From the older users on Fluther, can you remember what things were like during your time growing up?

You call people born before 1980 old, even doubting that they can still remember that far back?
And still you expect a response? ~

@whitenoise Well if you don’t like the question you don’t HAVE to respond..I never intend to offend anyone with anything I ask. If I intended to say “old” I would’ve said “old” Did I say “old?” I said older. Not the same thing at all. It’s fine if you don’t remember back then. You don’t have to answer if you don’t. Also, before the 80s I would’ve thought there’d be a wider variety of things to compare. Like from the 40s or 60s. Obviously I compare anything from those time periods to now because I wasn’t even around then.

I was born in WWII. I remember a nation united. I remember when everyone, not just the fortunate few who are already fabulously wealthy, could look forward to a better tomorrow. I remember an America where taxes on the rich were very high but we still made lots of millionaires, and we simultaneously lifted hundreds of millions out of Great Depression poverty and into the world’s first great middle class. America worked for poor and rich alike.

We also built the Interstate Highway System instead of sitting by and watching it rust and decay till it collapses. We paid down our debt instead of running it up. And every American believed that if they worked hard and kept their nose clean, they could make it. Parents believed that their kids would have a better life than they did.

It is truly sad how things have changed. The America I grew up in started to unravel in 1980 with Reagan’s trickle-down Voodoo Economics. Before his “conservative” revolution (conservatives don’t stage revolutions, that’s anathema of conservatism) we had been steadily retiring the debt of WWII as a percent of GDP. Reagan tripled the National Debt in just 8 years. He set us on the course we are currently on, which will turn us into a banana republic in a few more decades unless we switch directions.

@AshlynM

Please note the ~ in my remark and relax. It was said in jest, I am not that easily scorned. :-)
I am, however, at work and I will respond a little later to your question, when I have time. Enjoy :-)

Born in 1973.

Phones plugged into walls, you had a little switch you could make them tone or click when you dialed.

Cable was a revolution. Radio shack sold de-scramblers so if your dad was clever you could watch HBO for free. Most people had a nice color tv and a crummy black and white for a back up.

Computers were big clunky things the rich kids on the block had, with games that took hours to load, but were oddly, more fun than new video games today.

OH. You worried about nuclear war ALL THE TIME. When you went to bed at night, you thought about how it would take 15 minutes for the Russians to kill you, and you would never know. It was worse for kids near airbases, you knew exactly what target number you were on the Russian list. This was after they gave up teaching schoolchildren how to duck and cover. It was the era of hydrogen bombs, so when it came up in class the teachers would just say there is nothing we can do.

Yes, I’m older, not senile. I’m so glad I grew up when I did. The world was much larger and more simple. I grew up when we kids could go outside when we woke and be gone until dark and no one even worried about us.

I was born in 1967, and was a teen during the 80s. People dressed all sorts of ways, from punk rock to preppy to freak (see the folks on the left). I was a prep, with a hit of punk. I had spiked hair for a while, wore safety pins in my ears, and owned a pair of black leather (pleather, really) pants, but mostly I sported jeans and polo shirts.

The Cold War was still going strong, but we weren’t terribly worried about it. Things were much cheaper… only the very ‘best’ designer jeans – a new thing, at the time – cost over $30.00, and an expensive pair of shoes might top out at $60.00. Nikes were about $35.00. Generally, people were much the same as they are now. I grew up in a very diverse area, just outside of Washington, DC, and kids my age were very accepting of other cultures and skin colors. However, it wasn’t uncommon to hear the “N” word in public, especially from older people. Prior to the mid 80s, AIDS was unknown to most of us, so it was a much freer time, sexually.

I seriously don’t want to offend anyone. I’m merely interested and curious about what things were like during those times. Sometimes I think it would be neat to be around during those days and I wished I had a time machine so I could go back to experience it.

I was born in 1954. I remember buying 10 cent comic books, 5 cent ice cream cones. Cars didn’t come with seat belts. I think gas was 35 cents, and no one worried about what mileage a car got. If you bought a soda at the gas station you drank it there because the bottle got left behind (they were reused, not recycled) We played outside every day, and during the summer we were outside until the streetlights came on. Red Rover, Mother May I, Statues, Red light/Green Light – kids of all ages playing together. Kids walked to school, and didn’t have to be afraid.

Suntan lotion didn’t any SPF rating, and you burned. You made a skateboard with an old skate and a 2×4. If you wanted a scooter you added an upright to that skateboard. Duck and cover practice at school because of the Cold War.

You didn’t own your phone – it was leased from Ma Bell and you paid for it forever. No such thing as pantyhose, and as hemlines got higher you had to worry about the tops of your stockings showing. Hemline checks at school – you had to kneel and your hem couldn’t be more than 2 inches above the floor. Girls couldn’t wear pants to school, boys couldn’t wear bluejeans.

We got our first TV when I was 3. I didn’t know most of the Wizard of Oz was in color – our TV was black & white. The whole family would sit and watch The Flintstones – it came on in the early evening.

When high school came so did the peace marches. Kids from the local university marched to my school so we were sent home. I cut school one day to march and saw my mom marching too – she wrote me a sick note for school.

Computers were room size and used tape. The first computer I owned was a Timex that used the TV as the monitor – you programmed it yourself with a form on Basic. There was no way to save what you did – it was more of a toy. When PCs first came out you couldn’t save to the computer – that was what your floppy discs were for.

I was born in 1968 and my answer is similar to @augustlan except I mostly wore black clothing (not punk rocker, more like how people wear it as a basic) and I never heard the word nigger being said, it really surprises me that @augustlan wrote that. We went to the same high school. Unless she is going back as far as elementary school? I lived in NY through 4th grade, and then moved to where I lived in the same town as her. Or, maybe she meant among family members since she mentioned older people used it?

I remember when I was very little my dad made just over $8,000 a year, and we lived in a modest apartment, and could afford to take a vacation every year and eat steak twice a week.

We didn’t get a color TV until I was in my early teens, but we were a little behind most of my friends on that.

Cartoons were always friendly looking kind of round characters. Like The Flintstones and The Jetsons. Now I feel like it is difficult to tell which cartoon character is good or bad by looking at them.

Short mini skirts were in fashion a lot of the time I was a kid and teen. Heavy make-up was in also, and we wore a lot of plum colored shadows and lipticks. When I was very very little blue eye shadow was still around, but that kind of faded to be out of style.

A lot of girls and women had layered hairstyles, kind of following Farrah Faucets look on Charlie’s Angels, and also perms were popular.

@JLeslie When I was a younger kid, not so much a teenager, the phrases “nigger lipping” (meaning making a cigarette wet with your lips) and “nigger knocking” (meaning knocking on a door and running away) were still in regular use. Isn’t that appalling? As a teen, it was mostly my grandfather that I heard using the word.

@augustlan I have never heard either of those phrases. I would have had no idea what they meant. Was your family from MD? Your grandparents? It’s more of a regional thing I would think. My family all lived in NY, and there were probably more Puerto Rican slurs than black ones if I had to guess (think West Side Story) but I didn’t hear any of those growing up either. I can’t even think of one, unless we count Puerto Rican Pink, the rest would be before my time.

@JLeslie My family was from Missouri, but I was born and raised in MD. The phrases I referenced above weren’t from my family though, but from other kids in my neighborhood. I’m assuming they were from Maryland, but can’t really be sure. This was in Rockville. I didn’t hear them much when we moved to the town you and I went to high school in.

@augustlan Interesting. Well Rockville wasn’t that far away. MD was sort of a big mix of people though. Being kind of a border state for the north and south, and also suburbing DC. DC where there were people from every corner of the world and every part of the country, and that seemed to be more and more true over time as the suburbs we lived in grew and grew in population.

1945 for me. Ditto to the playing outside. I got a scooter for my birthday when I was 6, that opened up my whole block, first 2 wheeled bike when I was 7 and that opened up the whole town, actually nearby towns as well. No organized sports for girls, not many for boys except little league baseball. So we all played pick up games on the school playgrounds. IF my school marks were not good, I was in trouble, it was my fault, not the teachers. I think kids were taught respect for others and others’ property. It was a different world. Last week I had my dog at the vet and there was a sign in the waiting room that said if you acted violently the police would be called, 0 tolerance for violence it said???? In the vet’s office, I couldn’t believe it. Today I was at the human doctor and they had the same sign. Why would anyone get violent at the vets or doctors? My local paper today said crime in this town is up 11.6% since last year. It seems to me the world is going to crap.

Ours was a proud people, and always the strongest. For thousands of years our empire expanded. For so long, we could imagine ourselves alone in the universe. For so long, never did we encounter advanced life. And we traveled faster and farther, spreading in our galaxy. And before long we could see the day when our reachable systems would have been exploited, and then there would be nowhere else to go. And we discovered subspace. It gave us our galaxy and it gave us the universe. And we saw other advanced life. And we subdued it or we crushed it. In months, the elimination of billions of years of evolution, on a similar but slower path. With subspace, our empire would surely know no boundaries

Is was born in 1965. Way back then we wore bustles and corsets and did not have indoor plumbing. The car engines were still cranked by hand – if you were lucky enough to have a car, we went most everywhere on horseback or by foot (the people with shoes were the lucky ones). It was tough eeking out a life from the dirt, but we managed. You do realize that someone born in 1979 would be around 33, not old or even older by any stretch of the imagination.

The biggest differences between now and when I was a kid are in technology and economy. Of course there were no cell phones, personal computers, or the internet. When I was in high school we got our first VCR and renting movies was like the coolest thing ever. Before that, if you missed a movie in the theater you had to wait years and years and years until it came on tv. Video games were not something solitary one did at home; they were an outing and time to socialize at the arcade. I used to walk to the drugstore and get ice cream for a nickel a scoop and candy bars were 2 for 25 cents. I could buy a pair of 501’s for $19.99 and the Cherokee wedges I wanted soooo bad were probably around $25.00.

Near as I can tell, there were nice people and their rude people in same proportions as there are now. In the town where I grew up crime is about the same, no better no worse. (It is consistently the safest city of its size in the U.S.)

We lived in a valley surrounded by mountains and could get no television reception so for as long as I can remember we had cable. Even with cable back then though all we got were the three for profit networks and PBS. We had black and white television sets with no remote control. We used to lie really close so we could change the channel with our toes.War coverage on television was a lot different then. Reporters were allowed to go wherever they wanted during the Viet Nam. It was called The Living Room War because it was broadcast nightly with visuals straight from the front.

I was born in 1971.

As a kid in the 70s and early 80s, my four-block neighborhood was our whole world. Within a quarter-mile radius was our elementary school, church, park & playground, corner store, and a shopping plaza with half a dozen stores like Star Market, Woolworths, and Zayers. As such, we walked to everything and were out in the neighborhood all the time.

We knew our neighbors. Really knew them as people and talked to them regularly. All the kids in the neighborhood (and there were a lot of us) played together and knew each others parents.

In the Summer we lived at the park. Ice cream trucks came daily. The “Park League” came several times a week and would offer crafts, sports, and games from the back of a van. We played little league baseball starting with tee-ball when we were five. We played neighborhood-wide games of relivio (hide & seek in teams).

We also hung out in an abandoned cinder block factory at the edge of the neighborhood. Here, we built forts out of old wooden pallets, staged “wars”, found old discarded Playboys, and ran from the “man with the long fingernails” (a homeless man who lived in the brick yard).

There were two “Mikes” in the neighborhood. Michael who cruised the streets in his electric wheelchair. He could only move one hand and his neck a little and “spoke” in shrieks and wails. All the kids loved him like a mascot. Then there was “Mike” the ex-cop who hung around with the kids on his stoop as he never seemed to work. Some kids even went in his house. Years later, we found out he was a pedophile.

We had paper routes, worked at the corner store, mowed lawns, or shoveled snow. I was an alter boy at the church where we ate the “hosts” like they were cookies and helped Father Galleghar get drunk (“A little less water in the wine son”) There was a “brother” at our church who also owned the gas station in the neighborhood and fixed Father Galleghar’s Cadillac for free.

In the Winter, we would “mush” cars which involved hiding behind a mailbox as a car stopped at an intersection. Then you’d grab onto the car’s bumper and drag behind it up the hill.

We climbed the only billboard in the neighborhood, climbed trees, climbed fences, and stole cucumbers and tomatoes from gardens. Someone always had fireworks and every July fourth, we’d build a huge bonfire in the middle of the park.

We rented a flat in a house on the same street my mother grew up on. My father grew up one street over. My little old Italian aunt & uncle lived up the street. My landlords were from Italy and they grew grapes and made their own wine. They would sneak me sips of it when my folks weren’t around.

For over ten years, my folks works opposite shifts. When my mother went off to work at night, my father would sit on the steps. Sometimes his buddies would come by on their motorcycles and they’d smoke weed. They had colorful nicknames like “whale” or “bean”. My father was “mouse”. They called me “kipper” and sure I was bullied by some kids, and my parents screamed at each other, and my mother wielded a wooden spoon like a ninja – but in between it all, there were good times, and scrapes, and falls, and a lot of tears. Ultimately, the neighborhood made us feel safe. We learned everything in those four blocks and we feared nothing.

I didn’t read the others yet, so I may be repeating. I was born in 1958. We had drills in which we had to go to the grade school or “fall out shelters”. The guy 2 doors down had a bomb shelter built in his back yard. We were worried the Germans or Russians or some other country would bomb us. It was also the time of freedom. We would go outside and play until lunch, come in and go back out til dinner, then go back out and play until the street lights came on. No one worried that their kids would be kidnapped. We would get on our bikes and ride all over town, our parents never really knew where we were. We chased the bug truck on our bikes, breathing in the pesticides they spewed out to kill the bugs. It’s a wonder we all didn’t have cancer by the time we were 15. There were only 3 channels on TV and we all watched it together as a family. Hee Haw, the Ed Sullivan Show, Gunsmoke just to name a few. I love the inventions that have come about in the last 50 years, but I’m also glad for the time period I grew up in. We made our own games, spot light, dodge ball, king of the mountain, and we interacted with each other. When a new family was moving in, we kids gathered around to see if they had kids. The more to play with us, the merrier. We kids respected our elders, called everyone older than us Mr. or Mrs. If we got in trouble at school, we got in trouble at home, too. I think in ways it was an easier time, but then again, we were low income and I didn’t even realize until I grew up because everyone around us was in the same economic class.

I hate to be a multiple poster, but I wanted to mention that we only had one car and my mom would stuff all four of us kids in it to go to the store (no seatbelts) and leave us in the car so we wouldn’t bug her while shopping. I asked her years later if she wasn’t afraid someone would kidnap us. She said no, we were always fighting, who would want to kidnap fighting kids. Ha!
We also would get in the back of my grandpa’s truck and drive around town with 10 or 12 kids in the back.

Born 1961, observations are comparing the late 1960s through the 1970s to now:

Kids seemed to play outside more than they do now.
Less electronics (obviously), Simple TV with a handful of channels.
Schoolwork for elementary school was about the same.
More politically correct now (at least more lip service give to being politically correct)
More “mysterious adversaries” for US foreign policy. Back then it was the Soviets and the Vietnam war – more black and white – less terrorism.
People dressed a little more formally at work – most people wore ties in white collar environments – now jeans and a polo shirt are OK for the same environment.
Rock and Roll seemed bigger. Is there Rock and Roll today? If so, it seems to be relatively less popular compared to hip hop, dub step, etc.
More big American cars on the road (you can see this from photos of the era)

@chyna the safety thing is a really good point! We used to ride in the car laying across the seat, on the little armrest in the middle of a bench seat, in the very back curled up in a ball. Even when we road sitting up in the seats we never wore seatbelts and no one even heard of carseats for kids! We biked and skateboarded without a helmet and went flying down hills as fast as we could. When we were babies we all slept on our stomachs and as a rule moms did not nurse their babies. I inhaled cigarette or pipe smoke regularly from my dad’s three pack a day habit. One huge change, parents were no where near as safety conscious as they are today.

I was a kid in the 60’s and a teen in the 70’s. Yep, most of the parents smoked, drank, there were no seat belt laws, car seat laws, helmet laws for riding our bikes. Parents didn’t worry about their kids being kidnapped or molested by strangers, we took off on our bikes all day around the neighborhoods and park and came in for dinner and went out again til after dark in the summers.

Candy bars were 10–15 cents, you could fill your gas tank for $10 and McDonalds burgers were 15 cents. lol
It was a good time to grow up, no fear, lots of fun.

It’s interesting to note that while parents didn’t worry about kids being kidnapped or molested, it happened at about the same frequency then as it does now. Our parents just didn’t know about every case that happened, the way we do now with our news outlets.

@augustlan True, I guess ignorance was bliss in some ways.

@Coloma the one safety related thing my parents did worry about was tainted Halloween candy. I could jump off the roof and they would have wished me bon voyage, but opening a mini Three Musketeers bar without them examining it with a magnifying glass would have resulted in a whipping!

Regarding kidnapping and molestation, as long as I can remember I was taught not to speak to strangers. Maybe it was because I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles during the time of the Manson family murders, the Hillside Strangler and eventually the Nightstalker, but I always remember my parents being very clear about the danger of talking to strangers.

@SuperMouse Yes, we did check our Halloween candy and of course were cautioned about talking to strangers, but, the times were not tainted with fear which lent itself to a lot of fearless freedom that kids don’t get these days.

My mother still worried about kidnapping to some extent even back in the 70’s. We were taught not to go anywhere with strangers, I was not allowed to wear my name on my clothing or jewelry, and I called her so she knew where I was more or less. I grew up during the Son of Sam serial killings and at one point there was a serial rapists in my area when I was a very little girl, so I knew there were bad people out there.

As far as being left in the car, my mom definitely ran into some stores quickly and left me in the car sometimes, although not often. Her warning was not about being kidnapped, it was don’t touch anything, so the car would not move or roll at all. It was that sort of safety she worried about when we were in the car.

The kids in the communities around me play outside and ride their bikes around the community like I did when I was a kid. What is very different to me is how a lot of places children don’t walk to school. Here where I live the elementary school is right across the street from me, and many parents do walk their children to school, but not sure the kids walk themselves? Or, if there is always some sort of designated parent taking a group of children? But, it does seem if a school is of any distance over a quarter mile no matter the grade, the parents drive their children.

@Coloma where did you grow up? I really don’t remember having a “fearless freedom.” Maybe because we were so close to LA and my dad grew up in the city. Or maybe because my mom was a worry wart, but I remember always being pretty vigilant about safety. When I was a teenager I did a lot of stupid things, but I think teenagers are prone to that stuff.

@SuperMouse I grew up, for the most part in a nice suburb of Sacramento. We had tons of freedom and no fear. Spent hours and hours riding our bikes by the river, in the park, playing in vacant fields, no fear whatsoever.

@SuperMouse, your Halloween candy example was hilarious. My parents only forbade us eating apples or opened candy given at Halloween because of the fear of razor blades or tainting the candy. Our local hospital emergency room even x-rayed candy for free a few years.

Reading this post with great interest. I was born in 1988 so I have nothing to contribute, haha.
But I’m especially hoping that people who are either non-white or non-heterosexual or both will speak up as well.

@bookish1 I guess I can offer some input on that. I was born male but from my earliest memories, I wanted to be a female. I sometimes think I was a lesbian trapped in a male body. I liked everything about girls, their games, their clothes, their hair, their looks. I liked them so much I didn’t just want to make love with a female; I wanted to be a female and probably still make love with a female, although males were interesting too. I suppose that’s what we’d now call a queer person—not part of any large, well-defined group.

The 1950s were not a tolerant time when it came to gender differences. Everyone seemed to think that it was a binary world, and you were either a 1 or a 0. Any deviance from that brought the risk of ridicule, shame and worse. I stayed as firmly as I could in the closet all through secondary school and college.

I think that Christine Jorgensen, who got sex reassignment surgery in 1952, shocked the world into the recognition that gender wasn’t a black and white issue. Even though Lili Elbe had gotten the surgery in Germany in 1930, that never caught the world’s attention in the way that Ms. Jorgensen’s life and celebrity did. We slowly came to realize there were infinite shades of grey.

Knowing that sex reassignment surgery was out there left me struggling to decide whether to go that direction or not. But the option came along so late for me that my secondary male sex characteristics were all fully in place. I finally decided, after a year of living and working as a female, that I could never have X-X chromosomes and that for me, the best thing would be to man up, build some muscle bulk, and make the best of what I’d been given. At least I could love a female without raising any eyebrows.

If you have specific questions about how particular gender issues were viewed in the 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s; ask away.

@ETpro: Thank you very much for sharing. I hate that the world is so slow to open up breathing room and options for people :-/

Just read the article about Christine Keeler, whom I had never heard of. Did you mean Christine Jorgenson by any chance?

Recently I read the first monograph of American gay history, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities by John D’Emilio, and I was stunned to learn from it that more Americans lost their jobs in the 1950s as a result of accusations of homosexuality (often, “lewd conduct” arrests, which could mean almost anything, including falling prey to police entrapment) than of accusations of being a Communist !!

I was born in 1958. Didn’t go back in the house until 1985. Spent a LOT of time outside, barefoot, making/creating/building things.

@augustlan Yeah, I remember those terms. :( Remember “Enie meni mini mo. Catch a nigger by his toe….” I don’t remember when we changed the term to monkey, but I’m glad we did. We didn’t even think TWICE about the terms we were using.

I also remember when the crayon that is called “Peach” color now, was called, “Skin color.”

Really, we weren’t racist! My family wasn’t. It’s just…how it was. But things, they were a-changing for the better because we were smack in the middle of the civil rights movement, although I don’t remember it in particular.

I remember seeing JFK’s funeral procession…just caught a glimpse of it before my sister got the tip of her finger cut off in the hinge side of the door because she’d followed me in…(We were ALWAYS outside.)

We didn’t worry about “germs.” We didn’t worry about getting hurt. We didn’t wear helmets or seat belts. Car seats for kids hadn’t been invented.

Hearing the phone ringing and not being able to get to it in time because you were OUTSIDE was MURDER!!! You’d never know who was calling. Could have been the cutest guy in the school! Probably WAS!

We were always outside.

We didn’t have snacks on long car trips. When we got hungry, we had to wait till Dad found a restaurant. The other day I read a “tip” thing on taking long car rides with kids. Number one was “Take snacks so that they don’t go crazy if they get hungry!” Or something like that. We didn’t go crazy. We just waited.

Very, very few people were overweight (because we were always outside running around and we had to wait till lunch or dinner to eat.)

@Dutchess_III Yep, always outside, sans Saturday morning cartoons, and my mom kicked me out by 10 am. lol
” Go outside and PLAY!”
Kids today are couch potatoes with the video game madness.

I was born in December, 1946.

I remember driving 7 hippies (including me) in my VW beetle (which had a maximum capacity of 5), to the Summer Solstice celebration at Golden Gate Park on June 21, 1967. That was the first day of the Summer of Love.

@Dutchess_III We almost never ate in the car either. Never during daily tasks. Not food or drink. Sometimes on a long drive, like the 5 hour trip to NY, we brought food along. I don’t remember my friends eating in the car either. My husband and I still never eat or drink in the car, except very rare occassion on long trips. But, usually we stop during a trip, because I need to get out and walk around anyway. We eat in the restaurant, even if it is fast food.

I think if we went back to manual cars we wouldn’t have to worry about distracted drivers as much because of food and texting. When you need both hands to drive, you can’tdo the other stuff. But, we are going the other direction with research being done for cars that drive themselves.

Born in 1964.

I remember playing outside with all of the neighborhood kids. We rode bikes and roller skates (the kind with the metal wheels that would catch in the cracks of the sidewalk and send you flying onto the concrete). We would clip a playing card to our bike so that it would make contact with the spokes and make a clacking sound that was similar to the sound of a motorcycle. I had a pink bike with a sparkly banana seat and a basket with plastic flowers on the front and plastic streamers dangling from the handle bars. No one wore a helmet.

Unlike today, when kids eat fast food and junk food almost exclusively, we were only allowed to have junky food occasionally and the stuff we ate was probably full of gnarly un-pronounceable chemicals and preservatives. No one ate whole grain snacks, because there weren’t any. We very rarely went to a fast food restaurant, though, and we had dinner at home with the family every night.

Some of the tasty/nasty snacks that my brother and I loved were Hostess Raspberry Zingers, Snack Pack pudding in a can with a pop top lid (I recall that the edge of the lid was really sharp and not at all suitable for a child’s lunch box ) and Laura Scudder’s barbecue potato chips and Otter Pops.

We walked to school by ourselves or with neighbor kids, from the time we were in kindergarden and would have died of embarrassment if our parents had walked us to school. Today, the kids are not allowed to go by themselves, and they’re ususually driven to school, even if they only live a few blocks away, and they must be picked up by a parent or guardian.

My best friend in 5th grade was one of the few latch-key kids and often after school we would go over to her house and watch Popeye cartoons and look at her dad’s Penthouse magazines whilst eating Appian Way Pizza that we’d made from a boxed mix. She had several chores to do before her parents came home from work: picking up the dog poop from the back yard and putting some type of meat into the crockpot so it would be ready in time for dinner.

Television watching was very limited, and I don’t recall that we ever pitched fits or begged for more TV time (unlike my young cousins and nephews today, who regularly have screaming meltdowns about that subject). Part of that was due to the fact that we only got 3 channels, and the TV channels didn’t broadcast 24 hours a day. I think at midnight they had some kind of a sign-off that ususally involved seeing the American flag waving and then it went to a test pattern.

We watched cartoons in the mornings on Saturdays, my favorite was The Pink Panther and my brother and I also watched Dudley Do-Right, Fractured Fairytales, Tennessee Tuxedo, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Bullwinkle and Beanie and Cecil. In the evenings, our parents would watch the news and it always had grim scenes from the Vietnam war playing out. I avoided watching the news. Then we would watch one sitcom and go to bed. We watched The Monkees, The Lucy Show, Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Betwitched and Bonanza. I had a mad crush on Davy Jones.

When we were a little bit older and were allowed to stay up later on Friday nights, we would watch The Brady Bunch, The Nanny and the Professor, then The Partridge Family and finally Love American Style.

And unlike today, where kids can watch whatever movie they want, however many times they want to, whenever they want to, if we didn’t catch Heidi, or The Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz the one time per year that it was aired, we just didn’t get to see it. That was that.

We had dial phones and used them regularly to talk to friends and neighbors, but we weren’t obsessed with them. They were just for getting a hold of people, they weren’t considered a status symbol, nor were they part of a popularity contest (with contacts and Facebook “friends”) We would never have considered or wanted (and I still don’t want) to be available 24/7. If the phone rang after 9 PM, you were pretty certain that some tragedy had occurred, it wasn’t considered polite to call people after 7 PM. I remember when the first answering machines came out. We didn’t like them one bit. It was very intimidating to try to figure out what you were going to say. I always thought that I’d just call the person back at a more convenient time, why would I need or want to leave a message!? If the phone was busy, you’d just call back later. And yes, if the phone was ringing, and you were outside, you’d run like the dickens to get to it, because you never just let it ring. It was considered the height of rudeness (if you were home) to simply not answer your phone. It was very rare to talk to relatives on the phone if they lived out of town, because you’d pay huge long distance rates if you did. My mother and our relatives, and to a certain degree I did too, wrote letters, to people that lived out of town.

Back then, my friends and I were not allowed to watch overly scary movies like The Exorcist and The Birds (which was occasionally shown on TV in the middle of the afternoon) because they knew it would give us nightmares. We were also forbidden to go to an R-rated movie, and the movie attendents would never let you in anyway, they checked ID and you’d be in big trouble if you somehow managed to sneak in and your folks found out about it. Now, my 6 year old nephews regularly watch horrific, graphic R-rated movies. They’re not scared and their parents think it’s cute. Now all the little boys run around like they think they are super heroes and ninjas, but not one of them regularly plays outside or makes up their own games.

Here are some things that were thrilling to me, that kids today either just don’t give a fig about, or simply take for granted: getting a birthday card from Grandma with a dollar bill tucked inside, being allowed to go to 7–11 to buy a Hersey bar (which was 7 cents when I first started buying them) going to a birthday party and getting a mesh bag of M&M’s and peanuts tied with a ribbon as a party favor and getting to eat Neopolitan ice cream (as opposed to having a theme party with a paid actor posing as Spiderman, or taking 25 children to Chucky Cheese’s or taking 25 kids to Disneyland) going to a matinee to see a movie such as That Darned Cat every few months or so (as opposed to having hundreds of movies on DVD and watching them hundreds of times, maybe multiple times in one day) getting to go to Shakey’s Pizza once or twice a year (as opposed to having Dominoes deliver pizza once or twice a week) getting to go to Disneyland once every couple of years (as opposed to going to Legoland every couple of weeks)

Here’s some things that sucked: going on long car rides with no snacks, no DVD player, no air-conditioning. Pitching a fit or a tantrum would not have been tolerated.

There were certainly school bullies, but there weren’t many of them and everybody knew exactly who they were. Naughty or disruptive behavior simply wasn’t tolerated in the classroom. Plus in your neighborhood, every kid knew that every parent was looking after you and wouldn’t let you get away with anything. If you did something naughty, another parent would reprimand you and then tell your own parents where you would then get reprimanded again.

I remember having a low level of constant anxiety about the war and was worried that my brother would eventually be sent to Vietnam. Luckily by the time he was 18 the Vietnam war had just ended.

One of our biggest thrills was to go to the picture show which was what we called the drive-in theater. Me and my brother would run into the house and put on our PJ’s even though it was still daylight outside. Then we’d go by Thrifties Drug Store and pick out some candy. I liked Dots and Starbursts, my brother liked Black Cow lollipops and Pixie Stix, Dad did and still does love Hershey’s with almonds and my Mom liked Sugar Babies and Cracker Jacks. I know they still have those candies, but they tasted different, better back then. Once we got to the theater, we’d get to play on the swings and the slides until we heard the National Anthem start to play and they showed service people from the branches of the military saluting the flag on the screen, then they’d show some military planes flying over. We’d run like crazy back to the car, because we knew the cartoon was going to start any minute. Then we’d fall asleep in the back of the station wagon (not an SUV) before we even made it out of the parking lot. Zzzzzzzzzzz

Do you remember the roadside picnic tables? We would picnic at these. I still know where there are roadside tables.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/07/ionia_county_boasts_first_road.html

@Kardamom, my granddaughter just turned three. I sent her a birthday card in the mail from Florida to Maryland. I printed her name on the envelop, c/o her parents. She went with her dad to the mailbox and he must have made a big deal of mail addressed to her from Ganny. Everyday that I speak to her on the phone or on Skype, she reminds me to not forget to send her more mail. I’m glad she likes something as simple as getting mail.

We had snacks on long car trips – those tiny boxes of cereal eaten dry or fruit. The only time I got to eat Sugar Smacks or Sugar Pops, but we had three kids so the best cereal was a source of contention – you only got one good box. Otherwise snack food like candy and chips were rare. I think that is why we “believed” in the Easter Bunny until adulthood – the baskets were full of candy. Soda was something special, there wasn’t soda available every day. Staying in a hotel? No – we camped along the way, and camped when we got there.

I was born in 1966. Like a lot of people said here before me, there were limtied TV channels, and we used to watch I Love Lucy every day (syndication), Mash, All in the Family, Partridge Family, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Brady Bunch, Jeffersons, Sanford and Son. Saturday mornings were cartoons. Now kids have all kinds of choices, 24/7.

The thing about the regular phone with no answering machine was if you were expecting a call, you had to stay home and stay off the phone! If someone tried to call you and you missed it, tough luck! That part sucked.

Same with TV. You had to make sure you were home if you wanted to see a certain show on TV. No DVR’s or videotape.

Now, there are advertisements everywhere. In the supermarket, we are inundated with ads everywhere, and screens at the checkout. When I was little, it was TV, newspaper, magazines, radio and billboards.

I’d be outside a lot, playing with my friends, jumping rope, riding bikes, in their yards, in our yard, building forts, running around till dinner time.

Everybody smoked – everyone’s parents, smoking was allowed in restaurants and all public places. My parents didn’t, but it seems like everyone else did.

We used to walk to the town to buy the paper, maybe a candy bar, books, toys, baked goods. We were friendly with the pharmacist and there was a luncheonette where guys would go drink coffee and read the paper, and they sold things like yo-yo’s and rubber balls, and we would stop in there once in a while.

Atheism wasn’t as big as it is now, so “Merry Christmas” was all over during the holiday season, people weren’t afraid to say “Merry Christmas” and there were public displays for Christmas.

When I was pretty little, my mom used to get plaid stamps, which you got when you shopped at the grocery store (I think it was probably the A&P). You got stamps that you put in a book, and when you got a certain amount, you could get pots or dishes.

When I was a teen, MTV started, and cable came to be. Cable boxes were like pianos, with “keys.” I liked new wave music, which most of my friends weren’t into. I also hung around with some black people and I liked black music, which most white people did not like at that time. In high school, there were glamorous girls with high heels, designer jeans and metallic handbags. I was into flannel shirts and “Lil Abners,” which were like little boots that tomboys wore.

In that time, I remember the “Dress for Success” era, which was a book that dictated that in order for women to be successful in the workplace, they had to wear navy suits, little or no jewelry, no flamboyant hairstyles, navy pumps, IBM style. I am happy that dress codes have relaxed, because it would be uncomfortable and expensive to have to dress like that now.

Before the days of email and Facebook and cell phones, if you moved away, you had to take your friends’ addresses, and if you lost them or lost touch, you lost touch forever. Now Facebook has reunited me with a lot of my old friends, from pre-Facebook days.

One of my regrets is that I didn’t keep more stuff from my grandmother and grandfather. A lot of it would be collectible now, great vintage stuff that you would be lucky to find in a thrift shop or vintage store. At the time, it was thrown out and considered garbage, now I wish I had it. Old books (classic stuff like Little Black Sambo and some great kids’ books, and some old medical textbooks from early 1900’s are a few I can remember), vintage linens, handbags, jewelry, toys. The only thing I did keep from that time is some greeting cards and a few books.

I had a great childhood and I remember it fondly. I lived in an affluent area and it was just really nice, and I had a great relationship with my grandparents, which made it extra special.

I should add to the above that before the age of cell phones, if you were meeting someone somewhere, you set out and just had to hope they showed up. If you were late or they were late or one of you got lost, you waited and were SOL, and didn’t know till you went home and you spoke on the phone what happened to them. If you went on vacation, you had to leave information with your family about where you’d be, and you didn’t talk to your friends or family for the whole time you were away. You were like totally cut off from them until you returned. My mom still uses an address book, which is like an antiquated thing that she keeps phone numbers and addresses in. Most people probably don’t use them any more.

I hope more people continue to answer….it’s neat to see so many interesting answers. Thanks everyone.

Remember when cell phones first started gaining in popularity in the mid-1990s? We had these phones they called bag phones made by Motorola. The handset was attached to the battery like a landline phone, except this was mobile and your coverage was so limited they didn’t work more than half the time. They were huge, you had roaming everywhere you used the phone and the battery only lasted about few hours.

@bkcunningham: It was called a “brick” phone because it was the size of a brick – if that’s the one you’re talking about. I didn’t have a cell phone until around 1999 or so.

When cell phones first came out, the only people that had them were doctors, limo drivers and drug dealers. Now if you don’t have one you’re a freak!

I was born in 1965 in a small Welsh town, and it wasn’t until I was in my teens that my parents would habitually lock the doors when they left the house. Nobody ever broke in and nothing was ever stolen.

I remember getting our first colour TV when I was about eight or so.

I used to play outside with my friends and wander for miles without my parents ever knowing where I was. I promised always to he home for tea, and I always was, and that was enough.

I didn’t see a computer until after I left school.

Here’s the kind my husband had back in the day, @jca.

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

Here is the kind my useless grandson used back in the day

Now that was funny, @ragingloli.

WTF?! When I was incarcerated there weren’t no phone in my cell. ;-(

Yep. “GO OUTSIDE!!” was the battle call for Moms then.

Wow. “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”!

On trips Mom used to pack those single serving cereal things, too. There were 6 different kinds. But they were for breakfast in the hotel room. We used to fight over what cereal we got.

Howard Johnson’s, and their chocolate syrup on their Sundas.

There really were some good aspects of the “good old days.”

1972

Life was slow. We spent our summers exploring every part of mountainside we could. Me and my sisters seemed to be the pervert magnets for our area as we got flashed frequently what was up with that? I had a paper route that required early morning delivery. That meant I was up at 5am Mondays through Fridays and at 7am on Sundays. We spent our evening lying on our backs just watching the stars. My mom kicked us out of the house right after breakfast and didn’t really expect us back until dinner.

I remember listening in on adult conversations and hearing about wife swapping and having no idea what exactly that meant. (My mom was appalled at the practise).

Ferris Beuller was the popular movie when I was a teenager. Big hair was in as well as pants that went to your natural waist.

The big story when I was a teenager was apartheid in South Africa.

Those horrid metal skates! You put them on over your shoes, and tightened them down with a key. As @Kardamom said, the slightest crack in the sidewalk sent you flying…so we learned “damage control” really quick. And the skates would work their way out of the size you had tightened them down to…and THEN send you flying. No helmets. I think our folks didn’t care if we lived or died! :) Out in the sun, getting burned, no sun screen. We were fine.

Yep, close pinning playing cards to the bicycle spokes…

@rooeytoo Yeah…good aspects except…NOT KNOWING WHO THE HELL JUST CALLED AND YOU COULDN’T GET TO THE PHONE ON TIME! Really awful in Jr and Sr. High!

@bkcunningham: Oh yes, that one. I used to work for a major American electronics manufacturer (that shan’t be named) and I had a fake Motorola handset that we used to drive around and have a ball with, driving up to drive-thru windows and pretending we were on the phone and stuff – hilarious! Then they had the brick phone – it weighed about three pounds.

I remember also, when I was a kid, first thru third grade, before Etan Patz changed the world, I used to walk to my friend’s houses, and we’d walk everywhere (and sometimes make trouble). Now parents don’t let kids out of their sight.

I remember seeing Nixon on the news when I was little – Watergate was big. Then I remember seeing the Vietnamese hanging onto the planes as they planes left their country. I remember Nixon saying “I am not a crook.” I remember his impeachment, and then Ford, and then Carter getting elected, and all the jokes about him being a peanut farmer.

When I was in 4th grade my Mom sent me to the Shop Ez to get some potatoes. She just wanted 4 large potatoes. Shop Ez was just a convenience store, but they had fresh veggies then (and a thingy for testing TV tubes….). There was about a foot of snow on the ground, a large field, AND a two lane highway I had to cross to get there. My girlfriend and I went the a million times every summer, to get slushies (MADD Magizine anyone? :). (And I remember when “Mountain Dew” came out…they had this big thing at the Shop Ez for it.) Got there, the only potatoes they had were in 5 pound sacks. Keep in mind I was 9 years old. I lugged the potatoes out to the highway. There was a semi coming, so I tried to run. The highway was nothing but ice. I fell, and slid across the highway, with that semi coming on. When I hit the shoulder of the road I jumped into the ditch, which had about 3 feet of snow in it. I was so panicked that when I took my next step in the ditch I pulled my foot out of my rubber galoshes and the next step into the deep snow was in my bare, socked foot. I struggled back into my boot and made my way back across the field. I don’t remember much after that, but Mom said I came home just sobbing and scared and cold and she felt SO bad. I lugged that 5 pound bag of potatoes all that way, and all she wanted was 4 or 5 potatoes. We spent a lot of time running across that highway to the Shop Ez!

Here’s an early, “cell” phone from 1984 when Bell Labs, among others, were developing the technology. It came even before the Motorola brick.

In 1960 we had a “party line” phone at home. Many people would have the same line and each house would have a combination of rings to know it was their turn to pick up. Like it rang at all our houses so you had to pay attention to the code so you didn’t pick up on a call intended for some other person. And you couldn’t just make a call anytime. You had to wait until it wasn’t busy, otherwise you would pick up and interrupt a conversation in progress. I remember when the person was not at home and it would ring forever so we had to lift up the receiver momentarily to answer and hang up on it. Our answer code was one long…two short….like riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, ring, ring. That was our cue. The phone was one of those black “Bell” wall mounts, New England Telephone. It was built like a tank and had a shortish cord so, to use that phone we had to stand there in the corner where it was. I can say that the sound quality was so much better than the crap phones we get now. I don’t think we even owned that one. There was a separate charge on the bill for the lease of the thing. Later on we got the option to buy it outright and then we would be the proud owners of our own phone,giddedy .

And a call at a phone booth was 5 cents where people didn’t jack off into the pages of the supplied phone directory in there, sticking them together. Folks generally behaved back then.

@woodcutter We had a party line into the 50s too. And I remember buying gasoline for $0.19 a gallon when I was driving! After a football game, we’d all head for McDonalds where hamburgers actually had something recognizable as meat in them and cost 15¢, and the 10¢ fries didn’t turn into something like fried card cardboard as they got cold.

When we were kids McDonalds was actually a special place to go for burgers. as well as Dairy Queen.
The old monopoly days of Ma Bell. I suppose it was always a matter of time. Many here never knew you had to use their phones only, no other phones were allowed until after the break up. The phones were better then I’ll have to say, way before China bombarded us with chincy knock offs. Now we get knock offs of knock offs, Ha.

@woodcutter I still have an old phone as my golden standard. If a modern phone dies, I plug my 1970s AT&T push button phone into the line. Instant test of whether it’s the line or the instrument.

Heh we have one too. We call it the “Dick Tracy phone”. When we still had a land line we would grab that one out from the cabinet when we lost power because it was the only one that worked. It was hard getting used to the short talking range…stupid cord.

@ETpro – I am your age and I can’t remember .19 gasoline. I think 25 is about the least I ever paid. That is what a pack of cigs cost too.

I love that anyone born before 1980 is “older.”

Yeah, that makes me an ancient antique! And after just returning from a 7.73 km run in the freezing cold, I feel pretty damned ancient!

@Judi Well the reason I wanted anyone before 1980 to answer is because I was around during the 80s and 90s so I don’t really need anyone to reminisce during those time frames. Since I really don’t know anyone born before 1980 other than my parents and grandparents, that’s kind of what my thought process was there. I wasn’t implying that anyone was old.

@AshlynM – no apologies necessary. I am old, it’s not a disease, it happens to us all, if we’re lucky! You can call me old anytime, I earned it!

My aunt in Florida had a party line phone and I picked up her handset once and heard another conversation going on. It was so weird. Sometimes, in the lyrics of old songs you hear reference to “party line” and nowadays, people might not know what that means.

I remember with our home phone, you had to sit where the phone was, because there was no cordless. Everyone had a place in their home for the phone, like a little table or something, where you could sit and talk. It was like you were “stationed” at the phone, and there was very little privacy. When friends called, if your parents answered, they knew who was calling. Now everyone has a cell so most calls are direct, if you want them to be. People now are hesitant to give out their home numbers.

I really did enjoy writing letters to my friends who moved away. The pleasure of a letter from the mail was kind of fun, something to look forward to. Now it’s email, which definitely has advantages, but letters are fun and a great way to keep some history alive (primary source of information).

My mom and grandmother had recipe boxes, with recipe cards in them. Now, people may use them but they’re way less common.

I remember going to McDonalds with my mom in the mid-70’s and getting a meal for less than a dollar.

What were things like when I was a child? Well, let’s see… I remember riding my dinosaur to school, and having to catch my own lunch when we got a cave break around noonish. I also vividly remember the day my grandfather invented the stone wheel and some young buck stole it from him and passed the idea off as his own. He works for Geiko now, the bastard.

@AshlynM; no worries. When you start getting to the age where most people in the world are younger than you the transition is just strange. In my head I’m young and cutting edge, but when I hear things like that I am just reminded that there is another generation rising and i am entering a different phase in my life.

The first three numbers of the telephone numbers were names. Like, Sunset 8–1234. So when we gave our number it was SU8–1234. S=7, U=8, so the number was 788–1234. Wichita was MU7–1234. The MU stood for Murray.
In the town I’m in now I saw an old, old phone number on a local business. It said “CA1–1234.” So I did some researching and found that CA stood for Castle.

Oh, and all McD’s HAD were hamburgers, cheese burgers and french fries. They had the BEST fries, until that stupid furor over types of fat caused them to change from whatever oil they fried them in up until 1980-something, to vegetable oil.

@Dutchess_III: I like the old telephone exchanges! I sometimes wish they were still around. I think they’re elegant.

We had a turquoise blue dial phone mounted on the wall in our kitchen. It had a really long cord on it, so anytime a call came in for my brother, he would take that phone out into the garage so we couldn’t hear what he was saying.

When I was in 4th grade, my best friend and I still walked home from school together holding hands. One day, some older teenaged boys shouted at us that we were lezzies. We didn’t quite know what that meant, but we knew it was something “bad.” That was the last time I ever held hands with one of my little friends : (

Around 1976, whenever Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came out, my mom got this poster of Robert Redford and my dad let her hang it on the kitchen door. All of my friends and cousins and the neighborhood moms thought that was the coolest thing in the world.

My parents and the parents of my neighborhood friends would periodically have parties in the summertime. All of the kids would be sent off to someone else’s house and one of the older kids would babysit us and we had a grand time. It was just across the street, because we all lived on the same block. But we would get to check out the grownups party for a little while before we got shuffled off to the neighbor’s house. These parties were always BYOB, so my parents would go off across the street with a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill in one hand and a Credence Clearwater Revival album in the other hand.

One time the party was at our house and it was a luau party, so all of my friend’s parents came over dressed in mumus and hawaiian shirts. I remember helping my mom prepare the food for the party. It was my first experience with a melon baller. We scooped up watermelon, honeydew melon and cantaloupe into balls that were then placed back into the body of an already scooped out watermelon. I thought it was heavenly. She also let me put Kraft Pineapple Spread onto crackers.

We would always go camping every summer, we would pack our Ford Van to the rafters and me and my best friend would take turns sitting together in the front seat (2 girls, 1 seatbelt, no shoulder harness) with my brother. One of my favorite things about camping was that before you headed out, you first stopped in the parking lot near the 7–11 where they had one of those big ice machines. You’d put in your money, which may have been 2 or 4 quarters at the time and then a big square block of ice would come down a chute and we’d put it into our cooler. I loved it because the ice was clear, unlike the cloudy ice cubes that you made at home. It was on these camping trips that we got to have the little boxes of cereal that everybody has been mentioning. Luckily for us, we never really had to fight over the cereals. My brother loved Sugar Smacks while I preferred Raisin Bran. my best friend liked Frosted Flakes and my brother’s friend like Cocoa Puffs. Does anyone remember Puffa Puffa Rice?

With regard to cars and seatbelts: We had a 1976 Barracuda. Not only were there no seatbelts, but I used to lie down on the “shelf” in the back window and nap while my mother drove around.

Otherwise, I’d ride on the “hump” behind the front seats. It was the convex channel that ran the length of the car under which was the axle.

Another addition to the no seatbelt situation, we had an old pick up truck and in the summer it was great fun to hop in the back with my dog and ride in the bed. We had to stay seated though, no standing up!

And no bicycle helmet! I hate bicycle helmets. I rode for over 50 years without one, now I have to wear a helmet. I would rather go without and take my chances.

We’d ride around in the back of the family station wagon with that big back window down.

@Kardamom If the Butch Cassidy poster is the one I’m thinking of, it’s worth some BUCKS! It is just one of the coolest posters ever. I saw one in a business establishment once. I offered him $100 for it. He turned me down. Said he’s been offered $500, and he turned THEM down! Robert Redford was SUCH a hunk!

NO bicycle helmet!!

Cap guns. Parents didn’t think there was anything wrong with kids running around with their “six shooters” pretending to shoot each other with loud bangs. I didn’t have my own cap gun – my older brother had plenty to share. If all you wanted to do was make some noise take the red cap tape and hit it with a hammer or rock. Hours of fun.

Candy cigarettes!

I loved candy cigarettes, All the different brands too. And gum cigarettes – I chewed a whole pack once – my jaw hurt for days.

From the time I was around 10 to 20, from the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s, the hairstyle was the “Farrah Fawcett” feathered or “wings.” Everyone had some variation on that hairstyle, it seemed. Everyone either had feathered hair or wings, which were bangs that were parted in the middle and went to the sides. Even a lot of guys had feathered hair, and guys and girls would carry brushes or combs to make sure the feathers were nice and feathery at all times. You could use a blow dryer and round brush, or curling iron to curl the wings into the Farrah Fawcett style, or you could use hot rollers.

^^ Yes, and if you were a girl you’d be wearing Ditto’s jeans and if you were a guy you’d have Angel’s Flight pants.

Heh.

Remember when guys started actually using blow dryers?! Wait…remember when blow dryers and curling irons were invented?

@Dutchess_III Better specify electric curling irons. My grandmother told me she used something you heated on the stove.

I just remember using first, the black spiky ones you had to clip in to place with hair pins, then the “new” invention of the plastic ones you rolled up then clipped a plastic cover on to. Either way, you had to sleep in the shit! A couple of times and I decided it wasn’t worth it to me.

Then curling irons FINALLY came along, thanks to Farrah Fawcett.

Guess I’d have to know the age (and income bracket, believe it or not) of your gramma, @bewailknot.

Remember Jiffy Pop Popcorn? How it grew on the stove?!

Jiffy Popcorn is still in the supermarkets. It was pretty magical, how it “grew on the stove!”

Speaking of growing, remember ads on the back of comic books and magazines for Sea Monkeys? They said they were miniature people you could train and the pictures made them look like a little society of mini people. I heard recently that in reality, they were tadpoles or something.

The were little brine shrimp, @jca. Don’t tell me you didn’t have sea monkeys?

@Dutchess_III Nannie (my gramma) was born somewhere around 1899, and was probably what was then upper middle class. Enough money to have a maid and someone to come in once a week to do laundry.

SEA MONKEYS!!! And vibrating motel beds @bkcunningham!

That might explain it @bewailknot . My grandparents were immigrants from Holland in, I think, about the 1920’s. Desperately poor. Just…illiterate and unknowing. They wouldn’t have had the bells and whistles available to other people even a notch above their station. Same with my Dad (son of a dirt-poor farmer in Texas.)

BUT my folks kicked ass the American Way as adults! :)

@rooeytoo It was during a local “Gas War” where competing stations started slashing prices trying to attract customers to them. The Texaco station right across the street from us got down to 19.9¢ per gallon. Even on what I could earn mowing lawns, I could fill up the tank with that price. It didn’t last long. :-(

@ETpro – it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it. Gasoline here this weekend is $1.579 per liter. Thank goodness I have my Yamaha scooter. I just wish it had a heater, hehehe!

My dad used to go to the gas station and ask for a dollars worth of regular, and the guy would pump the gas, check the oil and wash the windshield.
All the gas station had a service station with a mechanic attached and of you wanted to buy a soda or snacks or cigarettes they might have a vending machine but they didn’t have a full blown store.

I was 5 years old and my dad would often send me to the store with a note to buy his cigarettes.
When I was 12 I got pretty good at writing my own note to buy my own cigarettes.

“I was 5 years old and my dad would often send me to the store with a note to buy his cigarettes.”
I doubt that would fly today.

It might work at one of the stores that sells single cigarettes, @ragingloli. I think it would be discrimination not to sell if the parent was sick or incapacitated and unable to get to the store.

@ragingloli , One time I got lost on the way home and they found my parents because I had the cigarettes and the note with my dads name on it to look up my number. I practically raised myself since my Dad was dieing from emphysema and my mom was either working or depressed, sleeping on the couch. My older sibblings had active busy lives. Today my parents probably would have been arrested fro child neglect, but back then it was nobody’s buisness how you chose to raise your kids.
I don’t resent my parents, they were doing the best they could with what they had, but sometimes, when a memory comes up, Like being 6 and the only one available to take care of my infant brother, I wonder how we survived.

here, they are prohibited by law to sell alcohol and cigarettes to minors, note or not

@ragingloli , that’s the case here too, but this was 45+ years ago.

@bkcunningham It’s against the law to sell cigs to a minor as others stated, how do you get discrimination?

Just kidding based on another thread about selling single cigs.

On Jude’s same note, in my HS we had a designated smoking court. All you needed was a note signed by your parents. There was no age restriction.

@Dutchess_lll, we needed a note to leave campus to smoke in Jr High, but there were 2 designated smoking areas in HS and no note was needed.

Craziness @Judi! It had to do with some sort of New Age concept of…something. Some New Way of raising children or something. Needless to say, I didn’t even THINK of asking my folks for permission! They’d have shot me then hung me out to dry. I hung out in the Smoking Area illegally for three years. They’d pull periodic raids, but if you were a good kid they left you alone. They never carded me.

The kids smoked more than cigarettes there…and one of the windows overlooking the Smoking Area was the principals office. True story (cause I was there when it happened): Some kid had written “Toking Area” on one of the walls. The principal happened to stop in the Smoking Area, and saw that. He was “old”, maybe 64. He looked at it and said, “Toe-king? What is toe-king?” (That’s just the way he said it.) Man, we just fell about the place! Some brave kid said, “Well, it means smoking something other than cigarettes.” Well, he was old, but he wasn’t THAT old. His eyes got wide and he left the room.

He liked me. He wrote in my Sr. yearbook something about looking down from his office and seeing me in the Smoking Area. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I’ll look it up someday.

I never smoked but I remember the “cool” girls bragging that they “had permission” to smoke. It’s so totally opposite of what I hope goes on today.

Of course there was always smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants too, but the smoke was everywhere, that’s the nature of smoke. It’s always shocking now to go out to Las Vegas where smoking is permitted almost everywhere, it stinks and it hurts my lungs and my eyes.

Girls were still required to wear dresses up until I entered third grade, around 1971 or 72. And we were not allowed to wear shorts to school (except for our P.E. uniforms) until I was in high school, but even then, although some boys wore OP shorts, girls were considered to be very loose and slutty if they wore shorts at school, probably because the shorts that were popular then, were those super short, tight Dolphin shorts. We wore shorts and tube tops all the time outside of school and no one thought anything about it, but in school it was not considered proper.

In high school, girls wore Candies shoes (high heeled sandals with a wood-like plastic base) or platform shoes with either cork or that stuff that looked like rope, or Famolares leather shoes with thick wavy rubber soles. In Junior high, guys and girls wore Earth shoes and they were so ugly.

When the New Wave music hit right at the end of my high school days, us girls started wearing 3 or 4 different shades of eye shadow at once to try to get that perfect Boy George look. My friends and I started wearing our grandmother’s cool 50’s era dresses and high heels. Some of the more cutting edge kids started cutting their hair in those assymetrical hair dos where it’s longer on one side and shorter or even shaved on the other side (those kids also started wearing long black jackets and tight black pants and plimsouls shoes). This kind of pre-dates the Goth look and no one was wearing white face makeup. We called it New Wave or New Ro (short for new romantic).

@Kardamom: Candies shoes – blast from the past! I never had them (I was a sneakers girl) but I remember girls wearing designer jeans with Candies. Boots were the short slouchy ones they wore over jeans or high heel riding boots.

I remember the new wave era – I was one of the few of my friends who liked new wave. Lots of black and white stripes, and we liked Joe Jackson, The Cars, The Ramones, Psych Furs, The English Beat, REM, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Specials to name a few.

I was born in the early 1970’s. I remember buying my mom cigarettes at age 7 (yes, it was easier for a child to purchase tobacco back then, than it is for an adult to purchase tobacco today). I remember being able to purchase snuff (for my own use) at the age of 10. Video games were still popular like they are today, but the games back then were more basic (but still challenging). I still have my original Atari 2600 from 1977, perfect working condition, joysticks, games and all. Computers were the new ‘big’ thing in the early eighties, and my brother’s Commodore 64 was the shit at that time. The C64 was very big, with space taking tower, and all for a cool $2500 (big money at that time). No internet, cell phones, ipods though.

As for things other than electronics, we were always outside rather than indoors. Kids back then usually had to work at odd jobs passing newspapers, summer employment, mowing grass, shoveling snow, etc to earn any money. If we had nothing to do we would usually make up games. When we wanted to play hockey, and we didn’t have hockey sticks, goals or pucks well we usually built our own from old boards, crushed cans and I better not say what we used as the ‘goals’. Mom and pop stores were still common. You made less money, but it went farther. Three wheelers were the big thing then (at least where I lived) while four wheelers (ATV’s) were much more rare to see. In some ways those times were very different, but in other ways many things were similar. There seemed to be many many more lightning bugs flying around then too at night. I rarely see lightning bugs anymore

In the 80’s they still allowed smoking on AIR PLANES!!

Oh, the smoking reminds me of how I would go to the double feature with my dad and he would go to the back rows to be able to smoke. Do they have double features anymore? I also used to go to the drive-in with my dad.

Ah, drive-ins! Where everyone lost their virginity!

@Dutchess_III Dude! With my dad!

Well, at least it was with someone close to you.

Dude! I wasn’t thinking when I said that! Sorry!

@Dutchess_III Hahahaha. No problem, I bet a lot of teenagers did lose it at the drive-in, like the scene in Grease. Now cars have bucket seats, even the seats in back are molded or divided by a center console in many cars. What happen to those long bench seats? It’s really very uncomfortable to make out in cars now.

Mine to the tune of The Harrod Experiment. What was that movie about, anyway? :)

Ah the Harrad Experiment. I think I read the book when I was about 10 or 11. What were my parents thinking?

I know @bewailknot!