Things I'm old enough to remember first-hand

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I was born in the early 70's. These are things I remembered commonplace that have dissapeared as a kid, some things I remember being introduced, and quite ironically, there are many things on the "most recently" list that are on the "remembered introduced" list:

Things I remember being commonplace that dissapeared when I was a kid:

Big console stereos with huge bass speakers
8-track players
tube testers at drug stores and electronics shops
rotary phones with full-length handsets and real bells
outdoor "campus" style schools
twin-lens reflex cameras
bean bag chairs
CB radios
16mm movies, projectors and cameras
Those metal "Charles Chips" cans you could get refilled
glass soda bottles
typewriters
Volkswagen Beetles
station wagons
modern style home architecture

Things I remember INTRODUCED when I was a kid

The CD player
VCR's
Boomboxes
hand-held portable LCD TV's
home computers (Commodore, Atari, TI, etc)
3-gun television projectors
The space shuttle
diesel powered automobiles
"Big dish" satellite TV
Heat pump HVAC systems
solar water heating systems
below the knee Men's shorts (if you can call them shorts)

Things I thought would be around forever that have recently dissapeared or begun to dissapear:

35mm SLR cameras
transistor radios
VCR's
boomboxes
handheld portable LCD TV's
component stereo systems (stereos as a whole!)
incandescant light bulbs
picture tube TV's and monitors
The Space Shuttle
metal bumpers on automobiles

Things that have held on despite the march of progress:

The ranch home
vacuum tube audio equipment
A.M. broadcast radio
the turntable phonograph
sealed-beam headlamps on automobiles
 
Real department stores, with records, books, sewing supplies, appliances, restaurants, etc. etc. etc.

Nurses in white uniforms.

Elks Clubs

Union Halls

Everyone having an ashtray on their desk

The Phone Company

Real news on local TV - not the fluff and gore you see today.

Morning and afternoon newspapers

Intelligent talk radio

Big hype fore each new model year of cars

Local TV shows (cooking, bowling, farm family of the week, etc. )

Western Auto, Ben Franklin, Pamida, Woolworth's, Kresgee's, McCory's, etc, etc, etc.

Branniff Air Lines

Local drug stores

The Candy Counter at Sears

lighted blacksplashes

The President's Physica Fitness Test

Local utility companies

Orson Welles doing commercials for Gallo wine

Barbara Walters on the Today Show

Dolly Parton doing commercials for Duz
 
Sorry, forgot three things....

Charge plates

Milkmen and TV Repairmen

When everything (utility bills, store bills, report cards) came on an IBM card with "DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE OR MUTILATE" stamped on it.
 
Ohhhhhhhh...

"The Candy Counter at Sears"

I always thought the fragrance wafting from that department should have been captured and bottled as a cologne. You'd be irresistible to EVERYONE.
 
RC Cola sitting in an ice water cooler, with the cloth to wipe it off tied to the side(13 cents drink in, 15 cents takeaway), Kresge's, draft dodgers moving in down the street and EVERYONE talking about it, our '56 Dodge Regent, the Gestetner and addressograph in my mom's office, Expo '67 Montreal, the coal bin at my grandparents house (very scarey!), the Beatty wringer at the other end of the basement, the Canadian dollar worth more than the US and the tubetester at the TV store.....
 
But wait, there's more!

My mom's Henna Rinse, her mangle ironer,(appropriate name) Waiting in the car (a 46 DeSoto) at the cleaners and watching the steam blow out of the press vent pipes, Manual operator-assist telephones ala "number please?", real dual exhausts and not the faux ones we see on cars these days, My Sears Wee-Alert alarm (blush,blush) The Jewel T. man, Reds under the Beds, Black jet boots, Deborah Kerr, pegged pants, sadistic nuns, Sunbeam chrome vacuum coffee pots, The Fleischman's Margarine lady with her cat eye glasses, taking out the klinkers, 3-bar spinner wheel covers.
 
you guys are good!!

Record Stores with Vinyl LP's and 45's.

The arrival of CD's in the big cardboard packaging.

Nurses in caps and white uniforms while on duty.

Turn cranks on the hospital beds.

Tincture of Green Soap.

The Brady Bunch and Partidge Family on primetime.

Another World in the Steve,Alice and Rachel days!

Kirby Vacuum Stores with The Dual Sanitronc 80 in the window and D50's along the side wall.

Green blenders and mixers on Department store shelves.

Mary Hartman,Mary Hartman.

Seeing the B52's for the first time on Saturday Night Live and becoming hooked!
 
The drama-spoof "Soap" being pre-empted because of racy content.

TPIR with solid tub Speed Queen washers & matching dryers.

After School Specials

Function Junction

Racing home after school to catch reruns of the Brady Bunch, Bewitched, etc. and being pissed as hell when it was ALL Watergate coverage on every channel.

Real news reporting with anchors nobody cared whether or not they were pretty or had good "camera presence" but were honest, intelligent and insightful.

The "Un-Candle"

Kasey Kasem & the Top 40

Buying the number one hit of the week on 45's

Blue Cheer
 
DelRosa Syrup, Farleys Rusks,Bengers
Andy Pandy, Watch With Mother, Pinky & Perky
Hoover Juniors, Servis Supertwins, Creda Debonair`s
Ronson Escorts, Carmen Rollers, Clairol 1200`s
Fairy Soap, OMO, Radiant
Ford Capri, Vauxhall Viva`s, Austin Allegro`s
Brutus Jeans, Cheescloth,Platform Shoes
10cc,Sheila B Devotion, Nancy Sinatra -These Boots Are Made For Walkin
Man on the Moon, Profumo, Miners Strike`s, Power Cuts

And Ariston, and on, and on, and on....
 
I was born in 1981.

Rotary dial phones.
Stick-Shift cars.
The Nintendo Entertainment System.
The Apple IIe with Oregon Trail.
Sesame Street.
Cars that actually contained metal.
Woolworth's.
Montgomery Ward's.
K-Mart.
No Wal-Marts!
Dart Drug.
Washing machines with lint filters you had to clean.
Before cable TV.
When people though beige was a good decorating theme (my mother still does)!
When cars were stll rear wheel drive.
Before the internet.
VCRs.
VCRs that were huge and loaded from the top.
BETAmax.
Microwaves were HUGE! (mine still is)
Dot Matrix printers.
When 9600 modems were the fastest thing EVER!
DOS. You could do ANYTHING in DOS, if you could only figure out how to use it.
When minivans replaced station wagens (why did this ever happen?).
Riding in the back of a GM station wagen facing backwards.
Whe SUVs replaced cars.
When pickup trucks were utilitarian work vehicles.
When many cars had no AC.
When Nickelodeon's last kids' show was Looney Tunes at 7:30, and at 8:00 they switched to Nick at Night with Mr. Ed.
When children played outside without direct supervision until 8:30 at night.
Before the National Do Not Call registry. (I was very evil to telemarketers.)
When people drove cars from the 60s and 70s every day.
Square One on PBS.
Before all the fun kids toys and playground equipment was outlawed for not being safe.
When flying was actually kind of pleasnt.
When accidentally getting injured wasn't cause for a lawsuit.
Sturmey Archer bicycle hubs. (Think old English 3-speeds)
Before Roler Blades.
Before Harry Potter.
Before toy guns were considered dangerous.
Before grocery stores accepted credit cards.
Before the McDonald's extra value menu.

That's a good dose for now,
Dave
 
Oh what memories!

Yellow, pink, turquoise, & chrome small appliances.

Alden catalogs

Fizzies--lemon-lime, strawberry, grape, orange

Turkish taffy--Vanilla, Chocolat, banana & strawberry

Swell frosting mix in a can-chocolate or vanilla

Sunbeam-"Built with integrity, backed by service."

Hamilton Beach appliances have a 5 yr. Guarantee

Danish modern furniture

Spartan brand TVs

TVs in wood cabinets--not wood vernier

Motorola--works in a drawer TV

Dark Shadows, Where the Action Is, The Edge of Night, Bob and Lisa being married, to each other! Jo Ann Tate, Rona Barret,

15 cent hamburgers,

Vending machines that accepted pennies

The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rawhide, The Avengers, Wild, Wild, West

Sunbeam "batter whipped" bread in round loaves

GE College bowl with Allen Ludden

Doctors and TV repairmen making housecalls

Party lines-listen for your ring pattern before answering

Adorn hair spray, Dippity-do

Western Flyer bicycles, bicycles with banana seats & high rise handlebars, the Varoom Motor, Marx toys

Give-a-Show projector, Spirograph, Creepy Crawlers, Vac U Form

School milk in glass bottles

45 rpm singles for 79 cents

Automatic record players

Metrical diet food

Great Shakes -- mix you add to cold milk

Whip & Chill--vanilla, chocolate, lemon, strawberry

Jello 1,2,3 Dessert mix-lime, strawberry, orange
 
Some of us still live this way

Non-dial phone with operator "Number Please"
Party line phone with a different ring for each customer
Big John and Sparkie from Schenectady, NY, on the Radio
Heath-Kit Radios, Stereos, TV sets and vohm meters
Rehostats not electronic dimmers
Bread delivery
Milk Delivery
Fuller brush salesman
Electrolux saleslady delivering bags
Tube type intercom
Reel-to-Reel tape recorders
Allied Radio mail order catalog
Wards catalog store
Small clothing stores downtown
Chanel 91 Color Radio am radio from San Francisco
Stereo FM
Ding Dong School with Miss Francis on TV
Ivy-League pants with the buckle in the back
Working on a tan
Spedeos medium length, not bekini size and not the long leg look
Stretch Levis

Martin
 
Things to remember but miss dearly

People/familyies in the summer at dusty dark sitting outside to do nothing else but just to talk and visit with the kids running around playing till 11:00 pm. That is something I really miss from my childhood. It saddens me so much that nowadays you can barely get anyone to wave as you drive by their house.

I was born in 1956 and as a kid of the 60's we did not live in a neighborhood. When living in rual Gwinnett county we had no A/C, no dishwasher, no clothes dryer, no city water, no city gas, no microwave. We did have electric power, automatic washing machine, B&W TV(only 1) and cooled the house with a window mounted fan.
 
Was not finished posting

We grew our on vegtables, killed a cow and usually 2 pigs in the winter for pork and beef.

I thought then everybody else had it made in the city. But now I know I was the one who had it made in the country. NOw I would not change a thing of my childhood!
 
I grew up during the Reagan years..

Reagan was shot.
John Lennon was murdered.
TV's in wooden consoles.
Paper only, not plastic at the supermarket.
Charles and Diana marry
Luke and Laura on "General Hospital"
Lego's
The "Big Wheel"
Rubik's cube
Cabbage Patch Kids
Lemon Fresh powdered "Dash"
the car phone
The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes
The Cosby Show
Dynasty
Gimbels---(for us Ny'ers)
Tob Job all purpose cleaner (green)
Glass bottled milk from "Dairy Barn"
76 cents, for a gallon of gas.
AIDS
"Grimsby and Beutel" on Channel 7, Eyewitness News (us Ny'ers)
 
An Earl Scheib auto paint job costing $29.95.

15-cent McDonald's hamburgers

Polaroid Swinger cameras

Kodak Instamatic cameras

Flashbulbs and flashcubes

Self-service gasoline costing $0.25, $0.26 and $0.27 a gallon for regular, mid-grade and premium respectively.

Reading, writing (we called it penmanship), grammar and spelling taught as four separate classes instead of the "language arts" sludge they teach today.

An author's stationery consisted of letterhead, second page sheets (name only, no address) and monogrammed note cards. The latter were for a brief handwritten note thanking editors for their time after they've rejected your submission.
 
great lists!

I remember so much of what already has been posted. Here's mine: (sorry for repeats)

Gas @ .019-.29 cents (Parents took family trip from TX-NM-AZ-Utah-Nev-Cali--5000 miles round trip and cost $100 in gas. I still have the reciepts)

Leaded fuel.

Concert tickets to all the new rock bands $8.00

No barcodes

Penny candy

JKF being shot, and the first Shuttle disaster.

Disco dancing and love in's....LOL...ummm...I will stop there.

Cable TV when it first came out, MTV & Showtime (showed some real naughty stuff late at night, lol) $8.00 a month!

Mortgage payments with P & I @ $140.00 for a brick 3/2/2!

Rent with all bills paid in nice new apts-$79-119 mo.

8 cent postage stamps

3 finger lids for $10.00 (roflmao)

Seeing ZZTop for $1.00...before they hit it big.

Ooooh the memories!

Staying out late at night playing with all the kids in the neighborhood, and running behind the mosquito truck....LOL
I'm surprised I am still alive.

Fireflys all over (even in suburbia Houston) and catching them in jars and putting them next to our bed and watching them til we fell asleep....of course, next morning they were dead.

Horn toads, don't see them anymore.

No such thing as salmonella poisioning...when everyone in the family visited the Grandparents the food was out during the day and no one got sick.

Quadraphonic stereos w/8 tracks

Hurricane Carla (have home movie)& Hurricane Alicia

This list could go on and on and on and on.....

C~
 
Can I add a few more?

And being able to smoke EVERYWHERE....

Airline flights
at your work desk
Restraunts
Buses
Taxis
Bowling alley
Movie theaters

There was no such thing as sexual predators.

If you were gay, you were considered "a colorful human being", and there was no such thing as hate crimes.

And finally................

EVERYTHING WAS IN ENGLISH!

Peace out! :-)
 
CD player comming out. Chrenobyl. Challenger going *boom*. Gorby :) NYC Subway grafitti. When only Hells Angels had Harleys, and choppers were seldom seen. 707s into JFK, and occasionally Cove Neck. The LIRR's old diesel fleet. PCC trolley cars in Newark. VW Bugs everywhere. Atari. Colecovision. Tube tvs. The Macintosh. IBM "tramp" ads. Gremlins. Ghostbusters theme on Z100. Howard Stern being cutting edge. Mayor Koch. 64k ram being a lot. Garage sales worth visting. Acoustic modems. IBM Selectrics in every office.
 
Hey,Washabear!,What about Eastpoint shopping Center?,Webster Apple orchard?,H&SBakery?Reice's Bakery?,Silber's?,Koester'sBakery?,Koontz Creamery?,Cloverland Dairy?High"s Ice Cream?,Belvidere Theater?,Belnord Theater?,American brewery?,BromoSeltzer Tower?,Stu Kerr as Mr Fortune?,Devine?,Topps/,Clarks?,Two(2) Guys?,Toy barn/,Double "T"diners?,The Pink Hippopotamus (Hippo)?,Reed Street?,Belvedere Hotel?,Owl Bar?,Cignals?--These are just a few of the Baltimore highlights I remember as well as the ones you listed.
 
Hmm

The 70s: Childhood
CB Radios
8 tracks
Disco
The Bee Gees
BSR auto changers
Gas lines
Console stereos
Belt drive KM/WP, Maytag and GE Filter flo's in the showroom.
The Krofft Supershow
Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street

The 80s
New wave
Breakdancing
Heavy metal
the Challenger
Commodore 64
CD's ("Hear the light")
Motorola cellular phones (that were installed in a car)

The 90s: Adulthood
My first day as a computer tech building a 386 DX-33 computer system complete with 4mb ram and a 120mb hard drive (that's right... MEGABYTES, not gigs)
MFM/RLL hard drives
Nirvana
Grunge
Beavis & Butthead
Ren & Stimpy
The internet

The 2000s:
Hi speed internet
Toyota Prius (Me and Helen just bought one)
www.classicappliances.com
9/11
Gas lines (just like the 70s)
 
Having just turned 55, here's the b-bro's take...

A few things I remember first-hand (and some I can still find)...

Glass milk bottles (still have a milk store a couple blocks from home where I buy milk in glass bottles!) ... "step-down" Hudsons ... bathtub Nashes ... the eerie glowing hood ornaments on "Silver Streak" Pontiacs ... the Westinghouse Laundromat "sand test" with Betty Furness ... Andy Griffith telling everyone Sanka coffee is "goo-OOOD!" ... bongo drums and congas that were made of alternating blocks of wood (light, dark, light, dark, light, dark) and whose heads had to be heated to tighten them up (as opposed to wrenches!) and never sounded as good as the ones on TV! ... vent windows for "no-draft ventilation" ... manual typewriters ... tube-type radios (I have one that sounds better than any of the solid-state stuff I have today) ... "that greasy kid stuff" ... and there's a whole lot more....
 
58 here. I can remember the following in no certain order.
Automatic doors at A&P
Home of the future at Marshall Fields in Chicago
Hamilton automatic washer
Speed Queen, Montgomery and Ward wringer washer, Maytag wringer washers, Thor wringer washer, GE wringer washer,
Trans view tv, a product of sentinal radio
Tang, Coca Marsh, Ovaltin, Bosco, Fizzies,
Tab cola, Clorox in brown glass bottles
Tide, Oxydol, Cheer, American Family detergent and soap, Vim, Salvo,Breeze, Surf, Duz, All, AD, Wisk (the first liquid detergent in a can)Nu Soft, Downey
Mennen deoderant in a green plastic spray bottle, rose's butch wax, Brillcream, Wildroot, Gillett Right guard in an aresol spray, pledge for furniture, Fuller Brush man, Sally Ann Bread Delivery truck, Morrison coal company who came to your house and filled the coal bin with coal for the start of the heating season, Dishmaster kitchen faucet,
My teachers using brass hand bells to call us in from recess, teacher hitting my hands with a ruler for talking out of turn and too much( that one hasn't changed)! lol Calling central for our phone service on a wall mounted oak Kellog telephone. The list can go on for a long time but I am tired and going to bed. Gary
 
A thought...

My grandfather, now 85 years old, attended the Boston Latin School. A favorite tale in the family is that while in (I think) the 4th grade, his teacher liked to rap his fingers with her ruler (he was, and still is, very intelligent, has a dry sense of humor, and doesn't tolerate stupid people well). He decided he had had enough of the finger rapping and the last time she ever tried it, he proved to be a bit too quick for her. He grabbed the ruler from her hands as she brought it down and snapped it in half across his knee, then he handed her the pieces. If I was in a similar situation, I would lhave likely done the same. My worst, or best, was calling a college professor incompetant in the middle of class. Being blunt is often quite effective! And now back to the thread:

The old Pepsi logo.
Gulf gas stations.
Erol's Video stores (Washington DC area).
Hecht's department stores.
Hechinger hardware stores.
Zayre's.
Crown Books (Another DC bookstore).
Safeway supermarkets in northern VA.
The original Volkswagen Rabit.
TV without a reomte control.
Records.
Wallpaper.
No cell phones.
No answering machines.
When beepers became pagers.
You Can't do that on Television.

Goodnight,
Dave
 

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