I remember when...

[trof]

You 'dialed' a telephone number. And it was just 5 digits. Mine was 7-4014.
'Word processors' came without screens or electrical plugs. Direct from keyboard to finished product.
And carbon paper if you needed a copy.
And Wite-Out

was SUCH an advancement over typewriter erasers.
The circular ones with the brush on one side for cleaning the little bits off of the page and out of the machine.
And if you weren't careful you rubbed a hole in the paper.

You could buy a single cigarette (short and non-filtered) for a penny at the corner drug store.
The book of matches was free.
Our neighborhood grocery store was not self service. You handed your list to the clerk at the front counter and he filled your order and brought it up to you. Or your mom could just call it in and send you down to pick it up.
If she was a trustworthy customer (who wasn't?) she had a charge account and paid the bill at the end of the month.
If YOU were trustworthy she would send you down with the payment.

Sometimes mom would let you make a couple of stacks of spare bricks (we always seemed to have spare bricks) and put one of her oven racks across it and have a backyard weenie roast. No charcoal, we used sticks and twigs from around the yard.

Making sure you had a nickel when you went out, just in case you needed to call home.
Two hankies for Sunday school. "One for blow, and one for show."
And a dime for the collection plate in church.
Just to make sure you kept to the straight and narrow, you were always quizzed on the way home.
"Did you put your dime in?"
"Yes Mam."

Lunch tickets, and the kind lady in the lunchroom who always said "I know you bought your lunch tickets, honey. You just bring it tomorrow."

Penny loafers with pennies in the slots. Lincoln head side showing...ALWAYS.
'Ivy League' pants with the cloth belt and metal buckle in the back. I guess they were so you could cinch them up if you lost weight, but these were our GROWING years. Very cool, however. :shrug:

When you started driving, IF you had your own jalopy, you had a necker knob on the steering wheel so you could drive with one hand and put your arm around your girl. WAY cool.

Anyway...it's a very pleasant Thanksgiving Eve afternoon down in Dixie and I was just sitting here reminiscing.
Anyone care to join me?
:-)

[ceile]

1. Let's see....

B&W tv's
VHF and UHF channels
schools without gates around the parking lots (is that to keep the students in or predators out?)
no metal detectors in schools
the family station wagon

[bleedingheart]

2. I remember when TV wasn't on all the time

no microwaves...reheating Thangsgiving leftovers involved pots, pans and the stove.

no air conditioning...it was way too expensive for regular folks...

does anyone remember letter writing??? Gosh..I loved writing and getting letters...

[ceile]

3. Getting letters from friends away at camp

was the best!
I think I still have some my friend sent back in junior high. :blush:

[bleedingheart]

6. I had pen pals in France and in California...it was a blast!

I loved the letters from France...

[trof]

11. I wasn't much of a letter writer. When I went to camp

mom put some self addressed, stamped postcards in my bag.
"You don't have to write anything. Just mail me one once in a while so I'll know you're OK."
She found every single one in my bag when she unpacked it.
I was too busy learning to canoe and smoking pine straw cigars wrapped in toilet paper.

[trof]

4. And the test pattern

An Indian chief in warbonnet.
Why, I wonder?

[bleedingheart]

7. I remember thinking how cool it was to stay up late enough to

hear the national anthem played.. and then the test pattern would come on....

[BrotherBuzz]

34. I wasn't allowed to stay up that late....

but I would watch fifteen minutes of the test pattern waiting for programing to resume Saturdays mornings. The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz was the first program of the morning; I NEVER missed it. Cold cereal, milk, sugar, and B&W TV, it didn't get much better than that!

[ceile]

9. or the National Anthem

at sign-off. I hated that. It was always the signal the long summer night was over and it was time for us kids to go to bed.

[trof]

14. We had a Buick.

Grandpa sold them, so we had a brand new 'demonstrator' each year.
He was the car owner in the family.
Mom didn't drive until he died, when she was in her 30s.

[ceile]

22. Chryslers and Buicks

The only brands my grandparents would drive. Gosh, they were boats on wheels.

[trof]

27. Land Yachts.

I bought an old Lincoln Town Car once, on a whim.
Paid a couple of hundred bucks for it and another $500 getting all the bells and whistles working again and a paint job..
Power EVERYTHING and an 8-track.
Moon roof.

We named it 'ABE' and got that for the vanity license plate.
What a great ride.
About 15 mpg.
:-(

[terrya]

5. I remember Green Stamps.

I remember when we'd go to the store and we got Green Stamps with our groceries. I remember when we'd go to the gas station (and none of that self serve stuff) and we'd get Green Stamps also. And after several books of Green Stamps, Mom would go to the Redemption Store downtown and get some small appliance or something.

[trof]

10. Yep. And gas station attendants.

Jeez, they'd hit us like an Indy pit crew.
Washing windows, checking tires, oil, water, pumping gas.
I always felt bad about buying a dollar's worth.
IF I was flush.

[novalib]

16. Gas-Station GIVE AWAYS!

I remember when gas station actually gave things away (like water glasses) to encourage customers.

[trof]

18. Right! I got a 'set' of U. of ALA. ones.

Bear Bryant vintage.

[CottonBear]

24. I had a transistor radio shaped like a Shell gas pump! It was so cool!

The display was where the gas prices and gallons would be on the pump and the knobs were on the side where the gas pump hose would be! I'm sure my mom threw it away at some point. :(
I remember getting a entire set of Coke glasses (one per fillup)!

[trof]

28. Transistor radios were our iPods(?).

I think that's what an iPod does.
Music?

[CottonBear]

23. I loved going to the Green Stamp store! Remember returnable coke bottles?

They were always arranged in huge stacks of crates at the front the local grocery store (A&P or Winnn Dixie.) Of course, my dad drank Pepsi instead of Coke. He liked the King Size bottles! :)

[trof]

30. I worked in a grocery store.

There was an old guy who came in with a wheelbarrow load of Coke bottles every Saturday.
We'd roll our eyes and say "Oh god. Here he is again."
A cashier would have to leave the register to go and count the bottles and pay him.
Lines would back up.
People would get pissed.

The poor guy was probably living off the income.

[trof]

8. I remember wanting a pair of glasses SO MUCH.

Everyone I knew who could read wore glasses.
Mom, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
I couldn't read yet, and so I thought glasses were like a magic window that made sense of all those squiggles on the page.

Now I got 'em.
;-)

[mike_c]

12. damn, I grew up in the south, '50s and 60's....

I have so many memories. Elberton, GA, oh my.

[trof]

15. 40s & 50s here. About a decade ahead of you.

Did you have a bike?
My first was a red Western Flyer from the Western Auto store.
With the 'gas tank'.
And once I was allowed to go off the block, I was FREEEEE!!!
What a feeling.
Giddy.

[CottonBear]

19. Hi! I live in Athens, GA, near Elberton! Granite Capitol of the World!

:) Have you seen the Georgia Guidestones there?

[trof]

32. Hold it. NH is "The Granite State".

I know, because my yard was FULL of it.
If granite was gold, Bill Gates would be my chauffer now.
So how could some town in Georgia be "The Granite Capitol of the World"?

[mike_c]

38. yes-- and I went to grad school in Athens in the early 90's....

I remembered shopping for school clothes in the department stores there when I was a kid.

[rug]

13. Mike Nesmith's mother invented witeout.

[trof]

17. The Monkees? THAT Mike Nesmith?

Get out.

[lizziegrace]

20. Yep

That Mike Nesmith. He's been managing her fortune ever since...

[rug]

21. Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Nesmith

[Mrs.Matcom]

25. I remember...

summer nights playing kick ball until the street lights came on...seemed like 10 o'clock!

8 ounce glass coke bottles that had to be returned.(still have the bottle bill in Mass)

Bazooka Joe bubble gum and reading your fortune and the comic

singing "over the river and thru the woods" in school before Thanksgiving.

Making hand traced turkeys in grade school.

Having snow by Thanksgiving!

All the homemade goodies and decorations we made with Mom around the holidays.

No VCRS, DVDS, CDS, or Microwaves; but Albums, 45's, 8 track tapes, going to the movies, The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights,
The Donny & Marie Show

My parents and grandparents always bought Oldsmobiles

Getting a set of Patriots football glasses with the fill up! Go Pats!

Greenstamps, we would pour over the catalogs to decide what to get.

The SEARS christmas catalog. My son, when growing up, would make me read the toy section to him at bedtime!

and being much younger and thinking 30 was OLD! man I would kill to be 30 again!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :hi:

[trof]

26. And a special DU Lounge welcome to Mrs. M.

:hi:
Nice to see you here.
I remember hunting up enough coke bottles (2 cents each) to get into the movies on Saturday.
And playing Coke bottle poker.
The town where the bottle came from was stamped on the bottom.
Farthest away got a free coke from the rest of the kids.
A good knowledge of geography and the ability to pull off a bluff came in handy.
(In Birmingham, where I grew up) "Hey, EVERYBODY knows Nashville is WAY farther away than Miami. I win."
:-)

[Mrs.Matcom]

39. Hi Trof!!

As you know we still have the bottle bill here on sodas,beer and water. Up to a whole five cents now! big pain in the patootie since most people recycle. Anywho, good to see you too! Next time you are up in our neck of the woods, give us a call and we can hook up.

I like the game you played with the geography on the bottles! That was quite ingenious! :hug:

[YankeyMCC]

36. Hit reply in the wrong spot nt

[DemoTex]

29. I remember when parsley was free at the grocery store.

And I remember when the phone did not have a dial (Auburn, Alabama .. early '50s). You picked up the receiver and the operator said, "Number, please." I even remember my grandmother's phone number: 1-4-3-8-W.

I remember straight-shift cars without synchro-mesh.

I remember airplanes without electrical systems, too.

Hell, I remember flying an airplane (1938 D-H Tiger Moth) with no brakes (had a tail-skid).

[trof]

31. OK. You're older than dirt.

;-)

Of course in the big city (Birmingham) we had dial phones long before the boonies did.
But granny would still tell me "Call Central and get the number for..."
It's NOT Central, granny. It's INFORMATION."
Smartass punk kid.

[skygazer]

33. Party lines

And you had your own ring. And you'd pick up the phone to make a call and hear the neighbor's voice on it - she'd say, "Give me a few minutes, skygazer" and you knew you had at least a half an hour before you could call out. :eyes:

No screw-top bottles - you needed a bottle opener. The soda machines had the bottles lying flat behind a glass door and when you put the money in, you could pull one out and open it on the opener at the front of the machine. If you were sneaky, you could just open the bottles while they were still locked in and let them drain into a paper cup. :blush:

If you didn't have a stamp, you could put your letter in the box with 15 cents and the mailman would stamp it.

Tuesday night was dollar night at the movies in my hometown - imagine going to a movie for a buck? You can't rent a movie for that.

[conscious evolution]

35. I can remember taking a quarter to the store

and buying a coke,a candy bar,a comic book and a game on the pinball machine.Three games if I skipped the comic book.

[YankeyMCC]

37. No TV remote

Commodore 64 - With a Cassette Tape drive - Oh boy that was fun lol

Buying Albums on Cassette

Seeing a first run "blockbuster" movie in the Theater for something like $2.50

A pack of smokes for 85 cents

A dime bag was on $10 and that was more than enough for a party

Must See TV was "Love Boat" followed by "Fantasy Island"

A lot more snow in the winter - but then again maybe it was just that I was shorter, although I'm not that much taller now :)

Hurricane Gloria

Sneaking out of bed late at night to see SNL and it being worth it even if you got caught

"Hey Iran" T-Shirts with various cartoon figures giving the finger (strangely - or perhaps not - adults who would normally get irate at the hint of a curse word passing the lips of a child said nothing about the hordes of preteens and teens wearing these things)

Atari - Pitfall, Asteroids, Dungeon (I think I have the name wrong but it was a simple line maze and your character was a square cursor, it was fantastic)

Zarex

[bleedingheart]

40. I was my mother's TV remote....

I could be buried in a book and my mother would yell for me...and I would come into the living room and she would say...."change the channel"....