What do you miss?

[veg-o-matic]

Being in rather a melancholy state of mind lately, I'v been thinking about stuff I miss.

What do you miss? People not included.

In no particular order, here are some of mine.

Woolworth's
The smell of sheets dried on the clothesline
Being so excited you couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve
"The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC."
Sleeping in the back seat on the way home
My grandmother's pancakes
Drive-in movies
Department store restaurants
Original Prell
Turning the lid over and reading the instructions for the game
45s
Space Food Sticks

 

[chachp]

What I miss...

My grandmother's steak and salad,
The smell of my grandfather's wine cellar and squeezing the grapes he grew outside,
My parents took us to the drive in movies in our pajamas and I miss that,
My mother's egg in the cup breakfast with toast sliced into thin strips to dunk in the eggs,
Sunday dinner at my grandmother's house. All my cousins were there, every Sunday. Yes, we're very Italian.

 

[tolivac]

typewriters-the keyboard on this computer is terrible!their keyboards had much better feel and design.

 

[mayken4now]

Ok here is my list:

T G & Y

Stiff Towels that I could snap and crack before taking them indoors.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH the Easter Bunny will bring us more if we are quite.

The Peacock as well.

How about on the floor board of a 1968 Pontiac and hearing the interstate or roads at that time go ta clump ta clump ta clump.

Homemade syrup (sugar vanilla and water, till burnt on the stove)

YEA Veg, getting stuck when it was wet at the drive in movie.

Duck hunting in the freezing cold in late December

Playing cards with Gram until 10, then ICE CREAM afterwards.

Visiting friends who were my parents life long friends with thier kids and having fish fry's outdoors.

Hide and Seak.

Dad chasing us around the house, when we thought we were hiding.

My Grandmothers 1956 LK with all the lights, and blistering my hand on the "K" on top of the agitator.

My other Grandmothers Maytag, & Unimatic.

Steve

 

[may63]

Carefree early '70's summers, watching all the game shows:
Money Maze
Password
TPIR (1/2 hour version)
Match Game
Tattletales

Cozy '70's winters watching CBS on a Saturday night:
Mary Tyler Moore
Bob Newhart
All in the Family
Alice
Carol Burnett

Saturday mornings going to Telander Drug with Dad to test suspected burnt out TV tubes

Speeding up and slowing down '45's and LP's (kids today don't know what they're missing)

The Applerollerway roller skating rink (heavy on the disco!)
The local A&W Drive-in
Uncle John's Pancake House
Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor
The original Way Park ice skating rink
Having a full head of hair
The '65 Black Corvair I drove in HS
The family's 1969 GE Filter-Flo (sniff)

 

[parunner58]

Here are some of mine

The day the Sears Toy catalog came
penny candy
summer vacation from school
Records
Christmas Shopping downtown outside not at the mall
old fashion church carnivals
new cars under $7000
my first brand new car (1979 Subaru 4WD)
Little Ceasers Pizza
Drug Stores with a soda fountain
Keebler Chocolate Fudge cookies

 

[dalangdon]

Seattle has lost so much of the cool retro stuff that was still here when I first moved here in the 80's, when it seemed like a backwater that time had forgotten...

The candy counter at the downtown Sears

Frederick & Nelsons (a division of Marshall Fields that had obscure departments like stamps & coins and two fabulous restaurants)

The downtown Woolworths, which was an Art Deco masterpiece

I. Magnin - a tony ladie's store with a severe white marble front and a beautiful interior. It's an Old Navy now.

The doghouse - an all-night restaurant with remarkably surly old waitresses and a bar with an organ player (versus a piano player)

The City Light building with it's fabulous 60's mosaic mural in front

The old downtown library.

Just generally, I miss:

the Sears catalog
colored appliances
Howard Johnson's Restaurants and Motor Lodges
The Amtrak "Pioneer" (Denver to Seattle) and "Desert Wind" (Salt Lake City to LA)
Branniff
Pan Am
The Holiday Inn Signs
AM radio before it became a bunch of screaming morons.
long distance dedication radio shows before the got all glurgy like Delilah.
"American Bandstand"
"America's Top 40" with Casey Casam (sp?)
Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley
Johnny Carson and Dinah Shore
Grown ups

 

[jdinstl]

Oh lordy...

Rex, I'm with you on typewriters -- I had an old IBM B model, with a typeface that was like all capital letters. Upper case was just a taller version of the lowercase letter. I'd give body parts to have that typewriter today. I'd give a few more body parts to have an IBM Executive. (Yes, I used one!)

The Carol Burnett Show, definetly -- who will ever forget Gone With the Wind, Carol descending the stairs, the drapery rod across her shoulders! (I cracked up just typing that one!)

All In The Family - Except we called it "Aunt Helen and Uncle Bob." Yup, had relatives just like that!

Riding my bike everywhere, for miles and miles.

Matchbox cars -- and the matchbox cities we made.

Mayken4now, we had a '69 Pontiac -- the thump-thump of the tires meant we were on Clayton Road, just a few miles from home.

Catching lightning bugs.

The last day of school.

Going to A&W! YES!!!

Ben Franklin stores. As a tyke, each time we went, Mom let me pick out anything with a '5' and a '9.' -- talk about major decisions -- so many things had a '5' and a '9.'

Little red radio's my Dad would buy me at the 9-0-5 store.

Snow days off from school.

I better stop now.

John

 

[tolivac]

John:In the 70's used to type transmitter logs with an IBM electric typewriter-don't remember what model it was-was turquoise in color-didn't use the "ball"-It was "Old" when I used it-that why it was passed on to the manned transmitter plant-and thats another---Manned transmitter plants for radio and TV stations-hung out at some as a kid.I am manning a site right now-its a short wave site with vintage 1940's,1960's and 1980's transmitters. To bad they ripped out the cool GE kitchen with the lighted pushbutton stove and oven!The "new" kitchen is awful!!

 

[petek]

I miss many of the above as well. Tulip sundaes at the Woolworths luncheonette, with those cool swiveling red stools..
We still have A&W's here, plenty of them on every other corner.
They don't do drive-in anymore, just drive-thru now.
Those honkin big National Cash Registers with stacks of cash drawers.
so many things.

Here's my IBM I may have posted earlier..still as clean and perfect ss the day it was made. Got about 5 differnt balls for it too. Nothing compares to a real Selectric keyboard.

 

[Kevinpreston3]

What do I miss?

Birthdays at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour, and always getting candy in the big candy store on the way out.

Going to drive-ins in the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Safari station wagon, crawling in back sometime during the 2nd feature, sleeping all the way home.

Tiki-restaurants with little delicious spare ribs for appetizers and a floor show with amazing dancers

Our house with the huge finished basement and setting up my Lionel Train, or Eldon race cars, or GI JOE Mobile Support Vehicle

Going to school with friends I liked before kids stopped being kids sometime in Junior High

Riding my Huffy one speed bike for miles and miles and miles, wishing I had a 10 speed, never thinking for a moment that someday I would be wishing I had the Huffy back

Having Cocoa Puffs and Pop Tarts before spending the day having Hot Wheels races

Playing with my Jimmy Jet for hours and hours until the batteries gave out.

Being able to run for miles and never really being out of breath

Going to see Sean Connery as James Bond, when the movies were new and in the theaters. Going to the little Woodlawn Theater in Littleton Colorado and thinking it was just the best place to be on Saturday afternoon.

Going to Cinderella City, one of the biggest malls in the world, when it opened.

Going to the May D & F store when it was upscale with my mom during the day, always getting chocolate covered peanuts, raisins, and bridge mix from the little candy shop in the middle of the store, for the ride home.

Playing nonstop board games with my sister upstairs while my parents had a dinner party downstairs.

Warming up by the NuTone wall heater on a chilly morning while I woke up.

Flying model rockets with my dad.

Going to my grandmas in La Mirada. My grandparents. When all my aunts and uncles were just in their 40s and 50s.

My first ride in a 1969 426 Hemi Super Bee.

The Bookmobile.

Going grocery shopping with my mom and getting a "supermarket toy".

Milk in glass bottles...already rare when I was young, but we would still get it that way.

Seeing Santa Claus downtown.

The smell of fresh cut grass as my dad mowed. Being excited when my dad got home from work.

The dishwasher going and my parents clinking the dishes as I drifted off to sleep.

 

[petek]

Kevin.. you mentioned Bridge Mix at the dept store counter...that was one of my favorites too. Sears always had a candy counter..what the heck was the womans name attached to it.. Pauline or something...
BTW when I was small I always thought it was called Bridge Mix because of the Blue Water Bridge spanning Sarnia and Port Huron MI..

 

[ironrite]

Oh, I miss work places like those in The Best of Everything. Give me Joan Crawford for a boss anytime!

BUT, you all are some sort of mind readers here. I've started a temp job last month and I get to occasionally use an IBM Selectric 50th Anniversary model typewriter and it's so much fun. The ladies I work with think I'm nuts!

Everytime I use it, I think of this group and wondered why hadn't anybody posted something about old typewriters.

My sister taught me how to use her IBM Executive typewriter. When I was about 12, she had a typing service. What made them unique was each letter was assigned a unit, they were proportional space type. You couldn't just backspace, you had to know how many units a letter was. An "m" was 5 and "i" was 2. It really played heck when you tried to center a heading or set up columns. They had this neat little hairline wire that you could pop up to aim with for correcting mistakes. And they used a mylar type ribbon instead of cloth.

Later in high school, I took business machines, full keyboard comptometer, rotary calulator and the brand new electronic calculator. I was the only guy in class that got an "A" for learning the IBM Executive.

Sorry I digress here, but perhaps it may bring a smile.

 

[air-waycharlie]

Everthing listed here......

Thanks for wonderful memories and I am one of the older posters.

I miss everything listed above but I still miss the true Disco years of Donna Summer, The Village People, Linda Clifford, Sylvester, Carol Douglas, Voyage, The Hughes Corporation, etc.

I miss being with my Grandparents on both sides, all my dear departed friends/sisters/brothers
that are still bogieing on in the great discos of the heavens...........

.............and those nights at Studio 54 in NYC. Those were the days.

Sometimes going down memory runway can be melancholic? Is that a word? As Dolly Pardon said in, "Steel Magnolias", Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.

Thanks Dolly.

 

[Kevinpreston3]

Yes the candy counter...

Pete,

It must have been some company that specialized in it, as this was something that was all over the US and Canada. My wife said they had it at the May Company in California when she was young, you saw it at Sears, I think I remember it at Sears too, that may have been the last place I saw it.

Man I can still see those lucite bins. Non-pareils too, whatever the heck a pareil is. But those three were the ones we always got. In little seperate paper bags.

Someone mentioned A and W. One taste of that root beer brings me back. We had one not far from our house, and they did bring the food out to you. That was so much fun eating their hamburger and then having the "frosty mug" of root beer. I think that and an "Otter Pop" have got to be two of the tastes that jolt me back to being about 6 years old.

Also, what about ice cream trucks when they were clean and driven by a normal looking individual? The milk truck coming at 5 in the morning and putting our milk in the wood SealTest box in front of the house! Mmmmmm, that was nice.

 

[petek]

Disco Charlie!!!
I was chatting with some others here about all that a couple of weeks ago.. all the great songs..I used to work weekend nights at the Playpen Central in Vancouver, that would have been around 75-76. Had Sylvester there a couple of times too. Still have quite a few of the albums and some in the disco single versions..sized like a 33 but just one song per side to get that really great booming bass. You make me feel brand new..lol

 

[petek]

Pauline Kellogg , I think that's the name of the candy counters that were in the Sears stores..ring any bells?

When I was preschool our milk was still delivered by a horse drawn milk carriage. That would have been up to about 1960. Bill was the milkman, can't remember the horses name but we'd always be waiting with something for the horse to eat. Bill never had to drive the wagon he just grabbed the milk from inside, jumped out ran to the front porch and the horse moved up to the next house, talk about automatic.

 

[kenmore1978]

memories

Making little "highways" in the yard, then pushing toy cars along them while imitating how different automatic transmissions would shift

Making "Jiffy Pop"

Thanksgiving dinners with each of my Great Aunts making her "specialty" (poound cake, sweet potatoe pie, macaroni & cheese)

Learning to drive on the street in my paternal Grandmother's 1967 Cougar

Driving on the dirt roads leading to my house in my Maternal grandfather's lap (he worked the pedals) in their 1957 Buick Super coupe

Learning to cook on maternal Grandmother's 40 inch Frigidaire range from the early 50's

Cooking on Paternal Grandmother's Flair range my Dad gave her as a present in 1960.

Going on car trips in Great Uncle's 1959 Pontiac Bonneville coupe

 

[customline]

Here's mine

TV's with tubes built into wooden boxes that looked like furniture
neon signs
Arthur Treacher's fish and chips
Two Guy's dept. store
Woolworth's
King's dept. store
Hess's dept. store
regular gasoline and the way it smelled
70's FM radio
Tonka Toys