Got my license in the summer of 1976, as a tech (later would be a tech plus). Had to go to the FCC field office in NYC. Had to send as well as receive code, at 5WPM. I expected to have trouble with the code, and to ace the written, but it turned out the other way, aced the code and barely passed the written (embarrassing for a double e college student). The FCC was recycling callsigns back then for a while, once found that a previous WA2ISE lived in upstate NY. Wondered if the examiner, thing I'd be a code fan, gave me ISE as it's a very short code sequence (all dits).
A few months later found out my callsign while at college, and went to the college ham club's shack and got on a novice band for the first contact. Turned out to be someone else maybe ten miles away, this on 80 meters IIRC. Went home for Thanksgiving, and grabbed my mom's HT and got on 2m repeaters to use the new license.
About ten years ago, the FCC abandoned all Morse code testing, so I studied up and took the advanced and extra writtens, and come No Code day April 15, 2000, cashed in the CSCEs for an extra class license. Bought a used rig, a Kenwood TS440SAT, tossed some wire in the attic craw space of my apartment to create something vaguely resembling a dipole, and got on the SW bands. Made a contact with this setup to someone in Antartica.
Haven't been on much lately. Mostly 2m repeaters with an Icon ICu2AT.
Now with analog TV gone, and almost no digital TV stations transmitting on channel 2, 6 meters should be more useful. Back in olden analog TV days, hams in towns with a channel 2 avoided 6m to avoid TVI complaints.