We also had a selection of gas station maps in the glove compartment, none of which were ever properly folded up once opened.
I got rid of them before the 2010s - when did Mapquest , etc come about? I was going to have to write out the directions if I used a map anyway - easier to do it online and print it. Which also had the advantage of not ever being a couple of years out of date.
I think Mapquest was available maybe twenty years ago. But it was only available on my desktop computer, not in the car, so I’d get the step-by-step directions from it and then copy and paste them to a Microsoft Word document, that I’d print at something like 24 point, so I could quickly refer to them in the car.
I remember having some sort of map book which included locations of motels, restaurants and other items of interest. This was useful because you didn’t have to rely on billboards to tell you where you could find things. Now, there are signs before exits which list gas stations, motels, and restaurants.available there.
That’s one of the main reasons I liked the Thomas Guides. No folding.
Everything’s closed except Chinese food places and movie theaters 
Also in the Northeast, I can’t think of a single store I’ve ever seen open on Christmas day that wasn’t attached to a gas station.
I used paper tape in my high school computer class, but never punch cards. However, i did vote on punch cards until the “hanging chads” debacle.
I learned electronics on vacuum tubes in high school in the mid 1980’s. Junior’s not likely to run into one of those these days unless they’re into audio.
I was watching Independence Day earlier this week and heard the distinctive clip of a Zippo lighter. They’d probably figure it out if open but I wonder how many teens would recognize a closed Zippo as a lighter.
MmmM. …pickles.
Back in the late 50s, the local corner store also took the soda bottles. When I took them, I’d ask for the deposit back in penny candy!
Kimball tags (ninja’d by Dewey_Finn). I never had to work with them directly, but in the 80s I wrote a few report programs for them for a local department store.
My son is 12, and he walked into a shoe store for the first time in his life, yesterday.
(Damn you, Amazon!)
(Actually he probably was in one a few times when he was 3 or 4 years old, but he doesn’t remember.)
So…his first encounter with the Brannock Device?
Yes! He said “it looks smaller than I expected.” Interesting.
That’s what those are called?
Yep.
Do they still have those big metal ones at the stores? Last time I saw one it was a simpler plastic device.
Yup, that’s what they had in the Nike store on Chicago’s Miracle Mile, anyway.
(But maybe in part as a nostalgic wink, like one wall of 70s-inspired new shoe designs).
Tar trucks.
I was out to dinner with my brother earlier this week and the subject of tar trucks came up. It used to be an open-bed truck or similar with a bunch of ladders, ropes, shovels, debris and junk in back, towing a smoking black trailer, misshapen from years of tar buildup and dripping that sticky stuff as it goes. But the big thing was you could smell it a long way before it came into sight.
You never see/smell those anymore.
When we holiday in Austria we often get a case of beer and we pay a specific “pfand” when purchasing. Taking the plastic crate and empty bottles back to the shop you can pop it in an autoamtic recycling machine that scans it all and gives you a deposit voucher that you can spend in the shop.
On more beer of course.