What do you remember from years ago? (toddler, older, students)
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Another thread made me think of all the things we no longer have, here are just a few. What can you add?
I remember
getting a coffee cup when you filled up with gas and nobody pumped their own gas
they cleaned your windshield, checked oil and tires when getting gas
Banks offered you a Coffee Pot or other small appliance when you opened an account
Green and Gold Stamps
buying laundry detergent and getting wheat dishes with it and kitchen towels
bag boys took your groceries to the car for you
And I remember going in stores when they had more than one checker working and we didn't have to wait in these long lines like today. They opened more if they needed to.
I remember good customer service
I remember when clothes, towels, carpet, hosiery etc.. were made in America and there were lots of plants/mills that made them all.
Blue Chip Stamps.
Lunch counters in bus stations (sort of mini-diners)
45 records
home movies
mom sewing and ironing
clotheslines
playing outside with the kids until dark
collecting polly wogs
hula hoops
piggy banks
all homemade food
piano lessons
helping dad wash the car
polishing shoes every week
So, wax philosophical about the past? Uh, hardly, in my opinion. And we still have a very long way to go.
People are recalling experiences that meant something to them, positive or negative. They're recounting their own pasts - and ultimately, that's all we have as we age: the stories that have made us who we are. The young don't want to hear our stories; one would think a retirement forum would be a safe place to share them with the dwindling few who do remember. Apparently not -- we're supposed to shut up and take our stories and remembrances with us to the grave.
For instance, it's amazingly wonderful to have cell phones. I can remember fearing breaking down in some scary place with no way to call anyone for help. Remember those days? Remember the fear of having your car break down in a scary area in the middle of the night? Were you a woman alone? Did you have quarters to make a phone call? Was there a public telephone close by? ...
I could go on and on, about other things that have made life easier for women, at minimum, including adhesive sanitary napkins, options for birth control, just so many, many things. ...
Try to remember what it was like to research anything back then, too, using the dewy decimal system, as opposed to Google.
OMG did that bring back some unpleasant memories. My favorite place in school was the library but I had a deep and abiding hatred of the Dewey decimal system, LOL.
I honestly do think that if today's research tools had been around in the 1960s I'd have realized that I am a research geek by nature and would have actively sought a career in that field. Unfortunately I was pigeonholed into the typical default "career" for any Baby Boomer female who wasn't intending to be either a nurse or a teacher: a clerk-typist. Never could get the hang of shorthand, it was all Greek to me, so I didn't even qualify to be a "secretary."
And yes absolutely I do not miss the no-phone car-worries. Our part of the country is very car oriented and if you didn't drive, your 'world' became very limited. It is still that way in terms of being able to get from Point A to Point B, but online shopping has solved many problems that used to exist for car-less people.
Athough I can wax nostalgic about certain things I certainly would NOT want to go back to any of the decades I lived through, unless it would be to go back with full knowledge of what the future held so that I could make different personal decisions, LOL. There is one guy in particular whom I would kick to the curb at first meeting under those circumstances.
And I remember going in stores when they had more than one checker working and we didn't have to wait in these long lines like today. They opened more if they needed to.
This is still true at my local store. Bag boys take your groceries out if you want them to (but I do it myself) and there are always several checkout lines open and they open more if the lines get long and also call people with small orders up to the customer service desk to check out if it's busy.
I remember some of the other things you mention, mostly S&H green stamps that my mom collected. I remember jelly being in jars that became drinking glasses after they jelly was gone.
I, and all my neighbors, had propane refrigerators when we lived off the grid in No. Idaho. My family lived off the grid for a while when I was in high school and Dad converted an electric fridge to propane. They have been around for a long time.
Getting our first private phone line. (Dad got tired of the neighbor lady always being on the party line when he wanted to use it.)
Supermarkets where the checkers prided themselves on knowing the price of every item in the store.
Taking a Coach class flight from Cincinnati to NYC for a job interview in 1978 and having the flight attendant bring me a hot breakfast including freshly-cooked eggs.
Teaching myself to use a typewriter.
Sitting in a seat at the shoe store while they brought me shoes to try on. (I know high-end stores still do this but I was a middle-class kid in a small town in Ohio.)
It's interesting how good customer service, once available to the middle class, is now reserved for the affluent.
The Fuller Brush man coming door to door two or three times a year.
The unique sound of the knife-sharpening guy's truck every couple of months. It was like a cross between the ice cream truck's bell and a foghorn, LOL. Couldn't miss hearing it unless you were deaf!
There was a bakery called Dugans that had a delivery truck that made once-weekly rounds with breads, rolls, cakes and cupcakes. (In our area he came on Mondays, I think.) If you put a sign with a letter D in your window he'd stop and come to the door, otherwise you'd just listen for the horn/bell and come out and flag him down, just like the ice cream truck, and buy what you wanted. Their crumb cake and danishes were the best! I was allergic to wheat as a child but every so often I'd sneak some of it and "pay" for it with a horrible rash afterwards ... but it was worth it, LOL
The abundance of door-to-door salesmen, is something I don't miss.
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What do I remember from years ago?
