That’s funny. Most people I (k)new had braces in their teens.
It seems like I see kids with braces in their pre-teens these days. I can only think of three people in my class (of 70 or so students) who had braces.
This. The first wheeled suitcase was patented in 1974. Back then, I remember Mom and Dad lugging heavy suitcases into the airport, bearing the entire weight on their arms.
Yes! My parents had station wagons from the early 1970s until the 1990s, when they stopped being made.
Surprised to not see credit cards mentioned yet. These days, a credit card transaction is often as quick (or even quicker) than cash: insert card, get approval, sign the fully itemized receipt (or in some cases don’t), and you’re good to go.
Back in the 1970s (and even into the 1980s), if the cashier saw you whip out a credit card, he reacted by whipping out a portable imprinting machine, which would have already been fitted with a metal plate embossed with the store’s name/address. He’d grab a carbon-copy invoice set, write your purchase info on it by hand, and set it in the jig in the machine on top of your credit card, and then manually push a carriage back and forth across it. The carriage had a rubber wheel that would imprint the store’s info on the invoice, along with your credit card info. Then you signed it, and he gave you one of the carbon copies and kept the other. If you were paranoid about fraud, you kept the carbon sheet, which had your card info on it; otherwise it just went in the trash.
K-Mart was paranoid about credit card fraud to a degree far greater than anyone else. Before processing the transaction, the cashier would whip out something that looked like a small phone book, except it contained known bad credit card numbers. He’d try to look up your number, and if it wasn’t in there, he’d go ahead with the sale. As you might imagine, this took quite a bit longer than just paying with cash.
Oh, and credit cards didn’t offer any of the perks that you get today - no cash back, no frequent flyer miles, none of that stuff.
Cash was also a pain in the ass. Banks had banker hours, and while ATMs did make their debut in the 1960s, they weren’t even remotely ubiquitous like they are today. Checks were far more popular, and to the extent that checks still weren’t objectively convenient by the standards of today, that might help explain why setting up accounts with stores (which you paid off with a single monthly payment) may have been more popular back then.
I can verify that these two things were still going on in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.
Girls with casts on their forearms were a common sight at my elementary school. It seemed like breaking a wrist trying to do a ‘penny drop’ off of a simple horizontal bar was a rite of passage.
I remember a company party my dad took me to (and probably shouldn’t have). There was a bit of excitement and I moved up to the front so I could see. There were bright lights and go-go dancers doing their thing. I think I had a look on my face like I was seeing god and my eyes were mysteriously covered and I was scooted out of there.
My dad’s secretary resigned to do “a man’s job” for the telephone company. It was a big deal.
In elementary school during recess we used to sneak off into the woods and kiss or just hang out (maybe kids still do that, I don’t know).
And for the billionth time, cigarettes and the smell of cigarette smoke was everywhere.
The drinking age in NJ was 18, so that meant getting it by hook or by crook started at 16 or 17. Plus just starting to drive.
If you got a cut or scrape, mom would whip out the Mercurochrome or Iodine, dab some on and send you on your way.
If you had a cold, she would give you some Vicks Formula 44 and rub some Vicks VapoRub on your chest.
Doctors making housecalls.
You and your brother went to opposite sides of the house and threw them blindly over the roof at each other.
Probably because you were born in 1960. I knew lots of kids in the 60s with braces.
Re-read that first post about braces carefully. 
Yup! And JC Penney “Plain Pockets” jeans too!
Those damn stiff/sticky/slick patches on the inside of the knees.
I was too young, too. Just barely. But if you look at what happened during the Summer of Love, it didn’t end all that well. The idea that anyone can have sex with anyone pretty much whenever creates a lot of friction IRL.
I wore braces in the 60s and the 70s. Plenty of other kids did also, but I believe it was more common in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas than across the country, and probably still so today to some extent.
The music was better, period.
We used to go the library in the 60s and the 70s, and they had books there. When the 60s started men were still wearing dress hats to work, but they were already on their way out.
People definitely didn’t get the same news from newspapers, that’s what’s happening now because few localities have more than one newspaper any more. Growing up outside Washington DC you could tell someone’s political orientation based on whether they had the Post or the Star delivered daily.
The Roadrunner cartoons showed Wile E. Coyote hitting the bottom after falling off the cliff, you could hear the thud, and you saw the projection at the top of the cliff break off and fall on him with another thud.
There were western and WWII war shows on TV. Educational TV was Miss Connie on Romper Room selling you toys.
Maybe already mentioned, Duck and Cover. And school desks that must have been able to withstand a nuclear blast. Home bomb shelters. Government publications mailed to you telling you what to do if a nuclear bomb fell on your house (a lot more of this stuff if you lived in the DC area).
Old 48 star flags and occasionally a 49 star version.
You might find some old stuff around your house with 5 digit phone numbers. Phone numbers started with two letters, and no area code because only the Rockefellers could afford to make long distance phone calls. And a telegram might get delivered to your house because it cost less than a long distance call.
You burned the leaves you raked up in the fall.
In the late 60’s, the FM air waves had very few stations. FM radio stations that did exist and played Rock music were referred to as “underground radio stations”. They were usually on air for a few hours per day, generally after midnight until dawn. If they aired commercials, they were usually read by the DJ.
I started listening to FM regularly in 1971, so unless this happened more or less overnight, I think you are misremembering. Those FM stations in 1971 were just normal stations without the bubblegum music that made up much of AM broadcasts.
Yes, but thank Frith for that tiny umbrella.
Could be location dependent John Mace. I’m talking Chicago, say 1967 ~ 1970. And yes, then there was an explosion of stations.
Ah, could be. That just happens to be the one year we lived near LA (I was on the east coast the rest of the time).