Back in Time for Winter 60s to 80s

February 12, 2020

I watched the next three episodes of Back in Time for Winter and although I didn't remember as many details of each episode as I did of the first two episodes, I say a few things below.

The 1960s episode had mod clothing and hair and weaving and painting and knitting crafts.  Mom knit, including pairs of mittens for us and Dad.  She tried to teach me but my four-stitch line widened to several stitches a few rows down.  I could knit funnels?  The tv dad plays outdoor ice hockey on a homemade rink.  Mom's still mired in the kitchen but there's much canned food, easing cooking.

The 1970s episode, during a time of economic slump, features pork hocks, sauerkraut, and other budget eats, as well as cross-country skiing.  From the sixties on, the tv family had synthetic outerwear, having left wool behind in the fifties.  In the seventies, I learned to ski.  I skied in heavy fleece, not the lightweight clothing they use for skiing.  I remember standing over a heat register in the floor in our kitchen to warm my feet, after skiing or road hockey.  The tv family by the sixties had a portable electric heater.  The tv daughters disco danced in  the house.  My Grade 12 chemistry and biology teacher taught us Grade 12s various dances, including disco and waltzing, before our 1979 graduation ceremony and dance.  There was television, as in the sixties episode.  The daughters said they liked the human interaction in the living room, a relief from their current cell-phone lives.  I'm glad my 1992-born daughter can socialize in person, unlike many of her generation, and indeed of my generation, enslaved by personal digital screens.

The 1980s episode, of the era in which the tv parents grew up, after the 60s and 70s when I grew up, was more prosperous than the 70s era, and thus food was fancier, including foreign fruit and vegetables, shrimp in the shell, and escargots.   That the tv mom mixed and rolled out spinach pasta as one would a pie crust, then cut it in strips and dried it hanging on dowels.  It reminded me of home made egg noodle pasta from our family friend Marie Lingitz.  My younger sister and I made pasta from scratch that decade, and I still have a pasta maker, but it's fiddly work and the contraption is hard to clean.  It pines in one of the two lazy Susans in my kitchen.  Better times brought lusher sports, including downhill skiing for the tv parents, and apre-ski drinks.

The 1990s episode's yet to come.  I hope to watch it alone and thus remember more of it than of these past three episodes.