When George Bush’s father was president 
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the capture of the USS Pueblo
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people freaking out over TI’s pocket calculators
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the Arab oil embargo
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Mr. Peppermint & Dialing For Dollars
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Staubach replacing Morton
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John Dean’s testimony
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when Layla first hit the airwaves
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when HBO wasn’t 24 hours. It used to start around 4:00 in the afternoon. Until then it would scroll the day’s offerings. Then it signed off around 1:00 am or so. First it went 24 hours on weekends, and then finally 24 hours all the time.
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getting paper straws at restaurants. Yes, a drinking straw made of stiff paper (which obviously didn’t stay stiff for long). I’ve met very few people who remember this and have been told I’m making it up.
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when one of the hottest top 40 radio stations in New Orleans was an AM station.
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riding my bike to the “Time Saver” convenience store to buy Star Wars trading cards, which contained 12 cards (I think), a sticker, and gum.
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upgrading to a 1200 baud modem.
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when comic books said “STILL ONLY 35 CENTS” on the cover.
I remember about 50% of the things listed so far…
I also remember:
-when MTV actually played music videos.
-getting swatted by my elementary school principal when I messed up.
-when my dad got a handheld electronic calculator that had gasp a square-root function. It was made by Rockwell International and cost a couple hundred dollars.
-every boy I knew owned a .22 rifle before their 10th birthday.
Okay, so I’m only 31…
Wow, you people are OLD!!!
Har har. I remember:
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the Bicentennial 4th of July;
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the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon;
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my 1st-grade teacher, Mrs. Charles, who had an enormous paddle with which she would beat unruly children (there were very few unruly children);
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having a milkman come every other day, early in the morning (though most folks didn’t do that; I don’t know why we did);
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very vaguely remember President Ford;
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“Disco Duck”; and
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friends coming over for the express purpose of playing “Pong.”
(I’m 31 as well.)
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Pop music consisted of tunes by Boston, Led Zeppelin, The Who, and other hard rockers that dominate “classic rock” stations today.
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Boston, Led Zeppeln and The Who played on AM radio.
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We had only one telephone in the house. Black, made by Western Electric, with a dial, owned by New York Bell, and hard-wired in the wall.
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Cable television only had 12 channels, one consisting of the footage from a camera alternating back and forth between a analog clock and an analog thermometer.
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S&H Green Stamps.
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Horse-drawn carts pldded down suburban streets, the driver screaming “RAGS! RAGS!” or “KNIVES SHARPENED! KNIVES SHARPENED!” Seriously … I’ve seen this as late as the 1970s.
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Traffic in entire metropolitan areas flowed without left-turn arrows, special left-turn lanes, and right-on-red.
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Driver’s licenses without photographs.
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Cable converter boxes that allowed you to purchase pay-per-view movies by inserting a magnetized card in a slot on the television.
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Local all-music video television stations.
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The distinct sound of a Chrysler motor product starting up.
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Huge freestanding Sears stores, with huge parking ramps, in inner city neighborhoods.
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The only national department store chains were Ward’s, Sears, and JC Penny; otherwise, you shopped at a local department store. (Up until the mid-1980s, downtown Buffalo had AM&As, Berger’s, Hens & Helly, Hengerer’s, Neisner’s, and Sattler’s.)
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Move to Buffalo, and you can still vote using a mechanical voting machine made in the 1930s.
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The ultimate status symbol among us in sixth grade … an LED digital wrist watch.
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McDonalds with no indoor seating, and other fast food chains with no bathrooms accessible from the dining area.
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Buying comic books someplace other than a comic book or geek/gaming store.
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ESPN, when it called itself the “Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.”
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Endless commercials for head shops and waterbed stores on local rock radio stations.
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Television remote controls that had just two buttons … channel up and power.
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Fridays. “Do you eat it? No no no! Do you drink it? No no no! Do you smoke it? YES YES YES!”
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The first US postage stamp without a value printed on it … orange, picturing an eagle and the letter “A”.
We were the first on our block with Pong, and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then we got Space Invaders for our Atari, which was totally hight tech at the time.
We were the first on our block with Pong, and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then we got Space Invaders for our Atari, which was totally hight tech at the time.
*The Challenger explosion
*My best friend’s Beta vcr
*The Berlin Wall coming down
*Grocery stores without scanners
*Staying up late rooting for Dukakis
*Rotary phones
Yeah, so I’m downright young, but I swear none of my friends remember this stuff.
I don’t remember 'Nam, but I do recall my father watching the news (I’m pretty sure it was during one of those '70’s Arab-Israeli conflicts) [sub]The more things change the more they stay the same[/sub] and the reporter was talking about guerilla fighters. I thought there were Armies of trained gorillas that did the fighting, ala Planet of the Apes.
Arctic Lights, $1.25 a pack at the local deli. You’re 12 and buying them for your mom? Fine son, no ID required
Is it now home to the eyesore known as Co-op City?]
Does anyone remember the bicentennial 7-Up cans, a set of 50, the back of the can being a part of the continental US & if you stacked right it made a map of the entire country?
Glad you phrased it that way. If you offend the lawyers on the boards, they’ll drag you into the Pit
I remeber my parent first calculator came with “check the accuracy instructions.” They sat at the table for hours plugging in the arithmatic problems and confirming each answer before they trusted it enough to do bills.
Nostalgia lane:[ul]
[li]The Kroft Super Show on Saturday Morning…that would blow your mind away[/li][li]The pre-renovated Yankee Stadium.[/li][li]The day Thurman Munson died.[/li][li]Manageries (freak-shows) at the circus[/li][li]Going to a taping of Wonderama & Bozo[/li][li]Those two hot hippie chicks with an acoustic guitar in a show called The Magic Garden.[/li][li]The BOSS is coming to dinner. A 1/2 gallon glass bottle of Pepsi that weighed more than I did.[/li][li]Tab Root Beer, Tab Ginger Ale & Tab Black Cherry [/li][li]My 1st 45 rpm record…Mr. Jaws & My first LP, K-Tel’s Blockbusters[/li]Movie theaters that had smoking sections and balconies[/ul]
I’m in my 30’s which is pretty dull for this thread. I feel young everywhere except online, where the demographic is different, so:
[ul]
[li]A steam train on a scheduled run.[/li][li]No ATMs.[/li][li]Our vinyl record player was a “radiogram”; quite a beautiful and solid piece of wooden furniture, with a record player, and a valve AM radio which needed warming up.[/li][li]Being impressed by colour TV at a friend’s house.[/li][li]The little dot when we turned out B&W telly off.[/li][li]Cracker night.[/li][li]Milkmen.[/li][li]All telephones having a rotary dial.[/li][li]My father taking me on a commuter ferry on Sydney Harbour (The South Steyne for you Sydneysiders), and holding me up at a railing inside so I could look down into the engine room and watch the steam engine.[/li][li]The introduction of FM radio.[/li][li]My mother buying a family of four’s weekly groceries for A$11.[/li][li]Kids’ bus / train fare in Sydney was 15c.[/li][/ul]
Ewww…
**Hillbilly Queen ** hit the nail on the head with the *injury may be sustained when handling the metal ice cube tray in the freezer *
**Lawn Darts ** was one of the first extreme sports. Mandatory barefoot playing. No dogs allowed.
Remember when ** life jackets ** didn’t have the crotch strap and if it wasn’t done up properly you’d slip right out?
When you’d play outside *all day long * without parental supervision.
When you were more afraid of your parents finding out than getting busted by the cops.
**Hillbilly Queen ** hit the nail on the head with the *injury may be sustained when handling the metal ice cube tray in the freezer *
**Lawn Darts ** was one of the first extreme sports. Mandatory barefoot playing. No dogs allowed.
Remember when ** life jackets ** didn’t have the crotch strap and if it wasn’t done up properly you’d slip right out?
When you’d play outside *all day long * without parental supervision.
When you were more afraid of your parents finding out than getting busted by the cops.
When I was little, there were negroes. Then they became blacks. Then they became African Americans. Except for Michael Jackson. He became whiter and a freak.
Remember when an R rated movie was really bad thing to watch because it was so dirty and filthy and all the things you really really wanted to see?
Remember **Pass book savings accounts **. I had more money at 10 than at 35.
all metal dash boards, no seat belts, 15cent hambugers at McDonalds, rotary phones.
Seven/Eleven was open from 7am to 11pm. Motel 6 charged $6.00 per night
A world without VCRs, answering machines, cable, and microwaves. Let alone cell phones, PCs, and the Internet.
A few more, from an Atari Gen-Xer …
ATMs without video screens. There were two types; one containing a little adjustable “Spock viewer” with a four line LED dot-matrix display, another that had digits and different messages printed on spinning reels. Both types printed receipts on small cards.
ATMs before regional and national banking networks.
Not just scannerless grocery stores, but grocery stores with electromechanical cash registers. Keypresses didn’t sound like “beep beep beep biddlybeep” but rather “click click click cha-chunk.”
Small convenience stores owned and operated by German, Polish and Italian immigrants.
If you wanted to gamble, you went to Las Vegas, played bingo at your neighborhood Catholic church, or you bought a lottery ticket which had a pre-printed eight digit number that was read the following Saturday night.
Candy cigarettes.
Sex-segregated public schools, and certain classes in public schools that were segregated by sex.
Radio stations that played “beautiful music,” i.e. 10,000 Strings.
Restaurants with small jukeboxes at every table.
The few remaining outlets of local chain restaurants which prospered in the 1930s, that were open for breakfast and lunch only.
An abundance of living World War I veterans. On a related note … also knowing plenty of people who were born in the 19th century.
Grocery store doors that opened when you stepped on a rubber pad in front of the door.
Non-computerized college class registration, where you camped out in front of the door to the college gymnasium for several hours, and ran to the registration table of your major department the moment the doors opened.
Gas pumps using mechanical displays.
In the US, gas pumps displaying the price per liter.
Japanese cars with talking diagnostics. “The front passenger door is ajar. The front passenger door is ajar.”
Your parents weren’t considered negligent for letting you bike over to the next block, or wander through the mall while they were shopping. “Let’s meet in front of Spencer Gifts in two hours.”
Ooh! I, too, remember the human freakshow at the Florida State Fair, circa 1976. I’m pretty sure they don’t have those anymore. Boy, did that make an impression on four-year-old jackelope.
44 y.o. checking in.
Naturally I remember vividly many of the events of the 60’s…Neil Armstrong, Nixon in China, most other space milestones.
“BigStick” popsicles for 10c., most candy bars the same, and small bags of Frito-Lay for 8c at the corner liquor store. Also, speaking of money: in about 1968 going with my brother on a one week group campout. Our parents gave us each a $10 bill just in case and my jaw just fell open. I’d never had so much money in my life! Most things in my kid’s world–Revelle models, paperback books, snax and candy were between one and two bucks, so a sawbuck made me feel like J.P. Morgan!
When Chicago had no UHF TV and only 5 broadcast TV stations - 3 network, 1 local (WGN) and 1 educational.
When first-class postage went up by 66% - from 3¢ to 4¢.
The Cuban Missile Crisis.
JFK’s assassination.
Seeing the satellite Echo I in the night sky.
A 2-hour show on Saturday AM TV: the Magical Land of Alakazam with Mark Wilson and Nani Darnell. Even as young as I was, I knew Nani was a babe. 
I remember hearing ‘Jane you ignorant slut!’ on live tv the first time it aired.
First-class postage: $0.03
Candy bars: $0.05
Real stores, no malls
Mohair upholstery (home and auto)
Area rugs - there was no such thing as wall-to-wall
New ivory trinkets
And, somewhere, I still have a Nixon/(whoever) 1960 campaign button.
The only choice for Xmas trees was scotch or fir - no plastic crap.
White-wall tires were the default.
A car with air-conditioning always had the tinted visor on the windsheid.
Opening windsheilds, for that matter (my first car was a Model A Ford - top that!)
TV was a broadcast thing - you either used rabbit ears, or you put up an antenna (fancy ones had rotor motors). Cable wasn’t even on the horizon.
Coal bins in homes.
Buying rolls of asbestos at the hardward store.