Good GAWD! You ARE an old backpacker.
I too started in the '50s in Boy Scouts with the Yucca Pack. (It was a canvas box with two top flap buckles, two cotton web shoulder straps, and six D rings on each side of the pack. That was it, PERIOD!)
I used farm shoe clodhoppers for hiking shoes. No REI in Pennsylvania in the '50s.
_________________________
"There are no comfortable backpacks. Some are just less uncomfortable than others."