One of the great joys of diving into the depths of YouTube, is surfacing with a cherished gem from years gone by.

I stumbled upon an episode of Bowling for Dollars from 1985. Now the Wikipedia entry for Bowling for Dollars informs me that there were many variations of this game show around the continent. I’m only familiar with the Kitchener, Ontario version that aired on our local CTV CKCO channel.

Part of the thrill of this show was …. well… did shows have thrill back then? If you grew up on a farm like me, you didn’t have cable, and you watched whatever channel your antenna could tune in.

If memory serves me correctly – Bowling for Dollars aired on Saturday nights around the supper hour. You always heard a town you knew, or your friend from school’s aunt was on, or your neighbour’s postcard was drawn. This was five-pin bowling, Canada’s version of bowling, with the much easier-to-handle small ball with no holes!

Every contestant had three rolls and were competing with all the other contestants on that thirty-minute episode. The highest score was the episode’s winner, and they got to come back next week. Every contestant pulled a postcard out of a bin so they’d be paired up with someone from home with whom they’d split the jackpot if they won. How do you win the jackpot? I can’t remember – probably if you rolled two or three strikes in a row? After every contestant was finished, the jackpot was incremented $15.

Watching this episode from 1985 can transport you right back to a different era, and that’s when you realize how much things have changed. Yes, our clothing and hairstyles have changed. But so have the jobs – did everyone used to work in manufacturing? Does anyone now?

Now the most fascinating thing to me – they mention the house number and street address of every contestant when they are introduced, and for every pen pal drawn from the bin! How crazy does this sound in today’s world where we guard our privacy and addresses for a dozen reasons. Are any of them legit? Did we have no bad guys back then? How sweet and innocent we were!

Take a watch – and notice even the 1985 commercials are left in this one!

While I was deep in the dusty back corners of the YouTube archives, I also stumbled upon one of my favourite shows when I was a kid. WKRP in Cincinnati! I found a channel with many of the episodes! I felt like this show was on for years, but it only had *four* seasons, from 1978 to 1982! But there were 90 episodes! I love old sitcoms, and when you watch older ones you realize how much they used to film in one take, and with a real in-studio audience. They didn’t worry so much about little imperfections. I love it! Here’s a random episode:

https://youtu.be/QlbQMojQHfQ?si=wbxlRnibsuuZzk0j

Now if you like walking down memory lane, this playlist has old The Price is Right episodes from the 1970’s! Check out the old cars that were prizes!

I was listening to an old comedy roast from 2006. Now that doesn’t sound so long ago, but language has changed so much since then! We’ve managed to eradicate so many slurs and insults from our vocabulary in less than 20 years!