Little things you remember, now consigned to the past

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

And a bone saw…you know, in case anything had to come off. That’s all medicine consisted of back then. Heart, reflexes, and amputation.

Here’s a bullet to chew on.

Unsafe toys - Capguns that looked like guns, lawn darts, stamped metal toys with jagged edges and lead based paint. G.I.Joe was a foot tall, dammit! (as was Steve Austin)

VCR’s that came in multiple pieces. The Camera was huge, with a cable going to a chunk of kit with the tape recording assembly (using lead acid batteries), and a third component you plugged the recorder into to get it to the TV. All told, 40 lbs. of equipment.

It’s still a pretty cool shape, you gotta admit. Record changers, load up 4 -7 records and get almost 120 minutes of uninterrupted stereophonic bliss!

62

The smell of some canergenic chemical used to make purple mimeographs in elementary school.
New Math, learning to make “set” for some reason.
Kids in shop class who really thought Nixon had a plan to end the war.
Cheapee Japanese cars.
My Mom’s Chrysler Imperial with push-button transmission and read leather interior.
Atari as a serious computer.
Pong.
My first calculator. Red LED numbers. You had to plug it in. It has a memory (yeah!)

63

S&M Yellow Stamps?

64

I am surprised no one has mentioned film strip projectors that would have a tape that played & someone got to advance the strip when the “ding” was heard.

Also, for my fellow techno-geezers - I had a 300 baud modem that could fall back to 110 baud if the blazing speed of 300 baud was just too fast for the phone line quality. You could watch that Apple ][ form the letters on the monitor at 110 baud. It still was superior to punching cards at the college computer lab (or paper tape).

65

Who fucking knew? greenpoints - AppCard

This news makes me a little sad.

66

Having a movie in class and the fun flappy, flappy noise it would make when the film was finally all the way off the front reel.

Fighting over whose turn it was to change the channel. I just found out this year that my sister would never change the channel because she didn’t understand how the line on the dial lined up with the numbers around the dial.

Waking mom up on Saturday to fix the cheap ass b&w tv which was “flipping”.

For that matter - Saturday morning cartoons.

67

Many families assembled their kitchen glassware from the individual pieces that came in boxes of dishwasher and laundry detergent.

We used to pull big headed nails with two digit numbers on top from railroad ties. One with a 36 on it would have been laid in 1936.

I remember being at a drive-in movie and my dad asking a question into the speaker mounted on the lowered window and the speaker answering back. The narration at the movie was live.

ETA: That “narration” was for something like a nature documentary, doubtful they’d have done it for a multi-actor drama.

68

I had a Sinclair green dinosaur when I was a kid. It developed a leak (it was pretty thin) and dad tried to patch it with a tube patch and melted a hole in it. Just from the glue, it wasn’t a hot patch.

Remember the old hot patch tube patches? Light the glue, put it out and rub it onto the tube with the little roller.

And the Bozo boxing clown that you’d punch, it’d fall over and pop back up.

69

I remember our drycleaner used to do deliveries. We’d have a big white bag of stuff for him to pick up once a week, and he’d drop it off a few days later. My mom would leave the money for him in an envelope between the screen door and the back door.

I remember when the garbage man was a really cool guy who would play with my brother and I (there weren’t a lot of kids in the neighborhood).

I also remember stuff like:

Bicycles with banana seats.
Hong Kong Phooey
HR Puffenstuff
When you could buy cigarettes if you were 10 years old - you just needed a “note” (and in some cases, you didn’t even need THAT!)

70

Another young 'un here (27–no I will not get off of your lawn).

*Glass soda bottles. The place where my mom worked had an old soda machine where you had to lift the lid, select your glass bottle, and pop the top off with the metal thingamahoochie on the front. None of that insert coin crap. You told my mom or her boss you were getting a drink and gave them your money.

*Aerials for televisions (I drove by the house I grew up in a couple of weeks ago–our old aerial is still up on the chimney!)

*Hairspray. It may sound weird, but I haven’t seen as much hairspray as I used to. (Granted, I did grow up during the big hair “boom” of the 1980s.)

*Instamatic cameras. Putting the film in the back was cool. Hated the flashbulbs, though.

*Free air at the gas station. None of this 75¢ crap.

*Actually having a ¢ key on a typewriter instead of an @.

*The cafeteria at K-Mart.

*Video game cartridges.

*I don’t remember the smell of mimeograph paper, but I do remember how easily it smeared. Especially if you’re left-handed and writing on your mimeographed test on a hot day.

*Paper bags as the standard at grocery stores. Only frozen items got a plastic bag.

*MECC games. Thanks to my ex and his wonderful emulating skills, I have the old version of Oregon Trail on my computer, but I still miss Ogden Lake and that game where you could make your own dollar bill and Carmen Sandiego. Where in the world is a Carmen Sandiego emulation?

*Buying 45s at the grocery store for less than a dollar.

*The carbon copy machine they used to use for credit card purchases before scanners.

*Honest-to-god filmstrips in school. I never got to run the projector, though. :frowning:

71

I remember the first electronic watches. You had to press a button to see the numbers. Wonderful.

72

That would be a good swastika for Nostalgia Nazis. :wink:

I remember the first time I saw a small CD section in a store and thinking "Yeah, that’s cool I suppose, but it’ll never take the place of records and cassettes. Within a year there were only a couple of stores that had record sections left, then of course- the way of the dodos to those.

Coffee shops where you ordered a cup of coffee and didn’t have to wait 5 minutes.

Ashtrays in grocery stores, hospital rooms, and doctor’s offices.

Fiddle Faddle with American Indian Chief stickers as prizes.

Sea Monkey necklaces (little orbs that carried actual live Sea Monkeys).

MAS*H action figures and playsets.

The Bicentennial star.

I’d love to zap back to Bill’s Dollar Store in Clanton AL for one hour IN 1979.

New Coke

73

I remember my brother being the first person he knew to buy one- it cost about $75 and told the time for three seconds in bright red digital readout when the button was pushed.

Cap pistols and toy guns that looked like real pistols (no red bar at the end).

The Lemon Twist jumprope toy.

74

Embrace the graying side…

75

I saw typewriter ribbons at an office supply place yesterday and was startled that they still sell them. Yes, I know there are still functioning typewriters out there, but I didn’t know anybody still used them, at least enough for there to be a rack of ribbons for them at a big box store.

Records. Yes, I know, but when I was a kid (late 70s early 80s) I had a toy record player, you know, the Fisher Price one with the plastic records? And now the little brats have toy cell phones and toy CD players and toy MP3 players probably. waving a cane around in indignation

76

Cash registers before scanners where the clerk would press a button for each digit of the price, then either hit the big button for groceries or the red button for meat or the green button for produce. They’d get into a rhythm- tickticktick barrrump, tickticktick barrump…

Getting a soft drink at the gas station by giving the guy your dime, reaching into this big cooler with the bottles submerged up to their necks in cold water, and popping off the cap with the opener on the side of the cooler.

Long distance calls were a BIG DEAL. When the parents got one, we all had to hush right then because the call was long distance.

Getting milk at elementary school in those little cartons,

Gas stations where the “3” for the price was painted on the signs, and only the cents part was changeable. After all, gas would always be thirty some cents per gallon.

Eight track players and waiting for the end of the track before the next song.

Pantyhose commercials on television.

Candy cigarettes.

Black cow suckers.

Slide rules.

Getting into Tiger Stadium for a buck for a bleacher seat.

Fifty cent pieces. How sad to see them go, as a kid you felt rich every time you held one.

Nurses in white hats and dresses.

Having to buy a new license plate every year instead of those tabs to stick on the corner.

Polaroid cameras.

Reading the LP cover as you listened to the record.

Turning off the television and the white dot in the center slowy fading to black.

“The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC” and the peacocks feathers come out to be seen.

Johnny Quest (seem seem sollabeem)

Movie theaters with one screen and a balcony.

Winding a watch.

Gavel to gavel convention coverage on all networks.

Thermos bottles with the glass lining. About twice a year you’d catch trouble because you dropped it and the glass shattered.

Farfel singing the Nestles song.

Game shows on every morning on all three networks.

Setting your car radio presets by pulling out the button so that next time it is pressed, the needle goes where you set it.

Getting coke at the lunch counter where they poured a glass of soda water, added coke syrup, and stirred it up.

Christmas catalogs from Wards, Sears, and Penneys.

The TV weatherman using a marker to draw the fronts and lows on a map.

77

The neighborhood video store, owned by an actual person who worked there, with shelves of actual video tapes. And they weren’t all new releases either. Even one in a small NEPA town had lots of obscure horror films. And that back room that said “Adults only, no one under 18/21 allowed!” on the door? They were gone by the time I was old enough (or at least looked old enough) to go back, but then again the internet had arrived by then so I wasn’t too sad.

“Modern” KOAish campgrounds in major tourist areas (like Orlando) that had communal showers and doorless toilet stalls in the men’s bathhouse.

78

Bah. Hers was the old fogeyest response in the thread!

The irony, it…well, it’s not burning. More like an achy stiffness like my back when I get out of bed in the morning, or the popping in my knees…

:smiley:

79

Cool stuff that your dad made for you, instead of bought:

a picnic set that my dad had made for the family (before I was born) out of one of those cheap 1950s fibre suitcases (the little overnight-sized ones). He cut wood fittings for Melamine plates, cups, fitted holders for forks, knives and spoons, little holders for salts and pepper shakers (which were actually old aluminum film canisters, since he was a photographer!); things were all fitted perfectly, and held in place with snappy elastic garters with metal holdowns. It was a minor work of art, really. It did yeoman service for 25 years or more…

A kickass rubbandband rifle that shot those big red rubber canning jar seals; he made it from a 2-inch dowl for the barrel and a really nice wooden stock, all sanded and finished, with an ingenious trigger mechanism. Woe betide my friends who got within range, as it packed a fair wallop!

80

Disaster drills in school. We had to get under our desks, kneel down, and clasp our hands over the back of our necks.

Saying the Pledge of Allegience, then singing My Country 'Tis of Thee.