Bookmobiles were an awesome development in our mostly rural area. The closest stop to us was about a three mile bike ride and saying that like it was no big deal probably also says something about the times.
I drew number 140 in the '72 draft lottery. Yes, many of us were shitting bricks that day.
There were a couple of different varieties of bookmobile. For me, it was a vehicle that came by once or twice a year to sell Scholastic books - but I know people who think of “bookmobile” as meaning “mobile branch of the library for borrowing books”
That’s what our bookmobile was. A branch of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library. They had books crammed on the vehicle (like a Winnebago), but you could also request titles and they’d have them the next week, if available.
My guess is that this sort of bookmobile was more common in rural areas. I was in a suburban area, and lived less than 2 miles from the main branch of the public library. I used to love hanging out in the magazine room, reading bound volumes of Life magazine all the way back to the first issue. Lots of other magazines too. And the entire NY Times collection on microfilm!!!
The internet is pretty good for reading old news, but if you want to reexperience an old decade by reading the advertisements, you need the actual page, not just the scanned and OCR-ed text.
Loved the bookmobile that came to our elementary school yearly. It was about the only time I did my chores well. I needed to earn enough to buy one or two of the good books, with pictures.
Indianapolis is a fairly large city. It had (and still has) bookmobile service:
Did your elementary school send those child life insurance applications home with you every year, listing payoffs? They did at my school, and it always scared the bejesus out of me.
Jeepers, Mom and Dad will collect good money if I lose an arm, or a leg. And, if I die, they’ll be flush with money.
I moved around a bit as a kid, but everywhere I lived that had a bookmobile, it only operated in the summertime. Their stops were usually at the school you attended. Which made sense since the rest of the year you had the school library to get books from.
We never had a bookmobile. But I was in a smallish city surrounded by a giant city. Our town had a library that we walked to when I was a kid. It was a real big deal when you could write your name, because then you could get a library card. It was a long walk for us kids (especially in the summer heat), but it was a cool old building – probably built in the teens or 'twenties. They built a new library near the pool, and its parking area was in an original Twilight Zone episode, so it was still old. I worked there in high school and stilled worked there when they built the new new library down the street. I worked there all through college.
I didn’t check. Machines were always the most expensive source for cigs.
… and candy, and soda, and whatever else. Like at the movies or in the airport, you’re paying for the convenience.
When I got my polio vaccine, I was handed a sugar cube in a little paper cup (like those ketchup cups at McDonald’s). I took the cube out of the cup and popped it in my mouth. Apparently touching the cube with your fingers was a big no-no, so they gave me a second one. I got vaccinated twice, and I got to eat TWO delicious sugar cubes! 
The bookmobile always seemed larger inside than out, like a Tardis. You went in, and there was a whole world of books.
I suppose TB was a bigger worry back then. Possibly, because the job was in the school snack bar and 100% of the customers were my fellow students, they were were worried a latent case might spread throughout the school. For those who worked at MickeyD’s, not so much.
When I went into the navy, they used a PPD test at the AFEES center, presumably because X-raying hundreds of new GIs a day was cost prohibitive.
And I was an 80’s kid. By my youth, the stereotype of the workaholic Japanese culture and its superior products was entrenched enough to inspire the movie Gung Ho, starring Michael Keaton, that directly addressed the Japanese takeover of an American car plant.
Hungry hippos get hungrier if you don’t play often, and I would guess that it’s been a few years?
Remember when The Phone Company used to deliver a new phone book to every customer each year? It was a requirement. Huge piles of the things would appear in apartment house lobbies. Huge forests were felled to provide all that white, yellow, and blue paper.
Do they still even publish a paper phone book?
We still get a local phone book every year. Just for the immediate suburbs.
“Clowns are funny”
I do also; covers several villages. Seems to get smaller every year, though.