Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[Fading Fast]

What a lot of people don't realize is that even the "fresh" juice in a carton or bottle is partially reconstituted: "flavor packs" made from "orange by-products" are added to make the product taste and look more orangey than actual real squeezed juice. Because these "by products" are part of the actual orange -- mostly peelings and processed pulp -- they don't count as artificial ingredients, so the product can still be marketed as "all natural," even though it's every bit as highly processed as frozen concentrate.

Chalk up another one for The Boys, and bear in mind that there's only one way to get real, fresh orange juice -- squeeze it yourself.

I've often wondered how they get it so consistent because the times I've squeezed oranges to make juice, the results have varied a lot.

 

[sheeplady]

I didn't know about greening of the orange crops until 6 months ago when I researched why it was suddenly so difficult to find Orange juice from the US. (There's only one brand I've found so far locally that is 100% US sourced OJ.)

Finding 100% USA sourced apple juice is similarly difficult.

 

[tonyb]

Sometimes I toss a coupla tablespoons of frozen juice concentrate in the blender along with a banana and/or cut-up pears and/or apples and plain yogurt and whatever else I got lying around that doesn't clash and oughta get used up before it becomes garbage.

It's easy on the old plumbing.

 

[scottyrocks]

What a lot of people don't realize is that even the "fresh" juice in a carton or bottle is partially reconstituted: "flavor packs" made from "orange by-products" are added to make the product taste and look more orangey than actual real squeezed juice. Because these "by products" are part of the actual orange -- mostly peelings and processed pulp -- they don't count as artificial ingredients, so the product can still be marketed as "all natural," even though it's every bit as highly processed as frozen concentrate.

Chalk up another one for The Boys, and bear in mind that there's only one way to get real, fresh orange juice -- squeeze it yourself.

I will never forget the first time I had a glass of Tropicana OJ after about two decades of the frozen concentrate my Mom mixed with water. The Tropicana was one of those clouding parting, angels singing revelations. Since that first time I have never had the frozen concentrate.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I didn't know about greening of the orange crops until 6 months ago when I researched why it was suddenly so difficult to find Orange juice from the US. (There's only one brand I've found so far locally that is 100% US sourced OJ.)

Finding 100% USA sourced apple juice is similarly difficult.

Oranges, like every other type of produce, are seasonal. However, the demand for orange juice isn’t, meaning if you want fresh juice out of season in the US, you have to use oranges from other parts of the world. Most major brands use US oranges when they’re in season, but supplement with foreign grown during the non-orange season. So depending on the time of year, your carton may be 100% US oranges, or it may not be. Brazil is the largest producer of “off-season” oranges for the US market.

I think Florida’s Natural is the only major US brand that used 100% US oranges all the time in their “fresh” juice, and even they use foreign oranges in their concentrate. They also claim that they use only 100% juice, no flavor packs or enhancements that Lizzie describes. Don’t know how true that is though.

As for myself, fresh OJ was one of the great things about growing up in Florida. Most folks around us had orange trees, and my aunt had an entire grove from which she sold commercially. Not all were the famed Valencia variety, however, so taste varied depending on what type of oranges you had available. We’d also just suck the juice right out of the fruit, bypassing the squeezing and the glass. Rather messy, even if effective, though.

 

[sheeplady]

I hope the growers find a reliable solution for greening soon. (Everything I've read says it will be a decade or more.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Does anyone still pull their own teeth with a piece of string and a doorknob? I extracted my last baby tooth this way when I was nine years old, and I was telling one of the kids about it the other day and she looked at me like it was the most horrifying thing she'd ever heard.

It's not like I tried to take out my own appendix or anything. Although I would have if I'd known what it was going to cost.

 

[3fingers]

Does anyone still pull their own teeth with a piece of string and a doorknob? I extracted my last baby tooth this way when I was nine years old, and I was telling one of the kids about it the other day and she looked at me like it was the most horrifying thing she'd ever heard.

It's not like I tried to take out my own appendix or anything. Although I would have if I'd known what it was going to cost.

I pulled a couple of my own. One with the string and doorknob, one with a pair of ignition pliers. I talked my sister into the doorknob remedy, but she chickened out and ran after the door so no joy for her on removing the annoying floppy Chiclet.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Police cars with a single rotating red light on top and the "growler" siren. We called the light the "cherry" or "gumball." I first encountered the red-and-blue lightbar and the banshee-whoop siren in Chicago in the early '60's.

 

[Stanley Doble]

My favorite brand of frozen orange juice was Old South, you can't get it around here anymore. I tried all the brands and it was the best. I have had guests mistake it for fresh squeezed. Does anyone else remember Old South orange juice from 25 years ago?

 

[scottyrocks]

My favorite brand of frozen orange juice was Old South, you can't get it around here anymore. I tried all the brands and it was the best. I have had guests mistake it for fresh squeezed. Does anyone else remember Old South orange juice from 25 years ago?

That's what my Mom used. I loved orange juice and drank this stuff (didn't have any choice), but once I tried Tropicana when I was a little older, I never touched frozen OS again.

 

[JennDarling]

Police cars with a single rotating red light on top and the "growler" siren. We called the light the "cherry" or "gumball." I first encountered the red-and-blue lightbar and the banshee-whoop siren in Chicago in the early '60's.

Michigan State Police still use the single light on top of their cars. They look like pencil erasers.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Police cars with a single rotating red light on top and the "growler" siren. We called the light the "cherry" or "gumball." I first encountered the red-and-blue lightbar and the banshee-whoop siren in Chicago in the early '60's.

And now many police cars have the lights mounted inside behind the windshield and rear window perhaps because many speeders had learned to keep an eye out for the distinct silhouette of a police car with the "Mickey Mouse ears" on the roof.

 

[Harp]

Police cars with a single rotating red light on top and the "growler" siren. We called the light the "cherry" or "gumball." I first encountered the red-and-blue lightbar and the banshee-whoop siren in Chicago in the early '60's.

Chicago Police plainclothes detail still uses cherry gumball hand placement devices to some extent but these are being phased out.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Used Book Stores
I suppose they could be called vintage because they disappeared. About twenty years ago there were at least a dozen or so used book stores in my immediate area, including two very large ones; Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA (opened in 1935) and Book Baron in Anaheim, CA. Now there's only one left! I believe there were two or three in L.A., including Book City in Hollywood that are now history as well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We still have our share of used book stores here, but it's frustrating when you go in and all you see are forgotten "best sellers" from the '90s. If I didn't want to read them in 1994, I sure don't want to read them now.

 

[Fading Fast]

Used Book Stores
I suppose they could be called vintage because they disappeared. About twenty years ago there were at least a dozen or so used book stores in my immediate area, including two very large ones; Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA (opened in 1935) and Book Baron in Anaheim, CA. Now there's only one left! I believe there were two or three in L.A., including Book City in Hollywood that are now history as well.

NYC still has a decent number; although, to your point, less than in years past. That said, the used book business - especially older or more obscure books (not necessarily rare or valuable) versus what Lizzie's notes in her post (best sellers from the past few decades) - seems to have move to and be flourishing online.

I buy a stupid number of used books a year and now just go online but almost always end up buying from a used book dealer somewhere in the US, Canada or the UK. And if I have questions, they are engaged and very helpful and with a very, very tiny percentage of exceptions, the dealers are honest and nice.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bookfinder.com is justification for the existance of the internet. Some of the stuff I use in my research will never be digitized, and can only be found from obscure used-book sellers.

For magazines I still do a lot of my shopping at the Big Chicken Barn, up the road in Ellsworth. They keep a pretty thorough stock of most of the major mass-circulation magazines of the Era, and when I need the Luce view on this or that subject, or a Saturday Evening Post article to disagree fiercely with, I can usually find what I need there. I've been a regular customer there for over thirty-five years -- even before the current owners took over -- and they show no sign of folding anytime soon. Plus it's a nice drive.

 

[tonyb]

Used Book Stores
I suppose they could be called vintage because they disappeared. About twenty years ago there were at least a dozen or so used book stores in my immediate area, including two very large ones; Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA (opened in 1935) and Book Baron in Anaheim, CA. Now there's only one left! I believe there were two or three in L.A., including Book City in Hollywood that are now history as well.

A good friend opened a new and used bookstore in the early 1990s and closed it about a decade later. It was profitable almost from the moment it opened (he and his girlfriend/business partner had been gathering inventory for years prior), but the employees actually made more money off the operation than the owners did, and they held out little realistic hope for that changing. So they went entirely online and have done well ever since.

But I miss the used bookstore experience. You go in looking for one thing and come out with a very different thing. Or two. Or three.

 

[tonyb]

Bookfinder.com is justification for the existance of the internet. Some of the stuff I use in my research will never be digitized, and can only be found from obscure used-book sellers.

For magazines I still do a lot of my shopping at the Big Chicken Barn, up the road in Ellsworth. They keep a pretty thorough stock of most of the major mass-circulation magazines of the Era, and when I need the Luce view on this or that subject, or a Saturday Evening Post article to disagree fiercely with, I can usually find what I need there. I've been a regular customer there for over thirty-five years -- even before the current owners took over -- and they show no sign of folding anytime soon. Plus it's a nice drive.

What do you typically pay for a 1940s issue of, say, Colliers or Saturday Evening Post?