Household Life in the 1960s-1970s, Part 2

I got my first answering machine in 1970's...my mother bitched that every time she called it "cost her" to get the machine and not me.....

[quote]I got my first answering machine in 1970's...my mother bitched that every time she called it "cost her" to get the machine and not me.....

In the 1980s, I had a friend who bitched about that. I had my phone set to pick up after 2 rings (I screened my calls from the beginning and I wasn't about to sit through any more than 2 which was the lowest setting). My friend said, "Set it to 4 rings before pickup so I can hang up before I have to pay for the call".

Thanks for the new thread, hun.

Listening to my stereo with giant headphones, laying on the floor - burning incense and smoking weed. Ah.

Oh, I had forgotten those IBM punch cards. My father was a tank instructor during WWII, got out in '46 and his GI benefits plus driving a cab at night put him through college. His first job out of college was at Western Electric in '50. or '51. He was there for just short of 50 years working on a variety of projects, including the Nike Zeus (an anti ballistic missile) and a most of his projects involved working with IBM mainframes. Every now and then he'd bring home huge stacks of those discarded punchcards, which Mama made us use as scratchpads or note paper. There as always a small stack of them in the kitchen. Our grocery lists were always written on the back of them and notes left for other family members.

Mama and Daddy had grown up in the Depression and I'm the one who posted earlier that her mantra was "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." When they died a few years ago, they were still writing their grocery lists on the backs of 50 year old IBM punchcards.

I hated my Erector Set. I never played with it.

For the person who posted on the previous thread about things being repaired: things don't get repaired today because they are made to be replaced. This started in the 1950s with planned obsolescence. In the early 1960s, the government actually paid repair shops to *not* repair items. There were far too many things around since the 1930s and 40s that simply got repaired rather than replaced. It was not good for the economy. As someone else mentioned, in the 1960s, it was not unusual to see appliances that were 15-20 years old in older homes. I remember a woman we knew still had one of the top loading dishwashers from the 1920s or 30s.

This is also true with fabrics. The price of fabrics were (and still are) inflated to discourage home sewing. This actually started when cotton flannel was made illegal for commercial children's sleepwear. Mothers simply bought cotton flannel and made their own. In order to discourage this, the price of flannel was increased to make home-sewing too expensive. Clothing manufactures realized that this is a great thing for them and encouraged the fabric mills to charge way more for retail bolts.

I would buy model cars that were already put together because I had no patience or skill. I walked down to the toy store on Main Street and picked up the last 1961 Imperial they had (in lavender!). On my way home I fell off the wall in front of St. Philips Neri Catholic Church and landed in the street, unconscious. When I woke up my Imperial was broken and my butt hurt.

I loved my Erector set, my American Red Bricks, my Lincoln Logs and later my Lego "Town Plan" set.

But I especially loved our Lionel Trains. My grandfather was a big electric train buff and helped my brother and I set up a huge town and country scene in out basement. For years he gave us collector editions of various Lionel pieces. After my parents died my sister was sole executor of their estates and she refused to tell my brother and I what had become of all the pieces. I'm sure she sold them off and pocketed the money,

Lite Brite and Spirograph would keep me occupied for hours. I even had the round-peg Lite Brite, which allowed for much greater detail.

For whomever posted it, those Aurora monster models were not cheap. As noted in previous posts, we were upper middle-class and my parents still bitched about the price of the models. I think they were unfamiliar with the concept of licensing fees.

I loved my dildo, er, water rocket...

Am I to infer from that, r8, that your brains are in your ass?

No R13. I think the priests took me in the rectory.

During this time period, I loved that tv stations still showed all those sappy WW2 movies. You don't see them much anymore, but there are dozens where a woman is pining for her boyfriend solider or a woman has joined the women's division and in uniform. In the Summer, I used to spend a few days with my grandmother and in the afternoon, we'd both sit down and watch all of those old WW2 movies. I wasn't old enough to place my grandmother in a time period, but now I realize that she had been a young mother during WW2.

If anyone is good at placing movies, I remember one where this soldier is putting the make on this girl. He's explaining an attack and he says something like "We came around the Germans like this" and he puts his arm around the girl. In the end of the movie, the girl does the same thing back to him. So sappy but I would love to know what movie that was because I remember watching it with my grandmother and telling her I thought it was the silliest movie I'd ever seen.

Another thing that I remember, all of my fathers dress shirts were white. No blue, no noth'n. Just white. His sport shirts were similar to Hawaiian shirts, but in very dull, muddy colors.

When one of my friends got her drivers license we would go riding in her father’s new Buick Electra. I have fond memories of riding around on a warm summer night with a mob of 8 in the car listening to the Supremes and the Fifth Dimension and going out for ice cream. This car had a fancy radio with 2 speakers one in front and one in the back.

My favorite Toys when I was a tot were Matchbox cars, and the tracks you could set up, and Fisher Price stuff. We had the FP plane, but my neighbors had the houseboat which could actually float in water. I wonder how many FP people got sucked into their pool filter? Just found this from the Matchbox car catalogue, and it brings back so many memories. I loved the Charger (#1), and the Mercedes (#6), but that VW Golf (#7) had two little surfboards that attached to the top roof rack.

I liked the electronic slot car track we had too, but we rarely played with it because my father had to set it up, and it took days of nagging him to get him to do it.

Then when I was older, Legos were my favorite especially when I'd build spaceships for my Star Wars figures.

As someone mentioned in the last thread, all the kids in my household started working at 15/16, and balanced that with schoool, homework, and activities. It's amazing how few kids work today.

My sisters worked at McDonald's and Sears, I started at the local drug store working the register and stocking shelves. Made minimum wage, which in those days was $3.35/hr.

About those IBM punch cards mentioned in the other thread and by R5.

I started sharing my older brother's paper route when I was seven. Eventually we moved into town and did two adjoining big routes together. I always had some kind of full or part-time job from there on --mowing yards, babysitting, running the photography department at Zayres, writing up sports stats for the local newspaper, directing a children's choir, selling men's clothes, etc., etc., etc.

My sister and I considered these a special treat-- we usually only got them when our parents were going out for the evening and we had a sitter.

I guess it was really insulting to my mother, who was an excellent cook. But you know how kids are!

I always wanted the dinners with the dessert in them, R22, like the little square of apple pie. Or there was one company that had a chocolate brownie dessert.

Turkey was my favorite, r22!

I remember our kitchen "junk drawer" being filled with Blue Chip stamps. Practically all the retail and grocery stores would give out a certain amount of stamps at the cash register, depending on how much you spent. Then you could redeem them for items from their catalog, or their small outlet stores. My mom used them to buy a cast-iron skillet that I still use today.

Thanks, r20!

Colored toilet paper. My aunt used peach, and my mom like the powder blue for our powder room.

R23 the chocolate brownie came with the salisbury steak one. Maybe that's why I like salisbury steak to this day. I loved the way the edges of the brownie would get all crisp.

We had a rec room in the basement where I could set up my slot car track.

I was reminded when reading about kids working at an early age that according to my Social Security statement, I paid my first taxes in 1968. I was 8 years old and have been paying every year since.

Did anyone have prize balls and Jack Horner Pies at parties? Prize balls were balls of crepe paper strips that you would unwind. In the center would be a cheap plastic toy. Jack Horner Pies were a cardboard ring on which sat the centerpiece. The entire thing was covered in crepe paper ruffles. A crepe paper streamer went from the pie to each place setting. At a given time, everyone pulled their streamer and the lid/centerpiece would fly off. At the end of the streamer was a small gift.

We got them at the Exchange for Women's Work. This was a charity that sold handwork made by women. Lots of hand knit baby sweaters, hand painted china and glass, Raggedy Ann & Andys, and felt and sequin Christmas ornaments. Oh, and another favorite was a bar of soap wrapped in net and decorate with sequins and beads to look like a fish.

My brother got sports equipment and toy guns as presents for birthdays and Christmas while I got artistic toys and crafts and stuffed animals. Do you think my parents knew I was gay?

My mother would spend countless hours cleaning during the week. Granted she only worked about 25 hours a week, but still she was raising kids, cooking, laundry, etc. But still she'd be vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, polishing, mopping, etc. and then twice a year she would move furniture around to do a thorough spring and fall cleaning. She's 80 now, and still doing it, but frustrated that she tires out more quickly. She seemed embarrassed a few years ago when she told the family she was only doing the full cleaning (where she moves everything out of the room, etc.) once a year.

She asked me once how I cleaned the outside of my 2nd floor windows, and I couldn't answer that. They're not *that* dirty.

No one's mentioned 8 Balls?

Trouble was, I really believed them.

Great thread!!! Brings back so many fond memories --- 2 things -- i remember when someone getting a new car in the neighborhood was an EVENT!!!! Adults and children would stroll over and get the 50 cent tour - and the kids would get a ride ---- Im from the burbs of Cleveland, and we had a local bottler who made 6oz bottles of soda pop called little Toms --- root beer, orange, lemon lime that was a bright green, grape, " red" and my favorite cream soda - they came in wooden crates of 24 and were the go to for communion parties, and company picnics --- lol thats when your pop intake wasn't rationed by mom and you could drink them like a sailor on leave.....

Once my mother started working part-time out of the house, we had a cleaning woman who came once a week or once every two weeks. She made me straighten up and vacuum and dust the day before.

Me: "But the maid is coming tomorrow!"

Her: "I won't have her see the house looking like this!"

Does anyone remember cars having wool plush upholstery? I am sure it wore well, but it reeked of cigarette smoke. It is still something I think of when I smell cigarettes.

I used to head over to neighbor's houses with a portable record player, and we'd listen to albums and 45s.

When I was very little, I was given a record player that you had to wind up. It was all made of plastic.

My father would get mad because we would cut records off the back of cereal boxes and try to play the on the stereo. He'd yell, "That 's an expensive needle and I'm not going to ruin it on those plastic cardboard records." So we had to play our cereal records when he was at work. I had a cereal box record of Josie & The Pussycats. Don't remember what song they sang.

We never had Atari or any of the tv gaming units as kids, but I did get the first handheld unit with multiple games, that was Microvision released in 1979. It came with BlockBuster, which was basically Breakout, but then there were other cartridges you could switch around (Phaser Strike, Bowling, Vegas Slots, etc.).

It looks so primitive today, but it was hours of entertainment back in the day, and if you muffled the sound under a pillow, your parents would think you were doing homework!

Did you read cock books?

I also had a handheld PacMan game, and I remember I got it taken away when I got a "C" in science. But my father just put it on top of a bureau in my parents bedroom, so I'd still play it when they weren't home, and I was very careful about lining it up right where he left it so they were none the wiser. Then when I got an "A" on my next science test, I got it back, but it was pretty anti-climactic since I had continued to play with it all along.

....

I had Atari and a hand-held pac-man in 1982.

You don't say, r43?

Pong

When we played the Partridge Family Board Game, I always wanted to be Laurie.

Too tame for me r47!

Every spring when CBS broadcast The Wizard of Oz, Daddy would fix scrambled eggs, sausage and ENDLESS PANCAKES! And we were allowed to eat while we watched. We normally weren't allowed to eat in the living room because of carpet.

This thread is why I love datalonge.

My mom would con me into doing laundry and ironing my dad's dress shirts by saying that we were going to play a fun game called "Chinese Laundry." And she'd tell me what to do with an ersatz asian accent. Ahh, racism.

We had "The Beatles Flip Your Wig Game" from Milton Bradley.

Speaking of board games, there was only one version of Monopoly. the same one your parents had played as kids.

I always got an "A" in Science partly because my parents subscribed me to the American Basic Science Club's "Kit-a-Month" plan. I received one kit per month for 10 months and did the experiments in order. I learned more from these kits and their instruction manuals than I did from school science classes. They should still offer them today. (Although the Atomic Energy kit included a tiny bit of radium paint and a little uranium ore.)

r2 were long distant call that expensive? Mother lived in Bayside Queens, NY. I lived 60 miles away in Suffolk County...how much could it have cost, 10 cents?

15 yrs later I' m bitching at my daughter because she is texting and costing us a fortune...but real one...not a 10 cent one

I had diarrhea in 1978.

Go to page 74.

I loved my NYC childhood. We played stickball in the gutter with a broom as our bat and a pink Spaldeen ball. Sometimes we drew in bases with chalk or if they were in a good position on that particular street we used the manhole covers and sewers or bumps in the gutter. We played points, another pink ball game, against the buildings that had the correct architecture for it.

In the summer open hydrants were our pool. The playground weren't all covered with matting. When you hung from those monkey bars you knew there was a chance you'd crack your head open and we liked it that way.

My father was one of the first computer programmers in NYC and he would go to the key punch department to also bring us home those colorful key punch cards. We also used them for scrap paper and made bookmarks out of them.

My dad often took me (an only child) and my mom to really nice restaurants but my favorite was when my mom would take me shopping to Macy's, Gimbles (talk about a notions department. OMG, they had the most extensive one ever) and other NYC stores. The best part was we almost always had lunch at The Automat or Chock full o'Nuts. There wasn't one thing either of those restaurants made that I didn't love. I even loved the vegetable plate at the hot plates part of the automat. I could watch for hours as food came out of those magic doors at the Automat or coffee or hot water or hot chocolate came out of the lion's mouth.

While my mom shopped she left me in the toy department for about 2 hours at a time. There were tons of other kids left there too. My favorite was Macy's 34th on Saturdays. They always had a magician there doing the most amazing tricks that of you could buy but never worked when you got them home, at least not for me.

At some of the better stores we ate in the tea rooms and I liked those too but had to be on my best behavior, napkin in lap and all that. Still the food was good.

My father didn't have much time off but when he did he often took me to Yankee Stadium and we had the best time. He was a Bronx boy so I knew how happy he would be if the Yankees won. He also took me to the '64 World's Fair many times and to a place called Freedomland Amusement Park and to one in NJ called Palisades Amusement park or sometimes just to the ball field in the playground to play punch or baseball.

My wonderful grandfather took me down to Orchard Street to shop for bargains. In those days the stuff sold was on pushcarts like they were a century before that. Later in the day, in the summer, he would buy me a Good Humor ice cream. The most expensive thing they had was 15 cents. I usually liked the 5 cent Whammy Bar.

My grandmother took me food shopping, but there not to a supermarket, there was only one or two stores in the neighborhood that I would really say were big enough to be called supermarkets and not just a grocery store. For each item we would go to a privately owned ma and pa store, one for groceries, a place for fish, a butcher show for meat and a live poultry story for chicken, but she had to stop taking me there because I would scream and burst out crying when I got old enough to realize the chicken was going to be taken into the back to be killed. Then there were the bakeries. OMG, real whipped cream, real custard real everything. The breads were amazing. When she got a rye bread she would always ask the person behind the counter to let me have the two small heel pieces when it was sliced, by long gone slicers that could slice thin, regular or thick slices. Usually I would be offered a free cookie too, with a cherry in the middle.

All these store owners knew my grandma by name and she would know theirs. It was so personal and friendly.

R58 continued...

On Sundays either my grandfather would go to the appetizing store and come home with lox and and whitefish and flavored cream cheeses and other yummies and then stop at the bagel and baily to bring home a dozen assorted or my dad would go to either Katz Deli or one of the many kosher delis that still existed and bring home a feast and I mean a feast, every kind of deli, salad, bread, side dish and every flavor of Dr. Browns soda. We had lunch for a week.

I loved being able to play until dark in the summer either on the street or in the park. I loved being able to ride the subway and busses by myself from age 9 and being able to go to the movies or theater matinee and to restaurants by myself. No one was afraid for their kid's safety. It was unthinkable that you let your kid out and he or she would be taken or molested. I loved the arcade places they had in Times Square. Yeah it was sleazy then but I never felt afraid and no on bothered me. All the sleaze was way more interesting than the sanitized Disneyworld it is now.

I grew up without ever being attacked and grew into a very independent person. I would have friends when I wanted but never had the need. I was always just as happy to do things on m own.

I miss my wonderful family and my wonderful NYC of yesteryear so much. It was a good life.

We were outside riding bikes, at a pool, a lake, or the beach so much in the summertime we had tan lines until Halloween.

R59 you sound like a very happy, contented man. Thank you for that walk through your early life.

Did any of you have parents who sold Amway or Saladmaster? My parents got involved in both and I remember throughout the '70s having a garage full of Amway products like laundry detergent, liquid hand soap, carwash liquid and wax, leather and vinyl cleaner, etc. I'm surprised these companies are still around because I haven't heard about them in decades.

r58, I'd love to hear your memories about the World's Fair.

Remember the game called Mousetrap where you built that Rube Goldberg thing? I spent hours playing with that game, not the first fucking clue what the actual game was about, the mousetrap was enough to keep me occupied.

Hey R51 -

“We need more Calgon”

“‘Ancient Chinese Secret’ huh!”

Yes, we had that game. It was fun.

Where’s Merlin now?

Where did he go?

Write Zoom Z-Double O-M Box 350 Boston, Mass O 2 1 3 Fourrrrrrr!

What about Naomi?

Boy With Chair!!!

My first absurdist theatrical experience!

In the early 70’s my dad was getting his PhD at night (it took like 7 years) - and he wasn’t home for dinner on Wednesday’s - so not only did we get to have exciting TV Dinners on Wed nights - but my wonderful wonderful mom would buy us LIBBY LAND TV Dinners!!!!

Libby Land - Where Food Is Fun

R58 / R59, you made me feel like I was there.

R72 Henrietta Hipppo!

New Zoo Review - comin’ right at you!

In the late 90s I did a freelance editorial job in Las Vegas - guess who owned the edit facility - Doug & Emmy Joe! I was in awe.

I remember those soap bar / netting / sequin / fish things - I think they sold them at the PS 8 Christmas Fair.

One year my Grandma “made” a few ornaments from a kit by pinning various beads, ribbon & sequins to those styrofoam Christmas balls that were covered in shiny colored thread.

Well I loved them - and asked her if she could get me a kit so I could make some. I could see Grandma get uncomfortable - then she just sweetly said she didn’t think my Dad would like that.

Another Grandma moment - around 74 /75 so I was 11. She was my mom’s mom.

We were over their house all watching tv in the living room. The news came on & there was coverage of the Gay Pride Parade. My dad made a loud nasty remark. Nobody else said anything, but I glanced over at her and she was looking at me with worry and slightly shaking her head

. She was the sweetest woman who ever lived. Miss her.

[quote] I'm surprised these companies are still around because I haven't heard about them in decades.

Really?

One of the huge things in the mid sixties was when network programming went from B/W to COLOR. It was a really big deal. As new shows were developed they would be in color from the start. But there were a bunch of successful B/W series that changed to color in the middle of their runs.

I think it was about 1966 when the wholesale switchover occurred. I was about 6 years old and I remember tons of ads during the summer for Lost In Space - my favorite show at 6 - coming back for its 2nd season in COLOR. I was glued to the 📺 for that first COLOR episode.

And why COLOR in all caps? If you remember, for a couple of years all shows had an “IN COLOR” message at the bottom of the title sequence to make sure people would go out and buy color TVs.

By the way, it cost the networks a fortune to switch all their programming to color.

To a much lesser extent, stereo tv had a similar roll out in the 80s. Remember the “In Stereo Where Available” at the beginning of SNL and other early adopters of stereo?

R78 CBS was the last network to go all-color. NBC was first.

The following presentation is brought to you in Living Color by....

R68 Bernadette from ZOOM is a friend. In my next post I'll link to her current website. She is a lovely person. For you, here is the opening segment of ZOOM where she does her trademark arm moves.

R68 Bernadette as she is now. A very talented singer and musician, she has turned her attention to doing a lot of music therapy for cancer patients at the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden in the town of Harvard MA. She's published several CDs of her music too.

R81 - Thanks! That is so cool.

While I could do the arm move, I was terrible at Ubbi Dubbi speak. Later in college I had a friend who could converse in it effortlessly.

I loved Zoom but can also vividly remember one film segment they did on some teen boy who built a working hovercraft using - I think - an old vacuum cleaner or hair dryer as the motor. As I’m watching this I’m thinking to myself - holy shit Imman utter failure as a kid. Lol.

soft and sweet, wise and wonderful...

I still love this tune.

I wanted a dog like Scruffy.

I used to think of the evil things I'd do to the little people if I found them - especially the smug captain.

In the 50's, color film was much more expensive to buy and to develop than B&W film so my Grandmother had two cameras, both cheap old Brownies, one she kept loaded with color film and one had B&W.

Routine things like my Grandfather catching a big fish, well, that was B&W material for sure. Even my early birthday parties didn't rate color film until my 5th, and that's when she broke out the color, but on my 6th we're back to B&W. Even my parent's new cars didn't rate color with the exception of a nipple pink Buick of some sort that apparently caught her fancy. I'm sure she was unaware of it, but 60 years later when you look through her old photo albums it's a really interesting glimpse into her mindset.

R85 - I wanted Gull Cottage! Especially the shots of the exterior in the opening credits.

I seriously loved that house. I also wanted the Please Don’t Eat The Dasies house - who wouldn’t want a suit of armor overlooking the livingroom - but that set really looked like a set, not an actual house.

Plowed by Captain Gregg while sucking off Nanny's professor? Would've worked for me as a gayling!

My mom went to one Tupperware party, so we had a lettuce crisper, though we didn't eat much salad then.

If my folks were going out, we'd have a TV dinner, dessert included, though I seem to recall apple pie more than brownies, before the babysitter arrived.

I seem to remember that the full-blown daytime rate to call from the east to west coast was something like $3 per minute. As soon as unlimited nationwide calling came into effect, my mom was one of the first customers.

Chemistry sets were great, although once the chemicals started running out we never actually bought replacements. In a year or so instead I would just get a whole new set. As with creepy crawlers, those would be considered incredibly dangerous now, and no one would ever sell them for fear of ruinous lawsuits.

Purchased books were for birthdays and Christmas, otherwise there was the public library. Back then actual book stores were not that common, and it wasn't as easy to get any title that you wanted, unless it was a special order. That's not saying that one couldn't get things like dark shadows and Partridge Family books at the corner drug store...

Regarding long-distance rates in NYS: Finding in-state rates is difficult. Also, at that time, rates were determined by local phone companies. The richest people in my hometown were the people who owned the local telephone company. I remember it typically was free to call within town or to the town next to you. Any further and you'd have to pay. This sort of stuff went on until the early 1990s in many cities.

I found a Federal document that outlines rates between various cities from 1960-1980 or so. In 1970, a 10-minute call between NYC and Philadelphia ranged from $2.15 to $4.50, depending on time of day and week. At current purchasing parity, that is equivalent to $11.41 to $28.39. The minimum wage in 1970 was $1.65/hr.

I wanted a big-ass Afro like Dwane even though I was a shrimpy white boy. Hey hey Hey!

Anyone remember this car driving game? Looks like a videogame but the “track” was printed on a long plastic loop that was wound inside the case and moved by a motor. The “car” moved left-right mechanically via the steering wheel.

I would have loved it, R92.

I had a pocket one.

I was born in 1968, so this thread brings back great memories!! And I'm amazed at how much I can identify with other's comments. Reading through the comments and I'm like yeah we did that too, or omg I remember that!!!

The classic New Zoo review outtake:

[quote][R78] CBS was the last network to go all-color. NBC was first.

That's because in the 1950s, CBS and NBC, then a subsidiary of RCA, had competing color systems that weren't compatible. There were patent wars and eventually RCA/NBC won out. The lack of a single color system delayed the general deployment for color TV for years, TV manufacturers had to decide which system to support.

That's why CBS was the last to go color. They had to pay patent royalties to RCA/NBC to broadcast in color. CBS fought it tooth and nail in court until the issue was dead.

I raced home after school for my daily fix of "Dick Clark's American Bandstand."

We danced to every song, and sang knew all the words, too.

Man, we were Way2Cool4School !

Did anyone mention Hula Hoops ?

I remember the giant afro's blacks had. I was jealous! And the casual racism - my mom would talk about "Chinamen" and say things like "You kids are behaving like wild Indians!"

Would be a great idea for a rest home, especially for residents with dementia - set up to look like the period of their youth or the prime of their life. Or what about a theme park featuring 50s nostalgia or 60s psychedelia?

Reading all these comments -- was I the only kid who HATED all the PBS shows, from Sesame Street through Mr. Rogers and New Zoo Review to Zoom? They bored me out of my juvenile mind.

I wasn't allowed to watch much TV, so of course I watched every chance I got, but even as a five-year-old I always wanted to watch adult shows and horror movies and cartoons, especially The Flintstones and all the WB/ Looney Tunes shorts. If someone tried to get me to watch Mr. Rogers or Zoom, I'd leave and read a book instead.

This is the bus safety film I recalled from the previous thread.

RIP Emma.

[quote]Reading all these comments -- was I the only kid who HATED all the PBS shows, from Sesame Street through Mr. Rogers and New Zoo Review to Zoom? They bored me out of my juvenile mind.

I agree with you. I was the same.

I liked New Zoo REVUE because I only saw it in America and it was on early in the morning at 7AM - we didn't have morning TV in England then, so it was such a novelty. I used to watch it followed by I Dream Of Jeannie & Gilligan's Island in our hotel room - sometimes without the sound, until my brothers woke up.

The theme tune still reminds me of the thrill of being in America as a kiddie. Lalalaallaa -lallallala.

[quote] i remember when someone getting a new car in the neighborhood was an EVENT!!!! Adults and children would stroll over and get the 50 cent tour - and the kids would get a ride.

Yes! I remember all the neighbors coming over to see our new car and everyone being in a good mood. This was the late 1950s when fins were in. Dad would let the neighbors drive it too. Nobody really cares when you get a new car nowadays, or else they think you're showing off. Design changes from year to year and options made people curious. Also, back then, they used to hide the gas cap. I loved trying to figure out where it was.

[quote] In the 50's, color film was much more expensive to buy and to develop than B&W film so my Grandmother had two cameras, both cheap old Brownies, one she kept loaded with color film and one had B&W

I had forgotten about this!

I lived in San Francisco and we woke up on Sunday, January 21, 1962 to SNOW! It had never snowed in my lifetime (I was all of 6 years old) and this was a BIG DEAL, so we ran out to play. My mother grabbed the camera and started taking pictures, in color of course (I remember wearing a bright red cap), But she soon ran out of film and the only film we had in the house was black and white, so if you look through the album, halfway through the 'snow pictures' they inexplicably go from color to B&W.

We only had one camera, so in order for my Depression-era parents to use color film, it had to be a big event. All of my first-day-of-school photos were black and white. That's what I get for being a B student, I guess.

Going to my Grandmother's meant eating on her Fiestaware. I started collecting my own later based on the nostalgia, not knowing it was a "gay" thing.

Mom collected S&H Green stamps

r106 In my final divestiture of dishes, I sold my Fiestaware collection last week.

For R89, books were not hard to find, at least not for kids. We did not get an allowance, per se. We got one dollar a week to spend on reading material. That was the cost of a Hardy Boy Book or a collection of Peanuts comics. Hardy Boy Books were available at supermarkets and drug stores. Peanuts books (Joan Walsh Anglund, etc.) were available at card shops. Most toy shops had a book department as did most department stores. Apparently, Golden Books were the first to take children's books out of the book store. There was always at least one rack at the supermarket.

My dad used cloth cotton handkerchiefs every day. He had his entire pants stash laid out the night before: handkerchief, wallet, keys, small comb, change, pocket knife.

Mom used to make me iron his handkerchiefs after she was done with the rest of the ironing. She seemed to think it was a necessary life skill but by the late 70s it was obvious that handkerchiefs were long out of style.

We used to look forward to summer vacation because our folks would hitch up the Nimrod Tent Trailer and take us camping in the mountains. Very compact until you raised the roof and pulled out the sides.

Growing up in the Midwest in the '70s: the mall had a York steak house, Hot Sam's pretzels, Chess King, Aladdin's Castle, ID, Waldenbooks, a 5 & dime store and a County Seat (Levi's). There was a Gimbels where the food court would eventually go, and my mother paid for her double-knit pantsuits with a charge card.

We rode our bikes to the PDQ to buy pop and candy with our babysitting money or allowance, and roamed free through the neighborhood until the street lights came on. 4th of July neighborhood bike parades. A small library branch, grocery store and drugstore in the small strip mall right up the road. A Marc's Big Boy & Pizza Hut down the way.

When we would drive to grandma's house or took any road trip we had books and coloring/activity books to keep us busy and watched traffic & scenery. Had to have the windows open, no A/C. Pulled over at rest stop or park to eat the packed picnic lunch, no fast food on the way (not as readily available, and we were always watching money).

My mom would always take me to see movies that were far too adult for me that she wanted to see but we were buddies so I came along. I cherish those memories! We saw 9 to 5, Foul Play, Murder by Death and Best Friends to name just a few. I get so nostalgic sometimes and very homesick for my hometown but it will never be the way it was when I was growing up. Wish I had known at the time how lucky I was

It was the closest thing you could get to a cartoon on Sunday.

One thing that does not seem to exist anymore is the Harvey Comics library. There were a ton of non-superhero comics many aimed at girls: Little Lotta, Sugar and Spike, Audrey, Little Dot, Baby Huey, Richie Rich, etc. Sugar and Spike had paper dolls based on designs submitted by the readers.

Then there were Classic Comics: Beau Geste, Les Miserable, A Tale of Two Cities, etc, in comic book form.

An of course the ads in comic books: X-ray glasses, live miniature monkeys, Sea Monkeys. etc.

Loved Classics Illustrated, r114. Tale of Two Cities and Count of Monte Cristo were my favorites. Plus Shakespeare.

With today's modern technology, I don't think people realize how expensive phone service was up until the early 80s. We lived in NY and my maternal grandparents lived in Alabama and we would talk with them once or twice a month. If the weather was bad, we had to shout because there was a lot of static on the line. We didn't have fiber optic lines back then. Finally, Ma Bell was split up and other phone services got into competition and prices started dropping.

R113 so true.

But for non church-going families like ours, there was always the Sunday funnies

Also, in the NYC area, we had the really laaaaaaame Wonderama on Sunday.

Oh have you heard any good news, today, today?

I want to hear what you have to say!

Wait til I get to the count of three

And tell me all the good news you have for me.

Uh one, two, three

(Bob McAllister shoves the microphone into some stupid kids face who squeals that her cat had kittens).

R89 R109 Book-of-the-Month-Club was a very popular subscription service in the 50s and 60s, and it's still going strong. You would subscribe and receive books monthly, or less often, depending upon the plan you chose. My parents belonged throughout my childhood and they got excellent selections for themselves and kids' books for my brother and me. I loved to read so it was a big deal when the BOTMC packages arrived in the mail.

Most every town in greater Boston had a bookstore, and, as R109 mentioned, various other local stores all had a book section. But I can imagine this wasn't the case for some parts of the country or areas that were more rural with fewer retail markets.

For some reason, Reader's Digest Condensed books were EVERYWHERE.

I lived in a fairly rural community, but we had a good bookstore in a strip mall. Then a new mall was built in our town and Walden Books muscled in and shut most everything else down.

Also, every community had a Library fair every Summer. So if you went around and hit all the Library Fairs, you had a good selection of used books.

Regarding the cost of making phone calls... my sister went to college in Colorado between 66 - 70. She couldn't afford to call my parents (way too expensive, she didn't have a phone in her dorm room). She would call my parents from the pay phone in the dorm... the telephone operator asking may parents if they would accept the charges. my parents would decline and hang up. Then they would call her back, dialing the pay phone number! That way they paid for the call.

R120, Readers Digest condensed books were popular because they were good decor. Having shelves filled with books that had matching spines looked "elegant", unlike the messy bookshelves of people who actually read. Certainly, though the early 1960s, homes were still being built with built-in bookcases. Something had to fill them.

OK, another memory: bay widows with glass shelves. These were quite common in SoCal, particularly in Storybook Ranch Houses. Usually they held a collection of Depression, Carnival, or Fenton glass, though California pottery figures were also common.

I don't recall New Zoo Revue as being PBS?

r120, I grew up in the town where Reader's Digest was published and every year at Christmas Santa would ride all over town on a fire truck and give out thousands of books.

We had a bookstore, and the next town had two. My favorite was the Book & Record. Not only could you get books and records but all sorts of tchotchkes. I got my mother this one year for Christmas.

We also had book fairs at school, I think organized by RIF (Reading is Fundamental).

I remember RIF. We used to call it "Reading is Fun, but Mental."

r110, I can relate. As a curious little gayling, I loved watching my mother iron. I had this spin-top, one of those ones wound up with a string, and it had a magnetic top. While mother would Iron I would let the top slide down the angled metal legs; gravity and its weight would propel its movement, and it would travel down appearing like a ski gondola in my mind.

After all the ironing was completed, I was allowed to iron my father's cotton handkerchiefs - this was usually done around 4pm, while her "stories" were broadcast. If I recall "The Edge of Night" was on at four.

I vividly recall the day the networks broke into her favourite story with breaking news that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. My mother was visibly distraught; ironically we were traveling thru Texas when JFK was assassinated. In 1968 I could not quite grasp why my mother was so upset over a US Presidential candidate being shot, as we are Canadian. Shortly thereafter it was Martin Luther King Jr. and in 1969 the Sharon Tate with the Manson Murders. It really was quite a time for a young lad.

As a kid I also had hankys, first the ones where you had one for each day, colourfully printed with graphics and the day of the week on it, with some schmaltzy rhyme for each day. I continued to carry a hanky thru my teens, as I had bad allergies (cats and pollen), but they abated as I got older, so I stopped always having one in my pocket. I realized how handy they were for cleaning up messes, and discovered they made ideal cum rags - stopped ironing them then!

R33, I was the poster in Part 1 who talked about my Mom cleaning. My Mom was probably keeping Lysol in business. She always used the stuff in the small brown bottle. The bathroom always smelled clean to me when she used it. As kids, we often bathed in it, especially in the Summer. It was good for cuts, scrapes and bug bites. I'd love to use it now but I have a cat and his litterbox is in the bathroom. I'm not sure he'd like that scent.

R71, I remember LibbyLand frozen meals for kids! "Libby the Kid, that's Billy the Kid spelled sideways . . . sort of." Loved that commercial!

R126, my Mom was watching some soap on CBS (As The World Turns, maybe?) when they announced that President Kennedy had been shot. She stopped watching that soap after that.

As the OP of the original thread it's amazing to see almost 750 replies and two threads on this.

New Zoo Revue was proof that children's programming production companies had a LOT of coke lying around.

Why? - DL LOVES nostalgia threads.

They see the words 60s &/or 70s and they're on board. Me too.

[quote]New Zoo Revue was proof that children's programming production companies had a LOT of coke lying around.

THAT's NOT Coke, gurl.

R130 Just that it happened so quickly. I think I posted the original Sunday, so that many replies in like 5 days is pretty amazing.

[quote]OP of Thread One

It's the way you set it up, OP.

Tremendous skill involved.

R123 - New Zoo Review was not on PBS but it was “educational” - it was a syndicated show - in nyc it was on channel 11 (I think).

R129 - I’m the poster upthread who once met Doug & Emmy Joe on a job as an adult. They didn’t seem like 70s coke head types (and I met a lot of those working in advertising in the 90s). They may have even been born-again, not sure, but they were definitely “midwestern nice.”

The aesthetics of their era were just very Groovy. Now in Sid & Marty Kroft land (HR Puffenstuff, etc) I’m sure the drugs were everywhere.

I want the childhood R58 had. Sounds magical.

Congrats to the OP of the first thread on having it go gold. Let's see if it can hit platinum without someone shitting all over it.

R113 - do you remember the Davey & Goliath about death (& Easter)? Terrified me as a kid.

Davey has a grandma who loves him and bakes him a cake. “I love you Davey”

Then grandma dies. Sad Davey goes back to her house & sees the uneaten cake under a glass cake dome. Disembodied spooky grandma voice echoes “I love you Davey”

Then because tomortow is Easter, Davey gets the idea in his head that Grandma will rise up from the dead in the morning. He and Goliath go to the cemetery to wait - but because this is D&G they end up in the Bible (like a Fundy Gumby) waiting at Jesus’s rock-doored toumb.

Now at 7 I’d seen enough Chiller Theater to know that a zombie Grandma coming out of her grave is Not A Good Thing, but Davey goes on and on about how nice it will be to hug Grandma again. I get very anxious.

Grandma doesn’t show and it falls to Goliath to explain the finer points of the End Days to Davey. During that speech he says, in his deep, deliberate Goliath voice “Everyone has to die, Da-vey.” Which is even more terrifying than a zombie Grandma.

I was a child during the 80s and a teen in the 90s. Man, you guys had it so much better.

I remember going to see movies as a kid in the 70s when you could stay in your seat afterwards and re-watch it without paying. Many people did it when Star Wars came out.

Birthday parties weren't such a big deal and kids didn't really have them past 8 years old. Siblings, cousins, maybe a few kids from school and the neighborhood would attend. Mom would make a cake and scoop out ice cream, and serve it on festive Happy Birthday plates, and Dixie cups (anyone remember Dixie Riddle Cups?!) of Hawaiian Punch. Maybe hang some streamers and balloons, give out party hats and noisemakers. We'd play some games like musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, etc. One year I got a Slip N Slide so that was the theme of my birthday. My guests showed up in swimsuits and brought towels and we had a great day. I remember attending one birthday party at McDonald's and it was boring compared to a regular birthday party at someone's house. Also, birthday parties were celebrated on the kid's actual birthday so most parties were after school unless your birthday happened to fall on a weekend or in the summer. And other kids' parents definitely did not attend.

One thing that has incredibly not been mentioned was that apart from herpes, there was a cure for all STDs! AIDS/HIV had not yet reared its' fearsome ugly head. Sex was a thing of joy and wonder without the spectre of the Grim Reaper hiding behind the curtain. For that reason alone, the 60s and 70s were heaven.

A random thing I remember is that Hi-C (and maybe other juice drinks as well?) used to come in big cans instead of plastic containers. My mom would buy the Hi-C, but ONLY when I was sick.

And since there was no way to close those cans once opened, my mom then would pout the Hi-C into one of these blue Blendo pitchers!

Thinking about those birthday parties mentioned and Halloween was huge when I was a kid. It went from 6pm-9pm and we wandered all over, often to expensive homes hoping to get good candy. No one was afraid of anyone. Yeah, we had that odd razor blade in an apple and people sticking pins in Milky Ways - I remember my mom inspecting our candy and taking the candy SHE wanted.

Yes, Hawaiian Punch came in a 64 oz(?) metal container. And you had to take a can opener and punch two holes in the lid so the juice would pour out.

[quote]Davey has a grandma who loves him and bakes him a cake. “I love you Davey”

Grandma must have hated Sally. She didn't get a cake.

I guess it's like Sally in the "Dick and Jane" reader. Dick and Jane got all the attention and by the time we got to Sally, we were tired of sounding out words and skipped whatever it was she was doing.

Pre-Betamax, there were these “View-Master” 3D picture discs on all sorts of tourist and educational topics, until the House of Mouse picked up on the trend. They also released small vinyl records paired with the discs, so you could listen to the soundtrack while watching the images.

Later they also made a small projector so you could watch those discs with friends (no 3D tho). Early version of home theatre perhaps ;).

[quote]wards and re-watch it without paying. Many people did it when Star Wars came out.

Not in my city. Lines were long to see "Star Wars" and they cleared the theater.

R145 yes, we also got apple juice in those huge cans. My OCD dad always insisted the “air” hole should be smaller than the “pour” hole for some reason.

Paste fail

I loved my klunky metal roller skates that I could custom fit by tightening them on my shoes with a metal key.

Playing Jacks, Pick-Up Sticks, and Parcheesi out on the porch in summertime.

Our annual Christmas tradition.........

My mom filled a large thermos with hot chocolate, and a container with homemade Christmas cookies, and we piled in the car and my dad drove around the "classy" neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights.

It was fun being obsessed with Wacky Packages as a kid. Series 2 was the best and trying to find the rare and elusive “Run Tony Shells” sticker.

[quote]As the OP of the original thread it's amazing to see almost 750 replies and two threads on this.

That's because all 17 of us are in our 60s!

[quote]That's because all 17 of us are in our 60s!

Not yet. Just turned 59 today!

Commercials for kids used to have a much more interesting storyline.

And now you know what Otis did those Mayberry evenings Sheriff Andy didn't have him locked up.

I forgot what the device was called, but one played a story on a record, and the unit also had a slot for a film strip to be inserted; can't recall whether it happen automatically, or the kid had to do so manually, but there would be a loud beep in the story which meant it was time for the next image on the screen. The thing was a bit like a small portable TV with a record player on top. We would sometimes go to visit a friend of my mom's, whose kids had one of those.

We basically spent the day at our neighborhood pool during summer break. We grade-school (haha) kids would begin gathering about 10am. Cannonballing, marco polo, back and front flips off the diving board. Towels spread out poolside with all transistor radios tuned to the same station. Around lunchtime the highschool girls would make their appearance. They would commandeer the chaise lounges and line them up in a row away from the hoipolloi(us)They all had their hair rolled up in giant juice cans with sparkly scarves tied over them. They oiled themselves with glass bottles of baby oil and iodine. We were overcome with the glamour and mystique of it all. They treated us with complete disdain. Hilarious to look back on it now. Good memories.

I had the Microvision, Merlin, Simon et al. Got all the electronic toys when I was a kid. The ultimate though was when I was 13 - I got the TRS-80 Model 1 Level II with 16K of memory. It's that machine that kicked off my career.

A trash 80, r161?

One thing I remember is just how neighborly people used to be. If someone got a new car everyone would run over to check it out. When a son was on leave everyone would come over and hug and kiss and shake hands. Whole families would go over to each other's houses for supper. Some families would even vacation together. Every woman was you spare mom ("I got a call from Mrs. Jones today. Anything you want to tell me?".) Everyone knew each other's name. I call them the ladies auxiliary corps. They had this secret line of communication. They knew everything. One time my dad was in a bad accident. My mother called no one but us kids. By the time we got home from visiting my father the ladies had casseroles and other foods waiting. Their was a baby sitting protocol already in place and the cleaning schedule had already been set up.

r159, we had one of those.

Later, I also had a talking Viewmaster. In the normal Viewmaster, you had one of those white wheels you put into the viewmaster and then clicked the lever. The talking Viewmaster had a plastic "record" attached to the picture wheel and would narrate as you watched "The 7 Wonders of the World." Why was Viewmaster always educational and never just entertainment?

I wanted to be a member of the Honeycomb Hideout.

Teenage girls ruled the 60s and 70s with an iron fist.

[quote] I forgot what the device was called, but one played a story on a record, and the unit also had a slot for a film strip to be inserted; can't recall whether it happen automatically, or the kid had to do so manually, but there would be a loud beep in the story which meant it was time for the next image on the screen.

It was called Show 'N Tell and yes, we had one

Does anyone still have some of the glassware they got as kids from fast food joints or the like?

I wish I still had my Peanuts/Charlie Brown glasses.

Or my Arby's Christmas ones. LOL

[quote] My mom filled a large thermos with hot chocolate, and a container with homemade Christmas cookies, and we piled in the car and my dad drove around the "classy" neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights.

We did something similar, but first, around dusk, we lit our luminaries. They were little bags with real candles inside but they were seldom a fire hazard as we almost always had snow.

It's funny, r168. I want to replace the two I had back in the 70's and I just went and looked on eBay yesterday to see what they're going for. One was the Brenda Starr and the other Fat Broad.

Since it was only about 40 minutes from our Plainview Long island home, we went to the 1964-65 New York Worlds fair many times. I was 10 and used the first "face time" telephone that wouldn't ever be invented at the Bell Telephone exhibit. Many of the old exhibits from the fair are now at Disney World in Florida

R168, I still have some of the Looney Tunes glasses that we got from Hardees. We don't have a dishwasher, so they haven't faded over the years.

[quote]Teenage girls ruled the 60s and 70s with an iron fist.

And they all wanted to be me!

R168 - in the early 2000’s my sister would give me old cartoon glasses each Christmas - I have about 20 - she would get them at the Syracuse flea market. She got herself the whole “Camp Snoopy” series like we used to have as well.

R163 - I was home for Christmas from my first semester away at college in ‘82. Walking through the shopping district of our neighborhood a car suddenly honked, made a u-turn and pulled up to the curb next to me - it was our brash neighbor Mrs G rolling down the window and yelling “You come over here right now and give me a kiss!”

[quote]By the time we got home from visiting my father the ladies had casseroles and other foods waiting.

If those women were anything like my grandmother, they had casseroles in the freezer. When my grandmother set out to make a lasagne or some chicken based casserole, she would would make 3 or 4 and stick them in the freezer. My grandmother was an excellent cook. You could show up unannounced at her house and she'd put out a feast for you. Oh, the things that woman could do with a pot roast!!

Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha every Saturday morning!

[quote] in the early 2000’s my sister would give me old cartoon glasses each Christmas - I have about 20 - she would get them at the Syracuse flea market. She got herself the whole “Camp Snoopy” series like we used to have as well

Check if this is one of those Camp Snoopy glasses. There were five common ones, and one rare one to the set. In good condition its worth 300 to 400.

anyone else have THIS? >

my favourite toy, by far.

[Grandma doesn’t show and it falls to Goliath to explain the finer points of the End Days to Davey. During that speech he says, in his deep, deliberate Goliath voice “Everyone has to die, Da-vey.” Which is even more terrifying than a zombie Grandma.]

Goliath gave me the creeps. Well, the whole show gave me the creeps, but Goliath most of all. Was he a dog or some sort of messenger of God? Did he really speak to Davey or was that just a sign that Davey was gonna climb a clock tower with a sniper's rifle in a. few years? Admit it, when the Son of Sam guy started talking about dogs talking to him on his mail route you flashed to Davey and Goliath, didn't you?

The only good thing about the show was how everyone drove jeeps.

R169 We went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and the church we attended always had lit luminaries in front of the church, and on each of the twenty stairs at the church entrance. It was always a welcoming sight on those snowy Christmas Eves. After church, we went home and opened our gifts, sipped eggnog, and ate my mom's Christmas cookies and fudge.

How I miss those Christmas Eves . . . . . . . .

My mom collected an entire set of blue Currier & Ives dishes, service for eight, and all the accessories, at the local A&P store. I don't know where they ended up, but I wish I had them.

Go to eBay r184.

We'd always be excited to see new filmstrips in school. Well almost always.

Saw this anti drug filmstrip first at the Catholic neighborhood school I attended up to grade 8. Next year at the public junior high, bingo there it was again. Then again in high school, we saw it again. Maybe they got a discount on it? As soon as we saw Sonny Bono in his gold outfit, my friends and I would let out a collective groan. I think we even said we'd sign a pledge never to do drugs provided we never had to see this film or him again.

Learning about this, of course.

I remember taking road trips to the Outer Banks in the 70s. There was no interstate, just a two lane US highway that wound through towns even smaller than mine. There weren't any rest stops like there are today. We would stop at the cleanest looking gas stations to fill up, because most service stations had outside bathrooms. They were locked, so you had to go inside and ask for the key, which was on a giant piece of wood so you wouldn't forget to give it back, I guess. You always unlocked the door with some trepidation, because you just knew the bathroom would be filthy, it was just a matter of how bad it would be. We always tried not to have to use the bathroom, but it was a 7 hour drive and we'd leave at the crack of dawn. On more than one occasion, we'd pull over and run pee in the woods. The roads were so deserted in some stretches that it was rare to pass another car.

Roadside diners were popular stops back then. You could stop for a quick bite and rest in the AC for a while before heading back out to the car. Even at 55 m.p.h., the air blowing through the windows is still pretty hot. Plus riding for hours with the windows down, the sound of the wind, it made you a little lightheaded.

Speaking of filmstrips and the like -- did anyone else have one of these?

I don't think I've seen these mentioned yet:

My Weekly Reader

Highlights for Children

SRA Cards and SRA Tests

I always looked forward to receiving the lastest issue of Dynamite magazine through the Scholastic Book Club.

[quote]Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha every Saturday morning!

Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha every weekday between school and dinner!

Seriously, r184:

Once upon a time kids knew how to read.

My mom got those Currier & Ives dishes for 25¢per piece, with each five dollar grocery purchase. The serving pieces were sold individually for $1-$4 dollars with different pieces featured every week. She recently passed away, and there's a ton of things stored in the full size attic. I'm wondering if they might even be hidden there. I know that there are boxes of vintage Christmas ornaments, and decorations for every season. I don't know what we'll discover, but I'm sure when we take the time to sort through it all, it will bring back lots of happy memories.

Speaking of drug education, did anyone else get the presentation with the kit full of sample drugs (see link)? We got t in both 5th and 6th Grade, and frankly, it taught us more about how to buy and use drugs than we could have learned on the street in a decade. The highlight was when the teacher burned a little pellet of alfalfa so we could learn what marijuana smelled like.

But the drug education kit was nothing compared to when Art Linkletter came to talk at our high school after his daughter jumped to her death. He lectured us on the evils of all drugs, but especially the dangers of LSD. That was a weird afternoon.

I'll always associate the "Highlights for Children" magazine with the dentist's office because that's the only place I ever saw it. While waiting in terror in the dentist's waiting room for my appointment, I would always pick it up and read the "Goofus and Gallant" page. From these I learned how to be a proper Goofus.

Yes, we saw the drug presentation and drug samples box, in the fifth grade, but in our case they were supposedly the real thing, and the box was carried and shown by a police officer.

Lol, my dentist had Highlights too. I wonder if it was an unwritten rule.

We lived on a dead-end street, which made it the best for kickball, whiffle ball, kick the can, etc. And yes, all the neighbors knew each other. I can still remember the family names that live in those houses, and if we refer to those houses today, it's still by the family name that lived there 40 years ago. Probably half of them are still with the same family, which is pretty surprising. Our next door neighbors' from childhood are gone, the parents having passed away within the last couple of years. They had three sons, who were around the same age as me and my siblings. We used to see them when they visited their parents for the holidays, just to wave and say hello. Seems strange to think that we will probably never see them again, now that the parents are gone and the house is sold.

It breaks my heart a little to think once my parents pass away, I'll never go back to my childhood home, or possibly our hometown. I can't even imagine it.

I love these types of threads, and I'm only in my 40s (at least for a little while longer). A lot of moms in those days were into soap operas. I don't remember my mother being a huge fan, but occasionally she would watch. I recall a scene from a soap she was watching that kind of freaked me out, where a car was driving down the road, and these two women in the car were arguing, then the passenger opened the door and jumped out of the speeding car! I must have asked 100 questions about it. Why did she do it? Was she going to be OK? Why were they fighting? Etc.

A few years ago, I googled a description of the scene, and learned it was from "Edge of Night", in 1973. I would have been 5 years old. And the woman who leapt from the car was played by Dorothy Lyman, who would play Opal Gardner on "All My Children" about ten years later, a show and character I loved as a little soap addict.

We had the McDonaldland drinking glasses growing up. Everyone wanted to drink from the Grimace glass.

We also had the glasses you got from buying a certain brand of jelly (Welch's?). I remember a Tweety Bird glass, but one night my great aunts came to babysit, and one gave the other a home permanent in the kitchen, and they mixed the solution in the Tweety Bird glass. Blech. So that was the end of that.

I had all the aurora universal monster models. I remember I would get them for Christmas and my older brothers would get whatever new Beatles album came out that Christmas. So my Christmas vacations were spent in my basement bedroom listening to the Beatles and assembling and painting Frankenstein’s monster or the mummy.

The model glue got me a little high, I think, and I am overcome with memories of the Beatles and their songs every time I smell that type of glue.

The 1970s saw the rise of the tv mini-series. I think Roots was the one that everyone made a big deal over.

I actually had a subscription to Highlights as a kid (as well as, later, Ranger Rick and Boy’s Life, but my heart belonged to Mad, Cracked & even occasionally Crazy)

Besides G & G Highlights also has a wood family saga called The Timbertoes. I do remember first seeing it at the Dr office right as I first learned to read. The magazine tag line on the never changing cover was “Fun with a Purpose” - well I thought it said “Fun with a Porpoise” and got very frustrated because I couldn’t find the story about the dolphin anywhere.

I loved the Archie comics and Richie. I couldn't get enough of the Riverdale gang though. By the time I stopped with the comic book in about 8th grade I probably had at least two hundred Archie comic books.

Our neighborhood Atlantic/Arco gas stations gave away the most elegant glassware, free with a fill-up of eight gallons or more. Gas was 33¢ per gallon.

I used to buy my Beatles 33⅓ RPM vinyl albums at Kresge's. They always had a featured album of the week for the low price of $2.47 ! I'd rush home to play them on my Motorola three speed hi-fi "stereo."

I remember the circular disk that you had to slide over the spindle to play the smaller vinyl records, with the larger hole in the center, that were referred to as "singles."

[quote] the smaller vinyl records, with the larger hole in the center, that were referred to as "singles."

Gosh, really?

These were always a "highlight" (sorry) of "Highlights for Children."

In the 70's we had "Health Class". Different ones for boys and girls. They basically just tried to scare the shit out of you by talking about syphilis, gonorrhea etc. My best friend got all nervous because he had a wet dream and figured it was gonorrhea. Even though he'd never had sex.

[quote]I remember the circular disk that you had to slide over the spindle to play the smaller vinyl records, with the larger hole in the center, that were referred to as "singles."

I called them 45s.

[quote]In the 70's we had "Health Class". Different ones for boys and girls. They basically just tried to scare the shit out of you by talking about syphilis, gonorrhea etc.

We were 100 miles from SAC Headquarters, so in Junior High we had a week, a full week, of training movies about how to survive a nuclear war, and they started out with the basic stuff like shutting off your water heater to use as a water source and how to build a simple bomb shelter, but by the end of the week it was very graphic first aid on treating radiation burns and setting compound fractures. People would get faint and have to leave the room.

My takeaway was that I hope I go in that first bright flash, but I will say that I think I take the dangers of nuclear war one Hell of a lot more seriously than younger people because of it.

We still have the McDonald’s glasses. We have Mayor McCheese, Grimace and Hamburglar. And a Dafffy Duck and a Bugs Bunny.

And there are some small Looney Tunes juice glasses, too. They were Welch’s jelly jars, filled with grape jelly, and when you finished the jelly (which we did as soon as we could), they became juice glasses.

My kids use them.

Wore this one out.

Speaking of drug education, we had to watch this in seventh grade. We were all traumatized as fuck.

Memories: day-glo three hole punch paper. It came in yellow, blue, a hot pink/magenta. I don't really remember if there was a lime green. Teachers hated it. I think it was eventually banned in our school.

Wide, wet look vinyl watch bands. The watch was attached by tabs that snapped into place so you could swap out watchbands. I had a Mickey Mouse Watch. My brother had Snoopy. We both had numerous watch bands. My were hot pink, lime green, etc. My brothers were white, black, and natural suede.

Compoz

I still have the Jellystone Park plate I used as a kid.

I told you once

I told you twice

I told you chicken noodle soup with rice

My mother wouldn't allow melmac in the house, but she bought Corelle with green stamps.

I remember sitting in the front seat while my brother, 3 years younger and wrapped in a blanket, was placed on the "floor" of the car. My mom said to hold him in place with my foot. If I did, I could pick some Brach candies out at the grocery store.

We also had a "Cow2Car" drive thru on 9 or 10 Mile (Warren, MI) where you could drive thru and buy milk, cigarettes, baby formula, bread, toilet paper...I wish they still had those. My mom never wore shoes when she drove around running errands, only slippers or rainbow "thongs."

I always had ashes in my hair. She had had straight hair and a scarf on her head.

Long straight hair ^^^

Are you a girl or a boy, r217?

[quote]My mother wouldn't allow melmac in the house, but she bought Corelle with green stamps.

Are they not the same thing?

[quote]I could pick some Brach candies out at the grocery store.

I remember at the grocery store, they had a huge bin of Brach candy sold by weight. People used to walk by and pick some out and eat it without paying for it. My mother would never let us do that.

We had a Corelle thread not too long ago....

And it was a good one, r226.

OMG, R200, the second I read the description of that scene in your post I knew it was EON and Elly Jo. I was going to go post that to you but then I read on as saw you already knew. She did one of the best death scenes ever and if memory serves I think her brother was played by the actor who went on to play one of Brooke English's husbands on AMC.

Edge was such a great show. Watch one or two episodes and it would hook you.

My absolute favorite r225, were those white taffy pieces that had the colored fruit jellies dotted through them.

[quote]My absolute favorite [R225], were those white taffy pieces that had the colored fruit jellies dotted through them.

It always bugged me that parts of the taffy would stick to the plastic and you had to make an effort to bite it off. You shouldn't have to work at eating candy. LOL

[quote]Are you a girl or a boy, [R217]?

Boy.

Cow2Car reminded me of the dairies we had. The sold milk, butter, cheese, and eggs. I can't remember if they were drive through.

The taffy with jelly pieces were always used as the chimneys on our gingerbread houses.

R200 - I love you - an Edge of Night website! Man, that soap was something - so adult for so long. It's demise was just due to changing tastes and its 30 minute length (so many soaps were going to 60 minutes). I wish there was a contact button on that site - I didn't see one. What you linked to is built off an older website (from fortunecity). In the old site there was a year by year list of the murders committed on Edge. It showed the victim, how they were killed, the accused, the guilty, A great resource that's now gone.

How funny r230, I'd forgotten that!

I can recall when plane tickets were written by hand. There were several duplicate carbon copies involved. The entire itinerary was on the same page, but the coupons were sequential! Instead of scanning boarding passes as today, the gate agent had to remove and retain the correct page from the "ticket" bundle. Leisure travelers usually got the ticket from a travel agent.

I addition to having limited hours, banks put LONG holds on checks. My dad would receive a (modest) quarterly check from his grandfather's estate on a NJ bank that was frozen for five business days by Chase in NYC.

I don't know when they discontinued this one, but in New Jersey and Connecticut back then on the parkways tolls were paid by tossing coins in a bin. Woe unto those who missed their aim! EZ Passes were light years away.

Coming home from junior high to watch the only soap I ever got into, but boy did I get into it, Dark Shadows. And all because of Joel Crothers. Later he was in daytime soap The Secret Storm. What a great-looking guy ( and a Harvard grad).

Kids today have no idea how to "kite" a check.

Joel Crothers appreciation video.

You could also get away with buying something on credit at a department store and then returning it for a cash refund, thereby raising cash for your weekend.

Melmac is plastic; Corelle is glass.

The ad campaigns seemed more clever.

Plop Plop Fizz Fizz

and

Ancient Chinese Secret Huh?

With the exception of Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Don Rickles, comedians were funny. Smut in comedy was unknown.

R110 I still carry a handkerchief! 48 yo and can’t leave the house without one in my pocket.

School blackboards were made of slate and chalk was made of chalk. Such an honor to be chosen chalkboard captain for my class and have the privilege of erasing the boards at the end of the day and then scrubbing them down with a wet sponge (made of sponge).

R243, my father always used a handkerchief. It ended crusty at the end of the day.

My dad used those R242. I always thought the idea of all that snot going into the laundry seemed gross. He called Kleenex from the box a "paper handkerchief."

Either season two or three had Ellen and her book group, which included the guy who plays the Indian kid's father in the Big Bang Theory and the gay guy from Boston Common and Yes Dear.

There was also an episode where she pretended to be a fitness trainer to Paige's studio boss where she pitched several novels to him.

Today, they were rerunning episodes from the last season after Ellen came out, and what was weird about those were E's straight friends acting like E had never dated, instead of her having never dated women...

r243, that was detention in my school.

Shhhhhhh, r247!

I was obsessed with the Monster Cereals (Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry). Mom would only let me have them about once a year. One box of cereal had one of those small plastic vinyl records you could put on the record player, called "Monsters Go Disco". I had that memorized. Later on I stumbled on the YT Link, where someone had uploaded the whole thing, and I went back to a euphoric haze. I had still remembered the whole thing.

There was a 4th monster cereal introduced, called "Fruit Brute", which lasted all of about 6 months on the shelves - I think there was some fear about food coloring in children's stools...

Once in awhile my mother would let us buy Quisp cereal.

[quote]Smut in comedy was unknown.

Apparently you've never heard of Redd Foxx, Rusty Warren, Moms Mabley, Lenny Bruce, et. al.

[quote]I think there was some fear about food coloring in children's stools...

No, that came from the dye in the pink and blue toilet paper.

My mother refused to buy colored toilet paper for that very reason.

You weren’t supposed to eat it, R253.

We had Correlle dishes because they were virtually unbreakable.

But if you ever had the misfortune of breaking one, you'd still be cleaning fine shards of glass from the floor a year or longer.

Franken Berry did indeed cause pink poop when first introduced. I loved Count Choculia & sister ate Franken Berry - mom bought both - no fighting!

Also liked Quisp. Related Cerial Quake originally had a hot hulking construction worker as the mascot. 5 year old me was VERY intrigued - especially by the commercial where he was transformed into a less brutish, slimmer Aussie Outback guy. Market research found that kids were afraid of Quake - afraid he’d “beat up” Quisp. I was obviously not consulted.

Quake - before & after

Career girls didn't have household lives. Their lives were too filled with drama, romance, and thrills.

I loved Dolly Madison brand Banana Flips and Zingers. If you got the occasional stale Banana Flip, it tasted like band-aids.

Also, Hostess Ding Dongs were wrapped individually in tin foil.

I also remember beer and pop being delivered on Friday nights. We had a pool and did tons of entertaining.

In the Detroit area, it was Towne Club pop, which we bought by the case or pallet, yet no one was fat.

Dolly Madison zingers were the official sponsor of the Charlie Brown Christmas special! I was in my forties by the time I actually had one, as they did not sell them in New Jersey.

There was another of those fruit-flavored cereals, which I believe was a spin off from the monster ones, called Sir Grapefellow.

My mother's kitchen (1970's) had one of these kitchen ranges. (I wish I could remember the brand.) Whenever she pulled out the burners (drawer) to cook, I kept waiting for it to tip over.

Fruit Brute was packaged as Wolfen Berry, with a werewolf mascot, in Michigan and other Midwestern markets.

But he inferior Fruit Brute name won out in the wide release, and most remember it as that.

I was afraid of Muenster cheese because I thought it was made by The Munsters.

In part one of this absurdly grim bus "safety" video, poor Mihi Kwon pays the ultimate price for dropping her handmade Valentine. NOOOOO!

R262 Frigidaire had similar models, and so did Tappan (eventually bought out by Electrolux)..

Notice the crown on this Queen of the Household.

Those kitchen ranges were nice, but the wall-mounted refrigerators were even better:

Those stoves and the refrigerator cabinets are so cool! I've never seen either!

My house was built in 1964. I bought it in 2008. It had the original avocado green dishwasher and range, which both worked perfectly. It took me several years to decide what to do with the kitchen so I didn't replace them until fairly recently. Both worked fine. The original Formica held up beautifully too.

Our house was built in 1958. A great deal of it was well designed, but what got me was that the kitchen counters were 4x4 tiles. All of the frigg'n grout to clean. Who thought that was a good idea?

I was wondering why Fruit Brute didn't sound familiar? It was Wolfen Berry in New Jersey, also.

Do people still have Lazy Susans? Our whole house was done in Early American back in the 60s, with colonial-patterned slipcovers on the furniture and a big, round slab of a dining room table surrounded by Windsor chairs with a matching Lazy Susan in the middle.

Did you hate it, R271? So was our house, and I have liked nothing but MCM as a result.

My mother used to take a bicycle chain to our old furniture in the 60s. She said she was "distressing" them. (It was a good way for her to vent her anger at my father.) Then she'd paint whatever it was with a base coat and cover it with a contrasting coat that she would rub off. This she called "antiquing."

At least it got her off of decoupage.

I don't remember having any feeling about it R272. The pictures on the wall were repros of the Declaration of Independence and faux Grandma Moses paintings. Kinda reminded me of Lucy and Ricky's house in the country. P.S. What is MCM?

Ahhh...Mid-Century Modern?

Ding-ding-ding, r275.

R271, did you have the wagon wheel chandelier and the coffee grinder lamps?

Nope R277. It was a simple, hanging, overhead lamp with a round, burnished brass-style shade which you could raise or lower by hand. I can still picture it, though I can't find a picture of it.

R273, I remember my mother and a woman down the street talking about "distressing" a bureau. On the paint can, it recommended putting small dots on the result so they look like worm holes.

Our interiors were Hollywood Regency. The house was built in 1958; so, I suspect the style was on the way out. My mother followed trends; she did not set them. The entire house was blue and green. It must have been a popular color pallet. The Robinson's Department store was the same color pallet and Hollywood Regency for that matter. The living room was primarily blue, white, and gold. One wall had a Van Luit wallpaper mural of the Acropolis. The carpet was white wool, the Tuxedo sofa off white, the side chairs were Regency frames in white and gold upholstered in powder blue velvet, the coffee table was two gold and silver Corinthian capitals with a glass top. The room was never used.

R278, I know that chandelier. We had it in the dinette. The was a brass egg on the cord that hid the pulley for raising and lowering it.

R279, you pounded nails in and removed them to make worm holes.

Who remembers the CB craze of the 1970s? And in extension, the "trucker" craze.

We got a great big convoy trucking through the night. Convoy!

And that weird assed song about the little boy on the CB radio who got all the truckers to stop and give him a ride.

On CB radio a "good buddy" meant there was a cocksucker at the next rest stop. Or maybe a few of them.

I grew up with Early American furniture too and it was very much like Lucy and Ricky's country house. The slipcovers on the sofas had a print of Revolutionary War fife and drummer. We had eagles everywhere including a big ass lamp with a brass eagle as the base. Ugly as fuck but the most comfortable furniture ever -- down filled cushions on all upholstered furniture. My mom redecorated in the 8Os and then our house looked like a Hoffman Koos display, aka boring and generic. Luckily my mom developed a sense of decorating style and has much improved the decor.

Yes! You're right R280. I didn't mention the brass bulb but I remember it. Wow!

[quote]The slipcovers on the sofas had a print of Revolutionary War fife and drummer.

Thank you! I was trying to recall what the pattern on the slipcovers was.

In the 1950's and 60's our gas company made a big push for outside lights powered by natural gas in people's front yards. For a couple bucks a month tacked on to your gas bill they would install it and even maintain it. Just about everyone in my neighborhood had one, and it gave my grim little suburb a kind of a Ye Olde London vibe at night.

Then the energy crisis hit, and they canceled the program overnight. It really changed the appearance of my town.

R283, Koos Brothers is where all my mother's Fauxlonial stuff was from, including my bedroom furniture. This was in 1961.

candy necklaces.

I grew up with a Tappan pull-out stove. Indeed, they were cool.

Here’s a catalog page of those height adjustable light fixtures. Brilliant engineering, the extra cord would automatically wind into the “egg” part when you raised it.

Anyone else have these in the bathtub?

Tks R290. That was it, on the right.

Cool, we had a very similar one. Reading the ad reminded me they also had 3 bulbs and a rotary switch in the handle would let you select the brightness by switching on one two or three bulbs.

Like Barbara, I have a distaste for my sloppy ways.

Yes, r290, we also had the one on the right.

Kreative kids enjoyed the decorative art of pyrography (wood, and finger burning).

Ha ha R296. I remember getting a wood burning kit for my birthday. It was so lame.

r290, FYI, those adjustable chandeliers were available in Europe from 1900 on. We have a German one in white porcelain from around 1910.

I wish they'd bring those back R286. I think they make electric ones now that flicker but it's not the same.

I had that wood burning kit - and I did burn my finger more once. Did like the smell of doing it, but it was very hard to make even lines.

I also had a tumble stones kit. Got it for my birthday. Set it up according to the instructions - put rocks, water & grit from envelope #1 in canister, screw on lid, place on unit, turn on and let tumble - for 3 MONTHS! And then you did the same with grit #2.

So between the hum of the motor and the clinking of the rocks it was pretty loud. Late that night my mom comes into my bedroom from theirs across the hall. “How long does that need to be on?” “3 months” “No it doesn’t” and she pulled the plug out of the wall. “But Mom, now they won’t turn out right!” “Tough.”

So I’d plug it in every morning for the better part of a year. The stones turned out ok. I guess.

Were they polished r300?

They were sort of polished - I remember being somewhat disappointed. Definitely better than where they started but nothing amazing - not like the rocks or petrified wood you’d see in gift shops on summer vacations.

But really how good a job would a kids toy do even if you followed those directions to the letter.

R294 I love those instructive films from the 50s. A Date With Your Family is one of my favourites; this version is really DL in soundover commentary. I know this thread is devoted to mostly fond nostalgia, so I'll also post the non-wiseass original next.

MST3K roasted a lot of these shorts. I'll post a link to the site, if anyone wants to peruse them. They post both the original and their roasted version.

Original short film, A Date With Your Family.

Mystery Science Theater 3000, if you never heard of it, was a brilliant off-kilter show on Comedy Central and then the SciFi channel. They showed a lot of 50s-70s horror, scifi etc films and educational short films. They intentionally chose bad films, though some are real classics. Their wiseass soundover commentary was hilarious and very smart, using current popular culture references as well as obscure stuff from literature, film, and all kind of genres - but it was all meant to be sly and funny. This site lets you explore the MST3K versions and the original full-length films and the short films.

r305, i hated that shit when it was on.

Who remembers Supermarionatio?

^^^^Supermarionation.

r290, the one on the left has "a gay border of multi-colored inserts."

Yes, R291, I believe we did have those.

R307 oh yes, the work of Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia who did the wardrobe design for many of the series. Thunderbirds, XL-5, Stingray, Supercar, Joe 90, Captain Scarlett, Secret Service, probably missing a few. Funny now to see their vision of the “future”. He also went on to do live actor stuff with Space 1999 and UFO. That was all must see TV for me.

Gerry Anderson and Sylvia planted the seeds of my purple wig fetish.

I was rather partial to the submarine shirts, on the guys anyway.

Getting sidetracked tho...

The folks at Rubbermaid came up with this extensible fence - took little space when stored for the winter.

Whenever my dad stopped in the A&P grocery store, he always picked up a Jane Parker Spanish Bar Cake. We loved 'em !

I hadn't thought about A&P in ages. That was my primary grocery back at university. Looking it up I see it folded in 2015 after 156 years in business.

R219, we had the exact same Jellystone plate, also a plate with Bullwinkle and the Cheerio kid, and the bowl with the Cheerio kids. There was another bowl, with two mice cartoon characters, but I can't remember their names. I think my mother still has some, but the bowls are pretty faded now.

The Cyclo-Teacher Learning Aid

I must have had about 300 Richie Rich comics. I say "I", but really I commandeered a bunch that my older siblings had when they lost interest. There were some Casper, Hot Stuff, and Spooky comics as well. Mostly the Harvey stuff, with some random Archie's or Little Lulu's thrown in.

When I started to get into baseball, this was a favorite comic, but I wondered why they didn't do an AL version. At that age I hadn't realized the history, and that the AL hadn't been around as long. But then they never did a comic when the AL turned 100.

Spanish Bar Cake recipe

For R315 r320

One of my first TV crushes was Virgil on McHale's Navy. I was the only one in our family who caught every episode with my father, who had been in the Navy in WWII. Little did he suspect why.

Sexy!

I remember Turkish Foot Candy.

Catching THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK or LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH on a UHF channel in the middle of an afternoon and having nightmares for days.

The original Flip-Flops @ D&K Stores for 25¢

Keds knock-off sneakers @ D&K for $1.00

My parents bought whole bean bags of Eight O' Clock Coffee at the A&P.

I was allowed to grind the beans in the store's own coffee grinder. My mom used a stove top percolator, and eventually moved on up to an electric percolator.

Same with me r327. I always got to grind the beans at A&P.

i used to turn the grinders on and walk off.

What the hell is Turkish Foot Candy?

Polynesian theme restaurants which kind of copied Trader Vic's. There was one nearby called Bali Hai. They poured a lot of money into it, with a working volcano in the parking lot, tiki torches, bamboo and fountains into which I poured soap suds as a juvenile delinquent.

We had Elby's Big Boy Restaurants, with that HUUUUGE Big Boy guarding the entrance.

Little did we know that the fat Big Boy would one day be elected President.

[Quote]Polynesian theme restaurants which kind of copied Trader Vic's. There was one nearby called Bali Hai. They poured a lot of money into it, with a working volcano in the parking lot, tiki torches, bamboo and fountains

Ours went broke then immediately reopened as an Italian restaurant, and they didn't change a thing. Your Cokes would come in coconut mug glasses and the spaghetti was served on plates with palm trees and hula girls. Still one of the greatest restaurants I've ever been in.

I liked the Spanish bar cake as a kid, too! Spices gave it a kick that went well with the frosting.

What exactly makes the Spanish Bar Cake "Spanish?"

^^^

🐂 Spanish Bull Urine

My mom had a cheese slicer that was basically a handle with steel tubing attached and formed into a square. A thin metal wire was attached across the top, and she used it to perfectly slice through her five pound loaf of Velveeta Cheese.

BOYS BEWARE.....

You might enjoy this site.

Pesky homosexuals....

Let's share some recollections of what it was like to be gay back in the day..

[quote]Let's share some recollections of what it was like to be gay back in the day..

Start a new thread. You can use this ^ as a title. Or just say "Let's be gay, back in the day."

Bump.

Weebles used to be a popular toy. We had the car and camper growing up.

R331, also the Tahitian Terrce at Disneyland. Later became Aladdin's Oasis, now closed.

They did, indeed, wobble and NOT fall down r343!

Hawaiian Tropic Suntan Lotion, with a formula for everyone !

One of the kiddie shows I used to watch was Captain Kangaroo, with Mr. Green Jeans an Grandfather Clock. My friends and I spent a lot of time outdoors, and one thing we used to play on was the Slip and Slide.

Grandfather Clock gave me the heebie-jeebies, r347.

R348 I thought Mr Bunny Rabbit was vaguely sinister in a way I couldn't define. Then I was introduced to Dick Cheney, his evil twin brother from another mother.

Still creepy.....

Anyone else remember a PBS show in the 1960's about floral arrangement? It was sort of like Joy of Painting with flowers, and was maybe the Gayest show ever on PBS. For 30 minutes the host would select the flowers and then trim them to make an arrangement, but it required an endless quantity of foam, chicken wire, and clay to make it happen. It was in B&W so it must have been early to mid 1960's.

The fact that I would sit glued to the television while it was on was maybe my Mother's first clue . . .

R351, was it "Crocket's Victory Garden"? I never watched it, but I remember that name, and it's the closest match I can come up with.

We actually watched a lot of PBS. The kids always watched Mr Rogers, Zoom, Electric Company. My mother watched all the British stuff - Masterpierce Theater, Mystery. My father would watch the Boston Pops specials. We would all watch the original "Sneak Previews" with Siskel and Ebert, or as we cleverly named them: Fat and Skinny.

Interesting that nobody has mention Girl Talk with Virginia Graham. This was a talk show for women that took a very traditional view of women's roles in the world. The episodes seem to be scrubbed from Youtube. I think this is the show where June Lockhart famously defended homosexuals to Virginia Graham's horror. Oddly, Joan Rivers was a frequent guest.

Grocery stores were a lot smaller. We didn't have a football field full of soda. There weren't 85 kinds of yogurt. Everyone was happy with the selection then. Jobs were easier to find. You could walk in a place and actually talk to a HR person. People were less stupid. There weren't metal detectors in school.

[quote]Grocery stores were a lot smaller. We didn't have a football field full of soda. There weren't 85 kinds of yogurt.

This is so true. And it really makes me mad today that it's difficult to find normal stuff because of all the special products. Some stores don't stock chocolate milk because they need the space for ten brands of soy milk and almond milk and no-milk milk. I miss the days when there were basic products on the shelves.

R355, it is interesting to me the difference in the reaction that my European friend have to supermarkets then and now. In the 1970s it was "Wow, look at all of these choices." Now it is, "Do you really need 25 different kinds of toothpaste?"

In high school back in the early 70's I worked for a bakery that delivered to grocery stores, and I remember being at a grand opening with the company's sales manager. The new store was 30,000 square feet, and I remember the sales manager saying that "they'll never make them any bigger than this one." Of course now a store 2 or even 3 times that size isn't even worth talking about.

[quote]Now it is, "Do you really need 25 different kinds of toothpaste?"

It started when "brand" became a verb (in the marketing sense).

R358, no, it was when businesses/ stockholders insisted on constant growth. The only way to achieve that is to have 9000 different variations of toothpaste: whitening, sensitive gums, fluoride, enamel toughening. Back in the 1960s, your choice was peppermint or cinnamon.

r359, we had spearmint too. We had high class stores.

Does anyone remember Psssssst? It was some mess you sprayed in your hair when you were too lazy to wash it. I looked on line and it's still sold. But for some reason I think of it as a 1970s product.

Thomas the Tank and Friends always crept me out. Trains with talking, human-like faces....... reminds me of Vincent Price ("Help Me! Help Me") in "The Fly."

We had Bubblegum Flavor r359.

Back in the days when kids were just kids, playing outdoors, riding bikes, and just having fun.

Before Pssssst, there was Minipoo, r361.

Every pre-teen girl wore Loves Baby Soft and smeared their lips with different flavored Bonnie Bell lip gloss. Every classroom smelled of bubble gum or Dr. Pepper lip gloss.

I remember The Virginia Graham Show R353. I liked her but I don't remember the homophobic stuff. I do remember her hair though. It looked like it was about to take flight. Three cheers for America's Mom - June Lockhart.

Blooper...

R365 I preferred Loves Fresh Lemon myself. I chose to wear my hair up, with baby's breath. I look REALLY PRETTY!

Hodgepodge Lodge, a nature show on PBS with the slightly mannish "Miss Jean" as host.

DIVER DAN!

CBS used to have s program on Saturdays that showed children's foreign films.

There was one where a little girl and boy sailed down a stream in a rubber raft and met, I think, a bad end. I still remember the song the little girl sang. There was also a movie about two Japanese boys called. 'Fatty and Skinny'

I also swear I remember seeing live adaptations of 'Rabbit Hill' and 'Stuart Little',

I guess I am a bit older. Girls wore Tinkerbell scent, lip balm, and clear nail polish. The boys, of course, called it "Stinkerbell". As recall it was an odd scent, more like acetone than perfume. I think it was a must-have for any girls birthday party.

This brings up another difference: birthday parties were single gender. Boys did not attend girls Birthday parties and vice versa.

My sister wore Yardley's Oh! De London fragrance in the late sixties, and I loved that fragrance. I also remember her wearing perfumed nail polish by Cutex. No Bonnie Belle for her, she preferred Cover Girl Cosmetics.

I thought my sister was so sophisticated.

Hang Ten knit shirts with the two bare feet embroidered on the chest.

Listening to the radio with rapt attention as they updated the lists of school closings during a snowstorm. I never had any trouble waking up early when it was a potential snow day. It had to be a blizzard or at least a very significant snowstorm for them to close school. School buses had chains on the tires. When we'd hear the name of our school district called, it was definitely a celebratory day! We'd play outside all day, my mom would make lunch, usually Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese, or Campbell's chicken noodle soup and PBJ on toast (or the rarest of delights, a Fluffernutter!). We could watch TV as much as we wanted during the day but were usually outside for most of the day. It was even fun shoveling, my siblings and I would get the whole thing done pretty quickly.

[quote]Does anyone remember Psssssst?

I do r361. I also remember a very young Susan Dey was the model for the magazine ads right before she became a teen idol as Laurie Partridge.

God, I'm old. Must go take my meds now.

Dey cover.....

My aunt told everyone not to by "Evening in Paris" perfume because it was the #1 choice oh whores everywhere.

r375, that was my experience too. And my father always commented about it. "How come when it's a normal school day, your mother and I practically have to drag you out of bed to get you up. Yet, when there's a snow day, you're up and out the door before the normal time the bus comes?"

And he was right. LOL

Where your communities all white or did you ever have minorities living in your neighborhoods prior to the 70s? Sounds like such a magical time, for some.

R380 the deed on our house (built in late 1950s) for the subdivision stated that no persons with hispanic last names were allowed to live in the house. Can you imagine that happening today?!

[quote]Where your communities all white or did you ever have minorities living in your neighborhoods prior to the 70s?

We had five black families in our town, but they all acted white.

Last derailing comment, but r381 I found out through my undergrad Con Law class that such stipulations are still technically legal for home owners, though probably not enforceable after the first sale. I don't think anyone would be foolish enough to put that in writing today.

Our community was nearly completely white. We had a Cuban family, Armenia family, and one or two Asian doctors. We did have a few Jews. To be fair, there were not many blacks in our area. The "others" were Mexicans.

R375, in addition, my brother and I were expected to be out shoveling our driveway as soon as the snow stopped. We'd then take our shovels around to some of the older neighbors' houses and make some money shoveling their driveways as well.

Today, my neighbor across the street goes out to shovel the driveway herself while her teen son stays inside! Unheard of!

One year in grade school I was the only white kid in my class. I didn't even realize at the time or care one bit. People having different skin color was no different in my mind than different eye or hair color. We were in a very diverse area that was, as shocking as it may sound to some people on DL, also very safe and low crime.

r385 I noticed that as well in my neighborhood. Teenagers really only shoveled when they were going around asking for money from neighbors.

R380 Our CA suburban neighbors were white (lots of Italians and Jews) , Latinos, Asians, but no blacks.

I didn't get to know any black kids until I went to high school in 1971, where they drew from a larger population area.

(And in case you're taking a survey, about 85% circumcised. The uncut guys were most of the Latinos, a couple of the black guys, and an American-born Greek)

School bussing. Worst social experiment ever. (well maybe not ever, but pretty damn close).

r380, it was mostly white but there were some minority families (including Vanessa Williams' family). My immediate neighbors included Korean immigrants, complete with a set of grandparents called Habaji and Hominy, which are phonetic spellings of what we called them. They used to wear traditional Korean clothes, and Hominy used to make brooms out of sticks Habaji would drag out of the woods to sweep the driveway and steps every day. Habaji used to go to a nearby cemetery and practice Tai Chi every morning. He used to sit on the front steps of the house and cheer us on when we'd play games in the street. He was such a happy fellow. He spoke no English, didn't drive, didn't seem to leave the neighborhood, but seemed to thoroughly enjoy life. Hominy was nice enough but Habaji was just a great man. Our other neighbors were a lesbian couple from Sweden. I had no idea they were Lesbians, but thought it was cool that best friends lived together like Laverne and Shirley. They would often play in the street with us kids. The other parents didn't exactly befriend them but no one shunned them either. They were probably in their late 20s so younger than the parents on the street and didn't have kids. They babysat once in a while for my sister and me if my older sister had plans. They told great stories. They moved away when I was about 12, I wish I had kept in touch with them. We also had two (unrelated) hearing-impaired kids in the neighborhood who we played with and no one made a big deal about their deafness. We all learned some signs, and shouted at them when we spoke to them, but we pretty much shouted at everyone outside.

R390 Chappaqua? I always figured that was as white as it gets.

Every now and then, rather than going to a “regular” grocery store (still small by today’s standards), Mom would go to a small neighborhood butcher/grocery store when she wanted a big roast or turkey for a special occasion. Their “grocery” section was limited but I remember they sold cookies in bulk, by weight I think. In brown paper bags. Milk was still delivered at home, but I think they had switched to the plastic gallon jugs, with the cardboard stoppers that would inevitably fall in. Ugh.

With another Nor'easter coming, I don't seem to appreciate those early days in the snow. We lived at the top of a good sleigh riding hill and when cars couldn't get up it, we'd get our sleds out. Neighbors would come at dusk and congregate in front of our house. They'd bring jugs of hot chocolate with them. Lots of fun and laughter. It really felt magical. Different now.

R371

David Sedaris references Fatty and Skinny in one of his books. The three of us were mo doubt watching it at the same time!

r393, I remember once our neighbors were out of town on vacation during a snowstorm and they had a steep driveway. All that unplowed powder was too much of a temptation for my brother and I and even though our mom warned us to stay off of that driveway, we couldn't resist. After a couple of runs, I wiped out and left half my face on a rock on the side of the driveway. As I limped back home, battered and bloody, my brother was like whatever you do, don't tell mom. I didn't, there was a code of honor back then and you took your lumps.

R395 I kinda did the same thing with my brother, except we both raced home to get our stories out first. Well, it wasn't really the same thing...I shot him in the face with a small tree branch from my home-made bow. I remember him staring at me in shock and me being in shock from what I had just done. He pulled the "arrow" out of his cheek and we both ran into the house. I'm sure I was punished. He's still around btw. Turns 60 this year.

lol 396! It really was a different time, and we survived.

When we went out for dinner at the Jersey Shore (Ocean City, New Jersey), we always dined at "Watson's" because that's where Grace Kelly's family ate. We were dressed for a night at the opera ( circa 1965). Suits, dresses, my mother's hair pulled up in French curls, etc.). It was a big deal to order Tomato juice and Melba toast for an appetizer. I thought it was nuts until I saw an episode of "Madmen" and someone ordered that.

R398, the other starter that I remember was Eggs a la Russe: a hard boiled egg cut in half and drowned in Russian dressing.

The doctor came to our house to treat us kids when we had the flu.

They did R400. And they all had those black leather bags.

Although associated with Jews, chicken livers was featured WASP places as an appetizer on the prefixe, set menu.

There used to be grand Chinese restaurants. My first memory of eating out was at a fancy place with a pagoda roof. Then someone spread a rumor they were serving Kitten Chow Mein and the place went out of business.

[quote]My aunt told everyone not to by "Evening in Paris" perfume because it was the #1 choice oh whores everywhere.

She must have been afraid of a little competition.

Naked Came the......

Stranger

I remember the doctor coming for a housecall when I had croup. He sent me to the hospital. I remember the pigfaced nurse holding my nose to shove medicine down my throat and threatening to spank me if I didn't stop crying. Parents weren't allowed to stay with their kids in the hospital then.

Nurses wore white dresses, white stockings, white shoes and white caps with a black stripe. Teenage girls volunteered as Candy Stripers and the wore pink and white striped uniforms. My Candy Striper was named Pamela and she read stories to me. I hope she became a nurse because she was much nicer than Pigface.

My doctor's office smelled like rubbing alcohol and cigarette smoke. There were chrome standing ashtrays located between every couple of Naugahyde chairs. He wasn't a pediatrician, just a GP family doctor. All doctors had their own practice. There were no medical groups, no HMOs, no managed care back then.

R403, our Chinese restaurant had the same rumor. The also featured Peking Duck on the menu which required 24 hours notice if you wanted to order it. The rumor was you had to order in advance so they knew how many ducks they had to catch at the duck pond. I may have posted this earlier but on Friday and Saturday nights they had a Chinese Smorgasbord. This was well before discount Chinese buffet restaurants. I thought it was so elegant, even Cokes were served with a little umbrella.

It was just taken for granted a doctor should be willing to make house calls, at least the GPs. For this reason during the gas-rationing days of WW2 the doctors were allotted twice the amount of gas regular people could receive.

For eight whole gallons a week they had to put a sticker on their windshield and mark what their work was.

Snacks were fresh fruit.

Our family dentist smoked. He would have a lit cigarette sitting in the an ashtray on that little round table where he kept his tools while he worked on you.

Skinny and Fatty, direct from YouTube

I mentioned doctors making housecalls early in the first thread.

r412 Yeah? And?

I went to a Medical Group in the 1960s, although I understand it was a new concept then.

R153, That made me cry! The last few years my parents were alive, we'd all bundle up, and drive around, from neighborhood to neighborhood, just to admire the Christmas decorations. We all reverted to our (my childhood), and it's one of the things I now miss most when Christmas arrives. My poor Mom had to bring an oxygen tank, but she still wouldn't miss it for anything.

I got a rock.

Was it a Magic Rock, R416? A close friend who knows my love the Titanic gave me a Titanic Magic Rocks box 20 years ago but it's still sitting in my walk-in closet. I had originally intended to broadcast its growth on my webcam back then but I never did. Will it still grow the magic rocks near the turd the Titanic seems to have landed on?

Hahahahaha r416. Good one.

Anyone who went to school in the early '60s HAS to remember this.

Does anyone here from Long Island NY remember a pink fancy Chinese restaurant? We drove around a lot so I don't remember what town it was in or even if it was in Nassau or Suffolk county. We used to call it the Pink Pagoda but that might not have been it's real name. It was right on some main highway.

Great food. It didn't have a buffet, there were very few buffet places back then, if any. What it had was this huge stainless steel thing that kept going around in a circle with chefs in the middle (on solid ground, not on the part that was spinning, lol.) on the metal table spinning were very thin cuts meats and poultry and seafood and every kind of Chinese vegetable and sauce you could think of and lo mein style noodles and crunchy fried noodles. People would point and tell the chefs whatever they wanted in their dish and they would make it on the spot, right in front of you. It was a real treat for kids.

Then you and the chef preparing your dish got a number and you were taken to a table and served tea and a bowl of those same crunchy noodles and a bowl of duck sauce. They ran down the list of soups and you ordered that and if you wanted a beverage other than tea you got that. When the soup was served they ran down the list of appetizers and then that was served. Then the main course you picked out was brought to the table and then if anyone still had room there was dessert. They were all light desserts and we would usually get the kumquats or the slices of pineapple sometimes a small single scoop of ice cream. Fortune cookies were given for free.

I sure hope someone else has been to that restaurant and remembers the name and where it was. If I'm ever in that neck of the woods and it still exists I'd love to stop there and see how it is all these years later.

Kids born after the drive-in era don't know what they missed out on.

Google maps tells me the closest survivor is 129 miles away.

We would go to the Drive In in our PJs and have to lie down in the back of the station wagon & “sleep”after the first of the double features.

Summer Fun ......... Pogo Sticks and Stilts.

We didn't have buffets, we had Smorgasbords. I don't think any restaurants in my part of the midwest used the term "buffet" until the big chain restaurants came in. And back then any self-respecting smorgasbord had a dazzling selection of jello based foods made in fancy molds.

I always tell this story r422. For some reason this one drive-in's marquee had lettering at the very bottom left over from something saying IN A CAR HEATER. One week they were showing:

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

IN A CAR HEATER

The next week we drove by and the movie was:

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI

IN A CAR HEATER

Yes R420, you could be thinking of what used to be King Wah in Suffolk County on the corner of Round Swamp Road and Jericho Turnpike. It's in Huntington across the street from the Oheka Castle. It sounds like exactly what you described. I posted a picture of it at R403. The restaurant was vacant but remained in surprisingly good condition for many years until it was finally torn down last year. I get off that exit on my way home from the city and when I saw it was gone I felt real sad to see it go. Thanks for bringing it all back. We have the same memory.

Did you ever go to the Route 110 Drive-In?

Lawn darts (also known as Javelin darts, jarts or yard darts) is a lawn game for two players or teams. A lawn dart set usually includes four large darts and two targets. The game play and objective are similar to both horseshoes and darts. The darts are similar to the ancient Roman plumbata. They are typically 12 inches (30 cm) long with a weighted metal or plastic tip on one end and three plastic fins on a rod at the other end. The darts are intended to be tossed underhand toward a horizontal ground target, where the weighted end hits first and sticks into the ground. The target is typically a plastic ring, and landing anywhere within the ring scores a point.

And fun for the whole family.

Begging my parents to go to the drive in because the 2nd feature was Annie Get Your Gun with Betty Hutton. My parents gave in and the next day admitted they actually enjoyed Annie better than the first run feature. Have no memory of what that was,

Years later, as a late teen who could drive, going to the drive-in by myself because they had started running soft-core porn as the late night second feature on week-ends. Could JO in the car by myself with no one noticing.

The first time I saw Paul Newman was on the big screen at the drive-in. I was only five, but I knew right then.

My family doctor, who was on the corner of my street, had NO secretary or nurse. He’d answer the phone in the middle of your exam with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. When he made house calls, my mom always had a shot of whiskey waiting for him.

R6 I remember a woman we knew still had one of the top loading dishwashers from the 1920s or 30s.

And heeeeeeeere's Madame Bette Davis, demonstrating key features of a 1930 GE dishwasher:

Sophisticated commercials...

Hey, R420 and R426 (and anyone else who lived on Long Island in the early 1960s)! Recalling unique restaurants, one of my favorites as a kid was Raynor’s - on Sunrise Highway near the Freeport/Baldwin border. It was a log cabin serving great fried chicken. But what I really miss are their corn fritters. IIRC, they were served with maple syrup. I couldn’t get enough of them. I’m guessing it’s long gone, but I really don’t know. Anyone else eat there as a kid?

[quote] always tell this story [R422]. For some reason this one drive-in's marquee had lettering at the very bottom left over from something saying IN A CAR HEATER. One week they were showing:

That would be "IN CAR HEATER." (No "A".) This was not part of a movie title left over from something-- it was another service offered by drive-ins to attract customers in colder climates. There was a heater device provided by the theater that you could place in your car during the movie (like the speaker.)

We went to the Italian Festival every summer in Little Italy. First we went to mass, and afterward the walked throughout the neighborhood carrying the Statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Next was the annual outdoor spaghetti dinner........so good, made by the parishioners. Everything was made from scratch, including cakes, pastries, and cookies.

After stuffing yourself silly, it was on to the games, activities, the rides, and bocce! We waited all year long for this event which now has evolved into a three day festival.

We drove 170 miles each way, 340 miles total, on two lane roads so my Grandfather could see How the West Was Won in Cinerama, and we all hated it. That was a long drive home.

We used to go to the drive-in exactly once a year when we were on our annual Cape Cod vacation. The Wellfleet Drive-in. It's still operating. I remember seeing the Poseidon Adventure there, but I could have sworn we kids recognized Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy Drew. Either we saw it years after its release, or my memory is faulty because Poseidon came out in '72, but Nancy Drew in '77.

Ha, love that story r436. The movie is terrible, yes.

THIS was my Saturday night treat in the early/mid 70s

So greasy....so limp....

r437 They re-issued Poseidon Adventure several times during the 70s.

These threads make me happy, then depressed.

Our first cable remote was the size of a brick with a thick cord that led to the tv. My parents would yell if we used it while sitting on the couch since it was a tripping hazard but it was the first time we could change the channel without having to walk to the tv!

It had two rows of buttons for the channels that were very loud when pressed, making it impossible to channel surf at night without waking everyone up - especially difficult when trying to find the soft core porn on HBO or Prism at night.

[quote]My mom would always take me to see movies that were far too adult for me that she wanted to see but we were buddies so I came along. I cherish those memories! We saw 9 to 5, Foul Play, Murder by Death and Best Friends to name just a few.

My mom did this as well. She took me to see movies with her favorite stars - Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere, John Travolta, etc - and paid not one whit of attention to whether the films were appropriate for a child. She took me to see 9 to 5 too. I loved it, even though I didn't get what was so funny about M&Ms...

[quote]I loved Dolly Madison brand Banana Flips and Zingers.

My dad owned a business near a Dolly Madison outlet for much of the 70s/80s, so we ate that stuff all the time. As another poster mentioned, Dolly Madison sponsored the Charlie Brown TV specials, so the outlet was full of Peanuts-related decor, which delighted us kids. I remember us collecting these large cardboard portraits of the various Peanuts characters from there, that you could get with a certain number of purchases or something - I looked on eBay and those things are going for absurd money now.

Does anyone remember Cricket magazine? It was basically a literary magazine for kids, like a kiddie New Yorker, and had the most gorgeous cover paintings. I was shocked to learn that it's still being published.

I now live in rural NH. My nearest movie theater is a drive-in. It shows first run movies throughout the season. Some things do not die.

Damn, I meant to post about magic rocks. I loved those damn things, but then I also loved the clam shells that you put in water and paper flowers bloomed.

My father was a doctor and I would sometimes go on house calls. He was free on Thursdays and one weekend a month. Otherwise he was on call or at the hospital. Doctors back then really worked hard.

I remember we had one patient who would give my dad Christmas stuff made from felt and covered with beads and sequins. My mother hated the stuff. She thought it was tacky. It disappeared rather quickly. One year he was given an advent calendar. We were supposed to have an advent calendar for church so this large banner with fuschia, teal, and turquoise sequins actually survived a few days. Then it disappeared and we were informed that we would no longer be attending church.

I posted in the first thread about the TV remote controls with the thick cord you had to be careful not to trip over.

It felt like the height of luxury to lay in bed and click that remote on its long cord, like a hedonistic Roman emperor. I still remember laughing about how gloriously lazy it was.

We were too cheap for cable tv, but my friend had it, and if you S L O W L Y wiggled the dial on the set-top box it would confuse whatever system they used to scramble the picture on the (soft) porn channel, and if you did it long enough you would be rewarded with a few seconds of naked people, usually bare breasts. We spent hours working that knob. We were like 13 year old safecrackers opening a bank vault.

R437, You're right. The Wellfleet Drive-In is still operating. We had a cheap summer rental last year next door separated by some woods. Still very popular.

[quote] we'd all bundle up, and drive around, from neighborhood to neighborhood, just to admire the Christmas decorations

Same here.

Some good friends would come for dinner and then we'd all pile into the car and go look at the lights. In 1970, the oldest son (17) decided to stay behind and help my mother with the dishes. After they'd gone home, mom sat my sister and I down and told us that he told her he had recently been diagnosed with leukemia. I really didn't know what that meant, I figured he would get treatment and be okay.

He was gone by the following April.

At age 13 I went to my first funeral, to watch them bury a friend I had known all my life. Looking back now, his parents were in their early 40s. I'm 60 and I cannot imagine coping with the death of a child. How they managed is a mystery to me (still alive in their late 80s, BTW)

In the gauzy haze of nostalgia, sometimes we forget that things weren't all rosy in the olden days

I think a lot of us never realized, not even a clue, how hard our parents struggled in so many ways to raise their families in the 50's and 60's. Average middle class back then would probably be looked down upon by many here as "poor white trash."

But we were happy kids who enjoyed our lives . We knew we had parents who would always be there for us.

R449

[quote]I think a lot of us never realized, not even a clue, how hard our parents struggled in so many ways to raise their families in the 50's and 60's. Average middle class back then would probably be looked down upon by many here as "poor white trash."

You are correct in the last part. Unfortunately, we do look down on the real middle class. We tend to think that the middle class consists of doctors, lawyers, and architects, not plumbers and electricians.

However, the first part is not true. Most got a huge boost in some form from the GI Bill. Many worked for a company that gave you a job for life. They did OK. They could buy a house and a car. They could take the family on a vacation. It might be camping at a KAO campground rather than Disneyland, but it was more than their parents could do. Christmas wasn't a struggle. Yes, Janie might have to get a Deluxe reading supermarket doll that was paid in installments rather than a Madame Alexander, but nobody was having a hard candy Christmas. To large degree, it appears that they had less because they saved. They did not spend every penny that they earned and they did not have credit cards to max out.

The problem is that everyone now wants to live above their means, and anyone who actually lived within their means would be considered poor.

We were middle class as R452 describes, and I know my parents never had any debt (aside from a mortgage which they paid off in 15 years). If only we could say the same these days; I think the average family has like $20,000 in credit card debt alone. Sad!

To R380 and others, my town had a section in the local newspaper called "Negroes in the Community." We bought our house from a Black family. He stipulated that he wanted to sell to another Black family. The article talked about how welcoming the neighbors were but my Dad and older brother and sister remember a cross being burned on the front lawn. I was 3 when we moved from Brooklyn to NJ so I don't remember that.

Behind our house was a Drive-In Movie theater. We would hear a constant buzz from the speakers that weren't turned off. Even though the theater showed a sign to please turn off the speakers before placing them back on the stands, people would forget. What was funny was the number of people who completely forgot to remove the speaker from their car windows and tore it off the pole!

We had a Studebaker station wagon. When Mom and Dad would take us to the Drive In, sis and I would go in our PJs. Dad would sometimes back the car into the space so we could lay down if we got sleepy.

I don't know how people can sleep at night with credit card debt r453. I am glad my parents taught me to be financially responsible. I am sure there were times when they had to use the credit card but it definitely was not a habit. They went to the bank every week, deposited paychecks and took out enough cash to get them through the week. Unforeseen expenses would be paid by check. And if you didn't have the money for something you didn't get it. We were taught to save up our money to pay for things we wanted.

Come on in, it's Kool inside.

No Shirt! No Shoes! No Service!

[quote]my town had a section in the local newspaper called "Negroes in the Community."

In the late 70's I stopped at a truck stop in KY, and their postcard rack (another thing from our youth that might deserve its own post) had one that showed a photo of some suburban houses, and the headline printed across the top of the card said "Beautiful Negro Homes in Louisville."

[quote] What was funny was the number of people who completely forgot to remove the speaker from their car windows and tore it off the pole!

I always liked the funny reminders they showed before the movie

Oh...God, r458..... WE did that!.. It sat in our basement for years and I have no idea what happened to it.

I got a Pet Rock.

Sadly, it died a month later.

R437 - Several summers in a row we camped on the cape - in our pop-up trailer. The campground was right across the road from the Welfleet Drive In and we’d always go a few times. I remember seeing Arthur there. And we’d always hit the weekend flea market as well.

I ordered a sea monkey from an ad in the back of a comic book. When it arrive the plastic bag of water was intact but the seahorse was floating around dead. My mother nonchalantly flushed it down the toilet and I ran to my room crying.

R443 - I loved Cricket magazine! I’d completey forgotten about it till I saw your post. My mom found out about it somehow and we had a charter subscription that came with a bonus LP record - there was a song “Circket is a bug a happy bug” as well as poems & short anecdotal stories.

My parents rented color television sets so we could see the Apollo lift-offs, moon landings and returns in color. My father woke me up at night so I could see what was happening with the space program. "This is important. Get up, come on downstairs."

When NASA for lander arrived on Mars and began transmitting back to Earth its first photos (I think the today show broadcast this live), my mother kept me home from school.

R463 you ordered a sea horse or a sea monkey? Quite the difference.

The Apollo 11 moon landing is one of my earliest memories. I’d just turned 6 & my parents woke me & my sister up to watch. I was riveted, but my sister was only 4 and kept falling asleep. I was very concerned that she was missing this so I’d shake her awake and say “this is history.”

I was not quite three for the moon landing. We were on vacation on a lake in the Adirondacks and the cabin had very poor TV reception. My dad would fiddle with the dial and rabbit ears so we could see it but it was mostly snow and static.

When I was a little older, I thought being an astronaut was as common as being a mailman or policeman due to I Dream of Jeannie.

Where do some of you live? I thought the first moon landing happened in the afternoon.

I thought the first moon landings were in B&W?

Remember the ad for a real monkey n the back of Boy's Life and some of the comic books? Did any kid ever actually convince his parents to let him get a fucking monkey in the mail?

I was into DayGlo posters and LSD in 1972. I took a hit of orange sunshine by myself for my 20th birthday and had a really bad trip and ended up naked on my mother's front lawn. My stepfather was an aerospace engineer who had worked on the space program since 1961 and the moon landing was the pinnacle of his career because he and his team built the LEM. My pissed off mother put me in the car and dropped me off at my father's house and he and I watched it together while I recovered from my hallucinations. I remember him saying "It's just like Flash Gordon!"

[quote] I thought the first moon landing happened in the afternoon.

The Lunar Module was on the ground hours before the live broadcast of Armstrong and Heisenberg stepping out. It was late night by then, well past bedtime for most Americans.

Commercials done by celebrities of the day......

The Apollo 11 module landed on the moon at about 20:18 UTC on July 20, 1969, then approximately 6 hours later, Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon at 02:56:18 UTC on July 21.

That moment when he stepped onto the moon was just before 10:00 p.m. on the east coast of the U.S. and just before 7:00 p.m. on the west coast. So for viewers in the United States it was "prime time" on TV.

At that time I had a crush on the boy that lived across the street and I remember him saying, "We're going in now to watch the astronauts!"

I was a kid in the 70s. During the summer the local grade school had "summer recreation". There was dodge ball in the gym, ping pong tables in the cafeteria and arts and crafts. Kids just came and went, usually by bike. You didn't have to be signed in or stay the entire time. It was just there.

Ant farms!

R449, leukaemia really was a death sentence back then. It hasn’t been very long that people had a chance to survive it. Since the late 80s, early 90s perhaps. A family member had it as a kid in the 80s. The consensus being everyone felt lucky the kid was spared.

"...before the live broadcast of Armstrong and Heisenberg stepping out."

R473 with all due respect, who do you mean by naming one of the astronauts as Heisenberg?! Armstrong and Aldrin were the first two on the mission who left the capsule and walked on the lunar surface, in that order. Was that a typo or one of the weird, inexplicable DL auto-correct glitches? Thanks for clarifying.

R475 I vividly recall watching the broadcast and afterward going outside to look at the moon for a long while. The moon was late waxing, full, or early waning so it really impressed upon me that this large distant but so familiar place was where those guys were actually standing.

In retrospect, I wonder if my grandparents felt a similar sense of how world changing that moment was when they read in newspapers that Guglielmo Marconi had sent the first wireless radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean? How did they react when they received news that he received a message in reply from England, via Newfoundland? The evokution beyond that first transatlantic radio signal reply, the development of commercial radio, then television and into the computer age of communications is an amazing progression in less than 120 years. That the post WWII American space travel program and a successful moon landing occurred within less than 30 years is remarkable.

R464, I don't think we subscribed to Cricket - someone my mom knew gave us their batches of back issues a couple of times a year, as I recall, so I got to binge on them every so often. It really was a lovely publication for children - I'm glad it's still around.

Did anyone else do the Scholastic Book Club thing in school? Every month Scholastic would put out this newsprint pamphlet letting you know which kids' books/magazines were available, you filled out the order form and gave it and your money to your teacher, and the books would arrive and be passed out in class a few weeks later. I remember buying Dynamite magazine that way, as well as things like tie-in books for the ABC Weekend Specials they used to show on Saturday morning.

Scholastic Book Club was a life saver for me. I was a nerdy, smart kid who loved to read but lived in a small town w/o a bookstore. All we had was a discount store and drug stores with a rack of paperbacks and a stationary store that only sold Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew and the Little House books. Since my mom was a reader, I got to order a lot of books even though we weren't well off.

The day the books came was just....orgasmic. The teacher would put together each students orders and they were usually rubber banded together. She would usually put them on our desks at the last recess but you couldn't start READING them until school was out an hour and a half later so it was just torture.

I usually had the biggest bundle. Me or this other kid who read a lot but his family was one of the richest ones in town.

And, yeah...I remember Dynamite magazine. It was pretty great.

I second r482; Scholastic Book Club was a life saver for me as well. I was always running out of stuff to read, and we didn't even live in a town, we lived way out in the 'burbs, so even if there had been a book store, I wouldn't have gotten to it.

So when that monthly (?) pamphlet came out, it was like porn for me -- I wanted everything.

Unfortunately, I also vividly remember my mother telling me in second grade that I couldn't order two books a month because we didn't have much money (one book I wanted that time cost 35 cents and the other 55 cents, IIR). That threw me into a panic, thinking that we were going to be destitute and out on the street soon (which of course didn't happen).

Scholastic Book Club order forms still exist and it is still the same thrill for many kids.

I remember my mother allowing me to get just about whatever I wanted even if we were broke. I remember paying an order of $12.00 with her spare change once. The change jar money was usually used for the whole family to go to the movies a couple times a year, but she knew I loved to read.

Most of us had live in maids, who got an "and / as" credit

What I remember about Scholastic Books was the Two Minute Mystery series. I loved those.

Scholastic still exists, but it is now heavily licensed characters and books+toys. It really is a lot of crap.

Our basement featured an almost complete collection of LIFE Magazines, and National Geographics going back to the late 1930's, and I think I went through every one of them when I was a kid, but the single greatest book we had was one printed by the Associated Press during WWII that covered the history of the United States in mock newspaper front pages. "Civil War Ends" would rate a page, but next to that article would be everything else that was happening in the world on that day like "Construction to Begin on Transcontinental Railroad." It was a great book.

My Mother threw them all away when I was at college because they were making the basement smell musty, but if anyone knows what newspaper book I'm talking about, I would love to know the title so I can try to buy a copy.

I've never personally walked on the moon, but I drank more than my share of Tang®.

^^ Tang, Ovaltine, Hi-C, Yoo-hoo, Shasta. Then the red dye #3 scare happened and no more Hi-C in my house.

[quote]As someone mentioned in the last thread, all the kids in my household started working at 15/16, and balanced that with school, homework, and activities. It's amazing how few kids work today.

They aren't working because there aren't any jobs to be had. My teenage niece works at McDonald's.

You sound like an early boomer; the job market was wide open for you guys -- plenty of jobs available. By the time I got to be a teen, finding a job was difficult because they were already taken by older teens. There were recessions, an energy crisis, and inflation in the 70's, unlike the 1960's and that made the job market even tighter. I wasn't really able to get a regular part-time job until college. This followed me pretty much until I found the job I eventually retired from -- after the recession of the early '80's was over.

[quote]My sisters worked at McDonald's and Sears, I started at the local drug store working the register and stocking shelves. Made minimum wage, which in those days was $3.35/hr.

Loved staying at Howard Johnson's, wearing my pj's to sit at the counter and have an ice cream with a cookie on top. Couldn't wait for bfast and scrambled eggs with little bits of ham. If we stayed at a Holiday inn, would sit in the lounge with parents before dinner and have a Shirley Temple, mom would give me a sip of her Tom Collins, nearly gagged when dad gave me a sip of bourbon and coke.

OMG, Scholastic Book Club!! My first book was "Curious George Takes a Job." It was my favorite.

Like so many others, we didn't have a lot of money. It was shear torture (for a 3rd grader) to have to choose JUST ONE book when money was low. When that would happen, it was off to the library.

We had great libraries in our public schools as well as the town library. We used to have library as an elective throughout elementary school, where we'd spend a half hour a week picking out books.

Items sold in stores always had price tags -- either paper ones, or, for things like canned goods, stamped (usually in purple ink) directly on the item. If the store raised a price on an item, they either had to sell the existing ones at the lower price, or cover up/re-stamp the new price on the item.

[quote]If the store raised a price on an item, they either had to sell the existing ones at the lower price, or cover up/re-stamp the new price on the item.

I was really good at peeling off the new sticker without damaging the old one.

Scholastic also sold some really poorly written books. I remember buying a book about Lucille Ball that was full of lies. LOL. For example, they said that the scene where she lights the putty nose on fire was an accident and unexpected but Lucy was a trouper and her quick thinking by dipping it into her drink kept the show going. But obviously, the putty nose was designed with a wick in it and Lucy rehearsed everything, so none of those laughs were accidental.

Scholastic is still decent. They have an online store that connects to a child's teacher and you order and it comes home with them. There is always crap...erasers, bookmarks, stuffed toys, stickers, etc. Some people have to be coaxed onto reading. That isn't anything new.

The good books are sold there and usually for reduced prices.

Drinking orange juice and milk from pitchers is very 70s to me. Does anyone do that anymore?

I read that same Lucy Book R496.

Loved ordering Scholastic Books - my mom often made me pare down my list as well. Anybody else here have “Professor Otis G Firefly’s Fantasmoralgical Almanac” It was my introduction to Mad Magazine type smart-ass humor a few years before I discovered Mad.

That Lucille Ball story has been told many times and is actually said to be truthful.

R110 My first memory is folding my Dad's ironed cloth hankies for my Mom while we watched the black and white version of Phantom of the Opera. We were waiting for my sister to get home from kindergarten, so that would make me 3 years old. It was 1970.

My whole family watched The Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. What an exciting experience. Finally, people were in better moods after having been depressed and traumatized for the two plus months since the JFK assassination. Maybe it was divine intervention.

Watching the 4 o Clock movie with my gay friend Richard... We must have watched A Summer Place a million times

R491 gave me a craving for peppermint stick ice cream.

R503, My favorite sundae was pink peppermint ice cream with marshmallow sauce. If that wasn't embarrassing enough for my brother, it was called the Snow White. I loved ordering it just to torment my brother.

[quote]Who do you mean by naming one of the astronauts as Heisenberg

You see? You see? It was faked!

R305 Mystery Science Theater 3000 is on Netflix currently.

[QUOTE]Drinking orange juice and milk from pitchers is very 70s to me. Does anyone do that anymore?

I've been using a glass all these years.

Orange juice was usually from those frozen concentrates like Old South, made in a Rubbermaid pitcher that would get all clogged up with the pulp towards the end of the batch. Couldn’t find a pic with the particular shade of forest green that we had.

My mom had brightly colored aluminum pitchers that came with a set of six tumblers in assorted colors. I believe they came from the Fuller Brush Co. or Stanley Home Products. One pitcher for lemonade or iced tea, the other for Kool Aid.

[italic]" Kool Aid ..... America's Favorite Drink In An Envelope ! "

[quote]My mom had brightly colored aluminum pitchers that came with a set of six tumblers in assorted colors.

They were great!! My mom made bug juice to take to the beach. This was a combination of lemonade and grape-ade. She said the pulp was the wings of insects, which now that I think about it is really strange. But those tumblers kept everything cold. And the colors were great. I always picked the mauve one.

Being in the Columbia house record club was so cool, at least when you got the first shipment for a penny. It was agonizing waiting for the box to arrive. You had no way of knowing when it would show up. There was obviously no internet to track the shipment. Then a couple of times a month you would get their little booklet with the little coupon that if you didn't mail back in time they would send you the album and you had to pay for it!

Even with purchasing the required number of record/tapes r511, as long as you sent the yay or nay card back in time it was a really good deal.

[quote]Then a couple of times a month you would get their little booklet with the little coupon that if you didn't mail back in time they would send you the album and you had to pay for it!

[quote]as long as you sent the yay or nay card back in time it was a really good deal.

I only got snagged once in ~20 years.

[quote] as long as you sent the yay or nay card back in time it was a really good deal.

And as long as you did not fold spindle or mutilate it.

My favorite toys were Kenner's Girder and Panel Building Sets. I had the ones with where you could put a motorized elevator in a "skyscraper" or build a drawbridge where the roadway actually went up. I also had the one that you could make factories, with clear plastic piping (and colored dyes) to make water pulse through the pipe lines.

When I graduated college and got transferred, I went to my parents home to retrieve these belongings. My mother said she'd given them away since I hadn't played with them in ages and they were "taking up space" in the basement.

Fast forward 15 years, I'm unemployed and hurting for cash. I come across an antique toy store in Lambertville, New Jersey and pay top dollar for the sets my mom had given away.

Did anyone else have the set of 4 Walt Disney books in the cardboard slipcover?

We had tons of "Little Golden Books."

They were like a hardcover edition of Classics Illustrated. They sold for 25¢. Classics Illustrated sold for 15¢.

How could I forget my very first radio, a small Sears Silvertone transistor radio with earplugs, that ran on a nine volt battery.

🎵 So Cool !

I still have a bunch of Dynamite magazines (ordered through Scholastic like others mentioned) in a box. They're from the mid 1970's. I just cant bear to part with them.

I also still have this set of multi-colored aluminum tumbler glasses that someone mentioned. Up until the last time I moved a few years ago I had them displayed on a shelf and they kinda looked like a rainbow flag. How fitting!

I remember soo many of the things mentioned on this thread. Thanks for the memories guys!

R515 I forgot all about Girder and Panel building sets! I loved that. Before that I was also VERY into Tinker Toys and Erector Set. I was obsessed with building things and understanding how things worked. I remember once taking my little sister's teddy bear that had a wind-up music box and cutting him open to remove the music box to see how it worked. I took the music box itself apart too because I wanted to see the inner workings. I think I got in trouble for that one.

This was one of my favorite books: "What makes it Go, what makes it Work, what makes it Fly, what makes it Float"

At one point to make breakfast more efficient, we got a 4-slice toaster. Except it had the same wattage as a 2 slicer, so it took forever. That was before the “no-carbs” movement, obviously.

R515, I suffered a similar fate. When I was away at college, my stepmother threw away everything of mine - my entire record collection, toys, my Disneyland memorabilia, etc., some of which commands high prices from collectors these days.

R515, my older brother and I also had the Kenner Girder and Panel set.....we would bring it out every Saturday morning and build some sort of skyskraper - never had LEGO, I bought that for myself as an adolescent. Our beloved building set suffered the same fate, to the trash. Same with all our board games, and we had every last one of them.

A few years ago I came across the drawbridge set you described at a yardsale, and sent it to my brother for his 60th birthday.

[quote]the single greatest book we had was one printed by the Associated Press during WWII that covered the history of the United States in mock newspaper front pages. "Civil War Ends" would rate a page, but next to that article would be everything else that was happening in the world on that day like "Construction to Begin on Transcontinental Railroad."

R487, you should visit the Booksleuth forum at Abebooks.com and describe the book for the posters there, someone might be able to help you.

R462, my great aunt and uncle had a trailer that they would bring to the Wellfleet campground every August in the 70s. Maybe I saw you there. I was a nerdy kid who looked like Ernie from My Three Sons.

:-)

[quote]They aren't working because there aren't any jobs to be had. My teenage niece works at McDonald's.

[quote]You sound like an early boomer; the job market was wide open for you guys -- plenty of jobs available. By the time I got to be a teen, finding a job was difficult because they were already taken by older teens. There were recessions, an energy crisis, and inflation in the 70's, unlike the 1960's and that made the job market even tighter. I wasn't really able to get a regular part-time job until college. This followed me pretty much until I found the job I eventually retired from -- after the recession of the early '80's was over.

Actually, not a boomer at all, my siblings and I are all Gen Xers. Started working our first jobs probably between '79 and '84.

I'm sure it's not easy for teens to find jobs today, but it can be done. I have nieces and nephews working, pizza places, restaurants, watching grade school kids until the parents get home from work, baby-sitting, etc. But so many of my co-workers don't even entertain the thought of work because Johnny (or Madysyn) are too busy with friends and activities. Just a different mindset, I think.

Adding to the discussion upthread about how tough it was in those days: I'm sure it was tough financially, but people seemed more willing to live within their means.

We were a five-person household living in a 3BR, 1BA house. Seems like "middle class" today would be in a larger home. We had one car until I (the youngest) was 12 or 13, and it was an average Ford. One tv. One phone/phone line. No cable. No dishwasher. No microwave. Rarely ate out or ordered in. Dad worked full time, and often had a job on the side, mom worked part time. One vacation a year, which was getting in the car and going to the beach. My first airline trip was after college.

It seems like the bar is just higher for today's middle class. The necessities of today were luxuries of yesterday.

R526, it takes guts to go against the grain of all the other parents. They would rather work and give kids money (and complain about how they just stare at technology) rather than do the work of teaching them to get jobs, driving them to a job, etc.

My partner and I each have an 18 year-old, and it is hell, but worth it, to teach a decent work ethic

I went back to my old neighborhood recently with my aged mother. We met some of the neighbors and they really seemed mentally retarded. This explains A LOT from my childhood.

[quote] No [R13]. I think the priests took me in the rectumry.

Sorry, couldn't pass that one by.

Those aren't 60s-70s vintage Matchbox, R18. As every kid back then knew, Matchbox were "Made In England", by Lesney. Most of them cost less than a dollar at the local Rexall. My pride and joy-the larger-scale collection my Gran picked up for me from the Harrah's auto museum.

[quote]We were a five-person household living in a 3BR, 1BA house. Seems like "middle class" today would be in a larger home. We had one car until I (the youngest) was 12 or 13, and it was an average Ford. One tv. One phone/phone line. No cable. No dishwasher. No microwave. Rarely ate out or ordered in. Dad worked full time, and often had a job on the side, mom worked part time. One vacation a year, which was getting in the car and going to the beach. My first airline trip was after college.

Pretty much the same here. We got color TV when grandpa died and left us his. My mother didn't go to work until we got to Junior high though. No vacations -- but Dad didn't want any.

I've been scanning my mother's old photo albums I got after she died. It brings back memories of how I grew up which is pretty much described above. I look back on that time with fondness. We were always dressed properly and had more than enough to eat (mom was a good cook) and we didn't really notice what we didn't have.

Initially I didn't expect much from this thread but it has been pretty interesting.

A very late thought on the Magic Rocks. I distinctly recall having those but when earlier when I tried to look it up the details of my kit weren't close to any of the kits I could find on google. I thought maybe it was a false memory and let it go. Last night though I recalled I had to put the "seeds" into craters on a moonscape and I was able to find "Moon Rocks".

The crystals would grow in the center tank. Not pictured and the thing I mostly remember is a clear hemisphere dome that covered the whole assembly. When the moonrocks had broken off and been thrown away, for years I'd use the base and done to play "Argo City" and similar sci-fi scenarios.

Part of the box.

Two words..........

Cinnamon Carter

R527 you totally described my upbringing. So many times I wonder “was I white trash growing up and didn’t know it?” I was expected to work during high school, pay for college and pay for my first car. None of those things were negotiable or expected from kids our age back then.

My older brother had a great collection of Matchbox cars. He didn't play with them though, kept them in compartmentalized boxes. I think he still has them. I had a couple of Hotwheels tracks but would basically build my own all over my room and race them and cause car accidents. Anyone remember the SSP cars where you pulled a plastic zipper thing to make them go? They were banished to outdoors after one accidentally hit my mother.

r516, yes we had those Disney books! We also had tons of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and my oldest sister was obsessed with Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. Some lady gave my mother a first edition Bobsey Twins collection. They all eventually got donated/trashed, I wonder if they would have been worth anything today.

r535 and r527, same here. Everybody worked as soon as they were able to. The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was a college education but even then I was offered a choice: you go to a SUNY school or somewhere local and live at home. They were not willing to go into debt to put five kids through college, or saddle us with it. I paid for all of my books, paid for my car and insurance and all of my expenses. (My mother would buy me clothes because I hate shopping and she has good taste. She still buys a lot of my clothes lol). I mowed lawns and delivered papers when I was 13, and worked part time since I was 15 and full time in the summers. My first professional job after college graduation paid $19,000 a year. I had a second job at Brentano's, working Monday and Thursday nights and all day Saturday to make some extra money to help me survive living in NYC. I shared a studio apartment with two roommates for a year until I could afford another situation.

My local supermarket, which is part of a small family-owned chain, hires a lot of teenagers, so there are some kids who want to work. I am not aware of seeing kids working anywhere else like the drugstore, flower shop, bakeries, restaurants.

Another reason why some kids don't work during the school year these days is because they need to spend so much time studying and on extracurricular activities. It sounds ridiculous at first, but good universities have gotten very competitive. It's much harder to get into a first- or even second-tier school than it was 25 years ago. There are so many international students now, many from Asia, who basically do nothing but study from the time they're 12 or 13 years old, all so they can be accepted into a top U.S. university. There are so many applicants but the number of slots hasn't grown in proportion to the number of applicants. Not all high school students here, but many, are taking heavy workloads of AP and honors classes in addition to playing a varsity sport or two, or doing band or theater to stand out. Making straight As is pretty much expected; there's not a lot of room for Bs.

Hey R525 - well I remember seeing Foul Play at the drive in - so we were both there in August of 78. I was the skinny nerdy kid with a shaggy Bobby Sherman side part.

Did you guys go to that inexpensive lobster place nearby where you sat outside on picnic tables?

R525 or R538 did you have an adjacent camping family of 5 kids in Wellfleet, summer friends with a middle child named Laurie who had almost Harp Marx level naturally curly soft blonde hair? Was the whole family insane for the Zarex fruit drink? If so we may be one-degree-of-separation from my childhood neighborhood.

That poses the question, who else remembers Zarex? My mom would never buy it, so drinking it at Laurie's house was excellent forbidden fruit.

We had Zarex in our house. Very sweet, used to mix it with club soda for a Shirley Temple type drink. Hadn't seen a bottle of it in years.

Dean Martin every week.

Zarex was a New England product. I kind of liked it with milk.

[quote]I am not aware of seeing kids working anywhere else like the drugstore, flower shop, bakeries, restaurants.

And who do you see working those jobs now? Think about it.

A lot of the jobs that used to be staffed by teenagers are now filled by immigrants both legal and illegal, as well as other adults from the lower-income bracket. Those adults are not hampered by limited working hours per week and unlike most of the kids, they REALLY need the job, so are considered more likely to show up, work overtime, etc. Business owners would rather have adults working for them than kids.

What's sad is that there are so many adults who need to work those entry-level jobs.

What r537 said is true.

College admissions today is an arms race of APs and extracurriculars. There are only two types of Americans who get admitted to top colleges these days: those who are good and check an affirmative-action box, and those who have an INSANE workload of curated activities and courses. I'm talking 14-hour days, 6 days a week of stuff they may partially enjoy, but all of which they're doing to get together a good college application.

I could tell you stories that would curl your hair.

So only kids who not on track for a "good" college -- and who therefore, if they graduate at all, will start life with a lot of debt and a not-very-helpful degree -- are available to have an actual after-school job. For the others, "after school" is when their unpaid résumé-building work takes place.

We didn't have centra air until the late 1970's, mostly because my Mother couldn't stand the idea of having one of those noisy outside units ruining her garden/back yard, so we made do with a few window units and screens, and we had a screened-in porch on one side of the house and all the kids would sleep out there on warm summer nights. It was very peaceful.

However the screens required the seasonal ritual of removing the wooden storm windows in the Spring and replacing them with screens and then swapping back again in the Fall. This was a big job, because they were awkward and heavy. Each window had a little nail with a number and you had to find the matching number on the window itself, and then it took two people on ladders to swing the one insert out and replace it. While it was out my Mother would wash the glass, and no matter how carefully we stored them in the garage there would always be torn screens and missing hooks, and the occasional broken glass to be repaired. It was long Saturday at best, and God help you if it was one of the years when they needed painting.

In the 1970s, "disco" roller skating was very popular. We went to the roller skating rink almost every Saturday night.

R546

I would NEVER wear rainbow suspenders. They were just tacky.

But you would wear rainbow kneepads?

r547 HTF was Eric Forman not gay? He and Fez could have raced to the bottom on the regular. But it wouldn't've been long term, as Eric was in love with Hyde.

R536 I bought a set of those Disney books-complete with slipcover-off Ebay last year.

Speaking of book covers -- do kids still make textbook covers out of brown paper shopping bags? Or buy them?

Well R552 - my nieces & nephews are in high school and they don’t even HAVE textbooks - just a school issued iPad that they also do all their assignments on. So I’m guessing no.

And my mom always makde my paper bag book covers. - she got them to fit lik a glove.

Paper bag bookcovers stopped being used when grocery stores phased out paper shopping bags in favor of plastic bags.

And I still remember the transition. The social justice warriors screamed that too many trees were being killed and that we should no longer use paper products, including paper shopping bags. So everyone switched over to plastic bags, which were actually better if you were caught out in the rain. Now the social justice warriors are crying to go back to the paper bags because plastic bags create all sorts of danger to the environment.

Oh, and also eggs. Eggs were good for you. Then they were bad for you. Now it's swung back to they are good for you.

R554 is a killjoy

The great cholesterol scare that pushed margarine and egg-white beaters.

The Galloping Gourmet, a cooking show where the host starts off buzzed and gets progressively drunker as the show proceeds.

[quote] The Galloping Gourmet was a huge hit, and earned two Emmy Award nominations. During its run, Kerr became a worldwide sensation and wrote an abundance of cookbooks. However, he was pilloried by many of the elite of the food world of the time, including influential food writer Michael Field, who called Kerr "the Liberace of the food world", and James Beard, who wrote that Kerr "has very little respect for food"

I remember going with my mother to the local clothing store that stocked our school gym uniforms. You had to have the regulation t-shirt, shorts, socks and jock. Another mother was there and I remember them picking out the jockstraps, opening the boxes and giggling.

R557 I loved watching that show as a late teen aspiring gourmet chef. IIRC one notorious episode that contributed to his decline was when he was preparing/skinning fresh eel for a particular recipe. The sexual innuendo was, at the time, pretty over the top for tv and exceeded his usual racy innuendo. All of it was thanks to his level of wine consumption on air. It was great fun to see things loosen up on tv in the 70s. Sadly, I've not found that episode or any segments of it online to post here.

All the old ladies were always worried about when they were supposed to take their "water pills". Do they do that anymore?

We already covered many of the items in this list, but there's a few we didn't mention.

While the variety of television shows, networks, and methods of consuming them are much better today, I get nostalgic for TV in the 70s where there was more "event" programming.

When ABC would show the most recent Bond movie for the first time, I remember getting really excited to watch it, and there were a bunch of us that would talk about it the next day at school. There were miniseries and TV shows and TV movies that you *had* to see, and because VCRs were rare, and Internet/streaming not developed, you had to watch them when they were broadcast. It was such a bonding experience in those days.

My parents were nude in the house all the time. Not as a practice but as a practicality. They'd take a shower then walk to the bedroom to get dressed for work. Stuff like that. They'd probably be on a pedo list today.

Seems that many of you would enjoy the book Sting-Ray afternoons

The Mike Douglas Show!

R565 among my favorite guests were brilliant comedian tv writer Jack Douglas and his wife Reiko. They were hilarious, sharp, very engaging. They were out of the box eccentrics for that era but they played it delightfully to engage everyone in their running joke that life is a farce, an adventure and get a lot of laughs about it to make others laugh. I'm rooting around online for them together on Merv or Johnny. Mostly it's Reiko only online so far.

R562. That is true. It was a huge event when certain movies were on television. The announcement of first national broadcast of 'Gone With the Wind' actually received news coverage.

I remember Francis Ford Coppola appearing before a heavily edited 'Godfather' to assure the audience that all Italians were not in the Mafia.

[quote]The Galloping Gourmet, a cooking show where the host starts off buzzed and gets progressively drunker as the show proceeds.

Did you know that he found Jesus and became a born again Christian?

💃 Saturday Night Fever !

I must have watched it at least a hundred times, and learned how to DISCO! I thought I was hot!

I remember "The Budget Gourmet" who was arrested and charged with the molestation of young boys.

For Shame ..........

^^^ My Bad....... 🙇

That was Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet

[quote] tv writer Jack Douglas and his wife Reiko.

I see she died five years ago. Gorgeous woman, hair down to her hips. Lovely enough you would ignore Batgirl and just look at her.

In philly we had Mike Douglas, who was like our Merv only straight. At least I think he was.

Seriously, R573?

I was born in 1971. When my grandparents died a few years ago, I ended up with some baby/toddler clothing and shoes of mine that my grandmother had held onto all those years. Every one of those items were labeled made in Belgium, made in England, Spain, etc. I was raised, and continue to live in a mid-sized city in flyover mid-western USA. We were very middle-class, and can assure you no one in my family was jetting off to Europe to buy my baby clothes. It really struck me as bizarre that that sort of thing was once apparently accessible to “the masses”, but is virtually non-existent today.

R371 Do you remember one of those movies about a kid getting bullied, they called him "Tobey Shmobey."

Hey R564, have you read Sting-Ray? Thanks for the recommendation. I hadn't heard of it before, but Steve Rushin was one of my favorite writers back when I used to read Sports Illustrated (before it became NFL Illustrated, featuring more pieces on fantasy football picks than on hockey, tennis, golf, and track & field... combined. But I digress.)

Anyway, this interview with Rushin, the author, gives a flavor of the book. It does sound like something that contributors to this thread would enjoy.

R575, before Nixon opened up China, we had a lot of products made in European countries. Portugal was another common country. They produced a lot of cotton flannel PJs, sheets, etc. I also remember that a lot of hardware( drawer pulls, hinges, etc. ) came from Portugal. I would get really bored during father/son trips to the hardware stores; so, I would see what countries made what. It was actually a good introduction to geography. Of course we had a globe, which was probably ten years out of date at the time.

Movies like Ten Commandments and Ben Hur would be broadcast on one of the big three networks and over the course of two nights. It was a big event.

[quote]Again, this is not common in America anymore either. You can get suits and shirts made from scratch, but they are not necessarily better than tailoring existing suits and shirts... though will be 5x the price. Most shops that used to do this have gone out of business.

^^ That quote is from another thread, the one about Your Favorite Luxury Brands, but it made me remember the little ads that would run in our small town newspaper every year or so for the Hong Kong Tailors. The would rent a motel room and the local businessmen would go and be fitted for suits and dress shirts. Then, a few weeks later the finished suits would arrive in the mail. From what my father said, they did a big business, especially in dress shirts (although I don't think he ever used them himself).

Anyone else remember this? Was it a scam and they got off the rack, or did they really get handmade suits from Hong Kong?

During the '70's my loving, funny, creative mother had the most unique ideas for refurbishing home décor.

As a Cub Scout project (she, our lovely Den Mother), had our troop transform a forgotten, beautiful cherry-wood cabinet stereo console into a glamourous fish tank. Our project was to remove the stereo speakers, turntable, and all electrical components, which provided a beautiful, modern housing for a fish tank. I chose the fish specie: delicate Neon Tetra because of their flaming, ever-changing color. (Even then, she knew.)

Don't know whether it was a scam, r580, but it was a thing. I remember it.

I remember updating cheap furniture involved a lot of faux-woodgrain contact paper (Mac-Tac was the brand). That was pre-IKEA.

R580's post about the touring Honk Kong tailors reminded me that the leading American designers like Bill Blass and Halston used to show their collections in New York and then take them on downsized tours around the country at the major flagship department stores like Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Marshall Fields in Chicago. The richest local ladies and society mavens could make their selections, meet the designers and maybe even be fitted by the master himself.

These local shows were evidently quite successful for the designers both financially and for PR. Does anyone know whether this is still done?

Didn’t they call those “trunk shows”, or was that something else?

According to Wiki, r585......

Thanks, r585 and r586. Evidently Trunk Shows are what I'm thinking about but the term seems to have a broader application than what I was thinking. I was thinking specifically of leading designers taking their collections on tour which allowed flyover society ladies to actually meet and even be fitted by the designers themselves.

From what WP says they aren't as popular as they used to be and are being superseded by online shows. But an online show isn't going to be nearly as rewarding for for Mrs. Mary Merrither Merrington of Omaha, Nebraska to actually meet Halston or Calvin Klein.

Regarding the Hong Kong tailors - this still exists in a way, online. Etsy has loads of tailors and seamstresses in Hong Kong and China who will make custom clothes for people - you just pick what you want and fill out the measurements form. I think there are some dedicated websites that do this too.

My experience with trunk shows was a bit earlier than Bill Blass and Halston. By the 1970s my mother had transitioned from Channel to Boutique clothing. However, I remember trunk shows. They were basically mini-fashion shows/ pop-up stores. I have no memory of a designer actually being there. The representative was usually someone like the head of the sample room or the merchandise manager. If you were a sample size, there was off the rack clothing, otherwise, it was made to order. I remember the Nini Ricci trunk show also had a book you could buy.

Buy the 1970s, when Boutique clothing became fashionable, a trunk show would either be a new company that the Boutique wanted to test market or a company whose price point or design was such that the Boutique was not willing to invest in purchasing stock, but would have a trunk show each season.

Opps! Chanel. I need coffee

We always had Lane 🍰 Cake for the Easter and Christmas Holidays.

We all learned macramé!

R588 how do I find these tailors on Etsy?

R593, just do searches on Etsy for 'bespoke suit', 'custom suit', 'tailored suit', 'made-to-measure suit', along those lines - whatever item of clothing you're looking for. I've also seen UK/European tailors there too, it's not all Asian.

I spent my childhood in a exclusive gated subdivision that had its own clubhouse and swimming pool. It was customary for the dads with young kids to take the kids to the pool every Sunday afternoon so that the moms could some time off. What I remember of the very early 70s was that all the dads were lean and hairy, with perms and mustaches. We boys kinda expected that we would grow up just like them. I remember feeling a bit ashamed of my midwestern farm-boy dad with his doughy hairless body and pale skin and red hair, but luckily I took after my French mom. The dads would get drunk as the afternoon wore on, and then get careless and I got to see plenty of adult dick (with full pubic bushes!) in the shower. I still think that is the sexiest look for a man.

In spite of his hairlessness, dad seemed to have been quite a hit with the wives - according to my mom he screwed almost all of the wives in the community, one after the other. One day he just disappeared from our lives, and I found out later that he had to move out fast because he had made so many enemies of the husbands and some were threatening to shoot him. Mom tried to maintain the marriage for a while longer, but dad was enjoying his swinging life too much, so they divorced and I saw him maybe three times after that. As far as I know, he married at least three times, and has about a dozen kids.

Most Saturdays, my Dad would take my brother and me to watch back-to-back movies at the Empire Theater, which showed non-stop movies for a single price (I think it was $1.00). The floor was always sticky and the place would be filled a variety of the shabbiest people. I was raised on Kung Fu movies, Blaxploitation movies, European horror movies and stuff like that. It was only as an adult that I learned the term for that kind of theater is 'grindhouse'.