I'm so old....I remember having to put things on lay-a-way, because there were no credit cards. I remember babysitting for like 75 cents an hour.
I'm so old....I remember having to put things on lay-a-way, because there were no credit cards. I remember babysitting for like 75 cents an hour.
Reader99. Oh, the old coat hanger trick! I remember that from way back in my school days, and how every so often we'd watch a boy get into his locked car using a wire hanger. A great collection you brought with you!
Kathy WI. Boy do I miss the old mass stores. The ones where canoes and boats and things hung from the ceilings, the ones where every large storefront window displayed a different theme. Great memories. Your Santa story is wonderful!
Kfander. The crank phone sounds awesome! Hee Haw style!
Polliwog. Boy, was I ever ripped! My hourly babysitting pay (in the 70's) was based on 1950's/60's hourly babysitting pay!
I'm so old I remember life-size mannequins in department stores/storefront windows.
I've been gone for four days and just now reading this ... I too remember a lot of what's been posted, but I have a few as well:
Our first phone was not a rotay phone. You had lift the receiver and the operator would say "number please" and you'd tell her the number you wanted ... ours was 971-W and my best friend's was 375-R. These were party lines, of course. Later on we got a private line and for the life of me I can't remember what the number was. It had four numbers tho. And when dial phones came, we got the word/number combination too; ours was WElls 5-XXXX because we were in oil weil country.
In our small town the telephone operators knew everyone, so sometimes I'd get a babysitting job because the operator told me who needed a sitter.
Other things: When I was around 7-9 we had to use an outhouse -- no toilets. And this was just south of San Francisco! I remember when we could wear pants to school -- around '60 where we were. Also the wing windows. Many many years ago I was watching -- oh dear, what was that talk show host with gray hair that Marlo Thomas is/was married to? -- anyway, he had some auto executives on so people could ask questions. One woman asked about the wing windows, and one executive said "you'll never get them back" -- something to do with streamlining, I guess.
TV shows I loved in the "olden days" were Superman, The Cisco Kid (I so loved him), and Father Knows Best. And American Bandstand when it finally came along. My folks liked Ed Sullivan. I also remember margarine (oleo?) that came with an bubble in the middle of it that you had to squeeze to color the margarine nice and golden -- to look like butter, I guess.
And the mimeograph that smelled so nice wasn't mimeograph, it was ditto masters (I think "ditto" was a brand name?). When you typed the purple ink stuck to the back of the sheet and you had to put it on a drum and that used a special liquid (can't remember what it was) to make the "ink" adhere to the paper. If you made a mistake typing you had to roll it up and scrape off the mistake with a razor blade or something like that. I remember smelling the paper when the teacher would pass them out. Mimeograph was a green fibrous sheet that, when you typed, spread the shape of the letter in the sheet, and you put that on a drum and some kind of ink came through the spread part. It was black and didn't smell good at all. If you made a mistake typing you had to roll the paper up and try to make the fibers go back together using a small glass stick with a ball on the end that look sort of like a thermometer.
At one point I had an IBM Executive typewriter with proportional spacing! Wow, that was a challenge! a, b, c and the like were two (or three) "units", capital M and W were four (or) five "units", etc. Corrections were well-nigh impossible, but it sure did look pretty when the document was finished ...
Enough for now ...
I remember when cigarettes were eighteen cents a pack and gas was thirteen cents a gallon.
I lived in a town where I was related to pretty much everyone, and we were on a party line. My mom knew everyone else's number (I think they were referred to as telephone numbers although they weren't numerical), since most of them were her sisters or other close relatives. Whenever someone called anyone on the party line, the phone rang in everyone's house. Two short rings followed by a long ring was our number. When someone would call one of my mom's sisters, she would wait a moment to let her sister answer the phone, then lift the receiver up softly and listen. If the call was from someone else she knew, such as one of her other sisters, she would join in and there would be four or five of them talking. Otherwise, she would softly hang up the phone. To make a call, you picked up the receiver and gave it a few cranks; the operator would answer and you'd tell her who you wanted to talk to, often only needing the first name, and she would connect. At night it took longer because I think the operator was located in her own home, and would be in bed at night.Originally Posted by Mrs-M
Last edited by kfander; 7-9-11 at 10:38pm. Reason: Typo
Stupendous Serendipity! Can you imagine the stories the old operators could tell? The things they heard and listened in on... I've always thought about that. (Talk show host Phil Donahue)!I actually miss his show. Your butter story is over the top! Way too cool! I don't remember that, but then again I am only in my 40's. Other shows (television) I remember from back in my days, Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, My Three Sons, and You Asked For It. This is awesome! I love this thread!
Kfander. I can't tell you how many "pops" we got on the seat of our pants (from mom) for listening in on other peoples calls. (Just one more example that spanking doesn't work)! LMAO!!! I remember it all so clearly. Sometimes when us kids would pick up the phone, one of the other parties would present the question, "did you hear that". Then the other person they were talking to would say, "no". Of course it would get us all giggling and we'd have to hang up! ROTFLMAO! Still makes me laugh to this day. Oh how I love all these old telephone stories!
I recall buying albums as a teen and playing them on a stereo with needle. It would skip when it hit a bad spot. I remember my Dad's reel-to-reel tape recorder. He had cabinets full of large spools that he would sit and splice with tape. I remember in 1970, we were finally allowed to wear pants to school. I remember that most everyone's mom was a housewife; I was embarrassed that mine worked as a pharmacist and that she too got a divorce. I remember that we personally knew most of our neighborhood tradespeople - the cop, the service station owner, the mailman,, etc. That reminds me, I recall that gas stations were always full-service.
I live in a town where we still know all of the service people, and the lady who delivers the mail comes in for coffee sometimes. We have one station that is full service, and no more expensive than the self-serve ones.
A few years after I had moved from my hometown of Wallace, Michigan to California, a letter that I had written to my father in Wallace came back as undeliverable. He hadn't moved but apparently they had changed the numbering system so he had a different route and box number. Rather than calling my dad, I wrote on the front of the envelope: "Come on Bob, he's lived there all his life." Bob was the postmaster. He not only delivered the letter but sent me a personal letter with my dad's new mailing address.
Gee, was that like Mullberry?
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