Speaking of newspapers: the agonizing wait until the next day to find out whether your favorite team won a game. If your favorite team wasn’t local, they might not have shown the score on the local TV news the night of the game. You just had to wait until the next morning when the newspaper came in order to see what the score was. These days, gratification is much more instant, because you can check the internet for a real-time update, even when the game is still in progress.
I delivered the Arkansas Democrat, an afternoon paper on foot at 12, with my motorcycle at thirteen. Dad helped me on Sundays when the damn thing was delivered at 5:00 Ante Meridian. 
I wish I could purge that damned jingle from my brain after 40+ years. I’ll still remember it long after I’ve forgotten my own name.
I tried to link to that thread when I posted this but
couldn’t locate it. Probably looked on the wrong board.
I had a variation in that I delievered the TV Guide once a week.
And some jokers would scribble (typically on bathroom walls), “For a good time call 358-1212,” which of course would direct them to said recording. See, I even remember our local number for that…
I use a diaper service. I love it! I just put a bag of diapers on my front porch once an week and magically it disapears and is replaced with a bag of clean ones. If I am running low I just make a phone call and more arrives.
Jamboree bags.
A coloured paper bag (maybe stapled or glued at the top) with sweets and games included. It cost maybe 3d.
Saturday Morning Cinema.
Started at about 9.00 a.m. Cost about sixpence.
Included a short animated film, a sing-a-long and some sort of feature (Cowboys and Indians were a staple).
We used to go to the Gaumont (sp) in Wood Green (London).
I also was thrilled beyond belief when my aunt used to come to town and take us to see Norman Wisdom films at the same Gaumont after school.
Highlight of my young life.
I thought they were just called quarter vents. They were so easy for a thief to break into it is no wonder they went.
When I lived in Bundaberg we didn’t even have radio reception 24 hours. The local station would go off air about 11 pm.
Along the same lines as the time (still 303 499 7111 in Colorado) is the use of Long Distance Cards…heck the concept of Long Distance Charges is pretty well over.
Used to be, you could drive into Boston (the “Combat Zone”-lower Washington street) and see the gals plying their trade. they would actually come up to your car window!(price negotiation)
Damn-this nostalgia is getting to me!
I thnik we need to get back to the 1950’s style sex trade.
I miss card catalogs. If I know exactly what I’m looking for it’s faster than the online variety.
I saw several tractor-feed dot-matrix printers in use at the last factory job I had, in 2006 or so. I think they even used greenbar paper.
At said factory job, we made music media and DVDs. There was still a cassette line running one shift. That never failed to blow my mind. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a new album released on tape.
I can’t say I remember the last time I’ve seen someone use a typewriter. They survived printers, but not PDFs.
As long as there are multi-part forms, there’ll be dot-matrix printers. Okidata still makes 'em new:
Seltzer delivery trucks/carts and the glass bottles with that elaborate mechanism for dispensing the seltzer.
My grandfather’s father did this for a living (cart style) when there were still goats roaming around in parts of Brooklyn.
Oddly enough, I read a story in the New York Times not long ago about an older gentlemen that crashed his seltzer delivery truck and seriously injured himself in the process. I think he was the last one…
Sad really.
And quarter waters.
What are “Quarter Waters”?
If you go to Cooper, TX, you can get a handmixed Dr. Pepper or Coca Cola at the drug store there. At least as of 2007.
google is your friend
I thought the number was 867-5309.
A few years ago I was supervising sime soldiers cleaning out a store room. We found a cabinet full of amberlith, rubylith, registration marksand sheets of format shading, not to mention a full set of rapidograph pens. (things used in layout and graphic design in the dark ages)
These soldiers were asking what it was used for so I regaled them with tales of how I used to do freelance graphics before being in the army and how we actually had to do layouts with non-repro blue pens, hot wax rollers and how we used to have copyfit type and go to a typesetter. When I explained to them how my first real job during high school was operating a photostat machinethey looked at me like I was freaking Peking Man. They couldn’t imagine the process because nowadays any bozo with a few brain cells and a laptop can design a product for print.
I have a shitload of zip disks that have pictures that I scanned onto them. Now I need to find an actual zip drive to get my photos back! They sure went away fast, eh?
This afternoon we had a conversation about TV shows we all liked in the past. The younger soldiers were unaware that Saturday morning was cartoon day for those of us long in the tooth. When I told one guy that I knew the morning cartoons were over when Soul Train came on he was like “What was Soul Train?”.
I wonder if the still sell Afro Sheen? (Man, my mother used to have one of those blow out kits!)
Lower Sukhumvit Road is chock-a-block with streetwalkers at night over here, and in recent years there have been plenty during the daytime, too. A favorite pastime of the transvestite ones, to break up the boredom in the daytime, is to accost a farang (Western) male walking with a regular girl – maybe a wife or a girlfriend – and demand to know why he never came back.
There’s a type of candy I recall, colored wafers that came in I think it was a wax-paper tube. I remembered them when I saw “quarter waters” above, because I thought the poster might have meant “quarter wafers,” but no. Does anyone else remember those? Flat discs about the circumference of quarters. They were not flavored in the sense of grape, strawberry etc, but each color did seem to have a distinct taste.
I remember the National Anthem being played on PBS every night, though I don’t think it was snow afterwards…probably a logo or pattern or something. IIRC, the last program was usually Charlie Rose or “Are You Being Served?”
Another thing I remember from the PBS of my childhood: That weird thing they’d do in the mornings and afternoons where they’d have footage filmed by some helicopter flying over a desert or a canyon with the time of day counting down in the corner. I always wondered what the hell that was all about.