I still have a few of the little screw top metal canisters that were replaced by the plastic ones (in the early 80’s?).
“This TV is like my brother-in-law. You have to hit him to get him to work too.”
–Redd Foxx
On my tenth birthday, I received a telegram.
Was at one time, had 4 2400 baud modems coming in 
Some days I really regret ever learning anything at all about computers 
The distinctions between nauseated/nauseous, compliment/complement, uninterested/disinterested. Shall/will has been gone so long I won’t even mention it, and is a different category anyway
Fear of nuclear war.
Even when watching cheesy entertainment like this
Or this
it was all very real.
I seem to recall some giving away encyclopedias – a few pages at a time each week, one page covering one subject. If you missed going for a fill up one week, your encyclopedia was incomplete. At the end of 2 or 3 years, you’d have the full encyclopedia.
When I was REALLY young, the first few years of my life, I remember having to leave empty milk bottles outside the door. In the morning, there would magically be a new bottle full of milk.
The non-cheesy entertainment was, at the time, rather terrifying:
And earlier:
The first time I ever drove a truck (before that an icecream van was the biggest) was when I was asked to take three tons of new potatoes, freshly dug in late January from a farm in Wales to Covent Garden.
Covent Garden is a tourist attraction these days, but then it was a fruit and veg market which opened at 4 am. I got there in the evening and it was very much clenched bum time as I threaded my way through the narrow streets with trucks parked on pavements unloading.
The spuds were all in 1cwt (112lb) hessian bags which were unloaded by hand. I then had to go to another store, where I was loaded with fruit in wooden boxes to go back to Wales.
I also have an early memory of leaving empty milk bottles out, and a milk delivery van coming early in the morning to deliver full glass bottles with foil tops. And the cream rose to the top of the milk!
I must live in a strange place, because I can get milk delivered in glass returnable bottles today (and have for many years while our kid was younger). I live within 20 miles of downtown Boston.
Is this really so unknown these days? I mean it’s expensive, but available. Maybe people mean it’s no longer the default method of getting milk.
You want really terrifying? The 1965 film The War Game, requested by the BBC but considered too scary and subversive. It was finally broadcast by them twenty years later. In the meantime, it had been shown other places and got a reputation. I saw it in the 1980s and was freaked out by its stark and bleak depiction of the aftermath of a very limited nuclear war on Great Britain. This film undoubtedly influenced the later Threads and The Day After. That latter film, for all its impact, still feels like a prettied-up shadow of The War Game.
Part of the film’s impact is its stark, black-and-white documentary style. It really does look as if they shot it after the bombs dropped on the UK. The fire departments and police try to deal with the problems with impaired and limited resources. The imposition of strict martial law itself is scary. But the worst part are the panning shots across the rows of survivors, sitting still or rocking back and forth, their eyes vacant in shock, covered with black stains that might be mud or blood or keloid scars - the black and white helps by making this ambiguous. The people blinded by looking at the exploding bombs. The Day After didn’t show or even hint at any of this.
When I was a kid, phones weren’t used to call people.
They were used to call the places you expected the person to be.
“Hi, Mom! Is Dad there?”
“No, he went to the office.”
“Hi, is Mr. JohnT there?”
“No, honey, your father went to see his brother.”
“Hi, Uncle Al! Is my dad there?”
“Sure… let me get him for you… John! Come grab the phone! It’s your kid!”
Yeah. Back in the day, one question you never asked someone you were calling was “where are you?” - because you knew where they were.
https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/im-asking-you-now
Do kids today understand Bart Simpson prank-calling Moe’s Tavern?
My impression is that it is not widely available and that many “kids today” would be completely unaware of the practice. We had milk delivered when I was a kid (1960s) but I haven’t seen it as an option in any of the places I’ve lived since. Perhaps I could get it where I live, but I’ve never seen a milk truck in these parts.
Okay, I just googled it. It can be done. (We don’t drink much milk, maybe a pint every two weeks)
Agreed. I suspect that younger folks can understand that “The Day After” is scary - but without the active USSR/US rivalry going on, can they understand that even offhand references to nuclear war in (say) “Night Court” evoked a sense of fear and dread.
Reminded me - Ace Comics, yes comic books, had a series called “Atomic War”.
*Those dastardly commies…"
The comics are available at archive.org