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

reply to post by margaretr


Wow! That's right...mother used a wringer washer and hung the clothes out on the line. I remember it accidentally sucked her hands in and they had to cut her wedding ring off with a wire cutter.

Could have been worse right? At least she did not beat them on a rock!

I remember penny candy where you could get some that were like 3 for a penny. Bubblegum came with a little cartoon wrapped around it. Comic books were like what? Ten cents or 12 cents?

We always played outside as others have said until the streetlights came on at night. And man were you in trouble if you came home later. Meals were actually home cooked with meat and potatoes and veggies, not fast food or microwaved.

Originally posted by speculativeoptimist
What do I remember? Kids being pretty gullible...
Remember these:
How many of us thought we were actually raising sea monkeys?

"So eager to please" hardy harharr


Classic comicbook adds used to get me so excited, especially the xray glasses!

Someone mentioned skating rinks, yes good times for sure, which reminds of this: Take it back yo...

Oh yea, kids used to get free bubblegum at gas stations too.
Man this thread has made me smile all morning, thanks plube!!

Peace,
spec

edit on 14-11-2010 by speculativeoptimist because: (no reason given)

Dude that was awesome .Everything you showed had an impact on me as a kid.I remember the sea monkeys, my mom wouldnt let me have them because they scared her! LMAO.
I did however get the X ray glasses because I wanted to see through womens dresses.I remember seeing an ad where they show a guy looking through a wall or through clothes.
I cant quite remember.

Dont quite remember sugar hill gang, but that was some awesome rap.When it was still innocent and funky.

reply to post by Night Star


Bubblegum with a cartoon wrapped round it..."Bazooka Joe"!! thanks for the memory !, also, Mars Bars were better and Milky Ways were darker in the centre.

Robinson Crusoe on TV, awww that music. Hand held cassette recorders held at the Radiogram on a Sunday night to tape the top 40!!!..if I could sticky this thread and let it last for ever I would

respects

Those were the days...

Heckle and Jeckle, Mighty Mouse
My Friend Flicka and Sky King
Johnny Cash singing through out the house
How that ol' black phone would ring

"Crunchy" dresses on Easter Sunday
We all wore hats and gloves
Off to Church we'd find our way
To celebrate Gods Love

School would teach the ABC's
How to read and write
When we asked, we'd say "please"
Before bed we'd get a kiss goodnite

Family dinners, homemade clothes
Big ol' green chevy car
So young then, we didn't know
We'd never get this far.

(by: me)

There were record players, reel to reel tape players, .10 cent movies
coca-cola in glass bottles dispensed out of a soda chest with a pad lock.
I could keep going, but, there has to be a lot more of us dinosaurs out there
with more memories, as well.

~holly

wow such bad jokes in those bazooka bubble gum...and what was the kid in most of the cartoons...oh yes you already said bazooka joe

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/91ab30bff56b.jpg[/atsimg]

another reason i started this thread was i was in another thread and someone mentioned spy vs spy and no one seemed to know who they were...and i thought how could you not know about MAD magazine and that led to this thread.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c7b2d307f2a0.jpg[/atsimg]

it was always well balanced first the white would win then the black would win...talk about fair play.

and was a mag full of useful information like this

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5d18f7872ddf.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by Electric Crown
If you have a teenager who thinks a vinyl LP is a "big black CD", you might want to get her checked out. That sounds like something a 4 yr old would say.

That reminds me, I remember when you could call people retarded and it wasn't offensive...

Teenagers, they say what comes into their minds... I didn't say she thought albums were big black CD's.. I said that it was what she called them that one and only time.

Talk about jump to conclusions

reply to post by Tayesin


I have to agree with you on that and it was the same for me when my girl didn't have a clue what a LP was...and also it shows how things get related to what is in existance at the time and the relevance it has in the here and now and not to the actual time of it's true existance....so kudos to your child for saying exactly what they were thinking at the time.... .

I think it just reminds us of how the present just disappears without even realizing it....might be something that can only come with age.

It's not often that I read every single post in a thread before replying -- I mean really read them: take in every word and sense the emotion and humanity behind what people have written.

This thread is wonderful. It's a gentle reminder that at the end of the day, we're all real people here; we all have our own lives and experiences, we all have something special.

So, it got me thinking. I was born in the UK but we emigrated to Australia before I'd even started school, so my memories all stem from there.

I remember when I was four years old and both my parents were working, so a girl called Margaret used to picked me up from kindergarten and look after me until Mum got home from work. Looking back on it, she probably couldn't have been more than 10 years old herself, but she was utterly reliable and trustworthy. We used to live in a seaside suburb called Glenelg back then and on fine days Margaret sometimes took me down to the beach. Not to swim, but she would let me "paddle" in the shallows.

I remember when I was five and my older brother used to make model airplanes from "Airfix" construction kits. They cost about 2/-6d in the those days. (Two shillings and sixpence -- which five years later when we changed over to decimal currency would be 25 cents.) He painted these models with miniature brushes and real paints that were either in tiny little paint tins (made by "Humbrol") or in miniature bottles with corks in them.

I remember my first train set. It was wonderful, with carriages that had tiny lights inside them and a locomotive that had a light on the front. I'd watch it going round and round on its tracks for hours on rainy days.

On sunny days we'd be outside, mostly racing around in our pedal cars. We had two, but we apparently owned both of them jointly as we'd swap cars with no complaints. I loved those cars. The harder you pedalled the faster they went. No electric motors: it was all muscle power. And they were built solidly, with all-metal bodies and a steel chassis. Sorry to bore you with details, but pedal cars in those days were built to be used and to survive the worst that children could dish out. One of the pedal cars was the classic "Cyclops" Austin A40.

Oddly enough, the first real car I owned (at 17) was a 1948 Austin A 40.

I liked those old pedal cars so much that when I found one many years later in a junk shop (for $20), I bought it and restored it then gave it to my own two children. Before I handed it over to them (as this was all done in secret as good surprises should be), I had a few friends' kids try it out to make sure it was all working as it should.

Do I really need to say that they all wanted one, instead of the plastic ones they had and which break after three days?

Over here in Prague, I built three pedal cars for my wife's grandsons to play with when they visited. Made them all by hand. (I had pictures of them somewhere. Must dig and see if I can find them...) Anyway the boys have now outgrown the cars so I took one out to our cottage in the country and the neighbour's grandchildren spent half the day racing up and down the street in it. (It's a dead-end street in a sleepy village and we were outside picking apples and keeping an eye on them all the time. Quite safe.)

Simply put, those old pedal cars my brother and I had were a big part of our childhood.

Now, other things...

We had a coke machine in school. It dispensed those wonderful little bottles that you had to open with the opener that was riveted to the front of the machine. Those little cokes cost 6d (5 cents) so I couldn't afford one very often. Then, when decimal currency came in (14 Feb 1966), a technician came out to replace the coin mechanism in the machine. Seeing as a sixpenny piece was the same size, weight and value as a 5-cent piece, you might wonder why they needed to do anything at all. The answer is simple: after decimal currency, we then had to insert a 5-cent piece and a two-cent piece to get a bottle of coke. Yep, they jacked up the price to 7 cents. (A 40% increase!)

Sound familiar?

I remember the bus ride to and from school used to cost 3d (Three pence [pennies]) each way. My brother and I often used to skip the ride home and bought lollies (candy) instead. You could get quite a nice bag of lollies for 3d.

I remember that the summers were long and hot and it seemed to go weeks without any rain. Winters were cool and rainy. It just seemed more predictable back then.

I remember my Mum taking me to a "chicken pox party". And yes, I caught it! It was a pretty normal way to do things then.

And some things others have mentioned: little toys in the cereal boxes. Yes -- we loved those! Especially the little animals that you put together and then attached a piece of cotton to them with a tiny weight on it, and you hung it over the edge of the table and the little dog (or whatever) walked along. We were easy to please...

Milk bottles with the aluminium tops -- and at Christmas they were either decorated with a holly pattern or they were golden coloured. We collected them (after they'd been washed), flattened them out and used them for "gold" in games we'd play, where one of us was a rich merchant and all the others were robbers.

The bread van used to come along every weekday, and Mum would sometimes send me out to buy a loaf of bread. It cost between 6d and 9d, depending on the type, and the baker would take the loaf out of a rack in the van and wrap a sheet of tissue paper around it. It didn't cover the whole loaf. It was more symbolic than anything I think. I loved the aroma of the fresh bread when he opened that van.

Then there was the scissors and knives man. He used to do the rounds of the whole district and when he came around, he'd call out "Bring out your knives and scissors", and Mum would quickly grab any that needed sharpening and out we'd go and she would would stand and chat with the other ladies while their implements were being sharpened. The knives and scissors man had a 3-wheeled bike with a small grinding wheel mounted on the handlebars (I think) and he'd chat to everyone while he did his work. I think he charged a penny or two for knives and 3d for scissors, as they were a bit trickier to do.

I recall a tinker who came around a few times but we never needed his services, it seems. (Dad was quite good at fixing our post and pans if they needed it.) But I saw a few ladies or their husbands bringing out pots and pans for him to repair.

There are many other things but this post is becoming a small novel so I'll leave it there for now.

Best regards,

Mike

The attendant at the gas station filling the car while you waited and he'd clean the windows and check the oil while the gas pumped. Then he would politely ask you to come back again. Some of the old filling stations still had the glass bubble tops on them and the gasoline went into your tank due to gravity.

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom followed by Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights.

Mod Squad!

Boxes of powdered laundry soap had washcloths and dish towels hidden in them or, sometimes, drinking glasses.

Boxes of oatmeal contained cups, saucers and small bowls ~ like CrackerJacks for Moms.

You could acquire a set of drinking glasses by buying: one brand of peanut butter (glass mug with handle), another brand of peanut butter (drinking glass) and some brands of jelly (juice glass).

You could acquire a set of dishes by being faithful to certain filling stations each fill up got you a plate, cup/saucer, etc.

S & H Greenstamps!

And, my all-time favorite as a child: the "five and dime"

No grandma's outfit was complete without an apron.

i used to play on my Dads sega master system in the good old days, but so much has changed since then. and ive got a feeling so much more is going to change before i kick the bucket.

I grew up in the 80s in communist Romania.

I know for most of you that means I grew up in communist hell, and that is most likely true, but what I can remember from those days seems all happy to me right now.

I remember my parents owned a dacia 1300 throughout the 80s, and I remember taking lots of road trips every summer in that old thing.

I remember old German magnetophones and old cassette and pick-up players, and I remember listening to western 80s music on those. And to fairy tales recorded on LPs, no wonder I still got a thing for audiobooks.

We only had a black and white TV, and I remember how exciting it was to watch Disney cartoons every Sunday morning.

I remember Pepsi-Cola in real glass bottles and how they were so hard to come by and how they tasted like capitalist heaven Nowadays I rarely drink sodas, but twice a year or so when I do, for some reason it's always Pepsi. But it just doesn't taste that good anymore...

I remember going camping with 80s gear and playing in the school yard games that kids today don't know anymore, and trips to the zoo and to the natural science museum with my parents.

I remember how my knees were permanently bruised from roller-skating through the neighbourhood and how nobody seemed to think that was a big deal. All the kids had bruised knees and elbows, that was the norm

My grandparents house still had coal oven heating, and going there during the winter smelled like smoke and cookies and cocoa milk.

Let's try to respect the New Generation

having fun...

Myself, growing up in the 70's through 80's:
the first real "stereo" that I had (a console):
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0175ce873294.jpg[/atsimg]

The very first 7" record I owned (as a gift):


The very first 7" record that I bought with my own money at 13 years old:


Almost forgot, my favorite Schoolhouse Rock:


Yeah, yeah, I love music...got into DJ'ing later as a profession.
Hope it brings back memories for ya (those old enough to remember)...

Erector sets and vacuforms, Suzie Easy Bake Oven, Lincoln Logs...........

I remember my dad being jealous of "Father Knows Best" and not allowing us to watch Bill Cosby because he did not want "colored" people in our house! Sunday nites, ditching church and watching "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Fugitive. Vaccinations on a sugar cube. "Duck and cover" under your desk drills....

Archie and Veronica, poor Betty, Wendy the Good Little Witch, and Casper the Freindly Ghost. Seven Up was good for you. The communist were going to take over the US with Rock and Roll!

Clothes lines and the fresh smell of air dried sheets. Party lines and back fence gossip. The Fuller Brush man and the Avon Lady. LUCY! YOU GOT SOME SPLAINEN TO DO!

reply to post by JustMike


Thanks for your input Mike.. it really took me back to those times.

I had forgotten so much and you helped me remember a lot of it. Kudos to you mate.

reply to post by mark1167

Glad to take ya back mark1167, and I wanted those xray glasses too, and for the same reason you did, and it was not just for looking thru walls either , nya, nya, nya Ahh the adolescent hormone fiasco.
My mom was not too happy with sea monkies either, especially when they died and stunk the house up.
Those old novelty items really bring back memories, like looking up at the sky and not seeing multiple chem/con/chaf/cloud-seeding trails!

I also remember Jiffy Pop popcorn, Marathon Bars and moon pies for treats.
I recall a peculiar rights of passage exercise known as snipe hunting too. I always carried a moon pie because calling all those snipes to fly in the bag was hard work!

Peace,
spec

ETA: SLINKIES and SILLY STRING

Great thread!

I remember seeing a calculator in the store. It had a red led segment display, could add, subtract, and multiply, but not divide. It cost $200. Man I wanted one.

I remember seeing the Moon landing live on TV. I told my Dad it was boring and I wanted to go outside and play.

I remember my Dad pulling into a gas station, then pulling out quickly saying that there was no way in hell he was paying 30 cents a gallon.

My favorite toy was a Mattel Thingmaker. Basically a hot-plate, molds, and chemicals called Goop. You put the goop in the molds, cook it, and you have a shrunken head, skeleton, bloodshot eye, etc. The goop came in different colors, and even had glow in the dark goop and edible goop. Even after I ran out of goop, I still played with the hotplate for a couple of years, cooking whatever would fit in it.

I used to love drive-ins. Almost every weekend me and my buddies would see how many of us we could sneak in with my buddy's station wagon. Two of us hid in the floorpans of the back seat, then we put the seat down. One of us hid in the spare tire well, then was closed in. Two others laid on the bed of the wagon and were covered with blankets. The driver paid, then we went to the front row so everyone could see us unload everybody. No one ever cared. The movies were always bad anyway. If I ever win the lottery ...

I remember when I would get new programs for my computer by hours typing in hexidecimal from a magazine, another couple of hours looking for where I made a typo, only to find that program sucked.

I still actually have a few things from my childhood tucked away in a cupboard like :-

My Atari 800
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3586fdce476b.jpg[/atsimg]

My AstroWars game
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f566581baacb.jpg[/atsimg]

and a battered Skeletor action figure
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b0cd80a7f27e.jpg[/atsimg]

I never understood why Skeletor had the body of Jean Claud Van Damme but the head of a Skeleton

Edit to add.

I also have some "gentleman's" magazines that I bought when I was about 14 but I can't post images of those

reply to post by davespanners


You are a rich man!