I remember all of these, you?

[shouldazagged]

I certainly remember the air raid sirens and the blackout drills during WWII. In 1962 I lived near a suburban fire department that still used one of the old sirens. During the Cuban missile crisis it cost me some sleep when it went off at night...

 

[arjay]

They still use them around here for tornado warnings.They tend to go off about 30 minutes after the storm leaves...

 

[jag312]

There is one thing that I remember that I don't see anymore. Whenever we went to town, we would sometimes have a special treat; eating lunch at a diner. On the back of the chairs was a clip. What was the clip for? When you sat down, you took off your hat and clipped it to the back of the chair. Now when I go to a restaurant, I just leave my hat in my car because I have no place to put it.

 

[Salty RI]

They still use them around here for tornado warnings.They tend to go off about 30 minutes after the storm leaves...

That doesn't give you much time to run for cover.

 

[sheepdawg]

I remember all Cokes were 6 1/2 oz. If you wanted 10 oz. you got Pepsi or Royal Crown, and you had to use a bottle opener,

You might like this 1955 cardboard sign I came up with.

Remember the 6 1/2 oz Cokes always were a little better? Everyone used to say that they both had the same amount of ingrediants, the 10 oz. just had more water.

Remember pulling Cokes out of the machine or cooler and betting on who would get the bottle from the farthest away city? I got one from Honolulu once.

Remember the Coke machines with that funny looking steel handle you had to pull down. I remember about 1962 or so at the barber shop, wow a Coke machine with a door on the side, you could just open it up and get a Coke or Seven Up or even a Nehi Grape.

Remember they would have contests and you would dig the cork lining out of the cap and see if you won anything?

Remember taking the caps and popping them off you fingers? If you were good you could pop one across a room.

Remember taking the very top of the bottle, the lip and making rings out of them? Yes you had to bust it. I had a buddy that could hit that spot just right to make it come off clean. He 's probably a rich surgeon or a chiropractor by now.

Remember those cardboard cartons? You could flatten one to make a deadly weapon. Kind of like a frisbee.

Remember when they went from embossed writing on the bottle to a white silkscreened print? After a while you'd get an old embossed bottle and it looked like it had been used and reused a thousand times?

Remember when Cokes went from a nickle to six cents and they had the honor can? The place you put the penny.

Remember just how weird we thought the little Coke sprite was? I mean look at it, notice he doesn't have an arm? Figure out how he got his hand in that position.


Old as dirt and loving it. Well I ain't to crazy about my knee hurting all the time.

 

[Salty RI]

There is one thing that I remember that I don't see anymore. Whenever we went to town, we would sometimes have a special treat; eating lunch at a diner. On the back of the chairs was a clip. What was the clip for? When you sat down, you took off your hat and clipped it to the back of the chair. Now when I go to a restaurant, I just leave my hat in my car because I have no place to put it.

I leave mine on my head, really P's off the wife.

 

[tomf52]

Believe it or not, when we moved into our first house (a brand new bi-level) in northern NJ we had a four party phone line with a switchboard operator. She would cut you off when she thought you talked too long. This was in 1976!

 

[Salty RI]

You might like this 1955 cardboard sign I came up with.

Remember the 6 1/2 oz Cokes always were a little better? Everyone used to say that they both had the same amount of ingrediants, the 10 oz. just had more water.

Remember pulling Cokes out of the machine or cooler and betting on who would get the bottle from the farthest away city? I got one from Honolulu once.

Remember the Coke machines with that funny looking steel handle you had to pull down. I remember about 1962 or so at the barber shop, wow a Coke machine with a door on the side, you could just open it up and get a Coke or Seven Up or even a Nehi Grape.

Remember they would have contests and you would dig the cork lining out of the cap and see if you won anything?

Remember taking the caps and popping them off you fingers? If you were good you could pop one across a room.

Remember taking the very top of the bottle, the lip and making rings out of them? Yes you had to bust it. I had a buddy that could hit that spot just right to make it come off clean. He 's probably a rich surgeon or a chiropractor by now.

Remember those cardboard cartons? You could flatten one to make a deadly weapon. Kind of like a frisbee.

Remember when they went from embossed writing on the bottle to a white silkscreened print? After a while you'd get an old embossed bottle and it looked like it had been used and reused a thousand times?

Remember when Cokes went from a nickle to six cents and they had the honor can? The place you put the penny.

Remember just how weird we thought the little Coke sprite was? I mean look at it, notice he doesn't have an arm? Figure out how he got his hand in that position.


Old as dirt and loving it. Well I ain't to crazy about my knee hurting all the time.

When I was a kid we used to take the coke bottles and put a cork in them and throw them in the water and shoot at them with 22's, you had to hit them just right or they would just spin.

We still have the honer can in a few places here one is a bakery the woman bakes bread and leaves her little store and goes to work, you go in and toss the money in a can.

We also have an egg farm, you go in the back door of their house grab a dozen eggs and put the money on the kitchen table sometimes you get green egg's, I wish they had some ham to go with them. we also return the egg box's.


Fifty years from now the people on this forum will be saying do you remember in the early 2000's they had shopping cart's with cup holders on them.

 

[Cyrano]

I remember all of them, and we lived in Connecticut. I also remember my folks talking about whether we could afford the charge for three telephone poles to bring electricity to our house. We didn't have a phone, party line or not, until the middle of the war( and you don't have to ask 'what waar?').

 

[nicky4968]

The best was letting go of the handlebar (left on Harleys; right on Indians) to shift gears on the motorcycles.

Indian was out of business when I came along (except the Enfields), and Excelsior long before that. But the motorcycles were still around.

Owned my share of WRs, WLs, one Hydraglide 74, one Springer 61, a couple K Models. Like some neat guns, sold them off when I needed the cash.

Do I miss them? No. I'm not the athlete I was and would kill myself the first time I tried to plant my left foot for the turns on the flat track. (Remember paper soda straws? That would be my knees today.) But I remember the fun I had.

 

[BlackAgnes]

The kid across the street lived his whole life in an iron lung--because we had not yet figured out polio--and remember the kids who wore leg braces?

An uncle died young of a bad heart--see, there was no open heart surgery or stent therapy back in the good old days...

My wife just survived and was cured of stage 4 colon cancer, thanks to modern surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation--back "in the day", I'd be making my own dinners now.

A kid up the street died of "consumption"--whatever that was--he just couldn't stop coughing.

Big dogs ran free everywhere, and all my friends had been bitten at least once.

A friend's father used to beat him so bad with a belt that he couldn't go to school for days--and that was perfectly acceptable back then.

Building codes were non-existent, and houses burned down regularly due to faulty wiring--nowadays, fires in newer homes are rare.

Many "retarded" kids were simply PKU kids who could have been treated with diet and drugs--but that therapy was unknown then.

I am rarely nostalgic for the "good old days", while admitting that some of the values we held back then would serve us well today. I am thankful, however, that my kids and grandkids didn't have to experience some of the horrors of that era.

 

[skeetshooter]

Thanks airpark for the memory jog,,at 80 years I remember all those and more.

 

[timjake]

I can easily claim 10 of the 15. Of the five remaining, I had aunts/uncles out on the farm that had four of the five.

And yes, the outhouse...

Duck and cover...

Could only get one tv channel, two if you climbed on the roof and pointed the antenna in a different direction.

 

[timjake]

And then there's this:
The Statler Brothers - Do You Remember These ?--(Orvsha) - YouTube

 

[rimfired]

Finishing 64 this year. Remember all of them and the ones others have mentioned.

We didn't get this far without the integrity, guidance and discipline instilled by our parents.

Raised by the Greatest Generation who survived the Great Depression and then WWII.

 

[Duster340]

Well... guess I'm older than dirt too.

 

[the ringo kid]

Believe it or not, when we moved into our first house (a brand new bi-level) in northern NJ we had a four party phone line with a switchboard operator. She would cut you off when she thought you talked too long. This was in 1976!

We lived 1 mile outside city limits in the early 80s--and had a party line then. Listening in sometimes was fun.

 

[rburg]

I remember the heat. My room was upstairs. Guess I should feel lucky because I had a room. But my room was the front room. It had slanted ceilings because the house as built was a 2 bedroom and they were on the first floor. The upstairs was suitable for storage...only. So you slept with the window open. And I arranged my room so I slept real near the window.

Of course with it being that hot in the summer, you just couldn't get to sleep. You were too busy sweating. And you listened to things. Outside.

We were a 3 stoplight town. At the south end, it was so far away you couldn't hear. But if you strained, you could hear cars starting up at the 2nd and then at the 3rd that was near enough you didn't have to strain. It was only a few blocks up the hill. But more often than not, there were no cars to listen to. Oh, there was an occasional truck, but not often.

And what I remember most was the trains. We didn't have tracks anyplace near our town. The nearest line was miles away to the east. But I can still remember the steam engines blowing. OK, whistling. I never figured out what they were blowing at. I always wondered how those folks didn't get woke up since I could hear them so clearly. And in my early teens I remember investigating it. Asking my dad who couldn't hear them, or my mother who thought I was crazy for asking.

And I remember hearing an occasional car crash. Those really got my attention. And I'd ask my brother if he heard it. He'd tell me to go back to sleep, like I'd been asleep. If you counted, you could guess when the fire siren would go off to call up the Volunteers for the ambulance-meatwagon. I always liked calling it that. Once I remember hearing it was at the 2nd stop light. So I hustled up the hill and then cut through neighbors property to take the shortcut. It was a Henry J (Kaiser) that had been hit in the front end. Still sitting where it landed off hte road in a church yard. Man was it tore up. And being a kid, I noticed things. Like hte drivers teeth still implanted in the steering wheel. He ate the wheel. It made the TV news the next day. I never did find out what the other car was.

 

[littleriver1]

-I'm "only" 47, and I remember using or seeing all of the above except the newsreels before a movie. I loved it when we would go to this one little restaurant. They had those jukeboxes at every table. Even if we weren't allowed to play them every time, it was still fun to flip through the song lists.

-My Grandparents still had a party line with their neighbors until they sold their farm in 1987 or 1988. And Grandma still used a wringer washer with a huge galvanized tub in the basement for all the laundry. And of course, Howdy Doody was well into reruns when I watched it. My neighbor when I was growing up had a Studebaker Avanti. One sweet looking car. Basically a Corvette with another body on it. But it was kind of an ugly burnt orange color.

L8R,
Matt

My first car was a 1950 Studebaker. My dad got it for me for $25. I was 15 at the time. he and I laid on the ground in the yard and rebuilt the engine. I remember being bored cause he wouldn't let me do much. He got himself a Studebaker silver hawk. I'm not going to tell you what I did to that car but I hid from him for 3 days. Remember them saying, don't set so close to the TV you'll go blind.

 

[RdrChRy]

I too am Older than Dirt. One thing I do not remember is...eating Pasta. Never, not even once. Oh, we had plenty of spaghetti and often had macaroni, but never had Pasta. It had not been invented yet, at least in the US. Pasta was invented so that when you went to a restaurant they could charge you $10 for a plate of it. If they charged you that much for spaghetti or macaroni you would refuse to pay. Call it Pasta though....OK. I still don't eat Pasta. Have spaghetti/macaroni often though.