WOW WOW things sure have changed just in my liftime...WHAT do you remember.

When toys meant something you could play with, by hand.

Johnny 7 Rifle. Please someone post a pic, cant do it. Looking on ebay for my grandson for Christmas, wow there expensive now. Ace fun.

Evil Knevel. Wind up motorbike stunt bike. Brilliant.

Kerplunk. Brilliant again.

Action Man. Years of fun. When eagle eyes came out we were amazed.

Free games.

Block.
Re-ally-o
Bulldog

When we were young if it was the world cup we played fotty, wimbledon we played tennis etc..

Things were better then.

I remember me and my friends would go to one of the stores that we had in our downtown, and well...we'd play house for hours with their refrigerators that they had for sale that were filled with fake foods....along with their tables, ect.....lol.....
we never got into any trouble doing this....
try to do this today...see what happens.
I also remember getting free healthcare from my doctor every morning when I went to pick up his daughter for our walk to school.....he'd ask how I was feeling, I was tell him if I was feeling crappy, he would pull out his stethoscope and do his thing....if he felt I was sick, he would give me something, or I might come home that night to find that my mom had pills that he had given her for me. Oh, and I remember playing in his cellar with my friend....that was filled with big bottles of all different kinds of pills....
I wonder how many doctors these days have their poorer patients picking up their daughters for school everyday?
wonder how many of them have a stock of meds in their cellars to give to those poorer patients??

I remember roaming the streets, with my friends, or by myself, at age five or six, feeling very safe....in the downtown area of what was then a village, but is now a city where we are told we shouldn't leave any of our kids unattended for any length of time!

I'm only 28, but I remember:
Going to the library for school projects and using index cards to find the books, no google,
Saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school without a parent suing the school because their kid said GOD.
Fighting with fists.
Waiting 6-8 months for a movie to be available to rent.
When swearing on TV just didn't happen- no TV-Mature ratings
When horror movies were actually trying to be scary and not some lame ass mind bending pyschological thriller( yeah you M. Night Shyawhatever- Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers kick ass!

We had way more freedom in society back then. Parents didn't hover over you as a kid. We would go out and meet up with a pack of kids my age in the neighbourhood and play and play until the streetlights came on everyday. There were few scheduled activities...we made our own. If you got hurt or something you were simply called an idiot and life would go on.

Now it is a myriad of safety concerns and insulating kids from any possible harm or bad influence. Kids are so tightly controlled. People need to lighten up. They think that, unless they're overdoing it, they're bad parents.

reply to post by plube

WHAT do you remember

I remember when getting a complimentary meal in Vegas didn't require playing $100 hands.

I remember when phreaking had nothing to do with dancing.

I remember when nobody had a cell phone, so nobody thought it was strange if you were out of contact for a few days.

Fun times.

But I also remember downloading porn in 256 colors, and having to wait nearly a minute for a picture to transfer over my brand new high-tech 9600 baud modem.

And I also remember having to wait a year after release for movies to become available on VHS tape.

And I also remember when arcades still had games like asteroids.

Nostalgia is fine. But let us not ignore the ways things have improved.

1950 - 1960s
I remember my grandmother having a 'mangle' to ring out the washing.
The 'refrigerator' was a stone slab in the larder. Freezers were unheard of.
Only the well off had a (black and white) TV. And there were only 3 channels.
Mobile (cell) phones appeared and they were as big as house bricks.
The 'rag and bone man' would come round on his horse and cart and give balloons or goldfish in a plastic bag to any kid who brought him anything.
I remember the Beatles appearing on TV (I actually got Paul McCartney's autograph and sold it for 1s 6d).
My favourite toy was a cardboard garage with a wind up lift.
Gas cookers were made of solid enamel and made to last 20 years or so (as were most things)..

Hmm ,I most certainly remember less "hover-parents" ready to sue any- and everyone that even looked he/she could slap their precious honeys when out of line. I got slapped by our neighbor once ,for wrecking his appletree. My parents upped the ante with house-arrest, instead of sueing for harm...
I remember falling from my bike..a lot.. and no-one went into a tizzy. Brush-off and go on.
WALKING to school, indeed..no-one but the town-doctor had a SUV.

And most of all: Being outside a lot, and not many fat kids. Even while the commodore 64 was already enticing some kids to a sitting existence.

I remember when the world was a much more peaceful place.

It was rare to hear that a child had been brutalized or murdered. In fact, although I lived in a mid-sized city, it was rare to hear about anyone being murdered on a daily basis.

Drugs were for hippies back then and hadn't infiltrated our cities and taken posession of a generation of children causing crime and death.

Television depicted happy families.

Things cost what they should cost. It wasn't yet our job to make every CEO in the country a billionaire.

Gas was less than 50 cents a gallon.

Kids respected their parents.

Mothers stayed home and raised their families.

The world is a chaotic place to be these days...

wow this is great thanks for the brilliant respnses it is bringing back so many things that have just disappeared in the blink of an eye within such a short period....it seems that technology does tell us a bit of where we come from but it is all changing so rapidly i find it hard to keep up...and yes a day when you actually played with toys by hand.....i remember making a ten speed mustang bike out of ten speed parts...Now they call them moutain bikes...

Here is your Johnny 7 hope it brings back good thoughts

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d463963749f7.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by MRuss


Of course bad things have always happened. But you do hear of stories, of villages that first got tv, and then there crime rate went through the roof.

I just wonder how quickly techs are really advancing. We have 6.7 billion on planet earth and techs in real world move pretty slowly.

Makes one wonder where all the advancements are and who has them.

reply to post by sbc650mike


Omg index cards....you actually had to look through paper to have a look for something...now that is amazing....let your fingers do the walking....Yellow pages add....

Oh Oh i think the yellow pages are becoming extint soon too.

Also do they still make matches anymore.....and theincandesent light bulb is fastly becoming exticnt too...we are creating and then in the same moment making things obsolete.

Growing up in a small city that was an industrial powerhouse in the fifties. Worlds largest steel pipe plant, 13,000 men. Worlds largest power shovel plant, Ford plant 8,000, very large shipyard, worlds largest truck trailer plant and much more all with a population of only 74,000. Now its practically dead. What the hell happened?
Immigrants from all over the western world, no PC talk yet we all got along very well.

reply to post by andy1033


i think your right considering many places to this day still live without electricty...but also with the advancement of solar cell tech that is changing somewhat as we get down to the $15 panels and i know of some african people who are many money in villages by using their panels and charging other peoples things for a small fee....Entrenpeneurs in the making.

plus a fair of our older tech is now making it's way to third world countries and geting a new life....i think that is the way to recycle....don't just throw out your old tech lets get together and see if we can get it to people who can give it all a new life.

reply to post by maldronath


Definately a good point there....PC has gone mad and i think in many cases creates more divisions than it does to correct divisions.... and at some point technology was supposed to bring people together but it seems to drive us further apart and not in racial lines but also between young and old.

I remember standing up and singing 'Oh Canada..' before starting class every morning in highschool and saying the Lord's prayer before starting class in gradeschool.

My dad drove a Nissan Datsun.

Our neighbour who lived across the street was Italian and woke us up every morning at sunrise with his opera singing. It was actually a beautiful thing...

My sisters used too much hairspray, listened to 80's Madonna and sad sad love songs. They wrote retarded love poems all over their gigantic photo albums

I watched Pee wee's Playhouse - Mecca Lecca Hi Lecca Hi Nee Ho

I remember card catalogs at the library, Captain Kangaroo, toys in the cereal box (those were cool!), 8 track radios, Mavericks (the car), the ABC Weekend Specials, and Pong. If I mention anything like these to my nephew (who's now 16) I get a blank stare. I'm only 37 but I still feel old lol.

Rituals for the family.

Every Thursday was fish and chips for tea. Now that was a treat. (I knew it was tea time because Mum would stand at the back door and scream my name)

Every Saturday we went to see Grandma. Not so good as it interfered with my playing out time.

School summer holidays meant camping on the local fields for weeks living off following the milkman in the morning pinching milk, bread and eggs off the doorsteps. You would spot your parents driving past every couple of days to make sure you were alive. Great fun.

Bonfire Night meant fires, eating potatoes off the fire that made all your teeth black, bommy raiding (and the territory fights that followed), throwing bangers at each other.

Christmas day was always a new push bike. I remember getting a raleigh arena one year, great bike.

Honda 50 stripped bare to ride on the fields, all day and night. Flicking the V,s at the cops and driving off when people complained. Man that was fun, used to drive the cops insane.

Ah, great days.

Originally posted by backinblack
I remember when the milk man would take me up on his cart to do the rounds and I'd get to hold the reins sometimes..The Ice man wasn't as friendly..
And we bought hot chips and potatoe cakes for $0.10.....
Then I could fill my car later in life for under $5.00.
Ohh and lollies tasted way better

Yep,I remember when you put your empty milk bottles out on your porch for the milk-man,and the milk still had the cream on top yum yum!didn't have to worry about calories then.I also remember little bottles of coke for a nickle,and also being sent to the store to buy my father cigarettes for 30cents,I was about 7years old at the time how odd is that?

reply to post by jehova620


Wow family rituals...hockey night in canda on saturday meant we all sat around eating hot dogs...i hate hockey and hotdogs i now remember why.

i used to own a maveric...what a great beast it was to...

I never should have started this thread....cause it does make you want a and crave a simpler life of the good ole days..and it makes me realize all those things my parents used to say makes sense to me....

mmmmm...cream off the top of the fresh milk.....how come there was all this fattening food about but a lot less fat people....I think it is not the fatty foods in life so much ...I believe it is all the sugar...the candy,chocolate bars,the soda pop, and i remember the coke for a nickel....and collecting crates of empty bottles to take back to the corner shop.

I am loving the replies.....thanks for the responses....i am also interested in what if you could bring something back from the near past and keep it within the realm of the future.

I remember waiting for Saturday morning, getting up, getting a bowl of cereal, then sitting in front of the t.v. to watch cartoons. Jonny Quest, Underdog, Touche Turtle, Josie and the Pussycats. Then on Friday, sitting in front of the t.v. with a big bowl of popcorn and watching Creature Feature. Those were the days!