You will never see a rumble seat: Rumble seat - Wikipedia
Some time around 1943, my uncle drove from Philadelphia to Long Beach Island (at a guess, around 70 miles) with my father and me in the rumble seat. I would have been 6.
Kids riding in the back bed of a pick up truck. Perfectly legal in Hawaii and very common, but don’t get caught not wearing your seat belt inside the vehicle. Big fine!
And Harmonic (the reciprocal of the arithmetic average of the reciprocals) and Geometric (the exponentiation of the arithmetic average of the logs), and the quadratic mean, and the generalized power mean, and all of these as weighted means, and a moving average, and … and those are just off the top of my head.
Just spent 30 minutes typing a beautiful post. Oh well
Cars:
REAL HUP caps - not wheel covers.
Radiator caps from classic cars - Packard, Pierce-Arrow, Cadillac (1935) Rolls Royce, Auburn, Duesenberg
Service Stations, not Gas Stations/ Parts on hand in the 2-bay garage with a real mechanic on duty/
“Trunks” were actually Trunks = the luggage kind. They were, when needed, affixed to a platform which swung up when not in use.
Ash trays for everybody
I once had a '63 VW bus with the ‘optional at extra cost’ GASOLINE-FIRED cabin heater. It didn’t work and I was NOT suicidal enough to try to fire it up. VWs, with the “air cooled” engine at the rear of the machine never had cabin heat. A bus/van meant "might as well open the windows and at least have fresh air.
Tires with inner tubes. 'nuff said. Good for both summer and winter
Banks
You got your checks back with your statement
Running to the bank with a check made payable to “CASH” on Friday so you had enough cash for the weekend
Getting coin rolls at the bank, filling them with the excess coins on the dresser and cashing them at your bank. You didn’t have to write your name and account number on each roll - they actually trusted you to fill the 50 pennies, 40 nickles, 50 dimes and 40 quarters!
General:
There was a genera; consensus that certain activities might cause you to harm yourself if you screwed up. This was regarded as normal and quite acceptable. Now, we sue everyone in sight is somebody gets harmed.
IMHO:
Life should NOT be “idiot proof” - from time to time, you assume risks. From time to time, the offs screw some idiots. This is not only acceptable, it is downright REQUIRED. The concept of a “Darwin Award” is how life should be ordered.
‘Bad Movie Night’ .
It was an idea from a small theater that wanted midnight shows, but not Rocky Horror. It was like MST3000… but live, because it was you and your friends heckling the screen.
It was like no other experience I’ve ever had watching film… and so funny because you were a part of it. It was a real theater, so you could have popcorn… and since the place was mostly empty you could be as loud as you wanted (but you always tipped the usher).
Banks giving *you *stuff like toasters to open accounts with them, instead of billing you for the privilege.
Having deleted several lines, as for CARS, they’re HUB caps.
As for banks, the last time I saw that was last Friday, when I did it.
I couple of weeks ago for me.
One of the joys of living in the middle of nowhere is that my kids “drive” on my lap all the time.
Cream Rinse for your hair.
Garbage Pail Kids.
Click clacks have already been mentioned.
Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. It was plastic in a tube that came with a little straw and you blew into the straw to make semi permanent bubbles.
Also from Whamm-o Footsie. And not those stiff ones. Those were cheats. Oh and. . . and. . . those gigantic pans and wands to make super big soap bubbles.
I’m going to go look and see if Whamm-o is still around.
tOf course Whamm-o is still around, making Hula Hoops and Frisbees. And Slip 'n Slides. And those complete wastes of money, Super Balls. Seriously, who ever got to keep one of those things for more than a day before it bounced off into the distance?
Stumbling across a skip signal on a TV. Once got one for hours from almost 1000 miles away. Got to watch Sea Hunt an hour earlier than usual.
You’d be turning the dial knob by hand from one station to another and pow, there’s something on one of the snowy channels!
With digital, that’s not going to happen on purpose, let alone accidentally coming across one.
(OTOH, I’m not missing horizontal roll, vertical shear, etc. But I do miss the “fading eye” some. Sure there’s an app. But it’s just not the same.)
C Band satellite. Analog feeds from the network to affiliate stations. Star Trek without commercials.
A feed from a girl volleyball match on the beach. The cameraman closed on a sandy bikini bottom, and suddenly withdrew, probably with stern orders from an angry producer.
Digital transmission allows more channels on a satellite, costs less, and provides for encryption.
dammit.
Orbitz soft drink.. Everyone with a science bent had one on their desk in the late 90’s becuase they looked cool. But nobody I knew drank a single drop. OK, one person I know did, and he said it tasted like gravy-thick fructose syrup with flavorles sweet tarts floating in it.
So, great initial sales, then a rather fast drop.
That takes me back to going on vacation as a kid in the 1970s. We always drove to Florida & my parents always left at night to avoid traffic— so my sisters and I would get in our PJs and settle into the back of the station wagon, which was folded down and made into a big bed with sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, & stuffed animals. Such fun!
My poor kids will never know that joy. They had to always be safely strapped into their carseats.
Hand turn signals. And the ultra-rare Stop Signal.
I’ll bet at most, 80% of the readers of this post will even know what they were, let alone how they were done.
Nowadays, you’d probably get a ticket for putting your hand out of a moving car.
Raccoon tails on car antennas.
Boxes on top of the cabinet style TV* which rotated the antenna on top of the house, or, if really rich, a tower near the house.
Has anyone mentioned cabinet “Hi-Fi’s”? real wood cabinets with receiver and record changer (not just turntable) with speakers - all in one box?
Yes, IIRC, the horribly rich could get a cabinet with the stereo and TV all in one box - the picture tube was concealed behind hinged doors when not in use.
For the lower-price group, there were portable “Record Players” - the looked like a box covered with textured plastic and contained the record changer (you could load 5-8 records on the spindle and it would drop them one at a time), amplifier, and speakers. Nice ones had detachable speakers so you could get the full “Stereo” effect.
The ViewMaster stereo viewer, with the disks with pictures (“slide”) is now a toy.
Little known: It was originally a complete set - a stereo camera, a punch to cut out the chips, empty discs onto which you mounted your chips of film and both the viewer AND projectors with which to view the completed discs.
Many years ago, some bits of the system came along on ebay. Absolutely mind-boggling that people actually did this.
There were also lots of Viewmaster collections - people collected Hundreds of the discs.
- the real mahogany veneer was on really thin plywood, but the joinery was better than the crap native to this house. Real corner blocks secured with real wood glue (it was yellow)
As you demonstrate, this still can be done - but these days, with the omnipresence of ATMs and debit cards, it’s extremely rare.
I doubt we will ever again see a major league baseball player nicknamed “Superjew”.