Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[Ed Bass]

I was riding home from work tonight and passed an excavation pit in the middle of the street with flashing LED pylons around the perimeter to keep the unwary from falling in -- and I had a flashback to when I was little, and they used to ring such pits with these round black metal things about the size of a cantaloupe with a flaming wick in the top. I used to think they were bombs, but they were just a very old form of safety light. I haven't seen these, or even thought about them in ages, but when they came to mind it got me thinking about other vintage things that just seem to have quietly disappeared in the past 45 years or so --

Vent windows in cars. I miss them terribly -- nothing nicer on a hot drive than that blast of wind right in your face.

Refillable glass soda bottles, the real heavy kind. I know they still have them in a few places, but they haven't been seen here since the late '80s.

Yellow stop signs. We still had a few in the town where I grew up, with STOP spelled out in little reflectors. They got older and rustier every year until one day they were just gone. Are there any left anywhere?

Bac-A-Belt Kits. You used to be able to find them at any notions counter, and they were invaluable for making matched belts and covered buckles for dresses. And then about ten years ago, they simply didn't exist anymore, and now nobody in the fabric department even knows what they are.

Wax paper bread wrappers. I came in just at the end of these, and can remember sitting on them to go faster on the playground slide. It's not the same with a polyethylene bag.

Theatrical cartoon shorts. There are occasional efforts to revive these, but as recently as the early 70s they were still commonplace at your neighborhood theatre. Our local house showed Walter Lantz cartoons before every feature, but only the later lousy ones where Woody Woodpecker was a boring suburbanite.

Sunday blue laws. Around here this meant no stores larger than a certain size allowed to be open at all on Sunday, so the corner groceries always did a booming business.

Probably all of us can think of something vintage that they've managed to outlive -- what's yours?

Manners and basic moral decency, if it hasn't been said already.

 

[earl]

My father had a sister named Elizabeth, and there are few others scattered in the lineage, but none of any great distinction. I've also got a Sarah, a Winifred, a Clara, a May, an Estelle, and a Wilhemina in my lineage. Given that we are almost wholly Scotch-Irish by way of Nova Scotia on every side of the family that I've been able to document (except for Irving, I suspect he must've snuck in from the Bronx or something), I have absolutely no idea what the deal was with Wilhemina.

The most common name in my family tree is Clifford. My great-grandfather and grandfather bore that name, and so does a cousin. We also have several Earles -- not nobleman Earls, but Earles like Uncle Earle who could fart to music and got laughs at Thanksgiving by dropping his partial plate in the gravy. My other Uncle Earle was semi-famous as the merchant sea captain whose ship was sunk by a U-Boat during the war, and who spent six weeks on a raft with his surviving crewmen until they arrived in Guiana. The whole adventure led many to question his choice of career, because, as Grandpa Irving might have put it, Earle and water don't mix.

Earl you say? My online name is not particularly creative. My grandfather was also Earl, my father Merle. Earl

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

My maternal great-grandfather was named Levi Elah Maddox. His youngest daughter, my grandmother, was Emma Elah Maddox. She had a sister named Leona. Their married names were Emma Scarborough and Leona McGoldrick. You just can't hardly get more Texas than that.

 

[GHT]

Did other countries have gas lit street lights? It was a common sight up until the 1950's here in the UK. Bigger cities were going electric, but it took quite a while for the whole country to catch up. The gas lamps were lit by a fuel we called: "Town Gas." It was given that name when natural gas was discovered in the North Sea. Our gas system was overhauled to burn North Sea Gas, and to distinguish the former fuel known simply as gas, it became known as Town Gas.
Town gas was an extract of coal, it was highly toxic, containing hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and volatile hydrocarbons as well as carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The residue of coal that was left was known as coke, it had a porous, sponge like appearance, and it burned really hot. Something else that has disappeared is the night watchman, whose brazier fire would burn coke.
The night watchman stayed all night by holes in the road in case anyone should fall in, remember, this was bomb ravaged Europe, following WW2.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Town gas was an extract of coal, it was highly toxic, containing hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and volatile hydrocarbons as well as carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

North Sea Gas contains those things as well.

As for gas lamps...each house in my neighborhood has a coach light in the front yard (we don't have overhead street lights). All were originally natural gas burning lamps, but some have switched over to electric. There are still quite a few gas burners though. Such is common around here, though the larger, overhead streetlights are always electric.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We've never had natural gas here, except after a bean supper, so we never had gaslights. What gas has been burned here has always been liquefied propane, delivered in steel cylinders by a big sweaty man on a truck and attached to a coiled up copper pipe on the side of the house. Pyrofax, Liqui-Gas, Suburban Propane, Mobilflame, and other brands were popular, especially in the years after the war.

We still don't have natural gas here, so LP is still very popular, both for cooking and for heating. But not for lighting.

 

[Stanley Doble]

We did have coal gas in major cities in Canada but switched over to natural gas in the fifties. Now every town has it. In rural areas propane tanks are common, refilled from a large tank truck. There are large natural gas fields in Canada. In some areas farmers hit gas when drilling for water, and hook up the well to their own gas system.

 

[Zombie_61]

Did other countries have gas lit street lights?

Yes Sir. In San Diego, California, there is a historical neighborhood known as Gaslamp Quarter, a reference to the gas lamps that were quite common in that area in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. One intersection there has maintained the use of four "token" gas lamps, but everywhere else is lit electrically.

 

[ChiTownScion]

When I was growing up I remember seeing those huge gas holder/ gasometer storage tanks in Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities. They've been dismantled, largely because, instead of local extraction from coal, household (natural) gas is now brought in via pipelines. The "old" name for the local gas company was the Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company, which is very telling regarding the production aspect. It later morphed into Peoples Gas, and then, NiCor.

Lizzie, I've read that in your state there are few- or no- gas pipeline to ship in natural gas, so propane is the only alternative for home heating with gas. And it's a lot more costly to consumers. Is there some historical reason why gas pipelines- or even the old local coal/ coke production method, were never utilized? Given the cold climate, I'd think that consumers would be clamoring for an less expensive option to propane, electric, or fuel oil.

 

[vitanola]

Producer Gas (whether made from coal, lignite, oil, or the bitumen residue from oil refining) was always more expensive than natural gas, and was not an economic source of heat. It was barely an economic source of cooking fuel, and would not have been so at all if not for its manifest labor saving advantages over solid fuel in this application. There was a reason that so many kitchens were equipped with "combination" coal and gas ranges. In the winter when the waves of heat sent in to the kitchen by the coal range were welcome the cheaper fuel was used, but in the summertime the expensive but cooler gas took over. Producer Gas was generally delivered with a rather high carbon content so that when burned in a batswing or fishtail open burner there would be a relatively large quantity of unturned carbon to glow a bright yellow and increase the light output of the burner. This "rich gas" unfortunately tended to soot up both kitchen utensils and the wallpaper. Natural gas has always burned much cleaner.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Natural gas or propane produces a bright white light if you use a fixture with a Wellsbach mantle. We used to have a travel trailer with a gas light in it, similar to a Coleman lantern.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Disapearing in my lifetime:

Nice young ladys with cute ear-studs, which got no string, transmitting anything.

 

[2jakes]

Kerosene lamps which were used on road construction sites.

 

[Trenchfriend]

bean supper,

Thanks, Lizzie, good inspiration! I thought on it, at my visit on supermarkt and took one of the great canned bean-soups, german style. Mmmmh!

 

[Fading Fast]

Kerosene lamps which were used on road construction sites.

They were still using those in the '60s and '70s in New Jersey when I was growing up. As a kid I thought they were very cool and, even then, they felt like a throwback to another time.

 

[HudsonHawk]

We did have coal gas in major cities in Canada but switched over to natural gas in the fifties. Now every town has it. In rural areas propane tanks are common, refilled from a large tank truck. There are large natural gas fields in Canada. In some areas farmers hit gas when drilling for water, and hook up the well to their own gas system.

You see that sometimes around here, but not as common as it once was. Oil companies used to supply the homes of their employees this way, especially if the were in a remote location. They'd never do it now because of safety concerns with raw gas. But you can still see some old water wells with the vapor haze over them.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Kerosene lamps which were used on road construction sites.

A farmer friend of mine has about a dozen of these that he puts along his drive when he's throwing a party at the house. Refers to them as his "flaming piss pots."

 

[LizzieMaine]

That image of a construction torch, or "Toledo torch," which is what they were called in the municipal-supply catalogs of the Era, takes this thread full circle to my original post. I knew that would happen eventually.

We used to call them "bombs," for obvious reasons.

 

[Fading Fast]

That image of a construction torch, or "Toledo torch," which is what they were called in the municipal-supply catalogs of the Era, takes this thread full circle to my original post. I knew that would happen eventually.

We used to call them "bombs," for obvious reasons.

234 pages is a pretty good run though. Heck of a good thread topic you started.

 

[BobHufford]

A lighter weight version of the smudge-pot is used with citronella oil for mosquito repellant nowadays.