I was in the library yesterday, reading some old issues of Life from the early 1950s.
I spotted an ad for Armour pork sausage, with a big picture of a frying pan full of cooking sausage burgers. Cartoon characters surrounded it saying nice things about the sausage…
One of the plaudits for the sausage was “Fresh as dew!”
I was scratching my head, because as yummy as I think sausage is, I don’t think of fried sausage and a pretty garden, say, in the same sentence. Unless I’m really, really hungry.
Actually, it was Orange Crush I would drink. The peanuts were always Tom’s or Lance. The soda was a dime (and only ten ounces!), the peanuts a nickel.
The other day, I put some Tom’s peanuts into a 20-ounce bottle of Barq’s root beer, and the total cost was more than two dollars.
Remember when sodas came in glass bottles? On the bottom of every Coca-Cola bottle was the name of the city where the bottle had been made. We’d always look to see where our bottle came from. One of my uncles kept a bottle that had “Rio de Janeiro” on the bottom.
If the bottle wasn’t worth keeping, you’d take it back to the grocer for the deposit. IIRC, a soda cost ten cents if you brought a bottle back, fifteen if you didn’t.
I remember when they started stamping “No Deposit, No Return” on the bottles and wondering why they cost more if you couldn’t get a refund.
Remember Continental Trailways Bus Lines? It was a competitor to Greyhound until the big running dog bought them out about fifteen years ago (or so). Their buses were red and white and they usually charged less than Greyhound did over the same routes. Some old Continental buses bought by Greyhound are still in use today! If the destination sign on the front of the bus is below the windshield and not above it, it’s an old Continental bus.
My mother worked for Continental in Dallas in the 70s. She was in the Accounting and Bookkeeping Department running a big calculator called a comptometer. This sucker had 100 keys and was as big as a manual typewriter and twice as heavy! It was electro-mechanical and made a terrible racket.
Remember the Ford Falcon station wagon? We had a 1960 model in 1964. Damn near blew out the radiator trying to drive up Pike’s Peak.
First job I had out of college was at an Accounting firm where 2 of the partners used a comptometer. One was electric and one was manual.
The managing partner usually would get out the company’s books about 4:45 pm every Friday and start “whomping” (that pretty well describes what he was doing) it. I can still hear that son of a bitch.
Sorry I missed your response! You are, of course, correct. (Although in one movie – I don’t recall which – "Slip’s middle name was given as “Montgomery”. But “Aloysius” was the usual middle name.)
“Jughead” Jones’ real name was “Forsythe P. Jones”
How long ago did you stop barefooting? When I was on a holiday in Maine in 94, I don’t think I saw a pair of shoes anywhere, other than the two pairs on the two of us in the car, and the one pair which I bought.
I read the story. It was probably a Carolina Trailways bus. As the name implies, they serve mainly just the South East. They’re owned by Greyhound now also.
Continental Trailways served the whole nation, as its name implies, though they didn’t serve as many small towns as Greyhound did and does.
Memories of my college days–in the SF Bay Area, Greyhound went up and down The Peninsula to San Francisco, but didn’t serve the East Bay where I resided. If I wanted to catch a bus south to my home, I either had to get to SF, or take the dreaded Trailways (which in my memory had coal-powered buses, people clinging to the roof, and a guy in the back row with a crate of live chickens) to San Jose and transfer.
To wrench this back to the topic:
Back when the world was new, financial institutions were divided into Banks and Savings & Loans. You couldn’t get a checking account at an S&L. And banks were forbidden to operate across state lines.
As somebody already pointed out, soda cans were hard to open. On the other hand, all over-the-counter medication was easy to open–just unscrew the top.
You want scary Scribe? My mother could do a creditable imitation of Hitler. She survived the Nazi occupation of Denmark and had to listen to Adolph’s drivel on the wireless all of the time.
Das ist immer alles un aulung rauschmidt undt neimenstintz, ein potzen volksvagen, und schvell pizza.
(Firesign Theater)
Speaking of pidgeon German. How about the sign in the Audio Visual office at Berkeley High School:
Achtung, alles lookenpeepers!
Das instrumenten ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und hittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenverk, poppen corken und blowin fusen mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur geverken by das dumbkopfs. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keep der hands in der pockets und vatch der blinkin lights.
Haven’t coughed that one up in over five years.
BTW, you didn’t have to rig a bladder type fountain pen to squirt. All you had to do was pry the little fill lever on the side while the bladder was full of ink. Voila, el squirto…
I’m 42 now, just old enough to remember buying 10-cent popsicles and 8-cent bags of chips at the liquor store in Manhattan Beach. This would have been before 1970. If you were a kid in those days, a few bucks was a lot!
I wonder if Automats were a casualty of inflation, i.e. you can hardly buy even an inexpensive meal with just coins. Y’know, wrt our (American) currency we’re getting to be just
like a third-world impoverished country…hardly anyone else
in the developed world issues currency notes that aren’t even enough to get you on the Metro. I wish we could move
toward higher value coins like most European countries, but
people just don’t seem to want it.
Mr. Potato Head came in a box containing no arms or feet; only several plastic eyes, noses, mouths, hats, ears; each backed with a sharp point instead of the blunt rods seen today; all were inserted into a real potato that you had to supply from Mom’s kitchen (really)
Cloth diapers
Looking up at the sky: Is it a daytime star/planet? Is it a Russian satellite? Is it the “big one?”
Spaldeens
Slide rules
Heavy wooden desk chairs with huge spring between seat and base, allowing it to (squeak-squeak) adjust to weight shifting.
Paper chains made from folding gum wrappers and linking them together into a long zig-zag tape.
Plastic lanyards woven into long, useless squared-off “cylinder”
One of my best friends across the street had a fall-out shelter; the only one in town. She made it perfectly clear that when the bomb came, only her family, no friends, would be allowed in.
Playing jacks
Lining up with the entire town to take the first oral polio vaccine delivered by sugar cube (well that must be how they got the idea for LSD delivery)
The Electric Company. (Someone mentioned this but don’t forget the Cheesey Spiderman!)
Automan (Nice car!!!)
The Star Wars Holiday Special. (…Shudder…)
MTV and MuchMusic actually played music.
ThunderCats (Mmmmm Cheetara… )
The Jokers Wild
Strech Armstrong (And that green monster dude)
$6M Man - With the ‘distributor cap’ thingy and the buttong on his wrist that would close his hand.
Original GI-Joe with the fuzzy hair and moving eyes.
Turbo Buttons on PC’s
AFX Tracks
There was a doll of a guy that had a see-through chest and when you pumped his back, his lungs would inflate and blood would pump. (Can’t remember it’s name.)
Root Beer flavored Jell-O
Woolco
Real-a-long story books that had 45’s in them and not tapes.
Green Machines
WordStar 2000
P.E.T.s
Pop-Cicle’s were 5 cents.
BATS (A game writen in BASIC that I used to play on an OLD HP portable maching back in 83.)
TRS-80’s (Or any Radio Shack/Tandy computers)
BattleStar Galactica toys. (Before that kid ruined the fun for everyone else.)
Pac-Man: The Cartoon
Wizard of Oz cartoon, (Oh the world of Oz is a very funny place…)
Digital watches on pens that cost about $150
Roller-rinks
2 Darens on Bewitched
Clogs. (And the ones with retractable wheels.)
Star Wars Glasses from Burger King.
4 toys for McDonalds promotions. (One for each week it ran) and not the 12 to 102 toys they have per month now.
And second- and third-place contestants got to keep whatever
money they’d won. Of course nowadays I think the losers get
much better consolation prizes.
)