What would you miss most?

[Edm1]

If you could one day wake up in the 20's-40's...and live there, what would you miss the most from today. I'd miss modern dentist. I dread the idea of drills and no pain relief....

 

[Shangas]

Anesthetics were fairly common by the 1920s and 30s, although I'm not sure to what extent dentists would've used them.

I would miss internet and TV. And possibly some of the food, but not likely.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Procaine, better known as Novocaine, was in wide use from the 1910s onward. Unless you had your teeth pulled by a blacksmith, that's what you'd get, right up until the 1970s.

I'd miss clumping cat litter, without question the most important invention of the 20th Century. I can't think of much else I'd sincerely miss.

 

[Edm1]

Procaine, better known as Novocaine, was in wide use from the 1910s onward. Unless you had your teeth pulled by a blacksmith, that's what you'd get, right up until the 1970s.

I'd miss clumping cat litter, without question the most important invention of the 20th Century. I can't think of much else I'd sincerely miss.

Ok. I'm ready then.

 

[Retro Spectator]

I would miss the iPod, or similar portable music devices. However, I would find it much easier to find music, since back then music was real music, unlike today, where 99% of music is garbage.

 

[Fading Fast]

Modern medicine: as a someone who gets migraines, it wasn't until the late 1990s that effective migraine medicine was invented and it changed my life. Also, I like knowing there are antibiotics out there for the really bad infections even though I haven't used an antibiotic in almost two decades.

The Internet: it is an amazing reference and communication tool.

People not smoking: I think I could adjust to almost everything, but I couldn't return to that world where smoke was everywhere (like in the 1960s and most of the 70s). Just today, I walked by a single smoker on the street and it reminded me of how disgusting all that smoking used to be (and not just on the streets, but in offices, stores, restaurants and airplanes and even peoples homes). Ugh.

Things I'd miss but would be worth the trade off: air-conditioning, digital TV (not so much the analog world of 1970s TV, but today there is an incredible amount of quality amidst the ocean of garbage) and diet soda (not for the calories, but for my teeth as I drink the stuff all the time).

I also think we would all be shocked by the accepted level of racism, chauvinism and general antipathy to non-WASP people and values. Sometimes, it shocks me just seeing it in movies even though I know that was the cultural norm of the day.

 

[LizzieMaine]

People not smoking: I think I could adjust to almost everything, but I couldn't return to that world where smoke was everywhere (like in the 1960s and most of the 70s). Just today, I walked by a single smoker on the street and it reminded me of how disgusting all that smoking used to be (and not just on the streets, but in offices, stores, restaurants and airplanes and even peoples homes). Ugh.

That was the peak of smoking in the US, the mid-sixties into the early seventies. In 1964, 42 percent of Americans smoked -- the highest percentage ever -- and it was downhill from thereon. Go back before WW2 and there was a good bit less smoking going on than the movies would have you believe. It was common, and public, but it was by no means as universal as many modern folk imagine it was.

Give me the days before WW1 when the ladies of the Anti-Tobacco League roamed at large, snatching the stinking fume of the stygian Pit from between the lips of smokers and dashing it furiously to the ground.

 

[1930artdeco]

Absolutely nothing! I would adjust. OK I admit the tolerance for different people I would miss that. The internet, as great as it is-everything I look up pretty much would be there. Drugs for hay fever, there is a second one. I am sure there may be one or two more things, but generally I would just adjust.

Mike

 

[Edm1]

I would also adjust. Hey, I own tube radios, don't watch tv, I like old guns....I like old cars...I guess the biggest adjustment would be finding a job suited for that time. I still fear the dentist of the past....but I guess I'm good with what they had....

 

[Stearmen]

I agree, antihistamines, life was intolerable right up until the 80s for us unlucky enough to suffer with hay fever! WWII was when a lot of men got hooked on cigarettes, they came free in the K rations. My Dad got hooked, cut his life short!

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

I'd miss the internet, but would adjust to just using the good old US mail service to shop for hard to find items, and my candle stick phone for communication.
I'd miss modern cars with their many amenities, reliability, and safety features. I hate the thought of having to repair my car every week or so in spite of the cool styling they had back then. It's a troubling trade off, but I would adapt there too. Life was far less complicated back then, so I really wouldn't miss very much of the modern era in which we live. Certainly not the so-called "fashion" of today, or our uncouth popular "culture". Losing all that would be worth a little inconvenience.

 

[Big J]

Antibiotics.

Although I'm guessing that you're really looking for answers like 'Jaguar V-12 engine', or 'cell phone'.

 

[Dixie_Amazon]

Living in the deep south I would especially miss antihistamines and A/C (in homes and cars).

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'd miss the internet, but would adjust to just using the good old US mail service to shop for hard to find items...

Catalog stores would make a comeback. You could always get pretty much anything you needed, it just might take a few weeks, depending on where you were.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You could get anything from a cream separator to a reversible raincoat to a rebuilt Model T engine to spermicidal jelly from the Sears catalog.

 

[HudsonHawk]

You could get anything from...a rebuilt Model T engine to spermicidal jelly from the Sears catalog.

That pretty much covers the spectrum of anything *I'd* ever need.

 

[Atticus Finch]

I'd miss a bunch of things, no question about it. Air conditioning, access to higher education, television sports broadcasts, reliable outboard engines, modern air travel, modern navigational aids, internet shopping, automobiles that run for more than 75,000 miles....I’d miss these and many other things greatly.

But I'm getting to the age now where modern medical care is very important to me. I'm guessing that's what I'd miss most.

AF

 

[tonyb]

I'd miss a bunch of things, no question about it. Air conditioning, access to higher education, television sports broadcasts, reliable outboard engines, modern air travel, modern navigational aids, internet shopping, automobiles that run for more than 75,000 miles....I’d miss these and many other things greatly.

But I'm getting to the age now where modern medical care is very important to me. I'm guessing that's what I'd miss most.

AF

Pretty much my angle on it, too. Modern communications technology has spawned entire new industries, but it pretty well decimated the one in which I had happily (more or less) made my daily bread. C'est la vie, as we say in the trailer park.

If not for recent developments in the healing arts, I'd likely not be here today. Same is true for numerous others of my acquaintance.

I have every confidence that 50 and more years from now people not yet born will take misty-eyed looks at our present era. What have we now that they won't? Will they long for that simpler time when smartphone batteries lasted only a few hours of usage and people had to refuel their personal vehicles every few hundred miles? Will they look back in wonder at a time when people had to actually drive the darned things?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Backwards Ballcap Lounge"

The one thing that makes my life bearable is the realization that I won't be alive fifty years from now.

 

[Atticus Finch]

...Will they look back in wonder at a time when people had to actually drive the darned things?

A friend of mine has a pick-up truck with hand crank windows. One day, her ten year old nephew rode somewhere with her and was puzzled as to what the strange handles in the doors were for. Donna showed him, whereupon the kid spent the balance of the trip repeatedly raising and lowering his window. Donna said he acted exactly the same way she did the first time she rode in a car with electric windows.

I'm sure that kid will one day post on some 2028 version of a vintage oriented forum about riding in his elderly aunt's old truck with mechanical windows.

AF