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  1. B

    Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

    When we look back, time becomes compressed. It has been over twenty years since 1995 and twenty years is a long time. But everything else has been changing, too. So-called corporate casual is somewhat vague just as proper business dress in 1960 was, too, just as you described. Was a white...
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    Old gas stations

    The idea of moving as far away from home as possible and it has happened in my family. My son went to California and is still there (where else would you live if you wanted to work in the movie industry?) and another family member went as far as Hawaii. Of course, there are other good reasons...
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    Old gas stations

    I--no, WE, are--are astonished that you once lived in California! The dusty waxed floor (looks more scuffed than dusty to me) reminds me of the schools that I went to, especially the older buildings built well before WWII. I even went to the same school where my mother graduated high school in...
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    Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

    I actually wore a suit yesterday because there was an after-hours event scheduled for my boss who had just retired two weeks ago. In my eighteen years of working for him, he wore a dark blue suit every day. He even joked about wearing an oxford cloth dress shirt to go jogging in but I think he...
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    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    I imagine the gasoline & oil racket bothers you even more. And as far as believing what I wrote (Mr. tonyb), of course I believe it. And since I wrote it, it must be true. My comments are based entirely on a scientific data gathering system called "observation." My notes and comments are...
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    Old gas stations

    She has a lunch pail exactly like my father used. There's nothing coming out of the thermos but obviously it's a posed photo. Virtually all are, anyway. I worked in photofinishing for about twenty years. One of our vendors owned a glass negative of a post-war photo of Lee. The plant manager had...
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    Old gas stations

    Well, generally speaking, tanned skin was hardly fashionable at the turn of the century, and judging from the way some people are dressed when they're out walking around the neighborhood where I live, it still isn't among some people. It wasn't so much a matter of the complexion but rather...
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    Old gas stations

    Ten or twelve-foot ceiling, nothing electrical in sight (probably a ceiling light, though), spittoon in the corner next to a wastepaper basket that's really a basket, everything made of beautiful oak, including, apparently, part of the wall, desktop fashionably cluttered. The lady's complexion...
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    Old gas stations

    Those Keds were what I was thinking of. My uncle would have worn white socks. Except when he was at work, he otherwise wore slip-on Romeo shoes, still available.
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    Old gas stations

    Weren't sneakers described as bad for the feet? Either because they had rubber soles or because they didn't offer proper support? Sneakers were on issue in the British Army, where they were called "canvas shoes" (shoes, canvas) and which now would be called trainers. American soldiers are now...
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    Old gas stations

    I think sneakers were popular as casual footwear as far back as the 1940s, by which I mean just casual and not particularly fashionable. Huntz Hall, whose photo is on my bulletin board here at work (along with his son, an Episcopal priest), usually wore sneakers in their movies. Thor Heyerdahl...
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    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    There is another expression that I heard was used (never heard anyone use it myself) in the area where my wife's parents moved to after they retired. It was basically a farming and fishing area that became a popular retirement location. The term was "come heres," referring to the retired people...
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    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    Now that's an expression I used to hear a lot when I was little: "out of state drivers." The implication was that they couldn't handle the crooked narrow roads in West Virginia. I have my doubts.
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    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    I'm sure everyone who still says "gee" and "haw" still use that expression. Originally, the typing class in school was "typewriting." Manual typewriters, too. But when was the last time you saw a typewriter? I have mixed thoughts about cell phones--or more correctly, smart phones--in cars. I...
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    Old gas stations

    While colors generally don't bring back any memories, smells, good and bad, do. My late father-in-law's garage/shop (it was an enclosed garage with an overhead garage door that was full of tools) had a certain oily aroma that's a little hard to pin down, since it didn't exactly smell simply like...
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    Old gas stations

    It's incredible the difference color makes. I don't seem to have any vivid recollections of colors from when I was little, meaning through high school, with a few minor exceptions. But when thinking of almost anything from before the 1950s, I usually think of it in black and white, because that...
  20. B

    Old gas stations

    I was just leafing through a few pages of this thread. Lots of interesting photos that give me totally opposite impressions of the past--even as I actually remember it! Of course, it doesn't follow that the way I remember it was the was it really was. These impressions are not entirely of gas...
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    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    Yikes!
  22. B

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    You could also "ring off" after making a "trunk call," with operator assistance, of course. With a cordless phone, could one even say that someone is on the line? Or if the line went dead.
  23. B

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    It's almost embarrassing to admit that I find those old boy's adventure books so fascinating and interesting. One reason might be that I never read any of them except the Hardy Boys when I was still living at home (I left home as soon as I finished high school). So the other books I've ran...

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