using the outhouse at my dad's mom's house...
B&W TV - and that was a treat....
B&W movies - they were not ALL in color...
$.25 movies....
$.25 a gallon gas and they wiped your windshield, checked your oil and tires...
Fruit was available - when it was in season... not all year long.
No interstates.. you had to actually drive through the small towns...
4-60 air conditioning in the car - all 4 windows down and going 60 mph.
Eisenhower... and before him - Truman...
The kennedy nixon debates.
the kennedy johnson race for candidacy - makes obama and clinton look tame by comparison.
polio.
everyone wore suits to work...
everyone wore suits to church...
an attic fan...
Castro's entry into Havannah
duck and cover.
the cuban missle crisis...
the berlin wall...
the berlin airlift...
the Korean war....
meeting a relative who remembered the civil war...
the way tomatoes used to taste when truly vine ripened....
The smell of mimeograph fluid...
The back porch at my grandma's house - where we played dominos...
looking at my uncle's playboy....
Going to my uncle's dairy queen - and getting a free sample...
walking everywhere... school, after school activities...
Watching my grandma kill, clean and cook a chicken for dinner....
Dixie Beer.
cane sugar sweetened cokes...

but we live in a much better world... now don't we?

But I remember my neighbor and friend getting polio and then every kid in the neighborhood spending all summer indoors (I did sneak out though.)

He lived, but he still has a pronounced limp.  He has had four operations to lengthen his leg to match the other.

Some things are better for sure.

Walking into a courthouse or government office building and not needing to submit to an electromagnetic colonoscopy while your personal items were simultaneously radiated; because a citizen was considered ‘law abiding’ until they proved themselves otherwise.

 I also remember making telephone calls and even e-mails not worrying that they was routed, recorded, or analyzed by a fear-mongering government obsessed with collecting information on everyone and everything in the name of preemptory paranoia.    

The 4th Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

 "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."


NO! This does NOT belong on the P&R board. This thread was based on waxing nostalgically. I have only added what I recall in misty-eyed remembrance.

-- Modified on 4/22/2008 2:40:39 PM

Playing with mercury and rolling it around in your hands....now they close schools down if there is any missing from the chem. lab.

Blowing up condoms and floating them on the lake hoping the girls would see them.

Going to a drive-in movie and sneaking in 5 friends in the car's trunk.

Coping a feel at the movies or getting a hand job at the drive-in (never heard of a blow job then).

Shooting guns in the back yard.

Watching a chicken run around after my grandfather chopped off it's head.

AND sharing the smell of my first "stink finger" with the guys.....LOL

Those were the days!!!!!!!!!

...a pile of horseshit...
Being examined for head lice...
Corporal punishment in schools...
Loyalty oaths...
Being made to wear knickers...
Two-piece bathing suits -- for guys!...
The iron lung...
Slavery...

but I have to say that penicillin was invented before I was in a position to consider treatment for gonorrhea (which, thank golly, I've never seen).

Kids going to college nowadays know nothing about "dialing" a telephone number or why 8:45 is a "quarter to nine."  Cheesh.

polio vaccines

it was ditto fluid, not mimeograph, mimeo was messy black ink

fallout shelters

party line phones where you had to wait until the other party got off the phone before you could make a call

5-digit phone numbers

no zip codes

ride the city bus for $.08

and a bunch of others I can't remember right now because I have CRS disease  (Can't Remember Shit)

Swim

How about even wearing a suit and tie while hitch-hiking back and forth from college.

I'm so old I remember...

the Seattle sound and birth of alternative rock
90210
Melrose Place
pagers!
typing lessons in the school computer lab with the old race car program
tapes in stores (for not long after that)
tv's were bigger, not flatter
when our governor was not a governator
original Sunny D
actual video games at 7-11
Clueless (the movie) when Alicia Silverstone was a star


Hmmm... I'm not THAT old, but my cousins today are shocked that I didn't grow up with a cell phone and lap top at birth.

Katie

depending upon where you grew up.

Was a kiddie back in the '60's...

Going to the next door neighbors house to watch shows such as Batman on their color TV, since they were the only ones on the block who had one...

TV coverage of space missions...totally dominated when happening...

Rotary dial phones...

Gas cost 30 cents a gallon...my Dad could fill the tank for less than $5....and they cleaned the winshield and checked the oil while filling up...

Palisades Amusement Park and Bertrand's Island...

No video games...you went out and played with the other kids that lived in your neighborhood...baseball and football in season...going to the woods to build forts and play Capture the Flag...going on bike rides...

Walking to school regardless of the weather...kids that were driven by their mommy were sissy's!

Ubiquitous cigarette adds on TV...

Watching the Interstate Highway system getting built in it's infancy...the few completed stretches connected by congested two lane roads...

The original Yankee Stadium, and seeing Mickey Mantle play in the first game I ever went to (1967)...

Walt Disney hosting the Walt Disney hour on Sunday evenings...

Game shows and reruns such as Leave it to Beaver and Dennis the Menace dominated daytime TV, and it was fun to get sick, and stay home from school...

Morris County, NJ when it was still mostly farms...and TV reception poor due to distance from NYC and Philly...

Drive-in theaters...and the commercials between flicks showing all those yummy looking burgers and dogs that the parents would never let us buy...

Computers were futuristic wonders seen on Star Trek...who knew the laptop I am typing this on would be advanced about a hundred fold then theirs were?

Frieght trains...common then, disappeared in Jersey about two decades ago...

NYC back when many of the traffic signals were red and green only...and most of the taxi's were Checkers...

Buying things for a penny...

WABC radio in NYC was Music Radio...Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, and Four Seasons were the top artists...WABeatleC, and be sure to turn that body over...

Wow, this ran pretty long, so I guess it's my $2 rather than two pennnies...

Any one got five bees for a quarter?

8o)