the total multimedia agony to kids in the USA of gavel to gavel coverage of the political conventions on the 1,2 or 3 TV channels that you could receive.
We still have both of these where I live, in suburban Ohio.
Sanitary belts.
Church Keys and other bottle top openers. Followed by flip tops that came off.
Winding a watch.
I’m afraid to ask (but even more afraid to Google it). What’s a sanitary belt?
I had an Atari 2600.
The game controller was a Joystick…with one button.:eek:
Talking about old tech I forgot how to use…
A few days ago I was helping out at a senior citizen’s Tag Sale and needed to make a call using a rotary phone…and forgot which way the rotary dial rotated.
Also, over the winter, I parked an old classic from the 70s, and forgot you need to pump the gas pedal to get it started.
Sanitary napkins weren’t always self-adhesive. Before 1975 or so, they had to be attached to special belts. I’d be shocked if anyone under 45 remembered them - my 48 year old sister never saw one until she gave birth.
Garter belts.
Color TV shows trumpeted as being in color.
Brewing coffee with a percolator rather than with a drip machine.
A March of Dimes drive every January (this may still happen, albeit not like the big campaigns of the 1940s through 60s).
No women undergrads admitted to Yale, Princeton, Notre Dame and other major universities.
Newspapers being typeset by Linotype machines rather than computer.
“Help wanted” ads being separated by gender.
One’s membership in community organizations being a defining part of one’s identity. This is apparent even in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970), where Margaret’s friends are shocked that she’s “no religion”, because how will she know whether to join the Y or the Jewish Community Center?
On a related note, I rarely, rarely hear about people my age (under 35) joining the Masons, Elks, Eagles, and other fraternal organizations. There are so many other options today for socializing, entertainment and belonging (and which don’t have certain exclusionary baggage) that it’s pretty understandable. (One cite: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20071125/NEWS01/711250073)
That ain’t the half of it. We had prefects on the gate at my High School who would monitor girls for the correct wearing of hats and gloves and the Girls’ Supervisor (a nasty old cow) would regularly inspect under our uniforms to ensure we were wearing the correct knickers.
I’m in a band that plays that circuit. Not Masons, but Elks/Eagles/Moose/VFW/American Legion. In the more outlying areas, these are basically drinking establishments, though I’m sure they do a few things related to fraternal or military endeavors. But in my experience, you don’t have to bring any such credentials in order to become a member.
I don’t know that I’ve encountered too many 21-year-olds at these places, but I would say there are a fair number in the 30-45 demographic.
There was a bit of a fuss at a California school about eight years ago when a school official made all the girls lift their dresses for her so she could check that they were not wearing thong underwear. At the prom. The parents were pretty angry about that.
Our gym teacher (boys’ school) was keen on checking that pupils had dried properly when they came out of the shower, which was the main reason he was known as “Bummer” Barnett.
On the multiple grades of gas thing, our local Shell station had pumps for two-star, four-star and five-star leaded, respectively “Shell-mex”, “Shell” and “Super Shell” which were 95, 99 and 101 octane (British system). Few cars needed five-star. In the 1970s, 97 octane became a thing and many cars would run happily on this three-star “Shell Economy” (so named for being a little cheaper than four-star). Other chains also had two, three and four star but I don’t remember anyone but Shell carrying five-star. Unleaded was not current until the 1980s and the station I mainly used then would play an audible warning message to notify you that you were about to fill up with unleaded.
When I was little we had BBC One, BBC Two and ITV with its many local variants. BBC Two was the test vehicle for colour transmissions, and broadcast for only a few hours a day. Channel 4 did not exist until 1982 although the TV set we had from the late 1960s onwards, and its 1970s replacement, had four UHF presets as the country had been waiting for an ITV2 for years. Cable? Don’t be silly.
Here’s one from my childhood I wonder how many people identify with: spending most of the holidays reading books at Dad’s office or Mum’s office, because that was the only childcare option for those slightly weird families which had both parents in full time work.
Is that what an “AAA Trip-Tik” was? I’ve run across the phrase in old novels here and there.
yep!
A “trip-tik” was a long, thin booklet with spiral binding at the top, printed at your request by the AAA office. It was a very narrow map–basically just a strip,showing only your specific route and a few inches of map-space on either side of it.You flipped through the pages as you drove along the route…
I never understood the purpose, since the exact same info was available on any regular map, with no limitation to just a specific route.
Ha! When I was little our television received the BBC. That was it. No tuning required.
The UK. Yes. The roof aerial gets me something like 40+ channels of Freeview digital TV (though, admittedly, only about 25 or so that I can imagine ever wanting to watch), plus enabling access to numerous further subscription based channels.
Also - where I grew up, there was one channel which showed a camera continuously panning back and forth showing a number of dials on a wall. Each dial showed something different - the time, the temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, etc. Kind of a prehistoric weather channel.
Easier than unfolding a full size map in a car.