Who Remembers?

[Rabbi]

 

 

[Walt Longmire]

6 minutes ago, Rabbi said:

It probably work....hell, it probably already exits in some form. 

 

As a tangent, most people under 30 probably do not grasp the long distance phone call and what a big deal it once was. (and how close long distance often was) 

I lived in a small town in Wa. about 400 people. The only other town we could call that wasn't long distance was a 55 and over community 5 miles away with about 200 people. I have lived in places that had no phone lines at all.

[Eric]

9 minutes ago, Rabbi said:

It probably work....hell, it probably already exits in some form. 

 

As a tangent, most people under 30 probably do not grasp the long distance phone call and what a big deal it once was. (and how close long distance often was) 

That's another one for the memory parade. Long Distance calls and phone bills.

Who remembers when Ma Bell got broken up into the Baby Bells, after the anti-trust litigation was brought against them? Then when long distance service was deregulated and everyone and their brother was suddenly selling long distance service. What a freaking confusing mess that was.

Who remembers the MCI Friends & Family fiasco? If you signed up for the Friends & Family plan and gave them the names and phone numbers of ten friends or relatives, you got a discount on your long distance service. That promotion pissed off a LOT of people and the other long distance carriers had an absolute field day with it. They tore MCI a new one for months, with commercials mocking that plan. It was hilarious.

[Batesmotel]

Party lines. 

[Eric]

10 minutes ago, Rabbi said:

 

 

That was the first TV remote control that my childhood household had growing up, that didn't have two legs and a head of unruly dirty blonde hair. Before that, us kids were the remotes. We changed the channels, we adjusted the rabbit ears. We fixed the vertical hold and on bad reception days, one of us would often end up having to stand there with a hand on the TV antenna. to improve the reception for everyone else.

[Eric]

A little more recent, but who remembers roaming charges on cell phones? Traveling with cell phones in the nineties could get damned expensive and often when you did not even realize it was happening. A lot of the cell phone companies had some predatory business practices, when it came to roaming fees. I think it was mid-2003 when I got my first cell phone plan that had no roaming charges. You still had to watch your minutes used like a hawk, but being able to travel without worrying about getting gouged by roaming charges was a blessing.

[Walt Longmire]

Collect calls. Phone booths. Calling the operator to ask the time, or to hit her up for a date.

[Eric]

Who remembers when movies could be funny and entertaining and endearing and maybe even carry a positive message to kids, without CGI, comic book heroes, ideological/social/political agendas and rap music soundtracks? A movie could just be a good, enjoyable story, well told. Kids could use more of that, these days.

 

 

[Tahmail]

My Mom had a large Coke bottle with a cork stopper and sprinkler head to sprinkle clothes with before ironing - no steam irons then. Portable dish washer rolled over to connect to the kitchen faucet/sink. Five digit phone number and a party line. Tested those tv tubes at the corner hardware store just like Eric mentioned. Metal lunch box with a thermos. Manual can opener.

[DrB]

Real M80's, T Bombs the good stuff that could easily take your hand off.  Dynamite you could get at the farm store and knowing how to fuse it and time the fuse.  Electric blasting caps.

Dave..

[Smith10]

My first pickup was a 3/4 ton ford that had split rims. Tire guys hated them.

[Smith10]

John Denver specials. And if the president was on, no TV.

[KWalrad]

How about kerosene smudge pots on road construction sites? Little black balls that looked like cannon balls that crews would sit out to mark traffic lanes back before LED and solar signs.

Glass insulators that used to be at the top of telephone poles along railroad tracks.

Freshly oiled dirt toads in the summertime, or walking down tarred roads popping the tar bubbles with your toes. Then getting a whipping (with a Hot Wheels track) for having tar all over your only pair of sneakers.

$5 sneakers that were bought out of a bin at the cash register of the grocery store. Kind of like low top Chucks. And they had to last all school year.

Putting bread bags on over your socks, and then putting your shoes on over them so that your feet would stay dry on the walk to school.

Three channels on the t.v., and all of them going off the air after they played The Star Spangled Banner at midnight. Turning the channel with a fork because the knob broke.

Great big television stereo consoles with built in speakers, a turntable, AM radio, and 8 track player. About eight feet long and three hundred pounds.

Sleeping with the windows open, driving with the windows down because there was no air-conditioning in the house or car.

[KWalrad]

The days before ATMs and debit cards. Rushing to the bank on payday to cash your check before they closed. Pulling out what you would need in cash to get by until next payday, because the bank was c!owed by the time you got off of work.

Travelling meant using travellers checks, because nobody would accept out of state checks. Hell, I walked out of Fort Benning with almost $6k in travellers checks.

Walking into an airport, buying a ticket, walking straight to a gate and getting onto a plane. A plane where smoking was allowed.

Playing outside and everyone stopping when a plane flew over, because you never saw airplanes except for on television. Shoot, I can step outside most nights and see almost a dozen queuing up around DFW airport. An airport that has the land mass of Manhattan.

Piling into the car with all of the dirty !laundry on a Saturday morning and taking a trip to the Laundromat. Hoping everything would be done early enough that you could get home to watch the cartoons before they went off the air at noon.

[DrB]

Gilbert Chemistry sets with the cool now banned chemicals like acids and such. Stuff you could mix and make things go Bang.  They even had a set with radioactive elements IIRC.

Dave..

 

[Tahmail]

There were blank checks at the grocery store check out from the only bank in town. Write your name and account # on it when you filled out the payment. I'd forgotten about those oil burner smudge pots. 

[misterfox]

5 hours ago, Rabbi said:

The thing about most phones back then is the phone company owned them. You paid rent on it. (in many cases)  The pile of **** phone companies probably still charge old people for one of these phones if they have never moved and still have it in some dark corner of the house. 

 

I've got one of those in a box in the basement.  I had it hooked up until a couple years ago.  It couldn't dial out on a 'touch tone' line, but would receive calls just fine.

 

They were made by Western Electric for the Bell Company and were built like a brick shithouse.    The phone company owned these and because the installation was so complicated, they had to install and remove the phones.  Usually when they were good and ready.

 

I think these things would survive a nuclear strike.

[DrB]

Oil burning smudge pots.  I think I still have one of those around here somewhere....

[Booker]

I did 2 packs a day!

 

[janice6]

10 hours ago, Rabbi said:

This is something you used to have to deal with on many cars. 

 

I learned that when an iginition capacitor went bad, the car wouldn't start, even though the spark/dwell/ignition wires were good to go.

 

I clipped a capacitor outside of the distributor and it ran like a top.  

 

You would have believed that being in electronics, I would have known this.  But, at the time, I didn't.  Learning is good!

 

In a pinch, a business card gap was good enough to get you going.

Edited September 4, 2017 by janice6

[Clancy]

11 hours ago, Rabbi said:

I remember making curtains out of these!!!!!!!!!

 

I remember the sound of coal going down the chute to my neighbor's basement. Vacuum tube testers at the local pharmacy. AM radios were an option in new cars, and your only other choice was nothing. My Mom making frozen popsicles from Kool-Aid. My great-grandfather was the last engineer on the O&W Railroad. The tracks ran right across the street from my home, and he would stop the train and pick me up. Damn big medicine for a 3 year old boy. My parents couldn't afford a camera, so there is no picture, . I remember hearing of someone in town buying a color TV, so me and a bunch of friends got on our bikes, rode up to the house, and asked if we could se it. The guy's wife made popcorn and lemonade(real lemonade) and we all spent the afternoon watching TV. I remember .10 beers, and if I had $5 I could get 2 6-packs of beer and a half tank of gas, and was set for Saturday night. I remember my brother getting drunk and driving into a snow bank. 2 NYS troopers helped push him out, and then followed him home to make sure he got home ok. Not a single kid in my class came from a broken or single parent home. Half my son's class does. Times have changed, and we are the poorer for it.

[Clancy]

11 hours ago, Rabbi said:

The thing about most phones back then is the phone company owned them. You paid rent on it. (in many cases)  The pile of **** phone companies probably still charge old people for one of these phones if they have never moved and still have it in some dark corner of the house. 

 

When I was little I could pick up the phone and tell the operator I wanted to talk to my grandma, and she knew who to hook me up to. We had a party line for a while, and to this day I stop to hear if anyone is on the phone before I use it. A friend of mine was an operator for a while, and she would tell stories of how nasty people could be to the operators, and how the phone company would come in and take the phone off the wall, and refuse to give the real assholes another phone for up to a year.

[Clancy]

A few years ago my Dad had a pick up truck with hand cranked windows. He picked my son and a friend of his(they were maybe 6 or 7) and the boys didn't know how to open the window. I remember my Mom telling my son how, when she was little, she lived on a farm that didn't have electricity. He looked incredulous, and asked how she was able to watch TV. 

 

[Rabbi]

 

 

[ASH]

too old for these but my wifes dad had a shoe salesman  as a friend and used these