<p>Car stuff-- (I may get the terms wrong–I’m not a mechanic, I just played one with my old clunkers):</p>
<p>Sticking a pencil in the air vent under the filter to keep it from sticking shut.
Wrapping aluminum foil around the fuel line to keep it from vapor locking.
Spraying WD40 on the spark plugs, etc to get it to start on misty mornings.</p>
<p>Typing:</p>
<p>Playing with the carriage to get it halfway between lines in order to float footnote numbers.
Popping in and out the ink and correction cartridges on my spiffy “Correctronic” typewriter.</p>
<p>What about whittling? Making something with a knife entirely by hand? Hard to believe a penknife was once considered an essential tool for a kid, and the occasional cut the price of learning how to use it.</p>
<p>I whittled a toy canoe once, in about 6th grade. It wasn’t very good, of course, but it was a fun activity.</p>
<p>DOS commands. Correction tape. Typing on a manual typewriter. Right-justifying type for a newspaper by typing everything twice, and counting the spaces that had to be inserted. Correcting carbon copies by scraping words off with a razor blade. Ignoring the “don’t touch that dial” admonission, and twirling the TV dial quickly from one station to another.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>how many pumps on the gas did the car take to start on a cold morning?</p></li>
<li><p>how many pumps to flood the car?</p></li>
<li><p>how did you start the car after it flooded (still useful, and the answer is, hold the accelerator to the floor and crank for about 30 seconds)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, in the memory book: The smell of gas outside on the first cold morning of the year as all the neighbors flooded their cars.</p>
<p>Greybeard, you don’t use DOS anymore? for some things, it is faster and easier (and it still does things Windows does not, such as deleting files with bad names…)</p>
<p>The C prompt seems so throughly hidden in Windows XP that I had thrown in the towel. Tell me where to find it, and I’d brush up on DOS commands.</p>
<p>Start-Run-cmd. i.e. get the run box up and type “cmd”. I use it enough that I have it on my office toobar.</p>
<p>The cmd prompt is the fastest way I know of resetting file attributes for a whole directory or directory tree, for example. wanna hide all the file in a directory? start dos. go to that directory, type “attrib +h <em>.</em>” . Try doing that with XP.</p>
<p>I’ve also had badly named files that came with zip files from asia. Couldn’t delete the files with windows, but got rid of them with no problem under dos.</p>
<p>An interesting note I’m sure a few parents would appreciate-
My family has been filled with scientists and engineers for the past few generations, so when I went off to college my dad gave me a slide rule and book of standard mathematical tables that has been used for generations in my family. He showed me how to use the slide rule and where the integrals were in the book, complete with the sage advice that I would still find particularly the tables in handy.
The slide rule I could survive without, but it’s really interesting how it’s a geek source of pride to know how to use one on campus- I could be a rich woman if I charged for all the lessons I’ve given in its use! As for the standard mathematical tables, pretty much everyone in my physics classes will show up before homework’s due to make use of the integrals. I mean we could use Mathematica in pretty much all the instances but which do you think is quicker, fiddling with the program or looking at a page?
I realize this is a pretty rare mix of things and part of the appeal is the archaicness of it all. But then you’re talking to a girl who is an experienced Ham radio operator and things like that, so I think it’s pretty cool. :)</p>
<p>PS- Forgot to add in that my sister is currently doing fieldwork in the Australian bush with no electricity in the area, so I’ve been reviving the art of snail mail correspondence with her. It’s quite fun, and I think she appreciates the fact that I can sneak little presents into the envelope.</p>
<p>making spit curls with pink tape stuck on your face and Dippity Do</p>
<p>being the 100th girl in the school to get a Sassoon Cut or the Dorothy Hammill</p>
<p>skipping a shampoo and just using Pssssssst…it looks clean right??</p>
<p>Rolling your hair on a can so it comes out perfectly straight with a stupid bump from the one bobby pin</p>
<p>Worrying about Split Ends</p>
<p>Using Silly Putty to lift something off the Funny Pages</p>
<p>Using the phrase Funny Pages</p>
<p>Losing the key to your skates (again) which are also rusty from the dew in the grass where you left them out overnight too often</p>
<p>Waxing the slide with Wax Paper from your mother when you felt like taking risks big time</p>
<p>pinning playing cards onto the wheels of your bike to make noise and Impress the gang with your flair and style</p>
<p>Inviting over the neighbors just to jump through the sprinkler</p>
<p>Reading the column in the local rag called Gossip! or The Tattler</p>
<p>Announcing that You Are Putting On a Show in your backyard and all the neighbors show up, buy tickets and bring lawn chairs to watch you sing a song with combs and wax paper or dance to the Player Piano music dressed as a hobo</p>
<p>Seeing the Wizard of Oz turn into Techicolor in Munchkin Land for the first time ever after years of only seeing it on BandW TV sets</p>
<p>Splicing cassette tapes</p>
<p>Having someone at the Movies in an Usher outfit with a flashlight come ask you to put out your cigarette</p>
<p>Slide rules: Pickett or K&E (“Slip-sticks”). “Rebels” used those funny circular ones.
Threading a reel-to-reel tape recorder
In summer school, I learned to type while the instructor played Lawrence Welk music from said tape recorder. Later developed an “unhealthy fixation on keyboard “feel”.
Going to a Lafayette Electronics store to buy a single 2K resistor for a project
Using DOS 1.0 and Edlin
Editing Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files (“Device=”)
Using the card catalogs at the library and the serendipitous joy upon discovering “stuff”.
Pushing a VW Bug down a street to get it started (on a cold, clear winter’s day in Ann Arbor, Mi).
Using a pen to prop open my car’s carburetor choke plate to keep it running on the coldest day in a decade (decade unspecified to protect the innocent)… Among my grad student friends, I had the only full size car (a Chevy Impala) that would start that day and had to pick up a bunch of people to get to a party at a friend’s apartment. I crammed four people into the back seat and laid a few more across their laps like cord wood. IMHO, one of the greatest grad student parties at UMich.</p>
<ul>
<li>Learning how to soak those little charcoal briquettes just right with that nasty lighter fuel in order to BBQ the burgers. The goal was to get the coals hot when you needed them hot, make the burgers not taste like the fuel, and toss in the match without catching anything on fire. Now we just have to turn on the gas and hit the ignition switch. Much more challenging the old way…</li>
</ul>
<p>French braiding – I struggled and finally learned to do french and fancy braiding when DDs were young. When they learned to do their own, I was out a job! </p>
<p>No longer need to set DDs hair on 100 green spike rollers. (Well, I am actually glad that skill is no longer needed!)</p>
<p>No need to sweet talk cute guys at HS to push start my VW or push it out of a snow bank! (now have 4wd)</p>
<p>No need to talk the head cheerleader into hiding in the trunk of the car at the drive-in movies to save money. (The best part was the cost to get in was $2/carload!! Her BF never let her know it was HIS idea.)</p>
<p>Waxing and buffing hardwood floors.</p>
<p>Diagramming sentences was fun. Slide rule was not.</p>
<p>Shoot~ I am remembering the big rollers and Dippity Do now; sleeping on those rollers the size of orange juice cans, and then blowdrying and then ironing my hair for an hour so it “would be straight”, only to frizz up with the first drop of humidity.</p>
<p>Now, all the fun is gone, since kids can have their hair professionally straightened for $800, and it lasts six months. They don’t even know the goo of Dippity Do.</p>
<p>being able to make the perfect flip (ala farrah) way back when with your curling iron</p>
<p>macreme</p>
<p>“distressing” our own levis’ breaking them in ourselves as opposed to spending an extra 70$ or more to have them pre-trashed for you, now that was an art form</p>