<p>Reminiscing about this with DH as we were waiting for DD to contact us (via e-mail, Skype or cell phone) after arriving safely to start her semester abroad;
calling parents/loved ones COLLECT and they would not accept the charges–so you would not actually speak to them, but they would know you had arrived safely! DH and I spent 3 years in a long-distance relationship–rare phone calls and visits–mostly hand-written letters–many saved to this day.</p>
<p>My first answering machine yielded this story: My grandmother calling me, getting recorded message and thinking it was me. The machine recorded her saying, “Morris, I can hear her talking but she won’t answer me.” It made me cry when I returned to think my nanny thought I ignored her. Job interview (still work there – 23 years ago) on my machine.</p>
<p>Kids were shocked when I told them this story. They kept saying, but before you had the answering machine, what if you weren’t home?</p>
<p>D thought garter belts of all kinds barbaric. They were awful.</p>
<p>Call Waiting. </p>
<p>I begged my parents to get this. My mom worked on the phone for hours on end doing Gallup polls. Nobody could ever get thru to me.</p>
<p>The final straw came when someone said to me in school one day, “I tried to get ahold of you last night, I had an extra ticket to the Flyer’s (hockey team) playoff game”. My CB handle (okay there’s another one) was Flyer Freak.</p>
<p>mythmom</p>
<p>It may be a gender thing. I believe there are 18 year old males who can imagine garter belts. IMOP</p>
<p>Party lines. Dial phones with cords.</p>
<p>I know they still sell “vintage” candies, but how many parents would think it was “cute” for their six year olds to pretend they are smoking? :p</p>
<p>Some bands also make new releases available on vinyl, Radiohead, Neil Young and <B Pearl Jam et.al. ( I already have my order of Into the Wild in- can’t figure out why it costs $11.00 to send it by USPS, 5 miles though).</p>
<p>Did some one already say remote controls? I even have a remote for my laptop.</p>
<p>I remember when I was 13 & I took a short cooking class at the local public utility featuring microwaves. That was pretty unusual.
( not that you would * want* to cook eggs in a microwave- which is what we did)</p>
<p>Card catalogs at the library.
Libraries are even switching from the Dewey decimal system to the one used by bookstores</p>
<p>windows that you have to crank to open.</p>
<p>Wearing slips and gloves and hats to church.</p>
<p>Church. ;)</p>
<p>
I have to agree with her there!</p>
<p>How about things that we couldn’t conceive of? My mother told me that, in Europe, they had to clean wounds, even small ones, and use cotton cloth and wrap them with gauze, around the chest, arm, hand, leg, whatever. It took a lot of cloth, and a lot of washing of bloody bandages. Can you imagine what it felt like when they got their first Band-aids?</p>
<p>Flat tops and butch wax</p>
<p>Remember those 8-track cartridge music tapes that were around sometime between phonograph records and cassette tapes?</p>
<p>“windows that you have to crank to open.”</p>
<p>Wait a minute. We just had these put in…</p>
<p>well I was mostly thinking of cars 
my window on the passenger side won’t open ( actually it wouldn’t shut after I rolled it down to clear the dew off & we had to take off the door panel, prop the glass up & stick the door panel back on because we were leaving for a trip the next day) we still haven’t had it fixed- but it is on the list.</p>
<p>Green stamps: filling the books and going to the special store to redeem them.</p>
<p>and it seemed as if everyone smoked cigarettes</p>
<p>girls wearing shorts under their skirts on gym day</p>
<p>taking the wagon and searching for glass bottles to redeem at the store…2cents for the small bottles and a nickle for the bigger ones ( a real prize). Spent all the $$ on candy. 2 tootsie rolls for a penny and a nickle for the big ones.</p>
<p>And checking our answers by casting out nines. I vividly remember the first calculator my Dad got - I was in high school. Only one person in my calculus class owned a calculator. And in chemistry we used slide rules. It makes me feel very old!</p>
<p>added: Dh’s car still has crank windows. We’re tightwads.</p>
<p>This was from my childhood. My bro was sent to Mom’s best friend to borrow potatoes for dinner. Only bro’s best friend home. He came back with: box of instant mashed potatoes and bag of frozen french fries. Kid had never seen a potato (in 1960 or thereabouts.)</p>
<p>My kids: Those insulated metal boxes milk was left in. Hey, source of all those milkman jokes. Now when a dad quips that his kid was sired by the milkman it must sound like some god awful horror movie.</p>
<p>How about little white cotton gloves that you wore whenever you got dressed up?</p>
<p>How about the fact that leaving the house to go most anywhere was considered a reson to get dressed up? I used to “dress” to fly back to Chicago for college. (This was 1966-ish.)</p>
<p>Heh heh – speaking of the '60s, how about thick, dark, black eyeliner that extended from the insider corner near your nose all the way to your scalp, so that you looked like we imagine Cleopatra did?</p>
<p>How about hair teased to the ceiling? </p>
<p>How about the home hair dryers with the plastic bonnet, that one needed to sit in for an hour or two to dry one’s hair in the big big rollers?</p>
<p>I’ve been reading women’s magazines from the World War II years (reading old magazines is a hobby of mine) and it’s amazing to me how different our societies are. Back then, partly due to rationing, partly due to just having come out of the Depression, people saved and re-used everything. There are articles about how to unravel children’s sweaters, wash the wool so it’s straight, and re-knit it. There are articles about how to re-make your husband’s worn-out suit into a coat or suit for you. There are articles about how to take dresses for a little girl – under age 3 – and expand them size-wise so they will fit the child up until age 6 or so. </p>
<p>I am in awe of the frugality and imagination they used.</p>
<p>My daughter drives my 10-year-old Toyota Corolla. It has crank windows, too.</p>
<p>Gosh these things bring back memories. I’m sure I haven’t worn a slip in a long while.</p>
<p>And I worked all summer for enough to buy the electric typewriter I took to college.</p>
<p>stride rite shoes. </p>
<p>It was an event getting your new shoes for the school year. We must have had amazing feet that only grew once a year back then…</p>
<p>I still have ‘crank windows’ in my 1991 Civic.</p>
<p>OK, so now everyone on CC will know I’m old! Not only did I play “girls’ rules” in HS basketball (see separate thread about this), but almost every one of the “remember whens” above, I experienced! </p>
<p>What about gym uniforms for girls? Ours were like short sleeve, shirt waist dresses w/ shorts/bloomers underneath. And these:
- Listening to Red Sox games on the radio
- Getting a letter from home every week or so in college – if it was a long distance call (that came in to the hall phone in the dorm), it was usually bad news because LD calls were expensive!
- no AP courses in HS
- no prom in HS – it was our “rebellion” against the previous establishment.
- a lower drinking age!
- practically no snow days, ever – and I grew up in western MA. We had to have about 2 feet of snow to get off from school. So, yes, I walked a great distance through tons of snow to get to school – AND I wore a dress or skirt since girls couldn’t wear pants until my senior year in HS!
- carrying a huge pile of books in my arms since only hikers had a backpack, but even they didn’t use them for books.</p>
<p>Gasoline under $0.25 a gallon. EVERYTHING closed on Christmas and Easter.</p>
<p>I thought this thread would address timeless things, like why someone would want to go to bed early or stay at home on a Saturday night.</p>
<p>transistor radios</p>
<p>Sony walkman came out shortly after I graduated. I remember sitting by the stereo and taping the songs I wanted on 120 minute cassettes. I couldn’t afford to buy the music. My son thinks it’s criminal not to be able to carry entire catalog of recorded music around with you at all times.</p>
<p>I was thrilled to have 2 hours worth.</p>