My Dad’s encyclopedia was 15 years old when I was born. The picture of Africa in “A” had a big blank spot in the center labeled “uncharted.” 
We loved going to the library.
and remember Fuller Brush men going door -to-door? I think there was also a vacuum salesman too, don’t remember the name of the company.
also there was man with hand-cart who walked the city sharpening mowers, knives, scissors, anything with a blade
I’m 68. Everything was different when I was a kid. Nothing is the same now.
Smoking was ubiquitous in pubs in the UK well into my adult years, it was just assumed every pub would be a dense cloud of cigarette smoke. I remember it was weird (even as a non-smoker) that it was banned in bars when I first moved to California in 2004 (I was 27 at the time). It took me a while to realize why people kept leaving the bar in pairs or small groups, the idea you needed to leave the bar to smoke was strange.
It was incredible how quickly your senses changed. I remember returning to the UK to visit in like 2005 and my local pub (particularly cramped and smoke filled) suddenly seemed unbearable.
Knock, knock, knock — “Gas Man!” He came inside the house, down the club basement stairs and wrote stuff down to figure your bill. We didn’t know him by name, but it was fun to try to un-falsetto our voices and call out “Gas Man” when he knocked.
I was a high school loser, never made it with the ladies, so my parents didn’t need to be concerned about me.
Absolutely the same here. I was not in a danger of getting into any sexual situations well into my twenties. Much to my chagrin. As said elsewhere I have some sympathy with incels, I was definitely one of them. I never went from “absolutely no women shows any interest in me” (I barely even knew any) to “it’s women’s fault that none of them show any interest in me”, but I didn’t have the manosphere telling me that.
But then your next door neighbor with a daughter had a favor so you gave her just a little kiss…
Right?!
If you had the talcum powder, you didn’t have to walk this way. 
Born in 1952. Another free-range childhood. During the summer after breakfast we spent the day doing whatever we felt like; lunch was either at home or a friend’s house and dinner at home, then back out until dark (the rule was that when the street lights came on we were expected to at least head home, although that didn’t preclude chasing fireflies).
The house I grew up on was on a street that was literally only a city block long, with a cemetery on one end and a city playground on the other. This meant that the only street traffic was people who lived there and the occasional wanderer. This meant we could play in the street without worrying about passing cars. Everybody on the block knew each other; this had the advantage of always having someone to help, and the disadvantage that if you misbehaved there was always someone who could (and would) tell your parents.
There was an empty lot a few blocks away that used to be part of a cemetery (not the one at the end of my block) and was full of ditches which made excellent battle sites. How nobody ever managed to break a leg there I’ll never know.
As was I, but that didn’t limit my access to nookie. I just dated girls who were also … well, not popular cheerleaders. And I dated girls from different schools, which helped.
Afraid not; “next door” was half a mile away, and their kids were my parents’ age. No dates in high school, very few in my twenties. Moving to Brooklyn right before 30 did the trick.
I was too much of an oddball for most to be interested in, and too clueless too be aware on the few occasions someone was.
I was of the “what’s wrong with me?” variety. I didn’t pass the gene down to my kids; they’re in their twenties, daughter is married and son has been with his SO for 7 years.
We didn’t have malls, when we wanted to hang out and have fun, we took a bus downtown. That was where the action was, now it’s all office buildings, cell phone stores, not a single fast food restaurant there any more 
. (lots of pricey Thai, Japanese, Indian, and many other types now.)….. There was one mall several miles away, I would take a 30 minute bus ride there, hang out looking at the marvels to be found, eat, go to a movie, and take two buses back home after dark, getting home around 10 p.m. Age 14, 15 or so. No one thought this odd or whatever… I didn’t have a car till I was well into my 20’s, and from early teenage years, took the bus almost everywhere I wanted to go. There were a lot more buses and they ran more often and were cheap.
And if you didn’t have 15 cents you would have a bottle opener and a straw from home. 
I’m 65.
There was no age to buy smokes. And if some old biddy at the gas station still wouldn’t sell them to you just go the the laundromat or bowling alley and buy them out of the machine.
We had a designated place to smoke in high school. Hell, you could smoke in the public library
Our town had a siren that blew everyday except Sunday at noon. During the summer you knew it was time to go home for lunch. This same siren would blow to alert volunteer firemen to come aid the fulltime crew in the event of a big emergency.
A Goo Goo Cluster was considered a nourishing snack.
Drinking age was 18. I could go to the bar almost my entire senior year.
TV stations went off the air at midnight or 1am.
And no goddamn infomercials.
People would applaud at the end of a movie in the theater.
The rides at the county fair were 25 cents each or 5 for one dollar. There were no special prices for certain rides. They all cost the same.
We had a man made beach. It was free to be there but 25 cents to swim. But you could get a pass for Memorial Day to Labor Day for a buck. Within the first week I had that pass paid for!
The park had a six story metal slide that got to 900 degrees in July and your legs in shorts smelled like cooked hot dogs when you got to the bottom of it. Plus there were swings that went 300 feet in the air, a see-saw, Merry go round, and this spinning thing we called the gate that got you dizzy as fuck.
Any kid wearing a helmet while riding his bike would have gotten the shit kicked out of him. Unless it was a football helmet or his dad’s motorcycle helmet and he was playing motorcycle. That was ok.
Baseball or playing cards clothes pinned to your bike spokes.
A playground version of rugby we called smear the [something or other]. It was brutal. And no helmets.
Lots of cigarette ads on TV. And beer commercials that also used cartoons.
One of the major grocery stores (Kohls) had these weird arched buildings.
Lunch counters at the drug store.
Cops and robbers.
Cowboys and indians.
Toy guns that looked real. I had a Johnny Eagle. Look that up.
I had a Johnny Seven OMA. Look that up.
I did look it up. If you stepped outside your house with one of those today, bye-bye pkbites courtesy of local LEO.
Did you ever have to use the Greenie Stik m caps?
What a pain in the ass.
If you wanted to play with your gun on Sunday afternoon you had to sit all day Saturday putting those things onto the plastic bullets.
When I was a kid, you could see captured whales at SeaWorld.
Dog food included bone meal, so dried dog poop turned white
It was common to pay for groceries by check
MTV (along with Rolling Stone magazine) was the arbiter of cool.
In 1988, when I was aged 10, my parents didn’t understand why I’d need a computer in the home (and I didn’t want to tell them that I wanted it so I could play video games: we settled on “he uses one at school”)