Let’s remember the Good Old Days when life was so much better.
Remember when everybody smoked and you could smoke anywhere? You could smoke in movie theaters, on airplanes, in a hospital room or at the doctors office.
Remember when kids didn’t have to be strapped into expensive and inconvenient car seats? You could just plop them down on a seat or just let them crawl around the car, but if you wanted to be careful someone would hold the child on their lap, even if they were driving.
Remember when drunk driving laws were rarely enforced and even if you got a ticket for DUI the judge would let you off because everybody does it, you didn’t kill anyone important, and you’re a nice family man.
I’m sure my fellow Dopers can think of other ways life used to be ‘gooder’ in the old days.
If your child was born with any number of heart or other defects, there were no concerns for paying for expensive advanced care or for a lifetime of adaptive paraphernalia and therapy. Because the kid died quickly.
Remember expecting a phone call? You literally couldn’t leave home, or even venture too far from whatever room the phone was attached to the wall in, or you could very easily miss it. And when they did call, you actually had to answer it and talk to them.
Ah, the Good Old Days™. We weren’t so good, we weren’t so old, and we’re usually talking about the nights.
To the point: if you wanted something, you ponied up cash (in some form). Unless the store extended you credit (due at the end of the month) or offered layaway.
We didn’t have silly GPS in the good old days. We had maps. Big maps that when unfolded, completely blocked your view of the road ahead (not much of interest to see there anyway). This resulted in a driving mortality rate of ~75%. This was good because it resulted in fewer drivers on the road.
The good old days, we didn’t have to buy stickers on Amazon, we just made our own stickers by using glue to glue up the ants that crawled on the floor.
Riding down the highway in the back of an open pick up truck comes to mind.
Helmets for bike riding?
The phone thing is weird too. We used to be on a party line. Now I have 1,2,3, Four ways for work to contact me. Luckily, I don’t work with a bunch of assholes. I work pretty much whenever I choose, but stick mostly to 8-5 M-F.
But seriously, the old days - grabbing 8-15 friends, a case or three of beer a volleyball set up and heading to the park. Those really where good old days. Now I just have old days No volleyball in my future.
But there is nothing like sitting on my deck across from the continental divide and playing chess with my wife of 26 years. I’m truly a lucky man. Right now I’m sort of stuck in Denver for another week though. I mis the mountains.
I don’t think you could smoke in movie theaters. Or our family doctor’s office. But you could in airplanes, although not on buses or trolleys. I think trains had no-smoking cars. When I started driving, no one had heard of seat belts–or airbags. But I think DUI was not tolerated, not in Penna, anyway. Helmets for bike riders were unheard of. Cushions in cribs certainly. I grew up without credit cards, although dept. stores had revolving credit accounts. Otherwise cash for everything. I remember pulling into a gas station and asking for a dollar’s worth.
I never lived in a place with air conditioning until I sold my house and moved into this condo four years ago. We used fans and on more than one occasion my father and I dragged a mattress into the back yard and slept there (neither of us was much bothered by mosquitos). We didn’t have any problem parking even after we got a car my senior year in HS, since so few of our neighbors had them. Oh, those were the good old days for sure.
Everyone smoked, even pregnate women smoked, espesially them, to keep off extra pounds that you gained. “Dallas has asthma! maybe it is the Christmas trees.” No, it is probably everyone smoking in a closed up house or car. Cars had wing window vents just to let the smoke out. And a cigarette lighter wherever you sat. Nice cars had 4 or 6 cigarette lighters.
No seatbelts in cars. Smoke alarms in houses, who thinks up this shit? Health Care consisted of, you are 50 years old, how much longer do you want to live? About as long ads your parents lived.
Running water, in the house, and two bathrooms!? Two? Damn, you are rich beyond our wildest dreams. Makes me want to go back in time and eat some lead paint off my bedroom walls.
I remember TVs being terrible. Always messing with knobs to get the picture to behave. And when it broke, which was about every six months, you called a “TV repairman” to come over and fix it.
You could where I lived. My sister took our stepfather to see a movie some years ago, which took some persuading to get him out of his chair. He hadn’t been to one in probably 40 years. He told my sister as they were going in: “Tell the usher that we want to sit in the loges so I can smoke.” She had to break it to him that two of those three things no longer existed, and that the third was now illegal.
Hey, how about those good old pre-penicillin days, when a scratch on the playground could be a death sentence? Even better, those halcyon days of no vaccines, when millions died from the flu and polio and the like. Fun!
Oh yeah, terrible quality. “Technical difficulties” pretty often from the station. Having to be home Thursday at 9:00 or you missed this week’s episode. Maybe you’ll catch it during the summer reruns.
I am truly amazed by the quality of our TV resolution, and the options provided by our DVR. It wasn’t too long ago that if you recorded a show in one room, you had to watch it in that room. Now with whole house DVR, I have many options.
No volleyball in my future.