Things you won't find anymore...

Cigarette holders.

I'm sure you can still find them somewhere, but there was a time when you could buy them at Rexall Drugs. Woolworth's, too, probly.

I've only seen one person use one. I was a tot, and the user was a lady who came to our house for dinner. She was probably a relative. It was a big family dinner.

Anyway, my Mom smoked for a short while before me and my siblings born. She hadn't been in the US for very long, so we're guessing she was trying to be a classy American lady and started smoking. And apparently, my Dad was okay with it until she paid $1.75 for a long, bejeweled cigarette holder. Then he "blew his top," according to my Aunt, and Mom stopped smoking. But she never really liked it anyway.


I just learned there were certain acceptable cigarette-holder lengths for certain occasions:

Opera length, 16 to 20 inches/40 to 50 cm
Theater length, 10 to 14 inches/25 to 35 cm
Dinner length, 4 to 6 inches/10 to 15 cm
Cocktail length, "stubbies"

Interestingly, men's cigarette holders were traditionally all stubbies all the time for all occasions.
 
Does anyone remember full-service shoe stores where fluoroscopes were present? You'd stick your feet into the device, and it would X-ray them to determine if your toes had enough room inside a shoe you were considering buying. Yes folks, get a free X-ray dosage just for coming in!

What other things once commonplace won't you see today?

View attachment 293431
A boy named Jan.
 
I remember putting my feet into one of those devices to measure if the shoe would fit my feet. I wonder how much radiation
it gave out. ?
Probably very little to the customer. But it was likely treacherous for the shoe salesmen.
That was before they invented the radiation badges-- to detect dangerous radiation exposure.
 
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