My long time partner’s uncle has become a Presbytarian minister, but when we were all young he was the Surfaris’ bass player for “Pipeline.”
Strainger: I remember Uncle Al from Cinti., and his dippy wife Capt. Wendy in her demure, knee-length “space dress.” FWIW, he lived not far from us and was the meanest SOB you ever met. Probably came from all those rugrats clamoring at him all day.
-
“The Millionaire” tv show, where an eccentric, anonymous rich guy sent his discreet man of affairs out every week to scout out worthy everyday folks to give a million bucks to. As a child I was sure every man in a gray suit was the one, come to give us a fortune. Since most men wore gray suits then, I lived in a lather of anticipation until about 8 yrs of age.
-
“Zorro”, the laughably bad tv show. I adored it. My poor parents wanted to give me dolls; I wanted a horse, black cape and sword so I could ride around stabbing people.
-
anyone else remember “Queen For A Day”? Almost makes Jerry Springer look tasteful. Three contestants competed for the most heart-wrenching tale of woe, with the audience voting via an “applause meter”. (One sobbing lady with a child in an iron lung brought down the house. She won a refigerator, IRC.)
-
huge old Coke machines that looked like red coffins; you flipped the lid; the bottles hung from the glass bulge beneath the cap. You scooted the bottle along a metal maze until it reached the opening, where you yanked it upward through the clamshell clasp.
I wasn’t tall enough to get the lid open all the way, so had to prop it open with my head and do it by feel–and always ripped the hell out of fingers on the bottle cap, trying to get the bottle free. -
the dead silence in the room when the draft lottery numbers were called for 'Nam. The facile, greedy revisionist histories of that time infuriate me. By focusing on fads and fashions, it diminishes how dead serious the social and political issues were.
Veb
…maybe my only chance to post this summer.
I remember when God invented gravity. At first, the gravity had little flames on it if it got very strong. The planets looked pretty stupid, and we all bitched until God had Ed fix it.
I remember when the self-replicating hydrocarbons were introduced. Before long, we could barely remember how we got along without them.
I remember when the Straight Dope was on AOL, and the columns were sorted by an ultra-cool graphic that looked like a brain.
I remember when Eve was Flora McFlimsey, and NO ONE knew she was that Eve. (By the way, Eve, I’m still in love with you.)
I remember when I could have used HTML to italicize up there. (Teach the newbies about gl0wworm. Because if we forget history, we are doomed to repeat it.)
And I remember when I was away at school and my computer didn’t suck and I spent 6 hours a day here. I miss this place. I saw something suggested in a sig line that Wally is gone… let it be known that I am willing to kill whoever is responsible if this is true.
School starts again August 12th. See you around.
–John
303 - a tremendous relief. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was to put us through that.
I’ve been lurking around the SDMB for 6 months now, and finally found enough to say about something to warrant a post.
First off, I’m only 21 and I can remember a lot of the stuff mentioned in this thread: Jiffy Pop, leaded gas, candy cigarettes, and that toxic waste bubble stuff (loved it). When I was a kid, we had an old Zenith color TV–circa 1972–that proudly proclaimed that it was “Solid State” (imagine that!!). While many of the things listed in this thread had their glory days a long time ago, remember that some things never die.
But, on the other hand…
I admit it’s nice to reminisce. I don’t have much history to remember, and I still like to think back to the good old days when playing in the dirt was the hallmark of a good day. However, I hope that the truly enlightened readers of The Straight Dope do not fall into the trap of thinking that things were always better in “the good old days.”
Face it, “the good old days” sucked in a whole lot of ways. While the progress of civilization has undoubtedly changed some things for the worse, I can think of countless more reasons why being alive now is infinitely better than living 50 years ago. Childhood disease; giant, ugly, gas-guzzling cars; and the constant threat of nuclear war just aren’t that terrific.
Techonology gives us access to more information, more opportunity, and more freedom in a lot of ways then ever before. The reason our kids play with video games instead of sticks and watch TV instead of play pretend is because that’s how they (and we) want it.
People aren’t worse now, kids aren’t more delinquent. It’s all the same old problems humans have always had and will continue to have…just in different forms. So we’re not worse off than before, and we’re better off in a million ways.
So when you reminisce, don’t forget to appreciate the present, and be enthusiastic about the future. Change isn’t so bad.
(Sorry about the long post, but I love to ramble, and I’ve got months of pent up rambling to get out.)
Very well put and well worded. Excellent post! My parents are just an example of what you mean… I’m 20, and my parents like to think back, but they realize that things were pretty crappy at times. They’re not proud of a lot of things, such as calling slingshots ‘nigger shooters’ and thinking nothing of ‘separate but equal’. It’s how they grew up and, unfortunately, how they were taught. They enjoy the memories, but have a realistic respect for the past. Cuban missiles, 'Nam, LSD, racism, etc… Ask many minorities to reminisce and you could hear a completely different story than those we’ve heard thus far.
Not to throw water on the party. It’s fun to think back and enjoy how privileged you were to live a good life. Things are pretty good now, too. Just think about the good memories our children should have. I don’t think we’re going to screw up what other generations started. For the most part, I think my generation is pretty much on track.
From what I read, most of you are like my parents, and that’s great. My grandparents are different. They think back and want everything back the way it was… No bad news reported on TV, no big changes, no blacks in white schools, etc. That’s sad because obviously they reminisce to think of better times, not to make times better.
Here’s for more memories…
Infamus
Remember the cardboard 45 records that came on the back of cerial boxes as a prize? You had to cut them out. I wonder if any of those have survived.
I have to comment on this. The regular sugar coke sucks!
I live in Louisiana, land of sugar cane, and can’t get a decent coke. Anyone know where I can get a cane sugar coke?
My friend from Lebanon says all the cokes aver there are made with cane sugar and he won’t drink American cokes!
What is the Automat?
What is a LaSalle?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by labdude *
**
The Automat was a restaurant in NYC. Eventually automats were a generic type of restaurant which followed its pattern. Think of it as a giant vending machine powered by humans separated from the customers by a big wall with coin operated windows to get the food out. You looked in the window, saw plate you liked, and put in a few coins to release the window.
I have heard the original served good food. The knockoffs generally filled the windows up in the morning and things got a bit mature by late lunchtime.
The LaSalle was a car. Hardly anyone owned a LaSalle, but evidently every one of them loved it. Go figure.
Tris
An automat was a self-serve resturaunt that was like a giant vending machine that delivered cafeteria style meals. Each item was behind a little glass door, and you put money in to get it out. I’ve never been in one.
A LaSalle was an automobile manufactured from the 1920’s to 1940 or so. The earlier ones are actually one of the nicer looking 1920’s vintage cars, IMO. It was originally positioned as the “companion car” to the Cadillac, hence it was named for another French explorer. It came into existence because there was a large price gap in the GM lineup between the most expensive Buicks and the cheapest Cadillacs. The song would probably refer to one of the later models. By that time, the gap between Buick and Cadillac had narrowed, and LaSalle’s had come to increasingly resemble Buicks, so GM dropped the line as redundant.
Here’s what this 31-year-old remembers…
- “Remember Marathon Bars - about 13 and a half feet of braided caramel smothered in chocolate that stuck in your teeth for a month.”
YES! That was my favorite candy bar as a kid! I got a huge kick out of putting it in the freazer (especially during the summer- we never had air conditioning, just crapy little oscilating fans) and then crunching on it cold. Twas NASTY when it melted in your hands. Apparently, these Marathon bars still exist in England under a different name (my Bristish pen-pal sent me some candy for Christmas a few years back).
-
Speaking of England, I remember watching the original “Tomorrow People” on Nickleodeon, back when the station was new and they weren’t making their own shows yet. I remember “jaunting” sounded like such fun!
-
Another Nick show from back in the day - does anyone remember a biography show called “Against the Odds” or “Against All Odds?” It was hosted by Bill Bixley (of “The Increadable Hulk” fame) it was a half-hour or an hour long (not sure which) and with one notable exception each show featured two somehow-related-or-similar historical figures, like FDR and Elanor, Napoleon and Hitler, etc. The one exception was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This show was the only way this white girl from less-than-diverse Parma, Ohio would’ve heard of him, much less become a fan of his. Damn fine show - if I were a producer, I’d make sure it would air again, or at least be available on video.
-
Never been to an automat but I remember seeing them in Bugs Bunny cartoons and thinking they were the coolest thing. I’d STILL like to visit one if one still exists.
-
How about 8-track tapes, the predicessor to today’s audio cassettes (which are now going by the wayside)? Man, those things were a bitch to cue up.
-
Here’s one noone’s mentioned yet…LEMON PEPSI! Went by the wayside pretty quick like Crystal Pepsi did, but I do remember seeing my dad and one of our neighbors drinking it straight from the bottle on our front stoop on a hot summer night. To get a feel for what a REAL cherry Coke or Lemon Pepsi tastes like, go to some coffee shop that has Torrani syrup as well as fountain sodas. Ask for a large Coke with only a LITTLE ice and a half-shot (a whole one is too sweet) of whatever flavoring you’re brave enough to try. My personal fave is vanilla Coke, but one of these days I’ll be brave enough to try chocolate (I hear that was tasty).
Sorry this was so long! I’ll post this now and head over to the Arabica coffee shop for a vanilla Coke.
Long-windedly Yours,
Patty
When mp3s took half an hour to encode.
When CD-Recorders were an amazing new technology.
420 meg hard drives.
Stereos that could only hold one CD at a time.
Windows 3.1.
Beavis and Butthead.
Booting into DOS to play Doom.
Playing Doom.
Games that actually came on disks, not CDs.
Calvin and Hobbes (sigh).
14.4 modems.
14 inch monitors.
Prodigy (Classic).
Wolfenstein 3D (Although, to be fair, it was out for a few years before I found it.)
“Stupid” bubblegum. It came with cards depicting horrible bug-eyed monsters with warts, tentacles, broken buck teeth, and most of all, huge red-veined eyeballs popping out. The humor was emphasized by giving them ordinary names: “Charles” “Francis” “Inez”.
There was also a genre of T-shirt illustrations showing these huge monsters driving tiny souped-up roadsters with the cylinders on the outside. You had to have been a fourth-grader in the late 1960s to have known about this.
One MAJOR cultural difference between then and now:
In those days cigarettes were smoked everywhere indoors, you had to breathe everybody’s nicotine and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it!
Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and his Rat Fink minions live on.
Remember tie-dying tee shirts? You didn’t buy pre-tie-dyed things like people who want to play hippie-dress-up today. You mucked about with a packet of RIT dye and did it yourself. Each one a unique masterpiece that faded after about three washes. I remember getting the bright idea of reverse tie dying a sweatshirt by tying knots in it and soaking it in bleach.
I’ll bet every male of the right age had a nehru shirt at some point, too. And I’ll bet very few of us had two.
Here’s an odd one that I’m curious if anybody else remembers. May have been regional or something. About the Beatle-Boot era, I would say - I was in junior high school, and it became the fashion to wear taps on your shoe soles so that you went clackety-clackety-clack down all the polished halls. School officials hated it because they scuffed up the floors something terrible and tried to ban them. A lot of parents, like mine, wouldn’t let their kids wear them. The kids sometimes got their comeuppance because it also made your shoe soles slippery, and I saw more than one guy fall smack on his ass.
Double sigh on Calvin & Hobbes, As well as Bloom County, and The Far Side.
Playgrounds just before they had molded plastic and foam rubber covering every surface (What happened to the fifty foot high metal rocket ships!?!?)
Forget DOS, I had a Commodore Pet and an Apple IIe (Sigh, such simple innocent days…)
I was also probably the last generation to remember the record player (Still got Dirty Dancing on vinyl!)
Significant Communist countries.
Ronald Reagan. (Sigh…)
REAL BBs’s, that you had to dial into (usually long-distance). I wonder how many of those are left.
We used to have what I like to think of as “training smokes”. They were available in both candy and toy form.
The former were a very bad pure sugar candy in a sort of off white color with a red dot on the end to simulate fire.
The latter were white cardboard things which when properly puffed (actually, gently exhaled through) would for the first few times emt a powdery faux smoke. Hey, what eight year old girl could resist the sort of debonaire young fellow who “smoked” these babies. eh?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by casdave *
**Torchy torchy the battery boy.
That’ll baffle the young 'uns.
Whitworth spanners, getting rarer all the time.
Magic eye tuners.
Radios without FM on them.
Batteries of strange shapes and voltages.
That humming sound that all “hi-fi s” made.
Drip trays under motor-bikes.
Wing mirrors on de-luxe models only
Prices printed on sweet wrappers.
Bells on police cars.
That’s Wentworth tools. I still have a set AND a pre-unit Triumph, though it was 4 when I was born. Also remember my big brother paying $125. for a calculator when they first came out. Does anyone remember late, late night broadcasts from “KAAY. Beeker Street” in Little Rock? I used to pick it up from almost 500 miles away…
Automats: I’ve seen vending machines based on this priciple showing up in more and more businesses.
Comics: I remember when For Better or Worse had the middle child, and I remember Funky Winklebean in high school. (Not that long ago, but still a while ago)
BB’s. I belonged to at least 10, all were local calls. I remember when it was a big deal to have 2 lines. (anyone else remember TradeWars and Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD))
Also from the Boston Area. I remember Romper Room
I remember the first run of the Transformers, GI Joe, Voltron. (there all being remade)
I remember Chrysler vehicles that said, “Your door is ajar” (No it isn’t, it’s a door) Mine said it for 2 weeks before my dad “fixed” it with a pair of pliers. (and when craftsmen was the only brand worth having)
That’s it for now.