<p>When I was little I remember getting milk dropped off by the milk man. I was really little when it stopped but I remember and we were living in a small suburban neighborhood. </p>
<p>The first time I saw a cell phone. Man the thing was the size of a suitcase. Some guy on a boat had taken the cell phone onto the dock to make a call. I thought it was really strange. Why not just go use the pay phone?</p>
<p>Popcorn before the microwave was either the stove top with Jiffypop popcorn in the aluminum pan or we poured good old fashion oil in the bottom of a stock pot and used jarred popcorn. Did this with the kids recently and they were all surprised.</p>
<p>One year for Christmas, my parents gave each of us a spiral bound volume of their “memoirs.” They just wrote little vinettes from one paragraph to a couple of pages each. Even though the things they remebered were “only” in the 1930s and 40s, it was amazing how many things had changed.</p>
<p>I hope that we all do that at some point. Because yeah, the idea of waiting all year to see The Wizard of Oz or Charlie Brown Christmas on TV, surprises my kids. Even if we haven’t done anything that made us famous or “important” in the eyes of the greater world, our kids will be interested in how it was “way back” when we were kids.</p>
My father had one like that. It was so cumbersome! My H still uses it to make a point in class or meetings to show how far we have come so fast - how quickly technology is moving. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My S only likes it done on the stove. So I do it that way almost all the time. D and I will eat microwave popcorn, but he can’t stand it.</p>
<p>Remember when TAB was the only diet soda? Nobody liked it. But, I can picture my grandmother always had some in her basement. </p>
<p>And, people didn’t order “decaf” coffee. They ordered Sanka. The waitress brought little instant packets to the table with a carafe or cup of water. Kinda like serving tea.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget the toys that could kill/maim you, like the Easy-Bake Oven, sharp metal erector sets, Creepy Crawler injection-molded plastic machine (which they still make but in a form that no longer allows you to happily sear your fingers). Or, my favorite (non-harmful), “Color Magic Barbie” – dunk her head in a bowl of vinegar or watered baking soda and her hair would change from bright red to bright yellow (or vice versa, can’t remember which did which, acid vs. alkaline?). After doing this 50 times (a day), the hair became so stiff she looked a fright, but we didn’t care.</p>
<p>Our TV didn’t have a remote control…the youngest child in the room had to get up and change the channels. Of course, there were only five or six channels, anyway.</p>
<p>Drinking water from a hose,playing wiffleball for hours at a time, pitching quarters,walking 1/2 way across town as a pre-teen to meet with friends, wearing a sportcoat and tie to parochial grammar school…Turkey Shoots in November,the soda delivery guy who drove the streets selling cases of bottled soda, the knife sharpening man, UNORGANIZED sports with friends, zagnut bars, RC Cola, yoo-hoo, rock and roll on AM RADIO</p>
<p>Astro Boy (the original!), Black and White TV (my mom insisted on us using our imaginations on the color) but then we only had 3 channels. Stealing the knob off the TV was our form of holding the remote control.</p>
<p>I just started watching Mad Men on Netflix. OMG! Some of the memories that show brought back. For example, there was scene where a girl (6 yo, maybe) was pretending to be a space monster. Her costume? A plastic dry cleaner bag over her head. :eek: The mom barely noticed. All she said was, “[girls name], I better not find my fresh dry cleaning on the floor when I get upstairs.”</p>
<p>In a different scene, the kids are in the back seat of the car. They didn’t like what was on the radio. So, the boy climbed over the front seat, changed stations, and then returned to the back seat. Mom, the driver, didn’t flinch.</p>
<p>I remember our first Japanese transistor radio.
At a little bigger than a pack of cigarettes, it was the epitome of Kennedy-era consumer high-tech. A few Christmases later, one of my sisters gave another sister a Polaroid camera. Amazing! I thought she was sooo generous and extravagant for spending $20 on such a sophisticated gift.</p>
<p>Summers in Baltimore were sweltering without air conditioning. We did not get our first window unit until the late 60s. We often spent evenings outdoors, catching lightening bugs (aka “fireflies”), throwing ripe mulberries at each other, or playing kick-the-can.</p>
<p>None of the mothers in the neighborhood worked outside the home; single mothers were unheard of. We usually played outdoors all day long in the summer from about 8:30 AM until dinner, with no adult supervision except for a group lunch prepared by any available mother. Our parents did not seem to have a care about letting a gang of 8 year old boys wander all over the neighborhood and beyond to build dams in the creek, explore inside the local storm drain pipes, sled down “suicide hill” in the winter, or play doctor with (or on) the only girl in the neighborhood. There were no “soccer moms”, just moms, who left us almost entirely to our own devices.</p>
I tell my kids it was truely a survival of the fittest. lol</p>
<p>I just want to know what our moms did when we were gone? I have 9 year old twins that I can not even let ride their bikes on the road without me standing in the road. We have someone trying to abduct a kid every couple of months. My oldest was almost abducted while(she was 18) picking the twins up off the school bus. The police didn’t even want to take a report.</p>
<p>I wondered too and used to stay home to listen to what they were talking about. I got away with it if I was very very quiet. If I interrupted to ask how someone could be having a baby when they weren’t married, I got sent outside. They had their own mysterious world going on, for sure.</p>
<p>I remember visiting my grandparents, who didn’t know how to make popcorn like that. On cold evenings, we’d all sit around the fireplace with the lights off, in order to save electricity. My grandparents brought out a popcorn maker, which was a little wire basket affixed to the end of a long handle. They’d put in the popcorn kernels, and we kids would take turns shaking the basket over the coals in the fireplace, to move the kernels around to keep them from burning. Boy that popcorn was good. I remember the sound of the hissing coals and the shaking kernels so well. Honestly, though, I think the popcorn tasted so good because the family was all sitting together talking, and I got to eat the popcorn while sitting on my grandmother’s lap.</p>
<p>Oh, and our station wagon had wood on the side doors.</p>