I was just a kid running home from school...

[Elmont]

I don't know where the time has gone. Seems like yesterday I was just a kid. Now I'm a Grandfather and retired.. Time is fleeting...

[dom]

You can say that again. 

[Gerard]

I also ran home to not miss an episode!  My parents had to replace our living room carpeting because of it.  The school bell rang at 2:55, giving me five minutes.  When I got through the door, I'd whip off my coat and slid across the carpet to the old Admiral black-and-white TV set, turning it on to hear the opening narrative just in time.  Eventually, I wore out the carpet down to the base; literally, you could see it - there was a path from the living room entrance to the TV (which had a rotor on top for the antenna - remember those?).  My parents had a heavy-duty Brady Bunch shag carpet installed.  It's still here.  DS is gone, but the shag is still here.

Gerard 

[Elmont]

I lived in an apartment complex back then. Our bus dropped us off at 3:03 and 10 to 15 kids would run as fast as we could, to get to the closet apartment. Because of parents and other things, who's TV we watched changed daily.. It was a lot of kids in your house..

[Gerard]

I remember running with friends to the closest home, too, Elmont.  Sometimes, I would go to my friend's house, named Jim (he, not the house), and we'd watch it there.  Sometimes it was to my house.  The next day, all the kids would talk about the previous episode.  Virtually all of us had only black and white sets; only the "fancy people" (as my dad called them) had a color set.  And the color was usually horrible - everyone looked green.  Of course, we were also hooked on Lost In Space (Star Trek was over our heads). We had DS and LIS toys, cards, etc.  When HoDS came out, we went two hours before the theater opened to get a spot in the line.

Gerard

[Elmont]

Those were the days my friend. It's a much different world for today's kids.

[Gerard]

Remember those, Elmont?  We paid a dollar for entrance, popcorn, candy and a sods (and had to bring the change home).  When I saw HoDS, it was part of a double-movie.  The first was some western no one cared about.  There were also previews, a documentary and cartoons.  Today, you pay about $75,000 for a "discount" matinee and if you want popcorn, that's another $138,000 more. I haven't been to the movies now for over three years.  We watched shows like DS, LIS, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island and The Munsters on old black-and-white TV's and like I said, if we needed to improve the reception, the bar was pushed or the knob turned on the rotor to change the position of the antenna.  It wasn't until I was in college when, for the first time, I watched The Wizard of Oz in color and knew that the horse of a different color turned colors.  People still "dialed" phones (even though we still say "dial" on "smartphones").  It was a different, and in many ways, wonderful world.  A poster here once commented that she was watching, with her son, the PT1970 episode where Daniel placed the record on a phonograph to play "Angelique's Theme."  She said her son asked:  "what's that?"

Gerard

[Uncle Roger]

I never had to run home for DS. Grammar school got out at 2:30pm, so I had plenty of time to make it home by 3:30pm, when the show was airing, before it moved back to 4:00pm. When i got into high school (no junior high where I lived), it was even easier. We were on half days most of the time. The bus got me home by 1pm, more than enough time to have lunch, take a nap or become hooked on other soaps.

[Gerard]

During summer, I also got hooked on other soaps before DS came one.  On our local ABC channel, it was "The Eeeeeeedge-of-Night."  It had its own creepy moments.  I barely remember two episodes.  One had two female characters sitting in the front seat of a car, totally oblivious, wanting to commit suicide, as they drove the car - stone faced - over a cliff as an unwilling passenger in the back seat was screaming.  The other had a young woman, trapped alone in a house, trying to call the police after the phone-line was cut, and the murderer opening the knob of the door.

Gerard