Things you remember as a child

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

All of the above except seltzer men. But I don’t remember ice men after about 1945, when everyone got fridges.

Not only coal chutes but residential ash collection. Quite an enterprise.

Many trolley cars.

Car running boards. And rumble seats. Bench seats for three in front. Hand throttles and chokes.

Ration stamps during the war.

Baseball doubleheaders.

Basketball doubleheaders with four teams only one of which was local. Sometimes the Globetrotters vs Washington Generals but sometimes involving two random NBA teams.

Goal posts on the goal line.

The Chicago Cardinals (football), the Philadelphia Athletics, St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators (two instances) Brooklyn Dodgers, and NY Giants (all baseball).

The shock when Truman won in 1948.

The shocks of the two bombs over Japan. My father had s strong sense that nothing would be the same.

A world without TV (as a consumer product).

The first ballpoint pens (awful and expensive) and, a dozen years later, transistor radios (ditto).

Computers that took up a large room, cost millions of dollars, used a small city’s worth of power and needed an army of programmers. Oh wait, some things don’t change.

Drug stores that sold only drugs.

Other drug stores that had soda fountains.

Small corner grocery stores.

Real rye bread (can’t find it even in NY).

My family not owning a car.

College football was truly amateur.

Baseball games over in 2 hours (I recall one in 1:35).

Phones with separate ear and mouth piece.

P.S. I’m 79

42

My school was located right on a highway through town. The only time we ever saw “foreign cars” was the Friday before the road races, when drivers and sports car buffs would drive through town on the way to Elkhart Lake’s annual event. Jaguar XK-120, MG-TD, Triumph TR-2, Porsche 356. The teacher surrendered, and came to the window to watch with us.

43

Being allowed to go to the store or play at the park by myself or with just a friend. All my mom wanted to know was where I was and who I was with.

Banana seat bicycles.

Having to change the channel on the TV by walking over to it and turning a dial. And if you wanted more channels you had to put the top dial to “U” and turn the bottom dial. Related story: having the cartoons interrupted on Channel 17 for their Pledge Drives (I can still picture Goldie in my head!)

“This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System” BEEEEEEEEP

Making Kool-Ade or Freshie with the little powder packet and 1 cup of white sugar.

I still have my Cabbage Patch Doll.

44

Rounded corners on old TV screens. Our Nintendo plugged up to a TV whose input terminals were a pair of screws that had to be tightened down. You never wanted Mario to go into the corner of the screen because a Koopa might be there and you couldn’t see it.

45

horizontal and vertical hold adjustment knobs.

46

Tube testers in convenience stores
Actually being able to buy small parts at Radio Shack
Hardware stores that provided live sockets for one to test light bulbs in before buying them.
Record stores that had listening rooms were you played the record to make certain it didn’t skip before paying for it.
Cars that had wing windows for ventilation; likewise cars that had scoops in front of the windshield to provide ventilation.
Saturday Night Specials for <$5.00
Switchblade knives in pawnshops for <$3.00; likewise blackjacks and brass knuckles
$0.05 beer was actually a thing.

47

Outhouses
Spring houses

TV tube testers.

Getting a lolly-pop at the bank.

Drug stores being roped off on Sundays.

Jingle Jump and Tony the Pony.
Super Balls and getting yelled at for getting it stuck on the roof again.
Silly putty and copying the Sunday comics.

Catching tadpoles and watching them turn into frogs.

All of us kids in the neighborhood piling into the backseat of a car and going to the movies. We’d get a quarter for the movie and popcorn. One parent in the neighborhood would take us, another parent would pick us up.

Skate keys and skating on the asphalt road. The weird feeling that you were still on skates even after you took them off.

Running through sprinklers and drinking from the hose.

The shock of cold when you reached through the ice water to pull a bottle of coke out of the coke machine.

Hoses that gave a ding when you ran over them at gas stations. Attendants, in uniforms. that pumped your gas, checked your oil, and cleaned your windshield.

Getting dressed up to go shopping.

Getting cake and ice cream at a birthday party. Winning prizes for Pin the Tail on the Donkey or dropping clothes pins into a milk bottle.

Sunday drives.

My uncle purposely making his car buck when shifting gears because it made me laugh. Car seats with steering wheels.

My father cussing at the Christmas lights because if one went out, they all went out.

48

I agree that “things I remember as a child” makes no sense.

That’s different - the being sick was during his childhood, while with “I remember as a child” the remembering is being done during my adulthood.

49

Seven Up bars.
Bit-O-Peanut Butter.
Hostess and Dolley Madison snacks - twelve cents.

Sugar Crisp, Sugar Smacks, and Sugar Pops.
Kellogg’s Triple Snack and Puffa Puffa Rice.
Jets cereal.

Twelve-cent comic books with ads for huge toy-soldier or cowboy-and-Indian play sets.

Johnny Seven O.M.A.
Flintstone Building Boulders.

Chuck’s Alley / Al E Khatt and Pansy / Al E Khatt and the Mayor (local kids’ show in Lansing MI).
The First Look (educational kids’ show from Lansing).
Space Angel.
61.

50

“Things you remember [during the time of being] a child” works fine for me. Goddammit, I don’t want this to be a grammar nitpicking thread, but serious question: Is this actually difficult to parse for any English speakers? It seems to me that the vast majority find it perfectly unremarkable and the most efficient way of phrasing this thought.

51

I remember now as an adult that as a child I was often sick.

I remember now as an adult that as a child the cars had manual roll down windows.

52

yep, some years were milder and it didn’t all get used. Some years were more harsh and we would have to buy more midwinter to get through. Usually 5 tons was just right.
keep in mind that the house was built in the early part of the 1920s or 30s, not exactly air tight

53

too late for the edit window, just checked myself, childhood home was built in 1910, I lived there from 1970 - 1989

54

The first Saturday of the month, at noon: the air raid warning siren would be tested.

Catching pollywogs in the pond by the school.

Long-distance phone calls, Upstate New York to the Philippines. Lots of static, and you could hardly hear my grandparents’ voice on the other end. Before making the call the whole family gathered at the phone at the designated time, because the calls were so expensive.

Seat belts in the back seats were a new requirement. Not all cars had them.

The smell of ditto sheets at school.

Toys! Some of these are probably still around:
Super Elastic Bubble Plastic
Lightning Bug Glow Juice
Sizzlers
Battling Tops
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
Spirograph
Light Brite
Super Balls
and… Jarts (Lawn darts. What genius thought that was a good idea? You were supposed to throw them underhanded, but some kids weren’t too coordinated. You’d better watch carefully and be prepared to run! Deaths? Yes - jarts lawn darts - Google Search)

3-speed and 5-speed bicycles

Loose fan blades on car engines - be careful when the engine is running and the hood is up
I’m 54.

55

Garage door openers: I remember when most folks did not have them. I remember regularly opening our garage door manually. It seemed like the 1980s is when they became common.

56

I read your list and immediately thought you must be about my age. I also had my Sizzlers and a Fat Track, had a battle arena for my Battling Tops, the red Robot was always the one to pick, and knew to never look down while playing Jarts. I also had a Schwinn Stingray 5 speed Fastback with the shifter on the center bar (yet somehow I grew up and had kids). I’m also pretty sure that once after perfectly executing the run, jump and throw it down as hard as your 9 year old arms can handle that my Super ball may have actually bounced off of the moon.

Also 54.

57

Lime flavored candies. Very hard to find nowadays.

58

Good memories!

But, dude, the Battling Top to have was Hurricane Hank! :smiley:

59

I was born in 1949 in a small town on the southwestern edge of Los Angeles. Besides the things already mentioned our Sunday afternoons were often spent parked alongside Hawthorne airport watching the planes land. The entire dirt road would be filled with others doing the same thing. The men would sit around and talk while the children played. We were all strangers to each other but had a great time.

 Our creeks were actually storm drains that had not been cemented over yet and had a fair amount of wildlife diversity. Open fields were never fenced. We showed up for gang fights with knives, clubs, black jacks and brass knuckles but seldom actually fought. When we did we seldom let things go too far. Instead of getting allowances we would give our mother most of the money we made from doing odd jobs. 

We knew everyone on our street and most everyone for a few blocks around. We were very seldom in the house before dark. Dogs ran without leashes and were seldom a problem, if they were a problem they disappeared pretty quick. Polio was a real fear for parents, I ignored it and played in polio water all the time. 

Bullies were not tolerated and in my particular area gay kids were not picked on, they were known as sissies and they were respected and left alone. Child molesters were seldom arrested, the parents knew who they were and warned the kids to stay away from them. Date rape was usually blamed on the girls so they seldom reported it. Some things were better and some worse
60

Candy cigarettes.
Plastic paratroopers maybe 1.5" tall, had crappy film parachutes that never billowed like real parachutes do but I still bought them, tossed them up in the air and watched them plummet. That was when we’d go visit my divorced aunt and two cousins on the weekends and go for long walks through Hines Park where we’d pick up cans to return for deposit while we played and then picknicked. Later in life I learned that’s when my aunt wasn’t getting child support; 4 sets of hands can grab a lot of bottles and cans while getting worn out and not needing a sitter.
Oh! I was born in 1970, a few hours before Mariah Carey; our lives diverged at that point.