I'm So Old That I Remember...

[msmofet]

Groovy!

 

[Andy M.]

Andy, you never looked like Fonzi?

Well, I do have a leather jacket and a bunch of tee shirts . . .

 

[msmofet]

Well, I do have a leather jacket and a bunch of tee shirts . . .

But no Duck's A$$

 

[Andy M.]

But no Duck's A$$

No. I wasn't a JD.

 

[taxlady]

Groovy!

 

[msmofet]

I loved the Smothers Brothers!!!

 

[Kathleen]

Wiggle dress and swing coat?

I remember owning several "twin set sweaters". We called them cardigan sets. They weren't called "pencil skirts" back then. They were called "tight skirts".

We called them pencil skirts - they went well with the boyfriend's letter sweater!

The wiggle dress was ever-so-slightly clingy dress that really presented the assets of that bullet bra. Swing coats have come and gone multiple times since back then.

Pencils! Glad you mentioned them. When I was a kid they used to sell potato chips in big white boxes containing two grease-stained bags of chips, and around the end of summer this box would include a round #2 pencil. It had the potato chip logo all over it, and it was much coveted by my brothers and sisters. I think I was in seventh grade until I actually got one. And I dropped it, and the lead broke, and that was that.

Remember the little "eraser hats" they had for pencils?

I still use those!

@dragnlaw My mother, a self-made "kitchen magician", was a pro at the beehive hair-dos. However, she cut *my* hair into a pageboy at one point. I absolutely hated it. She then took me in a little sailor dress to have a photo made.

 

[GinnyPNW]

My mother's best friend took me to have my first "hair cut". I do not remember why that was, but I remember getting home and my mother crying. Since then, I have waffled between hair down to my waist and up to my shoulders...but never shorter.

 

[Meryl]

I remember playing cat's cradle in the playground at school when I lived in the UK.

 

[Meryl]

I remember playing cat's cradle in the playground at school when I lived in the UK.

Or the " jumping elastics game".

 

[Kathleen]

I'm curious what today's young adults will write when they get a few more decades on them. Crinkle hair? Scrunchies? Neon colors? Jelly shoes?

 

[dr morbius]

I grew up in a suburb about 15 miles south of Chicago. When I was very young I would sometimes go out at night into the back yard and look up at the sky. To the north, which would be on my left, the sky was lighter than it was to the south, on my right. The reason for this was the light pollution from the city; south of us it was largely undeveloped and north of us was all full of suburbia. By the time I left my parents' house this phenomenon was gone; the sky was not fully dark anymore no matter which direction one looked. Now, of course, one has to drive a LONG way to get away from the lights of the city and suburbs of Chicago.

 

[taxlady]

Talking about light pollution increasing. When I moved to the West Island of Montreal (largely suburban, some rural, a bit of nature park), there were a lot more stars visible in the night sky. I remember seeing the Hale-Bopp Comet in the second half of the 1990s.

Comet Hale–Bopp - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I could see it against a background of myriad stars. Now, when I go outside at night, I'm lucky to see 30-50 stars.

 

[Texmex]

...when gas stations had full service. You just pulled up to the pump, rolled down your window (car windows were lowered or raised with a crank, not a button), and told the man to "fill 'er up". And he'd wash your windows, too!

...and gas contained lead, an additive to increase octane. After some time they eliminated the lead (hence the term unleaded gas) and new cars came with a "catalytic converter", which changed the exhaust to water vapor and "harmless" carbon dioxide.

...and gas was $0.36 a gallon!

I was in Oklahoma back then for gas was pretty cheap anyway and I remember it being 17 cents a gallon at one point. People would just go put a dollar's worth of gas in their car and then since it was the muscle car era everyone would just go squealing their tires and racing everywhere.

The first car I got that headache catalytic converter on it was very sluggish. A guy at a gas station offered to take it off for me and I let him and in my car ran really good again. When they first put those on they really hadn't made a car that was suitable for them and ran good with them on. That took a few years.

 

[Texmex]

We had milk delivered in glass bottles too. There was a form to fill in if you wanted other stuff than your usual delivery. I remember my mum skimming the cream off the top of the milk in those bottles. What I don't remember is the bottles freezing open. I grew up in SoCal and it just never got cold enough for the milk to freeze.

We lived several miles from any grocery store. I am honestly surprised that after and during covid, someone did not resurrect the milk truck. It would be great to have dairy products delivered like they did in the old days. And of course they picked up the bottles which were recycled back then.

 

[Texmex]

I'm 66 and a kiwi. Nz were prolly 10 to 20 years behind murica?
I remember staying at my nanas and granddad's they had an outside toilet. A bucket under a hole in a 4 sided box. Old school.
My granddad came back from wwll after 4 years in a pow camp I Poland. No money was a thing then. Sparse meals and no leaving the table until plates were empty. No elbows on tables. Saying prayers at night. My home had a proper toilet. He drove 39 chev. I've tried to track it down.
Milk at the gate in a bottle.
Mum sending me to the shops with a note for ciggies etc.
Mum making our clothes on a treadle sewing machine.
Some fond and not so fond memories.

Russ

In America it really just depended on how rural you were. I had a few relatives who still did not have indoor plumbing or electricity in the 1970s because they just lived out in the middle of nowhere. They live like in the old west. It was strictly farmhouse cooking.

One of my uncles who only died in the last few years lived on his place his whole life and he had a real idyllic situation because he lived on a cold spring, so that was like a big walking refrigerator in the spring house over the cold spring. Those relatives in that area through their water out of a well with a bucket and had outhouses. The uncle with the nice spring eventually did get electricity and indoor plumbing sometime in the 1970s I believe. I'm really glad I got to experience that. I thought it was a great adventure.

 

[Cooking Goddess]

There are a number of dairies that still offer home delivery in the Greater Boston area: https://www.newenglanddairy.com/blog-post/national-milk-day/
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Hippy? Or Greaser? Then there was the one that had no cool nickname, collegiate.
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No fish, chicken, or sharpening guy. We did have someone with a pickup truck drive slowly down the street shouting "paper, ex". He was actually saying "paper, rags" but it didn't sound like that.
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Baseball cards clipped to the spokes of a bike. Horn with the rubber ball to make noise. Handlebar streamers.
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Line dried sheets and clothes. Boy, those dungarees were stiff.
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Going outside to watch for the Echo satellite cross overhead. One of the local Cleveland newspapers posted a chart showing which way to look at what time and direction whenever it would be visible in the area.

 

[taxlady]

Roller skates that attached to your shoes. Then, when we got older, we took them apart and used them to make skate boards. They were adjustable lengthwise - the front and back slid apart or shorter. They could also slide all the way apart into two sections. Those two sections, a 2x4 and some screws was all you needed to make a skate board. Of course we weren't doing fancy stuff on those skate boards.

 

[dr morbius]

Roller skates that attached to your shoes. Then, when we got older, we took them apart and used them to make skate boards. They were adjustable lengthwise - the front and back slid apart or shorter. They could also slide all the way apart into two sections. Those two sections, a 2x4 and some screws was all you needed to make a skate board. Of course we weren't doing fancy stuff on those skate boards.

That reminds me of clip-on sunglasses. Somebody thinks they have a good idea and it gets marketed. Then people buy it. Then people hit themselves in the forehead, asking, "Why did I think this might be a good idea?"

Those clamp-on roller skates caused a lot of injuries, methinks. Of course, roller skating in general caused a lot of injuries.

 

[Cooking Goddess]

Roller skates that attached to your shoes. Then, when we got older, we took them apart and used them to make skate boards. They were adjustable lengthwise - the front and back slid apart or shorter. They could also slide all the way apart into two sections. Those two sections, a 2x4 and some screws was all you needed to make a skate board. Of course we weren't doing fancy stuff on those skate boards.

Your post reminded me of this old song from the early 1970s: