# Stuff that was different in the 60s and 70s **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 11, 2017, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688 "2017-06-11T14:38:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/21 "2017-06-11T16:18:40Z")
The girls were prettier. ---
**Author:** ![tuesdayweld](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@tuesdayweld](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tuesdayweld)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/22 "2017-06-11T16:29:56Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > In general I think most people were a fair bit more formal, and respectful, to one another. Piggyback: A library was once a place you could visit and experience a bit of peace and quiet. I don’t come across that ‘code of silence’ in libraries any longer - cellphones ring, parents shout across the aisles for their kids…in general, lowered voices inside of a library is now just a fond memory. In a nutshell: People used to be able to shut up. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/23 "2017-06-11T16:39:25Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > . . . You had to drop off your film to get developed at wait at least two days That hasn’t changed. 😉 The big answer is Civil Rights. Blacks and women were much less empowered then, and gays were absolutely disempowered. I remember when my mother wanted to sell some of her own property, and still had to get my father’s permission. Unthinkable today. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/24 "2017-06-11T16:45:06Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > And tube testers (with a stock of tubes) were in stores that had nothing to do with TVs so you could attempt a DYI repair. If you did attempt a DIY repair of a TV you were literally risking electrocution if you didn’t know what you were doing, even if you unplugged it. As far as I know this is still true of more recent CRTs. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/25 "2017-06-11T16:46:17Z")
Drinking and driving? - the officer that pulled you over would sternly tell you that you better drive straight home. Nothing was dangerous - 10 kids in the back of a pickup truck going down the highway? No problem. That is what pickup trucks were for. There were also beer windows. Those were sliding rear windows in pickup trucks that you could open so that you could grab a beer out of the cooler in the back. Personal store accounts - you and your family just got whatever you wanted from local stores, the cashier noted it in a log and you just paid for it in person at the end of the month. You never got a bill. You just knew that you would eventually be cut off if you didn’t pay for it eventually. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/26 "2017-06-11T16:51:26Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > If you lived in a northern state, your car wouldn’t start half the time in the winter. You would have to pop the hood and fiddle with the choke in order to get it to start. More generally, cars broke down/quit running/wouldn’t start a lot more often; but there was a better chance that there was something you could change or add or fiddle with to get it to run again. Depending on whom you hung around with, you might or might not hear “bad words” or explicit references to sex or bodily functions, but you probably wouldn’t hear them in public, and definitely not on TV or the radio, and especially not in “family entertainment.” Tattoos (at least visible ones) and piercings (of anything except a woman’s earlobes) were a lot less common and less mainstream. There weren’t as many fast food places, their menus were more limited, portions tended to be smaller (a Quarter Pounder was a big burger), and drive-throughs weren’t nearly as ubiquitous. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/27 "2017-06-11T16:54:07Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > At the grocery, a customer selects a couple packs of cigarettes from an open rotating rack by the checkout. > Clerk: “You don’t look old enough to buy these” > 14 year old customer: “I am” > Clerk: “OK, that’ll be a $1.20” Or, “I’m buying them for my mom.” Which 3 times out of 4, was true. Parents sent kids to the store for stuff all the time, starting when the kids were about 8, and cigarettes were one of the things that they might send the kids to the store for. Also, kids played outside, even in cities. You went outside, and there’d be other kids, and some game would be going on. Maybe it’d be an organized game like kickball, or kick the can (and you could always find an old can lying around in the streets, and your mother wasn’t hovering around to wipe your hands with Purell), or maybe it’d be a make believe game. Kids really did play “war” and “cops and robbers,” and our parents let us have capguns to make it more real. > [@ioioio](#): > > Calling long distance used to be a big deal because it was expensive. In my family, long distance calls were reserved for holidays, and confirming that someone who was traveling had arrived safely. When my aunt and uncle moved to Indiana, and both of their parents still lived in New York, just before candle-lighting on all the holidays where they couldn’t come visit, we’d all gather at one house for one phone call, because it was cheaper. > [@davida03801](#): > > In general I think most people were a fair bit more formal, and respectful, to one another. Children did NOT call adults by their first names. If you were especially close to a parent’s friend, they might become an honorary aunt or uncle, but you never addressed them by their first names. Even adults did not call very much senior adults by their first names unless invited to. ---
**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:** [June 11, 2017, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/28 "2017-06-11T16:57:38Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > More generally, cars broke down/quit running/wouldn’t start a lot more often; but there was a better chance that there was something you could change or add or fiddle with to get it to run again. I got a lot more flat tires, but maybe I was buying cheaper ones than I do now. Oh, you knew all your friends’ phone numbers without looking. And if you needed to call someone new, you looked in the “phone book.” ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/29 "2017-06-11T17:04:55Z")
Beehive hair styles. When I was in junior high school in southern California, beehive hair was fading away. It was the late 60’s and there were only a few hold outs who wore their hair this way. I believe they were the younger sisters of the girls who wore their hair this way during the style’s hay day. These hold outs would hang around together at lunch or between classes. When my friends and I walked by them, we would whisper “hair” just loud enough for them to hear. They hated us and would push us away. Finally they threatened to tell their high school boyfriends to beat us up. We just laughed. Another funny thing about the hair style was that in the yearbook photos, the girl’s chin would almost have to be cut off in order to get their hair completely in the picture. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/30 "2017-06-11T17:19:16Z")
Bicycles. In the 60’s, they were kid’s toys, with no gears to shift. Adults never rode a bike. Around 1970,that started to change. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/31 "2017-06-11T17:55:00Z")
> [@ioioio](#): > > I graduated from high school in 1968 and attended a state university. I applied to one school and was accepted, with little effort or fanfare. They wanted my high school transcript and SAT scores, but there was no requirement for essays or extra-curricular activities. > > And it was inexpensive. My parents hadn’t saved for my college, but were easily able to pay for the first semester. After that I got scholarships and worked part-time and paid my own way. I was not in debt when I graduated. I graduated from high school in 1966. I got a full four-year scholarship to a private Catholic women’s college in town. The cash value of that scholarship was (I kid you not–_who knows who used to say that on TV?_ 😉 ) $2,800. Roughly $25/hour for a 120-hour degree (15 hrs/per semester straight through). This didn’t include books, and I lived at home. The most expensive private university in town was (as I recall) $60/hour, so that would be a whopping $7,200 tuition for the whole shebang. Re gasoline: when I first left home in 1970 (with $400 in my bank account, never went back home, no $$ support from parents EVER), my roommate and I would put 4.00 worth of gas in her car and drive all week. At .22/gal that was practically a full tank in her big boat of a Chevy. We never actually filled the car, because we couldn’t afford it! We budgeted $10/week for groceries. Minimum wage was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.60. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/32 "2017-06-11T18:24:00Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Or, “I’m buying them for my mom.” Which 3 times out of 4, was true. In the late 80’s, as a late-to-mid teen, my grandmother asked me to go to the store to get some cigs and I was a little conflicted because it’s unequivocably dangerous to smoke (and, indeed, she would die from emphysema), but she just said that if I ran into any questions just say I was buying it for my grandma, and indeed, the clerk didn’t even bat an eye when I bought them with no explanation needed. I’ve never bought cigs before or since. To be frank, I’d feel less nervous buying pot in a state where it’s legal since it’s less dangerous. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/33 "2017-06-11T18:24:47Z")
Keep in mind, though, that $10 in 1970 is $63 in 2017. Other than housing prices, college tuition and health care insurance, I bet most things are cheaper today than they were in 1970, adjusting for features and quality, of course. The big difference is the technology change, especially with PCs, smartphones, DVRs, and automobiles. I used to do most of the work on my cars back in the day, but I pop the hood now, and I don’t even recognize what’s under there. We got our first push button phone in 1967, and we spent hours playing tunes on it as kids. If you needed to know if school was called off (for snow, in my case), you listened to the radio as they laboriously went thru every school district in the listening area. People got TV Guide, or had to look in the paper for the TV schedule. We used to record music off the radio by positioning the microphone near the radio and waiting, patiently, until the station played a song we liked. My buddy across the street and I used to send messages by morse code using flashlight at night. We used to create what we called “slang books” in school. Someone would take a notebook and dedicate one page to each student. We’d pass it around and comment. It was very cruel. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/34 "2017-06-11T18:25:32Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I can remember buying a new paperback book for ninety-five cents. And comic books were twenty-five cents. By me, paperbacks were 75 cents. And comic books had just gone up from 10 cents to 12 cents. You had to remember to plan to get gas. Especially before Sunday, when the stations were closed all day! Tank up on Saturday afternoon, for that drive back home from the cabin on Sunday afternoon. Because the only place you’d find a gas station open on a Sunday was in the Big City, a long ways away. Miss that opportunity and you’d have to go around and beg the neighbors to let you siphon some gas from their cars. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/35 "2017-06-11T18:30:03Z")
Funny, we used to siphon gas all the time without asking. Usually late at night. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/36 "2017-06-11T18:34:15Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > And tube testers (with a stock of tubes) were in stores that had nothing to do with TVs so you could attempt a DYI repair. I remember those. Kids could go play with the knobs while their mothers were checking out at the grocery store. Checkout took awhile because the prices had to be hand entered into the register. The scale at the checkout counter had a sliding scale to make finding the price to be entered quicker. There was usually one experienced cashier who was much quicker at entry than all of the others. Her line was always longer. You’d try to judge whether it was long enough to make it worth while to get in one of the shorter lines, with a slower cashier. You could tell by her smile that she was getting paid more than the slower cashiers. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/37 "2017-06-11T18:35:30Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Funny, we used to siphon gas all the time without asking. Usually late at night. 😃 Yes, yes, there were criminals back then too. Not everything has changed. ---
**Author:** ![Fleetwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fleetwood/32/271_2.png) [@Fleetwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fleetwood)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/38 "2017-06-11T18:40:14Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Ermm, not in the 60s and 70s. > > 65¢ for a pack in 1977. Some regional variations to be sure but $1.20 would be way out of range. That’s only 10 cents different, man. Hardly _way_ out of range. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/39 "2017-06-11T18:44:49Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > I remember those. Kids could go play with the knobs while their mothers were checking out at the grocery store. I’ll have you know that we never played with nobs _in a store_! > [@](#): > > Checkout took awhile because the prices had to be hand entered into the register. I worked a cash register back then for a summer. Not a grocery store, but a book store. You had to figure out your own change, too, which you did by counting up. If someone gave you $2.00 for a cost of $1.53, you gave them 2 cents, 2 dimes, and a quarter. That’s 1.55, .65. .75, $2.00. _ **And** _, you had to look up the tax on a table. After awhile, you knew without looking. ---
**Author:** ![Patx2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/73ab20/32.png) [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688/40 "2017-06-11T19:12:58Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I thought of another one. > > [Film strips](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmstrip) in school > > And they’d wheel a large back and white tv into the classroom to watch Apollo launches School worksheets were run off on a mimeograph machine with the purple type. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-that-was-different-in-the-60s-and-70s/788688.md?page=3)