I'm So Old That I Remember...

[dr morbius]

...when gas stations had full service. You just pulled up to the pump, rolled down your window (car windows were lowered or raised with a crank, not a button), and told the man to "fill 'er up". And he'd wash your windows, too!

...and gas contained lead, an additive to increase octane. After some time they eliminated the lead (hence the term unleaded gas) and new cars came with a "catalytic converter", which changed the exhaust to water vapor and "harmless" carbon dioxide.

...and gas was $0.36 a gallon!

 

[msmofet]

They also checked your oil and sometimes tranny fluid! The Texaco men!! LOL

 

[dr morbius]

I remember when TV had six channels: the three networks, two local stations and the local PBS affiliate. That was it. And if you missed a show, you had one hope, which was to catch it during rerun season. Recording TV shows? Hah! What a fantastical idea!

And Saturday mornings had cartoons on three of those channels from 7:00am until noon!

 

[Andy M.]

I can remember when we got our first TV. It was black and white and the screen was about 9". The rabbit ear antenna was a challenge to bring in a decent picture.

I too remember full service stations and gas in the teens. The first family car I can remember was a 1938 Nash sedan (we got it used for sure). Then came a 1950 Ford, a '53 Chevy and a '68 Chevy (this was the first car I got to drive).

When I was very young, I remember having an ice box and the ice guy came regularly with a block of ice.

We had milk delivered to our back door on a schedule.

Mom had a wringer washing machine with the rollers sticking up above the tub to get some of the water from the rinse cycle out so the clothes would dry faster. She used to hang clothes to dry on a line in the back yard. I had to climb a pole to restring the line when the rope broke.

 

[dr morbius]

I remember being the TV remote. My father would tell me, "Put on channel seven," and I'd get up and change the channel!

 

[Katie H]

Again, referring to cars...who remembers the headlight dimmer switch as a button on the floor?

When I was raising my children in the Washington, DC area, gasoline was 24 cents per gallon. Shortly after that we were put on "scheduled" fill-ups. What that meant was that if a license plate ended in an even number, one could get gas on an even number day of the calendar. Odd numbers, same drill.

As a result, lines were long and I often got my children up early, packed their breakfast and...waited our turn.

Interesting time to say the least.

 

[taxlady]

I remember having a wooden spoon on top of the TV. When the picture got wiggly, someone (usually me) would walk to the TV and wack it underneath, but just hard enough, not hard enough to break the filaments in the tubes.

 

[taxlady]

Anyone remember seeing Sputnik orbiting across the night sky?

 

[dr morbius]

I remember looking up at the night sky wondering which bright lights were stars, which were planets, and which were satellites.

Nowadays there's so much light pollution it's pretty hard to make out anything.

 

[blissful]

I used an old fashioned solar clothes dryer, pinning them to a line under the sun. (last week)
I remember when Kennedy was shot and there were no cartoons that day.

 

[Xocolatl]

Rotary phones, I spent ages on them as a teen.

And typewriters, my parents still had one. We only got a computer when I was 14.

 

[dr morbius]

Atari. We thought it was so cool. Remember joysticks?

 

[Aunt Bea]

I remember when the milk bottles used to freeze on the porch.

or getting lectured about not shaking the milk bottle before my mother carefully removed most of the cream that accumulated in the neck of the bottle.

I remember the smell of clothes being ironed and the soda bottle with the sprinkler head that was used to dampen them.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I remember growing up in a world where things were saved and reused. A world without paper towels, trash bags, etc...

A world where about the only disposable items were toilet paper and tissues.

A world where the corner grocery store packed our groceries in sturdy cardboard boxes rather than waste them or the heavy brown paper sacks that we used for all sorts of things.

I remember the rag bag, the button tin, the stacks of newspapers waiting for the scouts to have a paper drive, the brown paper grocery sacks in the tip out drawer at the bottom of the old refrigerator with the tiny ice box and metal ice cube trays.

I wonder what today’s kids will remember a half century from now.

 

[msmofet]

I remember growing up in a world where things were saved and reused. A world without paper towels, trash bags, etc...

A world where about the only disposable items were toilet paper and tissues.

A world where the corner grocery store packed our groceries in sturdy cardboard boxes rather than waste them or the heavy brown paper sacks that we used for all sorts of things.

I remember the rag bag, the button tin, the stacks of newspapers waiting for the scouts to have a paper drive, the brown paper grocery sacks in the tip out drawer at the bottom of the old refrigerator with the tiny ice box and metal ice cube trays.

I wonder what today’s kids will remember a half century from now.

Their first iPhone.

 

[Aunt Bea]

Wing windows and drip moldings.

 

[Meryl]

Plastic portable record players.

 

[Marlingardener]

I am happily living in the 20th century. We have a rag bag, paper bags and cardboard boxes are reused until they fall apart, typing skills learned in high school are still used (on a keyboard, now), and are firmly in the "save it, you may need it someday" school.
I do enjoy so many of the advancements made in my lifetime, one of which is being able to read posts and converse with knowledgeable folks!

 

[Kathleen]

SO many memories here. Who also remembers running wild from sunrise to sunset and returning home when the street lights came on OR until your family bell sounded. (At grandma's, there was a bell. All of the families had them in the hills and they all had their own sound. Everyone knew each other's bells.)

Rotary phones with that party line! My dad was a milkman! And being able to have unstructured playtime. Trips to the library. Dad excitedly reading the sound effects in Batman! Ka-POW, BAM, etc. Julie Newmar was a better catwoman than Eartha.

 

[dragnlaw]

Only one here I don't remember is Katie's gas rationing. Oh my, the memories of allll these.