What today's younger generation will never know:

MMinSoCal said:
FEDCO, Gottschalks, Woolworths, Montgomery Ward, Kmart (almost), same with JC Penney. Of the luxury stores on the West Coast: Bullock's, Bloomingdales, May Co., I. Magnin.
Click to expand...
I miss Gottschalk's and Mervyn's.

That's where I bought a lot of my clothes and shoes.
 

hollydolly said:
The traditional Rag & Bone man with his horse and cart, and a balloon or a gold fish in exchange for your old tat is long gone..:D. but we do have an 'Any Old Iron' type of guy who comes around once a month in his truck collecting anything that might be made from metal..old washing machines , dryers, pots and pans, bikes .. anything that can be melted down..
Click to expand...
there is a singer named "Rag & Bone Man"

very good pipes on this man...


Rag'n'Bone Man - Human (Official Video)

 
How to be politically incorrect, how to have a BB gun fight and how to have a sling-shot fight. Oh and the wonderful fun of tipping over an outhouse on Halloween Night. It was tricky because you didn't want to fall inside while tipping it over. I know because I experienced all those things when I was young and "wild." I don't do those things anymore. Must be "old age."
 

Attachments

  • Outhouse.jpg
    Outhouse.jpg
    145.4 KB · Views: 0
  • Outhouse2.jpg
    Outhouse2.jpg
    156.4 KB · Views: 0
Chris P Bacon said:
5¢ candy bars
Click to expand...
Ah yes! In the 1950s during the summer, my Mom would occasionally give me a quarter and I would ride my bike up to the local mall (outdoor of course, the indoor type was not in vogue). So at the drug store, I would buy a 10c comic book (usually Superman) and a 5c candy bar, then go to the lunch counter and get a 10c Coke. I would sit there, eat my candy bar and drink my Coke, while devouring the comic book from cover to cover! I was in hog heaven! :)
 
C50 said:
Car and bike both turned by an old crank?
(shame on me but I couldn't stop myself)
Click to expand...
I need to go to a story my mother told to me about learning to drive that type of car, circa 1922. She was 12, her older brother was 16 and had a car (I don't know the details of how he got it). He was taking my mother for a drive one day, pulled over to the side of the road and told her to get behind the wheel. So that is how my mother learned to drive at the age of 12, no driver licenses needed back then.
 
Packerjohn said:
How to be politically incorrect, how to have a BB gun fight and how to have a sling-shot fight. Oh and the wonderful fun of tipping over an outhouse on Halloween Night. It was tricky because you didn't want to fall inside while tipping it over. I know because I experienced all those things when I was young and "wild." I don't do those things anymore. Must be "old age."
Click to expand...
John, you bring back some great memories...I grew up in the high mountains, Rocky Mountains in the USA...and we were doing the same thing...great memories, and no one "shot their eye out"....SMILE
 
caroln said:
Your post reminded me of when my friends and I collected empty glass soda bottles and turned them in for, if I remember right, 2 cents each. Back then we were always busy doing something!
Click to expand...
Here in Ontario empty beer cans and bottles are worth ten cents each, so it is rare to see any of them lying on the ground. The Beer Store takes them in and gives you cash . Many seniors here have a side job collecting the bottles and cans for cash. My crushed beer cans are worth about $10 a month. Liquor and wine bottles are also worth ten cents each at the Beer Store refund section. As a result our road sides and parks are pretty clean, compared to other places. JimB.
 
spectratg said:
Ah yes! In the 1950s during the summer, my Mom would occasionally give me a quarter and I would ride my bike up to the local mall (outdoor of course, the indoor type was not in vogue). So at the drug store, I would buy a 10c comic book (usually Superman) and a 5c candy bar, then go to the lunch counter and get a 10c Coke. I would sit there, eat my candy bar and drink my Coke, while devouring the comic book from cover to cover! I was in hog heaven! :)
Click to expand...
I collected pop bottles and turned them in at the local store for two cents each. Sometimes we would get enough to get a comic book (Superman, Batman, Flash, Elastic Man and a chocolate soda at the local drug store. After reading the comic book for a few days, I would go to my barber and he would give me a nickel for any 'new' comic that was in good shape. Sometimes he had a comic I had not read, then we would just swap. Good old days they were...
 
What happened to learning to read music and play an instrument? Was required in my day beginning in 3rd grade. We then played in band and sang in the choir. Seems like in grade school, everyone did something in music...part of a well-rounded education!
 
C50 said:
I was thinking on this subject just the other day. I'm not sure why but the first thing that popped in my mind was the headlight dimmer button you had to push with your foot. I think those were gone by the 80's.
Click to expand...
I lived in Montana. The nearest Volkswagen dealer was 90 miles away, and I finished buying one in the early evening. As I was driving home in the dark, I could not find the dimmer switch, which was OK, because the lights were already set to dim. They took the thing off the floor completely. I stamped all around, stopped the car, and couldn't figure it out. I drove all the way home not knowing where the switch was. Eventually, I found the thing on the signal switch. How inconvenient! I can't remember if I eventually blundered onto it or read the manual.
 
Mandee said:
I remember coal deliveries,
Click to expand...
Remember that wall paper cleaner that was like Play Dough? You would roll it into a snake and drag it down the wall paper to get rid of the coal soot. It was fun doing it in the spring. It would leave this dramatic clean streak. It always amazed me how dirty the walls got over the winter.
 
JustDave said:
Remember that wall paper cleaner that was like Play Dough? You would roll it into a snake and drag it down the wall paper to get rid of the coal soot. It was fun doing it in the spring. It would leave this dramatic clean streak. It always amazed me how dirty the walls got over the winter.
Click to expand...
Imagine what the coal dust did to your lungs ? JimB.
 
Pink Biz said:
View attachment 213809
Click to expand...
Very nice post! All those home remedies were used on me as a youngster. Seeing that picture of Bob Barker on The Price Is Right put a smile on my face. Brings back memories of when I was in college in the mid-Seventies. The Price Is Right was huge among college kids in my area in those days. The soap opera "The Young and the Restless" and "General Hospital" too. Even among the guys.
I remember the TV room in the student center would be packed every morning with kids watching The Price is Right and "The Young" between classes. And when Luke and Laura got married that was a blockbuster. Standing room only. :)
 
hollydolly said:
The traditional Rag & Bone man with his horse and cart, and a balloon or a gold fish in exchange for your old tat is long gone..:D. but we do have an 'Any Old Iron' type of guy who comes around once a month in his truck collecting anything that might be made from metal..old washing machines , dryers, pots and pans, bikes .. anything that can be melted down..
Click to expand...
Yeah, I remember that guy with his horse and cart making his way through the alleys of suburban Chicago. He would make his presence known by continually calling out, "Rags and old iron," but he had a different first language than us, and my friends and I thought he was saying, "Rags-a-lion." I asked my mother what that meant, and she told me what she thought he was really saying. I listened carefully after that. Nope, I was still sure it was, "Rags-a-lion." My friends and I would occasionally find ourselves yelling, "Rags-a-lion!" It was fun to say. He also sharpened scissors, and while I don't remember him actually picking up any rags and iron, I do remember many women coming out to have him sharpen up their kitchen tools. I guessed he was an expert at that.
 
Last edited:
hollydolly said:
We still have a milkman, altho' I don't get my milk delivered because his milk from the dairy is almost 3 times the price of the supermarket but my next door neighbours get their milk delivered, along with orange juice and eggs and yoghurt and bread . He comes around 2 or 2.30am.. and delivers to the doorsteps, and to my knowledge the milk has never been stolen , which is amazing
Click to expand...
We had a milkman, and most of our neighbors did too. But here's a new one I think. We also had an ice man, because we had this wooden ice box in our pantry, and the ice man would come in with a big block of ice he carried on his back with a huge pair of tongs. I thought this guy was really important, because he was the only one who could keep our food cold, and he must have been really strong. He came about every other day. As far as I knew, he was probably more important than the president. Then one day we got our first refrigerator, and put it next to the kitchen sink. It had a freezer so we could keep ice cream, but only about two pints would fit in the freezer.
 
JustDave said:
Yeah, I remember that guy with his horse and cart making his way through the alleys of suburban Chicago. He would make his presence known by continually calling out, "Rags and old iron," but he had a different first language than us, and my friends and I thought he was saying, "Rags-a-lion." I asked my mother what that meant, and she told me what she thought he was really saying. I listened carefully after that. Nope, I was still sure it was, "Rags-a-lion." My friends and I would occasionally find ourselves yelling, "Rags-a-lion!" It was fun to say. He also sharpened scissors, and while I don't remember him actually picking up any rags and iron, I do remember many women coming out to have him sharpen up their kitchen tools. I guessed he was an expert at that.
Click to expand...
Exactly the same here..we thought he was saying the same as you.. because that's how he would be calling out...rags-a-lion...what he was saying was ''Rags or any old Iron''... :LOL:..but yes here he did get a lot of old iron and rags.. . the mothers would allow the kids to take out the old clothes to him, and we children would get a Balloon, or a Gold fish in a plastic bag of water depending on the amount we took to him..
 
I was 10 years old when I saw the first TV. We had the Milkman, the Ice cream man, the iceman and the Helms bread man!

DH grew up in New Mexico, got his drivers licence at 14 but drove the tractor well before that . His mother taught him to drive when he was 9 so he could drive their long drive way to catch the school bus.

Kids today probably don't even realise we didn't have TV until I was in my teens.

I'm in fact, really glad we didn't have computers when our kids were growing up. We did have encyclopedias (those were sets of thick books), for any young ones reading here. There was no fighting over the TV because there were only 2 channels when they were growing up.
 
dseag2 said:
We had the full set of World Book encyclopedias. They were bought one or a few at a time so it took me forever to get to XYZ. I thought as a kid that if I read through all of them I would know everything there was to know in the world. :ROFLMAO:

Hard to believe, but they still sell them!

https://www.worldbook.com/world-book-encyclopedia-2021.aspx
Click to expand...
On sale for only $599.00. That's $400.00 off! I'm getting two sets at that price! 🤣

It's hard to believe they're still in business. Who on earth would buy them?

I just took another look. That's the 2021 edition for $600. The 2022 edition is full price of $1,000. WTF? They must sell them to libraries or something.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top