I really didn't intend to post today, but when I came across this image, I had the urge to share.
This seems anachronistic to me because I doubt that too many people under the age of 70 have experienced this predicament.
We had two sets of lights when I was a boy. Neither were extremely long, the shortest perhaps only 12 - 18 bulbs. Fortunately, it was this shorter one that was of this ilk. If one light burned out, and they did do this, we had to get a good bulb from the storage pile, remove one bulb from the string, and insert the good one. If the whole string remained unlit, we would then reverse the move and repeat the procedure with the next bulb.
They were special bulbs that were a bit crinkly in a tired and the strand was stored in a worn out box. I assume that they became unavailable over time. My recollection is that we no longer had or used them by the early 1960s.
As irritating as it was back then, being reminded by this image this morning, I am left feeling a tiny bit nostalgic with memories of decorating the tree with Mom and Dad in our little, one-bedroom, upstairs flat in Montreal.
19 comments:
We had a couple strands of those lights but they were old when I was a boy. But there was a way to halve the time it took to find and replace the burnt out bulb. If you put the new bulb in and the strand didn't light up, instead of reversing things, I just assumed the bulb I had removed to put the new one in its place was still a good bulb and would swap it out with the next bulb on the string. Eventually you came to the bad bulb and swapped it with the bulb that had been previous to it before and things would work.
The only problem with this method is that if you had strands of multicolored lights, like we did, sometimes you would end up with say two red bulbs next to each other which would bother some of the pickier decorators than I.
I miss the old, large lights. Somehow the new led ones just don't cut it. Guess I'm old, eh? Happy Holidays, AC!
@Ed. Also, the old bulb was replaced by an already used bulb that would also burn out more quickly.
We haven't had a big Christmas tree in years. No tree, no lights. Problem solved.
I know whereof you speak!
I inherited my mom's lights, the same deal. Our little Charlie Brown tree is great.
A friend has a Charlie Brown tree, but it's snuggled in amoung a lot of other decorations, so its wonderful bare feeling is a bit lost. My engineer son not only looks for bad bulbs in twinkle lights (those little white ones) but will take the glass and wire elements out and restring them into the right plastic housing so they fit in another string. Argh! Yes, the big bulbs of my childhood were really nice!
It was really hard when more than one of those lights went out the same time!
That brings back memories for sure. Thanks for that.
I am *only* 66 but I definitely remember this. The horror of going through each bulb systematically to try to find the burned out one and the magic of getting them lit again. Now I buy cheap ones on sale after the holiday because I assume that they won't work the next year. This year I have two lights that don't work but the rest of the strand does so I may not buy any new ones. We'll see...I remember begging my mom to do tinsel (I loved the stuff!) and wondered why she was so hesitant. Now I know!
That's something I don't recall.
I do remember those as well. I too was thinking about decorating the tree in times past with my Mom and Dad.
PipeTobacco
Yes.
We had the same system in our Christmas lights a way back then. I don't understand why they used that system for a string of lights.
I remember those good old days!
You're preaching to the choir tonight, John.
I remember those old lights and have to say I prefer the little fairy lights. My husband's family had lights that bubbled in a way that made me a little queasy.
It seems that those of us now of a certain age remember those larger lights, which I believe were called C9 bulbs. Not only did my parents have those larger bulbs, but also tinsel that was made of aluminum and would be reused yearly. The carton was a memory jogger for sure.
I don't know why they even include extra bulbs. Once the string goes out, who can find the broken one to replace?
Yes, nostalgia. As I recall, my parents tree raising ceremony was often fraught. We now have LED lights, but the tree raising remains a high drama event, as Getting It Straight, while JG lies on the floor and adjusts our high tech stand straps, can take a while. The tiny lights look like little stars, but the tree looks very different from the old days.
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