Eldergays, Prove Your Status!

I remember people dressing up when they went out to dinner, went to a play or concert, or travelled by airplane.

I remember smoking sections of airplanes and college libraries. (Thank God, they're gone!)

Getting up to change the tv channel (only 7 channels -- WCBS, WNBC, WNEW, WABC, WWOR, WPIX, Channel 13 -- in the try-state area).

The TV Station ending its broadcast around 2 or 3 am with the National Anthem, then snow on the screen.

For those of us who went to parochial school -- buying pagan babies and mite boxes.

^^^ Meant tri-state. Damn auto-correct, it's incorrect!

Rotary phones. And, no, I did not dial with a pencil. We had a phone dialer, thankyouverymuch

I remember when smoking was allowed in elevators.

I remember how thrilling it was to ride in a horseless carriage for the first time!

I remember having to stay indoors when the "mosquito trucks" drove by dispensing a mist of poisonous chemicals (with an odd, not totally unpleasant smell).

I remember when Lesley Gore, the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Beatles were brand new. And also the Shangri-Las, whose "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" someone mentioned in another thread as being ruined by TikTok. Thankfully, I don't TikTok. Hope this will relax that poster a little.

Soda cans had pull tabs. Girls and gaylings would take the tab off and put it on their finger and wear it like a ring. A few girls would make a necklace out of pull tabs.

Chewing gum wrapper necklaces, bracelets, etc.

All sorts of telephone paraphernalia: tables to sit at while talking, contact books with the sliding knob to get to the letter, party lines, letters before the numbers (SL6-1234, e.g.).

Penny candy stores.

Christmas display windows in all windows not matter what sized town you lived in.

TV trays.

Broadsheet newspapers that were so wide they could be difficult to fold over.

Slightly guilty feeling when feeding your kids frozen dinners.

Call in requests to radio shows to play certain songs.

I remember seeing Keith Richards shot full of heroin and playing amazing electric guitar.

I remember when we correctly said "metal" rather than "medal".

returning glass soda bottles to the store for the deposit.

I was watching TV when Nixon resigned, and did a gay little fairy dance in my trailer, on the shag carpeting.

I was there for the Olivia de Havilland and Luise Rainer double-billed show at Lascaux. It was a hit (with a club).

OP, get the fuck off my lawn, you annoy little twerp.

I remember the Welcome Wagon lady coming to our house when we moved to a new town.

Maybe y'all might wanna remember that y'all repeat this thread topic erryday. aiite?

There used to be a Little Caesars truck that would drive around selling pizza. Like the ice cream man.

[quote] Maybe y'all might wanna remember that y'all repeat this thread topic erryday. aiite?

We have short-term memory issues, R17. We’re eldergays after all.

I remember those first meetings of the Mattachine Society, how thrilling it was!!

I remember gloryholes in the Mid-west when I was at school at Northwestern in the 1980's

I remember seeing Karen Carpenter in concert.

Department stores had professional salespeople in every department. They waited on you, you paid the for your purchase, they wrapped it for you, and you continued shopping. It wa great.

Rotary phones, pencil not included.

Elevators, with elevator operators. You told them where you wanted to go and they took you to that floor. Operators wore a uniform and sat on a high stool in front of a manual crank apparatus.

[quote] I remember seeing through Karen Carpenter in concert.

Fixed that for you, R22.

I’m so old, I remember when “impact” was only a noun.

Oh lord, the soda can tab thing brought me back. I remember cigarette machines, shag carpeting, and how kids would get high behind the drug store. Bucket seats, ball clutches, bic lighters at concerts, and teased bangs. My mother had these very tight metallic curlers and Jean Nate kept in a giant container in the bathroom. Her kotex used to frighten me.

I remember....Let’s see, what’s the first old thing that comes to mind… Dinah Shore on TV singing about seeing the USA in a Chevrolet.

Boston Harbor- I remember the string of summer cottages down the street the wealthy would board up in the winter because they had no heating or insulation. They are year round McMansions all worth over half a million dollars now.

We visited a beach in Lisbon Spain a few years ago and the weather worn shacks reminded me so much of my childhood!

Lisbon Spain, R30?

I remember when ice cream trucks actually sold either soft serve Ice Cream like you would get at Dairy Queen or scooped ice cream into cones or cups instead of just selling the same stuff you could get out of any grocery store freezer case at highly inflated prices.

R32, there used to be a Little Caesars truck that would drive around selling pizza. Like the ice cream man.

My nice grandmother drove a Packard.

For years I thought it was spelled "liter" because that's how Packard spelled it on the dashboard. Like the "GH" would have killed them.

No wonder they went under.

I remember waiting for the small amusement park-type ride flatbed trucks to show up in my neighborhood. There was a Carousel, Ferris Wheel, the Swings and the Whip. Can't remember how much a ride cost, probably a quarter, for a few minutes of fun. We even had a hurdy-gurdy man, complete with pet monkey(just like in those old B&W movies)

Many itinerant peddlers: , the soft pretzel boy, the umbrella repairman, the horseradish grinder(in an adjacent Jewish neighborhood) the knife and scissor sharpener guy, the snow cone man(he sold waffles and ice cream in cooler weather, his waffle iron was gas-powered) There was a man who carried a big straw basket on his shoulder and sold all sorts of little things: sewing needles, buttons, thread, pencils, envelopes, ink, shoelaces and shoe polish, a few kinds of makeup et al. The Javelle water man: an ancient man, with a horse and wagon, who sold glass bottles of bleach(not yet available in grocery stores) to all the housewives. The women would hear him and come out with their empty bottles, and receive a filled one in exchange for some small price. It was eerie seeing the almost-fluorescent yellowish-green liquid in those clear glass bottles.

The Abbott's milkman and his horse-drawn wagon. Crates of bottles of milk heaped with ice in Summer, and how we'd try to steal a chunk of it. The horse knew exactly where to go when the milkman whistled for him to come down the street. On frigid Winter days, the un-homogenized milk left on doorsteps would freeze and the cream would rise up a few inches above the bottle's opening.

Huge cuts(large, thick-crust square pieces) of pizza, for a dime, from the best pizzeria in the neighborhood-Fiore's.

Large stone watering troughs for horses, there was one every other block or so. Most are gone, but I'll see one occasionally as I walk around South Philly.

I'm verklempt.

I was there the night the Copa banned Helen Lawson. Well-deserved. Several members of the audience fainted.

When I was young in the 50s/60s and we went to see a movie in the evening we had to dress up in coat and tie.

In Ireland we brought a penny to school each week to send to the missions in order to save the black babies.

Little did we know 40 years later they would come to live with us and their crotchfruit would run rampant in gangs all over west Dublin terrorizing, attacking and robbing decent folks.

[quote] I remember when smoking was allowed in elevators.

No, you don't.

There were always ashtrays full of sand by elevators so you could extinguish before boarding.

Cars were better ventilated in the '50s and '60s.

Cowl vents, kick panel vents, and side vent windows have gone by the wayside.

The Eastern (Airlines) Air Shuttle cost $12. (If the plane held a 100 people and 101 showed up for a flight, they'd roll out another plane for that one passenger and fly them by themselves: hourly on-demand airline flights between NYC and Boston.) With my student ID it was $6 to fly to New York. A beer onboard was a buck.

r40 Gone for purely capitalist reasons-MONEY! With those features eliminated, more and more people opted to pay to have air conditioners installed in their new cars.

We called those side-vent windows WING-WINGS.

R35 - We also had trucks with rides come around our neighborhood on Staten Island in the early 70s.

There was a Ferris Wheel (4 cages), a Whip, and the swinging boat thing called the King Kong, which was the most fun. A ride was a dime and when you got off they gave you an unfrozen “Freeze-R-Ice” (the flat plastic tube filled with flavored water). You’d run home, stick it in the freezer and then impatiently keep checking to see if it was ready. We had trucks that sold pizza slices & candy as well as the soft ice cream & Good Humor trucks, and there was a knife grinder in a truck with a loud bell.

You could ride in the cockpit with the pilots. I was allowed sit through several landings. Just mention it to the flight attendant and you were escorted up front.

R44, did you ever see a grown man naked?

Is that all there is to the circus? Is that all there is?

I watched Romper Room, Captain Kangaroo and Bozo the Clown daily in the mornings, until I reached school age. I don't recall missing them once I went to school.

R35 how old are you, BronzeAgeGay?

A gorgeous male PE teacher stripped naked and joined us in the showers to make sure we washed everywhere. All of the male gym teachers did this. Can you imagine this happening today?

Yes, I can imagine it.

Haha! Cute R50.

S&H Green Stamps.

When we stayed with my grandma at her apartment in Queens at dinner time she’d say “C’mon kids, we’re going to the Chinks!”

I remember when Alfonso Ribeiro broke his neck and died while breakdancing during a Michael Jackson video.

Milk deliveries to our house by the milkman.

Stir 'n Frost Cake.

That shit came with the pan AND frosting.

I ended up making it as an after-school snack. I was able to finish the whole cake before dinner.

R53- Was your Grandmother's last name BUNKER?

R49-At my summer camp in the 1970's the young good looking counselors would be in the showers NAKED with us campers. This would NEVER be allowed today- gay boys leering at their naked counselors- which is what I did.

I'd be SO excited when I met my counselors at the beginning of the summer and they were good looking because I knew I'd get to see them NAKED in the showers.

I remember when car locks were completely manual. From inside the car, you had to pull up the lock to open the door in some models. In other models, pulling on the door handle would open the lock. This was completely mechanical – you could watch the door-lock button rise as you pulled on the handle. The same was true when you turned the key in the door lock.

I remember when seat belts were only lap belts. Soon after, there were shoulder harnesses as well, but they were a separate belt. Older cars had no seat belts at all, and no one was particular nervous driving or riding in them. In fact, many people drove around in new (seat-belt-equipped) cars without buckling up. No one thought this strange. If you wanted to risk your life, it was your business.

I remember paying $0.45/gallon for gasoline. That was 1973. The equivalent in 2021 dollars is $2.67, or about the price of gas before the current spike. Historically, gas prices are remarkably stable, especially compared to housing prices.

I remember a world without right turn on red. It was a grim place for drivers. Nicer for pedestrians, of course.

I remember when car styles changed dramatically every few years, so that you could tell at a glance if a car was, say, five years old. I also remember when a car with 100,000 miles on it was considered a remarkable, special thing. In other words, I remember when cars were more stylish but less reliable and durable than today. Not everything is worse in the 21st century … just most things.

A wing-wing.

R59- In the 1970's generally ONLY luxury cars had power windows. Big American cars of the 1970's were HUGE gas guzzlers but they were also ( as you mentioned stylish) they were EXTREMELY comfortable with the velour bench seats. They were wide ( FAT WHORE here) and had good thigh support. That type of comfort you cannot find in the bucket seats of a Honda Civic.

I remember going to the movies and really enjoying the picture, then knowing you literally wouldn’t see it again unless and until one of the networks picked it up — then it was a big deal that they had.

R62- A hit movie like Saturday Night Fever would stay in the theaters for an entire year or more.

It's right next to Cologne, France, [R31]. At least that's what a bootleg album I bought in 1976 said. "Recorded in Cologne, France."

My Avon cologne came in a classy car-shaped bottle!

r48 I am 70 y.o.

I remember gas wars between competing gas stations.

I remember going to see Song of the South at the Palace Theater in Canton, Ohio. We enjoyed it so much, we stayed for the next showing. We were surrounded by a haze of cigarette smoke, too.

My brother and I used take a nickle down to the corner store and buy a small bagful of root beer barrel and fireball candies.

R68- What year were you born? 1910

Milk was delivered to the home and left outside in small, metal boxes that were supposed to keep it cold.

Telephones took quarters, dimes, nickels and PENNIES.

You had to pay to use some toilets.

R70- WOW, what year did public telephones take pennies?

I remember when gas went up to 35 CENTS a gallon. My mother was complaining. I remember her telling me I'd soon be driving and then I'd have to pay that price! I wish!

Kiddie Matinees at our neighborhood movie theater. The tickets were 75 cents.

We had a milkman as well as an eggman. The eggman just seemed to show up whenever, but we always bought eggs from him, many with double yolks.

Orange-colored cardboard "Trick or Treat for Unicef" coin boxes, as well as selling Easter Seals for our Catholic School.

Columbus Day parades in my suburban town of about ten thousand people.

The excitement in school the day that "The Wizard of Oz" was going to be on CBS. Also when "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" was airing.

Attempting to stay awake for the whole 24 hours of "The Jerry Lewis Telethon". I'm still amused my parents' attitude was "Go ahead, knock yourselves out!" School would start that Wednesday.

I smoked in every class through undergrad and grad school. Everybody did.

When I went to college, tuition was $25 per credit at the public community college, $39 at the private one. Text books for the courses were never more than $20. Tuition at an out of state, 4-year college was $8 per credit.

When my parents purchased their first house in the suburbs, they were told they had to make $15,000 per year to be able to afford it. This was for a brand new house. Wealthy home owners in town lived in $100,000 dollar homes.

Tickets to concerts of popular bands were under $20.

How old are some of you?

I remember when God took a day of rest. I brought Him lemonade. And I'm not even the oldest person here.

Five bucks got you a bag of weed.

I remember paying $15 or $20 an ounce.

I remember being able to buy a bazooka gum for 1 cent then seeing the price one day go up to 2 cents and thinking how overpriced it seemed.

When I was in Junior high school in 1978 you could buy 4 snickers bars for a dollar. Now you can't even buy ONE snickers for a dollar.

As a child my parents would send me to the drugstore to buy them cigarettes. For $1. I got two packs of Virginia Slims and a Hershey bar (standard size).

R9 Not only frozen dinners (three aluminum sections, with a fourth small one in the middle of some desert, say, like apple crisp?), but "TV trays", portable contraptions that you "clicked" into place in front of chairs aligned to the new and fearsome TV screen. You wouldn't want to miss a Lucky Strikes commercial.

Also, when free basing coke was determined it was dangerous so you were encouraged to rock up the coke.

This is the proof you wanted, eh?

R58, same here. The cam director and the counselors changed in the same Changing Room at the lake with the campers (early 70s). The director was uncircumcised unlike every other boy or counselor in the Changing Room. I can remember thinking it fascinating.

R44, My first plane ride was when my folks took us to Bermuda. On the return flight, I pretended to be the pilot at my seat. The stewardess must have seen me, because at the end of the flight my family and I were invited to the cockpit. I remember the pilot and co-pilot explain everything to us.

R57, believe it or not, but the grandmother of R53 really wasn't racist. Americans of the WWII generation referred to Chinese restaurants and laundries as "the Chinks." My Dad would say it, and he wasn't racist. To us today, racially insensitive...of course. And anyone who says it today would be racist

[quote]When I was in Junior high school in 1978 you could buy 4 snickers bars for a dollar.

They were five cents when I was a kid.

My lunch in college often was a PayDay candy bar and a can of Coke from the vending machines. Cost: 40 cents.

[quote] [R62]- A hit movie like Saturday Night Fever would stay in the theaters for an entire year or more

Of course (although a [italic]year[/italic]? That’s a bit much), but then you’d need to go back to the theater and buy a ticket every time you saw it.

I saw the Beatles in concert.

In 1964.

R84- Oriental sounds a bit insensitive

Chink sounds NASTY

You could buy a quart of milk for a quarter, from the milk machine on the corner. So you didn’t have to go all the way into the supermarket for milk. The quarts came in waxed cartons.

R90 Ahem... or you could have milk delivered early in the morning at your door, directly from the dairy. And you left the used bottles there to be picked up. And we lived in the city.

Gas was .28 a gallon when I learned to drive. My parents made me learn on the stick shift car, before they'd let me drive the automatic. "You'll be thankful, some day." I was.

In 1971 my parents put me on a 747 to visit childhood friends. Before the flight, my Mom bought me new shoes and made me dress nicely. Even though I was a teenager, I hung out in the upstairs lounge, drinking a big glass of milk and munching on grapes and crackers with cheese. A ancient guy, maybe age 22, chatted me up while he drank cocktails. I went back to my seat in time for the hot meal.

The next summer I flew again but was disappointed it wasn’t a 747 with a lounge. It might’ve been a DC10. But I still had to wear my “Sunday clothes.”

Flying used to be so luxurious!

R93- In 1971 it was also much more expensive.

I remember when a purse or handbag was called by it's proper word - POCKETBOOK

R89 - it was a very different world - plenty of things that now seem very offensive were said and done casually, and not necessarily with malice intended - although malice often was intended. Have you ever watched old episodes of All In The Family, especially the first season? Archie Bunker wasn’t really a comic exaggeration, plenty of the members of his WWII generations thought and spoke the way he did

The shows creator Norman Lear based Archie on his own father and intended for him to come off as ignorant and bigoted, but not irredeemably awful. However at the time many, many viewers liked, identified and agreed with Archie, and thought his liberal son-in-law Mike was the wrongheaded one.

One of the shows dramatic strengths was that both Archie and Mike could be annoying and blind to their own shortcomings. .

I remember when ALL teenagers wore jeans now NO teenagers wear jeans.

I think that’s just a regionalism, r95. “Pocketbook” back east, “purse” everywhere else.

Or “handbag.” And it really was a handbag—ladies did not have purses with shoulder straps.

Hearing this live.

My NYC mom and grandmas called it a pocketbook or handbag, while “purse” was the change purse that went in the pocketbook.

One grandma kept bills tucked in a small fabric pocket that she pinned to the inside of her bra - purse snatchings were a real thing. When she wanted to give us kids money she’d joke “I have to go to the bank and make a withdrawal” as she patter her chest and walked into the bathroom.

Our brand-new four bedroom, two bath house cost $20,000 to build. It is now valued at over $700,000. Blows my mind.

I remember those commercials -Gentlemen prefer HANES from the 1970's and 1980's- so catchy then, considered SO sexist now.

R98- Its not so much regional as generational. No one under 65 says POCKETBOOK anymore.

My father would say slacks or dungarees. No one says that anymore either.

Having this for dessert. Early 1960s.

Riding on my dad's motorcycle with him - and no helmets.

Riding in the back of our pickup truck with my older brothers and our big dogs - no seatbelts.

Putting a worm on the hook and gutting the fish (ewww!)

Getting milk AND glass bottles of Soda delivered. And the empties picked up.

Adults lighting up on smokes as soon as they finished eating - sometimes snubbing a butt out right on the plate or food remnants still on it (I can hear the sizzle of a marlboro dying in an uneaten bite of mashed potatoes).

Age: 47.

White Trash? Obvi.

My mother took me to see the just released film, West Side Story in 1961. I was 8 years old. I took one look at the Jets and Sharks, and knew without doubt, I was gay.

I remember sitting in the living room watching my parents dance to Bobby Darin on the hi fi, especially Beyond the Sea.

I also remember the parties our next door neighbor's kids had when they were in high school and I was a toddler. I'd sneak out at night and nestle in the bushes between our houses and watch an old fashioned sock hop. They were held on their basket ball court, with lights and Japanese lanterns strung in the trees. I loved the 50's music, the girls' dresses and the boys in sportscoats and ties. I was in heaven. The first song I remember singing was Elvis' "Hound Dog."

In keeping with the music theme, I remember getting my first transistor radio. You could take your music anywhere! It was magic! It was turquoise plastic and a bit larger than a pack of cigarettes. I don't think it ever left my hand, but I remember my mother not letting me take it to school.

My grandparents had a TV with a "clicker" remote that was the cutting edge of high tech in 1972. I was fascinated by it as well as the power windows in their Oldsmobile.

I remember gay beaches.

Love to Love You Baby was acceptable music any 8 year old to listen to. Then killjoy Dad stepped in & put the kibosh on it. Then permissive Mom unkiboshed it. Also, Soap, the tv show, was equally acceptable, even past 10’ on school nights when I was 8.

This hot new device called a microwave, complete with faux wood paneling. So large you can cook a 20’lb turkey in it!

[quote]These Vintage Cherry Grove Photos Will Make You Miss Queer Beaches

What people really miss are gay beaches.

Nearly everywhere you went to eat they gave you a complimentary side salad with a choice of dressing.

Touch Tone phones were a modern luxury you paid extra for monthly.

Top movies of the year were intelligent dramas with adult themes, like the breakdown of a marriage.

Str8 men wore tiny speedos and tight trousers with bulges and no one said a thing about it.

Gays were perpetually sneered at, insulted and demonized in movies and on TV and everyone laughed.

The racism. The n word was thrown around as an insult so casually.

I feel like people farted more back in the 70s. I grew up always smelling fart/poop smell around my family and friends. Now, not so much.

I was 6 years old in 1976, and I wanted to try and use the pay phone on the corner, just for a thrill.

I waited until Mom left her bedroom, and I stole a dime off of her bedside table, and walked down to the corner. I felt so rebellious. Then I got to the pay phone, put the coin in, and didn't know what to do next. I didn't know any phone numbers to call, nor was I totally aware how to make that happen, or who I would want to talk to. I thought, maybe I can call Mom and say hello. Then I realized that would get me in trouble. Then I hung up the phone, and the dime flew out of the return slot. I took it home, and put the dime back on Mom's bedside.

TL:DR - Pay phones cost a dime in 1976.

The terrifying furnaces and heaters in old houses....big scary things with flames that heated the whole house like an oven....or, big grates in the floor you stood on to get warm.

My grandma getting dressed up to "go to town". She wore her work clothes to do all her chores at home (on the farm) then she'd bathe/wash up and put on a nice pants suit to go into town.

In many parts of the country, "ethnic" restaurants were a big deal because they were rare. Especially Asian ones where you just really had Chinese restaurants and in big cities, you might have a Benihana Japanese steakhouse place. And, at least in the Midwest, Chinese restaurants were either dark and mysterious and very old world Asian or sort of modern peppy space age mid century supper club places that were more "Chinese American" that always had a big American menu for all the wimps too scared to try chop suey.

Huge news stands with papers from around the world and hundreds of different kinds of magazines. I really miss those!

Oh, and parents being publicly violent with their kids, grabbing them roughly and giving them an ass whupping. So terrifying.

The cleaners would pick up and deliver the dry cleaning once a week.

I long for the days before self service gas. The attendant would fill your tank, wash your windows, and check your fluid levels under the hood, including the oil. If your washer fluid was not full he'd always top it off.

R118 -- we were a Texaco buying family and had a station account (before there were gasoline credit cards) at a nearby Texaco service station.

I remember the men at station performing their duties as you say and I even remember their names: Harry was the young one and John was the old one.

[quote]I remember how clothespin bags had a loop of medal so they'd slide down the line where you needed them.

They still do, I have two of them, both purchased within the last couple of years.

Getting my arm caught in the wringer of the washing machine, party lines on the phone, the local milkman delivering milk every morning.

Oh, you whippersnappers with your fancy pull rings on your soda. In MY day, you had to use a can piercer when you wanted a tonic: one large piercing to drink from and a smaller one opposite to enable a better flow.

R119 in my city most gas station attendants back in the day all wore white or green uniforms with their names embroidered on the shirt and a Navy style cap. The young fit ones looked sharp as hell. I remember my mother always commenting on one young man at the gas station we primarily used. As we'd drive off she'd say "he's such a nice looking young man". And he surely was. Looking back he was more handsome than many good looking movie stars of today. It was always a treat to watch him clean the windshield. He'd lean way over the window wiping from one side to the other and you could make out his powerful pec muscles straining against his tapered shirt.

Mmm hmm, happy days.

My mother used to make Jell-o and Junket on the same day each week. Here's vanilla Junket.

R118- You should move to New Jersey which has ONLY full service gasoline stations. Self service is illegal.

We got 2 newspapers delivered every day except on Saturday and Sunday. The morning addition and the evening addition. The papers were not thrown into the yard. There was a newspaper box attached to the side of the mail box at the street.

R126 Addition to what?

R123- I remember going to the Getty station in the 1970's which was the only service station for miles around which allowed the owner to charge high prices for his gasoline and be very busy with car repairs. Back then American cars were so HUGE that the gas station attendant would have to walk around to the other side of my fathers Cadillac Sedan De Ville to finish cleaning the other side of the windshield because it was SO wide.

I can remember when the Beatles first came to America, I couldn't believe how ridiculously long their hair was and how much I hated all the screaming the girls did while they preformed. At the time I thought they were horribly overrated.

I later had longer hair than theirs and loved their music. Still don't like the girls screaming.

Back in the day when someone asked for our phone number we'd tell them it was 'Belmont 7-8950' or 237-8950.

Green Shield Stamps with petrol purchases.

I remember my mother hosting a Tupperware Party

R132- Was your mother's name Edith Bunker?

Oh how I miss the summer of love ,dropping acid, up until 4 in the morning I realized just how queer I am due to those trips

R25, I have a friend who lives in a fancy Park Avenue building, and they still have an elevator operator. My husband’s family’s building had one back in the late 90s.

Personally, I find it too intimate (they can smell the alcohol or... whatever on your breath), and I can certainly press my own elevator button.

R122, we used those on cans of pineapple and tomato juice!

And Hawaiian Punch, for special occasions.

Until about 10 years ago I had saved an old Gannett newspaper from December 1977. There were ads for specials at the supermarkets. A&P had the biggest ad . They were advertising 10 navel oranges for $1. WOW

The other day I was in Hmart and they were charging 65 cents for one medium orange. OUCH

For R122. Yes! I remember using this gadget. A must kitchen accessory. Use this, or get a screwdriver.

(R104 / R106)

I'm from London, England (cunty if you're around, yes, I am, I'm not lying...for goodness sake!!)

But we came to America once or twice a year.

It was extremely expensive flying to the USA - you had to take what were called 'chartered' flights and book months in advance. The planes were shitty and had no movies or anything and they were often delayed. But it was worth it.

America in the 70s (& before) was way advanced than the rest of the world. It was like travelling to the future. Shopping malls, multi channel TVs/cable. Push button phones. Zillions of radio stations. Late night shopping. Fast food places (we didn't even have McDonald's).

I probably should have maturer memories and observations but I was a child so these were things that impressed me.

R139, were you part of the Suit 'n' Tie to Fly club?

Using this can lid remover. Deadly if your fingers slipped over the lid’s jagged edge.

[quote]You could buy a quart of milk for a quarter, from the milk machine on the corner.

Wow, I thought I'd heard it all, but this is a new one. R90, can i ask where this was, and when? I'm assuming a larger city?

R138 -- I've heard that gadget referred to as a "church key."

R139- Why would you need to take a chartered flight to the USA back then. There were MANY nonstop flights from London to New York on British Airways or BOAC then and Pan Am in the 1970's.

My first plane ride (from LA to SF) on a turbo-prop... before most commercial planes became jets.

R144 as R139 explained, it cost a helluva lot more on scheduled service back then: $1200 in 1961 dollars for a r/t from JFK (then Idlewild) to LHR. The inflation calculator will give you some idea of what that’s worth today.

You’ll see why people tried to save money.

In high school our school lunch cost 35¢. A lot of us opted to run across the street to McDonald's at lunch time and use that 35¢ to buy a hamburger, fries and a coke.

When I was about 10 my family went into NYC from Long Island where we lived. My mother forgot my dress (I was in play clothes, pants) and girls were not allowed on the street unless in a dress so they had to buy me a dress when we got there.

Cigarettes were 25¢ a pack or 5 for $1. Candy bars which were larger than they are today were 5¢ each or 6 for a quarter.

r142 I am not the one that posted about buying milk from a machine but we had them too on Long Island.

We had them in London too.

This mailed a letter

First stamp I remember:

[quote] [R126] Addition to what?

LOL, I just caught that. Another instance of the fingers going faster than the brain.

EDITION! 😳

What did poor R148 do to get troll designated? He was free and clear earlier on all his other posts.

at age 12 this put a knot in my stomach

Funny enough I recall we used to get two different newspaper deliveries. The morning would bring the Provience Journal. Then late afternoon they'd bring the Evening Bulletin. Also recall milk deliveries at my grandparents house in the city. Plus I recall the transition to plastic wrapped everything. Meat was in waxed or heavy paper. And yeah pay phones lemme think, 15 cents I think it cost.

CB radio was a big deal back then too - and the FCC licensed it too. Ours was KOR-8812. Of course now I got by something different KD1S that 1 in the middle means I got my call sign in New England. I got into amateur radio as a no-code technician. I heard stories how you had to go up to the Boston FCC office for the test prior to the volunteer examiner programs.

My parents first house cost exactly $20,000 wonder what it is now?

R153- I always found Mike Wallace to be SO SMUG.

I remember when the gas pumps only went to 99.9 so they had to sell gas by the half-gallon for a while.

Making toll calls at weekday rate = mortal sin!

“Toll calls.”

I remember when the caller was the only one charged for a phone call.

R147

A former supervisor of mine, who would now be about 85 years old, mentioned the time that she went into the city from Bergen County, and was lectured by a policeman about not being dressed suitably for the occasion. I don't think he actually had her turn around and go home, but if not he certainly hinted he was willing to do so.

R160- A woman was arrested in NYC in 1904 for smoking in public.

McDonald's Big Macs were 65¢ when I was 10 years old.

PSA Airlines. $29 flights from LA to San Francisco. Flavor Straws I remember buying cigarettes for my parents at gas station vending machines, where the packs would come with the change (two pennies) inside the clear plastic wrap. When Mastercard was called Mastercharge. And Visas were called BankAmericards. And, I used to work for Carte Blanche.

R163-Do you remember when Exxon was called Esso?

R164 I do remember Esso. And I remember jokes about the Esso Bee.

I remember free directory assistance. Simply dial 0 and ask the operator for the number of any person in the country.

R166- They were able to do that because they charged ASTRONOMICAL prices for anything considered to be a long distance call..

When I was 5 years old in 1958 my grandparents huge home had 2 telephones. A candlestick phone in the "phone alcove" upstairs at the end of the central hallway and a wall phone in the kitchen. No matter where you were in that big house when the phone rang you had to start fast to get to the phone before the caller hung up. I well remember when the lady that cooked for them would answer the kitchen phone she'd literally yell into it because she figured the other person wouldn't be able to hear her. 😃

By the way, I still have that candlestick phone as a decorative piece.

To R162, I remember when Mc Donalds and Carrolls were only 10 cents

I remember back when they used to pay me to eat at McDonalds. Good money too. Yeah, so....

I remember M, G and J as fresh young things.

I remember when toy cars were made in England ( Matchbox and Corgi) unlike today where everything is made in China.

I remember our house had a clothes chute on the third and second floors that ended in the cellar. We just threw our dirty clothes, wet towels, etc. in the chute and it was collected in the cellar basket. Smoking was allowed on airplanes, people dressed up when going out. The Green Stamp book that, when filled, was redeemable. Those were the happy days.

The FDR 6¢ stamp was the earliest I remember using.

We also had a milkman who delivered two half-gallon glass jugs twice a week. They had foil caps on them.

Payphone calls were 10¢ Our service was GTE, not Ohio Bell (which we considered superior to GTE).

I specifically remember a "gas war" in the late 60's when a Gulf station across the street from a Sohio sold gas for 25¢ a gallon.

Our house had an TV antenna on the roof that was controlled by a rotor box that sat on top of the console TV. To get clearer reception, you turned the rotor, which rotated the antenna. We often overshot and had to turn it the other way. BTW, we had three channels 3 (NBC), 5 (ABC) and 8 (CBS).

We had a natural gas furnace which heated water that circulated in pipes and radiators in each room. The pipes banged and clanged when the hot water hit them and if you brushed up against one pipe in the living room, it burned your arm, leg, hand, whatever. NB, this sort radiant heat is inefficient.

The one bank in town was owned by an elderly spinster who had a desk in a sort of loft overlooking the whole operation. She lent my parents the $9000 cost of our house in 1966. The mortgage was $83/month and I remember some months my parents could not pay the whole amount.

I also remember the meat counter wrapping everything from ground beef to cold cuts to slices cheese in brown butcher paper, with a piece of tape and a price marked in grease pencil.

the electronics and music pages of the Green Stamp catalog:

I remember when you traveled somewhere you would call home through the operator and ask to speak to your own name, when your parents answered the phone the operator would say that they had a call for that name and your parents would say that he wasn't here. You parents would know you have arrived safely and you didn't have to pay for the call.

[quote] A person-to-person call is an operator-assisted call in which the calling party requests to speak to a specific party and not simply to anyone who answers. The caller is not charged for the call unless the requested party is reached. This method was popular when telephone calls were relatively expensive.

If you recognize him, you're an elder...

I remember George Washington not being able to lie about chopping down the cherry tree.

I remember when Yugo's launched in the US. It was such a disaster that some car dealerships were giving them away for free with the purchase of any other new vehicle.

Hell yes I remember Bobby Sherman R177. My loins burned for him back in the day.

I posted above about the milk machine. This was in Flushing, Queens, an area of apartment buildings. Mother would send one of us down to the corner with a quarter if we ran out of milk. Even at dinnertime when it was dark.

Those were the days when kids had chores at home, & were sent on errands outside the home, going down in the elevator by themselves to the corner.

You generally saw milk machines on major roads. The machines were silver metal, about 5 feet tall. The milk carton came tumbling down a little chute when you put a quarter in and pressed a button for the kind of milk you wanted.

I grew up in NYC. In grammar school (parochial) in the earlier grades (1-4) in the early 70s, my younger brother and I would come home for lunch, then go back to school.

In department stores, you had salespeople who actually helped you.

Before the advent of the plethora of talk shows, we had the morning and afternoon movies on WABC. The talk shows were Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore in the afternoons.

I can remember my grandmother loved Merv Griffin ay 8:30 at night on WNEW (channel 5 in NY).

Card stores owned by individuals. In our neighborhood there was a card owned by two elderly Jewish sisters. We were Catholic, but they used to give my mother matzoh and Gefilte fish at Passover.

Bringing your dress shirts, bed sheets, and table linen to the Chinese laundry. zThey did a beautiful job.

Eating dinner as a family every night. If my parents went out, say on a Friday night, my Mom would feed us beforehand and perhaps get a pizza. Eating as a family was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me. We learned how to hold conversations.

r143 A lot of different styles of manual can openers were referred to as 'church keys,' even the ones that came with and were used to open sardine tins and cans of coffee.

I don't remember milk machines in the city, but we did have one where we spent Summers at the shore. It was a big, red, boxy machine, that dispensed the coldest milk I ever knew, in waxed paper cartons. The carton flew out with such force that sometimes it broke open before it got to the pick-up window.

I remember gasoline for 15 cents a gallon. Within the stretch of one block we had 3 places you could gas up: 2 simply had a pipe and hose set-up at the curb, the other was a full-service station.

R154- Up until the late 1970’s there were far fewer things sold in plastic. Supermarkets used paper bags without handles which was a pain in the ass to carry.

Nicer department stores gave you shopping 🛍 bags with handles while a store like Sears used these TALL paper bags.

r160 In the 40's my 23 year old aunt who lived in Manhattan went down to the river with her friends to sun bath and they had shorts on. A cop came along and told them they had to go home because of the way they were dressed and they were not allowed out in public dressed like that. Today, I can't even imagine that.

Am I the only one who had such dangerous items as Creepy Crawlers and a chemistry set?

I remember no internet, no public surveillance, anything you needed to look up was on paper or that newfangled microfiche.

People treated others like fellow human beings.

Very few rageaholics, and they were regarded as slightly crazy and to be avoided.

We had milk machines in Wisconsin. Very handy.

You'd pull into a gas station and a uniformed attendant would run out to see what you needed. Fill 'er up, clean the windshield, check the tires and oil, and cheerfully send you on your way.

Getting pizza was a treat.

I remember my father taking me to the Automat near Macy's in Manhattan in the early 1970's when there were still several left.

Anyone else remember candy cigarettes?

R189- I do remember them, vaguely.

Were they around in the 1970's?

I remember when the ‘hanky code’ was a big thing down on Folsom and the Castro. Blue for blow jobs,Red for fisting..sort of forget the others..right back pocket for the Receiver …left for the submissive. The meat rack at the Watering Hole…..those really were the days

R191 You must had a lost of crossed wires. Right - Receiver. Left - Submissive. Who's going to drive?

If this is the domain we're looking at.... I remember young men strolling slowly to show the wares on the streets off of Santa Monica Blvd. (Selma Ave), lingering hopefully around Pershing Square, and men tensely observing the guys working in the sand pit at Muscle Beach in Venice.

I thought it was right for the dominant ( the fucker), left for submissive (getting fucked) Have I been hooking my keys on the wrong side?

I remember my first dildo was made of bark and had to be hand cranked.

I had a policeman baton …just the right size….some have to work up to it though.

11, 11 ALIVE

For r193, who I hope hasn't had any problems navigating who's on top IRL.

Thank you for refreshing my memory…it has been a long time hasn’t it?

As a kid growing up in Wisconsin during the 60's margarine was not allowed to be sold completely mixed, it came in a plastic pouch and you had to squeeze the pouch to mix the yellow and the white sections inside the pouch. The dairy farmers didn't like that margarine cut into butter sales so if you wanted margarine you had to work for it and mix it yourself.

R197 Ha... I love the "will buy dinner"

It should be updated. Paisley right - "gluten free vegan" Paisley left - Keto diet

You could blow powdered sugar out of them. So sophisticated.

R199 Until 2008, Quebec outlawed coloring margarine. It was a ghastly whitish gray color.

[R118]

Same with Oregon. We can't pump our own gas. Every once in awhile, it comes up for a vote to end this, but nobody votes for it. Why get your own gas when somebody is there to do it for you? They also check the oil, tires, etc.

To the person who mentioned their father's Olds, I got a ticket for having 17 people in my father's Olds 98, at the time the longest car ever built. This was in a very large park, and it was a convertible, with people sitting on the hood and the trunk lid. I had to go to court with my father, who was a highly-respected lawyer in the city.

So, I'm up on front of the judge (who was a friend of my parents), with my Dad standing beside me. The judge frowns, and says to me, "I bet Mark (my father, not his real name), didn't like you doing that to his car, did he?" I wanted to sink through the floor.

Me: No, sir.

Judge: "Why did you have 17 people in your father's car?"

Me: "They needed a ride, sir."

The entire courtroom burst out laughing, including the judge and my father.

I spent my entire life as a motorist until very recently in New Jersey. So, I only learned to pump my own gas this year after moving to Florida.

I saw Herman's Hermits in concert.

I remember direct flights.

I remember when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a thing.

Not a single naked man I saw in the 60s and 70s, and I saw quite a lot at college, groomed his bush. It was all-hair all the time.

The average cost of the lowest grade of gasoline in New Jersey is right at $3.00/gal. and $3.50/gal in Oregon. So in plenty places in both states the actual cost is higher. Do people in those states not realize they're paying higher prices because the stations have to pay the salaries of people to pump that gas for them?

I remember in the summer of 1979 the first time I paid more than a dollar a gallon for gasoline.

I was 22, but I was outraged. As if I was one of our best eldergays.

In 1965, it was five gallons for $1 on Tuesdays.

I remember when a total stranger knocked on the door you answered it expecting the option to buy things like Fuller Brushes, or vacuums, even cosmetics. And as a young kid answering the door (which was totally normal back then before helicopter parents) They sales man would then say "is the lady of the house home"?

Going shopping for clothes at Woolworths and being able to grab lunch right at the lunch counter inside the store. Not in a separate room or alcove but right along the wall right next to tall the people and merchandise.

R209- I live in Westchester cty NY and I have to fill up my car today. My self serve BP is $3.01 per gallon and they're one of the lowest prices near me. You still have it better even with the full serve in NJ.

High beams in a cars were not on the staring column. They were located on the floor to the side of the break so you could tap them on and off without removing your hands from the wheel.

Marc's Big Boy. The Big Boy was the precursor to the Big Mac and I wonder if the Big Boy chain ever challenged it.

R213 Woolworth's lunch counter had the best BLTs and root beer.

I remember The Summer of '42. No I wasn't alive then it was a movie made in 1971, but I remember seeing it.

[quote]I was fascinated by it as well as the power windows in their Oldsmobile.

As a kid we had an Oldsmobile as well and the power rear windows didn't just slide down. They danced down. The window started going down at one angle and then switched angles midway through, ending in a straight line just as the window disappeared. This was 1964.

1964, I believe, was the year my folks bought a Ford Falcon; my mom passed her driver's test, but couldn't drive (my dad's) standard car.

The Avon Lady! She was a neighbor who was trying to pay off a debt; the housewives felt compelled to buy something from her to help her out. I do remember my mother looking out the window and saying "Oh no, here comes Marge."

Still, they all were the best of friends.

I remember the NBC peacock - The next program is in living color- I LOVED the NBC peacock which they used up until about 1975.

1975 would have been roughly when we got our first color TV.

I remember this.

When as a kid living in the city, I remember a fresh produce truck visiting my block twice a week. I remember the produce man singing some kind of song but the words were unintelligible and me and the other kids would mock the song. The last time I saw him was 1971 when we moved to a different neighborhood. There was no produce truck in that hood.

R100 - All the women on my mother’s side of the family called that method of monetary conveyance “Chest National Bank”.

As was said up thread, on weeknights TV broadcasting actually stopped after the "last" program. Often at midnight or 1:00am this is all you'd see:

"Bicentennial Minutes" CBS broadcasted a one-minute history lesson between two shows every night for a year and a half during the celebration in 1976. Each segment featured a celebrity, who reported what happened "200 years ago today".

Here's a sample from Youtube, reported by actress Jessica Tandy.

I loved these!

When I was 11 in 1964 I went to see 'Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte' alone because all my friends had heard it was terrifying and wouldn't go. It traumatized me. I slept with the light on in my bedroom for a week.

I am old, childhood memories from the 50s. Bread, milk, seltzer delivered to the house every week. We had a milk box on the porch, milk was left, my mom put the money in an envelope. No one worried about it being taken. The "fruit man" came with his truck, selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Insurance Salesman came regularly to our door, to collect insurance premiums, Fuller Brush door to door salesman, the "peddler" came to sharpen knives and scissors, etc. These weekly or bi-weekly visits were welcomed by stay at home housewives. My Mom served them coffee and cookies. These regulars were conduits of neighborhood news and gossip. Then there were itinerant vacuum salesman and encyclopedia salesman.

My mother used to give me a dollar. This allowed me to ride the bus back and forth to "downtown", meet with a friend, share a hamburger and cokes at Woolworth's. Sometimes I just walked, so I could spend the busfare on a pocket comb. It came in a little plastic sheath with a mirror on the back. bough candy with the rest.

R218, I'm so old I knew Jennifer O'Neill's ex-husband.

R228, thank you for sharing that. I remember these too!

[quote]1975 would have been roughly when we got our first color TV.

I remember felling neglected because other families were all getting color TVs and Dad thought they were too expensive. When the day came that he finally relented, to my surprise half the channels were still in fucking black and white!

My father refused to buy a color TV even though we could easily afford it, he didn't believe in it. So my mother got a job saved up the money to buy a color TV and said dad could watch the black and white TV in the basement. So eventually she had saved enough bought the color TV and you couldn't separate my father from that color TV he loved it.

Same thing happened with the microwave, my father refused to believe they could work, my mother bought one but my father refuse to ever use it, not that he ever cooked much, that was woman's work.

When I was a kid department stores could still ring up your sale even if the power was off, because they brought the cranks out and just cranked the cash register. When I was a teenager we had to punch in the item code and the price. None of this fancy scanning stuff.

I still use a fan scale in my kitchen.

I remember when bowling alleys had manual pinsetters (and bowling 'alleys' were not called bowling 'centers').

Shoot, we didn't have air-conditioning until I was ten years old. A fan in the front door blowing in, a fan in the back door blowing out, that was central cooling in my first decade.

When we did get air-conditioning, we were the first in the neighborhood and suddenly everyone wanted to play with us.

I remember the clinking of the slave chains lulling me to sleep as they came in from the fields right before sunset. If you waited until dark, they had a better chance of escaping.

When I was young, TV programming wasn't a 24-hour enterprise.

And speaking of TV, I remember that Kresge's dept. store sold rainbow-colored film to spread on your black and white TV screen so you could halfway believe you had a color TV.

The milkman drove an unrefrigerated truck. In those days, the milk was kept cold with lots of ice packed in hay (to keep it from melting too quickly).

We had a small aluminized steel box on the back porch for the milk delivery. And my mom scraped off the cream that rose to the top of each bottle to use in her morning coffee.

Telephones were available only through the Bell Telephone Company. It was a big deal when "Ma Bell" introduced the Princess phone (pink and portable) and phones with push buttons instead of rotary dials.

Panasonic was one of the first companies to sell transistor radios to the mass market. Reception was poor and the audio sucked.

My mom's Plymouth Suburban station wagon, circa 1959, had a push-button transmission

Running shoes hadn't been invented when I was a kid. Everybody wore sneakers.

I licked way too many S&H green stamps.

And families who could afford them had encyclopedias.

I learned to drive in a 1964 Plymouth Fury with a push button automatic. It had a 424 cu. in. engine that idled down a level street at 20 mph.

It sounds like some of you were born in 1920.

More like 1945 - 60 R242 — and when you get older you’ll suddenly realize that 25 or 30 years isn’t really all that much time.

I'm an eldergay myself. But some of these sound like suburban life in the early 20th century. Straight out of 'Knoxville, Summer of 1915.'

I can relate to most of it. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. It’s a world away from today, so much has been introduced since then.

Yet our grandparents marveled at what was introduced in the 60s and 70s.

We had penpals. Mine lived in England and we would write letters to each other once a month and we'd share our teen magazines. I never heard of Cliff Richards until I saw pics of him in one of the magazines and fell in love. I think I was 13.

I remember in Junior high school in the spring of 1978 when Pop Rocks and Space Dust were all the rage and I begged this kid to give me some of his Space Dust because both were in short supply.

Some department stores and specialty shops had lay -away-plans. The store held your selected garment until weekly payments were completed. I remember going with my mother to make a payment on a dress she had "laid away". The money was put in a glass or plastic sort of tube sent by the salesclerk to the office in a sort of vacuum chute. You watched it disappear. Loved that.

R248 I worked in an 8-story office building that sent mail through those vacuum chutes. There were a number of chutes, depending on the mail's destination. It all seemed very space age-y at the time.

I think drive-through banking was similar?

^^Yep, it still is.

I remember the opening of the first public television station in my community. It was so extremely different from network TeeVee that, even as a kid, I did not think this new idea would ever catch on. It was DRY.

R249. They are very cool but the technology is actually Victorian.

I remember when the first ATMs started showing up. They had a glass panel that would protect it from the elements and vandals and raised up into the panel only after you inserted your card.

In contrast, I remember public phone booths where you could make a local 5 minute call for about 25 cents if you could sand the smell of piss that long. The phones were NEVER cleaned by anyone. They were so gross greasy and smelly you needed to pick the handset up with salad tongs to avoid catching something.

Those were the days.

R 254- Chemical Bank was the FIRST bank in the USA to have Automated Bank Tellers- in 1969.

[quote] The TV Station ending its broadcast around 2 or 3 am with the National Anthem, then snow on the screen.

God, I remember this as a child. It always made me feel slightly melancholy. It was a reminder that the whole world was asleep except for you.

R256-What were you doing up so late at 8 years old?

R257 I was always a night owl. Sometimes I would manage to fall asleep at a normal hour (8-9 pm) and still wake up around 12 or 1 am, when everyone else was fast asleep.

My brothers and I were early risers, and we’d turn on the TV and watch the test pattern until programming resumed, at 6 a.m. I think. This would have been around 1960.

Sunrise Semester.

The cloying, saccharine yet still terrifying "Davey and Goliath" was often the first program on after the test pattern.

"Davey and Goliath" I had forgotten.

R261... Thanks?

[quote] A few girls would make a necklace out of pull tabs.

And some would do so much more.

R261-Davey and Goliath was DREARY as was the theme music, even worse was Underdog. That show exhibited an underlying depression.

The theme music is a very famous hymn! A MIGHTY FORTRESS IS OUR GOD. All I can recall of the series is Goliath's signature line: Aw, Gee, Davey!

I liked the Underdog theme song!

I watched religiously until someone yelled : "somethin' somethin' somethin'........after you RAPED Alison!!!" and my mother immediately ordered us outside to play in the garden. Never saw another episode. To this day I have a thing for Mia.

I used to watch "Pete and Gladys." Oh, yes, I did.

Let's just say I've been to me.

After the test pattern in the early 60s, we watched Atom Ant, Secret Squirrel, Underdog and Top Cat. I'd pull out a box of cereal and eat it straight from the box while watching.

I have always been an early riser. In our TV market (Cleveland), stations signed on at 5:45 AM. When I was a (little) kid, the only cartoons on TV at 6 or 7 AM were Casper the Friendly Ghost, Popeye, and Loony Tunes. I remember thinking that Casper was like me – a misunderstood outsider. Popeye sucked, especially the Bluto/Brutus character. We used to call our third grade teacher "Sea Hag."

Did everywhere have a Bozo the Clown? I think it was like a franchise a station could buy.

Clowns were more popular then.

R271- I LOVED The Bozo The Clown Show- I asked my mother to call the tv station to see if I could be in the audience. It was not possible because the show was taped in California and we lived in a suburb of NYC. I didn't give a shit about BOZO I just wanted a chance to win some of the FABULOUS prizes some of the kids won on the show.

My brother and I did receive tickets to Wonderama in 1977 but the tickets were sent to our old address ( we had just moved- about a year earlier) and by the time we received them it was too late. Yo had to order the tickets a year in advance to be able to appear on the show.

My dad was the attorney for Bozo in Boston in the early 60s.

Officer Joe McCarthy hosted cartoons on ch. 11 in New York; I believe their was a rival cop on ch 9? Only learned recently Caspar was a boy who froze to death - talk about a downer! I had a crush on Tin Tin's Captain Haddock!

Boston had its own Bozo. His name was Frank Avruch and after the Bozo gig died, he was the “Classic Movie” host in a tux.

When I was a kid I thought he was the only one.

Also, listening to my grandmother’s 78 of Merv Griffin singing “I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” on the record player over and over to try and figure out what it meant at age 6 or so. He was a band singer before he had a talk show, Eva, the Beverly Hilton, and Ryan.

When I was 7 years old in the early 1970's I would watch old episodes of Lassie ( the version from the early 1960's with the cute blond kid John Provost. I had a major crush/attraction for him but I knew even then that I was watching an old show and that little boy was all grown up. It made me a bit wistful even in 1972.

R59- Around 1974 I was in Little League. I wasn't a stereotypical gay boy but I wasn't into playing sports either. It was kind of exciting going to see the Mets play at Shea Stadium not because I gave a shit about baseball but because the manager of our team - he drove a late model Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon- and I LOVED Big American Station wagons- he drove me and some of the other kids to the stadium in his big beautiful car.

I watched Davey and Goliath because it was the only thing on but I HATED it.

I remember Davey and Goliath being shown early in the morning on Sunday . I kind of liked it even though I was a Jewish kid watching a Protestant show.

Sunday mornings at our house were Davey and Goliath, from our Lutheran friends, followed by Flipper, then Gentle Ben, starring creepy Clint Howard.

Porky Chedwick!

[quote]Davey and Goliath was DREARY as was the theme music, even worse was Underdog.

I loved Davy and Goliath come on, the dog was cute and Under dog? How could you hat that? Code for gays in straight society. Same kind of secretive life with super powers and alwasy helping the little guy. Not wasted on stupid blond big titted woman trapped is some 50 shades of gray fantasy by some crazy Joker.

Gumy and Pokey damn it! Claymation at it's most basic

I'm old enough that I watched "Penelope Pitstop" and "Rocket Robin Hood."

In 1975 my FAVORITE tv show was Land Of The Lost.

The New Zoo Revue

Speaking of Dave’s & Goliath, did you ever watch Adult Swim’s “Moral Orel?” It was an excellent satire of the show, with the writer’s showing you various hypocrisies and repressed rage that Morel never quite got, but we the audience did. For example, his father was a man trapped in his job, and his obligations to his family, the church, etc. It turns out he had strong homosexual longings for the gym coach in town that he numbed by being a functional alcoholic. Definitely not for kids!

^^ Davey, not Dave’s. Fucking autocorrect.

R270 reminded me about Superhost on channel 43. None of the kids in our family now believe that we'd schedule our Saturday afternoons around him showing mostly the same 5 Godzilla movies.

[quote]Why get your own gas when somebody is there to do it for you? They also check the oil, tires, etc.

My mom always opted for self serve because it was cheaper and she often didn't have the right cash to tip the attendant.

I remember the pedophile next door; the way children ran amuck in summer (a good thing); my mother's Avon Lady, brown as a coffee bean from so much sun exposure; Mam's Here's My Heart perfume (yes we were PWT); the milk deliveries; the bread deliveries; our first color TV; aluminum Christmas trees with color wheels; summer vacation Bible School.

[quote]... Mam's Here's My Heart perfume (yes we were PWT)....

When I was growing up, our PWT neighbor always referred to that perfume as "Here's ta My Heart." Even at 7 years old, I knew that was strictly NOCD. (Even if I didn't yet know the term.)

R288 Channel 43 WUAB changed our lives! We watched it on the UHF channel for years, but it was always fuzzy. We got a very primitive cable TV network in our small town in the early 70’s. It was on channel 6 on cable. Of course we watched Superhost’s Saturday Afternoon Movie, usually a Godzilla movie, all the time. Mothra was my favorite. Marty Sullivan was Superhost and I think he died just recently. Do you remember the Prize Movie with John Lanigan (?)? It was a long distance call to Parma, so we could never win.

Speaking of early cable TV, back in the days before one could just look things up online (mid 70s), the "local" station hosted a phone-in trivia contest; I once won a pizza!

Am I the only ancient homo who had a chemistry set as a kid?

I remember when cops would pull you over …..and not ask you if there were weapons in the car

R293- I remember when I was in high school and NO high schools had metal detectors that students had to walk thru to enter the school.

I remember the Fuller Brush man and the Avon lady making home visits.

[quote]I remember the Fuller Brush man and the Avon lady making home visits.

And our mothers routinely let them into the house.

The Watkins man always came to our house. I felt sorry for him because he was an old man. But he would sometimes give us little candies.

It was SO much sexier when you wondered about the bodies and sexuality of Hollywood's leading men and jerked off to the possibilities. Now nothing is left to the imagination. Going out on an actual date was a big deal. Now you can find whatever porn or hookup you want with a swipe on your phone. I'm so happy I came of age when I did.

I think I wrote upthread that we had milk delivered twice a week. But a couple times a year, a tinker came through town, in an ancient pick-up truck with a plywood bed cover, to sharpen your knives and try to sell you utensils and pots and pans.

This is REALLY old fashioned- Ca. 1971 when my brothers or I were sick we'd have the doctor see us. He would drive in his Oldsmobile 98 convertible to our house. Yes, he made house calls.

My parents didn't get a TV until 1952, when I was 5. Before that, we had a radio and a man would read the comics aloud on Sunday mornings when I was about 3. I'd get up early and go downstairs to listen to him, keeping the volume low so it wouldn't wake my parents and the baby.

Back in 1976, I was a sixteen-year-old who just received his driver's license. I went to a particular gas station where a gorgeous college student was working. He always cleaned the front windows; his shirt (unbuttoned three buttons) would fall from his body and I searched his chest for a nipple. It was tantalizingly close. One day the wind blew his shirt out, and I finally saw a spongy quarter-sized light brown nipple. I came in my jeans. He quit soon afterward and I never saw him again. I remember the good old days of full service. If I was a few years older, I would have offered him full service in return.

The gas crisis of the late ‘70s, you could only fill up on certain days (even/odd number on your license plate, I think it was the first digit). Waiting in a 30min line only to be turned away because we (knowingly) went on the wrong day. We were almost on empty.

R303- My parents were smarter. During the gasoline shortage of 1979 my father parked his Hornet Sportabout at the entrance to the filling station overnight. In the morning my mother dropped him off at 7:15am just before the station opened. He was at the front of the line without having to wait in line.

I remember as a child there was a kids show which by today's terms would be called "interactive" encouraging kids to draw right on the TV screens with some special crayons and a cover. If you didn't buy the special kit to put over the screen, more than a few kids would just draw right on top of the screen pissing off the parents.

Looking back, it was brilliant! A product that mom and dad better buy or else you kid will vandalize the TV. 🤣

[quote]Do you remember the Prize Movie with John Lanigan (?)? It was a long distance call to Parma, so we could never win.

R291, Lanigan's name sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't remember the Prize Movie. The only locals I still remember are Dick Goddard (sp?) doing the weather and Superhost on Saturdays.

RIP Dick Goddard. He died last summer.

I didn't know that. ☹ I left Ohio in '87.

I'm so old I got paddled at school with a thick piece of wood that had holes in it to make it extra painful.

I remember Charles Chips being delivered in a box truck in the 70's.

In the 80's I was working at a grocery store. No scanning. I had to manually enter the price of each item in the register. Then used paper bags, no plastic.

Seeing the Disneyland 10th anniversary special when it was first on. It is now on youtube. Seeing all the Disney pavilions first at the NY World's Fair. Thought Mary Poppins was the best thing ever on its first release. Imagine hearing all these years later that Julie Andrews said seriously to a dancer who was going from Poppins to the just about to start filming MFL 'You fucking traitor.' I wish I didn't know that.

What is MFL?

MFL = My Fair Lady

IHAAI = I hate acronyms and initialisms!

"MFL" has been used for multiple decades. "My Fair Lady" was once so ubiquitous that any reader would have understood "MFL," as any of the really old queens on this site can attest.

R314, I'm over 70 and devoted to old movies (though I don't consider "My Fair Lady" an old movie because it's post-WWII) and I figured out what MFL meant from the context. But I still hate acronyms and initialisms because they interrupt the flow for the reader. I realize that they're easier for the typist but I refrain from using them out of courtesy to those who will be reading what I wrote.

Wringer washing machines, pure silver quarters and dimes, the grade school teacher coming back into the classroom and announcing the death of President Kennedy.

I remember in my Social Studies class in Junior High School and my teacher was talking about gasoline reaching a $1.00 a gallon which was shocking in May 1979.

Let's see I remember my maternal grandparents got milk and dairy delivered. .Also remember when you had butchers at the grocery store and everything wasn't wrapped in plastic.

"Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent" and Kukla, Fran and Ollie every Saturday a.m.

My mom made me an Oliver J. Dragon puppet!

When coupes were the hottest selling car models.

Elevator operators in department stores used to not only take you to the floor you wanted, but to recite all the major things that were available on each floor as you went. The ladies who served you in the good department stores wore white gloves, and when they cleaned out the old cash registers they put the money in tubes which flew on wires above shoppers' heads and off to the accounting department. A new one would arrive automatically as part of the process.

My first car, which admittedly was really old even then, didn't have a fuel gage. Instead there was a lever on the floor, and when you ran out you could kick it over at 90 degrees and it would give you an extra gallon. If you wanted to thwart young thugs who wanted to steal your ancient clunker, you could put the lever at 45 degrees and it would cut off access to the fuel tank and only give them the gas that was already in the lines. They could drive about 300 yards before it stopped, and then they'd never figure out what went wrong.

Supermarkets used giant paper bags for your groceries, which were expertly packed and then carried direct to your car by local high school lads employed part-time for the purpose. A week's groceries for a family would fit in two or three of these bags, which the lads would carry with their hands underneath them to make sure the bottom didn't fall out from the weight of groceries. So really, the whole single-use plastic bag thing only came about because supermarkets became too cheap to pay high-school kids to carry paper bags. Capitalism sucks big-time.

I remember the ‘real’ Amyl Nitrate’ ……..not that liquid shit in a bottle

And the near-death headaches that followed, R323.

What was the real stuff like r323 & r324?

R325

In -fucking-tense…………

a MAJOR flushing of blood all through your body…but especially your head…..it’s heavy

I was a very baby gay (1975) when I first encountered the kind of poppers you actually break, the ones of which r323 types. I had no idea what was happening to me when the guy I'd gone home with, astride whose chest I sat, broke one open near my nose. I threw up all over him.

The sex ended there. I was indignant. "You DID that to me? On purpose?" I didn't go near them again until around 1980, when a guy whose cock I was sucking in his car in the Fens in Boston put the bottled kind up to my nose, and I said "Sure, why not?"

It made sex feel so mechanical. Neither of us came IIRC. And the headache the next morning. Ohhh, the headache. I never did them again.

To (R220), that is an awesome reaction to "the real Amyl Nitrate" I was 13 yrs old in a station wagon on East River Dr)Kelly drive now) in Philly A certain hockey player cracked the poppers under my nose while he was fucking me. It was like "a "bomb exploded" in my head. Next thing I remember was that BC& a Philly cop was slapping my face to see if I was alive.Then the cop licked all the cum off me, and we fucked like animals while he watched,then joined in the fun. I have told this story b4(Love the 70's)

You just reminded my why I never liked poppers. I never got the appeal. A head rush is not sexual.

I never got a head ache from poppers. Never. I've always wondered what that is about.

I have had my sinuses stopped up for a while. I've burned the skin around my nostrils. I've even felt irritation in my chest.

But no head aches. Never.

Lucille Ball used poppers in her later years for her angina, presumably secondary to coronary artery disease. Nitrates lower blood pressure and reduce the pain of angina.

Then too, Mary Benny smoked a joint, perfectly rolled by her butler, every afternoon at 4 pm.

This Gentle Reader appreciates r315.

Thank you, R333. But I just realized that I typed WWII in R315, which is an initialism! In my defense, I started to type "the war", which is how I speak when referring to World War II, until it dawned on me that some younger DL readers may not be aware of which war I meant, inasmuch as America has been involved in so many of them since I was born. But that's another, sadder, story.

315, your concern for clarity and thoughtfulness toward others proves your status. Carry on.

Happy Sunday Datalounge, Phillywhore here. My post at R329, I meant to type R323, not R220(though my mom did have a beat-up Ford Falcon) I did LOVE R328 reaction to the"real amyl" nitrate. Now I have to figure out why I typed 220.

R329Yes! The real ones that you had to break under your nose. Back in the day, I was fucking his army guy. He broke one under his nose and his hole relaxed and tensed up. It felt amazing! Then he broke one under my nose. I thought I was having a heart attack followed by the worst migraine ever! Thought it was intense, never again.

When they repackaged it as a "room deodorizer' or "video head cleaner" it was so much more diluted.

R336

When my mom got her license in 1964, my folks got a black Falcon (in addition to the stick station wagon she couldn't drive).

In the early 1960s, we kids in the neighborhood would follow the mailman to the end of his route. Then we walked home. 20 years later, when I was in graduate school, he was still on his route. I opened the door to accept our mail and his eyes opened wide and he hugged me. Turns out, he always asked my Mom how I was doing at college when they ran into each other.

That was an era when people bought holiday presents for the people who delivered to us, the mailman, the milkman, the diaper delivery man... We got to know them. There's something really special about that.

I agree, R339. Life was less stressful when things happened at a human level.

I remember when everything seemed to be psychedelic. Even McDonalds.

America was a much freer country before Ronald Reagan took over and ruined it.

R341- Sid and Marty Krofft sued McDonald's over that commercial because they claimed ( rightly so) that they used the characters from their tv show HR Puff N Stuff.

[quote] America was a much freer country before Ronald Reagan took over and ruined it.

R341, he didn't mount a coup, he was voted into office, twice. Just like all of the other shitty Presidents, such as Nixon and W. and Trump. Everyone who's nostalgic for whatever the good old days were needs to get off his/her butt and vote for better candidates in every election. Never forget that.

R299- Were you born in 1910?

I never knew Ronald had saddlebag thighs

I am so old, I remember when they only way you could get porn was to walk into a store and actually pay for it.

Telegrams. I'm so old I even remember singing telegrams.

I'm so old I remember the circus side show at the 8th Av MSG and they had several of the midgets from TWOO. I don't think it would go over well today. Yet for some reason you can still make fun of dwarfs.

" buh bum ba-bum bum bum..... Your sister Rose is dead....."

Old joke. Ask me.

I'm so old, R37, that I delivered singing telegrams.

Really.

Ugh. That was for r347.

The Charles Chips man.

I’m SO OLD I remember when everyone in the Upper middle class neighborhood I delivered newspapers to drove Big American cars 🚙.

I remember "My Mother, the Car."

I once ate an entire Coatco sheet cake!

R354 I remember Dave Garroway and J. Fred Muggs on the Today Show. Which was so long ago that he needs to be explained to you, dear readers.

From Wikipedia: The Today Show had begun in 1952 with Dave Garroway as host, but was doing poorly. The introduction of a chimp caused Jim Fleming, the original newsreader, to quit; he was replaced by Frank Blair. However, the addition of Muggs boosted ratings and helped win advertisers; the program's producer, Richard Pinkham, once estimated Muggs had brought the network $100 million. Muggs sat in Garroway's lap, mastered more than 500 words, and had a wardrobe of 450 outfits. He "read" the day's newspapers, imitated Popeye and played the piano with Steve Allen. Merchandise featuring him included books, comics, and games; as a star, he was called on to open supermarkets and commission US Navy ships.

Many sources refer to Garroway as jealous of Muggs. Joe Hagan of The New York Observer noted, without attribution, that "Legend has it that ... Mr. Garroway grew jealous and began spiking Muggs' orange juice with benzedrine to make him misbehave and deliver his human co-host back to center stage." Many sources suggested that Muggs did not have a good disposition. He has been described as "a nasty little monkey" and as "throwing legendary tantrums". He is said to have learned that if he misbehaved when the red light was on, indicating that the program was broadcasting live, he could not be disciplined."

To illustrate the last post:

The little chimp is Phoebe B. Beebe, J. Fred's girlfriend

I went to the 64/65 NY World's Fair.

I picketed Anita Bryant in 1977.

Jack Lalanne had a daily exercise show for the housewives of America. My Mom was crazy about him. I was, too, and I was under ten years old at the time. Our neighbor women also raved about him. If Jack wanted to sell something to them, he did. Huge numbers of women (and men) bought these products. He found a niche and ran with it, to huge benefit.

In the late 1970's and early 1980's I liked those commercial for those get away places in the Poconos- Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge. Penn Hills for lovers only you're NEVER lonely at Penn Hills.

Gene London.

Instead, R361 settled for a tawdry affair at the Milford Plaza without even a fur from the Ritz Thrift Shop to show for it!

We were jealous when some guys in middle school developed big bushes. These guys were self-conscious, but we wanted to be them.

R364 - How ELDERGAY can you be if you refer to Junior High School as MIDDLE school.

It was always Middle School when I was a kid, junior high came through a bit later.

I was in a middle school as well. We're talking the mid-70s.

As a boy my mother watched Jack LaLanne. To me he was an old man in ballet slippers. Bizarre.

[quote]As a boy my mother watched Jack LaLanne.

Your mother was a boy? What were their pronouns?

Jack LaLanne was always creepy. Way too aggressive with his enthusiasm.

Bonnie Prudden was more my style.

R367, I was in jr high 1959-1963 -- my youngest sibling is 5 years younger than I am and also went to jr high. We were in CA -- maybe the names are regional? I don't think I even heard of middle school until I was close to 30 (though I wasn't paying attention to the subject once I escaped, regardless of what it was called).

I think Middle School is an east coast thing, my partner and I are in our 50's and I called it Jr. High as I grew up in Calif and he called it Middle School from NJ. My Jr. High was a 2 year deal, his was 3 years.

Yeah, and Jack Lalanne was creepy old man in odd weard femmy cloths. I never go the appeal even as a young gayling. I guess to housewives he was less threatening?

We called it "junior high" where I grew up in New Jersey, in the 1960s. "Middle school" came later, by which time I was no longer paying attention.

I recall riding in the front seat of the car with my mom as a child, she was a nervous white-knuckle driver, but I of course sat in front, likely without a seat belt too

[quote] We called it "junior high" where I grew up in New Jersey, in the 1960s. "Middle school" came later, by which time I was no longer paying attention.

The district I lived in during 60's Jersey called it middle school. I went to private schools for K - 8 and high school.

To move the thread along... if only they'd bring back Hojo peppermint stick ice cream!

Howard Johnson's!

I've had fried clams in the Howard Johnson's that used to be at 46th and Broadway.

Friendly's had great fried clams.

R378- What about their FRIBBLES?

I never had a Fribble.

r380 Nor I. I wonder if they're fried Tribbles?

You can relax, R381.

I learned to type on a typewriter. I didn't mean to take the class; the Guidance Counselor just tacked it on because I needed enough credits to somehow miraculously graduate high school (long story). So I just went through the motions and learned to type at 35 wpm.

So glad I did because it enabled me to do entry-level office jobs for years. Then I worked many years as a library clerk and would never have gotten the job without passing... a 35 wpm typing test.

R378- When Friendly's was owed by FRIENDLY'S the food and their sundaes were GOOD. It was sold to Hershey's in the around 1982 that's when their food started to decline. It was sold again by the time I ate there on the way home from Provincetown in 1995 and their food was CRAP.

We never had middle school or junior high when I grew up. Grade school and high school. High school was freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. Did middle schools and junior high schools use number grades or fresh, soph, etc.?

My understanding of elementary school was Grades 1 through 6.

Junior High was grades 7 & 8.

High School was 9, 10, 11, and 12.

Middle School removed 9th Grade from high school and grouped it with the kids in the... Middle. Grades 7 through 9 was Middle School.