My dad gave my sister the nickname “Mad Dog” because when she was two she pitched a temper tantrum about leaving the mall. When my dad picked her up to carry her out, she started screaming “You’re not my father! Put me down!” The whole way out of the mall my mom kept saying “Yes, he is her father, I’m her mother” but they did indeed make it out of the mall without anyone questioning them. Somehow I doubt that would be the case today (particularly after the kidnapping obsession this summer).
Well, I can remember one of the neighbors inviting several of us over for television. But that was pretty far back.
One thing that was the norm that is near non-existent today is hitchhiking. I hitched a ride to work every morning for a while, and I hitched around the country for a few months. And there were thousands of other folks out hitching as well. Any Interstate entrance was liable to generate an impromptu party/camp-out. My dad hitched when he moved to the West Coast in the 1930s. I made several local (Texas and Louisiana) highway trips that way. Great way to meet people. :eek:
It wasn’t that big a deal to borrow some household commodity from a neighbor, even if you didn’t know them that well. I can’t easily imagine that today.
And even though I grew up in a big city, I never had housekeys. The door was always unlocked until my parents went to bed, and then ingress and egress were via the tree by the bathroom.
I knew the cops in the neighborhood. Some of them on not the best of terms, but my best bud Charlie and I would hang out many nights with two motorcycle cops, Sal and his partner, at their speed trap on Westheimer. Sal’s brother owned the Texaco across the street from school, and all the cops who passed through were more than happy to tell us all about cop tricks, how to hot rod a Chevy on the cheap, etc.
And when they did pop you, there was a good chance they’d take you down to the station house to scare you for a bit, and then just take you home to let “the Father” mete out some personal punishment. This practice allowed me the opportunity, once, when an ROPD sargeant I knew well delivered me home about two minutes ahead of my curfew, to say to my mom, before she looked up from the pan she was scrubbing, “Mom, he followed me home - can I keep him?” Reaming followed - Ah, what price we pay for our comedic moments!
Drinking while driving was not illegal. If you got pulled over (which happened a lot in long hair days), you could just put your beer up on the dash and it would likely not become a point of contention, even if the SOB was just there to ream you about a license plate light. Once, while hitching through Austin in 1970, the two long hairs that picked up me and my compadre got pulled over on I-35. Must’ve been a slow day as we drew five cop cars; the cops surrounded the car and shot the breeze with us while these two guys in the front seat held their 40 oz. beers. The lead cop finally said, “Well, we got a call that there were four drunk hippies on the freeway, but you guys ain’t anywhere near drunk yet. Head on, fellas!”
Pinball! Nowadays there are arcades in the malls that cater to kids, but before digital games (Pong et al), Bally ruled. And while Pinball machines could be found in some drugstores, you really had to go to pool halls or the bus station to find one late at night. After the liquor-licensed pool halls closed, the Greyhound downtown was it. I’d guess today you don’t find many 14-year-olds playing pinball at the bus station (we quickly learned to go to the restroom in pairs) at 3:00 AM. Hey now, I met Archie Bell and the Drells at the Greyhound.
Well, just thoughts passing in the night.
When my mom used to run out of cigarettes, I’d be summoned and hop on my bike to go get her a couple of packs. I knew the grocery store owner, he knew her, and that was that. I was about nine or ten the first time I went for her. Twarn’t no biggie. Then.
My granddaddy used to drop my sister and I off at the pool about eleven or noon, then come get us when they closed…usually about seven at night. We had a hoot. It was fun not having granddaddy watching us like a hawk. We got to buy “suicides” and “Paydays” without any griping. Sunscreen? Oh yeah…that was called “Baby Oil”.
I remember sitting out in the alley behind our house, during summer days, until really late at night talking with all the neighborhood kids. You could hear moms all up and down the blocks yelling for us to come in. I just can’t see my kids sitting in any alleys these days.
My main recollection of school days was if you got a whipping (and I do mean a whipping) from the principal, your ass was complete and utter grass when you got home, and in my case that meant from my mother with her trusty Fuller™ marbelized hairbrush. Suspension?? Detention?? Hah. Those words didn’t exist. We got our asses busted good, at school, and later, at home, bad.
Yeah…this thread makes me feel like a museum piece.
One of my favorite lines from “Half Baked” is when old-timer Willie Nelson is talking to the young pot heads and asks them if they knew how much condoms cost “back then.” (I don’t remember what time period he was referring to, but it was definitely pre-80s). They said, “No, how much?” and he said
“Who the hell knows? No one used them.” (quote probably not perfect)
I’m totally in favor of condom use, but still…it’s funny.
I agree that many, many things have changed for the better. I’d rather have less racism and sexism than more, and I’m in favor of safety in many cases. Kids need a chance to run free, though, and you can’t protect anybody from everything.
It’s only been possible to rape your wife for the past few years here in the UK.
Before that, you could do it to her any time you wanted.
-
I presume you meant illegal or something rather than possible.
-
Huh?
Hell, I’m 31 and some stuff I remember seems like it’s from another century (Hey,wait a minute…)
I recall my dentist not using rubber gloves or a mask when giving a check-up/cleaning.
Count me in the next Jarts/BB gun party as well.
As soon as we got to the store, my sister and I would run off to the toy section or whatever. Totally unsupervised for the duration.
I actually remember one time when a teacher asked a kid if she could borrow his pocketknife to cut some string that was gving her dull school scissors a hard time! He gave it to her, she used it and returned it and said nothing except “Thanks”.
LOL! A friend who is about your age used to talk about rattling a tin cup on the bars of the Houston jail and screaming to see his lawyer while waiting for his dad to show up. His dad was a security guard, and he knew all the cops so they just laughed with him.
Just a few things I can recall about times gone forever:
-
The kindergarten teacher being able to give the frightened “new” student a comforting hug.
-
Passing a group of teens and not hearing “_uck” used as every second word. And if by chance you did hear foul language, feeling safe to stop and suggest they not use it.
-
Not having to lock the doors to your house every time you left, much less set an alarm system.
-
The reaction of myself and friends discovering a classmate in high school got knocked up…the slut!
-
Knowing the local grocery store owner well enough to charge milk/bread until payday, when short of cash.
-
Having to make it to the bank on Friday before it closed to have cash for the weekend.
-
Knowing the people in your neighborhood well enough to say hello when you see them on the street.
I remember the milkman . . . he’d pick up the empties and leave the new glass bottles—with foil on top—in the wire-mesh container on the front porch.
I remember Dr. Margolis, who made house calls.
I remember sitting on the running board of the family car when I was a kid (no, not while it was in motion).
Eve, I remember putting notes in the empties for the milkman, and I remember the grocery store delivered. Heh, I haven’t thought about that in a while.
When I was in high school, kids in my neighborhood would generally start drinking in bars at 16 or 17. (At the time the legal age was 18.) No one ever carded us, at least in the local bars.
In 1973, I hitch-hiked coast to coast with my girlfriend in eight days. I think it would be a lot tougher today.
After that trip, I returned from San Francisco to NY in a ‘hippy’ bus. I had seen an ad in the paper from somebody supposedly looking for riders to help with expenses on the road. I called, and was told to meet a particular street corner. When I got there, I was astonished to find about 50 other people waiting for the same ride. Finally, a full size bus showed up driven by a couple of freaks. They had pulled all the seats out and filled the inside with mattresses. It was definitely the most comfortable way to travel coast to coast. The most memorable moment was when we were stopped for a smoking exhaust at night on the New Jersey Turnpike. The highway patrolman got on and shone his flashlight down the length of the bus. Seeing four dozen hippies and two German Shepards, he backed out, saying, “I don’t want to see no more!”
My local corner store owner lets me (and others) do this. I mean, I’m probably single-handedly keeping him afloat, what with all the beer & cigarettes I buy there. 
:eek:
Oh… mandatory showers after gym class - where you’d get in trouble if you dared not to shower - would not fly today.
And they actually turned red and were ashamed at having been caught using those words.
I remember the milkman. We got milk deliveries up till I was about 12 or 13.
Well, just want all you folks bemoaning the lost old days to know there are still some irresponsible parents out there who:
-tell their kids to go outside and come back in by the next meal - or bedtime, telling them to use their best judgment, and only to call us if they are going into someone’s house;
-force their kids to bike/walk to most activities, including after dark;
-have 3 sets of jarts, just got our son a 22 for his 13th b-day, and each kid (boy and girls) have multiple knives.
And I’m sure we do a whole bunch of other things folks might consider irresponsible.
I’m not sure whether folks restrict their kids due to danger, or the irrational fear of danger. Kinda like the folks who decided to drive instead of fly after 9/11, forgetting that even with all of the deaths on that date, more people died on US roads that year.
Everything involves risks. We have decided we prefer those accompanying creative exploratory activity, over those associated with oversheltered, passive, organized inactivity.
My kindergarten teacher used to read us Bible stories (1985).
My sister’s sixth grade teacher handed out Gideon bibles at the end of the year (1983-ish).
My grandma would let me sit on her lap while my mom drove us around town (lasted until we got cut off and I bonked my head on the dash, around 1986).
We never ever locked our house doors after we lost the key (1984-1993). Granted, we lived out in the sticks then.
I stayed at home by myself until my sisters got home from school thirty minutes later (1985-1991).
I used to roam the apple orchard next to my house until 11 pm (1991-1993).
We got paddlin’s in elementary school until around '87 when they had to send notes home for the parents to sign if they approved of such punishment. I got my behind whapped but good in kindergarten a few times. By the teacher.
A lot of the schools in my county also didn’t have a/c until the early '90s so when the temperature was above 95 we all went home at noon. Rock on!
Those of you feeling old, note the dates. The times changed only recently. I blame CNN.
A friend of mine, about 48, remembers smoking in her hospital bed after having her daughter.
I too spent my summers away from home. We had irrigation ditches running through town. We’d grab veggies from peoples’ gardens & wash them in the water & eat all our meals away from home. We had cucumbers, apples, raspberries, cherries, plums, etc.
My parents were really protective, we always locked the door at home, no one was allowed in the house if they weren’t there. We didn’t have to wear a seat belt, until it was a law, but if we didn’t, we couldn’t talk in the car.
One of my husband’s cousins is retarded because his mom had him lying on the bench seat of the car, as an infant. She stopped short & lost her grip on him.
I always had a knife with me, it was part of my Indian outfit. My sis & I made breechcloths out of old sheets & wore them with a belt. No shirt, no undies. Ma put a stop to it, when she found out…wonder if it would have been different if we’d been boys…
I guess ‘possible’ in the sense that courts and police even recognizing that it was possible for rape to exist between a husband and wife. Prior to that, #2 was in fact true. A husband could demand (and force) sex any time, and as far as the law was concerned, consent had been given when the marriage certificate was signed. Wives weren’t legally required to have sex, if that’s what the point of confusion was, but there was nothing in the law preventing it from being taken by force.
Older UK dopers may remember this. When I was growing up in the UK in the late 60s/early
70s, my parents’ favourite TV show on a Saturday night was “The Black and White Minstrel
Show”. Yes, that’s right. On BBC, prime time every Saturday evening for years. WHITE men in blackface,
with grotesquely exaggerated white lips and eyes, cavorting madly, rolling their eyes and grinning
and prancing insanely as they danced and sang stuff like “Mammy”. Excruciating. I hated it but my
parents saw nothing wrong in it.
Diving boards…do they even build pools with diving boards any more…?