Remembering old stuff

[Bijou]

Like a big, clunky, black telephone that sat on a desk and had a noisy dial?  Our family got our first telephone in the early 50's.  I still love those old fashioned things.  I heard they were made out of some kind of real hard rubber substance. 
Oh, I  just read they were made of Bakelite.
This is an interesting article.  http://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-domestic-phones.htm

Record players...I remember record players, or phonographs.  I got my first one when I was about 15 and was I thrilled.  All those fragile 78 records and the plastic 45's and 33 1/3 records.  They got scratched and you could listen to the same phrase over and over and over....

[Maxiestar]

Up until recently, my grandparents had  a record / 8 track player. I never saw any 8 tracks, but I did play my strawberry shortcake record quite often as a kid!

[siamesecat2965]

Old cars. i don't know squat about them, but I love love love cars from the 60's and 70's.  todays seem so molded and plastic like.

I love retro, so I think old kitchens with harvest gold or avocado appliances are the coolest things!

[Julian]

I'm a sucker for old things.  My teeny little town has at least 10 antique shops that I know of, so I love going in to browse.

One of them has heaps of things from my childhood - coca cola yo-yos, the old plastic Telecom phones from the 60's and 70's in funky colours, things like that.

Ehellions, I hope you all kept your yo-yos, they're selling for $A120 each.  Yes, each.  Sob!

[RegionMom]

There was a movie my kids saw a couple of years ago at a summer morning discount showing, where the plot dealt with a house under attack by aliens.  The family needed a phone, but could only find a rotary dial phone in grandma's house, and had no idea what to do!

For the kids in my group, I took them home and showed them the rotary phone I still have next to my bed.  Yes, it works.  I asked a child (ok, my son) to "dial" it, and he did not know how to.  Oh nose!  I had failed that part of mommyhood nostalgia! 

He simply pressed in at the zero, and then pulled around counterclockwise to the number he wanted.  This way, 0 did not move at all, and 9 was the tiniest of movement, instead of the l.o.n.g.e.s.t.

Anyway, they know NOW, and have shown other friends how to use it!

[rose red]

I remember my mother using the black metal sewing machine with the big turning wheel on the side.  She also used a washboard and metal tub for laundry.

[mrs_deb]

I was at a museum recently (the War Memorial in Auckland) and they had a reel to reel tape player.  We had one of those my entire childhood, til I went to college and got an 8-track.  What was it doing in a MUSEUM?   

[Acadianna]

My parents had a reel-to-reel videotape player, circa 1970.  The reels were pretty big, as I recall, and cost about $60 for a one-hour blank.  (There weren't any pre-recorded movies you could buy at that time.)

I saved up my cash and managed to buy two reels so I could record my then-favorite movie, the 1937 Lost Horizon.

I really wish I still had that recording, because current versions are now all incomplete.  An attempted restoration in 1973 could find only 125 minutes of film, with 7 minutes missing, though they did have the entire soundtrack.  (They've inserted still photographs to replace lost footage.)

I don't know if it actually was, but I like to think that my recording may have been complete -- and might have been able to supply the missing pieces.

[doodlemor]

I remember when we got our first TV set in the early 50's.  This was a big piece of furniture, a large mahogany finished wooden box with many tubes inside.  The tuning and stations were changed by turning the large dials on the front.  The logo on the front said "DuMont."

The stations were not on the air for 24 hours a day.  They started with a test pattern in the morning, and ended in the early hours with the national anthem.  Fathers got up early to adjust the black and white picture perfectly according to the test pattern, and woe unto any children who touched the tuner thereafter.

My brother and I sat in am armchair together and watched the original Mouseketeers on weeknights.  We also loved Mighty Mouse, Ozzie and Harriet, and especially Superman.  On Sunday nights we watched Lassie and Disneyland and my mother made popcorn in a pan on the stove.

If we were lucky to stay up on other nights we got to see George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton, and I Love Lucy.

My father was an easy touch and we used to stay up later on Tuesday night, when my mother went bowling.  We used to enjoy watching a show with him about WWII naval battles, of all things.

After we were in bed sometimes we would hear our parents laughing at Sid Caesar, or What's My Line?  Gunsmoke and Alfred Hitchcock Presents were on their list of favorites, too, as well as Perry Mason.

[Luci45]

Pit toilets, as a way of life.

Bringing the buckets of water from the wellhouse and heating it on the stove if it needs to be hot.

Electric lines not in the walls. Crank telephones. At least the mail was reliable.

That is the way my grandparents lived until 1957. It was not easy, but I loved visiting them.

[cicero]

I remember my father bringing home a color tv - it must have been sometime in the early 1960s.

I remember my grandma had this huge cabinet that "hid" the tv. and after you turned it on, you had to wait till that little dot in the middle expanded.

I remember that they showed "the wizard of oz" once a year, and my mom let me, but not my younger sisters, watch it. otherwise, we were all allowed one hour of tv a day. and we had ONE tv set, so it had to be a mutual decision on what to watch.

my parents had a movie projector that they would haul out once a year or so to watch home movies.

[siamesecat2965]

I remember my father bringing home a color tv - it must have been sometime in the early 1960s.

I remember my grandma had this huge cabinet that "hid" the tv. and after you turned it on, you had to wait till that little dot in the middle expanded.

I remember that they showed "the wizard of oz" once a year, and my mom let me, but not my younger sisters, watch it. otherwise, we were all allowed one hour of tv a day. and we had ONE tv set, so it had to be a mutual decision on what to watch.

my parents had a movie projector that they would haul out once a year or so to watch home movies.

I remember the Wizard of Oz once a year too!  we also had one tv, and I wasn't allowed to watch anything at night, during the week.  except the holiday specials.  I used to wait in anticipation for "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", "The Grinch" and others.  I was however, allowed to watch Emergency! on Sat nights.  that was my favorite show.  8pm, and I was allowed to watch "The Price is Right" before.  Then off to bed. But when all my peers were watching "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley" I was in bed.

Thanks to a new channel I have showing old shows, I'm able to re-live my childhood as they show Emergency! every day. 

[JustCallMePat]

Pay toilets.

Phone booths with the black dial telephone which took dimes.  The light up top which came on when the folding door was fully closed.

Lunch counters at the 5&10.  For that matter, who else remembers stores call a "5&10"?  ("Five and dime" maybe?)

Chest-type soda coolers with an opener on the outside.

Drinking fountains in the park.

Gas stations were all "full service", and getting gas included a clean windshield and checking the oil.

Metal trash cans that you had to buy yourself.

Color films - blue at the top, red in the middle, and green at the bottom - that were placed over a b&w TV to make it color.

B&W TVs that when shut off showed a shrinking dot at the middle of the screen.

Broadcast TV that ended programming and closed with the national anthem.

TV test patterns.

Policemen that patrolled by foot.  And you knew them by first name as they were always in your neighborhood.

Newspaper stands with a guy selling papers as they were tossed from the truck.

Penny candy.

All-male baber shops.  Women went to beauty salons.

Roman candle battles on the 4th of July.

Honest politicians.  Well... maybe not.  OK, how about "well-intentioned politicians"?

[mechtilde]

Honest politicians.  Well... maybe not.  OK, how about "well-intentioned politicians"?

Have we ever had those? 

I do remember:
Rotary phones
Pink, Sand, Avocado and similar colour bathroom suites. Ours was avocado.
Getting a colour TV when I was about eight- but only because our existing black and white set had broken.
Casette players being horribly expensive, and when DVD players came out later they weren't much cheaper to begin with.
As were early computers- my parents had to save up a lot to get my brother a ZX Spectrum (it paid off- he's a computer programmer now!)
Being allowed to stay up late watching Terry and June or Dad's Army as a treat. Crying when the Life on Earth series was over because I didn't think I'd ever see it again and my parents trying to comfort me by saying they were sure it would be repeated. 
Lots of beige
Vividly coloured sweets and drinks- long before natural food colours we were all on tartrazine!

[cicero]

Drinking fountains in the park.

do parks in your country no longer have drinking fountains? most of the city parks around here (in israel) do, though not all, and a few even have public toilets.