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Old 03-27-2016, 07:58 PM   #131
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

Oh, and Federal and Winchester were other common ammo brands.
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Old 03-28-2016, 01:56 AM   #132
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

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Oh, and Federal and Winchester were other common ammo brands.
Splendid. And might BT (Boat-Tail) ammo be the sort that zips through foxes and bobcats making an exit hole little wider than the bore, when used in the .22 calibers, i.e. poor terminal performance on humans? Or would boat-tails tumble and yaw in the target at velocities over typical .22 LR?
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Old 03-28-2016, 08:46 AM   #133
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

Completely unrelated to the current discussion on hunting, something caught my eye this morning that I think is valid.

A lot of the sparsely-populated rural areas, which I believe includes logger and potato farming areas of Maine, cable television wasn't always supported. Satellite television receivers, however, were "the big thing" around the late '80s/early '90s in such areas. What caught my eye was someone's leftover giant satellite dish in their back yard (they had the modern smaller dish inside it).

The satellite dishes were about 10 feet in diameter and mounted on a four to six inch diameter steel pipe. I'm uncertain as to the channels received, but I remember that local channels were not available via satellite.
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Old 03-28-2016, 11:28 AM   #134
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

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Completely unrelated to the current discussion on hunting, something caught my eye this morning that I think is valid.

A lot of the sparsely-populated rural areas, which I believe includes logger and potato farming areas of Maine, cable television wasn't always supported. Satellite television receivers, however, were "the big thing" around the late '80s/early '90s in such areas. What caught my eye was someone's leftover giant satellite dish in their back yard (they had the modern smaller dish inside it).

The satellite dishes were about 10 feet in diameter and mounted on a four to six inch diameter steel pipe. I'm uncertain as to the channels received, but I remember that local channels were not available via satellite.
Well, this is about all sorts of technology and feel of 80s Maine, not just hunting.

I suppose the Allens have a satellite dish. What did 80s television show?

Courtney Allen, the 21-year-old son, would be a Miami Vice fan if they can get it on their sat dish. Of course, he had no trouble catching the last two seasons '86-87, while at school in Cambridge, MA. Courtney also likes 80s action movies (at this time just known as 'action movies'), including cheesy martial arts movies (which he doesn't consider cheesy). A new favourite might be Hong Kong director John Woo. Also a fan of anything with mammaries & posteriors.

Clayborn Allen might watch the news. In his mind, John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart were real red-blooded men in their movies, whereas anyone shouting HAI! and prancing around with chorus-girl kicks just looks ridiculous. Spaghetti Westerns were quality foreign movies, made in English with proper actors, and if you need high-octane action, Steve McQueen was a far better action hero than any of the ox-like current crop in Hollywood or any squinty Oriental.

Clayborn saw a lot of movies in drive-through when he was young. A favourite classic, shared with his wife, is Gone with the Wind, and he secretly does not mind at all when Mrs. Allen says he looks just like Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.
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Old 03-28-2016, 12:34 PM   #135
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Well, yeah, there's always some old lady around who runs an off-the-books daycare. Even today. Back in the 80s? I'd say that off-the-books daycares are more common than licensed daycares.
[...]
Of course, my mom worked at the grocery on the other side of town (when she worked) so I could just free-range and swing by her place of work if there was a problem.
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Some arrangement could be made and as acrosiome says care in private homes was the norm rather than licensed public day care.

If it doesn't break anything for you the lady could be watching he kids at some church-related facility. Churches were also active in this sort of thing.
The teacher is probably a Baptist and the kids are/were nominally Roman Catholic. Given that she's on the school board and likes to keep busy, though, I don't have a problem with calling what she was doing a voluntary extra credit assignment, i.e. her making papier-maché Christmas decorations with the few children whose parents needed to keep them somewhere during the morning.

Ironically, the testimony of the teacher in question was simply that the girls didn't show on that morning, but their father's truck drove past the school building early in the morning. The janitor/librarian/dogsbody who works part time at the school (and seems to spend a lot of time in the library, even when there is nothing to do there) recalls waving to Mrs. Greybear in the car and seeing the two girls in the backseat wave back. In the front seat was a Mr. Wahaki, friend to George Greybear and, evidently, better friend to Mary Tomah Greybear.

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I could be a case of sampling bias, but in my hometown mom just stayed home, or worst-case an aunt or neighbor took charge of you. This was rural, though. I'm sure that cities were different.
I think your experience was typical. As you say, cities may differ.*

The adventure is set in an extremely rural area, of course. Allagash has less than 500 people and Dickey, the unincorporated part of it, adds a couple of hundred. Two neighbouring 'towns' of St. Francis and Saint John Plantation (both within 10-20 miles) count around 700 people in total and there are maybe another two hundred people living within ten miles of the towns on farms, without being part of Allagash**, with those people mostly east of St. Francis and Saint John.

Less than five people per square mile, even if you only consider the part of the Valley that is actually inhabited. The population density of Allagash itself is less than three people per square mile at this time, for that matter.

*My New York City cousins always went day-care back in the 90s (and I think late 80s, for the eldest) but then, both their parents worked. Well, they both worked full time until my second cousin was born, at which point my uncle's wife spent less time in her office. Not none, though.
"]**Which administratively owns most of the wilderness around it, being the largest town in Maine by square mileage, at around 140 square miles.
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Old 03-28-2016, 12:50 PM   #136
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P.S.- a 200 yards shot on a fox with an M1 carbine would be a nice trick. Well, not terribly hard, but not really a reliable instant kill. .30 carbine drops pretty rapidly, so you'd really have to know your range.
200 yards would be the maximum range I can see them being likely to have a shot at all, with 95% of shots being under 100 yards and ca 70% of total shots happening inside 50 yards.

That being said, Sommiers is a fair shot (skill 12), he simply lacks woodcraft (Survival (Woodland) -8) and doesn't have the best coordination (DX 9, Clumsy) or awareness (Per 9). Obviously, though, the .30 Carbine is not the optimal round for their hunting, but Sommiers is the most likely among the group to not care about the fur as a trophy or abstract notions of sporting clean kills. He cares about 'winning', or, at least, not feeling like he lost against the others at anything. On the other hand, it's not as if he has a driving passion for it, any more than he has a passion for anything in his life anymore, really. He doesn't like to lose, but he's grown fairly used to it.

Actually, most of the dozen or so men who go on this annual hunting trip are pretty decent hunters. The average experience of hunting among them is around 20 years or so and some of them are extremely keen amateurs who have few hobbies other than hunting.

The worst of them is County Commissioner Alexander Cadieu, who hadn't hunted in almost 20 years (and then only seldom and casually) when he first came with them four years ago. He's coming along just fine, though, with around skill 10 in both woodcraft and shooting.

Most of the rest have skill 12-13 in relevant skills, with Clayborn Allen and his old frenemy Phil Willette having expert level skills in stalking and shooting. The two of them were the best hunters of their generation even as boys, at least until young Abel Dufresne started growing up. But then, Dufresne became a Marine Scout-Sniper in Vietnam and won the Silver Star.
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Old 03-28-2016, 03:23 PM   #137
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

Given how expensive and obvious the dishes were I think the networks didn't worry about encryption that much. The number of people that would watch them was small and couldn't watch any other way. Plus I think the sat feed had the national commercials already in it.
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Old 03-28-2016, 04:00 PM   #138
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

Speaking of satellite TV, how has it changed since the 1980s vs the 2010s in that regard? What are the differences now in satellite TV now vs then?
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Old 03-28-2016, 05:23 PM   #139
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Speaking of satellite TV, how has it changed since the 1980s vs the 2010s in that regard? What are the differences now in satellite TV now vs then?
First, you can get local channels via satellite now; you couldn't back then. There were the three main networks - ABC, NBC, and CBS - broadcasting over satellite, but I forget what they had for the slots scheduled for local news. (I forget when Fox was confirmed as the fourth network.)

Also, the receiver is much smaller, such that you can have a satellite dish on the balcony of every apartment in a three story apartment complex. Back then, you wouldn't have had the room for a single one to service the entire complex.

The number of channels available was smaller as well; I want to say there were about 20 as opposed to today's ~200. HBO or Cinemax, no Starz or spin-off networks, MTV was still showing music videos (I don't think VH1 existed yet), and I'm pretty sure Turner was still expanding. I'm pretty sure "reality television" hadn't yet been invented - MTV's The Reel World, which started the whole thing, was still a few years off I believe.
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Old 03-28-2016, 06:11 PM   #140
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Default Re: 1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae

Depends on the satellite setup, the old large dishes were getting the raw network feeds. IF you had the right equipment, you could point it at any satellite, government satellites tended to be encrypted. I had a college professor in 1986 who liked fencing, he used his dish during the 84 Olympics to watch the German coverage, he also watched the British equestrian coverage.
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