older than dirt quiz

[jack forsberg]

Someone asked the other day, what was your favourite fast food when you were growing up. 'we didn't have fast food when I was growing up, I informed him.All the food was slow. C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat? It was a place called home, I explained. Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.


By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.


I did not want make a post of how old we are here,but it got me to thinking what is the average maturity of the members of this site.


Older Than Dirt Quiz :::::::::



Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about.Ratings at the bottom.




1. Sweet/candy cigarettes

2. Coffee shops with juke boxes

3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles

.4.Party lines on the telephone

5. Newsreels before the movie

6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])

7. Peashooters

8. 33 rpm records

9. 45 RPM records

10. Hi-fi's

11. Metal ice trays with levers

12. Blue flashbulb

13. Cork popguns

14. Wash tub wringers


If you remembered 0-3 = You’re still youthful



if you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older



If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age



If you remembered 11-14 = You're positively ancient!



Play along and post your score and othere thing you remember Please

[Jerome Stanek]

I remember all those and then some.

Glass milk bottles with cardboard covers in school

round tv picture tubes

duck and cover drills

But we did have a drive in restaurant just down the road that when we where working late in the greenhouse mom would send one of us to get some sandwiches nit very often though. Everybody had to work in the greenhouse.

[George Bokros]

All 14 for me. But I am not that old, I am almost 66 and that ain't old!

George

[Rich Engelhardt]

LOL!
Ohio must be the center for the old timers!

Yep - all 14 and then some for me too.

[Mel Fulks]

All of 'em. Also remember when president Roosevelt visited my second grade class .Not the young one....Teddy

[Michael Weber]

Okay, I get 13 and admit to just turning 67, but what the heck are sweet cigarettes? A flavor or brand? Maybe they didn't make it to the wilds of Arkansas. I still have my Hopalong Cassidy mug I got from sending in cereal box tops. And still have my original Howdy Dooty doll with string activated mouth. Those sure were days of innocence. Hard to believe kids of today will look back at their youth with such fondness.

[Gordon Eyre]

13 for me and yes, I am older than dirt. The only one I didn't know was sweet cigarettes.

[Bruce Page]

I remember them all including "may I be excused from the table?"
Sweet cigarettes - candy cigarettes.

[Dave Ray]

I remember them all, plus buying ice by the chunk to fit in the "Icebox." This from a man who drove a wagon of ice pulled by a horse, also had another man who sharpened anything in his truck again pulled by a horse.

[Steve Meliza]

My meals growing up were exactly like you described and we only ate out on Mother's Day. Sadly, I can only score 6 points which gives away my youthful 35 years.

I wonder if this person would be surprised to learn that once excused from the table kids are to clear the table, put leftovers away, and do all of the dishes without the benefit of a dishwasher.

[Stephen Tashiro]

I remember all except washtub wringers. Never saw one first hand.


We could also add

Steel beer cans that had to be opened with a can opener

The same for motor oil. The metal spout tool was handy.

It was illegal to own a telephone (It was Bell system property that you rented)

DDT powder in big bags

Drivers commonly gave hand signals when stopping or turning

It was customary when you finished eating the slow version of fast food in a car to throw the papers out the window.

[Howard Garner]

Remember them all. And can think of a few that you missed. But then I am in my 70's

Howard Garner

[Shawn Pixley]

Only six. Some days I feel older than others.

[Frederick Skelly]

12, but I had older family who had many of these things.

I assumed sweet cigarettes were either candy cigs (as someone already said) or the imfamous Swisher Sweets. Those were kind of a cigarette sized cigar that smelled sweet to me as a little kid. Dont know if they tasted that way.

[David G Baker]

All 14. I was thinking about the candy cigarettes the other day and how I enjoyed the taste. We also had an iceman deliver ice and a milk man. I remember the ice storage where river ice was cut and stored in sawdust so it would last. There was a horse drawn cart that delivered vegetables. The Fuller Brush and the Watkins man. I went to school in a K through 8th grade one room school in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade. We had a reunion last week for the surviving members that went to that school and the friend that held the reunion even had the bell from the school. Ah the old days.

[Keith Westfall]

13, until someone mentioned candy cigarettes - then I remembered them!

Also learned (and never forgot) that no matter how long you sat at the table, or what you put on them, cooked turnips never tasted good, (and still don't!!) :D

[Bruce Page]

Also learned (and never forgot) that no matter how long you sat at the table, or what you put on them, cooked turnips never tasted good, (and still don't!!) :D
LOL, that's how I felt about Lima beans - and still do!

[Lori Kleinberg]

I got 12 and I am still under 60. I wonder what that means?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I can remember several houses we lived in as kids that had outhouses and the wells for water were outside too. Baths were taken a wash tub. Some homes we cooked on a wood stove.

When we lived in Kemmerer Wyoming we had an icebox for the summer and a window box for the winter. We controlled the temperature in the window box in the winter by opening and closing the window. We heated the 3 room apartment with coal. We had coal bin by the road that had 4' walls, a hinged top and a Dutch door. Open range was the law of the land there at the time. Though we lived in an area of former WWI officers apartments it was fenced and had a cattle guard. In the winter the horses, wild and domestic, turned loose on the open range, would jump the cattleguard and eat from the trash cans. One day my father came home to find me hiding in the coal bin, with top of the Dutch door open and rope noose laying over the top of the trash can. I never did figure out how he knew I was hiding in there holding the end of the rope and what my intentions were? I do remember him muttering something to the effect "You are going to get killed."....

One day I came home proudly displaying my math skills early. There are coal mines there that have been burning according to locals since the 1930's. One day I crawled underneath the one of the old mine shacks and found a wooden crate. I drug it out and correctly divided the 21 sticks of old dynamite (white crystals on the outside of the cloth IIRC covering) by 3. My 2 friends and I each carried home 7 sticks of dynamite to the questionable pleasure of our parents.....

3 years ago after waking up deaf, my wife and I visited there. The old apartments are gone, the old mining buildings are gone. We visited the JC Penny's first home there which is now a museum. The female host there said some the mines are still burning.

BTW.....I answered all 14 correctly......

[Phil Thien]

How about old-fashioned soda machines that dispensed soda in glass bottles?

Rotary telephones?

True 3/4" plywood?

Waiting for the TV or hifi or radio to "warm up."

Darning socks?

Full-service was the only type of gas station?

Home visits by doctors?

Two USPS mail deliveries a day?

[Larry Whitlow]

I got 13. Also remember candy cigarettes, but didn't recognize "sweet cigs" as the name. We had three "fast food" places when I was young. One was a drive-in named "The Comet". The second was an ice cream/burger place called Penguin. I can't remember the name of the third, but it was one of those old style drive-ins where they hung the tray on the car door. Later it became an A&W. When I was older we got a Foster's Freeze. If you watched Soupy Sales on the old Philco, then we are about the same age.

[Mel Fulks]

Cigarette ads with doctors recommending a brand than didnt cause "smoker's cough" .But said nothing about cancer.

[Biff Johnson]

Got a 5 but can't say I'm surprised, the thinning spot on my forehead has been a dead giveaway for some time.

[Paul R Miller]

All 14. Anyone else have water delivered to the house by the bucket a couple of times a week by horse and wagon ... and then the same team (different wagon ) on other days to haul away the "honey". I also collected the entire 200 piece set of car wheels from Hostess potato chips and Jello pudding boxes. Even sent away for the poker chip holder to keep them in. Oh yes and the airplane wheels too. ...... that makes me 64.

[Fred Perreault]

I remember and experienced all 14. I was the next youngest of 5 kids. It was a very rural outer Cape Cod in the late 40's-50's. We had the iceman deliver block ice for our ice box till I was 8 years old, then we got an electric frigidaire....used. We also had a kerosene over wood Glenwood kitchen stove. You've never had toast till you have buttered and mashed it with a pancake turner on the cast iron top af a well seasoned wood stove. The men went hunting for meat to eat, and mom put up canned food for the winters. It was very post war, and the patriotic themes of Victory Gardens, waste not and sacrifice was still prevalent. At that time on the Cape, there were no housing subdivisions, or condo communities. The area was still in the throes of a declining agrarian/seafaring/salt making community. When young folks got married, the usual choices for a "new" home were the old Capes and farmhouses that were still standing, and banking the foundations with salt hay and seaweed in the Fall was commonplace to keep the drafts at bay that would waft through the native stone foundations. We grew up in such a place, and by the early 1950's my dad had a fishing dragger out of Rock Harbor, an old Cletrac crawler dozer, 2 new Cat D-2 bulldozers and my mom operated and staffed the Gulf gasoline station we owned adjacent to the house, as well as the 3/4 acre vegetable garden and 5 fruit trees on the land. I don't believe that we grew up wanting for anything, but it was just the way it was. I imagine that many others have similar tales of simple living..... The pics show our "filling station" vintage 1930's, and then 2 images from c.1951 ......... :) :) :)

[Chris Damm]

I'm positively ancient! I remember all 14. My kids have called me older than dirt for years now!

[Steve Baumgartner]

13 (We didn't have a wringer on the washing machine). My kids call me dirtier than old, however!

[Rod Sheridan]

Funny, I'm only 55 however I remember them all.

Jack, you left out the bread delivery man, just like the milk man except you didn't have to wash and place the empties outside with the change in them for new milk.

Regards, Rod.

P.S. It took a long time for my kids to believe that we only had two TV stations, CBC English and French, it was a big deal when we got a third station, a local english one.

[Jim Creech]

Like so many others I remember them all plus some. I recall hearing on the radio that if I go outside one particular night and watch the sky I would see Sputknik pass overhead. This I did and was amazed. Today I am a consultant for NASA and when I mention this to the younger crowd they just say "Man, that is ancient history".

[Lee Schierer]

Only my older sister is older than dirt, I scored 14.

I also remember:

little wax pop bottles containing flavored water,

drive ins where the car hop hooked a tray to your window,

little juke box players at your table with flip charts listing the tunes,

frosted mugs of root beer,

black cow sodas,

hula hoops,

bubble gum baseball cards,

using baseball cards and clothes pins to make you bike sound like a motor cycle,

seeing a B-36 fly over

.....and lots of other stuff.

[John Pratt]

I remember 11 of 14 and I'm only 49. I think maybe some of these things may be regional and based on where you grew up. I definitely remember helping do the laundry in the washtub and cranking the wringer till I thought my arms would fall off. The dryer was the clothes line behind the house.

1. What is a coffee shop with a juke box? sounds like the precursor to starbucks. Growing up I don't know anyone who had time to sit around a coffee shop when there was work to do. I do remember the local diner where people would sometimes congregate and tell stories and everyone knew everyone.

2. I'm not old enough to remember news reels before movies, but then I didn't get to the theater much as a kid.

3. I don't remember home delivery of milk either because getting milk meant going to the barn and getting the milk from the source.

[David Weaver]

I've got 7 of them with personal experience. A lot of them I wouldn't have seen at my age if my parents and grandparents had any tolerance at all for throwing things out (they don't like to throw things away, though they're not hoarders and don't have lots of junk, they just don't buy much and don't turn much over).

Most people who had any kind of money in their family had a console hi-fi when I was a kid. Now you don't see them much. And most grandparents still had a wringer washer stowed somewhere to wash things they didn't want to put in their "good" washer.

[Jason Roehl]

13, until someone mentioned candy cigarettes - then I remembered them!

Also learned (and never forgot) that no matter how long you sat at the table, or what you put on them, cooked turnips never tasted good, (and still don't!!) :D


LOL, that's how I felt about Lima beans - and still do!

My brothers--turnips and lima beans---blech! There are many things I didn't care for as a kid that my parents made me eat. Most of them I now eat and even enjoy, but there are a few that are just not fit for human consumption.

I'm (only?!) 39, and I got six. I'm aware of more on the list, but don't know that I've ever seen or experienced them firsthand. As a kid, we did have a alternative to sitting at the table until we liked the food--we could be excused, but then anything left on our plate went in the fridge and we got it for breakfast the next day.

[Kevin Bourque]

I can remember going to see the Phillies back when all the men wore ties and hats to the game. Nobody would ever think of leaving their trash on the ground like fans do today.

[Joe Bradshaw]

I got thirteen out of the fourteen. I was raised on a farm and we had our own milkcow.

[David Helm]

Got all fourteen. When talking about records you forgot about 78 rpm. Was ten yo when we got TV, and the screen was round like an oscilloscope. Turnips are definitely an adult taste. My mother would try to fool us by cutting them the same size, boiling them with potatoes and serve them together . . . didn't work! My favorite vegetable as a kid was Lima Beans (mature but still green, boiled, salted and buttered). Still love them today but can't get them. The growing season in the Maritime Northwest is too short. As a teenager I actually worked as a milkman (helper). Don't think I'm old yet, but I can see old from where I stand.

[Christopher Collins]

I'm only 33, but I grew up in rural Vermont (there really is no urban Vermont), which is like it's own little world, even today. There are parts of Vermont where you can still get milk delivered if the farm is pretty close (usually a service only provided to old-timers who've been customers and neighbors their whole lives, but it's apparently making a comeback), where people still plough fields with draft horses etc... And they aren't Amish or anything, and not doing it to impress tourists (tresspassers beware!), just old fashioned, and a few hippies who decided to let the modern world pass them by. Ironically, I also just read that Vermont also has the most high speed internet of any state in the nation.

When I was a kid I think our phone number was 5 digits for local calls. Probably one of the last telephone exchanges in the country still using that system.
I absolutely remember candy cigarettes and "Big League Chew", but I also remember when it was outlawed due to parental outrage.

[Roger Newby]

78 rpm records
giving the operator the number you wanted to call.........ours was 1908J and the neighbor was 1908W
I dated the daughter of the guy that invented dirt!

[Larry Heflin]

13 of 14 - never saw news reels. But along with delivery of milk and bread we also had the dry cleaners man pick up and deliver once or twice a week. Maybe a local thing but we also had the Charle's Chips truck drive by a couple times a week. You had to stop him if you wanted chips or pretzels.

[Jim Rimmer]

13 1/2 - Home delivery of milk but in cardboard cartons. We saved the opening tab for use as "money" at a toy auction held on Saturdays.

I remember the newsreels along with a cartoon. Saturday afternoon there was a serial of some kind. And we weren't concerned about when the movie started; you just went in and started watching. When it was over you waited for it to start again and watched to the point at which you had come in. Some of the movies that were real mysteries would advertise that no one would be seated after the movie started.

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.

[glenn bradley]

Uh-oh, I got 'em all . . . .

Newsreels, a cartoon and the movie-house manager picking the other half of your ticket stub out of a bowl so you won a prize . . . then the movie (or two). As to glass milk bottles with cardboard stoppers . .. don't forget the bakery truck. We kids would come running when we heard the bakery truck whistle . . . mmmm warm donuts; is there anything they can't cure when you're a kid?

[Dave Anderson NH]

Got all 14. Not a surprise really. Went to 1st grade in a 2 story brick 4 room school house. Our first TV was a DuMont bought when I was in 1st grade. I remember helping bale and stack hay at the dairy farm across the street owned by Grover Gerlock for $.15 per hour at 12 years old and coming home sweaty and itching everywhere during the second haying in August. I remember when Mr. Gerlock got his first milking machine and how we all thought it was an amazing thing and so much faster than milking by hand. I remember being whacked by teachers or having a blackboard eraser thrown at my head if I was less than attentive, polite, and doing what I was supposed to do. I remember the big Penfield (NY) Halloween crisis of 1964 when we had to go to the next county to steal an outhouse to put under the traffic light in the center of town (a town tradition since time immemorial). We had gone by this time (1966) from a sleepy farm community of 2000 spread out over a 10 x 10 mile are to 18000 people of whom 70% were under 18 years old. Suburbia had arrived.

I also remember my girlfriends mother picking a combination of rock salt and birdshot out of my back one Halloween night as I lay face down on their formica topped kitchen table. I was a little slow running away and had tripped over a wire garden fence after her brother, a couple friends, and I had been throwing apples at a farmer's barn and disturbing the cattle and horses.

[Eric DeSilva]

I'm 48 and went 14 for 14. Heck, my sister in Ithaca, NY still gets milk delivered in bottles from the dairy.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Along with all the other things listed, you can add watching mother or grandmother using their pedal sewing machine; watching father or grandfather crank the truck to get it started; having parents or grandparents tell you to go pour this (toxic) stuff into the hole in the ground or the ditch; wearing homemade clothes instead of store-bought clothes; and going to the little mom & pop grocery store to buy a bag of candy with a nickel and coming home with change!

[Rick Christopherson]

I'm wondering how many people are not misremembering seeing newsreels because they later saw them on TV? They started disappearing in the late 50's and early 60's when TVs became more common, and were stopped altogether by 1967. It's the only thing on the list I don't actually remember seeing first-hand. I knew about them when I was a kid, but never actually saw one in a theater.

The wringer/washer would have been next, except I do recall that my aunt still used one, even though my grandparents already had a modern washer dryer by then.

I grew up in the suburbs, so party lines were nonexistent by then. One day I picked up the phone at my grandparent's house and heard someone talking, When I started asking questions about why they were on my grandparent's phone, that's when I got an education of what a party line was. They were not amused.

[Dave Sheldrake]

6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])

Indeed :) there was always a narrator at "closedown" saying "And please don't forget to turn off the set" and as I kid I then worried that Mum and Dad would forget and burn the house down.


7. Peashooters

Although you can still buy them here using them against unwitting members of the public can result in an assault charge.

My childhood was great, off to the local downland, pitch a tent, 5 mates in a tent made for two people. Not a care in the world about weirdo's or "stranger danger"....

Twin Tub washing machines,
Fish & Chips in real newspaper,
A Vauxhall Viva car that had a horizontal speedo that was more of a "rough guess" than a measurement device,
Whistling kettles that screamed the house down when the water boiled on a gas flame,
Sweet shops where you picked out the ones you wanted with your fingers,
Bus tickets given out by a conductor from a mechanical clockwork machine while the driver drove the bus,(God bless the Routemaster buses)
The 1938 model Undergound trains in London that had wooden floors,
Visiting the post office tower in London and having dinner in the revolving restaurant at the top,
Telephones with rotary dials that by the time you finished dialing you had forgotten the number,
Half penny coins,
Going past the hairdresser and seeing a line of "old" ladies all sat under these weird metal hoods drying their hair,
Going in a toy shop and nothing in there required half a million batteries,
Model aeroplanes that came with a tube of glue you ALWAYS managed to get on the canopy and ruin the model,
Parkray home fires that had 12 strips of glass in the front that got dammed hot!

....and you know what? I loved every single second of it :)

cheers

Dave

[Michael Weber]

Spoiler alert!!!



Polio and iron lungs.
fallout shelters

[Lornie McCullough]

Great thread!! I've experienced all fourteen. But I'll bet only the eldest of us have seen one of these in use.....


269131


Lornie

[Ralph Okonieski]

One of my fondest memories is cranking the ice cream machine until my arms felt like they would fall off. I probably did not crank for more than a few minutes, but it was fun nevertheless.

[Howard Garner]

Looks like one of two things that I can thing of.

Part of the hay mow equipment, rides the rails and carries the hay from the wagon to the mow. Most are more complicated then this one.
Part of the manure removal equipment, a "bucket" would hang under it to take the manure outside to be dumped.

But that it could be something entirely different.

Howard (grew up on a farm) Garner

[Jason Roehl]

My maternal grandfather had a couple old hit-and-miss engines, one International and one John Deere. He even had a couple of the "attachments" for them, like a butter churn. As a kid, I could be entertained for hours watching those old engines run. I think the International was from the early 1910s and the John Deere either the '20s or early '30s. Now I'm going to have to bug a couple of my cousins to see if they know what ever happened to those things.

[Harold Burrell]

Well...I can remember 10.

Unfortunately, I take little comfort in that. For I am not sure if it is because I am not old enough to remember them all...or because I am getting too old to remember...:confused:

[Myk Rian]

1. Sweet/candy cigarettes

2. Coffee shops with juke boxes

3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles

.4.Party lines on the telephone

5. Newsreels before the movie

6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])

7. Peashooters

8. 33 rpm records

9. 45 RPM records

10. Hi-fi's

11. Metal ice trays with levers

12. Blue flashbulb

13. Cork popguns

14. Wash tub wringers
Every one of them.

You forgot to add a coal bin, and chute.

[Lornie McCullough]

Looks like one of two things that I can thing of.

Part of the hay mow equipment, rides the rails and carries the hay from the wagon to the mow. Most are more complicated then this one.
Part of the manure removal equipment, a "bucket" would hang under it to take the manure outside to be dumped.

Howard (grew up on a farm) Garner

I have what you are talking about also.... but it is much larger......

I included a ruler for scale, and the pictured item is only about 6 or 7 inches......

I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if anyone remembers seeing how this was used.

Lornie

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I rode on the back of a team of horses while my maternal grandfather walked to my uncles farm 1 mile away in southern Indiana, near the town of Heltonville. My grandfather and uncle tried to dig a basement for my aunt and uncles new house with metal shovel that had 4' long 4" diameter posts for handles. My grandfather and uncle quickly ran into some Indiana limestone. They ended up hiring a guy to blast and use a backhoe to dig the basement.

Later that fall I sat on the seat of a green wooden wagon which had "bank boards" on each side while 3 of my uncles and my maternal grandfather picked and shucked corn and tossed it into the wagon. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that team was responding to my grandfather's verbal commands and not that 35 lb. 5 year old kid riding on the seat.

Times were simpler then......

[Bill Huber]

I got all 14 of them with no problem.

I remember I had to come in and rest in the hot summer afternoon so I wouldn't get Polio and the person that lived behind us was in an iron lung.
I also remember the ice man, we had a refrigerator but the old people down the street had the ice man come all the time. The same people had a model T ford, that was all he would drive.
I remember watching the black smoke coming for the steam locomotives running on the tracks.
I also remember our first phone number, 976w2 this was after we got the new phone without the crank.
Don't forget about the popcorn balls that your got on Halloween that you could eat.

[David C. Roseman]

Remember them all, and most of everything else that's been mentioned. Here's another one. I remember making butter in a staved wooden butter churn, visiting my grandmother's farm in NC. I was very young, so couldn't do the up/down, up/down motion for long. Was also a city boy and didn't like the taste of the fresh butter. If it wasn't salted, in a package from A&P, it wasn't real butter. :) Still have the churn.

David

[kevin nee]

How about AIR RAID DRILLS where you and all the other student would get under your desk when the siren went off.

[David Weaver]

I rode on the back of a team of horses while my maternal grandfather walked to my uncles farm 1 mile away in southern Indiana, near the town of Heltonville. My grandfather and uncle tried to dig a basement for my aunt and uncles new house with metal shovel that had 4' long 4" diameter posts for handles. My grandfather and uncle quickly ran into some Indiana limestone. They ended up hiring a guy to blast and use a backhoe to dig the basement.


Was it a man-powered scraper pan type contraption? I have seen horse scrapers before, but I've also heard some other folks say their grandfathers had dug their basement/foundation with a man powered pan (Basically shaped like a wheelbarrow that you pull along the ground), taking turns over a long period of time so they didn't have to pay someone - same issue, hit a rock and either no basement where you're digging, leave it there or pay someone else to do something about it.

I can't find any pictures of the man powered pans I'm thinking of, but they look like a small wheelbarrow bellied out on the dirt, more or less. I wouldn't want to pull one.

(a little help from google finds that slip scraper is the correct term for what i'm talking about).

[Jim Koepke]

Not that old to remember them all.

Most of these things were still around in the early 1960s.

How about 78 rpm records? Don't forget the 16-1/2 rpm (not sure if there was a 1/2 on that) rpm for spoken recordings.

Even though I grew up in the San Francisco area there was still a couple of places where you picked up the phone and waited for an operator when I went to work for the phone company in 1968.

Another old thing that has left us seems to be the ice cream parlor. I remember 4 of them growing up. I think the last one closed when $tarbuck$ bought the building to open another coffee outlet.

Anyone remember turning on their headlights to get a waitress to roll up on skates?

How about YCJCUAQFTJB? (Your curiosity just cost you a quarter for the juke box) A sign often seen in bars and that would get you three selections. Often after telling you the bartender would hand you a quarter that was painted red so they would get it back when the music man came.

How about WPLJ? (White Port and Lemon Juice) That could make you sick if you kept drinking it. Not sure if it is still there, but there was a bar named WPLJs in Walnut Creek, CA.

How about yellow gum balls with red stripes? They were good for something special when you turned them in.

How about an extra pedal on the floor of your automobile? Actually there were two on some old cars, one for the starter and one for the high beam/low beam switch. Heck, for some folks it would be three if you count the clutch. More if you drove a Model T.

And how about the choke in the dash or on the column of some cars?

jtk

[Roy Harding]

13 for me. I don't recall newsreels before movies - but I may have just forgotten them (perhaps another sign of aging?)

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Was it a man-powered scraper pan type contraption?
(a little help from google finds that slip scraper is the correct term for what i'm talking about).

David,

It was very much like that except considerably larger.

[Bill Cunningham]

All 14 for me. But I am not that old, I am almost 66 and that ain't old!

George

Ya!! Me Too!

[Lornie McCullough]

269233

Back in the days before every salesgirl in the five and dime had her own cash register, this trolley was used to transport the customers sales ticket and cash up to a central cashier on a mezzanine where the central cashier made change and then sent it back down to the sales floor and the waiting customer. The wooden cup twists off with half a turn, to hold the cash.... the clip on the bottom held the sales ticket..... and the square rubber block between the pulley wheels held the cable when the cable loop was pulled tight so the trolley could be pulled uphill to the cashier on the mezzanine......

I know I am not the oldest person on this forum..... surely some of you have seen these in use??

Lornie

[randall rosenthal]

i remember them all and i'm only 65. my favorite place to eat out when i was a kid was "hamburger local" you sat at a counter and a lionel train with plates on the flat cars delivered the food. and besides the gimmick.....the food was very good......not fast at all. anyone else have a restaurant like that in their town?

[Jason Roehl]

i remember them all and i'm only 65. my favorite place to eat out when i was a kid was "hamburger local" you sat at a counter and a lionel train with plates on the flat cars delivered the food. and besides the gimmick.....the food was very good......not fast at all. anyone else have a restaurant like that in their town?

We have a local pizza chain (18 locations around the state) that has at least two locations that deliver the drinks by model trains. Maybe they don't anymore, but it's been a while since I've been to one--I'm not a big fan of that style of pizza.

[Jerome Stanek]

We have a local pizza chain (18 locations around the state) that has at least two locations that deliver the drinks by model trains. Maybe they don't anymore, but it's been a while since I've been to one--I'm not a big fan of that style of pizza.

I worked in Lafayette and ate many times at one of those. We were pitting in a CVS drugstore

[Howard Garner]

I remember seeing these in a couple store. Must have been the early 50's
Howard Garner

[Jason Roehl]

I worked in Lafayette and ate many times at one of those. We were pitting in a CVS drugstore

You didn't by chance put in the second one at Sagamore Pkwy and Salisbury in W. Lafayette, did you? At one time, that intersection had drugstores on 3 of the 4 corners--1 Walgreens and 2 CVS stores. I moonlight as a snowplow truck driver for a landscaper friend of mine--we do several of the CVS lots in Lafayette (I usually don't, though).

[Tom Stenzel]

I had a party line phone until 1994. Couldn't do faxes, modems or answering machines, and I loved it. The bill was less than $15 a month, with all fees and taxes.

-Tom Stenzel

[Brian Myers]

9 but 3 of those are because where my grandparent's lived (Luzerne County , PA area) seemed to be slow to catch up (or maybe give up old ways) with where I lived. My father's mother still had a round washer with ringer to the day she died and her sister continued to use it after that . She also still had home milk delivery in glass bottles, always thought that was kind of weird, never saw that where I lived growing up (New Jersey). Seemed these people were always behind the times and the old coal towns looked dirty and depressing. Funny thing is the best milk I ever had came from a Gentleman farmer down the road , pasteurized only not homogenized, in gallon glass jugs that we took back to him when got more. That was the 80's , who said new ways are better.

[Jim Koepke]

Here is a video from 1958 taken in the area where I grew up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSBXLjvGhC4

It was shot by two of my older brothers. Not sure if my dad or my oldest brother was driving the truck.

Looks like there were no traffic lights in town at the time. As I recall there are now at least three and possibly a fourth for a pedestrian crossing.

jtk

[randall rosenthal]

jim....i still live in a town with no traffic lights......and stop signs are optional for residents.

[David Weaver]

David,

It was very much like that except considerably larger.

I had relatives like that, they're all deceased now. You couldn't get a nickel from their hands to pay someone with a machine, but they would work their bodies until they couldn't move. It didn't take them long to decide that they'd do the latter every time. Pulling those pans is not something I would ever want to do. If that was how I had to dig my basement, I'd have a pretty small house.

[Mel Fulks]

I think we all had relatives like that . Bet you never heard any of them say they were " depressed". But fortunately WE have the medicines ,they didn't .

[Ken Fitzgerald]

David....do understand....my grandfather and uncle were using the horse drawn version. Even at that, the limestone was so close to the surface, they elected to hire a guy who could blast and use a backhoe.

My maternal grandfather was a skinny little guy, 1st generation born in this country. He wasn't very big. He had some sons, however, who made up for his lack of physical size. His mother came here with family from Germany as a teenager and though she spoke English, she insisted on using German. My grandfather spoke German. I can remember him "hiring" me to help him pole beans in the garden one day. My grandmother came out and quietly told him some bad news. He proceeded to break out in what I am sure was cursing in German. My grandmother chewed him out telling him to not talk like that in front of the kids. He said "They don't speak German!" She replied "I don't care. Don't you talk like that in front of those kids!"

I still laugh when I think of some of those things that happened over 6 decades ago!

[Mel Fulks]

Ken, I think the Germans are the champs at being able to speak English and refusing to do so . They disdain the mongrelized similarity.

[Rick Potter]

Hoo boy,

Not only do I remember them all, but I remember most of them from AFTER I got married.

How about the side door to the house that led to the kitchen, and had a small opening next to it for the milk delivery.

Rick Potter

[Tom Fox]

How about when you pulled in to a service station and the attendant came out, asked if you wanted Ethyl (or was it "ethel"?), and washed the windshield and checked the oil? Depending on the brand of station, there was usually some kind of giveaway if you filled 'er up.

And then there was "dish night" at the movies ... (which I did not experience first-hand, but I am going to take half-credit for eating off of the stuff that my parents brought home with them).

[Larry Whitlow]

Not that old to remember them all.

Most of these things were still around in the early 1960s.

How about 78 rpm records? Don't forget the 16-1/2 rpm (not sure if there was a 1/2 on that) rpm for spoken recordings.

Even though I grew up in the San Francisco area there was still a couple of places where you picked up the phone and waited for an operator when I went to work for the phone company in 1968.

Another old thing that has left us seems to be the ice cream parlor. I remember 4 of them growing up. I think the last one closed when $tarbuck$ bought the building to open another coffee outlet.

Anyone remember turning on their headlights to get a waitress to roll up on skates?

How about YCJCUAQFTJB? (Your curiosity just cost you a quarter for the juke box) A sign often seen in bars and that would get you three selections. Often after telling you the bartender would hand you a quarter that was painted red so they would get it back when the music man came.

How about WPLJ? (White Port and Lemon Juice) That could make you sick if you kept drinking it. Not sure if it is still there, but there was a bar named WPLJs in Walnut Creek, CA.

How about yellow gum balls with red stripes? They were good for something special when you turned them in.

How about an extra pedal on the floor of your automobile? Actually there were two on some old cars, one for the starter and one for the high beam/low beam switch. Heck, for some folks it would be three if you count the clutch. More if you drove a Model T.

And how about the choke in the dash or on the column of some cars?

jtk

I drive by WPLJ's in Walnut Creek all the time. Still there, but I've never been in the place.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

....and then there's Green Stamps.....and dishes that came in laundry soap....

and.....my 2nd car a '56 "Chevrolet"...that was the model....2 door sedan......265 cubic inch V-8.....had 3 on the tree shifting .....and a handle under the dash that engaged the "Overdrive".....

and vacuum operated windshield wipers that always failed when it was raining......they would fail during a downpour.....you couldn't see to drive.....they would always start working after you stood in the rain for at least one hour with the hood up looking for the vacuum leak. LOL! PDAMHIKT!

[John Coloccia]

I miss TV test patterns, actually. Local stations used to sign off with our national anthem, and then *DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEE* until morning cartoons and news. I still remember the first informercial I ever saw. Some Australian guy and a guy in a sweater selling the "Euro Painter". Stupid me didn't even realize it wasn't an actual commercial until they posted phone numbers and prices to order it. I was pretty young and I'd never seen such a thing before.

Back then, "there's nothing on TV" literally meant there's NOTHING on TV, not "there's 264 channels of junk on". Honestly, I never thought I'd miss test patterns. It's just as well. I'm not sure I've turned on the TV even once this year yet.

[Rick Potter]

John,

You don't get 'The Test Pattern Channel'? Right next to 'The Aquarium Channel'.

Rick Potter

[John Coloccia]

Speaking of TV, I'm wondering about something. Has anyone EVER, at any time, managed to tune ANYTHING in on UHF? That part of the TV must have been made with 1930s era Soviet technology because for the life of me, I don't recall ever picking up anything but slightly different colored static. I'm pretty sure I remember my mom screaming at me in Italian not to touch the "other knob" because I'm going to break the TV....or maybe she thought I'd tune in the wrong thing and Sputnik would come crashing through the front door.

[Jim Matthews]

I remember when good looking women didn't call me "Sir".

[Harvey M. Taylor]

Here are a few from an old 87yr/ old codger:Amos&Andy radio, Lum and abner, The 2 black crows, big little books[cartoons] curb feelers, 'thumb a ride,' hitchhiking, print dresses on flower sacks,food rationing, 'gimme a date, a ford v8, and a rumble seat for 2, and let me Wahoo, wahoo, wahoo. Sears catalog in the outhouse,with corncobs, more as I think of them. Max

[Keith Outten]

I also remember vividly all 14 items on the list.

Ken, my second car was also a 56 Chevy two door sedan :)

I received a Birthday card last week that had this information inside about the year I was born.

The New Jersey Turnpike opened.
The development of the hydrogen bomb was authorized.
First commercial color TV transmission occurred. Residential color TV didn't happen until I was in Junior High School.
22nd Amendment went into effect, the President now limited to two terms.
Collier's magazine carried the first major story on Marilyn Monroe.
UN forces pushed Communist troops back to the 38th Parallel in Korea.
Fluoride in the water was thought to reduce tooth decay.
Talks began in Korea to find end to conflict.
General MacArthur gave his farewell speech: "Old Soldiers Never Die; they just fade away".
Mickey Mantle joined the New York Yankees at age 19.

Milk was $0.96 cents per gallon.
New Home average price was $9,000.00
Average income was $3,709.00
1st Class Stamp was $0.03
US Population was 154.3 million people compared to 314.7 today.
One pound loaf of bread cost $0.16

I paid 23 cents per gallon for Sunoco 260 premium gas when I bought my first car. There were often gas wars in my neighborhood that pushed the cost per gallon down to 18 cents.

Before I could ride a bicycle I remember a drive in called Smitty's Better Burger that was just one block from my home in Hampton. Smitty's is still in business today and the car hops still come to your car when you turn the head lights on. I met all of the original seven NASA Astronauts at Smitty's, they used to go there for lunch several times per week and I would sit on my bicycle next to their cars and shoot the breeze with them.

I had a part time job at a gas station pumping gas one Summer, checking oil and cleaning windshields on every car.

After I got my drivers license I remember when Hampton Roads was finally connected to the Interstate Highway system, it was amazing!

I was the last person to be issued a US Navy serial number in the State of Virginia. When I got to boot camp my serial number was changed to my social security number.

John, I remember when we had three TV stations and three UHF stations. I was at that time the first paperboy in my area to own a portable AM radio because they were so expensive you had to have a job to buy one. Every time I would turn a corner the radio signal would go away or come back so the radio wasn't much of an advantage when delivering papers.

I must be old........:)
.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Okay....here's one for which we should all be glad we don't see anymore.

In the mid-50's we moved to a little town in southern Illinois from the wilds of western Wyoming.

My mother took me to a shoe store to get a pair of shoes to wear when school started.....they x-rayed my feet before fitting me for shoes.......Obviously in the past radiation safety wasn't as well known or enforced!


Keith.....my '56 Chevy was "baby blue"....... it had 125,000 miles on it when I bought it. I paid $150 for it. I had it 3 months.....was driving hard coming home from an unplanned date with a lady , late for Dad's imposed curfew when I blew up that 265 ci V-8. A wrist pin had crystalized and it broke. The rod left piston at the top of the cylinder and on it's next stroke the rod drove through the cylinder wall. Dad and I bought 283 ci short block at junk yard and over hauled it. The 283 ci was faster... PDAMHIKT.....LOL! After we installed the new engine, I tore out a rear end.

20 months later I traded that '56 Chevy for a '64 SS Impala convertible......lagoon aqua....white interior and top.....327 ci V-8 ....300 hp....... It ran like a scalded dog! I know.

It's funny 17 months later I got drafted, enlisted in the Navy with a 51 day delayed entry. I had financed that Impala and agreed to sell to a friend to get out from under the payments. The payments were about the same amount as what an E-1 got paid in the Navy at the time before taxes. 12 days before leaving for boot camp I met my wife, a young blonde divorcee' with 2 kids. We were married when I came home from boot camp. My fast driving days ended when I sold that Impala. A wife and 2 kids can change a persons perspective!

[James Baker SD]

Thirteen for me. But then I almost never got to go to the movies so maybe I should have remembered the newsreels?

My dad, military officer, also made me finish my plate at dinner before I could get up. No exceptions. Sometimes I sat there for an hour or more staring at the horrible food (usually lima beans or something similar). My dad would not relent, that would set a bad example, but eventually my mom would let the dog into the house and I would hold the plate down low enough for her to clean it off. Then I could finally leave the table. As I said, my dad would not officially relent, but I am sure he knew about the dog.

[george wilson]

I got them all,too. Candy cigarettes were just sugar. Looked like chalk,and had some red or pink dye on the front end to look lit.

Licking the cream off the cardboard lid of the milk bottle was a tread.

Setting the sign on the window for the ice man. You put upper most the number of blocks of ice you wanted put into the wooden "ice box"(today the fridge). My mother used to try to fool me by putting the wrong number there,but I always saw it and turned the sign the right way.

We had enormous water melons in Texas,for some reason. They were nearly 2' long,and over a foot in diameter. Today,they are all sold small. We'd go on a picnic and take one of those huge melons for several people.

Once I saw a sky writer airplane make an absolutely perfect Pepsi logo on the sky. I have no idea how he managed it!! Any sky writers today?

[Rod Sheridan]

How about AIR RAID DRILLS where you and all the other student would get under your desk when the siren went off.

Must be a regional thing, I don't remember those............Rod.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Must be a regional thing, I don't remember those............Rod.

You had to be a student in the late 50s or early 60's in the USA to experience those. One of the little towns I lived in....and I do mean "LITTLE".....had an air raid / nuclear attack shelter. I suspect it was only big enough for 5 or 6 local Civil Defense leaders who wore the metal helmets with the funny decals.:eek::D

I never could understand why someone would want to use a nuclear bomb on a town of 3,000 in the middle of nowhere but....there's a lot I don't understand!:o

[Bruce Page]

We had an Air Raid siren ½ a block from where we lived. They would test it on the 3rd Friday of each month at 8:00 AM. If you were still in bed, you weren’t there for long!

[Garth Almgren]

I'll admit I'm a relative youngster, a child of the 80s... Keep in mind that remembering (familiar with) and having actually experienced are two completely different things - I'm familiar with all of the items on that list, but have only personally experienced/used 10 of them.

Candy cigarettes were around as late as the 90s, when I found some in a convenience store near my house.
We still have home milk/eggs/bread delivery around here... Moderately expensive, but very very fresh! http://www.smithbrothersfarms.com/
Grandma still had a party line as late as the late 80s. It was a rotary phone at that.
There are even a few stations (mainly local OTA) that still go "off the air". Others mostly just go to infomercials instead of a test pattern.
I have 33s and 45s, as well as several LPs along with a turntable to play them. I also still have a VCR, cassette tape deck, and a laserdisc player that are hooked up to my home theater, and a "Hi-Fi" stereo in the closet. Love obsolete technology!
Still have metal ice trays with levers. Those things are great, except when your hands are damp.
Played with an elder relative's blue flashbulb camera when I was a little kid. I think it annoyed them, because you couldn't get new flash packs anymore so they ended up developing the roll and then throwing the camera away.
Actually used a clothes wringer (actually, a mangle) just this summer while visiting the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in De Smet, SD. :D

[Bill Cunningham]

My father used to get a case of beer delivered every Saturday. Both the beer truck driver, and my father had George as a first name..Well, that was cause for a beer for both of them. I think the driver used to have a beer with everyone on his route. I can also remember going out and telling the ice man we no longer needed ice for the icebox, because we now had a refrigerator, and remember him saying "Jeeeze everyone seems to be getting those things". We also had a 'coal man', I remember my mother telling him we needed a ton. He would carry 20, 100lb bags from the truck on the road, to the coal chute at the side of our house which would deposit it the coal bin in the basement...But, there was one guy on the street that had a oil burner mounted in his old coal furnace. The next step in evolution.. Things have progressed very quickly. I'm only 66, and can plainly remember mik and bread being delivered by horse and wagon in downtown Toronto. Technology has come forward in leaps and bounds ever since the 'recovery' at Roswell :D

[Bruce Page]

Technology has come forward in leaps and bounds ever since the 'recovery' at Roswell :D

OK, that one made me laugh out loud.
Have you ever been to Roswell?

[randall rosenthal]

i hear what bill is saying ...i'm a month short of 66. consider this....my grandma was born on a dairy farm without electricity or plumbing.....before automobiles or aviation.......and lived to see a man walk on the moon. quite a leap in one life time.

[Stephen Tashiro]

Okay....here's one for which we should all be glad we don't see anymore.

In the mid-50's we moved to a little town in southern Illinois from the wilds of western Wyoming.

My mother took me to a shoe store to get a pair of shoes to wear when school started.....they x-rayed my feet before fitting me for shoes.......Obviously in the past radiation safety wasn't as well known or enforced!


I remember when all shoe departments had those x-ray machines, I vaguely recall being examined in one once, but I seldom saw them in use. On the outside they looked liked wooden lecterns.

What about how people used to match paint colors? I can remember when hardware stores didn't have the color analysis machines, but all I remember about color matching in that era was people experimenting by adding different colored paints together. Was there a more scientific "old time" way? I suppose the more sophisticated stores had paint cards that gave a formula.

[Bill Wyko]

All 14 for me. As I was going down the list I realized I was getting older. How about black & white tv or the "Console TV" Remember the mechanical buttons on the remote. Or how about Packard Bell TV's, for that matter, any tv made in the USA.

[Harvey M. Taylor]

before jet planes, they weighed the passengers so the plane wouldnt be too heavy to lift off the runway.MaxT

[Dick Latshaw]

What about how people used to match paint colors? I can remember when hardware stores didn't have the color analysis machines, but all I remember about color matching in that era was people experimenting by adding different colored paints together. Was there a more scientific "old time" way?

That was one of my summer jobs when I was in college. Worked in the lab at a local paint company. The standard colors were all done by formula. But we would do custom colors to match someone's drapes or chair fabric. All done by eye. Get it close enough wet, throw a sample in the drying oven, and correct from there. Required a good understanding of which pigments did what. Lot's of fun, actually.

[Gordon Eyre]

I worked part time at a service station when I was in high school and gas was $.25 a gallon. We washed the windows, checked the oil and tires of every car that came in.

[Brian Robison]

NO FAIR!
I was raised on a dairy farm so, no milk delivery (I was the milk delivery)
Never got to go anywhere, so no movies of coffee houses.
Other than those, I must admit, we didn't use the wash tub wringer.
BUT, I'm old for my age.....

[Stephen Tashiro]

Bet you never heard any of them say they were " depressed".

Perhaps that's because there were things ilke "cherry coke" custom made at the soda fountain and ice cream that wasn't 1/2 air.

[John RStegall]

All 14 plus outhouses, kerosene lamps (dad called kerosene coal oil bought in 55 gallon drums), kerosene cook stove, water from a well drawn from the well using a "windlass" (pulley). Outhouse was a considerable walk to isolate from house and well. I actually delivered milk in glass bottles when the regular mailman was sick, he drove, I "hopped" the truck (got in and out with the milk bottles).

Just turned 70.

[Larry Heflin]

How many of you are still using Brylcreem or Vitalis? Remember the commercials? Hair care is not much of an issue for me anymore.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Hair?

Oh yes, that distant memory from many years back :)

cheers

Dave

[Bob Turkovich]

How many of you are still using Brylcreem or Vitalis? Remember the commercials? Hair care is not much of an issue for me anymore.

There's has to be a Johnson's Paste Wax punchline in there somewhere...:p

[Jason Roehl]

How many of you are still using Brylcreem or Vitalis? Remember the commercials? Hair care is not much of an issue for me anymore.

I haven't used those, but 25 years ago, when a flat-top was back in style, I had one, and my father introduced me to butch wax. Now I just give myself a buzz cut. I can't imagine having to take care of a mop of hair anymore. Cool in the summer, holds a knit cap like velcro in the winter.

[Stephen Tashiro]

Were we witnesses to a great advance in civiilzation? - when did underarm deodorants become common?

Even after they were available, barbers would still perfume the hair of male customers. You just expected the barber to pour a heavily perfumed tonic on his hands and then rub it into your hair.

[Bill Wyko]

Do you all remember when the doctor would come to your house? I lived in Los Angeles when I was a kid and as congested as that town was, the Doc still made house calls. (The smog was what made me sick all the time so we moved to AZ.)

[Dave Sheldrake]

Were we witnesses to a great advance in civiilzation? - when did underarm deodorants become common?

Even after they were available, barbers would still perfume the hair of male customers. You just expected the barber to pour a heavily perfumed tonic on his hands and then rub it into your hair.

Oh my...it's like reliving my youth here and I'm not that old!!

"I'm Victor Kiam the president of Remmington, I liked the razor so much I bought the company" was one well known TV add here :)

cheers

Dave

[Bill Neely]

I remember them all plus we didn't even have a television until I was about 12 years old. Probably a good thing, I learned to love books. Anyone remember when cokes were a nickel out the machine, pay phones were a nickel? The iceman used to deliver ice on our street and a junkman came around with a horse drawn wagon picking up whatever he could find. Our neighbor two doors down drove a model T phaeton.

[Richard McComas]

If sweet cigarettes and candy cigarettes are the same, then I remember all 14. I'll be 70 in November.

[Marty Schlosser]

13 for me... but it probably should have been 14 but I couldn't recall the newsreels shown at the movies. BTW, our milkman used a horse and it was the same guy who brought around icebox ice.

[Al Launier]

At 73 I recall all 14 above plus a few others, including:

getting up very early as a child to do farm chores in the morning before walking a mile to catch the school bus;
started working at the age of 13 to supplement family income
getting block ice for the ice box;
having no bathroom plumbing, only an out house in the cow barn;
filtering & drinking raw milk;
having no family health insurance and relying on a doctor that house calls for emergencies;
hunting regularly & butchering farm animals to supplement food for a family of 11;
having to till, plant & weed & harvest several gardens totaling about 5 acres;
haying fields for cattle food;
having no family dentist & pulling my own teeth with a string;
waiting for neighbors to get off the phone so we could use it;
having strong family discipline;
no social life;
so many other experiences that made the family members stronger people.

Not particularly good memories - fortunately life has changed so much for the better since then!

[Tom Stenzel]

I hit 12 on the geez-o-meter.

Had a two party line well into the '90s. My brother worked for AT&T, said there was a party when I finally went to a single line. Had the Western Electric phone wired to the wall set for a 'tip' party so it ran on my calls. The other party's phone was wired for "ring". Another reason I liked the phone: the brass bells sound like a phone.

I also have a pound can of ACME Dura-Dust containing 50% wettable DDT. It's about half full.

Getting a chip of ice from Perry the Twin Pines milkman was a treat.

On Detroit's near east side by the old Packard Motor plant, my grandmother shoveled coal to heat her house until 1966. She lived to be 99.

-Tom

[Mike Henderson]

I remember too many of the things talked about here. As Al said above "Not particularly good memories - fortunately life has changed so much for the better since then!". While there were some good things about growing up on a farm, it was not the romantic place the city slickers (back then) and modern urban dwellers think it is.

Al pointed out "no social life" and that was really true. You were tied to the farm 365 days a year. There were things that had to be done in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. Like him, we had animals. I assume if you were only raising crops you would have a bit more flexibility.

I left the farm and never looked back. I'm much happier where I am, but I understand and appreciate the work and the sacrifices that farm families make. It's hard, dirty work.

Mike

[Steve Peterson]

I only hit 11 of them. I am only 53, so maybe I only missed some of them by a few years. Plus it might depend on where you lived. We usually had goats or cows, so there was no need for milk delivery, except for one small period of time. The rivers never froze where I lived, so I don't know if they ever had ice delivery in my town.

My parents used to make me sit at the table until I finished my string beans or peas. They used to tell me that children were starving in Ethiopia as if that would somehow make me want to eat them. I told them to send the string beans to the kids in Ethiopia.

Steve

[Steve Peterson]

Remember the mechanical buttons on the remote.

What remote control? My dad would shout "Hey kids, come here quick". We expected to see something exciting on TV so we would come running to the living room. Often it would only be my dad asking one of us to change the channel.

Steve

[Mark Blatter]

I scored 13 out of 14 as I don't recall ever seeing newsreels at the theater. Born in 1960 and they were gone by the time I started going to movies.

I also remember my mother using an Ironrite for shirts and such. I still give her a bad time about ironing bed sheets and pillow cases. My grandparents lived in Chinook, MT and had a partyline for many years. As I recall, they didn't get a private line until sometime in the mid-70s.

Then there were pull-tab cans for beer and pop that have been gone for quite some time. I remember my first TV was black & white. It was a big deal when we got the color set. I also recall that calling long distance was super expensive. People would also call from work if they had access to an outgoing toll free line there.

How about climbing the stairs to get onto a plane? No security to go through for access to the plane? When meeting an incoming flight, waiting at the little fence that kept you off the tarmac, but no real gate, just a walk through with no one there?

We did have a fast food place. They sold burgers for $.15 and cheeseburgers for $.17. Ice cream cones were a dime, two big scoops for $.15.

To put this all in perspective, I don't remember outhouses, or tipping them over. Nor tipping cows over or riding horses to school. All of these my mother and father did. Shoot, my father slept outside in a old train car with wooden slats on it year round with his six brothers. In Chinook, MT where it was routinely 30-40 below outside.

Makes me think of the theme song from All In The Family.

Yes, I am older than dirt.

[terry wolfe]

I would be in ancient category... but it's all good

[Justin Koenen]

Turned eighty last June & do not think my feet hit the ground that entire day. Told my kids I think it will take me ten years to get used being eighty. I remember getting out of the service in 1956 and buying a '51 Chev and putting thin white rubber rings between the rim and the tire so it looked as though I had white sidewalls. Anybody remember them? Those were the "manual labor" days. Justin

[Bill McNiel]

13 - didn't have the Party Line experience. I'm 67.

[al heitz]

Did you also have fender skirts over your wheel wells; curb "feelers;" static straps; or a spinner knob on your steering wheel? I remember my father having a Ford ('38?) with a crank out windshield to get fresh air.

[al heitz]

Scored a perfect 14. Some other things I remember: the vegetable peddlar truck coming by every week, as well as a bakery truck (well into the late '50s); the man with the pony taking pictures; the Yo-Yo man visiting the school yard showing tricks and selling his yo-yos; great-grandma having a crank phone on the wall and the operator answered on the other end; cod liver oil; soap operas were on the radio and TV was only on from 4:30 until 11:30 pm (test pattern all other times); AF jets breaking the sound barrier overhead; sky writers; what LSMFT meant (not the crude version); dancing cigarette packs; the Brooklyn Dodgers and the St. Louis Browns; H.V. Kaltenborne; receiving tax stamps (in Ohio); also saving S&H and Top Value stamps for customer rewards. The juke boxes where in the malt shops around here.

[Roger Feeley]

All 14 for me.

OK, what's the lowest gas price you remember? For me, it's $.10/gallon during a gas war in Lawrence, KS. My dad just about exploded when gas went to $.20/gallon. He ranted on and on about how we were going to have to combine errands...

My wife remembers $.07/gallon in El Dorado, KS.

[Roger Feeley]

Not that, but I do remember the pneumatic system in our department store carrying tickets and money. I was fascinated to watch it.

[Roger Feeley]

You can have a jukebox at home.

http://www.cdadapter.com/pcplay.htm

I ran across this and plan to put it into a house we are building. It's an interface from an iPod to a jukebox wall box. So, the wall box controls the ipod which is wired to an amplifier.

We are building a place next to our kid's pool (think pool house) and our 'front door' will be a covered patio looking out to the pool. I plan to have a wall box on the patio. In my case, it will communicate via Bluetooth to wireless speakers. I really like the juxtapositoning of the '40s tech with Bluetooth.

[ron david]

14. we had an icebox, sawdust burning kitchen stove (sawdust hopper on the side) with the galvanized hot water tank and the telephone with the crank on the side( the nbr was Steveston 68). the first time that I saw tv was the Walcot/Marciano fight. never got to watch test pattern till we got our first tv in 57. can still remember some still using a crank to start their car.
ron