Like pedal pushers.
Carcoats also usually came with an attached hood and those toggle buttons.
Are there studded tires any more?
We actually had the rival service, SelecTV. I seem to recall ON having to go after people who pirated the signal with home-made boxes. You could get the parts (and even the plans, I’m told) at any good electronics store.
A couple of years later, we got cable in our neighborhood. It had the rectangular box with a row of selector buttons and a tuning dial at the end. That got a workout when I was trying to watch the Playboy channel, which Mom didn’t spring for.
I’d feel let down if I didn’t get to pull a mechanical handle (that looks like an old car cigarette lighter) waaay out.
After I had to plug in forty quarters…
It seemed not a household here in Chicago among my dad’s friends didn’t have a homemade ON-TV descramber in it. All I remember of ON-TV is trying to get a glimpse of Porky’s when my parents weren’t home.
Pennsylvania has some laws in place regarding tobacco sales. One regulation is:
*Prohibits vending machines to be in any place where an underage purchaser can gain access without the supervision of a parent or guardian.
Also, some stores are now requiring an ID check for any/all tobacco sales. This morning at a Dollar General a guy in his 50s was told he couldn’t buy his cigs without ID. I was next in line, waiting impatiently while the argument went back and forth.
Eventually I butted (hehe) in and asked if I could buy the cigarettes with my ID. So I did, then the guy gave me the cash and thanked me.
That’s been the case here in Chicago for quite a long time, though which places enforce it varies. The 7-11 I buy my snus (a Scandinavian-style smokeless tobacco) does not ever card me, but the gas station downtown I go to IDs and scans me every single time. I’m 46. Same happened last week in Houston when I bought a pack of cigarettes for the first time in God knows how many years. I also still get carded at most places for NA beer. Even the true 0.0% stuff and not just the under 0.5% stuff.
I never bought cigs from a machine, but I remember candy machines that worked that way.
Now that I think of it, I can’t remember the last time I bought anything from a machine. Are there fewer vending machines in general nowadays than there used to be, or is it just that I don’t spend as much time in vending-machine types of places?
(When I was a kid, I used to love vending machines, and elevators, and things like that where you could make things happen by pressing buttons. Nowadays, electronic devices like computers and smartphones are so ubiquitous that that kind of experience isn’t as special.)
This reminds me of something, tuning in channels 2 and 13 at the same time. The secret combo to get a mostly scrambled Playboy channel.
I got a two-fer for ya!
Just this past Sunday in the Porta-Cochere a customer was driving out with studs on WINTER TIRES!
I haven’t seen winter tires in 30 years!
NOT off-road knobbies for 4x4s, but winter treads for a passenger sedan’s standard-sized wheels.
They’re all over hotels, still. Just used one last week. My grocery store has plenty of lottery ticket vending machines near the exit. The outdoor mall I was at last week had soda vending machines strewn about (all of them out of soda and water, much to my chagrin). They do still seem to be around.
I have to know where you’re located; I had to look up Porte Cochère – how cosmopolitan!
Peacoats!
– why “pea” coats I don’t know. But they still sell them.
Definitely.
I would think that could potentially get the store clerk in a whole lot of trouble.
Where do you live?
I bought a car two years ago. I decided on all-weathers, in large part because usually if the roads are bad I can just stay home; but summer and winter tires were definitely a possibility. And they’re all over the place on a fast google search.
Walk on a college campus sometime. They are everywhere.
They are still around- there are still snack and beverage machines in hotels and offices and soda/water machines are pretty common at other places. But there’s a difference in what’s sold in them. I haven’t seen a newspaper vending machine or one that sells just candy and gum in years - but now I see plenty selling headphones and charging wires. I’ve even seen a vending “convenience store” in a hotel or two, selling over-the-counter medication an toiletries.
Wiki sez:
According to a 1975 edition of The Mariner’s Mirror , the term “pea coat” originated from the Dutch or West Frisian word pijjekker or pijjakker , in which pij referred to the type of cloth used, a coarse kind of twilled blue cloth with a nap on one side. Jakker designates a man’s short, heavy coat.[12]
We had a service, I don’t remember the name, but it beamed HBO to areas that didn’t have cable yet. The workers at Raytheon (then called Hughes Aircraft) would make counterfeit boxes and antennas that would let you descramble HBO without a subscription. We bought one, which lasted until cable came to our neighborhood, and they stopped broadcasting HBO over the air.
Not according to her. She sold me a pack of cigarettes and I had state issued ID. What I do with them after the sale doesn’t affect her and only potentially affects me if the guy in his 50s is actually under 21.
Similarly I once was flying from Puerto Rico to Florida. The dude in the next seat had a severe fear of flying and boarded the plane pretty buzzed. With drink service the flight attendant sold him one drink, but later refused him another. I ordered a few and resold them to him. When we were deplaning he gave me a big hug.
I was at a buddy’s house in Pittsburgh one night drinking/smoking/etc when we heard a commotion outside. It was 2 am. His next door neighbor had an extension ladder set up against a telephone pole. We went back inside and minded our own business. Cable went out for a few minutes, then came back on.
From that moment on my buddy had HBO. Years later HBO sent him a bill for years of service. He called them, denied doing anything illegal. They stopped sending him bills.
You’re lucky he wasn’t an angry, violent drunk.