<p>Another for shorthand. Mom said take shorthand. Dad said take physics. I did both. I’ve forgotten most of shorthand (physics too), but some words I can’t not write in shorthand.
I had an introduction to the slide rule in physics, but didn’t use it much. Calculators had just come out. I think my parents paid about $75 for one that would be well under $10 now.
Standard transmissions are still around, but how about a manual choke?(roommate’s car had one)
What about what we learned in school-- required home ec class included how to get in and out of car while wearing a skirt.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that these skills ARE obsolete, I’m just saying that fewer and fewer members of the younger generation are learning them:</p>
<p>making clothes from a pattern
cooking and baking from scratch
canning</p>
<p>Applying to college using a paper application.</p>
<p>For those of us with farm experience:
milking the cows and spraying milk directly into the mouths of the barn cats
baling hay (girls got to hook rather than stack)
whitewashing fences
plucking chickens
churning butter (by hand) and using wooden pound-sized butter molds
making applesauce with a colander and wooden dowel
studying the Sunday school lesson on Saturday night with Lawrence Welk on in the background
walking down a dirt road to the school bus shelter (little wooden things that were at the end of most people’s driveways back when driveways were a mile or so long)</p>
<p>Whether digging potatoes or shelling peas, the mantra was “a change of work is rest”. </p>
<p>Not a skill, but at school girls were required to kneel on a chair (which dipped) and a ruler was used to make sure your skirt was no more than two inches above the knee. That same ruler, or if the teacher were mean, a yard stick for extra whip effect was used to rap knuckles for kids who misbehaved (public school in the south).</p>
<p>
bethel, your noting that cooking from scratch is becoming obsolete reminds me of one of the most memorable Hints from Heloise columns I ever read. A reader wrote in to share her “discovery.” She found herself totally out of her favorite brand of canned gravy when she was just about ready to serve dinner to company. In desperation, she got out a little flour, mixed it in to the pan drippings from her roast, cooked this together a bit, added some beef stock and stirred a while until it all thickened. She reported, in amazement, that this self-discovered concoction tasted “just like real gravy.” Real gravy apparently being something that comes out of a can. :o</p>
<p>Crankstarting a car.</p>
<p>Seriously, we had an old Morris Minor 1600 (station wagon about half the size of a new Mini Cooper) and in the winter I had to crankstart it while my father made breakfast. I was ten or eleven at the time. It was a little tiny engine and actually quite easy to turn over. We sold it for $25 the next year when the floor disintegrated (quite literally–one moment it was there, the next you could see the ground) as my sister drove it over a bump.</p>
<p>jmmom, that was funny! </p>
<p>I think that part of the problem is that people have less time available for cooking - when you’ve put in a full day at work, who wants to start making a cake from scratch? Just look at the expansion of the “foods to go” section in the supermarket. Here in CT, there are thriving businesses with names like “Honey, I’m Home” and “What’s for Dinner?”(located at train stations - the commuter calls home, asking the spouse what pre-prepared gourmet dinner s/he should pick up on the way home.)</p>
<p>Knowing how to track down research sources in the library, instead of just using internet sources! Nothing like the book in your hands. Also actually looking at the dictionary to learn how to spell a word, instead of asking me how to spell it!</p>
<p>the lost art of changing the tv channel by actually getting up and turning a knob :)</p>
<p>“the lost art of changing the tv channel by actually getting up and turning a knob”… haha I remember that one well since I was the youngest in the house so I was the Official Channel Changer…even if I was 3 rooms away!</p>
<p>How about the lost art of making tea with loose tea, not teabags.</p>
<p>Hey! I make tea with loose tea all the time! I even prefer it!</p>
<p>laxmom-
Oh the abuse you took :)</p>
<p>ive never used tea bags…</p>
<p>or an automatic can opener</p>
<p>I don’t use an automatic can opener either. It takes up too much room on the counter, and I’m too lazy to plug it in. I use the hand-crank one every time (just opened 6 cans with it today to make chili!)</p>
<p>How about using a typewriter to type a paper…without correction tape…</p>
<p>springfieldmom-
I think somebody beat you to the typewriter thing in post #41.
Anybody still sift flour with one of those metal sifter things that you operated by squeezing the handle, making the metal arm whirl around in the bottom of the sifter? For that matter, does anybody still bake from scratch? 
Maybe we can share old family recipes. That’d be fun! I have a great family chocolate cake recipe. The other thing I still always make from scratch (no boxed mix) is chocolate pudding. It’s a family tradition, especially when the milk starts to get old. My s. refuses to touch milk past the date on the container, even if it seems perfectly fine. Time instead to turn it into chocolate pudding! Ditto with bananas-- they become banana bread when they weem a tad too ripe for anyone to consume.</p>
<p>Sitting in a hot bath while wearing brand-new “wheat jeans” to get them to shrink to fit. (Never worked very well for me!)</p>
<p>Pulling all my hair into a pony tail on the top of my head, using a knit head band instead of a rubber band (no crease) and then setting the hair in a ring of actual orange-juice cans.</p>
<p>Orange-juice-concentrate cans made of metal, not cardboard.</p>
<p>Setting hair on large rollers and waking up to find the cat playing with the one roller in the center of my forehead that I could never quite secure. (“swat, swat, swat”)</p>
<p>jym626-</p>
<p>yes, I still cook/bake from scratch. PM and we’ll share! (S had his first from-a-box mac and cheese just last year at a friend’s house)</p>
<p>Instead of using my old flour sifter, I now put the flour into a fine-mesh colander and jog it against my hand: much faster and easier on my fingers, with the same results!</p>
<p>what goes around comes around.</p>
<p>I have a batch of home-made yogurt fermenting right now!!! I used to make it all the time in college and have just recently come back to the process. Great yogurt!!!</p>
<p>There are certain things I make from scratch…biscuits, pound cake, pancakes, mac and cheese, and REAL mashed potatoes (secret ingredients, ya’ll!) and I cannot imagine having them any other way…</p>
<p>On the other hand, I have a friend who makes SYRUP (like, for pancakes!!) and that just seems crazy to me!!!</p>
<p>to each his or her own!!</p>
<p>edit: just realized, reading the list of things I make from “scratch”, you would think that I and my entire family are each appoximately the size of a hippo…and, thank goodness, we are not. Guess I don’t make all of the above that often!!!</p>