What is something you remember from your childhood that you don't see at all today?
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Kids playing cowboys and Indians.
Chevy Vegas. Ford Pintos and AMC Gremlins.
Even when I lived in Southern California, where air-cooled VW Beetles are a daily sight I saw exactly one of each in five years..
Rotary dial phones, Chatty Cathy dolls, manual typewriters, Brylcreem commercials, Burma Shave roadside signs…Damn, I’m getting old.
KIds playing ball at a playground, without adult supervision, uniforms, padding and “official” equipment and without being Properly Hydrated. Oh yeah and without their cell phones, game boys or iPods in their ears.
Picking up the phone and asking the operator to ring “My Grandma” please.She recognized my voice and knew who my grandma was.
A lot of bugs. I remember when I was young I could find all kinds of bugs outside. It seems like now a days i really dont see as much anymore.
I couldnt tell ya the last time I saw a rolly polly bug
@YARNLADY Picking up the phone and asking the operator to ring “My Grandma” please. she recognized my voice and knew who my grandma was.
Well. that’s totally adorable!
@uberbatman A lot of bugs. I remember when I was young I could find all kinds of bugs outside.
It seems like a bug-splattered windshield is no longer a part of every road trip. A couple of people have mentioned that to me. Freaky.
@jaytkay : I must be driving on different roads, I always have a mess of bug schmootz on my windshield when I roadtrip. yuck.
People cashing checks at the grocery store, televisions with dials to change the channels, people walking up to the television to change the channel, television antennas on houses, Freakies cereal, vinyl records, 8 track tapes/players, 5¼” floppy disks…
My Dudley Do-rights. Little plastic dogs with a ball and string attached. You would drop the ball over the edge of a table and the dog would “walk” to the edge and then stop .
Easily entertained in those days I guess!
Here are some oldies: yarnlady mentioned one:
Picking up the phone and hearing, “Number please.”
The milkman (although we had one in 1972 in Colorado). But when I was little he’d come to the back door and want us to buy this huge chocolate cake too.
The ice cream or Good Humor man. Popsicles: five cents.
Nickel cokes at the drugstore; six cents for chocolate coke.
Big rack of comic books at the little grocer.
Little boys wearing belt and holster w/pistol and often a cowboy hat
Kids playing hopscotch in front of their house
Kids roller skating on the sidewalk in aluminum skates—no leather or vinyl anything.
Backyard play houses w/a second story! All wood.
Women in “housedresses” not pants.
AS @Supermouse said, people getting up to change the tv channel.
Tinsel on Christmas trees and only breakable colored balls on them.
Everybody smoking cigs at parties! Fog bank fills the room!
Ashtrays sitting out on living room tables 24/7
Formica countertops in kitchens.
Dinette tables topped with formica.
Ugly but effective pull down bedrom window shades. Tan.
Hardwood floors in classrooms.
Kids’ metal lunchboxes w/thermos.
Someone defrosting the kitchen freezer.
Yo Yo’s
Little girls in Brownie uniforms.
Finally: teenagers with crinolines under their skirts to make them stand out!
@uberbatman Rolly pollies are alive and well in Arkansas! LOL
@YARNLADY the phone thing really was adorable.
@YARNLADY yea i know its pretty depressing. Like I know these things are happening, but to really see it in as little as 10 years is just mind boggling.
Funfruits snacks. What happened to those? I loved them. Surely to fuck they must still exist? I ain’t that old. >_>
People wearing Zubaz pants.
Bubble gum cigarettes.
Hair crimpers (I want one so bad)
and The Hamburglar
@Deja_vu one of the mcdonalds near me has a big statue of him :P
Rabbit ears on the TV, usually with aluminum foil wrapped around the ends.
@uberbatman Years and years ago I scored an apple pie tree. I had to get rid of it when I moved. I wish I still had it :( Mine was a little different then the one in the link, it was only about 5 feet tall and it fit in the corner of the room, but it looks just like the one in the picture. It was badass.
My grandparents, for starters.
Then there was “the bread man”, “the milk man”, “the fruit and vegetable man” ... all of these guys had regular delivery routes, and we purchased from all.
There was also “Pete, the TV repair man”. When was the last time anyone saw a TV repair guy making regular housecalls?
Of course, there was also black-and-white television.
Charley McCarthy dolls!
Rag dolls
Little girls hoping they’ll get a “doll who wets her pants” for Christmas lol
Tangee Natural lipstick on a card
BanLon cardigan sweaters-they were a status symbol !
Manual push mowers
Men waxing their shoes w/brush and a rag so they could see their face in them!
Neon colored, metal drinking glasses w/too sharp edges!
Red nail polish /red lipstick
Girls “saddleshoes”
@uberbatman- come to Australia, there is a locust plague down south, unbelievable to drive through, and enough bugs anywhere in the country to make you dance with glee. (well if you like bugs anyhow)
@Deja_vu thats fucking AWESOME
@rooeytoo joy…. lol. i just miss diggin up bugs in the dirt :P
@Aster I wear red lipstick, and red nail polish.
@Aster _Neon colored, metal drinking glasses w/too sharp edges! _
Eww, I didn’t like it when people served milk in those, it was totally wrong!
@Deja_vu You do?? Wow!! Do people comment?
@jaytkay But I liked the sweat droplets on them! They were so pretty when new ! Brrrrr they got so cold.
Pinocchio ice cream, but that’s because I haven’t been in Germany nor Austria since I was 4 and a half
Floppy disks, Windows 95/98, pagers, these, Beanie babies (I see them every now and then, but I sure haven’t seen one in a while), and these.
@DominicX I have a Beanie baby in my dresser. It’s about ten? yrs old.
@Aster I don’t think its so unusual to wear red lipstipk.
@DominicX – I still have my game boy and play it every now and then or dig it out when the grandkids come to visit.
Pac-Man arcade (or any other games) in the entry area of a grocery store.
S&H Green Stamps – I loved collecting them to get nifty things from the store. The glue on the stamps tasted horribly though.
Walkman cassette players and mixed tapes. 8-Tracks.
Commadore 64 and Vic 20. Favorite game was similar to Pac-Man, but it was a mouse chasing cheese.
Command prompts.
Coke machines selling glass bottles.
99 cents / gallon gas.
@Deja_vu Oh. I was going by my daughters who wear lipgloss. lol I just don’t see the red lips AND the red nailpolish anymore. Cool.
Jean Nate, Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers in the giant tubes, candy bars 2 for 25 cents, Thrifty Drug and Discount stores.
Kids fishing with a stick, piece of string, found fishline and rusty hooks.
Sitting down to eat meals at a table, no rush, no TV.
Here’s something sickening: a big wooden barrel in a store filled with pickles floating in water. Huge thing. 5c
Five cent suckers at the movies called Charms; I got lime. lol We called them lollypops, though..
In high school I was on the rifle team. We used to take out guns to school on the bus (no bullets, of course) and keep them in our lockers until it was time to go to the basement range.
No one got excited. No one did any damage. No one got shot.
Can you imagine doing that today?
@Deja_vu our shag carpet had tons of bald spots because of the stuff we had to cut out of them! Now there is a blast from the past!
@Deja_vu I loved shag carpeting ! The longer, the better. You’d rake it. And when it was new and had a foam pad underneath? Heaven for the tootsies.
Long lines of toddlers in church with pages they had colored with pics of Jesus=so cute.
Pan-Stik roll-on makeup base (covered pimples)
Black seams up the back of nylon stockings.
Drinking water kept in tall cisterns with a long hooked steel ladle. Several of my relatives had these in their kitchens, the water having been brought inside from a pump out back.
@Aster – I loved those pickles and I don’t know of anyone who ever became ill from eating one! When they started to disappear, my dad began to make his own. He had a huge crock full of water, garlic, salt and who knows what. He would put cucumbers, brussel sprouts, green tomatoes, string beans, etc. into it!
Everything @Aster said and,
Cola and orange drink dispensers at the dime store lunch counter that swirled the drink around in a big clear container. (What was that for?)
A lunch counter in the dime store and also the drug store.
I also could pick up my telephone receiver and ask for my grandma, and the operator would ask “which one honey, grandma Anne or grandma Jean?”
@rooeytoo He sounds like a great dad !
Cars with no seatbelts ; you never heard of anyone being killed but then, I was in a small town.
Putting chewing gum under your desk before the teacher saw it (maybe they still do it?)
Teachers in spike heels at the “blackboard.” Very grumpy teachers who hated kids and pulled my hair ! how dare she?
Space Food Sticks
Shake a pudding
Quisp cereal
Flatsy dolls
Little Kiddles dolls
Kids wearing keds tennis shoes with the white rubber bumper on the toe
Happy Face buttons
Clackers (a pair of lucite balls that hung from strings that you clacked together)
Incredible Edibles (a toy similar to an easy bake oven that was used to create something akin to today’s modern gummy worms)
Creepy Crawlers (almost the same as Incredible Edibles, but they made rubber “gummy worm” types of permanent toys that you did NOT eat)
Machines that dispensed glass bottles of Orange Crush, Bubble Up, Tab, Wink and Fresca.
Pull tabs on aluminum cans that came OFF
Princess phones
Real figure skates (to rent) at the ice rink, instead of those hard plastic ones that look like roller blade boots
Roller skates with 4 metal wheels
Bowls full of un-shelled nuts and a nutcracker (grandma’s used to keep those out for company, along with a candy dish full of hard candies)
Drive in theaters
Cards clothes-pinned to the spokes of bicycles (to make it sound like a motorbike)
Neighborhood block parties
Individual sized milk cartons with the round pull-tab (not plastic pull tabs like today, these were made out of the same material as the carton)
Sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper
Cafeterias (not the same thing as all you can eat buffets of today)
Root beer served in real glass beer mugs
Regular old-style Christmas bulbs (not LED’s or ropelights) like these
Pink, blue and green pastel colored tupperware cups with lids like these
Insulated plastic coffe cups with colored straw liners like these
@wilma I absolutely loved the food at the lunch counters esp burgers or fried fish and cole slaw
I sat on those padded barstools that spun around
Sturdy glossy cardboard boxes with a flip lid, jewel toned hard ribbon candies inside.
A pop machine that you had to stick your hand into cold water and slide the pop bottle along until you could lift it out of the water.
@wilma – I almost was expelled from school because of one of those machines. It was the start of my trip down the road to criminality! If you popped the caps you could take a straw and drink without paying. That theft did not go down well in a school for good catholic young ladies, heheheh!
@Kardamom if you mean cafeterias where you get in line and slide your tray down the stainless rods we have those all over Texas! And if the tray is heavy, a girl with a white uniform carries it to your table. (Luby’s Cafeterias and Furr’s)
Yeah , I sure remember the drive in movie gulp
@Kardamom Awesome list, I remember all of those!
I can still find two items – Cafeterias and neighborhood block parties. Plus draft root beer I think I can locate but it’s been about ten years since I have indulged.
I didn’t get cokes from the machine w/cold water because I was too scared I’d cut my hand!LOL
I miss the A&W Rootbeer in glass mugs with thick foam on top. tv time.
I miss going into a Woolworth’s store to sit and have a patty melt meal and sample flavors of ice creams I’d never heard of.
Ashtrays.No one I know has an ashtray anymore. No one seems to smoke indoors.
Oh, yes! Woolworth’s. I remember those, with the soda fountains. No more. And Ben Franklins. All gone.
@aprilsimnel Oh yeah, ashtrays! I remember when I was a kid that people had the most colorful and strange shaped ashtrays in their homes.
@Neizvestnaya – and playing the pinball machines in the back of the store. All the 5 & 10’s had them.
Kid’s with pocket knives. I used to have almost a collection, seemed every man carried one and every kid had at least one, sometimes we’d trade.
Of course my mind goes to food. Dunkaroos. If I saw them in the store tomorrow I would pass out. Well, I wouldn’t lose consciousness, but I would probably fall to the floor. I bought Berry Berry Kix last week for the first time and actually dropped to the floor in the store when I saw it. TALK ABOUT EXCITEMENT.
@Aster Yeah, I’m totally talking about those kinds of cafeterias. The last one I recall having out here in California was Furrs, but the last one I saw was about 20 years ago. I’ve heard about Luby’s and if I ever make it to Texas I will go straight there! I loved the fiberglass trays with the glitter embedded in it. And I loved sliding it along the metal rails and seeing the glass parfait dishes full of colorful jello. And the sight of steamed broccoli and baked macaroni and cheese (in my mind) makes me smile. It always smelled so good in the cafeteria—baked meatloaf, dinner rolls, stuffed cabbage, carved ham. It’s funny because I’m a vegetarian now, but the memory of those scents still makes my mouth water.
I thought of another thing: The Flexi It looked like a snow sled, but it had wheels on it.
@GeorgeGee How could I forget fizzies!!? Thanks for reminding me : )
Is it true that if you swallow them whole, your stomach will explode? :D
Razzles candy, Romper room, my grampa.
Bullock’s
The Broadway
May Company
Fedco
Gemco
Pic ‘N’ Save
Thrifty
Woolworth
Licorice Pizza
Real M-80 and Cherry bombs. They were so much fun!
We bought them from the guy in the ice cream truck for $1.00 per dozen.
Imagine 12 year old boys saying “Hey… what do you think would happen if we put an M80 in this?” .. Boom! Wow!!!
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