When I was your age...

[NCC]

We had to have an eight track tape player in our cars, the cars we drove only had am radios in them! And they rarely had air conditioning. We all knew how to drive a stick.

Speaking of AM radio: It played music when I was your age, the #1 rated radio station was AM. FM existed, but then all they played was Muzak stuff.

For a while, as a teenager, I made a hobby of listening to 'skip' ... catching far away 50 KW AM stations bouncing off the ionosphere. From Florida, KAAY Little Rock, WGN Chicago, WNBC New York, WCCO Minneapolis, and many more.

I never owned an 8-Track until 2005. Cassettes and 8 Track both became widely available in the 1960s. But, 8 Track caught the early market share, eventually taken over by cassette. At one time, I had a car cassette deck which had a record mode ... you could record off the AM/FM radio or off an attached CB style coil corded microphone. Cool beans!

 

[geeker]

When I was really little I had a tape recorder. I would record my favorite songs by holding the mic of the recorder to the speaker of my radio. I even recorded a couple of performances from the TV with it.

 

[aschmidy]

I still SWEAR that my red ball jet tennis shoes really could make me jump higher and run faster! I could even out run my big brother!! And I SWEAR I flew a few feet with my umbrella one time-like Mary Poppins!

 

[LadyMaMa]

What a fun to read thread!

I have no idea what YOUR age is, but when I was young:

Pantyhose didn't exist. We used garter belts to hold up our nylon stockings. Panties and brassieres were called underwear, not "Intimates." Most underwear was white.

If you used the word ho(e) in speech, you were talking about a farm/gardening implement and nothing else.

Typing was an elective in junior/senior high school,and all of the typewriters were manual. Girls couldn't elect to take Woodshop. Boys only. Boys couldn't elect to take Cooking or Sewing. Girls Only.

There was no 24-hour anything on television. Most stations stopped broadcasting at midnight or 1 a.m and resumed programming the next morning.

Reality television was watching a Fishing or Hunting Show, not Housewives of New York.

Dogs were superstars and heroes. Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie were always saving someone somewhere. The movie, Old Yeller, made us cry.

Given names were simpler and easier to spell. We were Mary and Bob, Barbara and John, Kathy and Dennis. No Siobhans among us.

Elected officials were generally respected and shown respect. We even believed that they deserved and earned it.

Almost every adult smoked cigarettes.

Cars were sht back then. Men were always working on them, and when they weren't working on them, they were talking about them.

In my neighborhood, there was a small mom and pop grocery (Staples: milk, bread, candy and cigarettes) on every other block.

There were no zipcodes or casual talk about home values and appreciation. Most of us didn't have credit cards. Many didn't even have checking accounts. Cash ruled.

The word "Hey" was never used as a greeting or a substitute for "hello." If you heard "Hey" back then, someone probably wanted to ask you something, give you a warning, or inform you that your slip was showing or that your zipper was unzipped.

Susan

 

[GinnieM]

When I was your age... on Halloween we went Trick or Treat at night and wore costumes our Mom made. The scent of burning Autumn leaves was in the cool, crisp night air... we were treated with lots of yummy homemade goodies... candy or caramel apples, popcorn balls and cookies... some folks gave out pennies or cups of cider.

 

[JRWReich]

When i was your age Pluto was a planet!!!

 

[vip0802]

a "portable" computer weighed enough to give the tech geeks muscles. We had to use floppy disks. Macintosh was the ONLY good computer (ok it really still is *oh burn*)
PAGERS! People had PAGERS! Your princess was ALWAYS in another accursed castle, kids lined up at the one friend who had a gaming systems house and QUIETLY waited to take a turn. There was music on MTV, AND most of it was GOOD. Bevis and ButtHead were considered controversial. Bart Simpson was considered controversial. (OMG I'm getting old. *sigh*)

i love it!

i just wanted to add that my 15 year old cousin looked positively horrified when i showed her some old Beta/VHS tapes and tape rewinder i found. "you mean, you had to wait for it to rewind and fast forward?!"

 

[CartHeadMod]

when I was your age you couldn't run down to the corner store and buy your favorite eliquid......

(oops, how did my grandson's post get in here).........

 

[martha1014]

I could buy a coke at school for 6 cents. Gas was 25 cents and cigarettes were 20 cents. No cell phone, computer or even colored TV. If you were lucky enough to have a phone is was several people on the same line.
I was in high school before I ever saw a colored TV.

We didn't get indoor pluming until 1956. Everything we ate came from the garden and/or killed a pig or a deer. Never ate out at any restrauant until I was in grammer school.

When I was in high school we did have 8 track tapes. We used manual typewriters and wore dresses to school everday I was in high school when the beatles had jus started playing music.

People call these the good old days but this is not so.

 

[Zenfrogs]

Hopefully I will not get chastised by a mod but since it is a fact ..hopefully not


This was before my time but my Gramma always talked about her friend sitting at the country store drinking Coca-Cola every day because apparently the original formula had other addictive qualities! That's right families! Go out and get the kiddos a bottle of pop ... don't worry that it has ....... in it! It's good for them! lol


Also, If I remember right Jagermeister used to have opium in it.

 

[SheerLuckHolmes]

Hopefully I will not get chastised by a mod but since it is a fact ..hopefully not


This was before my time but my Gramma always talked about her friend sitting at the country store drinking Coca-Cola every day because apparently the original formula had other addictive qualities! That's right families! Go out and get the kiddos a bottle of pop ... don't worry that it has ....... in it! It's good for them! lol


Also, If I remember right Jagermeister used to have opium in it.

Coca/cola, before it was a soft drink it was a laxitive!

 

[aschmidy]

The first copy machines I used in H.S. were very large roller ink machines. The computers were punch card. After graduating I worked in typesetting and our computers had a paper tape that it punched holes in. When I started in advertising layout and design the computers were smaller, only about 3 foot square. No such thing as windows, everything was dos. If the machine had a memory to it, it was a square disk, about 5 inches square, but most didn't have memory (bummer in an electric storm, you'd lose everything you were working on)

 

[maryl]

'Mods' wore parkas and rode vespas and fought with the rockers.

 

[tazzmann]

For those that don't understand, Coke was made with the same chemical as it's name.

When I was young, we used to stay up all night connected to the local college via teletype to play zork. My first programming language was Octal. I used to go to the store a mile away to buy my mom a pack of smokes. A screw was a screw. When someone said "I'm down with that" it meant they had the flu. I remember parachute pants, break dancing, and waiting until 7:00pm to watch the NBC Primetime special which was something like "Grease" or "Charlie Brown's Christmas Special", not "How I killed your mom, dad, sister, cousin and 50 other people and was released from jail two days later" Connie Chung Special.

tazz

P.S. And my pet peave.... No ...... (etc.) ads or ladies private undergarment stuff advertised during the time MY KIDS ARE WATCHING TV!

 

[Mac]

The cable remote had a long wire on it and if you pressed the mtv, hbo, and nickelodeon buttons down all at once you would get a fuzzy visual of playboy (with no sound). Ahh those were the days..

 

[Charlie58]

Our first car I remember had a push button shifter.
I was the king of pulling in those fringe stations on the Television using lots of my moms aluminum foil strung from the rabbit ears.
We had a cable company in the downtown section but it was the same stations you could get with a good antenna with a tower. Their weather channel was a camera broadcasting a picture of the baromiter,humidity guage and thermometer set up to view in their window in front of the office.

 

[Rosa]

There weren't any answering machines, pagers or cell phones so people would go out and nobody knew where they were every moment of the day - your friends all hung out at the same places - if you wanted to hang out with your friends you went to the usual places until you found someone. If your car broke down you just had to wait for a good samaritan to pull over and help you or give you a ride, and if it was your day off you simply didn't answer the phone. Ahhhhh, a REAL day off.....

We had a party line too, but the neighbor we shared it with was pretty boring to listen too.

We had a black and white T.V. with three channels and you had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel, turns out it was easier that way... now I don't just have to get up, I also have to search the couch cushions and every table surface to find the damn remote too - and the cable box won't work without it - and the T.V. won't work without the cable box. Now it costs $100 a month and I still only watch three channels.

It wasn't embarrassing to wash your clothes in the sink and hang them out to dry, lots of people didn't have a washer and drier.

The popular candy in my group was candy cigarettes. Not the gum kind, the wint-O-green tasting ones with the powder in the wrapper that you blew out to make it look like smoke. We always had a pack of those rolled up in our sleeves.

Skates still had four wheels - one on each corner of the shoe, and kids went roller skating at the skate rink all the time.

Nobody I knew had cassette tapes, everybody listened to records. I knew a boy who had an 8 track though - I think it was a Rod Stewart album.

Mousse was a dessert, not something you put in your hair. Boys just got a hair cut - they never put crap in their hair and stood in front of the mirror primping.


I remember when velcro came out. That was even bigger than cassette tapes.

T.V. dinners came sealed in tin foil and took 35 minutes to bake in the oven. Coffee was Folgers or something like it (or instant), there was no Starbucks. Whipped cream was something you had to make in the kitchen.

Fireplaces took wood to make them work and you had to chop it yourself.

Even little kids were free to roam around alone. I walked alone to 3rd grade half a mile away. I took the city bus to first and second more than a mile away and had to walk home from the bus station half a mile away. I walked to the park, half a mile away, alone or with my friends when I was 7.

People had to do the dishes by hand.
Toothbrushes didn't need to be plugged in.
It was embarrassing to discover that people could see your bra through your shirt - now it's intentional.

There were "block houses"; houses of neighbors that you could turn to if (as a kid) you thought some creep was following you or something. The houses would have a sign in the window saying they were a block house and even though you didn't know who lived there, you could knock on their door and go in and they didn't try to pull any funny stuff.

Family vacations were taken by car, instead of airplane.

Clothes shopping was about twice a year, not every weekend.

"Fancy" toys had a pull string.

 

[Stevew443]

It seemed as if every week, the Beatles had a new song in the top 10.
Music was so good when I was a teenager, all these new bands kept coming out like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Iron Butterfly, Big Brother and the Holding Company.

 

[Happy Domino38]

My able to go out with just your friends for company. No 'play dates'. Eat breakfast, go play. Come home for lunch, go play. Have dinner, hit the bath and watch Happy Days on Tuesday nights.

 

[CartHeadMod]

my wife has a college degree in secondary education.....teaching typing and shorthand....talk about obsolescence....