# Older people: amuse me with tales of your hardships in pre-tech days that would seem trivial today **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 6, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026 "2011-05-06T23:40:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/361 "2011-05-19T21:04:48Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Now that’s something I miss from the pre-tech days! > > And soda was dispensed from a big metal cooler filled with melting ice. That stuff was **cold**! Nothing better than an ice cold Squirt from a glass bottle on a hot August day. Some stores around here still do that. Love’s is large convenience/gas store chain around here, and I love getting their iced down Cokes. They keep a stash of Snickers (and other bars) in the refridge, too. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/362 "2011-05-19T22:21:34Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > …I’ll throw this in since it was my mother’s story. When she was growing up, the dairy industry had enough clout to make margarine company sell their product white and give you food coloring to make it look yellow like butter. I wouldn’t be surprised if some states do this today… Quebec is the only jurisdiction in North America that still has this restriction. ---
**Author:** ![luv2draw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/46a35a/32.png) [@luv2draw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/luv2draw)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/363 "2011-05-19T22:57:54Z")
> [@Old\_Eel](#): > > There was a thing called “white out” that had to be tediously applied to spelling errors made with a machine called a “typewriter.” White out? My first job if I made a mistake while typing a letter, I had to use an eraser. If I needed copies of it (no copy machines back then), I had to put carbon paper between sheets of regular paper. If I made a mistake I had to put a little piece of paper behind every piece of carbon paper and erase on every sheet individually. Oh yeah, I learned to type on a manual typewriter and had to press those keys hard. 😃 Since there were no copy machines, teachers had to cut a stencil for tests and handouts on a mimeograph machine. Not only did our phone have a partyline but it had a rotary dial. You had to stick your finger in the appropriate number and spin the sucker. The phone was plugged into the wall permanently so you couldn’t walk around the house talking. The TVs didn’t have remotes. If you wanted to change the channel, you had to get up, walk to the TV and turn the dial to the number you wanted. We didn’t have air conditioning in the house. Fans were the summer cooling thing. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/364 "2011-05-19T23:00:13Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > In the late 1960s companies would send you Visa and Mastercards. Not the form saying you could apply, the actual card.That’s how my father got his first visa card in 1969. I remember him saying he would only use it in emergencies. The first one turned out to be when we were on vacation and he decided we needed to buy a canoe. The guy who sold it had to call in the number and wait about 45 minutes to get confirmation. [MasterCharge](http://images.nonexiste.net/image/196514) cards ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/365 "2011-05-20T05:48:49Z")
Back in the early 80s, I was a missionary in Japan and we would write these things called _letters_ to our families. As I’ll have to explain sometime to my children, now a toddler and a baby: You would have to use a _pen_ to write on pads of _paper_, place the paper in an _envelope_ (the shape actually wasn’t copied from the icon for mail, which came later) go to a _Post Office_, buy a _stamp_, write the physical address and send it off via _air mail_. It would take a week for it to arrive, and even if they wrote back immediately, it would take another week for their response, so it would be a minimum of two weeks to get information. My first real job in Japan in 1990 was working for a documentation company, and I set up a translation division. People now will have no idea of the previous difficulty of obtaining information. During the translation process, you frequently ran into blank walls. What does this mean? How does this work? You could only make educated guesses, and work with dictionaries. Everyone has seen the bad results of translations which were just done with replacing Japanese words with English ones. Now, google it and .137 seconds later you’ve got 267,734 hits for reference. This saves hours. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/366 "2011-05-20T13:53:03Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > [MasterCharge](http://images.nonexiste.net/image/196514) cards And BankAmericard until it changed to Visa in 1976. I just looked up the date and am amazed it was that long ago. I can remember the change, and I would have been only six years old. WAY too much TV in those days. ---
**Author:** ![JMLVT68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@JMLVT68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JMLVT68)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/367 "2011-05-20T14:07:59Z")
In 1981, my family went on a four-week RV trip out west. In preparation, my father made reservations at a couple dozen campgrounds by going to the local public library near our home in Maryland and using “Phonefiche,” which was a set of the yellow-pages from all the major metropolitan areas in the U.S. on microfiche, which you may not have ever seen or heard of. At the time, I thought phonefiche was one of the coolest things ever! It took hours, trying to figure out where they were using a bunch of maps, writing down campground phone numbers that he would then call when he got back home, 'cuz he wasn’t going to make dozens of long distance phone calls from the payphone at the library. It was a great trip, but planning it now would be so much easier. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/368 "2011-05-20T14:34:24Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > In the late 1960s companies would send you Visa and Mastercards. Not the form saying you could apply, the actual card.That’s how my father got his first visa card in 1969. I remember him saying he would only use it in emergencies. The first one turned out to be when we were on vacation and he decided we needed to buy a canoe. The guy who sold it had to call in the number and wait about 45 minutes to get confirmation. My father had a _Vista_ card. Then they changed it to Visa. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/369 "2011-05-20T15:23:04Z")
> [@Shirley\_Ujest](#): > > Paying for gas inside the station with CASH. Not only that, but paying cash AFTER you’d pumped your gas! I remember electronics being generally bigger ticket items than today; my friend’s family had a Curtis-Mathes tv set, and had the repair guy out several times to fix it. This one isn’t so old, but for most of my childhood, the radio tuners were wholly analog. As in, you’d turn the tuner, find your station, and finely tune it in as best you could. That’s why you had station names that were whole frequencies- 101, 104, 96, etc… instead of today’s 92.5, 97.1, etc… You couldn’t tune to 101.1, but you could get close to 101, and fine-tune it from there. ---
**Author:** ![Jimson\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@Jimson\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimson_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/370 "2011-05-20T15:56:51Z")
> [@Shirley\_Ujest](#): > > Paying for gas inside the station with CASH. Paying with cash outside. The attendant would make change with a [belt coin changer](http://www.coindispenser.com/mcgillbeltchanger.html). Cause it was cash only. The really skevey ones would wear it just below their belly buttons and ogle the girls while they “made change”. I remember playing the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text only game right before I graduated high school. I thought man if this is computer gaming who cares. Much of my family is in medicine. The improvements in the past 40 years through technology and training are like night in day. They used to call the ambulance a “meat wagon” for a reason. Before the 1970 it was basically a body delivery service. A boy scout knew more about first aid that some of these guys. And no 911. You called the hospital or a private ambulance service. Response times were not the quickest. Now with EMTs and paramedics and life flight we expect that if the person is even half alive when you call then they’ll live. Heck we expect that doctors can re attach limbs. Pre 1980 household DIY was rare except for cars. If you did improvements around the house you used the Sunset Books. Now you can find on line and in print directions on how to do nearly any construction task. With chat rooms and email you can get help from people who’ve done it. If you’re at all handy it comes out pretty good. Back then unless you were in the building trades it usually looked awful. In the 60’s or 70’s if you heard that a neighbor had redone the basement you could count on it being that that awful dark panneling. ---
**Author:** ![jabiru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/371 "2011-05-21T00:57:54Z")
> [@Shirley\_Ujest](#): > > Paying for gas inside the station with CASH. Still do this. After I fill the tank which sounds as if it may be a bit of a rarity in some parts. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2011, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/372 "2011-05-21T02:25:42Z")
There used to be no ATM’s. Stoners had to actually plan a trip to the bank to make a cash withdrawl to buy a bag. ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2011, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/373 "2011-05-21T05:27:20Z")
> [@chacoguy](#): > > There used to be no ATM’s. Stoners had to actually plan a trip to the bank to make a cash withdrawal to buy a bag. When ATM’s became prevalent (mid 80’s?), they were known in certain quarters as “Coke” machines… There were some people who needed a lot of cash on short notice… ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/374 "2011-05-21T21:18:02Z")
> [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](#): > > When ATM’s became prevalent (mid 80’s?), they were known in certain quarters as “Coke” machines… > > There were some people who needed a lot of cash on short notice… There was actually a druggy joke about this back in the druggy days. A drunk, an acidhead, and a pothead get to the bank after it’s closed. They brainstormed on how to get their money. Drunk says, “Let’s get sledgehammers or dynamite and smash it open.” Acidhead says, “Let’s turn ourselves into vapor wraiths and drift in through the keyhole.” Pothead says, “Let’s go to sleep and it will be open in the morning.” ---
**Author:** ![santiago42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@santiago42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/santiago42)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/375 "2011-06-11T07:48:47Z")
> [@Jimson\_Jim](#): > > Pre 1980 household DIY was rare except for cars. If you did improvements around the house you used the Sunset Books. Now you can find on line and in print directions on how to do nearly any construction task. With chat rooms and email you can get help from people who’ve done it. If you’re at all handy it comes out pretty good. Back then unless you were in the building trades it usually looked awful. In the 60’s or 70’s if you heard that a neighbor had redone the basement you could count on it being that that awful dark panneling. Up here in Calgary, I had to use the elevator at the Sears in North Hill Mall this past week. The mall was originally built in 1958 and that wood panelling was still on the walls in the elevator area. Wow, that brought back memories as a kid in the 70’s and 80’s when just about every basement you ever went to had that on the walls. ---
**Author:** ![Fourtyfold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f475e1/32.png) [@Fourtyfold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fourtyfold)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/376 "2011-06-11T13:39:49Z")
Searching through logarithm books in maths class. Payphones that would only take two different types of coin. Missing a favourite TV show, because there was only one TV in the house and someone was watching a different channel. I had a friend at school who’s parents had an early remote, but ended up as a party trick to show to guests as the dog would jump up and start barking whenever it was used. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/377 "2011-06-11T23:06:42Z")
In the 1980s, I was an avid Amiga user. If I wanted to get a color digital image of something so that I could play with it in my computer or print it out, I used the NewTek Digi-View system. This involved a bulky setup with a black-and-white camera mounted on a frame, with the camera pointing downward at the image being digitized. I moved the camera up and down a vertical pole until the source image was properly centered and in focus. Then, using an R/G/B color wheel mounted under the camera’s lens, I took three shots (one with the red filter, one with the green, one with the blue). The Digi-View software then produced a color digital image (maximum resolution 640x400) which could be manipulated with other Amiga software, such as Digi-Paint or Deluxe Paint. I could also print out the image, using my $800 PaintJet tractor-feed printer (180 dpi) and special pin-feed paper that could only be obtained by mail order. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/378 "2011-06-11T23:24:29Z")
> [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](#): > > When ATM’s became prevalent (mid 80’s?), they were known in certain quarters as “Coke” machines… > > There were some people who needed a lot of cash on short notice… > [@Johanna](#): > > There was actually a druggy joke about this back in the druggy days. > > A drunk, an acidhead, and a pothead get to the bank after it’s closed. They brainstormed on how to get their money. > > Drunk says, “Let’s get sledgehammers or dynamite and smash it open.” > > Acidhead says, “Let’s turn ourselves into vapor wraiths and drift in through the keyhole.” > > Pothead says, “Let’s go to sleep and it will be open in the morning.” Reminds me of a Chris Rock joke: “Drugs are illegal, but ATM machines are open twenty-four hours a day. Twenty-four hours a day. For who? Who the fuck is it open for? Have you ever taken out three hundred dollars at four o’clock in the morning for something _positive_?” ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/379 "2011-06-11T23:27:46Z")
> [@jabiru](#): > > Yes indeed. Or a television set which would get a thin, black line at the top of the screen and a similar thin black line at the bottom. Said lines gradually got thicker until the picture was about 2 inches high and the rest of the screen was black. You had to turn the TV off for a couple of hours until the valves cooled down. Oh, I remember this! So annoying when you were trying to watch Batman. ---
**Author:** ![LaurenIpsum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@LaurenIpsum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LaurenIpsum)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/380 "2011-06-12T12:54:28Z")
Near the end of my senior year of high school (1996) my friend and I had to write papers for our economics class. A new library had just opened near us, so we went in and asked the librarian for the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, as that’s the only way we ever knew to look up articles. When she showed us that they had these newfangled computers where you could actually look up and view the article on the screen (and then _print_ it!), I was completely floored. They were all monochrome and command-based, but still. Wow! Listening to music. There are/were very few top 40 artists that I really, really like, so generally if I hear a good pop song on the radio, I only want to buy that one song, not a whole album of other stuff I don’t like. In high school, if I wanted that one song, I would have to see if the music store had it on a CD single. If not, then I had to buy the album for $12 (a lot to a minimum-wage earning high schooler). If they did have the single, then, great! I could buy the single for only $7 instead. Nowadays if I want that one song I can buy it for 99 cents on Amazon. Plus, I often didn’t listen to those singles because I didn’t feel like popping the CD into my machine for only a 3-minute song, then taking it out to put in another disc to just listen to one song, then another disc, etc (yes, the horrors). I sometimes feel like mp3 players are the greatest invention of my lifetime. I remember in the late 80s when my sisters were in college, typing term papers on a typewriter with carbon paper if they needed more than one copy. We actually had a typing program on our Commodore 64, but you couldn’t even call it a word processor. No copy & paste, and it was all “typeover” mode. If you wanted to delete a sentence you could, but it would simply replace those words with blank spaces. it wouldn’t drag all the subsequent sentences back. By the time I was in high school, we luckily had a computer with Windows 3.1 and WordPerfect (and Microsoft Works). My first car (which I had from 1997-2004) only had a tape deck - no CD slot, and certainly no auxiliary input. If I wanted to listen to my CDs in the car, I had to copy them onto tapes first. When I got my my current car (2004) I was thrilled that it could play CDs, but of course now I want it to have auxiliary input for my phone. For now I have one of those FM transmitters that I plug my phone into. My mom just got a car that just takes a flash drive, and it has the menus/music player in the car itself. It was the first time I had see/heard of something like that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026.md?page=20)