Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[K.D. Lightner]

I don't know if Des Moines, Iowa ever had a noon "whistle" but it does have a noon siren that goes off -- the same siren they use when there is a tornado warning.

The first time I heard it, after returning to Iowa after 38 years, I did not know what it meant and looked up at a clear blue sky, trying to discern why the tornado warning siren was going off.

karol

 

[Barrelhouse]

... 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.

They were called smudgepots. My gosh, I hadn't thought of them in decades!!! They did look exactly like the Spy vs Spy bombs in Mad Magazine. lol lol

So many things seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs but the one that always pops into my head are rotary phones with real bells. I think of them every time an obnoxious modern office phone screeches at me.

Thanks for starting this thread Lizziemaine and thanks to everyone that posted for this fun trip down memory lane.

 

[Sleepy LaGoon]

Smudge pot

The old highway "smudge pots" can still be purchased as "patio torches" in colors other than the basic black:

http://www.sportys.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?DID=10&Product_ID=2093

I may have to get some to put around the patio and pretend I'm in a mid-century highway construction project.

By the way, those things terrified me as a child.

 

[Brooksie]

A few more things I've thought of --

Non-dial telephones. My mother was a "number please" operator in Belfast, Maine until 1965, when they finally went dial. There were towns right around here that hung on until the seventies before giving up on manual exchanges -- and the last manual exchange in the entire United States was in Bryant Pond, Maine -- and didn't shut down until 1983! (The Bryant Pond switchboard is now on display at the Maine State Museum)

Downtown dime-stores. Woolworth's, Kresge's, Newberry's, McCrory's, McLellan's -- all gone now. Our local Newberry's was one of the last of that chain, lasting into the early '90s before finally giving up.

Tire chains. Does anybody use these anymore? The worst seat on the school bus was always the one with the chains piled up underneath.
Pilot crackers. Big, thick rectangular crackers you crumble up into chowder. They were discontinued in the '90s and there was such an outcry that Nabsico was forced to bring them back, but now they're gone again and this time it looks like they're gone for good.

I am working my way through this entire thread and this is how far I have gotten - yes we still have chains on our school busses in Portland Oregon because we do not salt our roads out here - I kept on hearing busses and the clang of the chains all winter long last winter

Brooksie

 

[St.Ignatz]

Speaking of coins, I was cashing out the tills at work, and was amazed to see a half dollar -- the first one that's come thru here in at least a year. That got me to thinking about how it wasn't so long ago that they were regular everyday coins: when I was little, I often got my allowance flipped to me as a fifty-cent piece, and never thought anything of it. Now you can go a year or more without seeing one turn up.

My neighborhood was built in November 1951. It was of course built on an old farm. The original farm house is located on a lot that borders a small corner of my home (yep, came back to live here). There was until the late 60s a two hole outhouse. Sneaking toilet paper out of the house to use the outhouse was an odd thrill for the gang.
Daves hardware was opened in 1952 to handle the needs of the new families, tools, toasters, pot's & pan's, replacement panes etc.. At Daves you always got half dollars with your change. Lots of former and active Philadelphia Phillies lived near by and you would run into them from time to time. Dave's finally succumbed to Home Dumpster and the like about a year and a half ago. Son of Dave held out as long as he could. He always carried a silver dollar and an Eisenhower in his pocket. The Morgan was worn almost featureless and the Ike on its way. At the closing party I gave him a new silver Eagle to carry at his new job in one of the few remaining real hardware's in the area. Seed's, saw's and maul handles I still need and think of Dave's every time I head off to buy. Gee, all that rambling without the influence of grape or grain.

 

[Inusuit]

Probably dating myself, but here goes:

Windup record players
Outhouse (we got indoor plumbing when I was a freshman in high school)
Kerosene lamps (we got electricity when I was in first grade)
Black and white TV
Hudson motor cars
Winchester rifles made in the USA
Telephones without dials (a nice lady asked for the number you wanted to call when you picked up the receiver)
Speaking of telephones, party lines.
silver coins
knives made of carbon steel, not stainless
Coffee that cost a dime
Coke in 6 oz bottles


Some of these I miss, some not so much.

 

[Brian Sheridan]

Common Sense.
Manners.
Dignity.

 

[Foofoogal]

ooweee.....I was going to put common sense in this thread several times and chickened out. thanks.


we still have a weekly tornado warning siren. does that count?

 

[skyvue]

Don't kid yourselves, common sense was always in short supply.

I really miss those pneumatic tubes once used in stores. Also, phone exchanges (mine is YUkon, and I would still use it when giving my number out, but here in NYC, we have to use area codes even for local calls -- 212-YUkon-6XXX just doesn't have the same ring to it).

I've learned firsthand that many young people have no idea about phone exchanges -- they don't even know they ever existed. This depresses me mostly because it would seem to indicate that they are never watching movies made before 1970, and as an avid movie buff, I find that disheartening.

Drive-in theatres haven't disappeared entirely -- there are just under 500 of them still operating, and new ones (or refurbished ones) still open all the time (others close just as often, alas, but I think we may have reached a sort of leveling off).

I operate a mailing list for drive-in buffs, in case anyone's interested -- it's been around for 15 years, is free to join, and is not annoyingly high in traffic, despite the fact that we have over 600 members.

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/drive-ins/

Sonic Drive-ins originated in Oklahoma, and my first job (besides the various summer I worked for my father) was flipping burgers at newly opened Sonic in south Oklahoma City.

No trip home is ever complete without at least one visit to Sonic, and my wife of 18 months, a Jersey girl who first tasted Sonic's delights a couple of years ago, is completely hooked.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A few more --

Orange juice in heavy glass bottles with a picture of "Tropic-Ana" on the side.

Neighborhood kids selling "GRIT".

Drugstore tube testers.

Picking up mussels off the shore and taking them home to cook for supper.

Lunch rooms offering "blue plate specials."

General-interest weekly magazines.

Teletype machines with actual typewriter mechanisms inside.

School desks that were bolted to the floor.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

The old highway "smudge pots" can still be purchased as "patio torches" in colors other than the basic black:

http://www.sportys.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?DID=10&Product_ID=2093

I may have to get some to put around the patio and pretend I'm in a mid-century highway construction project.

By the way, those things terrified me as a child.

I always thought they looked like anarchist bombslol .

 

[MisterCairo]

Good one.

Here's another, the local armory....

Here in Canada we still have armouries in most cities of 30,000 plus. Our reserve army (called the Militia, which gets some strange looks when said in front of our American allies!) can be found in armouries, some dating back to the 1850s, up to converted modern industrial buildings.

As for the loss of things now considered "vintage", use of the word "camera" which is now "digital camera", film generally (I still use it exclusively), and home photo developing;

Children's birthday parties being held at home instead of at a theatre/McDonald's/etc.;

Children "calling on each other", rather than having parent-arranged "playdates".

 

[univibe88]

I make my 8 year old daughter call her friends herself. Which ultimately ends up with the other kid handing the phone to her parent and my daughter handing the phone to me. I don't know why they can't work it out.

Which brings up a lost concept "come home when the street lights come on."

As young as 5 years old I would play out front of my house until the street lights came on. As young as 7 I'd be somewhere off in my neighborhood, exactly where unbeknownst to my parents, "until the street lights came on."

Not these days. Heaven forbid your kids are out of your sight until they are done with college.

 

[St.Ignatz]

The Brill Bullet. 1931 streamlined beauty. I would ride to Norristown on summer nights with windows wide open and the honeysuckle sweetness and cool evening air pouring in. Clickety clack of the stick rail, the sound of the compressor and peanut whistle blowing for the flag stops. Man I miss those cars.

 

[Lady Day]

Quiet, and being okay with quiet. I know so many people who have to have some sort of music, tv, noise in the background for no reason. :eusa_doh:

Enjoy the silence

LD

 

[Shangas]

1.) Students taking notes on paper in notebooks, rather than bringing the laptop to school, updating one's Facebook page, checking imdb and occasionally typing a few notes.

I'm a student. I take all my notes on paper in notebooks.

To top it off, I even do it with a fountain pen.

I've seen some shops which still sell soda (soft-drinks) in resealable glass bottles. There's a shop on my university campus that still sells drinks like that.

Common Sense.

That one has certainly gone extinct in my lifetime...which is scary considering how young I am.

Dunno if this counts, it may, it may not...but...

The typewriter.

I was born long enough ago to remember a time when the typewriter was still a common piece of equipment. My parents kept one at home and I remember using it for school assignments and writing up stories in my spare time. Mind, I was born during the dying days of the typewriter with the invention of the PC and the internet, but I do remember using that typewriter every day when I was a kid, a laptop for personal use was too expensive, and buying TWO computers was quite out of the question. I used that typewriter so often I had to change the ribbons on it...twice! Before it finally broke down one day and we moved from the dinosaur age into the computer-age.

 

[Ethan Bentley]

Recently there has been a resurgence of vinyl. I saw a display at my local Fred Meyer last week. The rumor is that someone ordered them by mistake and they've been flying off the shelf. I love the digital age but there is just something about analog sound.

Yes I quite agree with that. I get a few through the post and the postman was saying that he's been delivering a lot more vinyl recently, the packages are quite distinctive.

Up on hearing this someone suggested that cassette tapes will make a comeback too, I'm not so sure.

 

[John in Covina]

Firefly and Lightning Bug

When I was a kid in the 60's and into the 70's on Long Island, every summer you could see the lightning bugs or fireflies. They had that cool chemical glow light built into their butt ends and flew around blinking some sort of sex code to the opposite sex. Probably from shortly after the last ice age this light yellowish green or greenish yellow color blinking all over the place in what was then the suburbs and rural sections of Long Island.

Little kids loved them and we would collect some in a Hellmans (Best Foods in the West) mayonaise jar with holes in the lid for a while and let them out the next day.

I think when the local govt went all agressive against the mosquitos that the lightning bugs were colateral damage for our area back then.

Another enchanting piece of childhood that seems to be gone.

 

[skyvue]

We still have fireflies here in NYC. You can see them in Central Park at night.

They're one of my favorite summer delights.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

John -- I, too, remember lightning bugs in my younger years. Sometimes, near a river or swamp area, there would be so many of them, it would look like twinkling stars had come down to earth.

I used to catch them, then let them crawl out of my palm, up my finger and watch them take off. Some kids used to kill them, tear off the glow light and put it on their fingers to display as a "ring." I never liked that practice.

I saw them less and less during the late 60's; when I visited Iowa in the 70's and 80's, I never saw them. Mother and I guessed the chemical sprays used before their ban pretty much took them out.

However, they seem to be making a mild comeback. I've seen them every summer since my return to Iowa and, sometimes they glow all over our yard and neighborhood.

There was a flood last year, they sprayed for mosquitoes and I did not see as many fireflies. Hope they come back in profusion this year!

karol