I once tried to tell my nephews that my grandmother who lived in the city of Milwaukee once had a party line and that it in no way involved a 900 number.
I tired to convince them that there was a time when the only people who owned calculators were engineers because no one else could afford them.
And before the advent of Pong and the Atari 2600 there was absolutely no TV video games.
and when you could smoke in a plane? And then (at least here) pipes and cigars were banned, but not cigs, for awhile. Heck, airlines serving meals in flight.
How about when people actually dressed up to fly? I remember my mother making us wear patent leathers, and skirts (but not gloves-those had already gone the way of the dinosaurs) to fly from Chicago to Boston, a long time ago.
Speaking of clothes–does anyone wear slips anymore, under dresses etc? I grew up with slips scratching me around the waist, but I dont’ even see them anymore in the stores.
Pullman porters and sleeper compartments? My Dad and I took one to Washington DC from Gainesville FL waaaay back.
Drive up fast food. NOT drive thru. I am talking about Dog n’ Suds and the like. Where you parked on an angle and went in, gave your order and then the food was delivered to your car. I am too young to have seen the roller skated waitresses, but know they existed.
Drive in movies.
How about $0.75 to see the Disney matinee at the local theater? And if you missed it, that was it.
TV specials with “special guest stars” that were planned for (no TiVO or VCR) and watched together…and if you were lucky, that Disney movie was shown on a network (no cable) in prime time and you got to stay up and watch. Cable existed but was all Ocala jai lai (sp?) when I saw it at my Dad’s down in FL (as far as I know, it didn’t exist in IL at that time–late '70’s).
We just hired a new engineer who, while being very computer savvy, suffers from being a youngun.
Upon failing to get a file tranferred to an in-house application we use…
Me:“It’s an old mainframe emulator. You have to export from your root c:, as a plain text with eight-character filename. No spaces either.”
Him: blank stare
Me:“Eight character limit, you know, the old DOS limitation?”
Him: blank stare
Me:“ok, pull up a chair sonny, we’re going to set the wayback machine to 1990 and see the wonderful world of writing .bat files…”
Him:“Wayback what?”
sigh…I’ve officially become a curmudgeon.
What’s an encyclopedia?
I just heard a radio commercial for a car dealer. The main thrust of the spot was that they don’t add on extra fees like all the other dealers.
They made heavy use of the “ka-ching” sound effect of an old-style cash register, and I immediately thought of this thread.
Our 2001 Montana has two “cigarette lighters” side by side under the stereo, labelled “Power Outlets.”
Actually getting up to turn the channel on the T.V. And only having 12 to choose from.
The audience clapping at the end of a movie (ah, simpler times)
Singing the National Anthem at the Ball Game (not even a token effort at the last game I went to)
Cassettes (music)
“Converters”: the name for the original (analogue?) cable boxes, with a row of 12 buttons to select the channel, and a three-position switch to select which bank of 12 channels.
What’s amusing about ‘Police Squad - in color’
“And what’s 1990?”
Or in the British case, being jealous of countries that could get twelve channels!!!
Or ask any kid younger than 20 if they can figure out how cashiers rang up and entire cart of groceries before they had upc scanners.
I saw a movie on Tuesday night where the audience clapped at the conclusion. Of course, it was the Murrow biopic Good Night, and Good Luck, so a large part of the audience was gray-haired folks who wanted to revisit their younger years.
56k? I grew up with Commodore and 300 baud. I would have sold my mother to slavers for 56k.
My contribution: Someday, kids will think we were absolutely crazy because when we wanted to watch a porno movie, we had to go to the bad part of town, park under a streetlight, shuffle into a small, grimy cinema with eyes downcast, find a seat as far away from everyone else as possible…
Twelve? I remember the thrill of getting a 5th channel. Ah, those optimistic days when a new network called Fox was going to set us free.
Of course, you’d actually have to get up out of your bean bag chair to change the station. And that was all after you pulled the knob to turn the set on–and then waited for 60 seconds for the set to warm up. Of course if the sound was too quiet, you’d have to turn it up. Yes, turn. There’s a reason it’s called that.
And making change.
“That’ll be $1.38, from $5, that’s 39, 40, 50, 75, 2, 3, 4, 5 thank you and have a good day.”
We had to look under my dad’s bed. My kids look on my hard drive.
Quoth Leviosaurus:
The reason teachers preferred the mimeograph was because it was cheaper, and they had to pay for all of their own copies out of pocket. And when my mom retired three years ago, the mimeograph machines were still hand-cranked. It eventually got to the point where it was cheaper for Mom to buy her own (xerographic) copier.
And people wonder why we say the schools are underfunded.
You had 12? Our TV was so old, it didn’t have any channel selector! Or screen! And we called it “radio.”
You do know how to turn on a typewriter, don’t you?
Say, “I love you, typewriter!” 
Sombody ought to invent a little electronic device that produces a flame when you press a button and is great for lighting cigarettes. It’ll come with a adapter that you can plug into the “power outlet” thing in your car. 