What do you miss about the 'good old days'?

Hmmm. I would say that I really miss the time before AIDS really hit, when everyone had sex without worry.

when cartoons were actually funny…or not

This might sound kind of silly, but I miss meeting people at the airport gate. I miss seeing the faces of folks as they walk off the plane and recognize family members or lovers they haven’t seen in a while, then finally seeing the person I came to meet (who was inevitably the last off). For that matter I miss standing at the terminal window and waving as the plane takes off. I also miss ice cream for a nickel a scoop and dollar matinees.

I miss rotary-dial phones, the wind-vents in cars, real movie stars, getting up to change the channel, portable typewriters (I had an Hermes), playing in the street, five cent candy bars, pre Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Walter Cronkite, zip guns (as opposed to Uzis), black leather motorcycle jackets and Ray-Bans, Elvis, Duck-ass haircuts, doo-wop, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Fox’s You-Bet before it went from “choclate syrup” to “chocolate flavored syrup”, French Ticklers in the men’s room dispensers (Ribbed for her pleasure) and oatmeal that took longer than 30 seconds to “cook”.

@SuperMouse nice
@pdworkin yeah, I don’t miss getting up to change the channel, lol

I miss real cherry bombs and M-80s. They were a $1.00 a dozen from the ice cream man.

I miss the delusion I was under thinking I was close to my family members.

I miss the time when young people were not obsessed with their electronic connections. When they knew there was life beyond the Web, texting, exchanging meaningless blather on cell phones, and video games.

Life unplugged was pretty nice really.

I miss when Warner Bros. cartoons weren’t edited for violence, when computers were interesting instead of being generic, real muscle cars… actually, the list is probably quite long.

I am relatively young, so

Action figures with integrity! Back when to be an action figure, you had to be worth it. Or at least, that’s how it was for me, I didn’t live in the US as a child, but every action figure was worth his salt. Action Man? Not my thing, but I could respect that gargantuan beast of masculinity. Wrestlers, Superheroes with long-established followings… these were the stuff of action figures, with the occasional action figure that wasn’t a franchise product, but a wonder of plastic craftsmanship.

Now? Now, we have action figures for every major action game, every superficial bag of piss has an action figure. TWILIGHT ACTION FIGURES? wha?

@Sanyore Never thought of action figures as ‘beasts of masculinity’ but hey..

i miss…
the days when i could play with lego.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
yeah
i think of action figures as symbols of repressed homoerotic desires.

@ragingloli not that homosexuality and masculinity are mutually exclusive but hey…

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
i guess both are the reason for the popularity of wrestling soap operas (wwf wcw, or what they are called)

@Simone_De_Beauvoir

After my episodic action figure sagas, you will would never see action figures the same way again.

@ragingloli

I guess the fact that I had a barbie doll at 8 too may have somehow perversely blended into this to leave me straight. wonder of wonders.

@ragingloli Oh yeah I miss the good old days when I used to go see Undertaker and Shawn Michaels fight it out in cage matches

I am not quite old enough to talk about the good old days but:

I miss muscle Cars
I miss kids being able to play outside all day
I miss sunshine and rolling hills unscathed by construction.
I miss family dinners and holidays with extended family.
I miss the smell of Grandma’s homemade bread cooking.
I miss being able to have a career guaranteed with a college degree.
I miss knowing the owner of the hardware store who could show you what you needed.
I miss neighbors helping neighbors.
I miss being able to fix my own car.
I miss crawdad ponds.
I miss riding my dirt bike- there are no more places to ride.

I miss the Cuban criminals taking the piss out of the American admin.

SOOOO FUNNY and still is.

@muslimsrcomming Why the new identity after such a short time? We were just getting used to @Terrier.

Just sooo funny,ya gotta hand it to em!!!!!!!!!!!

I missed the days when I used to play outside and I wasn’t isolated in my room.

Being content

My “good old days” were the ‘90s and the early 2000s. There really isn’t anything I miss that isn’t just nostalgia and could happen with any time period. But I guess I miss the days before school shootings became a normal occurrence in American life.

The music..and the Flinstones. :), Scoooby-doo, etc., etc.

@Dog, I miss Brown Bag Deli and Holiday Hardware in the Janss Mall. I also miss the bowling alley and Bob’s Big Boy! I’m totally there with you on the hills without construction.

@SuperMouse Ahhh the memories!
All gone- even Franks Charbroiler went under last month.
Sprouse Ritz, Thrifty’s Ice Cream.
La Brinka Canyon and the waterfalls.

@Dog!! Sprouse Ritz!! How about TG&Y and Pickwick Books or the saddles for seats at the McDonalds on Janss and Moorpark?! Frank’s finally bit the dust, that is a true bummer.

How about the Ventu Park Drive in and White Front. I wish I had seen Jungle Land.

35 cents a pack for cigs, 25 cents a gallon gas, and the people were so much nicer than they are today….less hurried…more open.

@rocko Welcome to Fluther

Whitefront! The old drive-in too, that’s where I saw all the old Disney movies with Kurt Russell and went on my very first date – to an R rated movie nonetheless! The Jungle Land ruins were very cool – even though we didn’t get to see the actual park, I kind of hate what they have done to that area, it is a piece of my childhood gone.

Thanks Dog

I miss high-quality cartoons for kids, like Thundercats, GI Joe, and later, Doug, Ren and Stimpy, etc.

I also miss when Michael Jackson was the hugest act on the planet.

@SuperMouse that is because they made it into yet another place that caters to the wealthy.
Mayfair Market, Zips ice Cream and the arcade on Kimber.

Michael Jackson, in death, is once again the largest act on the planet!

Actual meals on airplanes, they sucked but at least it was more than peanuts!

@Dog, Casey’s! The arcade on Kimber was called Casey’s, though I was more of a Tilt girl myself.

Tilt, Orange Julius, Earth Crafts- cool stuff at the Oaks long gone.

I miss being able to go straight from ticketing to your gate without stripping sorting and x-rays.

I miss a having complete lack of responsibility.
I miss believing that “those in charge” did what is right.
I miss play-doh.

What I miss for me is just nostalgia (sex without fear was great!), but it saddens me that my kids can’t do so many of the things I took for granted. Riding a bike sans helmet, feeling the wind in your hair. Leaving the house at dawn to play outside all day, the only requirement being to get back in time for dinner. Going back out after dinner to roam the neighborhood (in the dark!) with friends, so long as I was home by curfew.

@augustlan

What does wearing a helmet have to do with the time period? The risk of injury is the same no matter what decade you’re in. My uncle rode his bike without a helmet back in the ‘70s and got hit by a car, receiving a bad head injury that led to brain damage and schizophrenia.

@DominicX Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. :(
Of course the danger was just as real back then, we just didn’t realize it. Being a responsible (and a tad overprotective) parent, I always made the kids wear a helmet. I certainly don’t wish they’d come to harm, I guess I just wish they had the freedom from fear that I had at that age. Some of my fondest memories of riding in a car include standing up on the back seat floor, in between the front bucket seats, or laying down on the ‘package shelf’ behind the back seat, scrunched up against the rear windshield. Doesn’t mean I don’t make my kids wear a seatbelt!

I miss being a kid and thus never having to worry about fixing dinner, paying the bills, or waiting for repairmen that never came.

@DominicX Back then we kids were given firecrackers, lawn darts and bb guns to play with. I had a wood burning kit, a chemistry set and we made go carts that were insanely dangerous by todays standards. I had a pocket knife I carried in my pocket from the age of 8 up. Nobody thought anything was wrong with it.

In the last two decades the world has been on a campaign to make childhood safer, Helmets, bans on toys that have an even remote chance of injury and now sand is being replaced in our area by foam pads. In some cases like the helmets it is awesome. But in other ways it is a replacement for the development of common sense.

@Dog

I can understand how foam pads and restrictions on toys are ridiculous, but helmets I’m always going to agree with. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t wear one. Like I said, my uncle wouldn’t be in a mental institution today if he had worn a helmet. But back then, no one did and you just risked it. Dumb luck might work for you sometimes, but other times it fails.

@DominicX I totally agree with the helmets- and I agree also with the fireworks and lawn darts and knives. (I will admit that I hate the sand loss- I spent hours playing in the sand)

The helmet law actually made it easier for kids to be safe as those who did wear helmets were ridiculed as retarded. I am glad my kids wear helmets. I am also in agreement with Helmet motorcycle laws and remember how the motorcyclists were infuriated at the lack of freedom. But the proof is in the lack of available donor organs since the law was enacted. Helmets work.

I miss American Bandstand.
I miss picnics at Washington Park on the 4th of July and then the fireworks.
I miss Summerfest (which was where I saw a barely-known R.E.M. on a tiny side stage in 1983, and Hall and Oates, Depeche Mode and Soundgarden in their primes).
I miss going to Kopp’s Frozen Custard after school and getting a burger as big as my head.
I miss having a crush on my Irish soccer coach and my ginger 11th grade History teacher.
I miss sliding down the sand dunes near my grandparents’ house near Lake Michigan.
I miss riding on the back of motorcycles with cute boys (helmeted, of course).
I miss singing along to the radio out loud on the school bus in third grade with my friends (we got the harmonies of How Deep Is Your Love down, OK?)

i miss junk food actually being junk food..as being delicious and woefully lacking in nutritional value…its all fine and well having more healthy food but sometime you just wanna eat some real tasty rubbish and all the fatties who sue people have taken that choice away from me

@rocko in what ways were people more open?
@noodle_poodle you can’t find junk food these days?

Maybe @noodle_poodle doesn’t live near a McDonald’s or Burger King or a Sonic or a 7–11 or any of those other purveyors of junk food, but only lives near a Whole Foods or other natural food store.

Or maybe mom is just lying and simply chooses to bring home only granola bars instead of Cheese Puffs.

@Darwin @Simone_De_Beauvoir oh yeh i can get “junk food” but they’ve changed it…even macdonalds have healthied up their ingredients….which is crap cuz they still arnt good food. now they are just half arsed things that arnt one thing or the other…for instance chicken nuggets used to be delicious,...i doubt there was any chicken in em but they tasted well good…now they use proper chicken or make bodged attempts to and they taste of nothing and still arnt healthy…..mcdonalds now do salad I mean who the hell wants salad from micky d’s? people buy that kinda thing in proper food stores

I miss the fried apple pies that McDonald’s used to sell. Now it’s a baked apple pie and it just isn’t the same at all.

@mrentropy Oh, me too! Try the apple chalupa (I think) at Taco Bell. It’s very similar to old-school McDonald’s apple pie, with a bit more cinnamon. Yummy deliciousness!

@augustlan Thanks! I will take a look. I don’t remember them having it last time I was there but I’m game for looking again.

I also miss 1980’s sitcoms like Night Court and Newhart.

@noodle_poodle – The Big Mac hasn’t changed. It’s just as bad for you as ever.

Sex. By the time AIDS hit, though, I was monogamous. The few years before that were pretty wild.

Not so many houses and people at beaches, parks, and other vacation spots. It’s getting harder to find dirt roads, and harder to find accessible places with no people and a lot of natural beauty.

I miss farmland near the city. Everything is covered with houses, now. It takes an hour to get to any decent country.

I may think of the past, but I bury it and only look ahead. Missing something denotes a lacking and all of my past was diverse, crazy and fulfilling, even in my worst moments. In fact the worst moments taught me the most so I can conjure up those feelings and never have to miss them.