Since I had to sell my 66 GTO five years ago, I really miss having a cool older car to drive on nice days. There is nothing like driving a big block muscle car from the 60’s. They sucked gas, handled like crap, the brakes were scary and were generally not very good cars. I’ve taken to collecting diecast cars now and have over 100 of them. As soon as my divorce is over I’m going to start saving up for another car.
Growing up, my parents owned a mountain cabin in Idyllwild, California. I spent a lot of time there with the family, hiking, horseback riding, fishing, and simply laying on my back on a huge rock across the creek from our cabin.
About 5 years ago, I drove to Idyllwild on business. After my meeting, I decided to drive down to the old cabin. I parked, walked down the driveway, and there was a lady in a rocker out on the patio. I said hello, introduced myself, and asked her if it was OK if I simply wandered around the outside of the cabin for a few minutes. She was extremely nice, and even invited me into the cabin (which she had remodeled, and was now her permanent residence) to look around. Any doubts she had that I had once visited or lived in the cabin were erased when, before I walked into the bathroom, I asked her if the “UFO style” heater was still hanging from the ceiling (basically an aluminum dish with heater coils - UFO was my sister’s name for it.) - when I saw it was, she smiled and visibly relaxed. I then walked down by the creek (which was dry - first time I’d ever seen that), and sat on my big rock for several minutes before driving down the mountain.
She asked me to send her copies of old pictures of the cabin, which I scanned and sent to her when I got home.
In answer to your question, the cabin in Idyllwild. If I am having trouble falling asleep at night, I picture in my mind the woods around the cabin and how peaceful it was. Never fails. Relaxes me immediately and I drift off within minutes.
I’m most nostalgic for simpler, less crowded landscapes. Seems the suburban sprawl of Wal-Marts, housing developments, and McDonalds is spreading everywhere.
Lightning bugs.
I grew up on the outskirts of a small town in western Wisconsin, and my parents fields were always filled with lightning bugs. We’d travel with my grandmother in her motor home all over country, and Kansan, Missourian, Iowan, Georgian fields were filled with lightning bugs. We’d catch them, release them, and enjoy the starry fields in twilight.
Now I’m big, and live in the city. I recently went to my brother’s house, in a small development outside a small town on the outskirts of St. Louis, and he had lightning bugs. And it instantly made me happy.
Being gay in the 70s, in either NYC or SF.
And for those of you in the Cleveland area: Euclid Beach.
I remember that smell but I haven’t smelled it in a long time. I grew up in a small town in about the middle-south of Oklahoma and summer rain was the best and even better when it was all sunny as it was raining. The smell of the warm rain hitting and soaking the warm sidewalks and dirt as we kids were running around is definitely one I’ll never forget.
We used to have to beg are mom to let us go play in the warm rain and she would say, “But you’re gonna get all wet.” Duh mom thats the point. She would always give in though as long as we changed into dry clothes on the porch before we came back into the house.
Sadly in southern California we don’t get that warm rain vary often. The few times I remember it happening here I was in school or at work.
A rather recent one for me is video games. All my friends play WoW now. Just 4 or 5 years ago if I wanted to play video games with my friends I would have to go to their house or they would have to come over to mine and we would make an evening of it and hang out and goof around.
Now we each stay home and play “together” online. It’s just not the same.
The decorative & architectural (sp?) styles of America in the Late 50s-60s.
About 40 years ago, my grandmother revisited a house that she lived in as a young married woman. She knocked on the door and, after explaining who she was, asked the owner if she could look around. I hate to admit it, but if a stranger knocked on my door today and asked if he could just “look around”, I’d probably call the police. Maybe I’m nostalgic for when you could actually do this, along with stopping at a stranger’s house to ask for a glass of water.
Not nostalgia so much, but as with other posters, olfactory memory. The smell of Brut aftershave takes me back to junior high dances, with its associated memories of nervousness and hormones. It was the classy aftershave then (early '70’s), and seemed to be the scent of choice for young studs, at least in my neck of the woods.
I saw it in the drug store the other day for about $2.50 a bottle.
I occasionally (very occasionally) wax nostalgic for my late teens—early 20s; staying stoned, Marlboro Reds, motorcycles, casual sex, shooting pool and drinking until 4:00am, going from club to club to hear friends’ bands play, LSD and Hawkwind, crazy pals that I thought I’d know and love forever…all of the wild stuff that was displaced by marriage, family, mortgage payments, sensible automobiles, saying “No” and almost constant sobriety.
I think my generation was probably the last that was allowed to be kids when we were kids.
I miss the motel my grandfather owned in Destin back in the late seventies to mid-nineties. It was called the Sun-n-Sand and we’d go there most summers and clean rooms in the morning, swim all afternoon, and hang out with “the customers” at night. I met lots of people from different parts of the world.
The hotel is gone now. Condos have taken over.
What do you mean? These days you’re allowed to be a kid until you’re at least 30.
Like rolling out of bed at 7:00 in the morning and going outside into the Saturday morning light, without asking the parents because they were still asleep. Parents would not be worried if they woke up a couple hours later and you were gone. You were not expected back until afternoon anyway. You are 8 years old, so you are not a baby. Now days you are a baby to be monitored until you are 18. Maybe 25, maybe 30.
No phones to check in with and no need to. No expectation that anything might be wrong while you are gone. The evening news was 1/2 hour of world events and the daily boogie man/parental concern was not yet part of the now 24 hour news cycle. I’m sure bad things happened, you just didn’t hear about every single instance of rape, murder, etc. that occured far away. You felt safe because you were safe.
Now you cannot be a good parent if you let your child slip out of sight for a minute.
And your children are still safe for the most part today. But you can’t believe it because of the 24 hour onslaught of bad news. Every bad incident around the world, you know about, and they get discussed here on the SDMB. But out of a whole world, would you know about the bad things if you only got local news?
I had my own personal 100 acre woods that I played in . And thousands beyond that I should stay out of. Climbed trees and fell out of them, got the breath knocked out of me. Had a pocket knife, and a BB gun, and bycycle. All that was needed.
Today, none of what was quite normal then would be allowed. Parents would have Family Services all over them.
I agree with Clothahump.
Being able to ride my bike everywhere I needed to go. School, friends houses, the 7-11 for baseball cards. Now if I want a good long,safe ride I have to load up the bike and drive somewhere.
Movies where you can actually see the action. Now movies are either too dark, or the camera is sooo close you can’t tell who is who. Transformers is the most recent example of the camera being so tight you really don’t see what is happening. Godzilla movies of the 70’s filmed there epic battles much better.
Riding in the back of pickup truck or station wagon.
I probably have 30 to 40 gigs of music on my computer at home, and have a 16GB mp3 player, but still have dozens of mixes with unimaginitive titles scribbled on their face in my car, and sometimes make mixes for friends as well.
I also know plenty of people who go a step further and create artwork with their own titles for their mixes.
Stopping for soft-serve ice cream on a warm summer night after Pop’s softball game. He ruled with an iron glare so we never clamored to stop; we would sit tensing every muscle waiting to see if he would hit the turn signal coming up on the stand. If he didn’t, slight slump and oh well. But if he did, the joy that would inwardly surge. Large chocolate dipped in chocolate, with that first bite off the top while the coating was still wet. Yummy.
And when it pours out, I am nostalgic for running around in the backyard in the summer with my brother, getting soaked!
And more philosophically, I am nostalgic for when I thought my whole life was ahead of me, and held so many possibilities. Slight slump and oh well.
I’m nostalgic for the early 70s. It’s a shame that when people think of the 70s they automatically associate it with Disco and the year from 1977 - 1979, when the first half of the 70s had nothing to do with it, so they aren’t experiencing the 70s, like most of it was.
Oh well as they say “Memories make good souvieneers”