<p>Re post #10:</p>
<p>QUILL pens, Dad<em>of</em>3? I’m 64 years old, and I remember fountain pens, with a rubber bladder and a tiny lever that you pulled out when you filled the pen from an ink bottle, and then cartridge pens, and then bad ballpoints that skipped, before the good ballpoints were invented…but quill pens – like, made-from-a-feather quill pens??</p>
<p>I went to a 50th year Elementary School reunion the other day, I can see the time marks on everyone’s face. It is permanent and astounding.</p>
<p>My favorite no-longer-extant thing from the '60s: the space program. Remember when we really wanted to go to the Moon?</p>
<p>Middle school: afterschool basement singing with girlfriends. We did all the Supremes hits with full choreography and wigs. Usually I was “Flo.” (She don’t know, cause the boy she loves is a Romeo.)</p>
<p>High School: Straightened my frizzy hair, by iron, conk-chemicals, and rolling in orange juice cans. The next day, same thing. Ironed my friends’ hair, too. Full iron on ironing board.</p>
<p>College: Gave free haircuts to boys right before they went home for vacations. When their parents tried to pressure them to go to their old barber, the boys refused because they’d “just gotten a haircut.”</p>
<p>Forgot about jacks! I was darn good at those, right up to tensies, and pretty good at pick-up sticks too–a shame I was never able to parlay those skills into a high-paying career…</p>
<p>Speaking of early Barbie, let’s not forget the Barbie prom board game, and the dreaded date with Poindexter.</p>
<p>Just to say–love the fact that we DO NOT pump our own gas. Think about having a baby in the car and it is always raining and you need to get out, fill the car, and go into the building to pay–just what do you do? Leave the baby–pull him or her out? Whatever, if you live in Oregon you love not pumpimg your own gas. It rains. We get wet. While we are usually good humored about it one of our loves is that we do not pump our gas and we have NO! sales tax on anything at all. </p>
<p>Playing neighborhood games such as kick ball.
Smacking the dog with a rolled up newspaper for discipline.
Have every neighboring house filled with: 13, 7, 5, 6, kids and knowing the house with 2 meant that the parents did not love one another.</p>
<p>Was told it was it was jobs-saving measure that caused the law to be passed that gas HAS to be pumped for you by a paid attendant. When it snows or is inclement weather, it sure is nice that you have gas pumped, in addition to when you haev young kids & others in the car that might otherwise need to be brought in with you.</p>
<p>I was embarassed to play barbies because she looked so scary-odd. Was relieved to find out (only last year lol) that the girls about 10 years older than me thought barbies were horrendously ugly and odd compared to real baby dolls.</p>
<p>I used Campbell soup cans (3 cans above hair band pony tail atop the head) and hair slathered in dippedy do so that it peeled off the cans in the morning. Had to put a pillow under the cans above head to allow comfy sleep. Brushed the dried goo out in the morning. Hair was sleek and straight. I rebelled in high school and stopped straightening the frizzy hair. It was a bold move =/.</p>
<p>Loved playing jacks on the front porch and yes to pick up sticks! Now when I unload the utensil tray of the dishwasher I harken back to the pick up stick game. Often when life seems complex I use pick up sticks as a mental metaphor to pick it apart.</p>
<p>Space program - well, if as many retired Generals from Army, Navy, Air Force from all over the world claim, we have been talking to the people from other systems and reverse engineering craft to get all our groovy technology, then why would we need a kindergarten level space program. Probably many of today’s UFO’s are our own fancy technology. </p>
<p>The future is now! Now if we could only learn to stop fighting so we could be welcomed into the galaxy, lol. Now that we have the key to the cabinet with the matches (nuclear science) perhaps we are really scaring the neighbors. </p>
<p>But I digress…</p>
<p>Gas pumping–yes, during bad weather it would be nice not to have to get out of the car, but, all of the pumps here take credit/debit cards so you never have to go inside to pay.</p>
<p>As for the original list-I think the “change” happened in about 1960 for most of those things.</p>
<p>Oregon101 (and others): the most wonderful thing about Oregon’s requiring that an attendant pumps the gas: your hands don’t smell like gasoline! And strangely, our gas costs less than gas just over the line in Washington state and a LOT less than gas in California, so somehow, paying an attendant doesn’t translate into higher prices. Perhaps that’s because every single gas station I’ve ever been in has an attendant–but usually all they do is sit in a bullet-proof enclosure and do nothing.</p>
<p>My car has just barely enough range to get to Seattle and back from my house. I so hate pumping my own gas that I have been known to top up just before crossing the border to Washington and then take the first gas-pump exit when I cross back over (which means the little light on the dash says I have 8 miles to empty!).</p>
<p>I used to change my own oil and tune my own car engine. Gapped the spark blugs, set the timing…the old guy next door changed his own oil and buried the used oil in the back yard.</p>
<p>Anyone used to eat Sarah Lee pound cake (frozen)? Mmmm.</p>
<p>Is a Twinkie from 50 years ago still edible?</p>
<p>hugcheck, I didn’t eat Sara Lee pound cake still frozen, but I did eat Sara Lee cheesecake still frozen.</p>
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</p>
<p>In driver training, they taught new drivers techniques to handle what were then common mechanical failures:</p>
<ul>
<li>How to handle a stuck accelerator (apparently, something that people driving Toyotas with incorrect floor mats did not know).</li>
<li>How to handle a brake failure.</li>
<li>How to handle the hood latch failing and the hood flying up and blocking your view.</li>
<li>How to handle a tire failure and then install the spare tire after stopping safely.</li>
</ul>
<p>At home, constantly fetching cigarettes, tobacco pipes, matches and ashtrays for every adult in my family. Smoking outdoors was for “hobos and bums.”</p>
<p>Yes, I was told when I joined a sorority in college that “good girls” didn’t smoke on the street. Apparently that was a sign of a whore. Literally.</p>
<p>On the pumping of gas - </p>
<p>I get that some people like to have someone else do it and that’s fine but some other people (like me) would rather do it themselves and that should be fine as well. If there were no law against pumping your own gas the stations would meet supply and demand with perhaps some offering to pump for the customer, some not offering it, and some in between (remember the self-serve/full-serve islands?). Regardless of the cost of gas at the station it’s clearly more expensive for the station to pump it so there’s no way that the cost isn’t tacked onto the price of the gas. A lot of the variance in gas prices has to do with state tax on gas so if a state has a lower tax then it’ll have lower prices but the cost would be even lower if people pumped it themselves.</p>
<p>Supply and demand should make the decision - not government mandates.</p>
<p>Just to reinforce my point on gas prices and where the lower prices are really coming from - </p>
<p>Oregon - 48.4 cents
California - 64.5 cents</p>
<p>New Jersey - 32.9 cents
New York - 63.4 cents</p>
<p>The above includes the 18.4 cents fed tax and is as of 2009 according to wiki.</p>
<p>Okay - sorry for taking this off topic but it relates in the way gas prices have changed over the years and one of the factors is taxation. I don’t know what the percentage of tax was back when gas was 23 cents/gal.</p>
<p>So - remember S&H green stamps and Gold Bond stamps at gas stations? I think I collected some books of those but never traded them in for anything.</p>
<p>what about grand union blue stamps? I DID trade that in for some thing, but that is waste of time since the item looks good on paper but not good when I get it. Cannot recall what it was.</p>
<p>I can remember looking at the Sears catalog way back when you could order a donkey (!) or many different breeds of dog.</p>