I remember when.....

[chiefusmm]

Smoking in the upper level piano bar on a 747 flight
Looking for the church key so you could open a beer can.
Not needing a license to fish

 

[djd]

I'm not a smoker and never have been other than the odd cigar maybe in a hotel bar late at night. I do miss not having that opportunity anymore as I'm certainly not going to go and stand in the street to have one. The smoking ban is a good thing - I just wish it didn't apply to me!

 

[Edward]

I'm not a smoker and never have been other than the odd cigar maybe in a hotel bar late at night. I do miss not having that opportunity anymore as I'm certainly not going to go and stand in the street to have one. The smoking ban is a hood thing - I just wish it didn't apply to me!

I don't know, I actually rather enjoy stepping outside with the pipe for twenty minutes....Providing it isn't raining, of course, but then I'm not enough of a smoker to miss it if it isn't convenient, so. [huh]

 

[djd]

Lol- that's the problem, it's always raining here!

 

[Godfrey]

A few of mine

20 cents of mixed sweets would leave you feeling sick and bloated!

Toys came twice a year. Christmas and birthday. Everything else was made or imagined.

everyone was really tall.

 

[John in Covina]

Toys came twice a year. Christmas and birthday. Everything else was made or imagined. everyone was really tall.

One thing that we loved was if someone got a big appliance like a frig or washing machine. The box it came in could be used for almost anything.

Along with people being tall, going to a place you went to as a child and returning as an adult is usually an eye opener. Everything seemed bigger then.

 

[St.Ignatz]

One thing that we loved was if someone got a big appliance like a frig or washing machine. The box it came in could be used for almost anything.

Along with people being tall, going to a place you went to as a child and returning as an adult is usually an eye opener. Everything seemed bigger then.

And the snow was deeper. I wonder why?
Tom D.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

One thing that we loved was if someone got a big appliance like a frig or washing machine. The box it came in could be used for almost anything.

I sell on eBay so I ship a lot of stuff out. I never thought the day would come that I would actually have to buy boxes for shipping. At one time discarded boxes were free for the taking practically anywhere. Now they're like gold because people snap them up for recycling.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One thing that we loved was if someone got a big appliance like a frig or washing machine. The box it came in could be used for almost anything.

I remember when some of the big appliances came packed in a wooden crate -- which was even better for kids. I remember a bunch of kids dragging a huge packing case home from out behind a gas station, and getting a whole summer's use out of it.

Even better was the time they turned a rusted-out kerosene tank into a space capsule. Nobody complained then about kids reeking of K-1, as long as they were out of the house.

 

[John in Covina]

I can recall using a refrigerator box as a fort for cowboys and Indians, tank for playing Army, as the sub on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and as the Jupiter space craft from Lost in Space.

 

[bil_maxx]

I remember:

No professionals in the Olympics.
Going to the corner store as a kid to buy cigarettes for my grandfather. The store owner knew me by sight and which ones I was supposed to buy for my grandfather.
.25 cent chocolate bars.
Rotary phones. Such a pain that you didn't call your friends, you knocked on the door, greeted "Mrs. Myfriendsmom" and asked for them to come play outside.
Solid steel dashboards with my parents magnetic religious symbols on them.
A real sized spare tire changed with a real sized jack which attached to a notch in a real large solid steel bumper.
Walking to school.
Taking the Toronto subway at 7 years old to go to school downtown all by myself.
Getting the strap at school and being scared to go home because my dad would have whacked me for making the teacher strap me if he found out.
Wearing hand me down clothes and using hand me down toys like bikes. And being VERY careful not to wreck them as they were going to the next youngest.
My uncle getting pulled over for driving drunk and getting a lecture from the police about it being unsafe. Then being sent "straight home now" as my aunt had no license. (One improvement in the laws I am happy about of course).
Fighting to see who would blow out the match for my uncle's cigarette. "Lighter? LIGHTER? What are we, RICH?"
Friday night poker games rotating through all of my parents relatives houses. The woman of the house cooked, served booze and emptied the ashtrays.
Friday fish. Catholic thing.
Neighbourhood priest coming over to see the family. He was a close friend to all families and was received with the utmost respect by all.
Huge Irish policemen who were very kind. Kids loved them and actually wanted to talk to them.
Taking the electric streetcar into downtown Toronto and it not being a lower class thing.
Kids getting taken home by the police for something and having to calm down the parents to prevent them from beating up the kids. This of course came with the automatic assumption that the police were right and that the child had in fact done something.
This is a Canadian one. Going to the government liquor store, filling out an order form, and having them bring you the booze to a window like in a bank where you paid for it.
Paying for everything with cash.

Sorry these are all over the place. I put them down as I remembered them.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

My mother had a St. Christopher's medal on her dashboard for years.
It went on the dash of my 60 Chevy when I started driving..

 

[John in Covina]

Although they are still available I relate Ronson lighter fluid and a Zippo type lighter with most adult men.
The smell of the Ronson fluid evokes a lot of childhood memories for me.

Newspapers that aren't here anymore. My dad preferred the NY Herald Tribune.

Howard Johnsons Restaurants.

Getting a high end pen and pencil set as a serious gift for a bar mitzvah, conformation or graduation

 

[Jaguar66]

I remember my dad giving my older brother $1.10, and we 4 brothers would go to the movies on Saturday, see a double feature and each have popcorn and a coke. My brothers ticket was 25 cents (he was 12), each of the other 3 was 15 cents, popcorn and coke were a nickle each.

I remember picking up the phone and asking the operator to ring the other party's phone, numbers were a name, followed by 5 digits. TUxedo 61559. The first two letters stood for 2 digits. In our case 88 = TU. No area code.

I remember walking home from the movies on Saturday, and trying to find the gas cap on the late 50s cars. Behind the license plates, or one of the rear tail lights usually.

I remember when seeing a California license plate was something to call out while riding in the car.

I remember stepping on an empty Lucky Strike wrapper, making a wish and hiding the wrapper so the wish would come true.

I remember Lik M Aid, a packet of sugary fruity and tart powdered sweets, eating it by wetting your finger and dipping it in the packet, turning your finger colors.

I remember drawing on the TV screen to figure out Winky Dinks secret answer, when we couldn't find the plastic TV screen cover.

I remember playing board games in winter, Mr. Ree, Careers, and Star Reporter. (of course Monopoly with the metal tokens and wooden houses).

I remember my brother going into the local hardware store, and being able to buy dynamite over the counter. He was 16.

 

[Jaguar66]

Post accidently duplicated.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I remember that getting a Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper with a picture of an Indian on it was bad luck. Or good luck, depending on what the mythology was where you grew up.

I remember giving kids from out of state a drink of Moxie and laughing as they coughed and spit it out.

 

[St.Ignatz]

My mother had a St. Christopher's medal on her dashboard for years.
It went on the dash of my 60 Chevy when I started driving..

The magnet under the talisman had a metal surface to stick to. Seat belts were a big deal.
Tom D.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I remember driving home from school with my brother and sister riding in the back of my 60 Chevy, no seatbelts, of course, so I'd whip the corners hard and laugh as they slid across the rear bench and slammed into eachother and the door.

 

[juup]

Getting a high end pen and pencil set as a serious gift for a bar mitzvah, conformation or graduation

I still have five or six of those unused things at my moms house in Pittsburgh. Some still in the original "apo, ny" boxes that they came in. I was (un)lucky enough to have been with my parents stationed in Munich at that time. Funny thing is Gramma Truedl (a former card carrying reichsarbeiter and party member paid for it all. Had my Bar Mitzvah at the base chapel and reception at the Kehlsteinhaus (eagles nest restaurant) in Berchtesgaden, GDR.

but having lived on the Rt 66 corridor for some time now, i've watch Stuckey's Restaurants/stores slowly disappear.

Also I remember a day when you had to go to the department store for customer service and five and dimes (specifically Woolco and Ben Franklins) for school supplies every august.

Also I remember going to school the week before it actually started to meet the new teacher whom you always addressed Mr/Mrs soandso or sir/ma'am respectively. The few years I taught right out of high school freshman students would come in the day school started and say "so what do I call you?"

 

[juup]

I remember that getting a Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper with a picture of an Indian on it was bad luck. Or good luck, depending on what the mythology was where you grew up.

I remember giving kids from out of state a drink of Moxie and laughing as they coughed and spit it out.

Where I grew up the challenge was to collect 10 of the indians because you could trade them in at the base Youth center for a free tootsie roll pop. As for my first taste of moxie, I had that at a halloween party in Portland in 1994 and gagged. After that i asked who made the witches brew b/c it tasted like they really used eye of newt. I found out later, at Camp Hinds in Raymond that it was a legit soda. To this day ive only tried it once