Do you Remember when:
Women would get dressed up to go shopping?
A popular bicycle accessory was a banana seat?
You used a rotary phone?
Your phone hung on the wall and had an extremely long cord (always tangled)?
Your milk, eggs, and other dairy products were delivered by a milkman?
The Fuller Brush man, the bread man, and the encyclopedia salesmen were three of the many door-to-door salesmen that would visit your home?
You met your friends on the corner in the evening to have ice cream from an ice cream truck?
You made coffee in a percolator?
You got under your desk for atom bomb drills at school?
School papers were copied by mimeograph with the acidic-smelling purple ink?
You called a refrigerator an ice box?
There used to be no swearing on TV?
You found phone numbers in a phone book or dialed information?
You called a number to get the correct time?
Calling the operator to place a long-distance call?
Phone numbers began with a word?
You collected S & H Green Stamps for purchasing household items?
Nurses dressed in white?
You had to adjust the TV antennas to get a good signal?
Wrapping the TV antenna in aluminum foil to get a better signal?
The television was black and white and signed off at midnight?
Riding your bike without a helmet and in a car without a seatbelt?
Playing outside all day and only coming in when the street lights came on?
Walking to your neighborhood school?
Using roller skates that had a key?
Car hops serving food to your car, sometimes on roller skates?
Nineteen cent a gallon gas, 25 cent movies, and 10 cent popcorns?
Ironing almost all your clothes?
Wringer washers and hanging your wash on a clothesline?
Every neighborhood had a corner store with essentials and penny candy?
Eating out was a special treat that only happened rarely and on special occasions?
Soda fountains in drug stores?
At home permanent waves and dye jobs?
Saddle shoes and penny loafers?
Hurrying home from school to watch American Bandstand with Dick Clark?
Using reference materials such as the encyclopedia, atlas, and dictionary?
Playing tether-ball and riding the merry-go-round and tetter-totter at recess?
Wearing gym uniforms and showering after PE?
The Easy Bake Oven if you were a girl and G.I. Joe action figures if you were a boy?
Watching for Burma Shave signs on road-trip vacations?
Having to re-type pages over and over until you got it right?
The thrill when you could use white-out tape and later white-out liquid to correct mistakes?
Shopping the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs?
Smoking on airplanes, in restaurants, literally almost anywhere?
You were fed a meal on your airplane flight?
Eating TV dinners while watching a family-favorite program?
Reading Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post?
Drinking orange-flavored Tang, made popular on John Glenn??s space flight?
"Women would get dressed up to go shopping?"
It wasn't just the womenfolk.?ÿ It was everyone accompanying her.?ÿ I can remember being at a friend's house one time when his mother decided they needed a significant shopping trip (nearly 20 miles away).?ÿ I was in my typical play clothes, but that was not adequate.?ÿ I ended up putting on some of my buddy's go-to-town clothes so that I could go along.?ÿ There was some serious scrubbing required, also, to make us presentable.
"Having to re-type pages over and over until you got it right?"
In 1987 my employer refused to have even simple computer or word processors used by the clerical staff.?ÿ All typing was done by clerks on typewriters based on the handwritten notes from the creator of the document.?ÿ Official documents had five carbon copies.?ÿ Any error required fixing all six paper sheets.?ÿ Too many corrections and the clerk took out the papers and started over with fresh sheets of paper.?ÿ That was insane.?ÿ Our department had a clerk who couldn't spell her own name correctly twice in a row.
"Nineteen cent a gallon gas, 25 cent movies, and 10 cent popcorns?"
You bet.?ÿ If you were under 12 years old the ticket only cost a dime.
Your milk, eggs, and other dairy products were delivered by a milkman?
Since I was raised on a dairy farm we got ours FRESH.?ÿ Lots of chickens and hogs around so our bacon and eggs were fresh too.
You used a rotary phone?
And had a "Party Line".?ÿ Depending on the ring, "two long and one short or some such", which house the call was for.?ÿ We had an old lady on our party line that listened in on every call, no matter who the call was for.
Andy
I remember after the late news and weather report, they would play the national anthem and then sign off with the target/logo thing a ma jig
I still make my coffee in a percolator.?ÿ I remember trying to help my great grandfather haul a block of ice into the kitchen so he could put it in the icebox and keep the milk, eggs, and butter cool.
To this day, my favorite donut is a FRESH lemon filled. We got them from the Helms bakery truck.
I remember the first Krispy Kream donut joint built in Daytona Beach. Lemon filled and glazed outside were to die for. ?????ÿ
How many of you remember the gas pumps where the pump was human??ÿ Having to pump the gas into the top of the graduated top of the pump, then it was all gravity getting it into the tank.?ÿ?ÿ
My first boss out of college had grown up a poor kid in Tippo, Mississippi, being raised by his aunt and uncle.?ÿ He was born in 1921.?ÿ He told us that somehow he managed to acquire an ancient pair of roller skates,?ÿ The only place to use them was at the little gas station in that Tallahatchie County metropolis.?ÿ The station had a small rectangle of concrete adjacent to the two pumps.?ÿ He would carry his skates to the station, put them on, do his best to stay out of the way until he was tired or run off, take off the skates and walk home.
"Phone numbers began with a word?"
We had to drive at least 10 miles to get to a town that was the center for such phone numbers.?ÿ We were on a crank telephone.?ÿ That town used Circle 4, which converted to 244.?ÿ My grandmother lived where Garfield 1 later converted to 421.?ÿ When dial phone service came to our rural area in late 1960 we did not have a word as part of our prefix as that practice was being phased out.?ÿ However, it made no real difference to us as we only had to dial the last four numbers to call anyone within our exchange.?ÿ All of the numbers began with 3, as in 3XXX.?ÿ Thus, you really only needed to know the last three numbers.?ÿ Those on a specific party line had somewhat similar numbers, as in 3862, 3865, 3866, 3867, 3868 and 3869.
"Smoking on airplanes, in restaurants, literally almost anywhere?"
Anywhere and everywhere, unless smokeless tobacco was involved.?ÿ OMG, the disgusting spit cans that were kept conveniently in people's living rooms.?ÿ Not fancy spittoons.?ÿ Rusty old gallon?ÿ cans.?ÿ A common site was a pickup truck with spit stains down the outside of the doors.
One thing I noticed as a youngster growing up with many WWII and Korea veterans in the area was that a very high percentage of them smoked while those of a similar age who did not serve in the military either did not smoke or chewed a bit instead.
OMG, the disgusting spit cans that were kept conveniently in people's living rooms.?ÿ
In my world "spit cans" were beer cans, beer bottles, or the drivers side window. Oh my! ?????ÿ
...getting a drink of water at my grandmother's house, all of the "kid sized" glasses were snuff glasses.?ÿ Oh the smell of Sweet Garret snuff...
Sigh. Plumb bobs, tapes, and only able to use the compass in the transit. The scale was only used to lay out 90 degrees. On a building. I have known more than one surveyor who could not use a vernier.?ÿ
Now, my dad was proficient with all of it.?ÿ
?ÿNow, where??s dat slide rule?
Cant go to the moon without a slide rule!
Remember lubricating the Monroe with kerosene? Fer ye young uns, a Monroe is a mechanical calculator. Usually with a carriage .
N
OMG, the disgusting spit cans that were kept conveniently in people's living rooms.?ÿ
In my world "spit cans" were beer cans, beer bottles, or the drivers side window. Oh my! ?????ÿ
I knew a guy back home, old farm hand, he just spit in the passenger side floorboard of whatever vehicle he was driving. Needless to say, he drove himself everywhere and without a passenger. ????ÿ
Needless to say, he drove himself everywhere and without a passenger.
That dude was smart. ?????ÿ
I still make my coffee in a percolator.?ÿ I remember trying to help my great grandfather haul a block of ice into the kitchen so he could put it in the icebox and keep the milk, eggs, and butter cool.
There was a freezing plant in the small Texas town where we lived in the late 1940s. They processed seafood, but were also happy to sell you a foot-square block of ice.
How you got the ice home without getting water all over your vehicle was up to you, but my dad had figured it out. He'd have them set the block on the front bumper of his 1939 Chev. The bumper was a heavy curved strip of chrome-plated steel that stuck out on brackets from the car. The ice block rested on the edge of the bumper and leaned back against the car body.
Of course there were people who would deliver the ice to your home, but that would have cost an extra ten cents or so.
