To expand on the above posts about cars not starting during the winter, my recollection is that many cars came equipped with electrical plugs sticking out of the front grill that you would hook up to an extension cord in the garage to run juice to some device that heated up the engine block. Regardless if you had one or not, <30F meant starting your car a half hour, at a minimum, before you had to leave in the morning.
When I started reading comics there were still reverberations from the price going to 12 cents from 10 cents. The 80 page “annuals” were 25 cents. I read my brother’s MADs, I think they were 35 cents.
In 1965, a pack of cigarettes was 34 cents. At my dad’s store, you could get 3 packs for a dollar. Candy bars were smaller than they are now and cost 5 cents.
Battles were fought between boys who wanted to grow their hair long (bangs and over the tops of their ears) and their parents. Wearing jeans to school was another battle. For girls, it was mini skirts. Girls wore hip hugger jeans. Your parents were always telling you to turn DOWN the volume of your music. Everyone watched Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights.
You behaved appropriately in public or else. I have the dent in my arm to prove it. You spoke quietly in stores, restaurants, libraries and doctors’ offices.
Our elementary school had Christmas pageants and Easter parties.
If your car or motorcycle made a lot of noise, people would make fun of you for having a POS.
Cheap!
It was before my time, but from looking at cover images online, it appears Mad Magazine was 25 cents at the beginning of the sixties. It was 60 cents an issue by the time I started buying it in the late 70s.
We had milk delivered every morning, through a “milk chute” in the kitchen wall. We kids used to hitch rides on the back of the milk truck, where there was an enormous block of ice to keep everything cool.
At Halloween, every single house gave out candy, on both the 30th and the 31st. We used to get four shopping bags of candy.
The Miss America contest was a big deal. Everyone watched it.
Mail was delivered twice a day around Christmas, and even on Sundays. Everyone sent Christmas cards, and it was a big event when you’d get stores’ Christmas catalogs.
We’d go out to play in the morning, and not return until it got dark. Nobody worried.
I remember when paperbacks were a quarter, and comic books were a dime. There were some “trashy” paperbacks that were a dime, but I never bought them.
Cars were stuck on the side of the road all the time, with someone fiddling with the engine or changing a tire. We used to yell “Get a horse!” at them.
Yes, I remember getting Buffalo Nickles, Mercury Dimes and Walking Liberty Half Dollars. Yes, half dollars were in common circulation.
Yup, miss an episode of Twilight Zone, and you’d never see it again. Or so we thought.
I related to just about everything you listed. Wanted to comment on a few things.
Kids outside: you wanted to be outside. To be kept in was a punishment. Outside you were away from parental scrutiny. When I watch House Hunters, I’m amazed that mothers consider it a requirement that their kids be within sight at all times.
The phone: yeah, a phone call after 9 pm had to be bad news. Also, my mother wouldn’t let me phone anyone before noon, so as not to disturb. If I wanted to play with someone, I’d go outside near their house and hope they saw me.
TV stations going off the air at midnight: a film of the flag being lowered and someone singing the “Star-Spangled Banner.” When we lived in Niagara Falls, NY, we got CBC, and watching their signoff, I learned the words to “O Canada.” 
Stores and businesses not being open: especially on Sunday.
Rich people, and also businessmen–for they were mostly men–on expense accounts.
And the money was well worth the trouble. IIRC you could get a couple of bucks for a case or two, and that was a lot of money for a kid back then, being enough for your choice of quite a few cool toys or model kits. Today, if you want money for your bottles you have to take them to a recycling center, and then you still get only a buck or two per case. With today’s prices, that’s like nothing, apart from the fact that it gets you back down to the shelf price for that twelve-pack of beer or 24-count case of bottle water.
A dent? Are you a robot?
Walmart and McDonald’s were not that common. Many mid-sized cities (population 30,000 or so) had neither. There were no Starbucks.
Tires used to “blow out”. It was common to see strips of rubber along any highway. You still see some now, but it’s obviously from big rigs. A blow out on the highway in the family car was a scary experience.
Remember finding 1943 zinc pennies in your change?
I never even heard of Walmart until sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. In the 60s and 70s, it was K-mart.
I was just talking about that with a friend the other day. Young girls were far more natural, often didn’t use make-up, some still went braless, though that was becoming uncommon as time went on.
If a girl was on the chubby but not fat side many guys thought that was attractive; and that was the same for skinny girls with flat or nearly flat chests. There was no such thing as a makeover and girls didn’t dye their hair green and tattoos and nose and body rings were extremely uncommon.
Much of what it now considerable acceptable, even desirable, as in downright hip, was considered cheap forty years ago. I’m not saying it was, just sayin’ :rolleyes: Also, the concept of cheap still existed and there were still young women who aspired to be ladies. All gone, gone, gone…
I thought of an odd difference yesterday as I was walking across a parking lot.
Does anyone else remember needing to watch your step on parking lots due to oil stains? If you didn’t you’d get stains on your shoes (and track them in). Modern cars hardly leak at all. The old ones left stains wherever you parked them.
Clearly you are not familiar with the “Polish death grip”.
I think the whole “stranger danger” thing came into fruition in the late 80s-early 90s, maybe? “Stranger danger” = “helicopter parenting”.
If your parent(s) kept tabs on you you’d never hear the end of it from your peers. Being called out for it automatically put you in the whatever-was-the-nerdy category social pecking order, which back then was considered a VERY bad thing. Yes, I know this from experience.
Parents weren’t your friends. They were your PARENTS. You were expected to be afraid of their wrath; ergo, you learned how to sneak around.
I wasn’t allowed to use the phone after 7PM. If I wanted to call somebody the earliest I could do was was 10AM “because you never know if somebody’s still asleep, especially on the weekend.” My friends were rather spread out within our town, so I couldn’t get in touch via phone and we had something planned I’d have to ride my bike to their house.
[QUOTE]
TV stations going off the air at midnight: a film of the flag being lowered and someone singing the “Star-Spangled Banner.” When we lived in Niagara Falls, NY, we got CBC, and watching their signoff, I learned the words to “O Canada.” :){/QUOTE]
I only remember the low-power stations signing off for the night, and they usually had their logo or that horrible buzzing snow.
All our stores were closed on Sundays until my state repealed their blue laws. Within that, it goes town by town whether they can sell alcohol. My town doesn’t allow it, but the next town over does, but only within a supermarket – the actual liquor store is closed.
When I started smoking (1967?) I popped a quarter in the machine and out came the cigs. Of course, that was in Virginia, a very tobacco-friendly state.
Divorce was also more difficult. California was the first state to enact a no-fault divorce law, in 1970.
Those low cig prices were before the politicians started thinking “we can’t possibly raise income taxes, where are we gonna get the money from? Hey! Lets take a dime a pack tax on cigarettes!” Repeat about twice a year.
In the 60s-70s:
[ul]
[li]No cable news or Hate Radio. We all were working with the same set of facts.[/li][li]Got a research report due? Head your ass down to the library and start going through the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. Then go through microfilm. None of that pussy Google stuff.[/li][li]To play ball, get on your bike and ride around the neighborhood and recruit players. No need for adults in any capacity.[/li][li]It was a big deal the night each year that the Wizard of Oz was shown.[/li][li]Educational films on 16mm or on film strips. Sometimes the filmstrips came with an LP that emitted a beep to advance to the next frame. Sometimes it worked.[/li][li]If you were lucky, you got to clean the blackboard erasers by going outside and smacking them against the building and raising lots of white dust.[/li][li]You went to the gas station to pump up your bike tires. And of course you ran over the little hose that activated the bell to tell the attendant a car had arrived.[/li][li]The girls often dressed really nice for school and we boys appreciated it. But not as much as when the young teacher wore a mini.[/li][li]You had one television in the house and three channels. You would fight over who got to watch when there were two thing on at once.[/li][/ul]
Outside of college campuses and a very few areas of big cities wth either current or recent bohemian/hippie reputations, coffeeshops were unknown, in the sense of an establishment subsisting primarily through the sale of coffee.
As the term was used then, a coffeeshop was usually a casual chain restaurant like Denny’s or IHOP, although they usually didn’t mind you spending an hour or two there ordering only coffee.
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If you wanted a smoke, you lit up a cigarette. Any where and every where.
Employers could ask women about their plans for marriage and children. It was assumed they would eventually get married, leave, and raise a family.
The only people with any power were white Christian men. And there were no queers or lesbians.