I'm so old, I can remember "_____"!

  • motor oil coming in unopenable cans

  • when everybody ate off TV trays

  • waiting for the next Beatle album

  • seatbelts being optional in cars

  • our first color TV

  • nightly casualty reports from Viet Nam

  • stationwagons

[hijack]
I’m so old,

  • I fart dust
  • I was at Jesus’ Bar mitzvah
  • My social security number is “1”
    [/hijack]
  • cigarette ads on TV

  • Women wearing hats, white gloves, and girdles when they dressed up. (Clothes, too, but you know what I mean.) My mom had a mink stole as well.

  • Walking to my elementary school alone

  • When my parent weren’t sure I should play with Hillary W., because her parents were…(whisper) divorced.

  • I actually remembered when Lucky Charms cereal only had pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers.

When Daredevil’s costume was yellow.

  • when “boot-cut” jeans were called bell bottoms

  • when “low-rise” jeans were called hip-huggers

  • when you risked injury, by getting ice cubes from those metal trays with handles

  • when individualy wrapped, sliced cheese was new

  • when cable tv was one chanel

  • A toy I had as a kid - a little plastic “maze” with a drop of murcury in it rather than a metal or plastic ball
  • My “Pet Rock”
  • Mikey, the Life Cereal kid
  • Going home for lunch, because my Elementary School did not have Kitchen/Cafeteria Facilities
  • “The Hustle” on the Juke Box

I still eat off TV trays most of the time, and my last car was a station wagon.

– watching the original Twilight Zone on TV, when it was brand new.

– watching Men into Space on TV

– watching Star Trek on TV on black and white, because nobody we knew had a color set.

– using a Slide Rule in high school. And for my first two years at college.

– Memorizing the Mass in Latin

– watching movies before there was a rating system

– Movies rated “M” (before they changed it to "GP’. then to “PG”)

–The 1964-65 World’s Fair

– The biggest theme opark in the U.S., Freedomland – bigger than Disneyland, and located inside New York City.

– going to Palisades Amusement Park (“Ride the Coaster/Get Cool/ In the Waves / In the Pool/ You’ll have Fun/ So…come…on…over!”)

–Dell comic books (before Gold Key)

– Paperback books that cost as little as $0.50 – or even (rarely) Forty Five Cents.

– A milkman who delivered to the milkbox on our porch.

Staying home from school to watch then-Colonel Neil Armstrong take that “One Small Step” onto the surface of another world.

Wow.

I remember when having a good stero ment you had an 8-track player

Cool bicycles had bannana seats and sissy bars.

GI Joe could was taller then that Ken dude.
Lawn darts

The first time everyone tried to say and learn what the hell ‘Voule vous chosha avec mois?’ (trust me the pronounciation was as bad as my spelling)
I remember back when a topless chick might appear in a PG film and I could be sitting there next to my parents and nobody would sit there wringing their hands thinking how bad my parents were or how I must be affected by seeing this.

I remember the wonder of a TRS-80.

Does anyone in the Chicago area remember a Jewel Foodstores promotion called “Saturday Night At The Races”? This was in the early to mid-60s. You would get a race ticket at the store, then on Saturday night, a real horse race would be run on TV and you could win money if your horse came in. It was very cool.

I remember AM radio being very cool.

I remember kneeling on the floor and a teacher making sure your dress touched the ground. If it didn’t, you were labeled a tart and disciplined soundly.

I remember when bedsheets pretty much only came in white.

[list]A horse-drawn milk wagon.
Asking my Dad where “Vietnam” was.
Beer and soda cans that had to be opened with a “church-key,” and the “pop-top” replacement that was so cool. Also steel cans being replaced with aluminum.
Sigmund the Sea Monster (and Johnny and Scott are friends…)
When Neil Diamond was popular.
Playing “Army” or “Cops and Robbers” or “Cowboys and Indians” with toy guns without do-gooders screaming that we would grow up warped, or that my parents were negligent.
Playing baseball until the sun went down.
Richard Nixon (and Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern).
That guy with the beat-up, faded blue van who delivered fresh eggs every other day.
Sesame Street when it was new.

*Pushing returnable glass soda bottle down the chute at the grocery store (wheeee!)

*Wearing jelly shoes and thinking I was hip–blisters and all

*Giant Swatch Watches on the wall

*Wonder Woman underoos

*Waiting in the car for an hour + while mom did her shopping

*Choosing penny candy from rows of glass jars at the corner store

*When cassettes were newfangled

Okay, so maybe I’m not old, pehaps I qualify as “un-young”?
:slight_smile:

bella

  • Flavor Straws

  • Warner Bros. cartoons on TV with the racist/violent stuff not edited out

  • “Creature Feature” - old syndicated horror movie show in L.A.

  • “Sheriff John” - old syndicated kids’ variety show in L.A.

  • “The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show”

  • Being shown a Disney cartoon film in school regarding “feminine hygiene” which left us kids completely in the dark regarding what it was talking about. I guess it was before school was allowed to teach kids openly about menstruation.

  • Flintstones powdered bubble bath - it came in little packets

  • “The Fearless Fly/Milton the Monster Show”

  • The year (1970 for us) when girls were finally permitted to wear slacks to school if they wanted to

  • when buying gasoline, the attendant actually pumped the gas for you (without extra charge)

  • when I looked forward to the next Star Wars movie

  • when movies weren’t rated

  • when Coca Cola only had one flavor

–giving a report to my 4th grade class that when men finally land on the moon we’ll see LIVE TV images. Nobody believed me.

–penny candy

–nickle popcycles

–dime pop (soda) 15 cents for a can with a pull tab

–nickle for a pack of 5 baseball cards and one very hard stick of bubble gum

Live TV.
Wind wings in car doors.
Howdy Doody.
Everybody wore horn-rim glasses because that’s what was available (think My Three Sons, here…).
Being taught how to roll cigarettes for my grandma when I was eight.

Hey! I still drive a station wagon!

Being the first family on my street to get color tv and central air conditioning!

Jungle Gardenia perfume (Mom always wore it. Is it even made anymore?)

Jack Paar hosting the Tonight Show

When the Flintstones first appeared on tv. It was a primetime show.

Oh and EchoKitty I remember “Let’s Go To The Races.” It was sponsored by Big Star/Colonial Foodstores down south. I know a lady who won $3000. That was biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig money.
Swampbear, shuffling off toward oldfartdom

I’l amend plnnr’s post by saying I remember when Crunch Berries only came in red, and when Fruity Pebbles only came in red, orange and yellow (this really wasn’t that long ago for either).

Other things I remember:

Cashing in empty pop bottles for 10¢ at the little store across the street in our then stoplight-less, McDonald’s-less little town.

TV stations signed off at the end of the night with (usually) a shot of the U.S. flag waving while the Star-Spangled Banner played. “This concludes our broadcast day.”

You actually had to get up from your chair and turn knobs to change the channel or adjust the volume (when you lose the remote you still have to do this, I acknowledge).

My Mom could leave me alone in the toy department at Sears while she looked in other departments. She let me walk to school by myself, too.

FM radio in the car was a luxury; having a tape player was for the elite.

Paper was your only bagging option at most stores.

Bicycle helmets were hardly ever seen; any kid wearing one was thought of as a sissy.

Playgrounds were rife with risks for injury. If you got hurt it was your own fault and your parents didn’t sue anyone.

The Atari 2600 fascinated me more than a PlayStation, GameCube, XBox, etc. would probably fascinate most kids today.

Happy Meals didn’t exist, and when they debuted the enclosed prize was comparable to something available in most gumball machines (no major blockbuster movie tie-ins in those days).

Kiss was one of the hardest rocking band (as much as I love Kiss, they sound tame when played back-to-back with the likes of Slipknot, Mudvayne. etc.)

Your options at the gas pump were regular or unleaded. A lot of places even had someone pump it for you, and he’d wash your windows while the tank was filling up.

Your phone was leased to you from the phone company, and dialing a number meant using a rotary dial.