<p>I remember when seat belts were optional in cars–and my dad was a total weirdo because he not only had them installed immediately, but he refused to start the car until my sister and I had put ours on in the BACK SEAT.</p>
<p>dg, your dad and mine were kindred spirits. Before we took a road trip to Florida in 1962, my dad installed seat belts in our '57 Chevy. Good thing, too, because they saved us from injury in a bad car accident on the way home.</p>
<p>When I was born, Eisenhower was still a first-term president, 16-year-old John McCain had just finished his junior year of high school, 6-year-old George W. Bush had just finished first grade, 5-year-old Hillary Rodham had just finished kindergarten, and Barack Obama’s parents wouldn‘t meet for another seven years. Mao Zedong had led The People’s Republic of China for less than four years, Georgy Malenkov had led the Soviet Union for about three months, and Queen Elizabeth II had recently been coronated.</p>
<p>People of my parents’ generation usually got married right out of high school, bought a house in town, and worked and saved money for a few years before starting a family. Fathers were able to support their families on one income (two incomes, if necessary) and mothers stayed home. There were no “latchkey” children, and so, there was no need for before/after-school programs. Families lived within their means (there were no credit cards and credit card debt), and owned just one car, driven by the man of the household. (Women who drove were considered brazen hussies!) </p>
<p>During my early childhood, parents kept their children indoors during “polio season,” and often sent their children to “measles parties” so that entire classrooms of children would get sick at the same time (usually during an upcoming school vacation). Doctors made middle-of-the-night and weekend “house calls.” Prophylactic tonsillectomy was considered “routine” childhood surgery. Fluoridated public drinking water was a contentious issue thought by many to be a sinister “Communist plot.”</p>
<p>Dairy products (such as milk and cream, which came in glass bottles) and fresh baked goods were delivered directly to households by neighborhood-route truck drivers. People bought meat, fish, and fresh produce from specialty shops rather than from grocery stores. Cakes, pies, and cookies were baked “from scratch.” Frozen foods were a recent invention, and the Swanson TV Dinner had just hit the market. There were only a handful of McDonalds restaurants (most on the West Coast) with a nine-item menu featuring a fifteen-cent hamburger. There were fewer than 2,000 Dairy Queen outlets; a vanilla cone cost a dime, and chocolate cones were served only during the summer. </p>
<p>A First Class postage stamp cost three cents, and mail was delivered twice a day; there were no zip codes. Household telephones shared a “party line,” and local telephone exchanges began with letters (not numbers); there were no area codes. People still wrote letters rather than make expensive and hard-to-hear long-distance phone calls. Telegrams were sent to communicate urgent matters. </p>
<p>Television sets had picture tubes, dials, and were topped by a “rabbit ear” antenna. Households received up to three stations. The typical broadcast day began with a morning “test pattern” and ended before midnight. All shows were black and white, and were often broadcast live. Many daytime shows (such as soap operas) were only fifteen minutes long. Desilu was still producing first-run I Love Lucy episodes. Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs were the Kings of Late Night (followed by Jack Paar in 1957 and Johnny Carson in 1962). Broadcast Standards & Practices prohibited programming containing graphic violence, sex, and profanity.</p>
<p>Movie tickets cost a quarter (or less) for a double feature preceded by a newsreel and cartoons. Saturday matinees catered to children and were even less expensive. Concessions included penny candy (which actually cost a penny), freshly-popped popcorn coated with real butter, and soft drinks mixed from richly flavored syrup and carbonated water. Drive-ins were being built nationwide and were becoming wildly popular. (Almost all of those drive-ins are now long-gone.)</p>
<p>My fondest “old” memories are of my elementary school. My friends and I walked to and from our neighborhood school. We had time to play together after school before dinner, and time to play again after dinner. Our school day was well-organized. We were taught all subjects daily, and we had art, music, and gym classes several times a week. We had morning and afternoon “milk breaks,” and our standard school lunch was delicious and filling. We learned a lot and performed well, even though homework was unheard of prior to fourth grade. Students and teachers (whose first names were kept a state secret) behaved themselves. Parents did their jobs, too. There was no “character education” and no “zero tolerance” policies. Second only to the freedom of the outdoors, school was my favorite place to be. I wish my daughter and others of her generation could have had that experience.</p>
<p>The Howdy Doody show…What’s My Line? My first job was minimun wage…65 CENTS an hour…Seeing Groucho Marx and Jimmy Stewart just walking down the street without photographers…no air conditioning…no computers…I remember the carphone. My first McDonalds…was 17 cents…and my cousin took me because my parents thought it had to be unhealthy. I guess they were right.</p>
<p>Hamburger, fries, soda at the local luncheonette- $.50
Babysitting- $.25/hr ($.50 after midnight)
girlscout cookies- $.40/a box . My great aunt bought 6 boxes. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven</p>
<p>previous thread on this topic (a fun read) <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/193692-you-know-you-old-when-11.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/193692-you-know-you-old-when-11.html</a></p>
<p>If you lived in Los Angeles…Helm’s Bakery Trucks, kleig lights at night when there were movie premieres. POP…And in general: the Lloyd Thaxton Show, Dippity Doo, the allure of New York city and Broadway shows…folk songs…and yes…hearing the John Kennedy was shot…and then Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King</p>
<p>My childhood was very happy, like Timecruncher’s but I’m not sure we should go back even if it were possible. Don’t forget the bad parts.
I remember seeing gas stations with restrooms for Men, Women and a third for Colored (I imagined a beautiful rainbow colored room…)<br>
My father worked for the defense industry and many of his co-workers built bomb shelters in their yards. We had air-raid drills once a month at school. My uncle and hunderds of other military men were used as Guinea Pigs in above ground atomic tests.<br>
The polio vacine arrived before I started school but there were still several kids in my grade who wore leg braces and walked with canes. And they were the lucky ones.<br>
The majority of men smoked and a large minority of the women did, too. Good hostesses had a pretty set on their coffee table consisting of an ashtray, a lighter and a covered box full of cigarettes. If you didn’t like the smell you didn’t say so - how anti-social!
Cities sprayed DDT every week during mosquito season. Most people didn’t think to make the kids come inside.</p>
<p>Spending depressing New Year’s Eves growing up, watching Guy Lombardo’s band with my joyfully inebriated parents.</p>
<p>I remember filling up my '72 Vega for 3 bucks. Man, those were the days…lol</p>
<p>How about going to a first-run movie for 50 cents? And there was no such thing as a “multi-plex” theater. … Or having milk delivered to your doorstep? … Or watching Felix the Cat cartoons after school, with John F. Kennedy for President commercials. (OK, I was really young then!)</p>
<p>dragonmom:</p>
<p>I remember getting my polio vacination. The doctor’s office was yellow (we lived in New York then) and my mother was crying…with joy because I wouldn’t get polio. I was very young…18 months old…and not happy…but my mother was thrilled.</p>
<p>To dragonmom: My childhood was anything but “very happy.” (That’s the reason the outdoors was my favorite place to be, school was my second favorite place to be, and my childhood friends–not my parents–were my preferred companions.) However, I considered this to be a “happy memories” thread, so I chose to focus on the positive. Those who read my posts will learn that sometimes I communicate straightforwardly, and other times I communicate subtly. I am as likely to communicate as much–if not more–by what I don’t say than by what I do say. With regard to the reality of my childhood: I can’t force myself to watch the film Pleasantville because it hits too close to home–an emotionally and physically abusive home located in a hate-filled and repressive hometown I escaped thirty-seven years ago, have involuntarily returned to visit only a handful of times, and haven’t laid eyes on in over thirty years. I’m glad you had a happy childhood, dragonmom, but I didn’t; regardless, nostalgia is fun, and so, I took advantage of the opportunity to share some genuinely “warm and fuzzy” memories.</p>
<p>In our neighborhood kids purposely ran through the antimosquito fog- it’s a wonder we survived without nasty sequelae. Up here we did not have the same racial segregation, with separate restrooms et al. Anyone remember the gender discrimination? Boys had all the athletic teams, a few girls were cheerleaders. My younger brother could have a paper route at 12, girls had to be 16, my mom drove me around to illegally deliver his papers one summer while he was at Boy Scout camp, of course I resented it).</p>
<p>My mom was a nurse in a polio ward, and she had an amazing picture that I have never forgotten. It was from a newspaper article, and it was my mom brushing the hair of a young girl in an iron lung. As a child, I used to wonder what it must have been like for that girl. I mentioned it to my kids once, and they knew absolutely nothing about the polio outbreak & the devastation it caused so many families. On the one hand, I am glad that polio has been eradicated & my kids can’t even relate. On the other hand, am I really so old that I can tell the “I remember when” stories?! I won’t mention my friend’s mom who had to stay at a sanatorium when she had tb. I must be ancient.</p>
<p>I remember watching “Wonderama” when we came to so. Cal to grandma’s house…ohhh the toys they were giving away on that show!!! I remember the first time Marsha got hit in the nose with the football…“Oh, MY NOSE!”…Beta or VHS??? Cokes (in a bottle) from the vending machine were 25 cents. My grandmother collected all of Noah’s pairs of animals when she filled up at the gas station, not to mention the dolls from around the world. What will our kids think is cool???</p>
<p>1970: 5 hamburgers and a Coke for 75 cents at the Crystal across the street from UF.</p>
<p>Here’s another “I’m really old” recollection:</p>
<p>When I was young, people (especially children) were excited about the Space Age. Back then, a lot of parents broke the rules (about bedtime and school attendance) so that their children could see man-made space objects pass overhead and watch televised space launches take place.</p>
<p>When I was four years old, the local news had reported that Sputnik would be passing directly over my region and could be seen from the ground. I remember standing (and shivering–I lived Up North, and it was October) in the backyard with my mother and paternal grandmother hoping to get a look at Sputnik through my father’s big, heavy binoculars. The three of us were sure we saw Sputnik. (I didn’t realize until years later that what we saw probably wasn’t Sputnik itself, but the reflective-paneled booster rocket orbiting along with it.) I was just one of a lot of little children allowed to stay up past bedtime so that we could see Sputnik. For me, that was the first of many nights standing in the backyard looking up at the sky through (soon after Sputnik, my very own child-size) binoculars.</p>
<p>As the Space Age continued, schools gradually realized that many parents (and my mother–otherwise a stickler for school attendance–was among them) were allowing their children to stay home “sick” on the day of a televised space launch. My elementary school responded by notifying parents that students would be allowed to watch launches at school. (That was the end of Space Flu for me!) From then on, whenever there was a launch, all classes would report to the auditorium about a half-hour before lift-off. A portable television on a rolling cart was placed at the front of the auditorium just below the stage. During that half hour, the room was absolutely silent, and at lift-off, everybody clapped and cheered.</p>
<p>I caught the Space Bug at an early age, and I still have it. My daughter caught it from me, and now she and I watch launches together on the Internet. She thinks it’s “cool” that she has a parent old enough to have seen Sputnik, the first Moon landing, the first Space Shuttle launch, and other Space Age events. She also thinks it’s “cool” that after all these years, I still want to go to Florida someday and see a launch in person. (Being present for a launch is my only “must do before I die” goal.)</p>
<p>I remember my first McDonald’s hamburger: 19 cents! It was probably a super-sale of some type because all 8 of us kids got to go! WooHoo! big party!</p>
<p>I remember going to the school picnic at an amusement park and buying tickets to ride the rides, at 5 cents per ticket. My sister dropped hers in the lake and wasted a whole dollar’s worth of tickets. </p>
<p>We had many cars with no seat belts… does anyone else remember that?</p>
<p>I remember on Sunday morning the only thing on tv was ZOOM and Davie and Goliath…I hated both of those shows!</p>
<p>Also remember MTV when it was only videos and how my family was the 1st to get cable (I was 16)</p>
<p>I felt really old Sat. night when DS went to the prom, when he came down stairs and asked for help with cufflings I broke down sobbing…all I could see in front of me was this little boy who 16 yrs ago, when he was 2 he would have already been bathed and in his night shirt (he always wore DH’s tees) picking out the books he wanted to read! </p>
<p>Bullet than informed me that he was going to make sure I had a couple of glasses of wine in me b4 the grad, to calm my nerves, and I reminded him that grad is at 9 am…he said fine, have a shot than!</p>
<p>Everyone pray for me b/c on the 8th I will be a chocolate mess!</p>