Without revealing your age....

[ButSeeYa]

what is something you remember, that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?

I remember flipping thru the Card Catalog at the Library in order to locate a book.

[RandySF]

1. Getting off the couch to choose between three television networks.

Along with a half dozen local UHF channels.

[SCantiGOP]

266. You were lucky

We had two channels until I was about 10.

One thing I remember was that girls were always cautioned to carry a dime with them on a date.....in case their escort tried to take liberties they could call home on a pay phone.

[safeinOhio]

2. Driving around looking for a

pay phone.

[Lunabell]

3. Free roam childhood.

Playing outside unchaperoned for hours. Walking and running for miles until the streetlights came on. And fireflies. Remember them?

[littlemissmartypants]

11. I miss the fireflies.

They used to be abundant but I don't think I saw any last summer.

[ginnyinWI]

164. come to my house!

We have them--live in the suburbs on a one acre lot. We NEVER put any weed killers or anything on our lawn. Maybe that makes the difference. They start up in July and end in September.

[littlemissmartypants]

174. Cool. Thanks.

[kimbutgar]

405. I remember them as a child visiting my grandma in Chicago in the summer

We didn’t have them in San Francisco. They were so fascinating to me. This mean boy once caught one and smeared it on his face leaving a fluorescent glow. Shocked and fascinated by it.

[whathehell]

412. We called them Lightening Bugs..

in my neck of the woods.

[littlemissmartypants]

413. We used to catch them in jars and put them by the bed at night.

Best nightlights ever.

[whathehell]

414. I remember them being put in jars..

with holes in the lid for breathing.. We didn't advance to the point of nightlights, though.

[brush]

124. Also "trick or treating" for hours on foot, many blocks from home with siblings...

Last edited Sat Mar 4, 2017, 12:04 PM - Edit history (1)

no parents, no fear on Halloween night.

Then finally coming home with a big bag of candy and fruit, some unwrapped, and yelling "trick or treat" to mom who knew who it was at the door.

[Butterflylady]

359. Trick or treating for a week.

[634-5789]

424. no parents, no fear on Halloween night.

Yeah. Wow!~ Now kids don't even go out around here and they have these 'business visits'. At my age i still cannot remember one incident of razor blades in candy, or some other harmful candy inserts. But, parents don't want their kids going it alone.

[femmedem]

208. Yes, this. Six, seven years old I'd walk two blocks through suburbia to a pond, watch minnows

and tadpoles, find old cow skulls in the woods, play on rusted, abandoned farm equipment, come home with bouquets of Queen Anne's lace and clover.

I wouldn't be who I am today without those hours of solitary exploration.

[Amaryllis]

212. Didnt have fireflies where I lived but I spent many hours roaming the neighborhood and the

woods behind the neighborhood...exploring for many blocks in every direction. I had a control freak mom and she never even worried or tracked where we were. It was safe then.

[pangaia]

362. THAT is a big one...

[Freddie]

4. Female - not being allowed to wear pants in (public) school!

They finally changed the rule when I was in 8th grade.
Also being FORCED to take "home ec" in 9th grade while boys got an elective period! That got changed before I graduated.
Not from the Bible Belt either - suburban Philly.

[SwissTony]

12. In my high school (Australia), the girls HAD to do home ec

while we boys had to do woodwork. Home ec back then seemed to be mainly cooking. I'm much better in the kitchen than I am in the workshop. I couldn't cut a simple piece of timber square until I reached the age of ** (old).

[PJMcK]

73. At my school, boys took shop

The girls had a half year of Home Economics using the classroom with numerous kitchen set ups. The other half of the year the class learned sewing, knitting and the like. Meanwhile, the boys had half a year of wood shop and half a year of metal shop. My grade was the last year for that segregation; the following year, the new co-ed classes spent a quarter of the year in each of those four disciplines.

As a boy, I loved the shop classes. The wood shop was terrific and I still have two of the projects I made: a jewelry box and a lamp. We learned architectural drawing which I've used throughout my life whenever I had a home improvement project. Likewise, the metal shop was infectious and I have an aluminum jar on my desk that I turned on a metal lathe. Those classes were great learning experiences and I'm glad that the school expanded their enrollment to include the girls. Unfortunately, I never did learn to sew but I did learn how to cook!

There's a frightening and curious side story to the metal shop class. The teacher was a great guy who spent extra time with every kid to help make their projects interesting and good learning experiences. He was one of the first teachers I had who rarely answered a question; instead, he would ask leading questions to make the student think through their problem in search of the solution. This cognitive process has stayed with me.

Many years later, after he had retired, a story came out that this former teacher was arrested for having child pornography on his computer. In his plea deal/jail sentence, he turned over evidence of a nationwide child-sex ring that resulted in dozens of arrests and the freeing of dozens of young girls and boys from sexual slavery. It was a strange realization for me that a teacher I had respected and liked could turn out to be such a ghoul.

[sarge43]

77. For the time my high school was enlighten

For one semester boys took home ec and girls, shop.

[randr]

139. We had the same deal

Boys made shop aprons in home ec and the girls made a sewing kit in wood shop

[pnwmom]

346. Oh, no!

How disillusioning that must have been -- though I guess you were old enough by then to realize how complicated people are.

[tonekat]

392. We were wary of one of the shop teachers

They were all strange in their own way, but the old guy who taught Plastics/Graphic Arts always threatened boys who acted up by saying he was going to "Paint their pecker red, and their ass green". It didn't come off scary in the way he intended it to, it came off pervy.

[MadCrow]

279. I wasn't allowed to wear pants to school all thru high school

Except on old clothes day when we could dress anyway we wanted within reason of course. This was in suburban NYC.

[demigoddess]

417. I remember the Principal telling a second grader she couldn't wear pants at

school, she had to wear a dress. I was second grade too, I think, and I thought the Principal was mean and stupid. The girl wore the prettiest plaid shirts and matching ribbons in her hair.

[LenaBaby61]

5. Without revealing your age....

Riding to Catholic School with my late older brother in his brand new Monte Carlo as Barry White's "I've Got So much to Give" played loudly on his 8-track tape

[HAB911]

45. I had a 4 track player in my '61 Ford Starliner

it had a handle to raise the capstan into place and there were twice the 'clunks' as it changed tracks

[spooky3]

6. Sleeping in hair rollers.

[mgardener]

19. Could not sleep on those plastic ones!

I'd forgotten about those!
And hair dryers remember those old ones ?

And
Dippity Do !

[lillypaddle]

38. Dippity Do

It was green, wasn't it?

[mgardener]

43. 2 colors

Pink and green.

[LakeArenal]

146. Are you talking hair rollers or the first color TV?

[lillypaddle]

249. Dippity Do

LOL

[tonekat]

393. Teal too N/T

[MLAA]

300. Too funny....

Just last Wednesday I mentioned dippidity do to my early 30s hairdresser. She had no idea what it was 😃

[llmart]

382. OMG!

What a flashback! I remember putting that pink gooey crap on my bangs and then taping them down all night long. LOL

[MLAA]

386. My sister rolled her hair on orange juice cans!

[solara]

438. I rolled my hair on grape-juice cans..using liberal globs of Dippity Do

I also ironed my hair

[MLAA]

439. Dippity do! It was so goopy and green!

[solara]

440. I think Dippity Do also came in pink.. but I never used that one

[tblue37]

68. What about the wire rollers with brushes inside, fixed in place by pink plastic pins. nt

Last edited Sat Mar 4, 2017, 05:45 PM - Edit history (1)

[marzipanni]

204. My mom used those to make her chin-length hair go under at the ends

Or used her favorite curling device, a little aluminum tubular thing with a 1/4" tube on one end and a 1/2" tube on the other, both with a slot to insert the end of a strand of hair and roll it up, stick a bobby pin to hold the hair roll, and repeat.
Once my aunt and I gave one of my older brothers a new look for a day by curling the top of his head of hair with 'Spoolies'. We badgered him 'til he gave in.

[ShazzieB]

429. Those things were torture devices!

I can't believe I actually slept on those things for YEARS.

[tblue37]

430. Me too!

[solara]

441. Yep, used those too also used 'spoolies'

Anyone remember 'spoolies'? The didn't straighten my hair enough, though.. my Mom used them.. she never understood the grape juice cans

[Sparkly]

444. Sleeping in orange juice cans!!

(Empty, of course.) This was to get smooth, straight, bouncy hair. We'd make a high ponytail and split it in half. Then roll each or two large orange juice cans with half the hair - smoothy - and pin with extra-long bobby pins.

[LenaBaby61]

7. Without revealing your age....

I remember HATING when people smoked indoors (Grocery Store, or in a restaurant) and I could barely breathe or enjoy my food because everything smelled and tasted like cigarettes

[randr]

142. Remember that every table has an ashtray and free matches?

[TexasProgresive]

8. This could be a long list

Card catalog and periodical index.
Playing Red Rover, tag, and freeze tag in the streets and neighbor yards.
Riding the ferry across the Mississippi from Gretna to New Orleans and then taking 2 buses home at 8 years old.
Building and flying balsa wood control line model airplanes.
Building and painting plastic models of ships, airplanes and cars.
Mowing lawns for pocket money.
Mostly all kids' activities were organized by kids and no grownups allowed. (as long as we didn't cause trouble)
Going door to door to sell raffle tickets and chocolate bars for fund raisers in neighborhoods that were not ours.
If we wanted to go anywhere, it was walk or bike, forget about getting Mom or Dad to drive you unless it was to church.
Playing board games during the hottest days of summer at the one friend's house with air conditioning.
Collecting soft drink and beer bottles from the side of the road for the deposit money- and sharing a drink (no back drafting allowed) and snacks with each other.
Learning to touch type on a manual typewriter.
There is more but I think I've worn out my welcome.

[PJMcK]

78. Sounds just like my childhood!

Thanks for stimulating the (mostly) happy memories, TexasProgressive! Enjoy your weekend.

[TexasProgresive]

120. Same to you PJ. Is that Patrick Joseph?

If so you have 2 feast days this month.

[PJMcK]

152. Nah, that's not me

I'm Paul Joseph and I ain't no saint! (Just ask my exes!)

But I'll feast any time I can.

[TexasProgresive]

192. The saints seem to always deny being one.

[leftofcool]

9. poodle skirts and my record player

[littlemissmartypants]

10. I hesitate to presuppose what might not be understood, but...

Here are some things that I remember fondly, being at the tail end of the boomer age bracket:

Family visits where we entertained ourselves with tall tale telling and singing around the piano together.

Waking up to the black and white test pattern.

Getting paid a dollar an hour to baby sit at age nine.

Hootenanny time at the park.

My first transistor radio with the single ear plug.

Learning to crochet, knit, embroider and tat from my grandmother.

Adding to your card catalog memory, the pride of being able to write my name on the card from the envelope in back of a book when checking it out from the library.

Waiting for The Bookmobile at the end of the road in the summer.

Great post, ButSeeYa. Thank you. ♡

----------

Baby boomers are the demographic group born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are between 53 and 71 years old in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

[gfwzig]

13. sugar cubes (polio vaccine)

[SCantiGOP]

267. I had forgotten the sugar cubes

But I also remember the sugar cubes from college in the early 70s that had a drop of LSD-25 on them............

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

348. I'm old enough to remember the max vaccinations immediately after

the Salk vaccine was deemed safe and effective. I actually attended one of the Catholic schools involved in the testing of the vaccine. My older sister (but not me or our older brother) was in the test cohort. Alas, she was in the non vaccine group. And so I may remember the original Salk vaccine even more vividly than most.

I do remember being line up in a field near where we lived as every child in our neighborhood (and this was in the midst of the Baby Boom) was lined up to get the vaccine. My own mother was a nurse and was somehow involved in this, although after some 60 years I no longer remember the details.

But I do recall how much the Salk vaccine changed every day life.

[JetFuel]

14. Watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan

And arguing when my parents said we wouldn't even remember who they were in a month.

[Rhiannon12866]

32. My mother was actually just the opposite

I was a kid, didn't know much about them, but she dragged me out in front of the TV and told me that I needed to watch, that this was history. So I actually remember watching that appearance and she was right! Welcome to DU, JetFuel! We're glad to have you with us!

[Still Blue in PDX]

260. My mom, too! She bought me the Veejay album "Introducing the Beatles."

I had never heard of them. It took me many years to appreciate just how savvy my momma was.

[hedda_foil]

390. Many of our parents were very young by today's standards.

People in their generation often had a couple or three kids by the time they were 25. If they were Catholic, the number if kids a couple had by 25 could easily be 5 or 6. So many got married right after high school. If they went to college, the expectation was that the girls be married within a few months of graduation -- if they didn't just drop out of school because they were getting their MRS. sooner. (My mother did that. Two years at Northwestern and married at 20.)

I'm on the invisible tip of the leading edge of the boom ... born between VE and VJ day in 1945. When husbands did war work or trained soldiers at posts in the states, a lot of them got pregnant after D Day in Europe, when the war turned decisively in the allies favor. My dad was 4F because he was allergic to something in the lunch they served the boys who were reporting for the draft. By the time he got to the medical exam, he was in the throes of a horrendous migraine which kept him out of the army. He worked as an engineer on airplane radios and weather balloons instead.

We had huge classes in school -- 40-45 kids per teacher, often in split grades. Of course, as soon as the vets came home, they couldn't build schools fast enough for years.

[whathehell]

52. I watched Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show!

I was only seven years old, but absolutely loved him!

[RKP5637]

59. Yep, I was so excited about their first performance on Ed Sullivan and we all watched it. n/t

[gopiscrap]

166. welcome to DU

[mgardener]

15. Not being able

To wear pants to school or work!
Not being able to attend Notre Dame University, all male school at the time!
And...
Washing dishes by hand, no dishwasher!
Black and white tv, no color!
Remember first electric can opener my dad bought for my mom.

[sarge43]

16. Life without any electronic devices

No television (not in our home anyway), radios ran on vacuum tubes, did advance math calculating with a slide rule, time pieces ran on gears. Yes, computers existed, but they had no effect on our lives. Everyone of them in existence had less memory combined than this desk top.

[dhol82]

29. I remember my dad taking the bad vacuum tubes from our tv down to the appliance store to get replace

They just got plugged in.
There was a tv show in the early fifties that had you put a plastic film over the tv and then you would draw on it in erasable marker to get the 'secret' picture.

[rzemanfl]

47. Yes.

"Winky Dink and You" 1953-1957

[dhol82]

61. Thanks!

I completely forgot the name of the show.

[Squinch]

231. Bwaaa! The whole theme song just came back to me!

I must have seen it in reruns because I was born after 57.

"Winky dink and me, winky dink and you,
always have a lot of fun together, (da da da)
winky dink and me, winky dink and you,
always fun in rain or sunny weather."

[rzemanfl]

234. This is from Wikipedia-

"The program was successful because of its pioneering interactive marketing scheme, and Winky Dink became one of television's most popular characters of the 1950s. However, the show's production was halted despite its popularity because of concerns about x-rays from TV picture tubes. This was particularly true for early color television sets. CBS was also concerned about parents' complaints that children who didn't possess the interactive screen were drawing directly on the TV screen.
The show was revived in syndication for 65 episodes beginning in 1969 and ending in 1973. In the 1990s, a new "Winky Dink Kit" was sold containing a screen, crayons, and all-new digitized Winky Dink and You episodes.

[Squinch]

237. I must have caught it the second time around. Don't remember anything but the song.

I can also remember the entire "Buster Brown Shoes" song.

[rzemanfl]

238. Does "Plunk your magic twanger froggy" mean anything to you? n/t

[Squinch]

239. No, but I saw the reference down thread.

[rzemanfl]

241. Buster Brown shoes sponsored that show. n/t

[Squinch]

242. Oh! But their commercials must have been all over for me to remember every word of the song.

[rickford66]

282. Andy's Gang - Andy Devine

[rzemanfl]

371. This was entertaining during Irma. n/t

[EarnestPutz]

318. Bob would say "So you take the pie..."

And Froggie would say "....and you put it on your head".
Which Bob would do and then say "Oh no, froggie, look at
what you made me do!!!". After which Froggie would pluck
his magic twanger and disappear in a cloud of smoke.

[ailsagirl]

261. "MOTHER, PLEASE... I'D RATHER DO IT MYSELF!!!"

[tonekat]

394. DRAMA!

Oh yes, I remember that one well.

[ailsagirl]

411. "Sure, you're tense, irritable... but don't take it out on her!"

After all these years I still recall that!

[solara]

437. DON'T TAKE THE CAR YOU'LL KILL YOURSELF!!"

Infamous 1978 Drunk Driving TV Ad - Husband and wife fighting in the back ground as kid plays with toy car. Guy stumbles out the front door… Wife yells to hubby's back as the front door slams shut: "DON'T TAKE THE CAR YOU'LL KILL YOURSELF!!"

[whathehell]

48. I remember vacuum tubes and

I think the name of that TV show was Winky Dink.

[sarge43]

50. A pack of vac tubes in house

Dad was in charge of replacing the dead in the radio. It was in a cabinet which was about 5 feet tall .. with dials.

Oh yeah, 78 records. BFD when stereos and LPs came out. Could listen to a complete symphony without changing out the records every five minutes.

[Beartracks]

130. Wow - interactive television!

========================

[sarge43]

60. Carbon paper. n/t

[dhol82]

63. I just bought some and was shocked by how expensive it was

I had always thought of it as so cheap. The pack cost me over $20.

Guess it's now a specialty item.

[sarge43]

69. I'm surprised it's still available.

It brings back some painful memories -- manual typewriter, multi copies, carbon paper, typo ... mother $@*%!

[RKP5637]

75. I remember retyping term papers at school because I made a mistake in the last

paragraph ... and then those times of the smudges on carbon paper, then on my fingers, and then accidentally touching the white paper and ruining it. Yep!!!! mother $@*%!

[Freedomofspeech]

277. Oh, that was the worst...

Sitting at night in the dorm...retyping a paper if you made one typographical error,

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

327. Ay caramba!

I had a temp typing job when I was about 18. I spent the entire day typing up one document, because I kept on making a mistake somewhere. Erase wasn't allowed.

Among the reasons I love computers, is that I can make a mistake and backspace to erase it, as I've done many times in typing this entry.

[tonekat]

396. I remember the joy when I discovered

The Word Processor!

Suddenly, everyone started overwriting!

[pangaia]

364. probably on your nose also. LOL

[dhol82]

76. I was finally able to track it down at Staples

They only had the one choice.
I remember the horrors of typing with it but loved the onion skin paper that was used for the copies.
I am using it for a design project.

[tblue37]

72. I was 5 when we got our first TV set, and few people we knew had one yet. nt

[sarge43]

109. Relatives and neighbors showed up just to check it out. n/t

[tblue37]

147. Oh, yes. nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

328. Watching "Peter Pan"

by looking through the window of a neighbor's house, the only one in our neighborhood who had a TV.

[CountAllVotes]

154. I actually did my taxes w/o any devices this year

Used the old skills of add, subtract & multiply.

I filled the forms out, signed them and mailed them in. No more TurdoTax for me!

Useless in my case as I have little income to report sadly.

Oh well ...

[WiffenPoof]

17. Trying to talk to...

...grandson about the Beatles.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

329. Having some young kid in 1987 tell us

about Paul McCartney, and explaining he used to belong to some other group, called the Beatles.

[Chasstev365]

18. Wacky Packages!

Today, companies would sue and kids wouldn't find them funny.

[rpannier]

20. Let's see

Not so much wouldn't understand as find weird or amazing

Milk Man Delivery
Turning in pop bottles for money
Cash registers that the clerk had to push the little levers and the numbers would pop up at the top (no computer anything)
Wandering around and seeing what there was to do that we thought was fun
Mid-rift shirts on boys and girls when I was in jr high
Getting a driver's license at 16 and no need for an adult in the car
TV stations signing off between midnight and 2 am
TV shows that began with "In living color"
No round the clock football during the fall
Movie theaters with only one screen
Balconies in movie theaters
Drive-in theaters
Rotary phones
Calling information and getting a real person
Calling any store or company and a rteal person ansered, not a recording telling me to push 1

[GP6971]

97. Telephone party lines. nt

[2naSalit]

141. and only needing to dial 4 digits...

unless it was long distance calling, then you needed the operator to make the call.

[rpannier]

200. frontier 1956

That was our number when I was young.
373 - in Sou Cal was Frontier

[2naSalit]

223. We didn't have those

in rural Maine. By the time we went to NH you had to use 7 digits. It was in 2002 that I discovered you had to use all ten +1 to call in the same city (at that time it was Portland, OR) due to massive cell phone use.

[happy feet]

21. Ditto plus

Watching the moon landing on black and white tv
Watching huckleberry hound and other cartoons weekday eves after washing dinner dishes and as a family
Playing street game - mother may I? Hide and seek, jacks, double Dutch...
Block parties
Drive in movie theatres
anxiously awaiting to see wizard of oz every Feb 22nd on black and white tv
Movie theatres had cartoon first before movie and if you missed the beginning you could stay in theatre for next showing
Ice cream man excitement
Sitting still with baby powder all over our bodies when extremely hot (of course no air conditioners)

[GeoWilliam750]

22. Rotary telephone

Smoking sections on airplanes

[babylonsister]

23. Short, striped polyester dresses with fishnets and go-go boots, white of course!

Trust me, it was haute couture.

[malthaussen]

81. And as a male of the time, I definitely appreciated them!

-- Mal

[Cooley Hurd]

24. Fighting off grizzly bears at school with my musket...

[pangaia]

365. Fake news....

[dhol82]

25. Party line telephone

Collecting newspapers and old clothes to take to the rag seller for candy money.
Going to the movies for 25 cents and seeing two features, a newsreel, and several animated cartoons.
Walking home from school for lunch at the age of seven - and then back to school for the afternoon.
Having an air conditioner only in my parents bedroom and then hanging a big sheet over the stairwell so we could have the whole upstairs cooled down.

[tobefree]

26. Pulling your car into a gas station....

With no expectation of getting out of it.

[Rhiannon12866]

248. I remember riding with my Dad

He'd roll down the window and say "Fill it, please, regular." The same thing every time.

[SCantiGOP]

268. My Dad knew the guys that ran Johnny's Esso well

And, in what I thought was the coolest thing ever, when they were busy they didn't mind if he got out and pumped his own gas !

[Rhiannon12866]

274. My Dad, on the other hand, was not a car guy

He was not a fan of pumping his own gas, I believe my mother usually took his car and did it for him.

[doc03]

288. My dad always got 2 bucks worth of gas. On Sunday he would buy 2 bucks worth of gas and drive

to grandmas house 120 miles round trip and have enough left to drive to work all week.

[Rhiannon12866]

292. I remember getting a ride to school with my cousin

We were going to stop for gas - but it was 47-cents! She said that we could definitely get it cheaper elsewhere!

[doc03]

294. Us guys would each chip in our change and maybe come up with

15 cents for a gallon of gas.

[Rhiannon12866]

296. So I guess 47-cents was quite exorbitant!

I didn't drive yet back then, but at $2.69 most places right now - even here in New York! - it sounds pretty reasonable to me!

[tonekat]

397. I remember the full serve Flying A station

You didn't have to ask to have your windshield washed.

And the aroma of leaded gas! I loved it!

[tonekat]

404. "Ding Ding" N/T

[democrank]

27. Interesting post, thanks.

Hiding under my grammar school desk during an "air raid drill"

Using someone's hand-crank telephone which had a "party line"

Putting a sheet of colored plastic (or cellophane) over television screen to go from black and white to color

Seeing cars with "rumble seats

Having a cast iron hand pump in the kitchen sink

Having a milk man leave glass bottles of milk (with cream on top) on the front steps

Having a "Bond's Bread" salesman come to the house each week and wishing we had enough money for the doughnuts in his giant pull-out truck tray

[Freddie]

94. We had a milkman and a "bread man"

Sold Sunbeam bread and other baked goods. Back when many families (like mine) only had one car and Mom was stuck home all day. The bread man also sold 5 cent and 10 cent candy to us kids. We'd smack the Turkish Taffy (vanilla was the best!) on the sidewalk so it would break in little pieces.

[randr]

143. Milk wagon, bread truck, ice wagon, rag man, coal truck, and vegetable wagon

Wagons being horse drawn. Also the old steam engine trains.

[bullimiami]

183. And a seltzer man that brought chocolate and coke syrup.

And the Charles Chips guy that brought giant cans of amazing potato chips and cookies.

[dhol82]

194. We used to get a case of soda and seltzer delivered every other week.

Remember the wooden crates.

[griloco]

28. Okay? It's alright

[dchill]

107. Don't forget Topo Gigio...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

264. Senor Wences lived to be 103.

He died in 1999.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

330. Senor Wences lived to be 103.

How amazing is that?

[Sancho]

30. ok..this is fun...

- Adjusting the antenna, or even turning a motored directional antenna on top of a tall pole, to get one of three channels: ABC, NBC, or CBS

- Using a slide rule for math computations in chemistry class

- Handing everyone a fan at church or some indoor events like school plays because there was no air conditioning

- keeping bottles of "white out", memeograph paper, ribbons, a dictionary, a ruler in a box in order to type term papers and reports

- trilled to get a 9-volt, AM only transistor radio for a Christmas present, and using it to hear that Kennedy had been shot while at school (on WTMA in Charleston, SC)

- building a concrete bomb shelter in the back yard, and stocking it with canned food in case of an nuclear war with Russia

- several file folders of paper maps from everywhere I traveled, charts from sailing trips, and booked street maps of cities; but you could get "Triptics" printed from AAA!

- Actually looking forward to the update column of World Book Encyclopedia to come every year or so

- separate black and white waiting rooms at the dentist office

- an entire bookcase in my office of decks of computer cards with programs to be read on a mainframe, and buying an Apple II+ for $1300 in 1978 with 4K (yes; thousands) of memory and writing programs in Basic! No word procession or spreadsheets - but VERY exciting!!

- I owned an Apple II+, IIE, IIC, Osborn I, TRS80, and Franklin 1200...and one of the first Macs!! Years after I left college

- Driving most cars without automatic transmissions and no air conditioning; also a school bus and dump truck - all with clutches. I still have a manual pick up truck!

- lawn darts, whirly gigs, incredible edibles, cap guns, pong

[Maeve]

140. AAA still does TripTiks--but now we download them

Onto the tablet that we use for travel

The excitment of a personal computer--a Commodore 64. Bought my husband a new monitor at Target for Valentine's Day one year. Before that, the fanciest piece of electronics was a Bowmar Brain, an early calculator.

We made all the kids learn to drive a manual--just heard of a car theft that failed because the thief couldn't drive stick!

Creepy Crawlers.

[Sancho]

161. I forgot creepy crawlers!!

Yep, my brother and I loved the thing maker!!

[Silver Gaia]

31. Doing "paste-up" for the school newspaper and

hand-drawing ads for it
trying to keep my mini-skirt pulled down enough to keep my garters from showing
wearing pantyhose for the first time

[zeusdogmom]

65. Oh the smell of rubber cement

I was co-editor of the school yearbook. Spent many hours in a small and unventilated room using rubber cement to secure pictures and script to the paste up pages. The script was typed of course on manual typewriters.

[Silver Gaia]

71. Yup! Rubber cement!

I did the school newspaper and the lit journal... Loved it!

[randr]

153. We had mint flavored glue in art class

My stomach aches thinking about it.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

331. Panty hose was an important aspect of mini skirts.

Like you, I started my (semi)adult life with stockings and garters. Luckily for me, the transition to panty hose happened soon thereafter. Skirts got shorter.

I'm somewhat fascinated to have realized that in recent years stockings in any form have almost totally disappeared.

[DinahMoeHum]

33. When communiques to overseas were done by telex.

when I was starting a career in international logistics/transportation by ocean freight.

[GP6971]

122. Yep...make a mistake

it was backspace, backspace and the start over.

[bullimiami]

184. Worked at a fish farm and we had a Telex.

Magical.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

332. Oh! Oh!

I had a job that required sending information by teletype. It sometimes took three or four hours to correctly type out the information without typos that would render it invalid. ARRRGGGG! How I HATED that part of the job.

[tonekat]

395. My dad's office had a Teletype Room

It was glassed off from the rest of the office, and had a little latched window you could open up to talk to the person in charge. The glass was that kind that looks like it has chickenwire embedded in it.
He'd go in there making his rounds of all the departments, and it must have been 120 db in there. Tons of punched paper ribbon all over the place. Pre-OSHA. It was in an old furniture factory, and his office had a curved glass block wall.

[bucolic_frolic]

34. Place a long distance call by telling the operator the number to bill

it actually wasn't that long ago, but you know some remote areas
were behind the times for many decades

[Squinch]

35. You mentioned "catalog" and my mind immediately went to the Sears catalog. The back of it.

With the toys. Flipping through it with my sisters to see what kinds of toys were out there.

[sarge43]

42. I hope someone (Smithsonian?) has all the catalogs

The record of Americana in the 20th century

[Freedomofspeech]

36. The Main Street of my small town in Southwest PA....

Lined with locally owned clothing stores, shoe stores, a meat market, Mcrorys and Woolworths, etc. We never had to leave town to buy anything! My Mom and I would walk uptown to shop and have a hot fudge sundae in Candyland...now those stores are all empty. We walked to school, home for lunch and would watch Search for Tomorrow and Guiding Light (15 min. live soaps) with my Mom and then walk back to school for the afternoon. Life was good and then Vietnam happened and my brother was killed in a plane crash...nothing was ever the same again.

[RKP5637]

70. Yep, just thinking back, Vietnam was really the turning point. Seems we've been fighting an uphill

battle ever since in so many ways.

[Freedomofspeech]

92. No kidding.

When this country decided bigger is better it all changed. Malls killed the downtowns and consolidation of schools hurt public education...as a retired educator, I witnessed this...

[lillypaddle]

39. Paper drives

and speaking of paper, no one thinking anything about your lunch trash being tossed out of the car window. Littering? What was that?

[marzipanni]

246. I remember the Don't be a Litterbug! campaign in the early '60's

And once my dad picked up all the paper cups, containers, napkins, bags, etc. that the customers of the little drive-up seasonal restaurant down the street generated and tossed in our neighborhood, and gave a paper grocery bag full of it to the manager, saying, "I think this is yours". They hired a kid with a bag and a stick with a nail on the end to pick up trash for a while.

[TuxedoKat]

263. They should bring this campaign back

Too many people litter in this country.

[padfun]

40. Fall Out shelters

They had the atomic sign. I think they started to disappear around 1970 or so.

[whathehell]

41. Newspaper classified ads for jobs divided into "Male" and "Female"

Already shocked my niece with that one.

[k8conant]

320. Along with those ads for a "Girl Friday"!

[whathehell]

370. Oh yeah?

[whathehell]

432. Oh yes..

Those fell by the time wayside, didn't they?

[ShazzieB]

428. I grew up down south...

...so I remember FOUR categories of classified job ads:

-- Help wanted male - white
-- Help wanted female - white
-- Help wanted male - colored
-- Help wanted female - colored

Just typing that made me shudder!

[whathehell]

431. Wow.

I grew up in the North and never saw that..

Did these appear after the passage of Civil Rights Laws in the mid-Sixties?

[Shanti Mama]

44. All of the above and

Not liking all the buttons on my everyday tops.

[IronLionZion]

46. Always being the only one of your type in every school and job

Thank God America is more diverse now. You don't even realize.

Trying to find something at a restaurant or find some recipe that doesn't suck to feed your one vegetarian (for religious reasons) friend. There are lots more vegetarians and options to feed them now.

Always have to carry a quarter with you for the pay phone. Which got screwed up when they raised the price to 35 cents. But now good luck finding a pay phone.

Being stranded somewhere without a ride home. Now, we can always get an uber/lyft in many neighborhoods, even small cities and suburbs.

[FuzzyRabbit]

306. I remember when a pay phone was still only 10 cents.

And air mail stamps were (I think) 5 cents. Regular mail was 3 cents as I recall.

A fast food burger was 19 cents, the deluxe burger with tomato and lettuce was 29 cents.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

334. HA! I remember penny post cards.

Yep. They cost a penny and could be sent anywhere in the country. When I was perhaps 10 or 12, the penny post card cost 2 cents. At some point they were discontinued entirely.

Oh, and I am surely older than you as I remember fast food burgers costing 15 cents. Which, according to an on line inflation calculator, is still less than $1.25, and you cannot buy a fast food burger for that low an amount these days.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

333. WHAT??

I had NO IDEA that pay phones ever went above 25 cents. And I'm old enough to recall when they were 10 cents. Never knew 5 cent call.

I'm also old enough to recall when pay phones were common. And young enough that I missed the era when signs saying "Pay phone inside" helped people find a pay phone. Apparently, before the 1950's, certain businesses would have pay phones inside, and might choose to advertise that. At some point, stand alone pay phones outside of businesses became common, the pay phones of my youth, that you young'uns don't recall.

[IronLionZion]

367. It's 50 cents now

which is highway robbery. But I don't believe I've used a pay phone in the last 15 years. And we don't see many of them anymore as everyone has cell phones.

If I really want to feel old, I can remember when international calls had to be booked by appointment with the phone company. And if my grandparents weren't home when we called, it might be another few days or a week before we could try again.

[tonekat]

398. Pay Phones

I remember when an older kid showed me how to unscrew the mouthpiece on a pay phone and touch the two screws behind the microphone to ground the circuit on the hook to get a dial tone.

Then they started making them so you could not unscrew them.

[NeoGreen]

49. Printed Encyclopedias (NT)

[Hoyt]

126. Just think if we'd had the internet to research school projects.

[JDC]

51. TV Tube testers at the Grocery Store

[sarge43]

58. X-ray machines in the shoe stores.

Shoe repair shops

[terip64]

53. Unscrewing the cap and removing the transmitter on the phone...

so we could make prank calls without worrying that anyone could hear us laugh. Not nice, but fun! We also didn't have to worry about caller ID back then!

[RKP5637]

54. The Air Raid Sirens going off every Saturday at noon in our town for testing. n/t

[jarhead69]

275. Air Raid Siren

During a storm there was a huge flash of lighting, a clap of thunder that shook the house and the town air raid siren starting sounding. My mother thought it was the end of the world.

[El Viejo]

55. A younger person wouldn't understand

Your phone was on a party line.

[wcast]

56. Memorizing telephone numbers.

[mikeargo]

57. Pay phones

Getting up to change the channel on the TV
'Ditto' papers in school
Some Republicans weren't assholes
Noon whistle at the fire station
NHL was 99% Canadian (and only six teams)

[iamateacher]

62. Nuclear Drills at elementary school

Where you hid under your desk....

[randr]

149. First time I was sent home for "bad" behavior

During Nuke drill, standing with hands behind back against wall in basement cafeteria, I get smacked by teacher for talking. I respond by telling him that if I thought this was a real bomb alert my ass is heading home to be with my mother. I was dragged by my ear to the principles office to await my mothers appearance where my wish was granted.
My mother waited until we were in the car to thank me for thinking of her.

[bullimiami]

185. Yeah that was a good plan.

[tech3149]

64. Party line telephone service

You could tell by the ring code who was getting a phone call and back then phone calls were mostly important.

[tblue37]

66. S&H green stamos. Gas station attendants filling your car up and washing your windshield.

I could name a million of these things!

[mchill]

180. Licking those stamps for your mother (in our case Blue Chip) and putting in the books

[Louis1895]

67. Republican Senator Howard Baker wanting to get to the truth in the Watergate hearings

What? A Republican put country before party?

[zeusdogmom]

74. Tangee lipstick

It was orange in the tube but kind of pink on your lips

Creme deodorant which came in a small jar and you applied to your underarms with your fingers

Perhaps TMI but sanitary products wrapped in plain brown paper located behind the druggist's counter. Plus you had to ask for them. Very embarrassing to a young teen.

[sarge43]

79. Tangee is still available from Vermont Country Store.

VCS has a lot of the old timey stuff - trip down memory land.

[Alpeduez21]

80. Being a paperboy

Walking through a neighborhood everyday putting the paper in each door. Then on Saturdays collection the money and giving the little rec torn from the book. Cursing the post office everyday federal holiday because they got the day off and Saturdays and Sundays.

Not wearing seat belts or using car seats.

Drive in movies

Getting hit by teachers in school and everyone was OK with that. Catholic school, of course.

[pinboy3niner]

82. Five and dime stores

The five and dime usually had a lunch counter, and ours had a popcorn machine that filled the whole store with the aroma of popcorn.

Bank and gas station premiums like a free toaster for opening a bank account and a drinking glass with gas fillup.

I remember getting free goldfish from the bank next to the Woolworth 5 and 10. The bank sent out small pieces of card stock in mailings. Kids lined up at the bank to insert the cards into a machine that determined if you were a winner, and a winner got a goldfish in a small bowl.

Free dinner plates in boxes of Duz laundry detergent.

[GP6971]

119. Savings account passbooks

Everything entered in the passbook by hand.

[AJT]

83. Feeding my program into the computer.....on punch cards

[sarge43]

113. Dropping the tray of punch cards you were carrying

Two or three ran and hid somewhere or were damaged. Not getting out at quitting time today.

[AJT]

123. I remember still having a deck to IPL the mainframe as

an emergency stand alone in the 80s.

[randr]

155. Took a code writing class in the late 70's

Took an hour to get computer to print my name.

[mchill]

181. And waiting 24 hours (turnaround time) to find out you had one comma that made program not work

[dhol82]

195. Writing a program in physics class and typing it into a teletype machine.

At least that's what I seem to remember. It just seems so odd.

[sinkingfeeling]

84. Ordering items via the Sears catalog.

[GP6971]

117. And "Monkey Ward". nt

[malthaussen]

85. In the spirit of the OP...

... I think one of the more difficult things to understand today was how blase everyone was about personal risk. Smoking everywhere, no helmets or other armor for riding bicycles, skates, etc... to say nothing of pollution pre-EPA. One might reasonably question if we had no respect for human life.

-- Mal

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

336. And the sad reality of smoking is that everyone knew it was dangerous.

By the early 1950's, and much earlier for the most part. Cigarettes were commonly called coffin nails.

The truly sad thing is that all these years later, more than fifty years after the Surgeon General's Report (and if you're too young to recognize the reference, then LOOK IT UP) smokers are still in total denial about the proven dangers of smoking. Oh, and if you don't think smoking can affect your health, then go to a high school class reunion, say 35th reunion or higher. You will have NO trouble figuring out who the smokers and the nonsmokers are. And that's only for those who are still living.

[northoftheborder]

86. Huge back seat in car - could stand up

"Oleo" which was white but came with a yellow dye to color it to look like butter (food rationing)

Thin stationery for writing letters to send "Air Mail". All others went by truck. Calling long distance expensive - for emergencies only.

Record player with 78's, then vinyl

No air conditioning, ran barefoot all summer

Hanging clothes outside to dry.

[Mrs. Overall]

87. Eating pancakes at Sambo's completely oblivious to the racist stereotype.

[bullimiami]

186. The waiters at Morrisons Cafeteria. Speaking of racist stereotyping.

[aka-chmeee]

88. school handouts smelling of alcohol.....

from the Mimeograph.

[bullimiami]

187. Mimeograph fluid. MMMMM.

[dhol82]

196. I loved that smell

Probably toxic as hell.

[Dream Girl]

217. And they were often kind of damp

[Polly Hennessey]

89. I remember many things

Playing kick-the-can until dusk when mom would call us for dinner.
Riding bike without a helmet.
Skates that had to be tightened with a key.
Tomato Aspic - oh, dear.
Spending afternoons actually reading books for pleasure.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

337. Skates that had to be tightened with a key . . .

[Freddie]

90. Many of my classmates were the children of small business owners

The barbershop, an appliance store, a mom and pop grocery, a corner tavern, a shoe store. Mom didn't work and Dad could support a family with his business. Now all these businesses are gone and we have nothing but chains.

[Freedomofspeech]

95. Bigger is better killed our downtowns...

And communities in general.

[CanonRay]

91. Calling the Long Distance Operator to put through a call on Christmas

[mercuryblues]

93. The Jewel man

He came every week and sold anything from diapers to furniture and dishes. Butcher shops and bakeries were plentiful.

[CrispyQ]

96. I lived in the country & we had a party line.

Even my cousins who lived in the city didn't know what that was.

[dhol82]

197. I lived in Philadelphia and had a party line.

[littlemissmartypants]

99. Hip hugger, bell bottoms with platform sandals. eom

[GP6971]

100. Trucks delivering coal

to the house. Unloaded to the coal bin in the basement.

[Faux pas]

101. Burning trash in

the back yard incinerator in SoCal before there was smog.

[lapfog_1]

102. Writing computer programs on an IBM 026 card punch

while in high school (very progressive for that era).

[GWC58]

103. I told my 11 year old

when I was in elementary school we too had computers; an abacus! With a wondering look in his eyes he asked "what's that?" I told him to "look it up."

[dchill]

104. I remember changing points and plugs.

[CountAllVotes]

105. Drive ins

Used to drive in to a place to buy milk, orange juice, yogurt and other dairy products. The milk came in glass bottles at that time and we'd take a steel rack filled with empty bottles in and buy a new round of what was needed for the week. It was an early form of recycling but no one viewed it that way at the time (c. 1960).

I used to loved drive ins! Esp. the movie theaters! Those were fun fun fun!

[WePurrsevere]

116. I LOVE drive-ins. Amazingly enough there are 3 within a 2 hour drive from us.

It's like taking a trip back in time... the food, the mosquito coils, etc. Most I've been too even still play some of the same concession stand ads between movies too.

[Freddie]

106. Cigarette vending machines

There was one in the basement of the hospital (!) where I worked in the 80s and 90s, next to the soda and candy machines. They eventually removed it.

[gademocrat7]

108. Early morning delivery of milk in glass bottles.

[littlemissmartypants]

110. First grade required that

Each student bring a cigar box to school with scissors, crayons and pencils. To be kept in your desk at school. I threw a fit in protest because I wasn't allowed to bring it back home. I loved that cigar box and all it meant because there was No Kindergarten in our school system.

Mrs. Mink was my teacher's name and as far as I was concerned, she.was a super hero. But she wouldn't let me take that cigar box home.

[pnwmom]

343. Where did we get cigar boxes? I'm pretty sure I had one though no one smoked. n/t

[littlemissmartypants]

374. Drug store gave them away.

Before smokes were as regulated. They were in most stores, shops. Irrc.

[pnwmom]

375. Aha! Thanks for clearing up the mystery!

[Historic NY]

111. Rotary dial phone.

[FuzzyRabbit]

310. And the phones were all attached to the wall by a wire that carried the signal. No wireless phones.

[Historic NY]

369. I still have them...

they never need service, batteries, work if the power is out, can't lose them, and the phone company has to maintain the lines.

[WePurrsevere]

112. Some young people may know one or two of these, IDK...

Praying like crazy to find a phone booth when your car is giving you trouble

Snow locally deep enough that, while dangerous, you could tunnel and crawl around in it without piling it up first

10-4

The button on the floor to switch your headlights from high to low

Going door to door to collect bottles to get some spending cash

Waiting for the TV to warm up to watch a show

A moose who likes knock knock jokes and ping pong balls

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

338. It was not only the TVs that needed to warm up.

The cameras in the studios also needed warming up. If you've ever looked at the first reports of the JFK assassination, especially on CBS, the reason first reports are audio only, and only after a half our or so go to video, is because the television cameras needed a half hour to warm up. So while you can hear Walter Cronkite's voice at first, you don't finally see him until those cameras have had the time needed to warm up.

[WePurrsevere]

356. I hadn't thought of that but it makes sense...

since I'm going to guess that they too were powered by tubes similar to TV's and older radios? I remember going into certain stores with my dad and there was a big display and a 'table' where you could plug in and test the tubes used in the old electronics.




I was absolutely fascinated by it, heck all electronics, but my dad, a GE accountant, wasn't into it at all and back then and as a 'girl' I was discouraged by him to pursue that interest.

Now there's something else that was much more common back then, gender roles. Sadly it and equality issues in general are still way to prevalent, but it's much less than it was. Unfortunately those strides forward seem to have some of the more fragile white sexist, racist, etc male egos threatened enough that they're desperately trying to undo much of it but I still have hope that we'll prevail against them and those types will become, if not as 'extinct as the dodo bird', 'as rare as hen's teeth'.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

358. The short answer is yes.

[Lebam in LA]

114. Without revealing your age

Helms Bakery trucks
Milk man delivering milk, eggs and sometimes we even got chocolate milk (special occasions)
Jewel-T man, Fuller Brush man
Leaving the house early morning and not returning until just before dark, walking miles to get to the beach, Del Amo shopping center
No 405 freeway, Pacific Ocean Park
Chicken coops, outhouses
Party lines, rotary phones, Prefixes with 5 digit phone numbers. I still remember our # FR 55492
Getting all our vaccinations at the school cafeteria
Polio outbreaks, being purposely exposed to measles, mumps and chicken pox (better to get as a kid was the thinking back then)
Carrying jugs to the spring to bring home drinking water
Trick or Treating until mid-night without adults
Trick or Treating with adults and them getting shots of liquor as their treats

So many things have changed. Some good, some bad

[tonekat]

399. Halloween Adults

LOL, I remember in the 70s, a neighbor showing up in a sheet that said "Trick or Beer!"

He got his beer and came in for awhile.

[guillaumeb]

115. Turning on the car radio and waiting for the tubes to warm up. eom

[missingthebigdog]

118. Calling time and temperature

The recording said:

The time is 10:12 a.m. The tem per a ture is 49.

Usually sponsored by a local bank.

[CountAllVotes]

131. You'd dial POPCORN for the time!

Remember that by chance? I sure do!

[littlemissmartypants]

121. Hitchhiking. eom

[Hoyt]

125. Out Houses, party lines, test patterns, bomb drills, punch cards, george wallace (or maybe there is

modern version), segregated facilities and restaurants, no TV, and much more -- some good, some bad.

[Lefthacker]

127. Playing golf

With actual "wood" woods. And high school baseball with wood bats.

[JenniferJuniper]

128. The sadness of math tests tempered by

the joy of freshly mimeographed paper.

[Freethinker65]

129. Telephone party lines

[liberalmuse]

132. Smelling your test...

Which was freshly mimeographed and still warm and damp.

[JenniferJuniper]

144. That was mine too...

[DesertRat]

133. Waiting by the phone for a call

No answering machine, corded phone.

[MFM008]

134. These

Superballs. Hula hoops. All metal easy bake ovens. Staying out all day and not getting kidnapped or killed.
1st run Star Treks...

[randr]

135. The empty bottles you put in the milk box

indicated what you needed the milk man to deliver that day.
In my case the milk "wagon" was actually horse drawn.

[democrank]

136. Great post!

Kick

[dewsgirl]

137. Apparently, 13 yr olds think the idea of a pager

is a hilarious concept. My son got a big laugh out of the fact I had one.

[GP6971]

138. Good Humor ice cream trucks. nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

145. Trading cards.

Listening to kids' shows on the radio.
Watching Saturday morning TV shows when we finally got a TV - The Lone Ranger, Sky King, Andy's Gang, etc.
Being sent to the bakery with a quarter to buy a loaf of bread.
Playing outside in the summer until it got dark and we heard the curfew siren.
Having to watch The Lawrence Welk Show whenever Grandma visited.
Roller skates that clamped on to your shoes; you used a key to tighten the clamps.
Slide rules.
Sonic booms.

[GP6971]

148. Tires with tubes. nt

[LakeArenal]

150. Following the DDT sprayer mist with our bicycles...

[sarge43]

170. Breaking therometers and playing with the mercury.

Amazing any of us are still alive.

[lunasun]

210. I was fascinated with breaking them and playing with mercury! Thanks I forgot about that toxic joy

[SCantiGOP]

269. Not dangerous unless you breathe it in or swallow it

But it would turn your fingers black.

[tonekat]

400. I only broke one...

...in my mouth.

And, of course, got to play with the mercury after.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

229. Along the hazard line, in school we'd make projects by moulding asbestos clay powder. . . nt

[GP6971]

151. Local drug stores

where you had a account and free delivery

[CountAllVotes]

158. The local phamacy I use delivers for free

Still that is!

[LisaM]

156. Styrofoam boater hats for candidates.

Republicans and Democrats in side by side booths at the county fair getting along.

[randr]

157. Cobble stone streets

The sounds the trains made a night in switching yards. Steam engines with bells and whistles.

[C_U_L8R]

159. Rolodexes and Rotary Phones

Crazy Foam, Silly Putty, TV Dinners,
Black and White TV, Ubby-Dubby....

"why don't you go outside and play... just remember to come home for dinner"

[GregD]

191. I worked in an office with a corded switchboard

The operator (makes me think of Lily Tomlin's Laugh-In character Ernestine) answered the phone and literally had to plug cords in to transfer a call.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

350. I was a telephone operator when Lily Tomlin was doing her thing,

and we were utterly convinced she was one of us.

I saw many an operator who had that hairdo, who thrust her hand into her bosom just like that.

Some years later I learned she'd never been an operator, which was somewhat disconcerting.

[Laffy Kat]

160. No yard fences and everyone's dog ran loose and un-neutered!

In my neighborhood nobody's yard was off limits, except maybe that older childless couple. Someone else mentioned a free-range childhood and that was absolutely my experience. In the summer we played from the moment we awoke until it got dark enough for our mom's to call us in each night. I can remember my older sister taking me at least a half a mile from home to explore the spillway tunnels!

[gopiscrap]

162. watergate

[gopiscrap]

163. welcome to DU fun question

[ginnyinWI]

165. long division--with no calculator!

I can still take a paper and pencil and do long division. My 34 year old, Masters' Degreed, school psychologist daughter cannot, and was amazed to see me doing it!

I also took slide rule in middle school. Slide rule!! lol

[WhiteTara]

172. diagramming sentences

and putting saran wrap on the tv screen to help rocky and bullwinkle.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

339. Yes! I am just young enough not to have learned to use a slide rule,

but if need be I can still do some pretty impressive long division by hand.

[gopiscrap]

167. Saturday morning cartoons

[gopiscrap]

168. Not being able to buy alcohol til 2pm on a Sunday

[dhol82]

198. We used to have blue laws in Philly

You couldn't buy anything on Sunday.

[FuzzyRabbit]

312. Blue laws. We couldn't buy any kind of alcohol on Sunday, or anything else for that matter.

We couldn't buy anything except food from restaurants or the rare small grocery.

Big grocery stores, gas stations, department stores, hardware stores, pharmacies, dry cleaners, shopping malls, etc, were all closed. I remember looking for an open gas station in Seattle, summer 1973. We finally found one.

[gopiscrap]

169. Christmas programs on TV ONLY once a year

[unblock]

171. liberal republicans

not "republicans who are liberal by republican standards" but republicans who are actually liberals, more liberal than many democrats.

hard to imagine these days....

[SCantiGOP]

270. Hey, I grew up in SC

Most Democrats were racist tea party assholes, but Southerners still voted Dem like the unions and inner cities and Catholics did because we could never vote for the party of Lincoln.
I remember when the Viet Nam protests were in full bloom many of the heroes in the Senate who were trying to end the war were GOP. Many of them were from the West Coast.

[littlemissmartypants]

173. Glass oral thermometers with mercury. nt

[50 Shades Of Blue]

175. If you missed a TV show, you were just SOL until summer reruns, if they showed it then.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

340. The standard season was 36, maybe 39 weeks.

The rerun season was (I might have this wrong) 20 weeks. So not all episodes would show up in reruns. I well remember the frustration of hoping a specific episode would be rerun, and wasn't.

[littlemissmartypants]

176. Reading through this thread

I realize how much I have forgotten. Really great idea, this was! Thanks again, ButSeeYa. ♡

[Sedona]

177. Having a 20 foot phone cord

so you could have some privacy while you talk. Mine reached from the kitchen to the garage and the other way out to the patio

[Motley13]

178. shorthand & typing class in school

record stores, you & friends went into a booth, put on a 78, danced & left w/o buying anything

[SCantiGOP]

271. I took typing my Senior Year

I had an elective and knew that the class was almost all female, so that was the attraction.
Little did I know that it would possibly be the most useful class I ever took in High School.

[mchill]

179. Phone numbers that started with words like "Olympic" (for "OL" 65)

[bullimiami]

188. NAtional 1 6386. Call me.

Seriously why do I remember a phone # from 50 years ago?

[mchill]

190. Yep Olympic 8-1654 :)

[Motley13]

199. Logan ####, don't remember the numbers

[radical noodle]

213. Blackstone 3478

[pinboy3niner]

257. EMpire 4-2177

[FuzzyRabbit]

313. ADams 1059

[k8conant]

323. LOgan 2-1926

[rzemanfl]

240. GLadstone 5-6365. My phone number from age 5 to 12. n/t

[sagesnow]

291. Me too: SunSet 20281

will be forever etched in my brain.

[WheelWalker]

182. Cleaning chalkboard erasers on the big vacuum in the janitors' closet at school. A reward

if you got out of class to do it... a punishment if you had to stay after school to do it.

[Mrs. Overall]

189. Glass clacker balls (also called knockers) on a long string.

Clacking them together until they shatter everywhere!

I did enjoy my purple clackers on a long white string. Mine never did shatter--luckily.

[GregD]

193. punch cards and diskettes

I'm a programmer, and when I started this stuff, that's what all of our data was recorded upon

[Binkie The Clown]

319. When I started with computers we pluged wires into a board to program them.

This machine was the first one I worked on.

And this is what a "program" looked like:



Later we moved up to AUTOCODER on the 1400 series and finally COBOL on the S/360

[Amaryllis]

201. Typing term papers on a typewriter and not being able to edit! Wondering how much white out i could

use before i had to retype the whole darn page.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

344. Oh! Oh! I used to type papers for other students

for extra money.

I threw in various dumb jokes along the way. And was never caught by anyone, not the kids I typed for and definitely not the teachers. Although, come to think of it, the teachers knew I was the one doing the typing and probably gave us all a pass.

[Lint Head]

202. Whenever I'm watching the news I recognize

names such as Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Henry Cabot Lodge and others that would be obscure to a younger person watching or listening to the news. My son is in his twenties and very interested in what's going on today. But when names like that are mentioned and certain things that I experienced, maybe during the JFK assassination or Watergate or McCarthyism, or someone are a reporter is trying to make a point using those references I know he doesn't understand the totality of the discussion. He will ask me what they mean sometimes though he is very smart.

[wcmagumba]

203. Family owned mom and pop convenience stores...

in my small town we had one of these across the street in a residential neighborhood. It seems like there was one every few blocks. The lady and her family lived in the back of the store near us, it had the big curved glass counters with candy and cigs, groceries with unsure dates on them, pop in glass bottles. I used to ride my bike between these while delivering Grit newspapers...(that's another one that is gone).

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

345. When I was very poor, I'd turn in a silver dollar to a locally owned

local convenience store and redeem it a week later. They made a difference in my life back then.

[GentryDixon]

205. Going to the library

to use the Encyclopedia Britannica for research.

I loved going there, which led me to my love of reading. Years ago I belonged to the Literary Guild for my books, but with the advent of BN and other such stores I got away from ordering from them.

I am an old gal, and not ashamed to admit it. The alternative is my darling departed sister.

[oldtime dfl_er]

206. Space Food Sticks

and Fireball XL-5

[lapucelle]

232. And Tang

[Ron Obvious]

256. Found some at Costco a few weeks ago.

It's still great for camping, etc.

Tastes pretty much how I remember.

[Va Lefty]

207. The phrase "Oh, Rochester!?"

[lunasun]

215. Yes boss?

Eddie Anderson his voice got damaged as a kid hawking out loud selling newspapers That's how he happened to sound that way

Benny gave him some of the better joke lines and you can stay at his mansion
https://www.bedandbreakfast.com/ca-los-angeles-therochestermansion.html#img-8
Remember Benny's safe ? I think it was in the basement with alligators? Or down a tunnel?

[Va Lefty]

219. That's awesome! Thanks for the info

[sarge43]

236. "Your money or your life ....

Jack, "Wwweelllllll........"

Followed by the live audience laughing for at least minutes

Basement as memory serves, accompanied by hilarious sound effects, creaking doors, echoes, chains

[Basic LA]

209. Cultural References are now more difficult.

I mentioned the old novel & movie "Sophie's Choice" to a group of professional people in their 30's and was met with blank stares. Trying to clarify, I said, you know, the movie with Meryl Streep. No one had heard of her.

[Fresh_Start]

211. moving the ears on the TV antenna

to try to pick up a 4th channel

[longship]

214. "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!"

Although, I go back to Smilin' Ed McConnell days. When he died, Andy Devine took over the franchise.

They often featured Ramar of the Jungle adventures. But nobody wanted to see those. It was all about Froggy.

Hi-ya kiddies! Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya! Pfftpfftpfftp!

[lapucelle]

233. Officer Joe Bolton and Captain Jack McCarthy hosting cartoons

on the local channel, and Wonderama with Sonny Fox.

[radical noodle]

216. Without revealing your age...

Playing jacks on the front porch

Going "visiting" on Sunday afternoons

#45s on a portable record player and 78s on a console record player/radio.

The First Family record album (which I still possess)

Crinolines and always trying to outdo other girls with the most elaborate and most layers

Wrapping angora yarn around your boyfriend's ring

"I like Ike"

Sitting up front by the school bus driver and pulling the lever to make the stop sign stick out.

Mimeo machines at school

Standing outside with my Grandmother trying to see sputnik

[Doreen]

218. Rotary dial phones.

black and white TV.
8 tracks.
Cassette tapes.
Beta vs VHS.
Penny candy that was actually a penny.

[MrPurple]

247. Rotary phones why 212, 213 & 312 are NY, LA, Chicago area codes

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

355. I'm a former long distance operator.

And I've paid attention to area codes in my normal life.
So without going into a lot of detail, area codes make a difference.

[lunasun]

220. We had a candy store and trick store in our hood. One just sold candy . The other gags and tricks

only.
I don't know how they would stay in business now in little neighborhood storefronts like back then just selling single selections like that to (primarily ) kids

But they kept me in candy cigarettes and fizz tabs for years along with fake vomit , itching powder and a tin that said salted peanuts which no one should open if they didnt want a surprise

[DeeDeeNY]

221. Going to a movie at any time, not when it started

You could stay all day with one admission ticket. So if you got there in the middle, you just stayed to see the rest of the movie and then the beginning through the middle to where you came in. Or even longer if you wanted. There were also lots of double features, and some movie theatres gave out dish sets although I don't remember why.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

347. Yes. On Saturdays we'd be dropped off at the local theater

and we stay inside for hours, watching the movies, the previews, the cartoons, the newsreels. We'd watch a movie until we got to the point where we'd arrived, stay a few more minutes and then leave. I have no idea how we knew when to go outside to be picked up, because none of us had a watch. But it was wonderful.

[Amaryllis]

222. American Bandstand. Howdy Doody. Lassie. When Star Trek first aired. Purple ditto sheets.

[doc03]

224. A three scoop ice cream cone for 15 cents. Chilly Billey Cardill and

Chiller Theater, Sunday afternoon studio wrestling, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, David Garaway and J Fred Muggs, Isaly's chip chopped ham and Scyscraper
Ice Cream Cones.Having bad air allerts almost every day in the summer.They had a mine bullitin board on the radio and it took 5 to 10 minutes to list all the mines
that were working or not.

[doc03]

225. My parents got dressed up to go shopping all the men wore a tie and hat nt

[Freddie]

245. Dressing up for church

Dad and my brother wore a suit and tie, Mom and I our best dresses (never pants). I think when most women started working and had to "dress up" all week was when church started getting more casual.

[SCantiGOP]

272. Suits were mandatory for church

but we would laugh at pictures from the 1940s of men at baseball games in the summer wearing coats and ties.

[Warpy]

226. Renting a rotary dial phone from the phone company

and being on a party line.

Hint: there was no celebration to those lines, they were dominated by one or two gabby people who never seemed to hang up to eat or sleep, meaning everybody else had to scream "EMERGENCY!" at them to make a 2 minute call.

[MrPurple]

228. I think it was when Carter was President

that Ma Bell's monopoly on renting phones to everyone finally got broken up.

[MrPurple]

227. I remember when you wanted to change tv stations, you had to get up and do it

Those were rough times, young'uns.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

230. 45 rpm singles. Some of them get vinyl, but 45s not so much.

[lapucelle]

235. Winding a wristwatch...

heading home when the streetlights went on...

going to the grocery store with a quarter and a note from your mom so you could buy her smokes...

the Star Spangled Banner when TV stations signed off for the night...

[napi21]

243. I remember...........

Milk delivered in the winter would freeze and expand the cream out of the top of the bottle.

Everyone I knew declared automatic transmissions bad, unreliable, and for drivers who were too lazy to use their left foot!

A job that was an upgrade from a regular typist-a keypuncher-the KP Dept. at the place I got my first job had 50+ full time.

Gas was .25/gal. High Test was .27/gal

Having to shovel coal to fed the furnace every so many hours, and bank it off at night so it would last till morning.

Being able to drive by yourself as soon as you passed your drivers test-no Cinderella licences then either.

Almost everybody did their own work to fix their car & keep it running.

Most moms didn't work outside the home.

One car per household until your kids got old enough to get their own.

My weekly grocery bill was $10.

Rent on our first apartment was $75/mo.

Electric bill was $5.00/mo.

[littlemissmartypants]

244. Sex Ed.

“YOU’RE A YOUNG LADY NOW”: MENSTRUAL EDUCATION THROUGH ADVERTISING https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/blog/youre-young-lady-now

And...

[DeeDeeNY]

250. Shoe salesman ex-raying my feet

An accepted part of buying shoes for kids!

[heaven05]

251. ENGLISH CLASS AND SPELLING

[mainstreetonce]

252. Poodle skirts

And crinolines.

[OneBlueDotBama]

253. Sleeping

on the shelf below the rear window, driving back from the cottage on Sunday night.

[Glamrock]

254. Buying cigarettes for my dad at 8 years old.

[Still Blue in PDX]

255. TV rabbit ears. And putting aluminum foil on same.

[Vanessa Rose]

258. Long distance calls

I remember only making long distance calls if there was an emergency, otherwise we wrote letters.

[pnwmom]

342. Calling collect. n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

357. Yes!

I recently read a novel in which people in the 1950's somewhat casually called each other long distance, including from England to the U.S. or vice versa. It was obvious that the novel was written by someone who'd come of age a great deal later than the time frame of the events of the novel. I'm a half decade or so younger than the characters of the novel, and I know quite clearly that we simply didn't make long distance or (as happens in the novel) overseas phone calls casually. Those kinds of calls were reserved for genuinely major events. Sigh. It's more than obvious the novel was written by someone of a very different generation, used to the conventions of our era.

[Totally Tunsie]

420. Waiting for Sunday to call b/c the rates went down.

[Mendocino]

259. Five cent cherry cokes at the Rexall drug store

paper routes

Bubs Daddy, a 10 inch cylinder of gum about as big around as a little finger

The 20th Century With Walter Cronkite

Jonny Quest

WW1 vets were common

driving from Ohio to Florida for spring vacation, no interstates

Sorry to interrupt, this is a special bulletin from CBS news

the smell of ditto copies

Munsters vs The Addams Family

[duncang]

262. Going down to the 7-11

With a tv tube to check in their tester and buy a replacement.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

265. The first year "Peter Pan" was broadcast on TV with Mary Martin as Peter Pan,

there was one and only one family in our housing complex with a TV. Everyone was invited, or maybe we all simply showed up. I recall standing outside their place, watching the show through the window, since the living room was completely full of people. We wouldn't get a TV for two more years. While TVs rather quickly became common, there was a time when having one was a rare privilege.

Milk being delivered and put in the milk box outside our apartment.

The Mickey Mouse Club. My favorite Mousketeer was Doreen.

Skates that you attached to your shoes, and were sized using a key.

I still miss card catalogs.

[SCantiGOP]

273. 30 cents

In the late 60s, that was the set price for a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes.
I remember putting a quarter of gas in the car once to make sure I got home that day. Smart ass gas station attendant, after he had pumped the gas, gave me a free map of the State and told me to enjoy my ride.

[k8conant]

324. I bought Marlboros in 1967 for about $2.00 a carton in Michigan

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

276. Filmstrips in junior high.

[k8conant]

325. I was on the AV team in elementary school:

we set up the film strips and movie projectors for the teachers that couldn't figure out that "high-tech" stuff.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

349. lol, me too!! Not until junior high though... guess I was a "late bloomer." (haha)

[AJT]

278. Waiting for the Sears Christmas catalog to come in the mail.

Then looking through it at all the great toys and, for whatever reason, the parent/children Christmas morning matching pajamas.

[secondwind]

280. Playing in a Riverside Drive Park, New York, , circa 1950

[NBachers]

281. The Alexander Botts series in the Saturday Evening Post (A Caterpillar Tractor from Peoria guy.)

"Start fresh, with L&M
Stay fresh, with L&M
Unlock a whole new world
Of- fresh smoking pleasure.
Start fresh, stay fresh, with L&M."

[Enoki33]

283. Having to adjust twin carburetors on a Austin Healey 3000.

[MFM008]

284. Watching Romper Room

Watching the moon landing live.
Not being allowed to use the phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen.
Playing with Super-balls.
making creepy crawlers..
Looking up words in a dictionary.
Vaccinations in the school gym.
so so many things.

[BigMin28]

285. Paper dolls

S & H Green stamps, going to Hancock fabrics and picking out patterns and fabric for the clothes my Mom made for me. Also, the Jewel T man stopping by our house.

[donco]

286. car hops.

[defacto7]

287. Turning the car's brights off and on

with your left foot using a button on the floor.

[doc03]

289. The smell of ditto ink on tests in school nt

[NotASurfer]

290. Cap guns and candy cigarettes

of course Mom said that when she was in school, the day before hunting season started, students old enough to be out at dawn the next morning would check their deer rifles in the office, so they could head out right after school.

[doc03]

293. Going to a Saturday double feature buying popcorn and Good and Plentys

all for 50 cents. Then going to Isaly's for a Scyscraper cone for 15 cents.

[doc03]

295. A Republican president that wasn't batshit crazy nt

[MLAA]

297. Drive in theater. Jiffy pop popcorn and fizzies!

Last edited Mon Sep 11, 2017, 12:07 AM - Edit history (1)

[SummerSnow]

298. 1. Penmanship. They never heard of it

2. Write it in cursive. They never heard of that either



* this thread is the best

[onecaliberal]

299. Penny candy.

[MLAA]

301. Romper Room....and I see Suzy and Jimmy....

[Warpy]

309. My mother would never allow me to watch that

She said Miss Whosis made her want to throw up in the sink.

[MLAA]

311. LOL! Unfortunately my mom had a little stronger stomach. 😀

Just googled it...her name was 'Miss Nancy' Claster.

[Funtatlaguy]

302. The dirtiest line in television

Ward, you were a little too rough on the Beaver last night.

[Heartstrings]

303. Alaska Pops!

The best Popsicles, bought at our neighborhood corner store. The store owner was a hoot and would always add the flavor of your choice as addition to the 10 for 10 cent bag I got.

I feel fortunate to have lived in that era....

[mjvpi]

304. Seeing the Greatful Dead walll of sound tour.

[Willie Pep]

305. Pay phones.

VHS

Video rental stores

Trying to watch premium cable channels (yes, including the naughty ones) through scrambled pictures.

1-900 numbers, again including the naughty ones. Why do I remember these so vividly? LOL.

EDIT: The card catalog at the library too.

[Warpy]

307. Being fascinated with the drip pan under the ice box

and how big the blocks of ice were when they were delivered every other day.

Getting bread and milk delivered to separate boxes on the front porch. Seeing the milk bottle lids popped off and sitting on a column of frozen cream on super cold days.

Feeding the rag man's horse a piece of carrot.

Watching my parents do hobbies while radio shows played (we got the first TV on the block when I was four).

Loving the old Dumont Netowrk's animation of a big ass plane circling an itty bitty earth when they signed on.

Getting free miniature loaves of bread when supermarkets would have a grand opening (now they just get sold out and put new signs up).

And mostly, being trusted to play outside all over the neighborhood, as long as I came home before it got dark. Walking to school by myself and to the park by myself at the age of seven and feeling very grownup when I did it.

[applegrove]

308. The excitement leading up to the Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday

Night.

[procon]

314. Party lines, doilies, transistor radios, and my fave, Go-Go Boots. nt

[Binkie The Clown]

315. I remember taking tubes out of the TV down to the grocery store

to check them out in the tube tester to see which one was bad. Every grocery store had a tube tester and a selection of the most popular vacuum tubes like the 6AU6, the 12AX7, and the ubiquitous 5U4, which was usually the culprit when everything went out including picture and sound.

[FuzzyRabbit]

316. Howdy Doody

Hopalong Cassidy
Sky King
Roy Rogers
Mickey Mouse Club

and later:
Perry Mason
Highway Patrol
M-Squad
Dragnet

[Binkie The Clown]

321. Every time Kate Smith started singing "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain" I knew that

Howdy Doody was coming next because Kate was signing off.

Also, later:

My Little Margie
Our Miss Brooks
Captain Video
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (I had such a crush on Vena Ray)
Mickey Mouse Club (I had such a crush on ... no, not Annette, but Doreen)

[chillfactor]

317. black and white TV....

with static showing on the screen.....the first telecasts of the Jackie Gleason Show.....

[k8conant]

322. Penny candy...

Nickel candy bars
7¢ Fudgsicles and ice cream cones (2 scoops for 13¢)
Pepsi at 30¢ a 6-pack
My father complaining that hot dogs were now a dime apiece instead of a nickel.
Gerald McBoingBoing on TV
Mickey Mouse Club
"Nap"time on mats in kindergarten (hanging our coats in the cloakroom)
Wearing leggings in the winter over our dresses to go to school
Being amazed at stereo vs monaural record players.
Smoking leftover cigarette butts after meetings at our house when I was 10
Riding my bike to the library because I missed the bookmobile stop on Monday nights.
Gas for 19.9¢ a gallon
Waiting until a baby was born to find out if it was a boy or girl
Using a Friden calculator
Using mathematical tables for interpolation and extrapolation
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and 1¢ milk for lunch in high school
Rolling our skirts' waistbands in junior high
Movies in the auditorium during lunch
Driving from Michigan to Tennessee with 6 of us in the car (and my having to have my feet on top of the ice chest the whole time) took 17 hours on US-25 or US-27
Counting posts along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to pass the time, or playing the alphabet game while riding, or writing down all the states for which we saw license plates.
Playing ping-pong.
Setting up a scary hallway with the entrance covered with a blanket.
Smelling fresh Ditto copies in school.
Camp Fire Law

Worship God.
Seek beauty;
Give service, &
Knowledge pursue.
Be trustworthy ever, in all that you do.
Hold fast onto health,
And your work glorify,
And you will be happy, in the law of Camp Fire.


Soupy Sales touting "Sealtest--the best milk in all of DEE-troit" (and he was the only one who dared to pronounce De-TROIT with (as my father would say) the ac-CENT on the wrong syl-LAB-le)

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

353. Woah! best post so far.

[Petrushka]

326. Let's Pretend---a Saturday morning radio show for young children

Radio shows with plenty of sound effects
to spur the imagination:

Gang Busters
The Lone Ranger
The Shadow Knows
Inner Sanctum

[sprinkleeninow]

335. Ringer type washing machines?

[pnwmom]

341. Going door to door to sell Girl Scout Cookies. n/t

[get the red out]

351. 8 track tapes

Playing in my Papaw's giant Olds 98.

[chelsea0011]

352. Encyclopedia Britannica

[k8conant]

372. We had World Book Encyclopedia

We have Britannica now (from 1992 or so)

[chelsea0011]

373. All the copies or are you missing any? We had one of them missing copies.

Where did they go?

[pansypoo53219]

354. jeez, i have been doing estate sales for years. all the old shit i have seen. CRANK phone!

treadle dentil drill. extremely old multi piece radio. TV TUBES! no telegraph yet. hell, just my potato smooshers are very old school. i love time travel.

[Butterflylady]

360. A rotary phone.

[pangaia]

361. An actual ICE BOX. with ice in it...

[llmart]

383. Defrosting a freezer...

by placing bowls of bowling water in it and then chipping away at the ice.

[pangaia]

385. Oh god, yes...

milk delivered in glass bottles..
playing after school in the woods until dark
black and pink
walk a mile and a half to school
1950 ford- our first car
1954 ford- second car

[pangaia]

363. WOLLENSACK reel to reel..

Playing in the 'woods' every day after school...

Black and pink the 'in' colors

'56 Chevy Belair

Ration stamps right at the end of WW II ( my mom got them, but took me with her to get extra)

Crank telephone (I think I remember that) and getting the operator

WALKING a mile and a half to get to school.

[nocoincidences]

366. Saturday morning tv shows

like Sheena Queen of the Jungle and Hopalong Cassidy!

That strange milky smell in the Elementary School Cafeteria. I am convinced that odor turned me off on milk for life.

[riverbendviewgal]

368. I remember all of what you all remember

We had a hill next to our house, which in winters we woild sled on, in spring we flew our kites, in summer we would sit and count the stars until we lost track, in Fall we took big cardboard boxes and slid down the hill.

Milk man and Bond bread man came to the house. On Thursdays the one armed veteran drove his fish truck slowly down the streets for housewives to buy their fish for Fridays supper.
Telephone party lines, I got the transistor radio. 45 rpm records.
S & H stamps and the family spending a day at the kitchen table putting the stamps in the books.

Kids went to weddings that didn't cost thousands of dollars.

Live local bands at high school dances.

Mr. WIZARD Saturday TV show.
Rocky Jones space show
Wink Dink
American Bandstand
Air raid drills where we hid under our desks.
Elementary classes with 2 or 3 rooms for each grade. We were baby boomers.

[Snackshack]

377. Let's see...

Free Range childhood.

Rotary Phone.

Yellow Front.

Points & Condenser.

Lawn Darts...

[yesphan]

378. Horny toads

and these things....

[sdfernando]

379. How about 3 on the column?

and a bit later....using and acoustic coupler to access dial-up BBS.

[stonecutter357]

380. Atari 2600 .

[dewsgirl]

381. Explaining to my 14 yr old what a pager was and the codes we would use

He seems to think I'm talking about a calculator that makes calls????

[llmart]

384. For the women in the group...

Petti pants
Dr. Ben Casey blouses
Angora or mohair sweaters
Stretch pants with the strap under the foot
Girdles and nylons with seams
Poodle skirts
Gym suits
Ironing your hair
Spit curls
Orange juice can hair rollers
Penny loafers
Saddle shoes

[RandomAccess]

387. Howdy Doody and Mousketeers

You can find some of the episodes on YouTube (which surely has to be the greatest repository of cultural history ever imagined).

[RandomAccess]

388. CARBON PAPER !!!!!! And Mimeograph machines

To this day *I* can't figure out how we lived without photocopy machines.

[RandomAccess]

389. Baseball Cards in bubble gum

[SCantiGOP]

391. 13 years old:

Wondering if I would have to wait until my wedding night to lose my virginity (thank you, sexual revolution of the 60s!)

[Thomas Hurt]

401. There was such a thing as a tv repairman who actually came to your house.

[wasupaloopa]

402. Pushing the red dot on oleo margarine to spread the coloring through the package.

[wasupaloopa]

403. Telephone party lines

Duck and cover
Civil defense
Air raid drills

[redstateblues]

406. Getting a clock radio with green stamps

[wryter2000]

407. Juke boxes

Although I went to a vintage diner recently and saw one. I’d forgotten about them.

[pbmus]

408. Gallon of gas 25 cents, when getting filled windows washed...

Absolutely no such thing as the word service in our vocabulary anymore..

[lostnfound]

409. Drive-in movie theatres. Nt

[pansypoo53219]

410. gas & markers used to smell good. CHRISTMAS TUNES WERE PLAYED ON CHRISMAST EVE & CHRISTMAS.

i know how a wood stove works. things used to be made out of cast iron.

[wnylib]

415. Doctor making house call when my sister

had scarlett fever, health dept putting quarantine sign in our front window.

Penny candy and 2 for a penny candy in wooden frame case with glass windows at corner mom and pop store.

Getting written script from doctor to take urine sample to hospital lab for pregnancy test, then waiting several hours for results.

American Bandstand setting trends in music and hair styles (for girls).

Bouffant hair styles, "bee hive" hair that was "teased" (back combed) and piled high on top of the head, then sprayed with lacquer hair spray.

Wool cardigans and pullover sweaters with pleated, plaid wool skirts. Wool wrap around skirts in tartan plaids with large kilt pins that resembled giant safety pins.

Weaving pot holders at summer playground activities and selling them for spending money to neighbors who did not really need or want them but rewarded our efforts.

Playing until hide and seek until dusk in summer when parents called us home. Then sitting on the porch with cold soda or Kool Aid drinks until the house was cool enough inside to sleep.

Radios, automatic transmissions being extras on new car purchases.

Very long cars with big fins that could not fit into some old garages.

[Talitha]

416. Horse-drawn junk carts in the alley.

I grew up in Chicago and once in a while as I was playing in the back yard, I'd hear a distant "Rags, old iron! Rags, old iron!" accompanied by the rhythmic clip-clop of a Horse's hooves.

It was the junk man. I couldn't understand what he was yelling though, and misunderstood it to be Rags-o-line. So I'd run inside and tell Dad that Mr. Ragsoline was coming.

Mom let me feed the Horse a carrot while Dad got his junk out of the garage and loaded it onto the wagon. I don't know if Mr. Ragsoline paid Dad any money or not, though... I was too busy feeding and petting the Horse.

[Skittles]

418. not being able to talk to my grandparents for years at a time

military family, often overseas, trans-Atlantic phone calls were ridiculously expensive

[Sparkly]

419. I teach college students, so there are MANY things...

Some I realize -- I know there are media they won't understand (LPs, tape, etc.) But the card catalog is a great example. They have NO idea what it is like to do original research, vs. clicking on a link and paraphrasing. It is challenging for teachers, and has me questioning whether and why they need to retain information vs. processes, concepts, relationships -- a different paradigm.

[Totally Tunsie]

421. Wearing a sugar cube corsage for Sweet 16.

Just Googled them, and apparently they're still around as a "southern tradition", which doesn't explain why I had one when living in CT.

[phylny]

422. Opening the vent window if you were lucky enough to sit in the front seat of the car

or later, when you could drive. For some reason, my family called it the "butterfly window."

[634-5789]

423. I remember...

Prell shampoo. That pearl dropped in the bottle showed just how luxurious it was. Is Prell a thing anymore? And...it wasn't the holidays until I saw that team of Clydesdales for Budweiser. Good times!

[Mersky]

425. Broke a bone by dropping the yellow pages on my foot

It was the corner of the M-Z that chipped a bone in the top of my foot. I actually have a bone spur from this that acts up and causes me trouble some days.

[TrumpVirus]

426. It was always a HUGE deal when the new Sears catalog arrived!

We would fight over it and remember my mom would put a timer clock set for 30 minutes, when we would have to hand it over to a sibling for their 30 minute turn...

[Auggie]

427. Free stuff from gas stations (other than Green Stamps)

Our local Shell station gave out tumblers and highball glasses with the Cleveland Browns logo on them. Sinclair once gave out large blow-up dinosaurs. Think it was minimum 10 gallons.

Looked like these:

[Joinfortmill]

433. Pressing sheets on a clothes mangle wringer.

Some photos, although none like the one my folks had:
https://www.etsy.com/market/mangle_wringer

[El Supremo]

434. These phone plugs:

[ShazzieB]

436. I don't remember those at all.

What I do remember is phones being hardwired straight into the house/building. No changing or rearranging without the phone company sending someone out to do it.

If you needed to replace a phone or change to a different type of phone, you had to get it from your local phone company, and someone had to come out and install it.

If you lived in a small town, all the latest styles weren't necessarily available, and you had to setle for whatever they had.

No matter what kind of of phone you got, it remained the property of the phone company.

When it became possible to buy a phone in a store, you couldn't do it without first having a plug-in wall jack installed, unless you lived in a place that was new enough to have them already installed. (Which we didn't.)

I was so happy when we finally moved to a newer place and could buy a phone of our choice, bring it home, and plug it in.

[Bones1]

435. Anxiously Waiting

For lunchtime in HS to go to our designated smoking area, with ashtrays, outside, covered from the rain, to smoke cigarettes with my friends. But no smoking in the bathrooms !

[RobinA]

442. As A Freshman

in college, I was super happy to be assigned to the dorm that had phones in every room.

[Voice79]

443. 3.2 Beer

I live in Ohio. When I was 18, we had 3.2 beer. Ohio voted and approved a law requiring age 19 for everyone for purchasing liquor and beer. Ronnie Regan threatened state’s federal highway funds if they did not raise the drinking age to 21. How did he get away with this? Can you imagine this happening today?

[Sparkly]

445. There's got to be a party game in here somewhere...