This Is For The Older People Here

[Janice]

What are some of the oldest things you remember?

I remember the man coming to our house and pouring coal down to our basement. We had to fill the furnace with the coal.

I remember the wringer washer. I put the clothes through the wringer.

I remember air raid practices. We covered the windows and got under our desks at school.

I remember when there were no preservatives in bread and the bread would mold in a couple days.

I remember cod liver oil in the frig and I had to have a spoon full each morning.

[alicia-w]

I remember milk and cream being delivered to our door.
I remember when the ice cream truck in the neighborhood was a real Good Humor man.
I remember sitting in my grandfather's basement next to the coal furnace watching the eggs in his incubator...
I remember when ladies didnt smoke, drink, or wear pants (at least where we lived).
Patent leather Mary Janes at the Buster Brown shoe store

[angelwing]

Wringer-washer
Carry along record player from Motorola that played 16 1/2-78 rpms and it had 2 huge detachable speakers
Milk delivery
Air raid siren going off every Friday at noon
Te huskster coming down the driveway every Friday..."Jersey tomatoes, 3 lbs for a dollar, Jersey peaches!"
Garbage collection 3 times a week
Hanging wash outside to dry (not a lot do it here & I can't living in an apt )
Hedgeclippers to trim the hedges along with mowing our lawn with the push mower
black dial phone kitchen model and our old phone number that started with "LI"
saddleshoes
Nuns in full habits (no hair no legs)
Priests in full cassocks

A lot more but that's enough to pre-date me

[coriolis]

You guys have me beat.

Wringer washer

Black and white TV with an antenna on the roof and only 3 channels. Only two channels were clear enough to watch.

Station Wagons

Sting Ray bicycles with bananna seats

78 RPM records

President Lyndon Johnson

[Janice]

You could take a dime to the store and get a bag of penny candy.

Cloth cords on telephones instead of plastic.

Filling your hair with pincurls and using a bobbypin to hold it in place.

Using a hairnet.

Using a bathing cap.

No airconditioning in your house.

[Pburgh]

Oh my this is definitely for me!!!!
Telephone operators that connected you to a party line. Picking up the phone and hearing someone talking and waiting for them to hang up so we could make a call.

NO television but listening to the radio. Having the milkman throw his ice on the road after his route was complete and eating that ice as it it were the best tasting stuff in the world. Curling irons that were put on the gas stove to heat and when you got them too hot you could smell hair burning. yuk Dampening all the clothes before you ironed them.(and everything had to be ironed - no permanent press)

The taste of soda pop - cause you only got to drink it once in a blue moon!!!!lol I loved cherry!.

[Miss Mary]

- Popsicle trucks (similar to the ice cream man).

- All of us crowding around the 9 or 10 inch Muntz, black and white TV. No remote.

- When TV shows began going to color. It was a huge deal.

- 3 network TV channels and a few UHF ones. That was IT baby.

- The NBC peacock - the color was amazing..........

- When blowdryers were sold to the public. I used my portable hair dryer as a hand held one, but the hose was too floppy. I was ahead of my time......

- Individual glass milk bottles at school, not cartons. I wanted my mom to buy milk in small bottles. She never did - too expensive.

- Gallon milk coming in glass, retangular milk bottles with indents to grab. Cardboard stoppers, no fancy sealed contraption, just a cardboard top stuffed inside.

- Glass soda bottles. My mom saved one for her ironing, by using a sprayer attachment made specifically for glass soda bottles. She just shook the water on the clothes and then ironed.

- My mom taking dress shirts, rolling them up and lining them up in the fridge on a cookie sheet. They ironed better she said, if she did this first. Who would bother with all that today? LOL

- Learning about TV shows by watching TV or reading a rare article in the daily newspaper. Can't remember if TV Guide was around back then.The way you heard about shows also was word of mouth. No internet, message boards, etc.

- Definitely no A/C at our house. We were miserable in hot summers. Sleeping outside or in the basement.

- Coffee perculators, on the stove top. No drip coffee makers. You'd listen for it to perculate and then you'd hear your dad say, 3 to 5 minutes, coffee with be ready! Removing the grounds basket, otherwise that pot of coffee was nasty!

And here's my biggest pet peeve, educational wise speaking:

- If you wanted to learn how to type, you took a real, honest to goodness class. Mine went a full year, with a bad a** nun, full habit and mean scowl. Pointer too. I learned to type on manuals, with carbon paper and everything! Kids today are missing out - in a major way. They all use computers, why don't they just take one full year, 4th or 5th grade and teach them Home Row? My rant is done......hence, why my replies are lengthy at times. I know how to type! With my eyes closed....hrrrrrmmmmpppphhhhhh!

Good topic Janice!

Thought I was old before I read the replies here, now I feel downright ancient and ready for the nursing home!!!!!

Old Fart Mary

[Pburgh]

Oh bobby pins!!! Janice, I forgot about those. Did you ever have your Mom curl your hair with rags!!!!!!! I guess that goes back to the late 40's. lol

[Miss Mary]

Or tame flyaways with their spit! My mom smoked like a fiend back then and drank at least 8 cups of strong tea a day. When she'd lick her fingers, I'd run!

Did anyone save large orange juice cans, removing both lid and bottom. And use them for curlers? I did, I'd put my waist length long hair up into a pony tail on top of my head (wet). Then I'd bend over and proceed to roll my pony tail into 4 sections. One on each side of my head. And then attempt to sleep like this. I'd position the pillow just below the curlers and hang my head kinda over my pillow like this.

But it sure made my hair look good. lol

Does anyone remember ironing their hair? Hey now, my mom ironed everything and if I even requested to use that darn iron for my hair, I heard about it. My friends ironed their hair but I hardly ever got to......dang.

[alicia-w]

i still iron my hair.....

i forgot about telephones that really rang, stingray bikes, the soda bottles for ironing (my mom's had a little daisy head sprinkler on it).

but we had air conditioning.

i remember taking the tubes out of the TV and going to the drug store with dad to check them out on the tube tester....

our first electric typewriter was quite a novelty, it typed in script!! we thought that was the living end.

[Janice]

I had the big bulky black manual typewriter in typing class, no electrics. And remember the carbon paper?

The adding machines with the big handles were a blast too.

I am really dating myself, but I graduated the year the Beatles came to America.

[Pburgh]

Alice, "the living end" Wow I haven't heard that in years. Thanks for the memory.

Janice, how about the mimeograph machines that you had to correct your copy with a razor blade!!!

Miss Mary, I remember sleeping in those suckers. OUCH

[Aslkahuna]

How's about listening to Benny Goodman/Glenn Miller/Inkspots on the phonograph. Speaking of radios, I still have the old Hallicrafters Skybuddy Shortwave radio that we listened to for years. Boston Blacky on the radio and who forget "Suspense" with the creaking door. When I was sick and couldn't go to school, had to listen to all of the Soaps on the RADIO-all AM no FM radio then.

Steve

[Pburgh]

Steve, The Shadow Knows!!!!!

[southerngale]

I guess I'm not "older" yet because I don't remember most of what y'all are talking about, although I would LOVE to have milk delivered to my door. lol

Black and white TV with an antenna on the roof and only 3 channels. Only two channels were clear enough to watch.

I remember that well, minus the antenna on the roof. It was about 5-6 months ago. I returned from living like a gypsy for weeks after Rita. When I got electricity, I still had no cable for quite a while and the Astros were in the playoffs headed to the World Series and I was desperately trying to catch a glimpse on a little 13-inch black and white TV, moving the antenna and TV to various places, adding foil, hoping to get a "decent" view. It didn't work very well, and I ended up hearing better on the radio.

I remember station wagons...aren't they still around? Sometimes I see them with plastic and tape as one of the windows and at least one tail light hanging from the car.

[Janice]

How about the origional Flash Gordon, Howdy Doody and Clarabell.


Did you have a wire hoop shirt or slip?

Seams in the back of stockings, hose.

I remember using an outhouse regularly and using a pump at the kitchen sink.

Separating milk and even churning butter.

Yes, we had a bottle of ink in school and a quill pen and we actually used those. We had holes in our desks for us to put the ink bottles in.

[GalvestonDuck]

Sheesh...I feel young now!

Janice, that last post...you're putting us on now, aren't you? I mean, you're talking "Little House On The Prairie" now.

I remember when milk was delivered, Barbie came with those little suitcase boxes, "when you hear the bell, turn the page" was on your record player, shag carpet, bumper pool, "Ghost in the Graveyard," trying to find backward masking on vinyl albums, "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!," there were three networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) and an independent local channel (usually the one that gave us reruns of those "old" black and white shows like "My Three Sons" and "The Patty Duke Show" along with great Saturday movie matinees all day long, never locking a door (and then when the term "latchkey kid" became a news magazine focus), Pong, carrying one of those rounded-handled combs in your back pocket, Slinky, skate keys, fondue, dialing a number on a rotary phone, using a dime to make a call on a pay phone, gas prices and the Iran hostage crisis, and KFC was truly the "original" recipe.

Am I old?

[Janice]

My cousins lived in a small Iowa farm town, and when I was in grade school, my sis and I would spend a week there in the summer. They had an outhouse and pump at the kitchen sink, on their farm.

[MGC]

Doctors made house calls. We only had one TV, a B&W one with tubes and when you turned it on you had to wait a half hour for it to warm up. Soda bottles that you could return for a deposit. My brothers would make a living during the summer collecting bottles. Every now and then I'd steal some from them and run up to the corner store and cash them in and buy some candy. Candy bars were a nickle and so were soda pop. Had to wear dresses to school, even on cold days. We only had one car and my Mom and Dad would argue over who would get to drive it because thier businees was more important.......MGC

[Brent]

Oh WOW... ya'll are old.