Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[LizzieMaine]

Pulmonary and heart disease and strokes, combined, cause more smoking-related deaths than lung cancer. None of my relatives ever had any form of cancer -- my grandfather, a smoker from the age of thirteen, died of severe emphysema, which is a grisly, debilitating, completely undignified way to die, and both my grandmother and uncle died from smoking-related heart disease. My grandmother had smoked two packs a day of Pall Malls when she was young and stupid, and had her first heart attack at 35. My uncle, a steady pipe and cigarette smoker from the age of fifteen, dropped dead when he was forty-six years old.

Cancer gets most of the publicity. But tobacco has dozens of ways it can kill you, and the odds are pretty good that if one of them doesn't get you one of the others will. It's Russian Roulette, only there's just one empty spot in the cylinder.

And it's not that the industry didn't know what it was doing to people all along. As far back as the twenties, there was research on the deleterious health effects of tobacco, and the industry was very active all along in subverting, undermining, or trying to buy off this research. The journalist George Seldes, in his "In Fact" newsletter, published a detailed, fully-documented expose in 1940 of how mainstream journalism was deliberately suppressing the results of these studies due to heavy advertising buys by the tobacco industry. The Boys, even then, were soaked in blood, and they didn't care as long as the money continued to flow.

 

[Fading Fast]

My grandmother had emphysema and, yes, brutal, horrible, and very painful for a young boy to see in an adult (forty five years later and I still get chills thinking about her gasping for air). "Fortunately" she developed a metastasizing cancer toward the end that took her out before the emphysema could finish her off. All really bad stuff.

 

[PeterB]

Very depressing posts, above. Vintage things that have disappeared in my lifetime? Filing cabinets made of wood, wood office chairs, and black rotary phones. ALso the concertina arm with the phone on it that you could push back to the wall and pull out.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Library card catalogues, and anything made with Bakelite.

 

[2jakes]

Local book & grocery stores.
Barber shops.
Public weighing machines.
Traffic cops at busy intersections.
When traffic Walk-Don’t Walk signal was longer than 3 seconds.
Downtown shopping stores.
Dress code for attending public schools
Doctor making a house call.

Having to swallow a spoonful of Castor Oil . Thank Goodness !

 

[Bruce Wayne]

They still have weigh yourself machines at Truck stops in my area.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's one of those in front of a store downtown here. The penny mechanism is disabled, so it weighs you for free, but the weight is twenty pounds fast. I didn't come here to be insulted by a scale.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Oh, and as long as I'm alive, black rotary phones won't be extinct. Mine are metal, not plastic, like all proper phones should be.

 

[Fading Fast]

Library card catalogues, and anything made with Bakelite.

I'm with you on the bakelite. Absolutely love it. Our bakelite radio and intercom phone with bakelite mouth and ear piece.

 

[2jakes]

I compromised.

 

[DNO]

Ditto on the rotary phone. Can't beat a nice metal 302. Or an early 50s 500 with a bakelite handset. Still using both.

We still have local book stores and groceries as well as barber shops. We have tons of stores in our downtown area and some local public high schools have introduced uniforms. Catholic high schools have always had them. And my doctor even makes house calls when necessary!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd be satisfied to have a doctor I didn't have to drive sixty miles to see.

 

[2jakes]

Cooling fans.

It’s cold in the hospital or clinic waiting rooms.


Perhaps it’s to numb you for the needles or medical bill.

 

[Zombie_61]

Cooling fans.

Nowadays it’s :smow: in the hospital or clinic waiting rooms.


Perhaps it’s to numb you for the needles or medical bill. :eeek:

Or to keep your mind off of how long you've been waiting past your scheduled appointment time. lol

 

[Stanley Doble]

I'd be satisfied to have a doctor I didn't have to drive sixty miles to see.

After being without a doctor for 14 years I got one to take me as a patient (by luck). If I want an appointment I have to book at least 3 weeks in advance.

If I am sick, I will be better or dead in 3 weeks. If I am not sick I don't want a doctor. So, he may be slightly better than nothing.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Pickled crab apples. They used to come in jars, red or green depending on the food coloring used. They were delicious and I haven't seen them in ages.

 

[GHT]

Analogue cell phones, mine was of the generation that followed the 'Brick.' It's about the size of a large bar of chocolate. Originally analogue, some smartass geek kid, the grandson of one of my friends, fitted a clever piece of electronic wizardry in it, and now it works again. Note the size of the sim card, and, Cellnet is no more.

 

[Stearmen]

Analogue cell phones, mine was of the generation that followed the 'Brick.' It's about the size of a large bar of chocolate. Originally analogue, some smartass geek kid, the grandson of one of my friends, fitted a clever piece of electronic wizardry in it, and now it works again. Note the size of the sim card, and, Cellnet is no more.

Now that is too funny! My neighbor has a brick he was issued while still in the Air Force, when he retired, he took it in and the supply Sergeant who looked at it and said, "what am I suppose to do with this?" He told my friend to just keep it! Would be fun to retrofit it, and go into coffee shops and make a phone call. Especially funny, the look on the face of the inevitable person who ask to talk to the person on the other end, only to find out, you're not faking the call!

 

[oak1971]

Drive in movie theaters ,last one just closed up.

Customer service.

Carburators.

Affordable well made stereo gear. Home theater doesn't count.

 

[Zombie_61]

Drive in movie theaters ,last one just closed up...

The last drive-in theater around here closed well over a decade ago. All but one have been torn down, and that remaining one has been re-purposed as a weekend swap meet and outdoor concert venue for tribute bands.