But I digress. Star Wars is always cool. Except for those dumb azz Ewoks! And Jar Jar Binks
🙂 At least "meesa" got to see every Star Wars movie when it first came to the big screen! (did you know the early TV advertisements for the original Star Wars was billed as a love story in space?)
