Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[LizzieMaine]

We still have hitchikers here -- usually they're drifter-looking characters who appear to be in a hurry to get out of town.

My mother tells stories of, in the mid-1940s, hitchiking to the movies. As an elementary-school child. I was a pretty independent kid myself, but I never went that far.

 

[Zombie_61]

What paper maps don't have is an annoying voice that sighs heavily when you ignore an instruction and then, in a most patronising voice says: "When it's safe to do so, make a 'U' turn!"

Are you sure that wasn't your lovely wife?

 

[belfastboy]

What paper maps don't have is an annoying voice that sighs heavily when you ignore an instruction and then, in a most patronising voice says: "When it's safe to do so, make a 'U' turn!"

We have named our GPS 'voice'...Dorothy. A most common refrain from my wife and I...."Dorothy, shut up!".

 

[GHT]

We have named our GPS 'voice'...Dorothy. A most common refrain from my wife and I...."Dorothy, shut up!".

Dorothy eh? Tina named our old MG Jessica. Puzzled, I asked, "why Jessica?" "Because," Tina said, with an impish grin, "like her cartoon namesake, she's a redhead, she has a great body and she's got a cracking pair of hooters." So Jessica it is. Even the mechanic at the garage refers to the car as Jessica.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Dorothy eh? Tina named our old MG Jessica. Puzzled, I asked, "why Jessica?" "Because," Tina said, with an impish grin, "like her cartoon namesake, she's a redhead, she has a great body and she's got a cracking pair of hooters." So Jessica it is. Even the mechanic at the garage refers to the car as Jessica.

You sir are a lucky man.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I haven't read all 357 posts, so excuse me if this is a repeat. I remember as a child going into downtown Pittsburgh with my mother, going into an office building or a department store and taking the elevator. In those days someone (usually a women, if I recall) sat on a little fold-down stool and said, "Floor, please".
Elevator operators have disappeared. It must have been a miserable job.

 

[Turnip]

So must have been gas station attendant. Those guys who filled up gas in your car and cleaned your windshield or checked your tyre pressure meanwhile.

Think self service pumps and internal tyre pressure systems made them redundant as well as the chemical industry, that let not many bugs left to be scrubbed from your windshield after an entire summer.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandfather pumped gas for forty years. He'd come home at night, slump into his chair, unbutton the top button of his pants, and growl "I've been smiling at g-d tourists for twelve hours straight. LEAVE ME ALONE!"

 

[tonyb]

I haven't read all 357 posts, so excuse me if this is a repeat. I remember as a child going into downtown Pittsburgh with my mother, going into an office building or a department store and taking the elevator. In those days someone (usually a women, if I recall) sat on a little fold-down stool and said, "Floor, please".
Elevator operators have disappeared. It must have been a miserable job.

The Smith Tower in Seattle, built 1914, had elevator operators until 2017.

 

[tonyb]

So must have been gas station attendant. Those guys who filled up gas in your car and cleaned your windshield or checked your tyre pressure meanwhile.

Think self service pumps and internal tyre pressure systems made them redundant as well as the chemical industry, that let not many bugs left to be scrubbed from your windshield after an entire summer.

In my teens I worked for a fellow who owned a full-service Texaco station and an entirely self-service Gull (not Gulf) station, which was a novelty at the time. I much preferred working at the Texaco, pumping gas and checking oil and washing windshields. It beat the hell out of hours on end sitting in the effing booth at the Gull, taking money for gas and selling cigarettes and snack foods.

 

[Turnip]

That might possibly have appeared a little different when you seriously would have had to earn a living with it.

 

[tonyb]

That might possibly have appeared a little different when you seriously would have had to earn a living with it.

Whether I had to “earn a living with it” or not wouldn’t have changed my preferring to be moving around —pumping gas, cleaning windshields, etc. — over being penned up in that booth.

I’ve been paying into Social Security since age 13. In my last couple years of high school I worked the graveyard shift at SeaTac, loading and offloading cargo planes. I dummied up a birth certificate to make myself two years older than I was and thereby eligible for that employment. (It was much easier to get away with that sort of thing back then.)

My parents housed me and mostly fed me. But they didn’t put clothes on my back or provide me with transportation or any of the other “extras.” And I was out of the house upon my high school graduation. This was common among working class people of that time and place.

I wouldn’t suggest that young people these days have it easier. Cars and gas and housing were far less expensive when I was that age. And I could find a job that paid well enough to keep me going without having to jump through many hoops. That’s rarely true these days.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

The Smith Tower in Seattle, built 1914, had elevator operators until 2017.

So I asked the elevator operator, "How do you like this job?" She said, "Oh, it has its ups and downs." (insert rim shot here)

 

[Trenchfriend]

Indian Burn still there, around the kids?

 

[Turnip]

As we got third of October, the cozy East/West division of the world with it‘s clear and easily comprehensible bogey man images in general and that small, slow and comfortable Bundesrepublik Deutschland in particular.
Having lived my youth close to the fence and having met, partied with, drunk with and fought aside many of those guys right from the other side of the fence, once it’s been open, I could imagine not to few of them might think similarly on this very day today.

 

[Fifty150]

Elevator operators have disappeared.

Technology was updated. That was the beginning of the end. Old elevers had a control lever to move the car up & down. There was an actual skill to stopping the elevator car so that it was flush to the floor you were landing on. And someone actually had to open and close the door. Some dummy might leave an elevator door open, then drive the car to another floor.

gas station attendant. Those guys who filled up gas in your car and cleaned your windshield or checked your tyre pressure meanwhile.

Up until a few years ago, my local gas station still employed pump attendants. The owner, who is a friend of mine, said that they actually made him money. They checked the oil and showed the customer a dipstick which was low - then sold the customer a quart of oil. Every dipstick is low when you first turn the car off because the oil hasn't settled back to the bottom of the oil pan yet. They showed the customer black oil on the dipstick, and sold oil changes. Every car's engine oil is dirty after the first couple of hundred miles. They showed the customer a dirty air filter, and sold new filters - every air filter is dirty unless it's new. They told the customer that their tires were worn down to whatever depth, and sold new tires. They would tell the customer that the brake fluid or coolant looks like it needs to be flushed. And during the rainy season, they sold and installed plenty of wiper blades. He gave those kids a commission on the sales. And those kids actually made decent money.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Broadsheet newspapers. Now some newspapers still think of themselves as "broadsheet", but if I don't have to hold my arms wide apart to open to an inner page, it's not "broadsheet" in my book.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our local weekly -- formerly our local triweekly -- recently reverted to the old-style broadsheet size after several years as a hyperthyroidic tabloid. It's like the last little flare of life in a dying star before it fades away forever.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@LizzieMaine @BobHufford @GHT @Doctor Damage @MisterCairo

Is "ROOT BEER FLOAT" still a thing in the US? Or was it more a thing of your grandparent's era?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can go up the road right now and get one, if I wasn't working and I wish I could. My favorite ice-cream stand drink, but it has to be made with hard ice cream, not soft serve.