Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[HudsonHawk]

Are there still fire-hoses made from Canvas?

The traditional "canvas" fire hose is still prevalent for its durability and abrasion resistance; however, most nowadays are made from synthetic woven fibers, not cotton canvas.

 

[belfastboy]

From the days when banks actually might have a sense of humor -- Manufacturer's Trust in New York, "Everybody's Bank with a branch Just Around The Corner," put out a long-running series of pocket schedules featuring the city's three baseball teams. I'd do business with any bank that commissioned cartoons by the great Williard Mullin.
Yes, our local baseball team, formerly a Triple A franchise now reduced to short season Single A distributes a pocket schedule. Unfortunately no wonderful cartoonist does the graphics but they are handy nonetheless.

Do pocket schedules even exist anymore? Everybody used to put them out, but I haven't seen one in years.

 

[Stormy]

The traditional "canvas" fire hose is still prevalent for its durability and abrasion resistance; however, most nowadays are made from synthetic woven fibers, not cotton canvas.

I remember canvas lawn hoses. I had forgotten all about those. Thanks for reminding me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Old canvas fire hoses, flattened out and painted white, were used as the foul line markers at Old Comiskey Park in Chicago, another vintage thing which has disappeared in my lifetime.

 

[Fading Fast]

As someone who looks for opportunities to be in old NYC buildings, I still regularly see those canvas fire hoses. Some look well maintained and ready to go into battle, others look as if they've been untouched for fifty years, are coated in dust and like they'd break if anyone tried to unfold them from their racks.

Our building - having had a fire recently - but even before, has upgraded all its equipment to current code (or so the Board has told us as they explained the increased assessment), so the hoses are gone but the old metal racks that held them in place are still there as shown below (picture just snapped).

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I don't remember the last time I saw a fire ax in a glass-fronted box with a sign that said: "In case of fire, break glass." Often there was a metal rod dangling from a metal chain to break the glass with. Famed Murder, Inc. assassin Pittsburgh Phil Strauss never carried a weapon. When he located his mark he looked around for something to kill the guy with. Once, in a movie theater, he looked around and saw one of those fire axes. He broke the glass, took the ax and buried it in the mark's head, then walked out while everybody was screaming and fleeing. You gotta admire a real pro.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I hate when we get customers like that.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
There are hundreds of worthless SOBs still walking God's good Earth mostly because I know just how difficult it is to get away with murder.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The traditional "canvas" fire hose is still prevalent for its durability and abrasion resistance; however, most nowadays are made from synthetic woven fibers, not cotton canvas.

I remember those from when my dad was "on the job." His engine company was in an old house that had a hose tower: after a run the wet hoses would be pulled up by ropes and hung to dry.

 

[Trenchfriend]

How much women wear Lily-of-the-valley/Maiglöckchen-perfume, today?

 

[Zombie_61]

^^^^^
There are hundreds of worthless SOBs still walking God's good Earth mostly because I know just how difficult it is to get away with murder.

During a "Student and Law" class in high school a detective came in to give us a lesson as a guest speaker. During the discussion he actually told us, "If you ever kill someone, make sure there are no witnesses. Or, at most, one person, because in a court of law it would be your word against theirs. And if you use a weapon of any kind, whatever you do, make sure it's never found." Of course, this was back in the late-1970s when there weren't surveillance cameras everywhere; I imagine it's a bit more difficult these days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Kill them with kindness. Or a frozen leg of lamb.

 

[Bushman]

Old canvas fire hoses, flattened out and painted white, were used as the foul line markers at Old Comiskey Park in Chicago, another vintage thing which has disappeared in my lifetime.

We still used them when I was in high school for scrimmages on the football team. They were always such a pain to roll up at the end of the day.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Eastern Germany got them still in the 90s, but today, I don't know.

 

[Benzadmiral]

@sheeplady mentioned vending machines in the so trivial thread. I can't recall the last time that I saw a vending machine.

Vending machines are everywhere, including those that take credit cards (for a slightly higher price, of course). What seems to have vanished is the cigarette vending machine. I recall those in stores and bars when I was a kid -- in the early Sixties my mother would send me down to the tavern on the corner, the Bourbon House, to get a pack of Pall Malls from the vending machine there. Nobody objected. (It's a miracle, say I, that I never took up the coffin nail habit.)

Nowadays, if you must purchase cigarettes -- or even pipe tobacco -- you have to ask some member of the staff to unlock a glass case, or to hand you your choice from behind the check out counter.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Oatmeal-gruel/Haferschleim on beeing stomach-sick.

 

[Fading Fast]

Vending machines are everywhere, including those that take credit cards (for a slightly higher price, of course). What seems to have vanished is the cigarette vending machine. I recall those in stores and bars when I was a kid -- in the early Sixties my mother would send me down to the tavern on the corner, the Bourbon House, to get a pack of Pall Malls from the vending machine there. Nobody objected. (It's a miracle, say I, that I never took up the coffin nail habit.)

Nowadays, if you must purchase cigarettes -- or even pipe tobacco -- you have to ask some member of the staff to unlock a glass case, or to hand you your choice from behind the check out counter.

As a kid in the late '60s/'70s, adults regularly had me get them a pack from the vending machine. Which - at least the most common one I remember - had a substantial round handle that you pulled out (took a bit of effort - no digital push pad) and, after a loud clunk, the cigarette pack plunked down and slid out of the metal shelf at the bottom. You'd hand the pack over to the adult who would "pack it down" with a few meaningful smacks on a table or counter top and they were good to go. There was, to my memory, no controls / oversight for age on those machines.

To your other point, I thank God I simply always hated smoke - the smell disgusted me as a kid and still does to this day. I was unsurprisingly revolted the one time I tried them as a teenager. To be honest, in my somewhat indiscriminate youth, as a young man, in a bar, later in the evening, several drinks in, talking to this or that attractive girl who, as many are wont to do, seem to smoke when they've had several drinks in them (even the ones who "don't smoke"), I wasn't turned off by the smell of that smoke. But at that age, with alcohol and hormones powering my libido, cigarette smoke didn't stand a chance as a turn off.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had exactly that type of machine at the gas station -- a low-slung brown-painted metal thing that looked like a piece of industrial equipment. There was a window on the front behind which were displayed dummy packs of Camels, Lucky Strikes, Chesterfields, Winstons, and Salems. These packs were actually wooden blocks with pack wrappers glued around them, and were yellowed and faded from being in the sun for twenty years. We eventually got rid of it when the price of cigarettes exceeded the capacity of the coin mechanism in the machine, which I imagine was the fate of a lot of similar machines. It was never a particular money maker for us, my uncle had the key and would open up the machine and help himself without paying when he needed a fresh pack.

There was a big white sticker over the coin slot with big black letters: BY LAW THIS MACHINE MAY NOT BE OPERATED BY MINORS.

By the 1990s, legislative or municipal bans on cigarette vending machines were common in many areas -- either the machines were banned outright or restricted to bars and other venues where minors were not admitted.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ only now that you mention it, I think I remember a similar warning about minors using them being on those machines in NJ. There's a college paper in there about the subconscious erosion that silly, unenforceable regulations have on children's respect for authority, government, police, etc. And, yes, those machines were low slung and industrial looking with the exact window you describe.

Based on this (your uncle's access) and many of your comments, methinks a firmer hand on the P&L would not have hurt your family's gas station business.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Actually, I think the best thing that could have happened to our operation was my uncle finding something else to do with his life. He was a lovable character, but he was a sucker and a mark for every con man and huckster that passed thru town, and was constantly taking on new lines of merchandise that had no business in a gas station. One day I walked into the office to see the walls lined with cheap stereo equipment -- apparently some guy in a truck showed up and sold him all this stuff promising BIG PROFITS if we carried the line. Didn't work out that way, and I always sort of suspected the stuff was hot anyway.

Itinerant con men and hucksters seem not to be as common in real life as they used to be, probably because they've all moved to the Internet.