By the old days, I mean the 70’s and the 80’s… and stop snickering.

No, I am not going to talk about when cavemen would sit around a fire and grunt and throw their arms wildly into the air.  I am going to talk about how we used to have fun “back in the day”.  In the 1970’s and 1980’s most of your entertainment options were outside of the house, unlike now when the world comes to you.  The result of entertainment being outside the home was that we took it serious.  That may sound strange, but it's true.  We would wait all week long for Friday night to roll around, and with great excitement we would all pile into a car and go.  Some of the things that we did may get a huge “yuck factor” rating from the readers because some of them were downright corny.  This is, however, where the gaming spirit began.
 
In the early 1970’s, before I was old enough to drive, we would all go out as a family after the milking was done.   The family would skip the evening meal at 5:00 PM, and go straight to milking the cows.  This would get us done with evening chores around 7:00 PM.  Then we would cleanup quick and all pile into the car and go to the local pizza shop.  “Shakey’s Pizza” was a local chain that offered affordable pizza and family fun.  The four of us would go there, order a large pizza and then sit at a large table covered in a red and white checked table cloth. To pass the time while we were waiting for our pizza to come, a large screen would drop down from the ceiling and the words to songs like beer barrel polka would be displayed.  In the center of the room was a player piano belting out the tune to the song on the screen, and families would sit together and sing out loud and smile.  This would go on until they would stop the projector and piano in fear of overheating.  So then I would just sit there, and of course me with my notoriously short attention span would start to look around the room for something to do.  That is when I discovered a machine over in the corner with blinking lights and sounds of distant things exploding.  I approached the machine cautiously.  "What could this be?” I asked myself.  A mind programming device from the Atari Corporation?  A device to eat quarters at an alarming rate?  A gift from the gods?  It was all of these, and more.

Fast forward a few years.  I am now driving myself and going on dates.  The dates of the time were typically dinner and a movie.  Dinner consisted of a fast food place, like McDonald’s , and the movie was at an outdoor theater.  Outdoor theaters are a wonderful tradition.  Even then I was “FarmerDave”.  I did not bring a car like everyone else.  I would clean up one of the old farm trucks.  Instead of sitting in the cab of the truck to watch the movie, we would back into the stall, sit on lawn chairs, and relax.  We would bring our own snacks: large tubs of popcorn popped at home on the stove.  To drink we usually brought eight-packs of soda in glass bottles and chewy candy that made your teeth stick together.  Outdoor theaters were also a great bargain; you paid about the same price as you would for a regular movie in an indoor theater and you could watch three movies for the same price. 

So there you would sit with your girl and watch a movie.  If the date wasn't going so well, you could always watch what everybody else was doing in their cars.

When the first of the three movies was over, we would all head into the “snack bar” and grab some fresh food go to the bathroom.  I would go and play the video games while I was waiting for my date.  There were a few times when I would get back to my truck only to find my date there wondering where I was.

Thus began a life-long tradition of explaining to the women in my life about video games.

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