MTBLover

Yep! None of that digital stuff for us, eh?

robtown

I remember 35 cent gas in high school. I remember making my father an ash tray in elementary school for art class. I remember side vent windows and floor vents in cars. I remember wooden skate boards with steel wheels.

BlazingPedals

Bubble gum for a penny, most candy bars were 2 cents, the big deluxe ones were a nickel. I filled my Honda 90 for 24.9 cents per gallon. How about when the oil embargo hit us hard, and gas went all the way up to 36 cents per gallon??? I worked for Burger King while going to college, and was aghast when the Double Whopper topped $1 and the sugar embargo made a large drink jump to 39 cents.

Artkansas 

I don't know about others, but my family were always high-tech nerds. We were using calculators as soon as we could multiply.



Both my brother and I were using computers in high school.



We were eating at McDonald's when I was 3. And I can remember when it said 1 million.



To me, music was always remixed and electronic.



And most futuristic about my life....

I taught myself to ride a bike at age 5 and kept on riding.

card

I remember watching Satchel Paige pitch for the Browns, Stan Musiel bat for the Cards and Ted Williams play for the Red Sox...all in person.
I shined shoes in 1952 for $.10 a pair--and had to keep the barber shop swept for free.
Drove a truck in 59 moving drilling rigs for $1.00/hr.
1st car--1949 Chevy--$200--1960
Mom used to give me $.25 to go to the Saturday matinee movies. $.15 to get in, $.05 for candy or popcorn and $.05 for a coke--and the cokes and candy were BIG. Double feature with cartoons and coming attractions.

Billy Bones

I remember when saying the "f" word anywhere near where your mother (or the Priest, teacher, or neighbor) could hear it was worth a near-death experience at the hands (or specifically at the boots) of a Battle of the Bulge veteran.

Little Darwin

I remember a lot of those things mentioned... And I don't think I saw a color TV until I was in the Marines, but I was always intrigued when the family sat to watch one of our regular shows on our B&W TV...

The announcer came on and boldly said, "The FBI... In Color"

It was probably in the 80's when I finally knew that the Wizard of Oz was partly in color, and partly in Black and White.

I also remember hand written report cards where the comments weren't just the instructor selecting from a list.

Remember when downtown areas were the hubs of activity, before everyone started shopping at malls?

I remember getting my first library card, and then walking the 2 miles to the library to check out books. It was nothing but a wallet sized slip of paper with a number and my name on it, but it was so cool waiting for the librarian to type it up.

stapfam

I remember when I could remember.

Most of it will be silly prices but 3 gallon of petrol for £1--About $2. Then prices started going up and thought that if it hit $1 per gallon- I would give up driving. That was in 1972/3. It is now around $11 a gallon.

And I would like to know when the penny chewie bar hit 15 pence. Gave a neighbours kid £5 to go to the shops to get two Icecreams last week and got no Change. Still reckon she made a profit out of me.

genec

Yeah and that radio today is supposed to be an "improvement."

My son wanted to buy me a new radio for my car... something that would play CDs... He has heard me rant so much he remembered to get one with knobs... so I could adjust the volume without pushing buttons. (thing still has too many buttons... and yeah, I keep a copy of the manual in the "glove box")

BTW grew up in Texas... 19 cent gas was pretty much the deal during "gas wars" until about the mid '70's... then there wasn't any gas. I was already a bike rider and I just knew we were going to one day a week of no driving... man I was looking forward to that... It was already fun riding past the long lines at the gas stations.

genec

My "car" is a used '91 4x4 Toyota truck... one of the "selling items" was the side vent windows... they have far outlasted the air conditioning. (and the radio... )

Of course the truck still works fine as I bike commuted for so many years. (I bought that truck in '93)

Those side vent widows are wonderful... wonder if they are available as an option in any car made today.

dlharrison

I am currently reading a book about the depression and in 1933, the price of a barrel of oil was $0.04.

DnvrFox

Here are some prices starting in 1947

byte_speed

Our 4 party line number was Franklin 75084. Hadn't thought of that it years.

CrankyFranky

I recall that there were two types of pushbutton adjusters.
The first (earlier) type has a small slotted set screw associated with each button sometimes under the button at an angle. You would tune manually, then push the button in and hold while adjusting the screw until you felt it touch a bar. You would then hit another button and then the one you just set to see if it tuned to your station just right - and if it didn't, you would fiddle with the adjuster screw just a bit until your station would tune correctly when you next pushed the button.
In the later type, you would tune to the station with the dial, and pull out on the button you wanted to set, and then you would hold the tuning dial while pushing the button in all the way.
At least that's how I remember it.

MTBLover

I never saw the first type, but the second I've known well! Was the first type more prevalent on European cars, I wonder?

Mariner Fan

It's kinda funny but I remember that all of us bought our own cars. We had part time jobs and we saved up to get our own rig. We treated them like gold no matter how old they were. If some one's car was broken down we were all over trying to figure out how to fix it.

Remember dragging Main street?

CrankyFranky

I remember riding my 20" bike in the summer up to one of the two corner stores (geez, remember them?), walking in, going over to a big chest immersion cooler and sticking my arm over the elbow into excruciatingly cold water, sometimes with big clear ice chunks in it, to fish out my preferred bottle of soda (usually birch beer). It would sometimes take a lot of fishing. Once landed, flipping the bottle cap on the opener, with the cap dropping into a small tin cap-catcher. Then, up to the register with a burning arm to pay my nickel. Aaahhhh! To be six and free!

Louis

I remember when the word "tooling" was commonly used as a verb. As in: "We went out tooling the drive-ins." We smoked "****" or "weeds", drank "3.2" beer and went looking for "broads (sorry ladies)" that would "put out". I grew up in the country but I wasn't a "rube", by any means.

CrankyFranky

I'm not aware of european car radios - I was American as Wonder bread. The first type was most common in desk radios, but also showed up in car radios. Remember, there were dozens of radio manufacturers.

Hey- remember when Wonder bread went from "building strong bodies six ways" on to "eight ways" and eventually to twelve ways?

Mariner Fan

Wonder bread made great grilled cheese sandwiches!

deraltekluge

I don't recall radios that used a screw to set the buttons. The first car my family owned that had a radio was a 1954 Ford, and its radio used the "pull, push" method.

The first telephone I remember had a 5-digit number, and was on a ten-party line. Amazingly, I still remember that number. I also still remember the 7-character number (2 letters, 5 numbers) that it was changed to.

Yen

Yep, I remember that too. My dad told me that if I wanted a car, I needed to buy it myself, so I saved all my cash from my first after-school job and paid $625.00 for a 7-year-old 1966 VW Beetle, one of the best cars I've ever owned. A few years ago I thanked him for insisting I buy my own car and he was pleased to hear that.

I remember.....
... counting out-of-state license plates while on our family vacations.
... the Helms bakery truck making the rounds through the neighborhood and selling fresh-baked goods lined up in wooden drawers at the back of the truck. I always got one of the long doughnuts with maple icing.
... playing "Mother May I?" and Hide-and-go-Seek with the other kids in the neighborhood.

Catweazle

I can remember when my Dad used to tell me about all his "I can remember when..." recollections of life before I was around.






He still does do that, of course, but nowadays I have to remind him that they happened when I was about 18 years old!

MTBLover

Fixed it for ya (although the grilled cheese were pretty good too).

MTBLover

How about this one? You'd go out to get the milk (in glass bottles then, and delivered by a milkman), and if it was really cold and you picked up the bottle by the neck, the bottle would crack around the base, you'd lift it up and be left with perfectly solid column of frozen milk.