I believe it was 1972, IIRC. There was a severe gasoline shortage (I can’t recall why at the moment…I was only 7 at the time), and rationing was in effect. To alleviate the incredibly long lines that formed at gas stations when they restocked, they instituted a system where even-numbered plates got gas on even-numbered days, and odd plates on odd days.
During the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s, gasoline was in short supply. Gas stations imposed a system wherein odd-numbered plates could get gas only on odd-numbered days, and vice-versa. There were still long lines at stations.
Some stations used to hang out little colored flags - green indicating they had both leaded and unleaded gas, yellow indicating that only leaded gas was available, and red signaling that they were completely dry that day.
Person-to-person calling was available through the early 1970s as well. I remember a shaggy-dog story that ended with “making a parson to parson call” and no one in my sixth grade class missed the reference.
“Number, please,” is admittedly my mom’s reference and era, not mine. She worked as an operator in her teens, and it involved plugging a line in and asking, “Number, please?” and then connecting the caller (by plug) to the desired number. This would have been early 1940s, Chicago.
- Rick
“Do you remember that episode of James at 15 where…”
Who did you think was cooler: Rosie or Madge?
I realize there are still a few drive-in movies. But they’ve largely disappeared - there are none in or around Houston anymore.
Besides odd and even days, there were incredible around-the-block lines waiting to fill up.
The small town I grew up in, a few miles from where I am now, still does this.
As a young heathen that was how I ran my days. Go home from playing for lunch at the siren, mom yelled for dinner, and in by the time the yard lights came on. Or at least in the yard.
Wouldn’t that be another one?
In by the yard lights? Can’t have the gas yard lamps anymore.
My children have come to the realisation that there is more than one way to pop popcorn outside of the microwave.
First time I made it the “old fashioned” way I thought there were going to have a fit. They insisted I was doing it wrong making it on the stove and just knew I was going to ruin it.
Sometimes at 31 they can make me feel like a fossil.
Rabbit ears and antennae on the roof.
Pulse dialing.
Test patterns is what we called them, Big Girl 
Tubes and tube testers.
Tubeless tires.
What? No Bosco?
Dippity-Doo.
B Batteries.
Flashbulbs.
Peel-apart Polaroid™ pictures.
Theme lunch boxes.
White wall tires (wide ones)
Soda fountains and soda jerks.
Quadrophonic sound.
Reel to reel tape.
Reel mowers.
Bumper jacks.
Ethyl.
Hi-test.
Smokes for $3.00 per carton and fuel for 26.9¢ per gallon.
Fender skirts.
Five and dime stores.
Penny meters.
Esso, Sinclair, Flying A, and Cities Service.
Packard, Hudson, Studebaker, Rambler, and AMC.
3 on the tree.
A & P supermarkets.
S & H greenstamps.
Horn & Hardart-the automat.
Typewriters.
UHF converters for TV channels above 13.
FM converters for AM radios.
Elevator operators.
Metal garbage cans.
Stem-wound watches. (With hands, even!)
The white dot in the center of the screen, when the TV had just been shut off.
Pong.
Space Invaders.
A fifth. No-not 750ml.
Linotype machines and operators.
Suicide doors on sedans.
Penny candy.
Coke syrup-at the drug store.
How about dialing period.
Odd/even gas rationing, yeah, that was going on when I got my DL and a major PITA, as I recall.
Only three TV channels (and PBS if you could pick up UHF)
Hey, there’s one, UHF & VHF.
70s stuff:
I hate it when my finger slips out of the hole and I have to redial the whole number.
I dropped my Coke, and glass and Coke were everywhere.
The tape stretched, and now my cassette sounds warbled.
The bank closed, and now I can’t get any cash all weekend.
I got a flat, and had to walk 2 miles to a pay phone to call my husband to come and change it.
In a pinch, I can just stretch out on the back seat of the car for a nap.
Well, I believe the FBI is all over those Soviets spies posing as UN delegates.
Give me $3 of regular, please.
My dad, in all seriousness: “I’m NOT paying 60 cents a gallon for gas.”
Man, this phone cord is never long enough.
OK, I’ll be waiting by the phone for your call.
He’s not home, and there’s no one there to take a message for me.
I’m up and down changing the channels for my parents all the time.
OK, Bricker, let’s have some clarity here.
How old is a “youngster”? I think of people under 30 as youngsters (I’m 44), and there are probably some here who think of ME as one.
I’ll through in my suggestions:
- How do you use carbon paper?
- Who played Gidget in the movies?
- What is a crooner?
- What TV show popularized the phrase “Sock it to me”?
- Who were Rob Petrie’s coworkers?
I think these would knock out most people under 35.
During the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s, gasoline was in short supply. Gas stations imposed a system wherein odd-numbered plates could get gas only on odd-numbered days, and vice-versa. There were still long lines at stations.
I doubt that would go over well today. People would get shot.
Man. I feel so totally lost here.
Seriously, though - how did people get anything done back then? In the day before cell phones, internet, computers, PDAs, pay-at-the-pump gas, MP3s, CDs…barbaric. 
Of course, I have no idea what half of the things in this thread are (or are a reference to). What were person-to-person calls (isn’t that, like, any use of the phone?) or service station bell hoses? Postal zones? Can I get some explanations, maybe?
And before copiers (for a long time generically known as a xerox machine) became affordable, we had mimeographs.
SnoopyFan, there were quite a few instances of violence associated with the gas lines.
“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”
L.S.M.F.T.
“Double your pleasure, double your fun!”
Soon enough, carburetors. And setting the choke.
I am the oldest(at 48) of three sisters. My middle sister is a pharmacist, and the younger sister(now 43) has two boys, 9 and 2-1/2. One day all three of us, along with #3’s boys, were here at my place, when the pharmacist middle sister’s beeper went off, from the hospital where she works, and so she called work on my phone.
It’s a rotary dial phone. Our 9-yr old nephew watches her dial with a puzzeled expression on his face. After the call is over he asks “How do you DO that?” “Well, you just stick your finger in the hole and dial it around.”
I still don’t think he understood. He may never have seen a rotary phone in operation.
I like to still think of myself as a youngster, and many of these references aren’t all that old. I remember going to Kmart and buying records, seeing my first ATM, first hearing of an answering machine, TVs without remotes and with UHF/VHF dials, Space Invaders, rotary dial phones, leaded gas, tube testers, returning bottles to the grocery store, flashbulbs, and more in the 1980s.
On the other hand, Boyo Jim has me more or less stumped, although some of the things he refers to sound vaguely familiar.
Ask someone what Ipana is.
Or Ovaltine.
Remember “Dialing For Dollars” ? The count is 3 from the top and we’re calling the Springfield area. (Granted this was a local show but it seemed every local station - coast to coast - had a Dialing For Dollars Movie).
Or sometimes when you mention the “Paul McCartney Is Dead” rumor, some people think - I never heard that (as if the rumor happened last week !!!)
NinjaChick, back in the day, long distance calls were, like a really BIG deal and if you only wanted to speak to one specific individual, you didn’t want to waste the call so you would have the operator make the call “person to person” which meant you didn’t have to pay for it if the person you wanted wasn’t there. The bell at the gas station was to let the attendant know you were there so he could pump your gas (and clean your windshield and check under the hood) for you. Postal codes, aka zip codes, were not commonly used until, IIRC, the mid-sixties and the two letter state abbreviations came even later.
Bugnorton now feels very old…
Age 33, got all five.