Nostalgia..What do you remember


B

bwells

Member
I have seen a lot of posts that bring back memories and thought this maybe a good place to put them all in line. How far back can you remember?

I remember S&H Green Stamps as well as Blue Chip stamps. Can't recall if green stamps had the larger size like Blue chip did. I think 1 large Blue chip was equal to 5 maybe ten smaller stamps.

I remember the high-low beam switch was located on the floor to the left and you stomped it to change the headlights.
 
I remember riding home from the hospital in the back seat of a 55 chevy, the floor was rusted out (it was 1961), I could see the pavement zoom by. They use a lot of salt in Minnesota.

We were bringing my mom and newborn baby brother home from the hospital.

Of course, there was the party line telephone. Our telephone number started with two letters. Also, being very concerned about how long we were on the phone because "long distance" was quite expensive.
 
Ah yes, party lines. I remember you would pick up the phone and there was someone talking on it. In 81-83 the PUC required phone companies to eliminate the party line service in order to more enhance the 911 service, it was called IRS- improved rural service and was a major undertaking for the phone companies as the sets needed to be rewired or replaced as well as new wire strung to houses. The old timers told me there was a thing called farmer lines, where the phone company would bring dial tone to a box and the farmers would string their own wire down fence posts or whatever to as many people that were interested in it. All the phones would ring at the same time and the first to answer would have to relay the message to the person that was called. What a mess I bet that was!



I remember my dad installing turn signals in a 1955 Chevy truck because it didn't have them. He called them blinkers and I think he installed seatbelts as well, none of those either.
 
Wow I think this is going to be a hot thread.OK I remember Bordens bottled milk me and my sister and brother would fight over got to drink the cream on top,I remember Mello roll ice cream,penny candy, 2 cent newspapers, 5 cent bags of potato chips, envelopes were 2 for a penny,comic books were 5 cents, the junk man with his horse and wagan,my fathers 1948 Buick oh yes and trolly cars and then electric buses. I could go on and on.
 
I forgot about the milkman. My mom would put the list on the fridge and the milkman would walk in the back door, grab the list and bring back whatever she had check. My brother would always check the chocolate milk box. This all happened before six AM. Far cry from today's world.
How about the donut man, Helm's I think, that would come down the street with his song playing and we would run out with our money to get donuts.
 
We were in the country so got the Farmer magazine.

There was a regular, the Song of the Lazy Farmer. I don't know how he got the whole thing to rhyme, but it was truly full of wisdom on how not to farm.

The subscription was $10 per year and I liked it so much I paidfor it out of my own money (as a gradeschooler)
 
I remember not having bad knees before I got hit head on by some idiot who almost killed me lol. I remember floppy disks and a lot of people not having home computers. We spent a lot of time at the library using their computers for home work or school projects. And my dad complaining about the cost of long distance phone calls. I'm assuming calling from Chicago to Missouri wasn't cheap back then lol
 
Bottled milk and eggs delivered to the back door, 5 cent air mail stamps, five daily newspapers in Chicago, 25 cent gas (except during gas wars), S&H green stamps, no seat belts, no air conditioning in the cars-or house. Radios allowed in school only during the World Series, and only between classes! JFK's assassination and all the TV coverage after that. Changing the screens to storm windows in the fall and vice versa in the spring. Gas station giveaways like silverware and glasses; gas station signs that rotated 360 degrees. Dad worked and Mom was home. Lead in paint-and gas and who knows what else! The Chicago skyline when the Prudential building was the tallest around. The Sunday drives to St. Charles in the summer for ice cream at Colonial.

FM C Liners working on the Milwaukee Road, some with maroon stripes and some without.
 
I remember 5 cent stamps, S&H Green Stamps and the books they were saved in, gas wars, party lines, I Spy (Bill Cosby being in the news for a different reason), The Huntley Brinkley Report and Walter Cronkite, Red Skelton, Casey Jones on TV, drinking glasses for buying so much gas, wash clothes in Duz detergent, JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations, Civil Rights marches, Look and Life magazines, body counts from the latest battle in Viet Nam, anti war protests, getting smallpox and polio vaccinations and wishing they had one for mumps and measles, March of Dimes collections in school, Reddy Kilowatt, Rin Tin Tin, wide oval tires, Kent State, GP7's and F7's on mainline freights, "See the USA in a Chevrolet", "Car 54 where are you?", Route 66 TV show, 20 Mule Team Borax, Mighty Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Walt Disney Show and so much more. Great thread!
 
I remember when everyone did not have cellphones, we had PAY PHONES almost everywhere , USPS mail boxes on almost every street corner... while growing up my age, ok I was born in the early 1960's and learning that I have a Disability which affected my right side of my body only and learning to cope with it.. Not forget hearing of the Gas crisis in the 1970's.

BCK RR
 
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I remember seeing a Y6 on the N&W in 1958, going to see my Aunt May in Front Royal Va.
I remember 5 TV stations in DC.
I remember Good humor Ice Cream trucks, Air Raid sirens, Yellow rain coats and boots, Lansburgs American Flyer train displays at Christmas.
I remember the big Marx bulldozer, Girder & Panel, Great Garloo, Silly Putty, Flubber, Hula-hoops, Rat Fink, surfer crosses, Aurora Plastic monsters, Visible V8, Science Fairs and Book Fairs at school.
I remember the local amusement parks Glen Echo, and Marshall Hall, and The early days of Muscular Dystrophy carnivals in your back yard.
I remember my grandma's pot bellied stove and pile of coal in their shed.
I remember party lines, dial phones, and 23 cent per gallon gas, from Sunoco, Gulf, Sinclair etc., GEM Stores, Peoples drug, Drug Fair, Waffle Shops, Highs, The first McDonalds in Alexandria VA, and when the muppets did commercials for Wilkins coffee, and were on Jimmy Deans show.
I remember Watergate, and 2 of my high school buddies dad was mixed up in it!
I hate to admit it but I remember disco.
 
I remember Instamatic cameras and the 126 film that went in them. I remember when Polaroid invented the instant camera. I went out and bought one, it was great, even though the pictures were only black and white. You took the picture, the film would pop out of the slot on the front. There were rollers in the camera that would squeeze the developing chemical onto the film, and it would develop in a couple of minutes.
I remember being the first person in town to have a power mower. It was a self-propelled reel-type, with a 2hp Briggs and Stratton engine mounted on it. It was chain-drive, you would start the engine and hang on, as there was no clutch to release. Later versions were safer...
I remember our family getting the first color television in our town. It was a 19" Ford that lasted 29 days before meeting an untimely death at the hands of our local power company. For some reason, the electronics didn't respond well to 180 volt power surges...
 
I remember when the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central merged, and thinking at the time it would never work. Then, those railroads were forced to take on the additional burden of the New Haven, and I was kind of surprised the affair lasted as long as it did. When Conrail was formed in 1976, our local switch engine still had "NEW YORK CENTRAL" on its hood.
I remember the first (and only, thank god) standing derailment I witnessed. Our local feed mill was unloading a hopper car, and the weight shift from the feed leaving the hopper caused the rail to roll out from under the car. I was standing about ten feet from it when it did its thing. Scary stuff.
 
The first colour TV in the neighbourhood, wow!
The first microwave oven, thought our food was going to glow in the dark!
The first time I ran a locomotive, I was 14 and it was an SW1500.

Oh yes I do remember when they put the high beam switch up on the signal light lever, I kept getting my foot stuck on the steering wheel! :p
 
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